Sri Lankan justice minister calls for strike ban in key sectors

K. Ratnayake

Late last month Sri Lankan Justice Minister Ali Sabry publicly called on President Gotabhaya Rajapakse to take tough action and ban strikes in key sectors of the economy. Sabry made his appeal on NethFM radio, during a nearly 90-minute conversation about the problems confronting the Rajapakse government.

“There are key strategic economic sectors, such as the ports, customs, CEB [Ceylon Electricity Board], Petroleum Corporation, GMOA [in fact, he meant the health sector]. Strikes must be banned in all these,” Sabry said.

Ali Sabry (Photo: Facebook)

Strikes in these institutions are a “crime,” he continued, adding that the right to strike should be removed from the constitution. “The army cannot strike, the police cannot strike and, like them, nor should other economically strategic [institutions].” The president “is a bit soft,” Sabry said and added, “We expected a president who would act a bit ruthlessly.”

Sabry is a senior corporate lawyer, having previously represented major companies, and one of several technocrats and academics, who rallied to support Rajapakse’s presidential election campaign in 2019. Known as Viyathmaga, the right-wing group promoted Rajapakse’s “national security first” and “strong rule” for economic security election campaign.

Th e COVID pandemic has sharply deepened the political and economic crisis of Sri Lankan capitalism over the past two years . The country is on the verge of foreign debt default with around $US7 billion in loan repayments due in 2022 with similar amount s in the coming years , and sharp falls in state revenue. Facing a foreign reserve crisis and revenue shortfall, the Rajapakse regime is slashing imports, leading to increasing prices and shortages of essentials.

Strikes and demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands of workers have erupted in the health, electricity, petroleum, ports, education, plantation and garment sectors over wages, privatisation and austerity measures. There is also widespread popular anger over the government’s criminal response to the pandemic. Rural districts have been engulfed by farmers’ protests. Sabry’s remarks reflect the fear of the Rajapakse government and the entire ruling elite of this rising mass opposition.

Sabry told NethFM that protests by electricity board employees were the result of actions by corrupt elements among engineers and insinuated that the unions were using incidents such as the transfer of employees, as an excuse for strike action.

These claims are bogus and used to slander workers taking action over the rising cost of living, shortages and moves towards privatisation. Contrary to Sabry’s claims, the unions have been doing their utmost to dissipate social anger and suppress workers’ strikes and protests.

Targeting the state sector, Sabry said it was overcrowded with massive numbers of workers, many of whom were sitting idle, and now employed 10 times more than it did since independence. The 52 state-owned enterprises suffered a loss of 200 billion rupees (about $US1 billion) during the past ten years. In contrast, he said, the private sector earned huge profits in the last two years.

Teachers demonstrate in Nuwara Eliya on July 30, 2021 [Credit: WSWS Media]

Sabry’s references to the state sector echo the ongoing demands of the International Monetary Fund for downsizing and privatisation. Successive governments, including the current Rajapakse regime, have already privatised some state-owned sectors.

Sabry declared that “unpopular decisions” have to be made and referred to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who broke strikes and sacked thousands of workers in order to “save” the country during the 1980s. She was called “iron lady,” he said. Sabry also referred to Lee Kuan Yee, the former Prime Minister of Singapore, who used police-state measures to stop strikes during that time.

Sabry’s remarks are not accidental. Similar sentiments have been expressed by other government ministers. In April last year, state minister, Dilum Pamunugama called on Rajapakse to “act like Hitler.”

On January 21, Minister of Lands M. S. Chandrasena criticised those in parliament denouncing the Sri Lankan president for acting like Hitler and added: “But when we see the problems of the country it needs a leader like Hitler.”

Sabry’s call for strike bans and other calls from the ruling party for Rajapakse to act like Hitler are a clear indication that the regime is preparing for class war. The ruling elite, however, has been emboldened to openly call for the suppression of democratic rights and for dictatorial methods because of the betrayal of trade unions.

When struggles erupted in education, health, port, power, petroleum, the plantations and other industries the unions deliberately promoted illusions that the crisis-ridden Rajapakse government and big business could be pressurised to grant workers’ demands. They consciously worked to divert struggles from a unified political fight against the government attacks, and have opened the door for attacks on the democratic rights of the working class.

While the circumstances in Germany in the 1930s and Britain in the 1970s were different from today, the rise to power of Hitler and Thatcher’s attacks on workers were facilitated in both cases by the treachery of the opportunist organisations of the working class.

Hitler came to power with the assistance of the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy, which directed the German Communist Party to oppose united front action by the working class against the Nazi party and its stormtroopers. Thatcher was only able to able to carry out her class war offensive, closing steel plants, coal mines and other state-owned industries, because the Labour Party and the Trade Union Congress, assisted by the fake lefts, opposed a unified mobilisation of the working class against the Tory government.

Several unions in Sri Lanka have publicly opposed Sabry’s comments and asked whether the government was planning to suppress the unions. Ceylon Teachers Union (CTU) secretary Joseph Stalin, struck a phony militant posture declaring: “If this sort of thing is really done, then all the trade unions will definitely unite against it.”

Last year, however, the CTU and other educators’ unions betrayed a determined 100-day online strike by over 250,000 teachers, accepting a paltry wage increase and supporting the reopening of public schools, as COVID-19 infections continued to surge. These unions blocked teachers from uniting with other sections of the working class to fight the government’s austerity policies.

