The dispute over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline

Peter Schwarz

There is no honour among thieves, goes the proverb. This also applies to NATO and its preparations for war against Russia. While governments on both sides of the Atlantic are surpassing each other with their accusations and threats directed at Moscow, mobilising a huge war machine, and assuring each other of their agreement, behind their backs their knives have long since been drawn.

As in the wars of the 20th century, control over strategic raw materials plays a significant role in the present confrontation with Russia. While the First World War was about the coal of the Ruhr area in Germany and the iron ore of Alsace-Lorraine, oil came to the fore as the most important energy source during and after the Second World War.

Pipes for Nord Stream 2 in Mukran (Photo: Gerd Fahrenhorst / CC BY-SA 4.0 / wikimedia)

In the meantime, natural gas, which is slightly more environmentally friendly than oil and coal, has also become very important. In the last 30 years, global gas production has doubled, while oil production has only increased by a quarter. Currently, about 30 percent of the world’s energy needs are met by oil, 27 percent by coal and 24 percent by natural gas. Russia is the world’s second largest producer of natural gas and oil behind the USA. It is by far the largest exporter of natural gas and, behind Saudi Arabia, the second largest exporter of oil.

Since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union three decades ago, NATO has moved ever closer to Russia’s borders. The largest imperialist military alliance will not rest until it has gained unrestricted access to Russia’s vast mineral resources, subjugated the country, and eliminated it as a military rival.

This—and an intractable domestic crisis—are the reasons why neither the USA nor the European powers are willing to accommodate Russia’s demand for security guarantees and are recklessly heading for a third world war. But there are fierce tensions within NATO over who bears the burden of the confrontation and who gets the spoils in the end.

This lies behind the conflict over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which the US has long insisted will not be put into operation. During Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s inaugural visit to Washington, President Biden even blatantly threatened he wanted to “put an end to it”. Scholz himself has long hesitated to put Nord Stream 2 on the list of possible sanctions against Russia and continues to dodge the issue.

The 10-million-euro Nord Stream 2 was completed last year despite American sanctions but is still awaiting its final operating permit. The 1,250-kilometre pipeline connects Russia directly to Germany under the Baltic Sea. It bypasses Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and other Eastern European countries that collect high transit fees and could turn off the gas tap in case of conflict.

Nord Stream 2 doubles the capacity of the parallel Nord Stream 1, inaugurated in 2011, to 110 billion cubic metres a year. That is significantly more than Germany’s current annual consumption of just under 90 billion cubic metres. However, German gas consumption will increase significantly over the next ten years due to the phasing out of nuclear and coal power and the growing demand for energy to power electric vehicles. The pipeline also supplies other countries, such as Austria, the Czech Republic and France, via the widely distributed European gas pipeline network. The whole of Europe currently receives 160 billion cubic metres of gas a year from Russia.

The non-operation of Nord Stream 2 would not directly threaten the energy needs of Germany, which currently obtains 55 percent of its gas and 42 percent of its oil from Russia via the existing pipelines. However, this would be the case if existing pipelines were to be shut down or Russian supplies came to a complete standstill due to the escalation of the Ukraine conflict. Such a halt to supplies could also occur if Russia was excluded from the SWIFT system and could no longer process international payments.

In such a case, not only would hundreds of thousands of German households be left in the cold, but some parts of industrial production would also come to a standstill due to a lack of energy supplies. With a share of 35 percent, industry is the largest gas consumer in Germany. In many processes, natural gas is difficult to substitute. The second largest consumer is private households with 30 percent; half of German homes are heated using natural gas.

The German government and the EU Commission are feverishly searching for substitutes. Since existing gas storage facilities are only marginally full and the most important suppliers after Russia, Norway and the Netherlands, are at the limits of their capacity, only liquefied natural gas (LNG) comes into question. However, this is considerably more expensive than pipeline gas, as it must be cooled down to minus 160 degrees Celsius, loaded and unloaded in separate terminals and transported by special tankers. Germany does not yet have its own LNG terminal.

Qatar, the world’s largest LNG exporter, has offered to supply more to Europe, to the detriment of Asian and developing countries that depend on supplies from Qatar.

The USA is also showing a willingness to help. According to the finance daily Handelsblatt, “top officials of the EU Commission are currently speaking almost daily with experts of the National Security Council in Washington via tap-proof connections” to discuss the matter.

The US is not acting without self-interest. The country, which consumes over a fifth of the world’s natural gas, has become a major LNG exporter thanks to fracking technology. It is an extremely lucrative business, as the price of gas is reaching record levels—not least because of the Ukraine crisis. According to a Reuters report, LNG ships from the USA are already being diverted to Europe because market prices there are much higher than in Asia.

Handelsblatt expects “shock waves on the markets” in the event of a war in Ukraine: “European shares would plummet by up to ten percent, Brent oil would rise to 100 dollars a barrel, the price of gas would increase even more by up to a fifth.” Markus Krebber, head of the energy giant RWE, warns: “I’m afraid that the high industrial prices will lead to a creeping de-industrialisation and hardly anyone will notice.”

Purchasing large quantities of LNG from the US would also make Germany more dependent on the US in the long term. The importation of oil and gas from Russia goes back to Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik in the early 1970s. At that time, German steelworks supplied the pipes for the pipelines to Russia, which were then paid for by gas exports. Germany thus secured greater independence from the USA during the first major economic crisis of the post-war period.

