Wildfires rage along South Korea’s east coast

Ben McGrath

Wildfires along South Korea’s east coast and other parts of the country have caused massive destruction in recent days as firefighters struggle to bring the blazes under control. As of Tuesday morning, the main fire located in Uljin County and neighbouring areas had burned approximately 21,765 hectares of land, making them the most destructive wildfires in 22 years. Thousands have been forced to evacuate.

The fire in Uljin, located in North Gyeongsang Province 330 kilometres southeast of Seoul, began the morning of March 4 and quickly spread north to the neighbouring city of Samcheok in Gangwon Province. Approximately 18,000 firefighters, 95 helicopters, and 781 vehicles on the ground have been deployed to fight the blaze. Only about 50 percent of the fire has been extinguished, with little progress made from Monday. The fires have been fuelled by strong winds and dry conditions. Dry weather warnings are in place for the east coast while much of the remaining parts of the country are under dry weather advisories.

Other fires on the east coast have been reported in recent days in Gangneung City, which spread south to Donghae City, both of which are just north of the Uljin blaze. About 90 percent of this fire has been extinguished. Wildfires also continue to burn in Yeongwol County, Gangwon Province and Dalseong County in Daegu, with 60 and 40 percent of each being extinguished respectively. According to the Ministry of Interior and Safety, there have been 245 wildfires during the period from January 1 to March 5, an increase of 110 over the average for the same period for the last three years.

Smoke from wildfires on the coast of South Korea on March 5, 2022 (Photo: NASA)

The Korea Forest Service and police do not yet know what caused the Uljin fire, but the authorities suggest it started from a cigarette butt thrown from a car. Based on surveillance footage, they are currently looking for the owners of three vehicles that passed through the area where the fire originated. A court has, however, issued an arrest warrant for a 60-year-old suspect accused of starting the Gangneung fire. The man supposedly told police he started the fire after being “disrespected” by other residents for many years.

The Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters reported that at least 7,355 people have been evacuated. Approximately 1,000 of the evacuees have been forced to stay in cramped, temporary shelters in public facilities and schools. At least 512 buildings have been damaged, including 343 homes.

No direct casualties have been reported yet, though an 86-year-old woman reportedly died while evacuating from Gangneung. No cause of death has been released. In addition, a 51-year-old firefighter was discovered dead on March 6. His family explained that he had been overworked and on the job for five days straight before passing away. They also stated that he had worked more than 50 hours per week for the past three months. This underscores a lack of government resources to deal with wildfires, which are common occurrences.

Many victims, already facing poverty, have lost everything. An evacuee in his 60s told the Yonhap News Agency, “My house was burnt down and I have no hope. All I have now is my body and the clothes I'm wearing.” Poverty among the elderly in South Korea is the highest among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with 43.4 percent of people over 65 living under the poverty line.

On Sunday, the Moon Jae-in administration declared the area around the Uljin fire a special disaster zone. “The fastest way for the government to support the residents is to declare a special disaster zone and to take part in recovery efforts,” Moon stated after meeting with victims on Sunday. On Tuesday, the government added Gangneung and Donghae as special disaster zones.

The declaration supposedly means that the government will share the costs of rebuilding homes and other buildings. For private buildings, the government will cover 70 percent of the cost and 50 percent for public facilities. Residents will also receive a grace period on their bills and taxes while receiving an additional income the government claims will be enough to provide a stable living.

The two major candidates in today’s presidential election also stopped in the Uljin area for photo ops with evacuees. Neither Lee Jae-myung of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea nor Yoon Seok-youl of the main opposition People Power Party had anything to offer victims outside of empty phrases and vague promises to rebuild. Yoon, for example, told a distressed evacuee who had lost his home, “When the wildfire is over, all the homes will be rebuilt. Don’t worry.” Then adding, “The country will rebuild everything.”

Compounding the disaster is the current explosion in COVID-19 cases. Evacuees in shelters are packed closely together and unable to properly social distance. The past week has averaged more than 210,000 new cases each day with a record high of 266,850 cases recorded on March 4.

The government’s response to disasters like wildfires and a deadly pandemic exposes the class realities in South Korea. For the working class and poor, the government provides the bare minimum it believes is required to prevent a political backlash. Meager government assistance while recovering from a devastating fire or a few hundred thousand won (100,00 won equals $US 81) for people who have lost their jobs in the pandemic is considered generous.