Last year, Rajapakse imposed the essential public services act on many state institutions, banning all industrial actions and imposing heavy punishment on anyone violating its regulations. Not a single trade union opposed this repressive law.

The Rajapakse regime is not alone in advocating state attacks on the working class. Parliamentary opposition leader Sajith Premadasa recently told a Colombo meeting that Sri Lanka needed an “elected dictatorship” and praised Thatcher. “Ms.Thatcher was called ‘Iron Lady’ because she did what she had to do without fear,” he declared.

Turkish health workers strike as COVID-19 pandemic, living costs surge

Ulaş Ateşçi

Turkish physicians and other health workers are on a nationwide one-day strike today as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government dismantles all public health measures against the COVID-19 pandemic and inflation soars to levels not seen in a long time.

The strike by the over 100,000-strong Turkish Medical Association (TTB), as well as the Turkish Dental Association (TDB), nurses and several other health workers’ organizations, takes place after the government repeatedly rejected their wage and benefit demands. Having initially called a strike on February 17-18, the Hekimsen physicians union also announced that its members, who are members of TTB and TDB too, will join today’s strike.

Today’s work stoppage comes after strikes organized by the TTB on December 14 and Hekimsen on January 21. Moreover, the health care workers’ strike takes place as a wave of wildcat strikes and mass protests spread across Turkey.

Healthcare workers march during a strike on December 6 in İzmir, with a banner saying ‘Health care is teamwork. We want wages to live decently, above the poverty line!’ [Credit: @sesgenelmerkezi on Twitter]

Since 2022 began, metalworkers, miners, cargo couriers, textile workers, dockers, food workers and construction workers have stopped work one after another, demanding wage increases and better living conditions. Workers have drawn inspiration from each other as ever-broader layers of workers defied the diktat of the union bureaucracy and the state over strike action. The movement erupted independently of pro-capitalist unions and used social media to discuss and coordinate methods of struggle.

In recent days, mass protests against electricity price hikes of up to 125 percent have erupted atop this wave of strikes. While thousands took to the streets in mostly Kurdish towns of Ağrı, Doğubayazıt with a population of only 130,000, protests were also held in Hakkari, Şanlıurfa, Mardin, Diyarbakır, Muğla and Bursa.

Beyond electricity price hikes, a 50 percent hike in gas prices and the doubling of prices for basic necessities is fueling anger and opposition of millions of workers who cannot make ends meet. According to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜIK), official annual inflation reached 48 percent in January (the highest rate since the 2001 crisis). The independent Inflation Research Group (ENAG) announced that the actual rate was 114 percent.

Health care workers, who are at the forefront of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, and the suffering caused by official policies of mass infection, are also hit hard by the rising cost of living.

According to a TTB statement, “Today, the salary of retired physicians is between 2,300-4,000 Turkish lira; a general practitioner’s basic salary is approximately 4,900 TL. The net salary of a 30-year specialist physician is 5.800 TL.” According to the pro-government Türk-İş union confederation, as of January 2022 the poverty line for a family of four in Turkey reached 13,843 liras.

TTB stated that it “represents the physicians who receive some of the lowest salaries and suffer the most violence in any country of the world.” It also added, “Turkey ranks sixth from the last among OECD member countries in terms of specialist physician salaries according to 2020 data. As for general practitioner salaries, it ranks 14th of 17 countries.” Moreover, “Turkey ranks 34th of 37 among OECD countries in terms of number of physicians per patient in 2020.”

TTB started actions called “White Vigils” on January 26, “against the withdrawal of the draft law regulating economic and personal benefits of physicians and that it is still not discussed despite the fact that it was supposed to be discussed in January.” It also announced a strike on February 8 if their demands were not met.

TTB emphasized that health workers will make “special efforts to ensure that the care of emergency patients, dialysis patients, emergency or risky pregnant women, pediatric emergencies, cancer patients, intensive care patients will not be interrupted, and that the intensive care and inpatients will not suffer any medical harm” during the strike.

Underlining the dysfunction of the health care system, doctors said, “Patients cannot get an appointment for months; our emergency application numbers are at rates that can be seen in a country experiencing extraordinary situations. Medical examination in 5 minutes imposed on physicians/patients does not solve this problem.”

As rates of infection and death from COVID-19 among physicians in Turkey are among the top in the world, the TTB also demands a “COVID-19 Occupational Disease Law.”

Health workers especially appealed to the public to support the strike: “We are also calling out to the society; this strike is not only for physicians and health workers, but for all of us. This strike is so we can say that enough is enough to a health care system where you are forced to wait for a doctor appointment for months and are confined to private hospitals… Come to the hospitals to be with us in the strike.”

In its statement, the TTB said that today’s strike is to last just one-day, signaling longer work stoppages could be held in the coming period.

Criticizing the response of the government and Health Ministry to the COVID-19 pandemic, TTB added: “The government and the Health Ministry, which took almost no scientific measures during the COVID-19 pandemic, so that neither the society nor us would get sick or die, have now completely ignored scientific knowledge and historical experiences by removing all the precautions.”

Doctors and public health specialists have previously denounced the government’s campaign to downplay the pandemic and its consequences. In its February 3 statement, the TTB said: “In many hospitals, clinics are closing and health services are disrupted. The health minister’s ‘don’t worry’ rhetoric against this growing crisis is unscientific and ignores public health.”