After World War I, when America first emerged as a leading world power in Europe, Leon Trotsky wrote that it would put capitalist Europe “on rations”: “It will divide the market into sectors, it will regulate the activity of European financiers and manufacturers.... This means that America will tell Europe how many tons, litres or kilograms of this or that commodity it may buy or sell.” (Leon Trotsky, Europe and America)

This is now being confirmed again. Washington is pushing for all NATO members to join the war front against Russia and is careful not to let Germany and the European Union become too powerful. Nevertheless, there are no significant voices in the German media and establishment parties that opposes the war course.

In 2003, the German and French governments had still spoken out plainly against the US invasion of Iraq, which affected their own imperialist interests in the region. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, a conservative Gaullist, delivered an incendiary speech at the United Nations against the US war plans. Around the world, millions took to the streets against the Iraq war.

Today, German politicians and the media never tire of assuring Washington of their support and their willingness to pay a price for it. The peace movement has completely collapsed.

Green Party Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock assured the Bundestag (federal parliament) that Germany must be ready for sanctions, even if they brought economic disadvantages. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) applauded. “If Putin knows that we will only accept sanctions if they don’t hurt us, then he also knows that they won’t hurt him either,” emphasised CDU foreign policy expert Roderich Kiesewetter.

This attitude has both domestic and foreign policy grounds.

The last thing the ruling class wants is an anti-war movement, which would inevitably combine with the growing opposition to its policies of deliberate mass infection, social inequality, and social cuts. Like the US ruling class, its German counterpart uses war to channel internal tensions outwards.

Eastern Europe, moreover, has always been the traditional direction of expansion for German imperialism, alternating peaceful methods with violent ones. In both world wars, Germany occupied Ukraine and tried to conquer Russia and the Soviet Union respectively. Now it is joining the USA because it fears being left out in the division of the spoils.

Germany increases military spending for war against Russia

Johannes Stern

Germany is playing an ever greater role in NATO’s aggressive buildup against Russia, increasingly threatening a third world war.

Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht (Social Democrats, SPD) yesterday called for a rapid and massive increase in defense spending to prepare the German armed forces for a possible war against Russia. “The threatening situation on the borders of Ukraine has once again shown us very clearly how important an effective deterrent is unfortunately again today,” she explained to Der Spiegel. From this, Germany’s governing coalition must draw conclusions “for the financing of the German army.”

German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) with her U.S. counterpart Lloyd J. Austin III at the NATO defense ministers meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Feb. 16, 2022 (Stephanie Lecocq, Pool Photo via AP)

Lambrecht explained that national and alliance defenses within NATO—a code word for the preparations for war against Russia—is one of the core tasks of the German armed forces. “They have to be equipped in the best possible way for this, and that also means that the defense budget must continue to increase,” she said.

The spending figures being discussed behind the scenes are gigantic. According to a detailed paper reported on by Der Spiegel, planners for the armed forces have calculated that the military will need an additional €37.6 billion in the years up to 2026. This extra spending will be needed “to fulfill commitments already made to NATO and to be able to implement urgently needed modernization steps, such as the purchase of a new fleet of fighter jets.”

In a speech at the Munich Security Conference, which was all about the war offensive against Russia, Lambrecht repeated her demand. “We have to pay for the security of tomorrow today. And I mean that literally: In order to give ourselves the necessary room for maneuver to modernize our armed forces, we have to be in good financial shape. In other words, we must continue to increase defense spending and do so sustainably,” she commented.

Without mincing words, she declared that the ruling class is once again preparing for full-scale wars. “The conflicts of the future will no longer only be fought on land, at sea and in the air, but also in cyberspace and in space,” she said. “We will always be dealing with new weapon systems: just a few years ago, steerable hypersonic missiles were a thing of the future. Today they are reality.”

Lambrecht identified the nuclear powers, Russia and China, as opponents. Moscow has “developed an exoskeleton that makes soldiers more mobile, more efficient and more resilient,” and in China “bionic research has military priority.” She concluded, “We recognize that we must make our society more resilient to attacks of any kind; that we have to make our armed forces fit for new forms of conflict, for the areas of conflict and the weapons of the future.”

In fact, “the conflicts of the future” have long since begun. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, the imperialist powers have been at war almost continuously in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. With regard to Russia, they are pursuing the goal of subjugating the resource-rich and geostrategically central country, also as a prerequisite for a war against China.

In the past few weeks and days, the conflict has continued to escalate. The United States and NATO are working systematically to launch a war against Moscow under the fabricated pretext of an alleged Russian invasion of Ukraine.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) speaks at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 18, 2022 (Ina Fassbender/Pool via AP)

“Today, we have to say this very clearly, a new war is threatening in the middle of our Europe,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in her speech at the Munich Security Conference. Russia is making “an absolutely unacceptable threat with its troop deployment against Ukraine, but also against all of us and our peace architecture in Europe.”

Who does the Green foreign minister, who appeared in Munich together with her US counterpart Antony Blinken, think she is kidding? In the Ukraine conflict, it is not Russia that is the aggressor but NATO. In early 2014, Washington and Berlin, in close cooperation with fascist forces, organized a coup against the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. Ever since, they have been systematically moving troops to Eastern Europe.

At their meeting in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday, the NATO defense ministers decided to further strengthen their presence in Eastern Europe. As part of the so-called “Enhanced Forward Presence,” the military alliance wants to station “battle groups” in Bulgaria and Romania, and possibly also in Hungary and Slovakia in the future. The “Battlegroups” in the Baltic states and Poland, which have existed since 2017, are currently being strengthened.

Germany is playing a central role in the war buildup against Russia. On Thursday, the German army reported that “the first large marching group of reinforcement forces” had reached the German-led NATO battle group in Lithuania. On the same day, three Eurofighters from the Tactical Air Force Squadron 74 arrived at the Romanian air base Mihail Kogalniceanu to take part in NATO’s so-called air policing.