In contrast, when the pandemic struck, Seoul quickly moved to assure the banks and big business that no demand for government handouts was too big. In March 2020, then Bank of Korea Deputy Governor Yun Myeon-sik stated, “It is hard to estimate how much liquidity will actually be supplied (to financial firms). But the plan is to supply the entire amount requested and without a limit.”

While the exact moment of an outbreak of a disaster like a wildfire cannot be predicted, the response can be carefully prepared, including the establishment of properly response prevention planning, warning systems and emergency services. Instead, the capitalist class in South Korea, as in all capitalist countries, is driven by its own financial interests, not the needs of the vast majority of the population.

Omicron BA.2 subvariant fuels new global surge of the pandemic

Evan Blake

As the deepening war in Ukraine threatens to escalate into a direct confrontation between the US-NATO powers and Russia, there has been a parallel but almost entirely unreported escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic. These two interconnected global crises are hurling mankind into catastrophe.

The most significant hotspot of the pandemic is now Hong Kong, where per capita rates of infections and deaths have dwarfed all previous surges in every country in the world. Soon after infections spiraled out of control in mid-February, hospitals and then morgues exceeded capacity, with the relatively less vaccinated elderly population most severely affected.

On Monday, the 7-day average of daily new deaths per 1 million people in Hong Kong reached 29.18. This is over 50 percent higher than the peak of 18.31 reached in the United Kingdom on January 23, 2021, nearly triple the United States’ peak of 10.22 on January 13, 2021, and higher than the previous world record of 26.2 set in Peru on April 23, 2021. COVID-19 deaths in Hong Kong continue to rise exponentially and could surpass 50 per 1 million people in the coming days.

Significantly, the BA.2 Omicron subvariant, with an I1221T mutation on the spike protein, accounts for 100 percent of all sequenced infections in Hong Kong. The city is a canary in the coal mine for the next stage of the pandemic, in which the BA.2 subvariant is forecast to become dominant worldwide.

As with the global spread of the BA.1 Omicron subvariant last December, the total reopening of the world economy is causing BA.2 to rapidly spread internationally. Contrary to the narrative spun by the corporate media that COVID-19 is now “endemic” and a stable “new normal” has been reached, reality has come crashing down once again in the third year of this unprecedented crisis.

Only 37 days after official global infections reached a peak of 3.44 million on January 24, 2022, the decline abruptly stopped at 1.48 million on March 2 and is once again rising steadily, marking the start of the latest global surge of the pandemic.

BA.2 accounts for over a third of all sequenced infections globally and is driving the new wave of the pandemic. It is now the dominant variant in 34 of 75 countries being monitored by covariants.org. And it accounts for at least 40 percent of infections in 7 of the top 10 countries with the most daily new cases: Vietnam (42 percent), Germany (63), Russia (41), the Netherlands (53), the UK (57), Austria (40) and Malaysia (73).

After weeks of decline, hospitalizations in England rose sharply by 15.6 percent last week across all age groups, with a staggering 26 percent rise among children ages 6-17. In the United States, BA.2 is rising exponentially, with the Northeast region experiencing the most rapid growth.

Scientist Yaneer Bar-Yam, a co-founder of the World Health Network (WHN), a global coalition of scientists and community groups that advocates for a policy of eliminating COVID-19 worldwide, recently spoke with the World Socialist Web Site. Summarizing the results of a major study on BA.2 from the University of Tokyo, he noted that “BA.2 transmits 40 percent faster than BA.1” and is “more vaccine-evading than BA.1.” He added that BA.2 “is much more severe” than BA.1 and “infection by BA.2 is resistant to previous infection by BA.1.”

Dr. Bar-Yam concluded, “BA.2 is different enough from BA.1 that it should be given its own designation—its own Greek letter—according to the current numbering scheme. But that’s politically not very comfortable, because people are declaring this to be over and having a new Greek letter would raise questions that require us to reevaluate what’s going on.”

Patients in hospital beds wait in a holding area outside the overloaded Caritas Medical Centre in Hong Kong on March 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Indeed, the rapid spread of the more infectious, virulent and immune-evading BA.2 subvariant takes place under conditions in which almost every country except China has scrapped all remaining mitigation measures to slow the spread of COVID-19. The shortsightedness and stupidity of these efforts now stands fully exposed.