“With its successive statements, the government did not take any precautions against the current situation. They clearly intend to cover up the truth,” said the TTB, adding: “It is not scientific for Health Minister to compare a disease where the number of daily cases exceeds 100,000 and the number of deaths exceeds 200 to the flu. The pandemic continues in its most burning form.”

Indeed, in late January, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca declared: “Do not worry, the disease [COVID-19] is not as strong as it used to be… If we explain the number of our citizens lost from the flu on a daily basis, we will see that it is no different from the pandemic… The worst days are over.” He also boasted: “We have lifted all restrictions, except for basic personal protection measures and vaccinations... The pandemic is leaving for good.”

However, according to data reported to the World Health Organization (WHO), a total of 7,931 people died from flu and pneumonia in Turkey in 2018. On the other hand, while the official death toll in the two-year pandemic period in Turkey was approaching 90,000, the excess deaths from the pandemic exceeded 251,000 as of February 1, according to the latest calculations of Güçlü Yaman, a member of the TTB Pandemic Working Group.

According to Worldometer data, the 7-day moving average number of COVID-19 cases in Turkey, where the government declared the pandemic is ending, exceeded 100,000, while the 7-day average number of deaths was 214.

President Erdoğan, one of the individuals in Turkey who is most strictly protected from the virus, announced that he infected with COVID-19 on Saturday. This underscores that the virus has spread everywhere as the government lifts remaining public health measures.

The Erdoğan government, with its unscientific campaign to normalize mass infection and deaths, is following the steps of ruling elites from the US to Canada to European countries to end reporting and media coverage of pandemic data.

Omicron wave devastates US nursing home residents and staff

Kevin Martinez

COVID-19 infections and deaths among nursing home residents and staff took a terrible toll last month according to the latest health data. In the week ending January 23, there were 42,584 resident cases, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data. This number surpassed the record set during last winter’s surge, when vaccines were just becoming available.

Nursing Home in King County, Washington. (AP Photo/Ted Warren)

The number of resident deaths increased each week in the last month, with 1,298 people dying from the virus in the week ending January 23. However, this figure is down from the 4,100 deaths reported in the same week from last year, according to the CDC.

Nevertheless, the latest figures show how hard the highly contagious Omicron variant has hit the at-risk group of nursing home residents and staff with another preventable wave of infections and deaths.

During the week that ended January 9, there were more than 32,000 cases of COVID-19 among nursing home residents, with 645 deaths, a sevenfold increase from just a month earlier and a 47 percent rise in deaths. Among staff, there were 57,000 cases in the same week, a 10-fold increase from a month earlier.

These figures come on the heels of a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which found that more than 200,000 residents and staff in long-term care facilities have died since the pandemic began in early 2020, accounting for at least 23 percent of all COVID-19 deaths in the US.

Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, epidemiologist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, told the Associated Press as cases were surging in mid-January, “We need to build a Fort Knox around protecting nursing homes, but we’re not doing that right now, and that’s why cases are surging,” adding, “We’re going to have exponential numbers of hospitalizations and deaths.”

Vaccinations have saved lives and prevented even deadlier outbreaks in long term care homes, with recent tolls being eclipsed by the horrific records set in December 2020, when 6,200 deaths were being recorded in a week.

According to the CDC, 87 percent of nursing home residents have been fully vaccinated, with 63 percent having received a booster shot. The number of fully vaccinated staff is 83 percent with 29 percent having their boosters. The US Supreme Court recently upheld a Biden Administration mandate requiring most health care workers to get a vaccine.

Breakthrough infections still occur, despite vaccines and safeguards such as social distancing and increased testing. The Webster at Rye nursing home in New Hampshire was hit by an outbreak in late November despite it’s staff and residents being 100 percent vaccinated, although many were not boosted and were awaiting their shots. Six residents died as a result while dozens more were infected, including 20 staff.

Nursing home residents are also having to deal with longer wait times for COVID-19 test results. Slower response times for lab-based PCR tests and a shortage of rapid antigen tests have severely limited the ability to quickly identify outbreaks and quarantine individuals.

An analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation of data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services found that 25 percent of nursing homes that sent tests to a lab waited on average three or more days for the results in January. A month before, the figure was only 12 percent.

The long waits for test results render them practically useless according to health officials, forcing many nursing homes to rely on rapid antigen tests. These however, have been compounded by shortages further straining efforts to contain Omicron in nursing homes. Experts point out that any delays in testing mean that outbreaks can emerge undetected, and breakthrough infections among the elderly have appeared to cause more severe symptoms.

The Biden Administration is sending 1 billion rapid COVID tests to households and another 2.5 million tests every week, but health experts say this is not nearly enough. A survey from LeadingAge in January, which lobbies for nonprofit nursing homes and other care for the elderly, found that 76 percent of nursing homes had adequate testing supplies, but that restocking supplies was getting more difficult. The American Health Care Association estimates that nursing homes need 5 million tests per week.

The rise in COVID-19 cases among nursing home residents and staff has also caused a shortage in admissions, creating a backlog of patients stuck in hospitals. Normally, hospitals would discharge patients into residential care, but the surge in Omicron means that these facilities have seen many staff get sick and unable to transfer new patients.

Staff shortages at nursing homes have included 234,000 caregivers leaving their profession during the pandemic, a 15 percent reduction. At one point during the pandemic, health care work was listed as the most dangerous occupation in America, according to death rates. These working conditions and shortages led Wisconsin to train 200 National Guard members to work as nursing aides.