On Friday evening, Germany, together with other NATO allies, increased the operational readiness of the NATO intervention force. “At the request of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), General Tod Wolters, and in close coordination with the Allies, the federal government will increase the responsiveness of the German army’s forces registered in the NATO Response Force,” said a statement from the Ministry of Defense.

In concrete terms, this means that the readiness to relocate almost 14,000 soldiers who were deployed to Germany as part of the NATO Response Force is reduced to the minimum of 30 days. According to the Defense Ministry, “further preparatory measures to increase operational readiness and improve NATO’s responsiveness” could follow.

The mobilization is being accompanied by a deafening propaganda campaign in the media, whose lead opinion makers are foaming at the mouth with the demand for war and claiming the government is still responding too timidly. It is “characteristic of the German debate that it is conducted almost exclusively in moral categories, but not based on the question of what helps to assert German interests,” complains Stefan Kornelius, head of the politics desk of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. In other words, crimes must be committed once again to secure resources and geostrategic influence. This is the mindset of the ruling class, which has already taken over 120,000 lives in the pandemic.

The aggressive behavior of the German ruling elite confirms the warnings of the Socialist Equality Party (SGP). When then Foreign Minister and current Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) announced at the Munich Security Conference in 2014 that Germany was “too big to only comment on world politics from the sidelines” and had to “engage in foreign and security policy earlier, more decisively and more substantively,” and shortly thereafter supported the coup in Ukraine, we wrote:

History is returning with a vengeance. Almost 70 years after the crimes of the Nazis and its defeat in World War II, the German ruling class is once again adopting the imperialist great power politics of the Kaiser’s Empire and Hitler. The speed of the escalation of the war propaganda against Russia recalls the eve of World War I and World War II. In Ukraine, the German government is cooperating with the fascists of Svoboda and the Right Sector, which stand in the tradition of Nazi collaborators in the Second World War. It is using the country that was occupied by Germany in both world wars as a staging ground against Russia.

Eight years later, the imperialist powers are implementing the program of their fascist collaborators in Ukraine. Oleh Tyahnybok, a member of Ukraine’s parliament and leader of the neo-Nazi Svoboda party, said earlier this month that Russia would have to be “dismembered” and divided into “20 nation-states” to bring Crimea back to Ukraine. Tyahnybok was already one of Steinmeier’s closest allies in 2014.

The Putin regime has no progressive response to the aggression that increasingly follows the lines of the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union by the Nazi Wehrmacht. It represents the interests of a corrupt oligarchy, which has amassed enormous fortunes since the Stalinist restoration of capitalism, and also, with its reactionary nationalism and militarism, it is further increasing the danger of war.

A Demilitarized Zone in Eastern Europe

Arnold Oliver

Europe has been a flash point for war among both great and small powers for centuries. Conflicts beginning there have been known to spill over outside Europe, sometimes encompassing nearly the entire planet. These wars have unleashed untold human suffering and death, destroyed entire societies and produced campaigns of mass killings and genocide. Over the years, a number of organizations have been created to reduce or eliminate the risks of war in Europe and around the globe. Now is the time for them to step up.

With the current crisis in Ukraine, there has been renewed interest in peaceful and lasting solutions to European security issues. One proposal that is receiving renewed interest is the potential for a neutral, and perhaps even demilitarized, Eastern and Central Europe.

Even if Russia does launch an attack against Ukraine in the coming days, the points raised here will if anything become more relevant.

Demilitarized Zones have an extensive history, and some have lasted for centuries. In 1819 for example, the Rush-Bagot Treaty established a DMZ around the North American Great Lakes between the United States and Great Britain, which governed Canada at that time. Later the Zone was expanded to include the entire US-Canadian border. The agreement has lasted for over 200 years with only minor glitches along the way.

Other DMZ’s exist, for example along the Uruguay-Argentine border at Martín García Island; several areas along the borders between Israel, Egypt and Syria; and the continent of Antarctica. Other nation states, including Costa Rica, Grenada and Panama, have self-declared their DMZ status by abolishing their militaries.

Political neutrality differs from de-militarization in that the governments that embrace it often retain military forces. In Europe, Switzerland, Ireland and Austria are not part of defensive alliances, yet retain armed forces. It is important to understand that Russia/USSR agreed to abide by Austrian neutrality in 1955, and has done so. Finland too has been neutral since 1948, and has so little in the way of armed forces that it almost as well be a demilitarized zone. Russia has also respected that arrangement.

But now, the threat of yet another large war in Europe exists. Russia may invade Ukraine to control it, to use it as a buffer state against the West, to remove Ukraine as a potential adversary, to prevent it from joining NATO, and/or to secure water resources for Crimea.

Today’s Eastern European crisis has antecedents. The newly independent states of Eastern Europe in the 1990’s erred by not sufficiently respecting ethnic Russian civil and political rights. In particular, Ukraine has allowed its security forces to be infiltrated by Nazi sympathizers. All this was bound to lead to tension with whatever government was in charge of Russia. Russia erred grievously in the 1990’s by allowing authoritarians to seize control of the process of political reform. (The government of the United States was singularly unhelpful in that regard, siding with the thoroughly corrupt Boris Yeltsin.)

The United States and NATO are far from blameless in the current crisis. In spite of promises made during the early 1990’s the US and NATO rushed to expand the alliance to include nine new members near the Russian border. Warsaw Pact military forces were withdrawn from these areas with the understanding that they would be neutral, an understanding that the US and NATO ignored.

The original architect of Containment policy during the Cold War, US diplomat George Kennan saw the present crisis coming 25 years ago when he wrote that “…expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.” In part, what Kennan had in mind was Russia’s experience with invasions from the West. Napoleon was bad enough, but against Nazi Germany Russia faced a struggle to the death. These memories are seared into the souls of the Russian people, and explain part of their security concerns.