In the US, this process has been spearheaded by the Biden administration and White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients, a multimillionaire who amassed between $10.4 million and $28 million in 2020 alone after the CARES Act bailout of Wall Street.

Working closely with the White House is Ezekiel Emanuel, former advisor to Biden and Barack Obama, who co-authored a paper published January 6, 2022, titled “A National Strategy for the ‘New Normal’ of Life With COVID.” On Sunday, a 136-page elaboration of this paper was published under the title “Getting to and Sustaining the Next Normal: A Roadmap for Living With Covid.”

Emanuel, a longtime advocate of lowering life expectancy and cutting health care spending, has been described as “eugenicist” by disability rights advocates. His plan, more aptly titled a “Roadmap for Disaster,” accepts unending waves of infections, deaths and long-term debilitation from this preventable virus, which he argues should be a permanent feature of society.

Providing pseudo-scientific justification for ending all COVID-19 testing and contact tracing, Emanuel’s “Roadmap” is the antithesis of the “dynamic zero” strategy pursued in China which has stamped out repeated outbreaks and reduced deaths to only 2 people since May 2020 in a country of 1.4 billion.

The very evolution of Omicron and its BA.1 and BA.2 subvariants is the product of the capitalist response to the pandemic, which has subordinated public health to the profit interests of the ruling elite. By refusing to implement the measures necessary to contain and ultimately eliminate the virus in each country, the ruling class has spawned the Frankenstein’s monsters of Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and now Omicron, with each one worse than its predecessor.

The long-term consequences of these socially criminal policies are incalculable. Every study on Long COVID reaffirms the horrific character of this disease and the necessity for its elimination worldwide. The most recent and perhaps most alarming is a UK Biobank imaging study recently published in Nature, which found that participants with mild infection sustained brain tissue injury five months after their infections, with damage consistent with a decade of aging. Researchers speculate that dementia and memory loss may be long-term ramifications of a percentage of COVID-19 infections.

It is now abundantly clear that the current vaccines limit the likelihood of death but do not stop infections, severe disease or death, rendering the “vaccine-only” approach unscientific and unviable. So long as the virus is allowed to circulate and infect millions of hosts around the world, new variants will continue to emerge that are potentially more vaccine-resistant, contagious and virulent due to the relentless character of viral evolution.

The emergence of BA.2 fundamentally refutes all claims that COVID-19 will evolve into a kinder and gentler virus akin to the flu or common cold. Such claims have always been soporifics meant to disarm an increasingly militant working class that has been traumatized by the devastation of the pandemic.

This coming Friday, March 11, will mark two years since the World Health Organization officially declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. In just two years, approximately 20 million people have died directly or indirectly from COVID-19, according to a tracker of “excess deaths” published by The Economist. This includes estimated real death tolls of 1.2 million in the US, 1.2 million in Russia, 220,000 in Ukraine, 150,000 in the UK and 120,000 in Germany.

Having committed sociocide through the “herd immunity” and “vaccine-only” strategies implemented over the past two years, the ruling elites in the US and across Europe have steeled themselves for even greater crimes in a potential Third World War with nuclear-armed Russia.

The war itself, which broke out at the peak of the Omicron surge in Ukraine and Russia, will greatly exacerbate the spread of COVID-19. Over 2 million Ukrainian refugees have fled the country, packed into overcrowded trains and subways, creating a massive super-spreader event. Spending on social services will be slashed even further and funneled into the military budgets of each country.

In both the response to the pandemic and conflict with Russia over Ukraine, the ruling class has proceeded with extraordinary recklessness. But it is a recklessness rooted in class interests. Indeed, one of the central aims of the hysterical propaganda for war, above all in the US, is to distract attention from the pandemic.

The capitalist media operates under the delusion that if it does not report on the pandemic, then it does not exist. But for the vast majority of the population, the pandemic has had and is continuing to have catastrophic consequences.

US Senate passes Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act

Trévon Austin

The U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act on Monday named after the black teenager whose brutal killing helped to spark the mass civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The bill criminalizes lynching and makes it punishable by up to 30 years in prison. Introduced by Representative Bobby L. Rush (Democrat, Illinois) in the House and senators Cory Booker (Democrat, New Jersey) and Tim Scott (Republican, South Carolina) in the Senate, it is now headed to President Joe Biden’s desk for signature.