Nursing homes have been struggling with understaffing for decades even before the pandemic. Many workers feared correctly that they could bring the coronavirus home to their families, while others struggled to care for children because of school and day care closures. Many became sick or died, or simply moved on to less hazardous and better paying jobs.

Admissions to nursing homes are still not at pre-pandemic levels with some patients delaying procedures, like hip replacements, because it would mean staying at a nursing home or some step-down facility. Many were also rightly concerned about the high rates of death and sickness in nursing homes as well as the isolation and loneliness.

Residents are also complaining of substandard care at their facilities, like not being changed or receiving meals on time. Laurie Facciarossa Brewer, the Long-Term Care Ombudsman in New Jersey told NPR that her office received complaints that facilities have one nurse taking care of more than 50 residents, when the normal ratio should be one certified nursing assistant for eight residents on the day shift. New Jersey has also deployed National Guard units to help nursing homes with worker shortages.

Many nursing homes have been forced to shut down or close wings of their facilities and reduce the number of new patients they accept, further exacerbating pressures on hospitals and primary caregivers.

The average length of stay in a hospital for patients being discharged to a nursing facility is up 21 percent in the last month compared to 2019, according to Careport, a company which connects patients in hospitals to long-term care facilities. The average hospital stay for patients being transferred to home care agencies, which are also dealing with worker shortages, was also up 14 percent during the same amount of time.

More than 200,000 American children have lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19

Shelley Connor

More than 200,000 American children have now lost a parent or primary caregiver to COVID-19, according to Dr. Charles Nelson, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Harvard University. Nelson coauthored a study, published in Pediatrics in October 2021, on the impact of COVID-19 deaths of parents and caregivers. When the study was initially published, 140,000 caregiver deaths had been reported through June 30, 2021, which has now increased roughly 50 percent during the surges of the Delta and Omicron variants across the US.

Richard Gomez holds his 1-year-old son, Jacob, who was born to Gomez's wife in 2020 while she was hospitalized for COVID-19, at Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, Calif., Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

The staggering figure of 200,000 children deprived of their caregivers represents incalculable social and personal loss, which will impact all those affected for their entire lives. According to a 2018 study published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, the loss of a parent predisposes children to “depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and functional impairment.” “The loss of a parent,” the study’s authors write, “is one of the most stressful events that a child can experience.”

These losses are devastating and destabilizing. Children are sometimes forced to move into homes with relatives they do not know well, while others face foster care or group homes.

“Under no circumstances should these children be put in institutions,” Nelson told Newsweek last week. “There is a risk, particularly for older kids, that they could be put in group homes or residential care, rather than placed with family.”

Tami Logsdon, the program director at the Children’s Bereavement Center of South Texas, told Newsweek, “We know circumstances of people as young as 20 who are attempting to care for three younger siblings.”

The disruption of bereavement can cause children to fall behind in school, Lodgson says, and many of them will struggle to catch up. Loss can also lead to behavioral changes, such as withdrawal or acting out. Experts warn that prolonged grief puts children at greater risk for substance abuse and suicide, in addition to relationship problems in adulthood.

On December 30, 2020, Margaret Garza’s husband David called her saying he was short of breath. Margaret called an ambulance for him, then called him back. “… the last thing I heard him say was, ‘please help me,’” she told Newsweek. David died from COVID-19 shortly thereafter.

Five years earlier, the Garzas had adopted two young boys from the Texas foster care system. Julius, now 14, and Aidan, 12, entered foster care at ages two and four. “So when we adopted them, they had that stability of a mom and dad … and then their dad died. That was taken away from them,” Margaret Garza said.

“I think they somewhat live in a little fear because they know that their dad died of COVID. They wear their masks, they wash their hands, all those things … they’re very cautious,” Margaret Garza says of her sons.

The Garzas’ heartbreak is shared by hundreds of thousands of other families nationwide. On September 23, 2021, 46-year-old Misti Mitchem of Stafford County, Virginia, died in a Fredericksburg hospital just days after being diagnosed with COVID-19. Two weeks later, her husband, Kevin, 48, succumbed to the virus as well. Together, the Mitchems had five children; the four younger children, ranging in age from 11 to 17, were taken in by an aunt and uncle in South Carolina. Their remaining family has been forced, like so many survivors, to appeal to crowdfunding sites for help with the children’s needs.

While no one could responsibly attribute all 200,000 known caregiver deaths to school reopenings, there can be no doubt that this policy has greatly contributed to this horrific phenomenon. Last month, a New Jersey clinical psychologist told the World Socialist Web Site that in the first week of this year, two of their students caught COVID-19 at school and inadvertently infected and killed their mother and grandmother, respectively.

In August 2021, 12-year-old Marshall Hammond of Georgia lost his father Sean, a teacher and football coach. Marshall’s mother, Heidi, also a teacher, followed her husband only one month later, leaving Marshall orphaned. The Hammonds are among more than 2,000 educators who have died of COVID-19 in the US.

The highly transmissible Omicron variant has impacted the pediatric population at a greater rate than previous variants, making classrooms more dangerous than ever. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), almost 4.2 million pediatric COVID-19 cases were reported in January 2022, with children now accounting for nearly 25 percent of all cases in the United States.

This week’s AAP report found that over 630,000 pediatric COVID-19 cases were officially reported on the week ending February 3. While this number marked a decline from the 1,150,000 cases reported at the peak of the Omicron surge in January, pediatric cases doubled those reported at the peak of the Delta surge that claimed the Hammonds’ lives.