It is time to renew the calls for the establishment of a neutral and perhaps demilitarized zone in Central and Eastern Europe. This zone would include at least Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Belarus, Slovakia and the Baltic States – later, other states may be added. As agreed by the parties involved, all outside military forces would be withdrawn from this region.

Russia would be expected to pull back offensive military forces from its borders with Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic States. The creation of the agreement would be facilitated by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe defining the limits of the demilitarized zone and the methods of supervision. The Commission will organize resources to pay for the Zone’s creation and maintenance.

With the creation of a neutral Central and Eastern Europe, US and NATO forces and installations would be removed from the Zone. Russia would acquire a buffer against possible aggression from the West. The people of Europe and the US would get peace and many more resources to devote to social progress instead of war.

The Keep Africa Poor and Dependent Project

Graham Peebles

Exploited and abused for generations by white colonial powers and manipulative economic structures, there is a growing feeling of solidarity within parts of the African continent, as exemplified by the #NoMore movement. Covid vaccine inequality and environmental injustice, together with recent events in Ethiopia have galvanized people.

Ideas of African unity and rage against former imperial forces are nothing new; the chain of suppression and exploitation of African nations is long, running from slavery and colonialism (including colonial extraction) to wealth and climate inequality, racial capitalism and now Covid vaccine apartheid.

Despite the fact that many would say Africa was united long before Europe – family to tribe, tribe to nation, nation to continent, with 54 countries spread over a vast area – establishing a defined Union of Africa seems unlikely, if not impossible. Standing in solidarity, rejecting western intervention, challenging the exploitative status quo and reductive notions of development based on a defunct western model is not; indeed, if African nations are to prosper and create vibrant economies allowing its burgeoning young population to fulfil their enormous potential, they must.

Poverty amidst abundance of resources

Blessed with rich environments and vast natural resources, Sub-Saharan Africa should certainly not be poor. But for huge numbers of people across the continent grinding poverty and hardship are the norm.

According to the World Bank report Accelerating Poverty Reduction in Africa, while those living in extreme poverty (less than $1.90 a day) has fallen in the last twenty years, the number of “poor people [living on $5 a day or less]…has increased from 278 million in 1990 to over 413 million” Over 80% of those living in stifling poverty are found in rural areas where education and health care are scarce.

Natural resources dominate many African economies and, along with agriculture, are central to the livelihoods of the poor rural majority. African natural resources that are owned by multi-national mining companies, dug out of the ground by grossly underpaid local workers, are exported for production in goods that are sold in the rich developed nations. This has been the role of Sub-Saharan Africa for generations, and is fundamental to the prosperity of advanced countries: they need the raw materials and they need them to be dirt cheap.

The handful of conglomerates that dominate, collude in enabling monopoly buying structures. Contracts agreed at national levels are administered by middle-men, often corrupt, in the pockets of the corporation; the local workforce have little choice but to accept whatever ‘terms of employment’ are offered; poverty entraps and silences rebellion.

It is a crippling model of suppression and exploitation; a form of wage slavery – that holds not just the workers in its suffocating grip, but the nation and continent. It is one of the main reasons African nations that are overly dependent on raw materials, whether cotton or oil, coffee, diamonds or Cobalt, are poor. Poverty is political, the result of short-term political and economic decisions taken in The West by duplicitous corporate-controlled governments.

The other reasons that ensure Africa remains poor and dependent are historical and economic: Colonization, which persists as economic and cultural imperialism, together with a certain mind-set of superiority/inferiority. A mind-set that maintains consciously or unconsciously that some people (black, brown) are worth less than others and, as Covid vaccine inequities demonstrate, can be sacrificed. The economic structures, global institutions and economic ideologies championed by abusive self-centered governments and promoted in the business schools around the world are all designed to ensure Africa remains poor: Imperialism never ended, it just changed form.

When colonial powers withdrew from the global south they needed new ways of maintaining the enslavement of Africa and Africans. Three interrelated weapons where used to create dependency: Aid, debt and the toxic Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), the overarching umbrella of control.

In the 1980s SAP’s where introduced; the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) gave highly conditional loan packages to African nations in order to aid their ‘development’; in fact the loans/SAPs, which destroyed African economies and agriculture, were simply forms of debt entrapment. Once a country is indebted it becomes easy to control. SAPs hollowed out national economies and incorporated Africa into the global political economic system, dominated by the US. It’s economic warfare: the rich countries set up these unaccountable institutions and systems to control the poor nations.

The IMF, WB, World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), were given enormous political influence/control of African governments and economies. Funding for public services (e.g. education and health care) was slashed to repay loans; countries were forced to ‘liberalize’ their economies, and privatize, selling off key areas like utilities to western or western-backed companies.

In his book Confessions Of An Economic Hitman, John Perkins designates this process of economic terrorism as ‘Predatory Capitalism’: he describes how in an earlier period, during the 1950’s the IMF, CIA and US State Department set up a faceless bank to lend money to African countries that were producing raw materials; any national President that refused the loan was at risk of being handed over to the ‘Jackals’, as Perkins describes the CIA thugs that accompanied him.

At independence, many African countries were self-sufficient in food production and were in fact net exporters of food; SAPs and the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, changed all that. Countries were forced to withdraw State subsidies to agriculture (while farmers in Europe and the US receive huge subsidies); farmers suffered, food prices increased, food insecurity was created, dependency on aid and Western benefactors ensured and with it control by the US and her puppets, of Africa, its direction and ‘development’, or, as these paranoid selfish states would have it, its non-development.