An estimated 4,700 lynchings took place in the United States from the last two decades of the 19th century through the first half of the 20th. Lynching was part of the system of racist terror that accompanied Jim Crow segregation. Nearly three-quarters of its victims were blacks, mostly but not entirely in the former Confederate states of the South.

Efforts to make lynching a crime go back more than 120 years. In 1900 a congressman from North Carolina, then the only black member of Congress, introduced a bill which went nowhere. Anti-lynching bills have been regularly introduced since then. In 1918, Leonidas Dyer, a white Republican from St. Louis, was able to secure passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill in the House of Representatives, but it was halted by a filibuster by Southern Democrats in the Senate, who declared lynching a states’ rights issue.

Subsequent efforts were repeatedly blocked by Southern Democrats. Later, after the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, the Republicans took over the task of defending “states’ rights.” The passage of the bill today is largely symbolic, given the almost complete disappearance of this form of brutal racist vigilantism.

Emmett Till

Emmett Till was a 14-year-old boy from Chicago who spent part of the summer of 1955 visiting his great-uncle Mose Wright in the Delta region of northwest Mississippi. He was brutally beaten and shot to death on August 28 of that year for the “crime” of allegedly whistling at a white woman. His murderers, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were quickly tried and acquitted by an all-white jury, less than a month later.

The murder of Emmett Till drew international news coverage and outrage and exposed the brutal reality of Jim Crow, particularly after the courageous decision of Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, to show the gruesome consequences of her son’s murder in an open-casket funeral.

Why has the anti-lynching legislation finally made it through Congress? The reasons have nothing to do with the interests of the working class, including a genuine fight against all forms of racism and prejudice.

Both capitalist parties have their reasons for posturing as opponents of lynching today. For the Republicans, it’s a cheap means—especially since the mass multi-ethnic protests against police killings after the murder of George Floyd in 2020—of clothing themselves in the mantle of anti-discrimination, even as they appeal to racist elements, and Donald Trump openly welcomes the support of white supremacists.

For the Democrats, invoking the name of Emmett Till is a cynical maneuver to shore up their voting base in the midterm elections. The Biden administration and the Democrats are hemorrhaging support because millions who were told that their hatred of Donald Trump made it necessary to pull the lever for the Democrats have been bitterly disgusted by the consequences.

Rush, the co-sponsor of the legislation, issued a statement Monday evening declaring that “lynching is a longstanding and uniquely American weapon of racial terror that has for decades been used to maintain white hierarchy. Unanimous Senate passage of the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act sends a clear and emphatic message that our nation will no longer ignore this shameful chapter of our history and that the full force of the US federal government will always be brought to bear against those who commit this heinous act.”

Rush’s pompous words are belied by the fact that fascists, anti-Semites and white supremacists, openly encouraged and supported by one of the two major capitalist parties, are on the rampage, as evidenced by the recent killing in Portland, Oregon, and last year’s murders in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

On the other hand, the Democrats have long sought to utilize identity politics to retain their dwindling support among minority workers. At the same time, racialist politics is used to promote divisions and obscure the common class interests of all sections of the working class against all the politicians of big business, Democrat and Republican alike. Rather than taking action on the genuine grievances of workers and youth of all races and ethnicities, the proponents of identity politics defend the privileged sections of the upper middle class and, above all, the interests of the big bourgeoisie.

A flagrant example of this was Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent attempt, in a March 6 speech marking the anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, to compare the brave struggle taken up by millions in the civil rights movement to the war in Ukraine. Standing on the bridge made famous by the 1965 march, Harris said, “Today, the eyes of the world are on Ukraine and the brave people who are fighting to protect their country and their democracy. … At this moment, we are faced with a choice, a choice that we have faced many times before: Do we stand or do we fight? Gathered at this bridge, reflecting on its history, yes, I know the path forward is clear.”

This outrageous attempt to draw a straight line between the suffering of the Ukrainian people and the civil rights battles of the mid-20th century ignores the fact that the war in Ukraine was instigated by the US itself. It is Harris and her superior in the White House who are primarily responsible. One must add that the US government did not provide billions in military aid to the civil rights activists who were facing beatings and death. Now Biden and Harris invoke the memory of civil rights martyrs to stoke the imperialist war drive.