Nearly 2,000 children were hospitalized with COVID-19 last week, and another 21 tragically succumbed to the virus, according to the AAP report. A separate database from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recorded 104 pediatric COVID-19 deaths in the past two weeks alone, or an average of more than 7 child deaths every day.

The Omicron variant was a known threat by late November 2021, when reports from Botswana and South Africa made it very clear that the virus’s new mutations made it both more contagious and harmful to children.

Armed with this knowledge, the Biden administration could have shut down schools and workplaces to stop the spread of COVID-19. Instead, Biden, with help from white-coated charlatans such as Monica Gandhi, falsely claimed that the Omicron variant was milder than past variants and that its heavy mutations heralded the transition to a mild, endemic virus akin to the common cold. Teachers and students were crammed into classrooms as this highly contagious variant surged.

The extraordinary spike in pediatric COVID-19 cases means these children have brought the virus, with all its deadly potential, back home to vulnerable caregivers. Teachers, many of whom are parents themselves, are told to risk orphaning their own children in the interest of keeping schools open.

School reopenings have been a homicidal experiment with children’s and teachers’ lives. The teachers unions have abetted this criminal enterprise, strangling walkouts in Chicago, Oakland and other cities. In January, union officials in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, shamed and denounced teachers who led a sickout, telling them they were abandoning their most vulnerable students.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), has worked closely with the Biden administration and has facilitated its policy of fully in-person instruction. In the fall of 2021, she staged a town hall meeting with prominent COVID-19 denialists and anti-vaccine activists, signaling, under the guise of civil discourse, her complicity with their attacks upon science and public education. Like Biden, she bears enormous responsibility for the massive death toll from COVID-19.

On Saturday, Weingarten tweeted a link to a New York Times piece on COVID-19’s death toll, saying, “The US COVID death toll has surpassed 900,000. Their memories are blessings.” Well aware of the discontent of the teachers she represents, Weingarten disabled comments on her grotesque and callous tweet.

Amid the mounting death toll from COVID-19, the bipartisan attack upon workers and their families continues. Multiple states controlled by the Democratic Party announced plans to relax masking mandates on Monday, including New Jersey, California, Connecticut, Delaware and Oregon.

This bipartisan attack, not only on workers but also on science, underscores the importance of the Global Workers’ Inquest into the COVID-19 Pandemic that has been initiated by the WSWS to expose the crimes committed over the past two years which continue in the present. Through the Inquest, workers and principled scientists have been given a platform to share their experiences during the pandemic and to counter the falsehoods upon which Biden and others have constructed their criminal herd immunity policies.

War tensions mount as EU powers hold talks in Moscow, Washington

Alex Lantier

After thousands of US troops arrived in Eastern Europe this weekend to threaten Russia’s western borders, the European Union (EU) powers held high-level talks yesterday. French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz went to Washington for talks with US President Joe Biden, both to discuss NATO propaganda claims that Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, Monday, Feb. 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Events yesterday put paid to any claim that the European imperialist powers represent a kinder, gentler alternative to the US-led military escalation against Russia. While the EU powers both called for diplomacy, they unambiguously aligned themselves with the US plans to deploy tens of thousands of troops in Eastern Europe and back the entry of Ukraine and other states on Russia’s borders into the NATO military alliance.

Yesterday evening, after four hours of one-on-one talks in the Kremlin, Putin and Macron gave a press conference. While Putin claimed that Macron’s proposals could be “the basis of our further joint steps,” he baldly warned of the danger of a world war if Ukraine joined NATO. “I think this is a question of the safety not only of Russia but of the whole world,” he said, adding: “If everybody wants peace, what’s so bad about not placing offensive missile systems near our borders?”

Addressing a French reporter, Putin said: “Ask your readers, do you want war with Russia? Because that’s what will happen if Ukraine, which has made a pledge to take back Crimea by force, joins NATO … you will fight a war against Russia.”

After the 2014 NATO-backed coup in Kiev led by far-right Ukrainian nationalists, the Crimea, a Russian-speaking peninsula with a Russian naval base at Sevastopol, voted to rejoin Russia. The NATO powers have refused to recognize the vote and have instead supported the Ukrainian regime as it threatened to storm the Crimea. Putin noted that such an attack would trigger Article 5 of the NATO founding treaty, requiring the NATO powers, including the United States and the major European powers, to enter into a war against Russia.

“Russia is one of the world’s leading atomic powers. There would be no victors,” Putin warned, adding that Macron “does not desire such an outcome. Neither do I.”

Macron flatly rejected Putin’s positions, however, and insisted on an “Open Door” policy allowing Ukraine to join NATO. He issued only vague proposals that there be “transparency” on missile bases that NATO would station on Russia’s borders were Ukraine to join NATO. At the same time, Macron lectured Putin, denouncing Russia for allegedly violating principles of international law.

“These rights have been violated on our continent: the use of force, the inviolability of borders, non-interference in internal affairs, the failure to respect fundamental rights and human rights,” he said.

Macron’s allegations were echoed by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell at a press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington. “We are living, to my understanding, in the most dangerous moment for security in Europe after the end of the Cold War,” Borrell said, blaming the crisis entirely on Russia. “Nobody masses 140,000 heavily armed soldiers on a country’s border” without posing “a strong threat,” Borrell said, denying the US stance was at all alarmist. “This is not alarmism. This is simply the facts.”