‘Development as Westernisation

Within the narrow socio-economic paradigm that dominates global affairs, ‘development’ and perpetual economic ‘growth’ are regarded as all important. Dominated by quarterly national GDP figures, it is a reductive model designed by ‘donor’ nations to serve not the people of Africa or Asia, but western corporations and the unjust, defunct Ideology of Greed, so beloved.

The very idea of development, has become synonymous with ‘Westernization’, including the way of life, the values, behavior and attitudes of the rich, ‘successful’ nations of The West: a hollow, deeply materialistic way of life rooted in division, selfishness and conformity that has poisoned and vandalized the natural environment, created unhealthy, unequal societies of anxious suppressed human beings.

In order to develop economists maintain Africa must industrialise and manufacture – no country has ever ‘developed’ without manufacturing. All this is true, and some African nations, like Ethiopia, which has a vibrant leather industry, are beginning to do just this. But this is only true within the suffocating boundaries of the existing model of extreme capitalism based on unsustainable consumerism.

There must be another way; perhaps as we sit at this transitional time, not just for Africa, but for the world as a whole, the opportunity presents itself to re-design the socio-economic structures, reimagine civilization, and in so doing save the planet. And perhaps Africa, unburdened, energised and dynamic can play a leading role; working with the West, but rejecting the model of conformity and exploitation, the conditionality of support.

The existing development paradigm sits within the overarching political-economic system, a system of global monopolies, centralized control, massive inequality, grinding poverty, financial insecurity and stress. Not only should this model of development be rejected by Africa, and it would be were it not for the Noose of Debt, and the fact that it is presented as the one and only show in town, but the poisonous spring from which it flows – Market Fundamentalism as some call it – must also be radically dismantled.

It may appear impossible to challenge, but there are alternatives to the current unjust political-economic system. And as the environmental and social impact of the Neo-Liberal experiment becomes more apparent, as well as the economic pain of the majority, more and more people around the world, especially within Africa, where the environmental emergency has inspired powerful movements of activism, recognize the urgent need to reject this way of organizing life and are demanding change.

Western powers (dried-up imperial forces) do not want Africa and Africans to flourish and become strong, this is clear to all. Africa’s destiny must rest in the hands of Africans, in particular young Africans (the median age in Africa is around 20, Europe is a greying 43, US a complacent 39), who are increasingly standing up, organizing, particularly in regard to the environment, and calling for change.

But what should that change look like? Not a shadow of Western nations, but a creative evolving movement of development in which the people have a voice; social and environmental responsibility are championed and lasting human happiness sit at its core. Unity is essential, African unity is essential; together, not necessarily under some defined structure, but coordinated cooperation and support through the medium of the African Union and civil society.

The first and most basic step towards establishing a less brutal, more just system would be the equitable distribution of the resources of the world – the water, land and food; the machinery needed to build infrastructure; the skills, knowledge and expertise.

The world is one: We are brothers and sisters of one humanity. And if we are collectively, within Africa and the world, to establish An Alternative Way, this basic fact needs to form the foundation and provide the touchstone of new systems and modes of living. Only then will we begin to build a global society in which the values of unity, compassion, tolerance and sharing, which are found in tribal societies all over Africa, may flourish.

The Western Allied Nations Bully the World While Warning of Threats From China and Russia

Vijay Prashad

On January 21, 2022, Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach attended a talk in New Delhi, India, organized by the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses. Schönbach was speaking as the chief of Germany’s navy during his visit to the institute. “What he really wants is respect,” Schönbach said, referring to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. “And my god, giving someone respect is low cost, even no cost.” Furthermore, Schönbach said that in his opinion, “It is easy to even give him the respect he really demands and probably also deserves.”

The next day, on January 22, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba summoned Germany’s ambassador to Ukraine, Anka Feldhusen, to Kyiv and “expressed deep disappointment” regarding the lack of German weapons provided to Ukraine and also about Schönbach’s comments in New Delhi. Vice Admiral Schönbach released a statement soon after, saying, “I have just asked the Federal Minister of Defense [Christine Lambrecht] to release me from my duties and responsibilities as inspector of the navy with immediate effect.” Lambrecht did not wait long to accept the resignation.

Why was Vice Admiral Schönbach sacked? Because he said two things that are unacceptable in the West: first, that “the Crimean Peninsula is gone and never [coming] back” to Ukraine and, second, that Putin should be treated with respect. The Schönbach affair is a vivid illustration of the problem that confronts the West currently, where Russian behavior is routinely described as “aggression” and where the idea of giving “respect” to Russia is disparaged.

Aggression

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration began to use the word “imminent” to describe a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine toward the end of January. On January 18, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki did not use the word “imminent,” but implied it with her comment: “Our view is this is an extremely dangerous situation. We’re now at a stage where Russia could at any point launch an attack in Ukraine.” On January 25, Psaki, while referring to the possible timeline for a Russian invasion, said, “I think when we said it was imminent, it remains imminent.” Two days later, on January 27, when she was asked about her use of the word “imminent” with regard to the invasion, Psaki said, “Our assessment has not changed since that point.”

On January 17, as the idea of an “imminent” Russian “invasion” escalated in Washington, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rebuked the suggestion of “the so-called Russian invasion of Ukraine.” Three days later, on January 20, spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova denied that Russia would invade Ukraine, but said that the talk of such an invasion allowed the West to intervene militarily in Ukraine and threaten Russia.