The legacy of past injustice finds present-day expression in higher US poverty rates and social ills among African Americans and other minorities, as well as in a disproportionate number among those killed by police. This is a product of the capitalist system and the class oppression upon which it is based.

US ramps up “financial war” on Russia as retired generals call for no-fly zone

Andre Damon

The United States and European Union ramped up their “financial war” against Russia on Tuesday, announcing major measures to restrict Russian oil and gas imports.

US President Joe Biden announced the immediate ban of all oil and natural gas imports from Russia, while the UK announced a plan to end all oil and gas imports by the end of 2023.

The European Union separately announced a plan to slash oil and gas imports by two-thirds this year.

The announcement had an immediate impact on markets, with crude oil surging 7 percent, to $128 per barrel. Russia is the world’s largest exporter of petroleum products, including crude oil and natural gas.

FILE - Two Polish Air Force Russian made Mig 29's fly above and below two Polish Air Force U.S. made F-16's fighter jets during the Air Show in Radom, Poland, on Aug. 27, 2011. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz, File)

Biden made clear that the measures targeting the Russian population would have disastrous consequences for the US population. “This is a step that we’re taking to inflict further pain on Putin, but there will be costs as well here in the United States.”

Biden volunteered the American population to bear the costs of surging energy prices. “I said I would level with the American people from the beginning, and when I first spoke to this, I said defending freedom is going to cost us as well in the United States.”

These actions are part of what Julia Friedlander, a former member of the National Security Council, called a “financial war” against Russia, aiming to “change military strategy in a war that is already happening.”

It also threatens, however, to trigger a major recession in the United States and Europe. The Financial Times (FT) quoted Mohammed Barkindo, secretary-general of OPEC, warning that there is no way to counterbalance the effects of cutting Russia out of the global oil market. “There is no capacity in the world at the moment that can replace 7mn barrels of exports.”

The FT warned, “The rise in oil and gas prices triggered by the Ukraine conflict and western moves to punish Moscow has raised the threat of the worst stagflationary shock to hit energy importing economies since the 1970s.”

Responding to the actions by the US and EU, Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed his Cabinet to produce a list of items that Russia would stop importing and exporting until the end of 2022. Russia also threatened to cut off gas exports to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

The rapidly accelerating economic war came amid growing demands within the US military and foreign policy establishment for the United States to set up a no-fly zone, a move that both the White House and the Kremlin have made clear would lead to war between the United States and NATO.

On Tuesday, Politico published an open letter by a group of retired military officers, diplomats, and national security officials to “impose a limited No-Fly Zone over Ukraine starting with protection for humanitarian corridors.”

The signatories included retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, the former Commanding General, United States Army Europe, as well as retired General Philip Breedlove, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe for NATO.

Among the signatories were many of the leading witnesses in the first impeachment of Donald Trump, which was centered on claims that the former president withheld weapons from Ukraine .

The signatories also included Kurt Volker, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO and Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, and the first witness to testify against Trump in the impeachment.

He was joined by William Taylor, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, who declared that Ukraine was “on the front line of the conflict with a newly aggressive Russia.”

Another key impeachment witness, Colonel Alexander Vindman, has stated his support for a no-fly zone, but was not among the official signatories.

Other defense officials included Ian Brzezinski, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and the son of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paula Dobriansky, former Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, and Eric Edelman, former Under Secretary of Defense.

Responding to the letter, the White House was clear about what the signatories were demanding. “A limited no-fly zone would still require implementation of a no-fly zone, even if it’s a smaller geography, which would still require shooting down Russian planes if they fly into your no-fly zone,” said White House spokesperson Jen Psaki. “So that would still have—we would still have concerns about that being an escalatory action that could lead us into a war with Russia, which is not something the President intends to do.”

Despite the White House’s insistence that it does not intend to fight a “war with Russia,” the conflict is escalating at a breathtaking pace.

On Tuesday, Poland announced a plan to transfer all of its Soviet-era MiG-29 aircraft to the United States, and fly them to Germany, from which they would be flown into Ukrainian airspace to engage Russian aircraft.

“The authorities of the Republic of Poland ... are ready to deploy—immediately and free of charge—all their MIG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base and place them at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America,” Poland’s foreign ministry said.

In a tersely worded statement, Pentagon Spokesperson John Kirby said, “We do not believe Poland’s proposal is a tenable one.”

He added that “departing from a U.S./NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance.”