In reality, it is the NATO powers who are leading an aggressive war drive against Russia, based on an entirely false premise, that Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine. Even the head of NATO’s puppet regime in Ukraine, President Vladimir Zelensky, has publicly declared that the Russian military is not poised for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Nonetheless, top NATO and EU officials endlessly claim that a massive military buildup is necessary to counter a Russian threat to Ukraine.

The hypocrisy of Macron’s accusations was staggering: NATO is guilty of everything he accused Moscow of doing. In the 30 years since the Stalinist regime’s 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union removed the main military obstacle to imperialist wars, the NATO powers endlessly used force. Repeated invasions or interventions against Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Syria and Mali collectively cost millions of lives. While NATO dismembered Yugoslavia along ethnic lines and bombed its capital Belgrade in the 1990s, it organized a putsch inside Ukraine in 2014.

The European powers’ shift to the right over this period is undeniable. In 2002-2003, before the US invasion of Iraq, based on the Bush administration’s lies that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction,” Paris and Berlin joined Moscow in criticizing and opposing the US war drive. The war hysteria seizing European ruling circles amid the current US war drive against Russia was on full display in a recent Le Monde column by editorialist Sylvie Kauffmann.

“No, we will not reopen over Ukraine the great conflict in the West over the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its supposed weapons of mass destruction. There will be no remake of the saga of the ‘smoking gun,’ the proof of Saddam Hussein’s crimes that certain Europeans vainly asked from the US. … [T]he watchword is finally clearly formulated among the allies: unity!”, she wrote, adding: “The Russian president not only threatens the Ukrainians’ right to choose what camp they are in, but they are also questioning the settlement of the Cold War, which the United States won.”

This orientation was on display as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke with Biden in Washington to pledge that Berlin would align itself with Washington against Russia. Biden stressed that he would halt the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, which successive US administrations have opposed, if NATO declares that Russia had invaded Ukraine. “If Russia invades—that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine, again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” Biden said. “We will bring an end to it.”

Under pressure from reporters, Scholz did not explicitly commit to ending the pipeline project but pledged to work closely with Washington and the entire NATO alliance. “We have intensively prepared everything to be ready with the necessary sanctions if there is a military aggression against Ukraine,” he said, adding: “We are absolutely united, and we will not be taking different steps.”

Behind the reckless militarism of the NATO imperialist powers lie growing class and international tensions tearing apart the world capitalist system. NATO welcomes a war crisis as a distraction from the vast human cost and social crisis caused by its policy of mass infection from the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 2 million people have died in the NATO countries, and millions fall ill every week as governments lift all remaining public health measures in the face of growing working class anger. They are responding by trying to turn internal class tensions outwards into a war drive.

NATO’s geopolitical calculations were laid out by French officials who insisted that a hard line with Russia could force it to submit to NATO and function as a base for use against China. Former social democratic foreign minister Hubert Védrine told the Journal du Dimanche that “aggressive dialog” with Russia is essential. “No one will make a written pledge that [Ukraine] will never be able to join NATO,” he said, adding: “[t]he Russian elites must not be happy about sliding towards China. We should rely on this wariness, which gives us a lever upon which to act.”

Indeed, the bankrupt post-Soviet capitalist regime in Moscow, unable and unwilling to appeal to international working class opposition to war, sees no way out of this crisis. It is split between factions supporting an aggressive policy in Eastern Europe that could trigger war and others advocating abject capitulation to NATO. These latter factions made their views known in an open letter signed by Russian Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, echoing NATO’s lying propaganda presenting Russia as the aggressor in Ukraine.

Calling on Moscow “to abandon the criminal policy of provoking a war in which the Russian Federation will find itself alone against the united forces of the West,” Ivashov demanded that Putin implement “Art. 3 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and resign.”

Germany continues to relax protective measures despite 250,000 new coronavirus infections every day

Tamino Dreisam

As coronavirus infections reach new daily highs, the German ruling class is discussing lifting even the last protective measures. On Friday, nearly 250,000 people nationwide became infected with the virus, and the seven-day incidence rate rose to 1,350 per 100,000 inhabitants.

The incidence level is highest in Berlin (1,803), Bavaria (1,695), Brandenburg (1,683) and Hesse (1,622). In 17 districts, the incidence rate is already above 2,000. In Berlin Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf it is 2,705. The number of positive tests has increased to 41 percent, up by 9 percent compared to the previous week, which suggests underreporting of the actual infection figures.

A woman walks past an abandoned coronavirus test center in Frankfurt, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. Numbers of coronavirus infections are rising again in Germany. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

The number of outbreaks in medical treatment facilities, as well as old people’s homes and nursing homes, also continues to rise. Last week, there were 154 outbreaks in medical treatment facilities (29 more than the previous week) and 246 outbreaks in nursing homes and homes for the elderly (15 more than the previous week). This refutes the claims of Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (Social Democratic Party, SPD) made at the last federal press conference that the older generations had been successfully protected from the Omicron wave.

Particularly ominous is the rising number of hospitalisations. The adjusted hospitalisation incidence rate is already between 8 and 9 and is showing a strong upward trend. Over 1,200 people are hospitalised every day. The proportion of free intensive care beds is currently just over 10 percent on a national average, considered the threshold for hospitals’ ability to respond. Since the beginning of the week, more than 600 people have already succumbed to the virus.