Even a modicum of historical memory could have improved the debate about Russian military intervention in Ukraine. In the aftermath of the Georgian-Russian conflict in 2008, the European Union’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia, headed by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, found that the information war in the lead-up to the conflict was inaccurate and inflammatory. Contrary to Georgian-Western statements, Tagliavini said, “[T]here was no massive Russian military invasion underway, which had to be stopped by Georgian military forces shelling Tskhinvali.” The idea of Russian “aggression” that has been mentioned in recent months, while referring to the possibility of Russia invading Ukraine, replicates the tone that preceded the conflict between Georgia and Russia, which was another dispute about old Soviet borders that should have been handled diplomatically.

Western politicians and media outlets have used the fact that 100,000 Russian troops have been stationed on Ukraine’s border as a sign of “aggression.” The number—100,000—sounds threatening, but it has been taken out of context. To invade Iraq in 1991, the United States and its allies amassed more than 700,000 troops as well as the entire ensemble of U.S. war technology located in its nearby bases and on its ships. Iraq had no allies and a military force depleted by the decade-long war of attrition against Iran. Ukraine’s army—regular and reserve—number about 500,000 troops (backed by the 1.5 million troops in NATO countries). With more than a million soldiers in uniform, Russia could have deployed many more troops at the Ukrainian border and would need to have done so for a full-scale invasion of a NATO partner country.

Respect

The word “respect” used by Vice Admiral Schönbach is key to the discussion regarding the emergence of both Russia and China as world powers. The conflict is not merely about Ukraine, just as the conflict in the South China Sea is not merely about Taiwan. The real conflict is about whether the West will allow both Russia and China to define policies that extend beyond their borders.

Russia, for instance, was not seen as a threat or as aggressive when it was in a less powerful position in comparison to the West after the collapse of the USSR. During the tenure of Russian President Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999), the Russian government encouraged the looting of the country by oligarchs—many of whom now reside in the West—and defined its own foreign policy based on the objectives of the United States. In 1994, “Russia became the first country to join NATO’s Partnership for Peace,” and that same year, Russia began a three-year process of joining the Group of Seven, which in 1997 expanded into the Group of Eight. Putin became president of Russia in 2000, inheriting a vastly depleted country, and promised to build it up so that Russia could realize its full potential.

In the aftermath of the collapse of the Western credit markets in 2007-2008, Putin began to speak about the new buoyancy in Russia. In 2015, I met a Russian diplomat in Beirut, who explained to me that Russia worried that various Western-backed maneuvers threatened Russia’s access to its two warm-water ports—in Sevastopol, Crimea, and in Tartus, Syria; it was in reaction to these provocations, he said, that Russia acted in both Crimea (2014) and Syria (2015).

The United States made it clear during the administration of President Barack Obama that both Russia and China must stay within their borders and know their place in the world order. An aggressive policy of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and of the creation of the Quad (Australia, India, Japan and the United States) drew Russia and China into a security alliance that has only strengthened over time. Both Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping recently agreed that NATO’s expansion eastward and Taiwan’s independence were not acceptable to them. China and Russia see the West’s actions in both Eastern Europe and Taiwan as provocations by the West against the ambitions of these Eurasian powers.

That same Russian diplomat to whom I spoke in Beirut in 2015 said something to me that remains pertinent: “When the U.S. illegally invaded Iraq, none of the Western press called it ‘aggression.’”

Germany’s federal and state governments decide to scrap pandemic measures

Gregor Link

Wednesday’s conference of Germany’s federal and state governments has laid the basis for a devastating intensification of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the high point to date of the Omicron wave, the representatives of the “traffic light” federal coalition government and the state minister presidents have agreed to eliminate all remaining measures apart from mask mandates in certain public places.

An intubated COVID-19 patient gets treatment at the intensive care unit at the Westerstede Clinical Center, a military-civilian hospital in Westerstede, northwest Germany, Friday, Dec. 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

The agreement stipulates that by the official start of spring, March 20, 2022, all “substantial protective measures” are to be lifted. The protective measures that have been in place up to now—such as access restrictions to retail stores and restaurants, the obligation in some areas for employees to work from home, and the requirement that people in workplaces either be vaccinated, recently recovered from an infection or in possession of a recent negative test—are to expire as planned and will not be extended any further.

As a first step, all private contact restrictions for vaccinated and recovered people will be lifted as of Friday. In retail, the so-called 2G rule, which allows only people who are vaccinated or recently recovered to enter many stores, will be abolished nationwide, and the requirement to wear an FFP2 (N95) mask will be removed.

From March 4, 2022, the access restrictions to restaurants and hotels will be relaxed to allow access to people with a current negative test, as well as those who are vaccinated or recently recovered. Discos and clubs will open to all guests with a same-day test or booster vaccination. Where the 2G or 2GPlus rule applies, requiring vaccinated or recovered persons to present in addition a current negative test in order to gain access, the “maximum capacity” rules will be adjusted for “major national events,” including football matches. Up to 6,000 people will be allowed indoors, and up to 25,000 outdoors.

The federal government’s Council of Experts, which includes scientists and other government advisers, sanctioned the “relaxation” of the measures, but warned in a statement that there will be a greater need for “intensive care for people aged over 60 years,” and increased risk of the “spreading of new virus variants.” It added that the course of the pandemic “cannot be precisely predicted.”

Due to the “probably even more infectious” Omicron sub-variant BA.2, a “longer wave or a rebound of infections compared to the estimates for BA.1” must be anticipated, the paper noted. “As part of any reopening steps,” it continued, “unvaccinated and older people at risk of a severe infection will be increasingly involved in the infection process.” Additional major “waves of infection” can be expected by autumn at the latest.

The days leading up to the most recent federal-state conference were marked by a reactionary, anti-scientific campaign. This culminated in Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (Social Democrats-SPD) removing decisions on the length of the so-called recovered status from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s infectious disease agency.