The Washington Post noted, “The move by Poland appeared intended to shift the responsibility for delivering the aircraft — and risking a potential Russian military retaliation — to the United States. It occurred as the No. 3 official at the State Department, Victoria Nuland, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”

The response by the US came despite the statement by Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday that NATO countries had a “green light” to send aircraft to Ukraine.

Despite the US response to the proposal from Poland, the US effort to funnel arms to Ukraine is staggering in scope. The Wall Street Journal wrote that the US is carrying “one of the largest and fastest arms transfers in history.”

The Journal noted: “In Poland, the provincial airport of Rzeszow located about 60 miles from the Ukrainian border has been so crowded with military cargo jets that on Saturday some flights were briefly diverted until airfield space became available. On the country’s highways, police vehicles are escorting military transport trucks to the border, with other convoys slipping into Ukraine via snow-covered back roads through the mountains.”

The Wall Street Journal added that “The race to deliver arms to Ukraine is emerging as a supply operation with few historical parallels.”

Much of this weaponry is finding its ways to neo-Nazi militia, such as the Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi organization which over 40 members of the US congress sought unsuccessfully to designate a foreign terrorist organization.

On Monday, Nexta, a media outlet affiliated with the Belarusian opposition, published photos of NATO instructors training members of the Azov battalion, wearing neo-Nazi insignia, on how to operate a shipment of NLAW anti-tank missiles.

Anger mounts at Ukrainian security forces’ treatment of Africans fleeing war

Kumaran Ira

While the US and European press present NATO intervention against the Russian war in Ukraine as a defence of democracy, anger is mounting across Africa at reports of racist targeting of Africans by Ukrainian security personnel and border guards as they try to flee the country. About 16,000 African students were studying in the country before the Russian invasion, according to Ukraine’s ambassador to South Africa.

Scores of African citizens have been blocked from leaving Ukraine. France 24 interviewed several African students at the Lviv train station in western Ukraine who said they were turned back by Ukrainian border guards while attempting to cross into Poland.

“They stopped us at the border and told us that Blacks were not allowed. But we could see White people going through,” Moustapha Bagui Sylla, a Guinean student, told France24. He said he fled his university residence in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, when the bombing began.

Bagui Sylla walked for hours in freezing temperatures heading for the Polish border village of Medyka, where he was ordered to turn back. He reported that Ukrainian border guards said they were merely following instructions from their Polish counterparts. Officials in Warsaw denied the claim, however.

Ukrainian soldiers drive on an armored military vehicle in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, March 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Barlaney Mufaro Gurure, a space engineering student from Zimbabwe at Ukraine’s National Aviation University, fled Kyiv after Russia launched the military intervention on February 24. She told Al Jazeera that she had finally reached the front of a nine-hour queue at Ukraine’s western border crossing of Krakovets after an exhausting four-day trip.

When her turn came to cross, the border guard blocked her and four other African students at the border for hours, giving Ukrainians priority. “We felt treated like animals. When we left [Kyiv] we were just trying to survive,” she told Al Jazeera. “We never thought that they would have treated us like that … I thought we were all equal, that we were trying to stand together,” she added.

The UN estimates 2 million people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion began. Queues along the border are dozens of kilometres long. Some African students told Al Jazeera they have been waiting for days to cross amid freezing temperatures and with no food, blankets or shelter.

There are mounting reports, as well, that Polish far-right nationalists are attacking African, South Asian and Middle Eastern people who have crossed the Ukrainian border into Poland. In Przemyśl, attackers dressed in black tracked down groups of non-white refugees, primarily students who arrived at a train station in Poland from Ukraine after the war began. Police said three Indians were beaten up by a group of five men, leaving one of them hospitalized.

“Around 7 p.m., these men started to shout and yell against groups of African and Middle Eastern refugees who were outside the train station,” reported two Polish journalists from the OKO press agency. “They yelled at them: ‘Go back to the train station! Go back to your country.’”

Police and riot officers were sent after groups of men arrived chanting “Przemyśl always Polish.”

“I was with my friends, buying something to eat outside,” said Sara, a 22-year-old Egyptian student in Ukraine. “These men came and started to harass a group of men from Nigeria. They wouldn’t let an African boy go inside a place to eat some food. Then they came towards us and yelled: ‘Go back to your country.’”