Contrary to official propaganda, schools are a central driver of infection. The incidence rate in the 15- to 34-year-old age group is 1,684. Among 5- to 14-year-olds it is already 3,818, which means that almost 4 percent of students in this age group are newly infected with the virus every week. In the last four weeks alone, 1,566 outbreaks were reported in schools, although the last two weeks cannot yet be conclusively assessed due to late reporting.

The ruling class is responding to this tsunami of infections in the biggest wave of the pandemic so far with an even more ruthless policy of deliberate mass infection. The remaining protective measures are gradually being ended. In the process, politicians and the media are competing with their calls for the lifting of all measures, as has already been implemented in Denmark.

On Wednesday, all the federal states uniformly decided to massively increase the upper limit of spectators allowed at large events. This means that up to 4,000 spectators are now permitted indoors and as many as 10,000 at large outdoor events. In states such as North Rhine-Westphalia, the maximum number of spectators had previously been 750. Bavaria, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt have already announced that they will allow more than 10,000 spectators at events.

Numerous government representatives are already calling for more far-reaching relaxations. Last week, Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (Christian Social Union, CSU) demanded “consistent steps in opening up [society]” and a staggered plan for relaxing the rules in large events and in hospitality. Specifically, he called for an end to the “2G rule” (proof of vaccination or a negative test) in retail and the obligation to show a test result in restaurants. Basically, he said, one should proceed according to the principle, “Where FFP2 masks are worn, contact restrictions can be lowered.”

Finance Minister Christian Lindner (Liberal Democratic Party, FDP) has also called for an end to the 2G rule in the retail sector. He told Der Spiegel, “We already have to work concretely on when and under what conditions there can be a gradual opening up.”

The first federal states are already beginning to implement the relaxations. For example, the state administration in Schleswig-Holstein is planning to lift the 2G regulation in shops and to abolish the curfew in restaurants as of February 9. State Premier Daniel Günther (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) praised the “Danish way” and declared that his state wanted to “move a bit towards normality.” A short time later, the Hesse state government also declared it plans to end 2G rules throughout the retail sector.

Commentary in the press openly makes clear in whose interests the policy of deliberate mass infection is being implemented. Already, more than 118,000 lives have been lost in Germany alone. “Ending coronavirus rigidity—for the sake of the economy” is the headline of a commentary in Die Welt. To get out of the “coronavirus trap again,” the newspaper opines, “one thing above all is needed: a shrewd plan on how the country can gradually open up—following the example of other countries.”

In fact, this has been happening for a long time. The first official act of the “traffic light” federal coalition of the SPD, FDP and Greens was to officially end the designation of a “national epidemic situation.” Since then, the government parties have proven they are even more ruthless in pushing through the interests of finance capital than the grand coalition of the CDU and SPD before. The quarantine period has been shortened and contact tracing and testing reduced. Now the government, with the support of all the parliamentary parties and the media, is systematically working to fully “normalise” the pandemic.

The campaign claiming that the pandemic would peak and become “endemic” by the end of February is aimed at accustoming the population to widespread infection and deaths indefinitely. Already, the more than 150 deaths per day hardly find a mention in the news. Reporting on the situation in hospitals or even severe and fatal COVID-19 cases among children and young people are systematically ignored.

In the process, an ever greater catastrophe is unfolding. As the entire course of the pandemic so far has shown, the herd immunity policy does not lead to an “endemic” end to the pandemic but to the emergence of ever more infectious and resistant variants. Already, the Omicron subvariant BA.2, which has 80 to 90 mutations, is spreading rapidly.

The only way to end the pandemic and stop the mass deaths is a Zero COVID strategy to eliminate the virus globally. The example of China, in particular, shows that this is possible. However, the governments of the imperialist countries vehemently oppose the Zero COVID strategy because it cuts across the profit-grubbing of the corporations and a small parasitic financial elite. Only an independent movement of the working class can push through the necessary measures—lockdowns combined with vaccination, contact tracing and the isolation of infected people.

In the US, France, Greece, Austria and around the world, student and teacher struggles are increasingly developing against the policy of herd immunity. In Germany, too, a petition by more than 100 student representatives is currently going viral, opposing the policy of deliberate mass infection in schools. However, a struggle for safe education can only be successful if it is armed with a socialist perspective and does not appeal to the governments that have been deliberately implementing this policy for two years.

Kiev denies war plans against Russia as conflicts within the Ukrainian ruling class escalate

Jason Melanovski

Even as the US continues to ramp up its anti-Russia war preparations, the general commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces denied his country is planning a military invasion of Crimea and the separatist-controlled Donbass region in eastern Ukraine, despite the armed forces’ holding its own military exercises near the Russian-controlled peninsula.

Responding to a question over claims that Ukraine is planning its own offensive operations, General Ander Valery Zaluzhny stated that there had been “no orders, no conversations about a military operation to enter the currently occupied territories of Donetsk and Lugansk or currently occupied Crimea—such conversations and such plans have not been drawn up.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks to the media, Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)

Both the Kremlin and representatives of the so-called People’s Republics in Donetsk and Lugansk in East Ukraine have warned over the past month that the number of active combat operations near their borders has been increasing.

On Thursday, Ukrainian forces conducted military exercises with its Hurricane rocket launcher system and released a slickly produced video of the missiles pointed towards Crimea. Despite this, Ukrainian Defence Minister Alexey Reznikov backed Zaluzhny by stating, “The Ukrainian armed forces are not planning any offensive in Donbass.”