A person’s “recovered status” refers to the period of time during which he or she is considered, for the purposes of public health restrictions, to have immunity from the virus. In the future, “determinations on the status of vaccinated and recovered” individuals should no longer be delegated to the scientific institutes of the federal government, he declared.

Following the latest scientific findings, the RKI had reduced the immunity period after an infection from six months to three months without taking into account the interests of big business. Free Democratic (FDP) politicians and right-wing media commentators demanded that RKI head Lothar Wieler be “disempowered.” A report by the scientific service of the federal parliament even expressed “doubts” that the actions of the RKI met “constitutional standards.”

On the talk show “Anne Will” on Sunday, Lauterbach summed up the capitalist programme of endless pandemic. Looking ahead to “completely different variants in autumn,” it was, he explained, “important to recognise that things will no longer be the same as before COVID-19.”

He continued: “The world has gotten a little worse. We have a virus that is more contagious and dangerous than the flu. The idea that this is now becoming increasingly harmless and will soon become a cold is a very dangerous legend. That may be the case in 30 or 40 years, but not for the next 10 years.”

This is what the man believes who, as minister of health, bears direct responsibility for the scrapping of protective measures!

Lauterbach is risking the deaths of hundreds of thousands because the capitalists refuse even temporarily to put aside their selfish profit interests. The example of China shows that the virus can still be stopped through a scientific elimination strategy, including coordinated lockdowns and public investments to fight the pandemic. If the same policy had been followed in China as in Germany, well over 2 million inhabitants would have died, compared to the 4,636 deaths China has recorded.

In Germany, the policy of allowing everything that does not result in the complete and immediate collapse of the health system has caused immeasurable misery. In just the three weeks since the last “Coronavirus Summit,” 3,476 people have officially died of COVID-19. Since November 9, there has only been a single day when fewer than 140 people died from the virus. The official death toll of 120,227 people since the pandemic began is roughly the equivalent of completely wiping out a mid-sized city like Wolfsburg or Göttingen.

Since the number of deaths fell in January, partly due to booster vaccinations, this trend has reversed in recent days and is now threatening to parallel the explosion of infections. At 11.73 per 100,000 inhabitants, the rate of hospital admissions is at the RKI’s highest warning level and has again increased massively in the oldest and youngest age groups (+1.75 and +0.35, respectively, compared to the previous week).

According to official figures, some 320 people have on average died per day in France, with a maximum of more than 650 deaths. If one adjusts the number of deaths in France, Israel or Denmark, which are a few days or weeks ahead of developments in Germany, for population size, one can assume that Germany will soon record at least 500 deaths per day, despite vaccinations.

Mass death on this scale, which, according to a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), is projected in the pandemic plans of the Ministry of Health, would be comparable to the worst days of the so-called Delta wave last winter.

The epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch and his team at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health presented new figures on excess mortality in a preprint study, according to which some 135,000 adults died of COVID-19 in the US between June and early December 2021 because they were not vaccinated. Of the nearly 1,000 preventable deaths every day, one in six was under the age of 50.

Turning to the impact of the Omicron variant, the FAZ recalled that in just under two months, half a million people, most of whom were not vaccinated, have died worldwide.

An article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung makes it clear that talk of the Omicron variant being “mild” is specious. “Omicron has a supposed mild effect because the vaccinations protect against severe symptoms so well,” Oliver Keppler, head of virology at Munich’s Ludwig Maximilian University, told the newspaper.

Markus Wörnle, who heads the central emergency room at Munich University Hospital downtown, added, “The patients who have to be hospitalized because of a COVID infection are usually older patients with previous illnesses, or patients with no or insufficient vaccination protection.”

The “pathogen, which is deadly for many people” is still associated with severe pneumonia and causes Long COVID, the consequences of which “cannot yet be seriously quantified,” according to Keppler. The virologist added: “The label ‘mild’ is disastrous.”

According to British data, even among vaccinated infected people, the hospitalization rate is 1.9 percent. Two million Germans over the age of 60 are still unvaccinated.

But although the science editors of the major newspapers—as well as the federal and state governments—are well informed of the facts of the Omicron catastrophe, large sections of the media support the policy of mass infection and even fuel it. A particularly repulsive role in this campaign is played by the daily newspaper Die Welt, which now publishes vicious articles on a daily basis denouncing students, parents and teachers who oppose the policy of mass infection.

A recent Die Welt article titled “The Lockdown Advocate Conspiracy Theory” angrily notes that “a movement is growing on the pro-lockdown side that … accuses the open school state and its actors of seriously planned mass assault.”

According to the author, Verena Weidenbach, a growing part of the “No COVID faction” criticizes the “social Darwinist ‘planned mass infection’ of ‘defenseless children,’” views “the state’s alleged ‘mass infection policy’ as an expression of neoliberal-capitalist selection logic,” and associates it with “eugenics programs” and the “Nazis’ murder of the disabled.”

This perspective, the author warns, is part of “worrying processes of alienation and radicalization” that are associated with “considerable potential for the mobilisation of fundamental opposition.”

UK cost of living crisis hits millions as inflation reaches new record

Barry Mason

UK workers are suffering a worsening onslaught on living conditions as inflation surges to record levels. The Consumer Price Index measure of inflation hit 5.5 percent in January, a rise from 5.4 percent in December which was already the highest rate in nearly 30 years.

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

A more accurate inflation measure, the Retail Prices Index (RPI), which factors in housing cost, measured 7.8 percent in the year to January, up from 7.5 percent in December.