Polish police also warned that far-right groups are spreading false information about crimes allegedly committed by African and Middle Eastern citizens fleeing Ukraine. On Twitter, Przemyśl police said: “In the media, there is false information that serious crimes have occurred in Przemyśl and the border: burglaries, assaults and rape. It’s not true. The police did not record an increased number of crimes in connection with the situation at the border.”

Ukrainian and Polish officials have denied reports of racial discrimination at the border. A spokesperson for the Ukrainian border guards claimed that only Ukrainian men aged between 18 and 60 were stopped from leaving the country, as they are required to join the war against Russia. However, footage on social media have shown acts of discrimination, abuse and violence against African and other foreign citizens fleeing Ukraine at its border posts.

Amid mounting anger in Africa, African officials have expressed concern over discriminatory treatment against their citizens. Videos and tweets under the hashtag #AfricansinUkraine have flooded social media, prompting numerous crowdfunding initiatives on Telegram and Instagram to help students at the borders.

Last Monday, in a statement, the African Union declared: “Reports that Africans are singled out for unacceptable dissimilar treatment would be shockingly racist and in breach of international law.” Similarly, the Nigerian government said that a group of Nigerians had been refused entry into Poland. A South African foreign ministry spokesperson said that a group of South African nationals and other Africans were “treated badly” at the Polish-Ukrainian border.

The ill treatment of many Africans by security officials and far-right mobs exposes the hypocrisy of the crocodile tears the NATO media are shedding for millions of people fleeing Ukraine as a result of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine.

Since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the NATO powers have attacked Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, destroying infrastructure and killing countless thousands. As people fled these countries, taking risky journeys via land and sea to seek shelter in Europe, the EU enacted increasingly draconian anti-immigrant measures, refusing to grant asylum to those who managed to arrive in Europe. As a result, tens of thousands of migrants and refugees have drowned when their boats capsized in the Mediterranean Sea or even in the English Channel.

In reality, draconian EU anti-migrant policies and the NATO powers’ longstanding legitimization of far-right politics across Europe, and notably their support for the February 2014 Kiev putsch that brought to power a pro-NATO government in Ukraine, fuel anti-refugee hatreds. The NATO powers are not concerned about refugees’ fate, but rather are exploiting their suffering to justify further warmongering against Russia.

Internationally, there is mounting opposition not only to the Russian invasion but to the US-NATO war campaign against Russia. Seventeen African countries, including South Africa, Senegal, Uganda, and Mali abstained from the UN vote to condemn Russia’s “aggression against Ukraine.” Several of them have suffered enormous losses during invasions launched by the NATO powers in nearby countries like Libya and Mali.

Last week, the Senegalese government issued a strongly-worded statement condemning Ukraine’s policy in Africa. This followed attempts by Ukraine’s embassy in Senegal to recruit volunteers via Facebook to join far-right Ukrainian nationalist militias fighting Russia; the Ukrainian embassy claimed that 36 Senegalese citizens had, in fact, enlisted. However, under Senegalese law it is illegal to recruit mercenaries on Senegalese soil.

On March 3, Senegal’s foreign ministry said it had summoned the Ukrainian ambassador in Dakar after learning “with astonishment” about the Facebook post. The ministry said it had “firmly” condemned “this practice which constitutes a violation of the obligation to respect the laws and regulations of the receiving State.” It told the Ukrainian embassy to withdraw its Facebook post.

Russian-backed cable news network RT America shuts down

Kevin Reed

RT America, the Russian state-funded cable news network in the US, was shut down on Thursday and all 120 of its employees were laid off.

T&R Productions, the firm that operates RT America, informed its staff in writing that it was “ceasing production” due to “unforeseen” events. The employees at the channel’s offices in New York, Washington, DC, Los Angeles and Miami were also told of the decision during a company-wide town hall meeting on March 3.

CNN Business reported the shutdown after obtaining a memo from T&R Productions general manager Mikhail Solodovnikov, which said: “As a result of unforeseen business interruption events, T&R Productions, LLC (‘T&R’) will be ceasing production and, therefore must lay off most of its staff who work at all of its locations,” and, “Unfortunately, we anticipate this layoff will be permanent, meaning that this will result in the permanent separation from employment of most T&R employees at all locations.”

RT America was the US division of the RT (formerly Russia Today) network, a global multilingual television news network based in Moscow. RT America was distributed through a select group of cable TV providers, streaming services and live streamed through its website.