The Ukrainian officials’ denials cannot be taken at face value. Since early 2021, the “recovery” of Crimea and the Donbass have been part of the official military strategy of Kiev. The implementation of this strategy means preparations for a direct military conflict with Russia. Since the US-backed coup of 2014, which overthrew a pro-Russian government, the Kiev regime has waged a civil war with the aid of fascist paramilitary forces and Western arms and funding against separatists in East Ukraine.

Over the past weeks, NATO, with the US and UK taking the lead, have dramatically ramped up their war preparations, delivering Javelin missiles and other weaponry to the Ukrainian army. This has been accompanied by a press campaign glorifying the far-right paramilitary “volunteer” groups that have played a central role in the civil war for years.

The escalating war crisis has deepened divisions within the Ukrainian ruling class and state apparatus.

Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelensky confounded Washington recently when he denied its incessant warmongering claims that a Russian invasion is “imminent.” Clearly, the US ruling class was less than pleased with Zelensky’s comments. The Washington Post quoted a “senior US official” who stated, “We’re his most important ally and he’s poking us in the eye and creating daylight between Washington and Kyiv. It’s self-sabotage more than anything else.”

Zelensky’s calls to at least temporarily tamp down the hysteria emanating from Washington were in part motivated by the serious damage that the war propaganda has done to Ukraine’s economy and the stability of his government. With the Zelensky administration’s approval ratings at record lows, the war drive has already caused a 10 percent decline in the value of the country’s currency.

Foreign investors are leaving the country in droves, causing the Ukrainian bond market interest rates to soar. In such a situation, the Ukrainian state, which is already heavily indebted to the IMF, is finding it nearly impossible to borrow money to continue to function.

However, Zelensky’s appeals for calm do not signal a fundamental change in its march towards war. Even while calling upon Washington to not create “panic,” his government has continued its expansion of Ukraine’s military capabilities.

On Tuesday, Zelensky signed a decree to increase the size of the Ukrainian armed forces —currently numbering 250,000—by 100,000 over the next three years. On Thursday, Zelensky met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey in Kiev. The two presidents signed a free trade agreement, and Ukrainian officials touted a deal to produce Turkish-designed Bayraktar TB2 aerial drones in Ukraine.

Ukraine first deployed the drones against Donbass separatists in October, despite their use being prohibited by a ceasefire and the 2015 Minsk Accords. The use of the weapon marked a significant escalation in the nearly eight-year-long civil war. Such drones were employed heavily by Turkish-backed Azerbaijan in its surprise victory over a Russian-backed Armenia in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war.

On his visit, Erdogan also attempted to present himself as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine, announcing plans to act as a host for three-way talks. Erdogan, who is hoping to use the talks to increase Turkey’s influence over the strategic Black Sea region, claimed negotiations were a certainty despite unclear stances from both Kiev and Moscow on the issue.

Zelensky had previously maintained that all discussions be held in Ukraine. After his meeting with Erdogan, he suddenly declared, “It doesn’t matter where the talks with Russia take place.”

Whether Zelensky has any real say over Ukraine’s stance on negotiations with Russia is highly questionable, as his statements are regularly walked back or contradicted by other Ukrainian officials as the warfare within the ruling class and state apparatus escalates.

On Tuesday, Zelensky’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, essentially sabotaged any basis for negotiations by stating that the Minsk Accords Agreement would never be implemented by Ukraine as it represented the “Russian viewpoint.” Kuleba also rejected any possibility of a special federated status for the breakaway regions as required by the Minsk accords. Speaking with Poland’s Rzeczpospolita newspaper, he said, “No Ukrainian region will have a right to national state decisions. This is set in stone! There will be no special status, as Russia imagines it, no voting power.”

Aside from his own foreign minister, the Ukrainian government and military contains within it far-right elements who would welcome the removal of Zelensky.

Arsen Avakov, Zelensky’s former interior minister and a man notorious for his close ties to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, recently called for both early presidential and parliamentary elections on national television. He obliquely suggesting he did not want to see Zelensky be ousted in another “Maidan,” the name of the right-wing protest movement that preceded the 2014 coup.

“The economic situation is tough, the energy situation is complicated and the mood of people is not good. The political situation is threatening the country, which should be resolved, in my opinion, not in a ‘Maidan’ and revolution, but in early elections, which would be the correct and civilized way,” Avakov declared.

In a thinly veiled appeal to the neo-fascist forces he helped build up as interior minister, Avakov called for opposition forces to support the country but in the meantime “consolidate our forces” in preparation for early elections and the potential end of the Zelensky presidency.

Petro Poroshenko, who became president after the 2014 coup, and suffered a massive popular defeat to Zelensky in the 2019 election, also recently returned to Ukraine to stand trial for treason. Upon his return, the state refused to detain him and he immediately began a press campaign attacking Zelensky for his alleged softness toward Russia and lack of war preparations.

The Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail recently revealed that the decision to not arrest Poroshenko was made after the personal intervention of Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland. According to the newspaper, Freeland spoke to Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, in the days before Poroshenko’s return to dissuade the government from detaining the “chocolate oligarch.” The US secretary of state also expressed official support for Poroshenko through a Twitter message.

In yet another sign of preparations to oust Zelensky, a plot to stage violent demonstrations and clashes with security forces was uncovered and prevented last week. The Russian outlet Kommersant suggested, based on the revelations by the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, that the plans had likely originated with far-right forces embedded within the state security apparatus.