Many staples are now unaffordable for millions of people. An analysis by the i news web site found: “In January 2021, a 500g tub of margarine cost £1.27 on average, but by January 2022 that price had leapt 57 pence to £1.84, a 45 percent increase. While shoppers could expect to pay £1.89 for a kilo of apples last January, the price shot up by nearly 27.5 percent, to £2.41, in the next 12 months. A kilo of pears, which previously cost £1.91 would have set shoppers back £2.36 last month, a rise of nearly a quarter. Instant coffee became dearer too, costing £3.06 per 100g last month compared to £2.77 a year ago – a 10.5 percent increase. The cost of tomatoes also rose 10.5 percent, from £2.19 per kilo to £2.42.”

According to Tesco supermarket chairman John Allan, the worst is “yet to come”. Predicting that food prices will rise by five percent in the spring, he said at the start of February that “price increases at the supermarket could be five times greater over the coming months than they had been in the last quarter.”

Due to a surge in ingredients, energy and transport costs, the Heineken brewer said that beer prices could shoot up by 15 percent.

Deepening the cost-of-living crisis, average petrol and diesel prices are both at record levels. Petrol passed 148p for the first time this week, breaking the previous record (147.72) set in November. Diesel reached a new high of 151.57p per litre. The businesses hit will pass on the cost to consumers.

With public transport costs prohibitive for millions, even access to a second-hand car is becoming impossible. Second-hand car prices have increased by 30 percent, due to factors including a shortage of new car availability in the last two years. Henry Smith, strategy manager for car buying website Desperate Seller, told the Times, “This worsening situation could result in vehicles being out of reach for low-income households, the people who often rely the most on having a reliable car.”

On February 3 the Conservative government’s energy watchdog body, Ofgem, announced increases on the price caps power companies can set for consumers. Ofgem stated, “The energy price cap will increase from 1 April for approximately 22 million customers. Those on default tariffs paying by direct debit will see an increase of £693 from £1,277 to £1,971 per year (difference due to rounding). Prepayment customers will see an increase of £708 from £1,309 to £2,017.”

The £1,277 figure which had been set in October last year was a £139 increase on the previous figure. Energy experts predict it could rise above the £1,971 figure in Ofgem’s August 2022 revaluation.

The energy price hikes will impact most on vulnerable groups such as poor pensioners and the disabled. The approximate 4.5 million people on pre-payment meters, who are often already struggling financially will be especially hard hit.

The government, citing its fraudulent commitment to “levelling up” incomes, was forced to announce limited mitigations to the extreme energy price hike.

Johnson’s multi-millionaire Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced all UK households would get a £200 rebate on their energy bills in October. However, this would have to be paid back at the rate of £40 a year over five years beginning in 2023. In addition, council taxpayers in England who live in properties rated A to D for council tax charges, the lowest value properties, would receive a £150 rebate in April this year. This meagre amount would not have to be paid back but its impact will be offset by rising costs.

The Resolution Foundation reported that even with the government’s measures, the number of families living in fuel stress would still double from 2.5 million families to five million.

The End Fuel Poverty Coalition noted, “this will plunge an additional 1.1m homes into fuel poverty, taking the total now in fuel poverty to 22% of all households in England (c.12.5m people). The final total may be higher and closer to 26% of all households, due to the ‘heat now, pay later’ nature of Government support.”

Disability group Scope tweeted, “We are braced for the biggest fall in living standards in decades, and disabled families will be among the hardest hit.”

The Food Foundation affordable and healthy food campaign group spells out the dire impact. Their February 8 press release noted that a shocking one million adults, 3.6 percent of the population, had gone without food one whole day over the last month as they didn’t have access to or could not afford food. It warned of “a continued rise in food insecurity across the UK. Compared with July 2021 the figure has risen from 7.3 percent of UK households to 8.8 percent (4.7 million adults in the past month.”

Vulnerable groups were particularly at risk of food insecurity, the Food Foundation noted, with disabled people and those on the Universal Credit benefit five more times likely to have been food insecure over the past six months.

Highlighting the “eat or heat” dilemma the organisation found, “Sixty-two percent of households have experienced higher energy bills; and 16 percent of UK households have had to cut back on the quality or quantity of food to afford other essentials (e.g., energy bills). Meanwhile 59 percent of households are worried that increased energy prices will mean they have less money to afford enough food for themselves/their family.”

Children are increasingly facing food insecurity as “two million children… live in households that do not have access to a healthy and affordable diet… (putting) them at high risk of suffering from diet related diseases, poor child growth and shorter lives.”

Disability Rights UK CEO Kamran Mallick said, “With rising energy bills, increasing inflation and benefits pegged at a horrendously low level, millions of Disabled people are living in conditions comparable to the nineteenth century work house.”

Even the Financial Times article felt obliged to comment, “The stark indicators of hunger come before a once-in-a-generation hit to living standards, as people in the UK brace for a triple whammy of tax rises, increasing energy costs and consumer price inflation.”

In April, National Insurance contributions will increase by 10 percent, leaving a worker on £30,000 a year around £5-a-week worse off. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) calculated that the rise could trigger a 30 percent increase in households classed as destitute, taking the number to a million. Being destitute is defined as being unable to afford to buy essentials to eat, keep warm and keep clean.

Workers are not seeing their wages rise to compensate. A Trades Union Congress (TUC) report published February 7 noted that in a poll two thirds of workers expected to see their pay fail to keep up with inflation over the coming year. The TUC said, “Headline pay growth—before prices are taken into account—slowed to 3.8% in November from 4.2% in October.” It added, “And in spite of its pivotal role in the pandemic economy public sector workers are seeing the biggest reductions to pay growth.”

The trade unions are the main force in ensuring that workers’ wages are held down. One dispute after another, they have acted on behalf of the corporations, public sector management and the government to suppress the class struggle and impose poverty-level, below-inflation pay deals.