RT coverage of the controversy over 15-year-old Kamila Valieva at the 2021 winter Olympics

On March 1, in an act of anti-Russian hysteria, the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences suspended the general membership of T&R Productions manager Solodovnikov and removed him from its board of directors. A representative of the organization told Deadline, “Due to the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the International Academy is suspending Mikhail Solodovnikov’s membership and board position, as well as the membership of Elizaveta Brodskaya.”

Brodskaya is head of news at the RT International and RT Russia based in Moscow. Several other Russian members were also stricken from the Academy’s membership list.

RT America ran numerous programs that were hosted by popular talk show figures with a wide range of political views and perspectives such as Dennis Miller, William Shatner, Peter Lavelle, Chris Hedges, Lee Camp and Jesse Ventura. The channel was launched in February 2010. RT’s sister channels in Canada and Europe have also been shut down.

RT’s deputy editor-in-chief Anna Belkina told CNN, “We are sad and disappointed that our groundbreaking channel RT America had to go off the air after more than 10 years, and that the company that supplied much of its content, T&R Productions, had to cease most of its operations, due to challenging external circumstances.”

Although details about the “external circumstances” have not been officially stated, it is known that DirecTV, the multichannel video programming distributor with 15 million subscribers and a major source of RT America’s viewing audience and revenue, dropped the network on March 1, two days before the shutdown. Roku, a supplier of television streaming equipment, also removed RT America from its channel store on March 1.

Ora.TV, the producer of the Dennis Miller + One and William Shatner’s I Don’t Understand programs, released a statement on March 1 that said, “Given the invasion of Ukraine and the tragic humanitarian crisis, Ora Media has paused production of content we license to T&R Productions. Future business decisions will be made based on the evolving situation.”

In a statement, Shatner said, “Ora TV sold the show to RT America. I had no say in the matter.” He added that the show is “informative, entertaining and totally, absolutely non-political. My contract for seventy half-hour shows this past year has been with Ora TV. Those seventy shows are in the pipeline, and I have no voice in that matter as well.” Shatner also expressed sympathies for the Ukrainian people.

The shutdown of RT America follows a pattern of censorship measures imposed by the European Union (EU) that banned RT and Sputnik, the Russian state-run news agency and radio broadcast service. The official EU ban was followed shortly by all of the major tech and social media platforms—YouTube, Facebook and TikTok—shutting down access to RT and Sputnik across Europe. Apple removed the Russian news services from its app store everywhere in the world except for Russia.

Among those whose programs were terminated in the RT America shutdown is the stand-up comedian, author and activist Lee Camp, the host of the weekly Redacted Tonight. Camp, who identifies himself as anti-war, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, also had his podcast called Moment of Clarity removed from the audio streaming service Spotify.

Appearing on the YouTube channel The KatieHalper Show, Camp said his TV program was shut down suddenly and with very little information. He said, in his view, it was obvious that RT America was terminated by either a directive from the US Justice Department or the sanctions regime imposed on Russia that made it a crime for the network to continue to operate.

Camp said that being dropped by platforms would not cause an immediate shutdown of the channel since the organization had financial resources that should have enabled it to continue operating even if it had to scale back. Camp said that the fact that RT America was shut down instantly meant, “the only thing that would ever cause that would be a fear of the executives getting arrested or literally the Justice Department saying, ‘shut it down’.”

Camp went on, “For anyone to celebrate this brand of McCarthyism, this kind of mass censorship—I was censored on three platforms in the span of three days. My YouTube videos of Redacted Tonight were banned throughout Europe and the UK, my show was gone. And, on top of that, my personal podcast Moment of Clarity was deleted from Spotify in three days … the idea that anyone would celebrate this level of censorship is really tragic.”

In response to a question from Halper about the attempt to silence critical voices on the war in Ukraine, Camp said, “I said clearly in all my videos that I was opposed to this, I think Russia’s invasion is wrong. But I also give context to what’s going on in the situation, you know, how NATO has expanded over the years, how there are literally Nazis with Nazi emblems like swastikas on their helmets involved in the Donbass region. And giving context, if people think giving context is somehow justifying, that’s utter nonsense. We should be intelligent; we should understand the context of these issues.”

Foreign corporations exit Russia to provoke economic collapse

Andrea Peters

The imposition of sweeping sanctions on Russia has prompted a mass exodus of foreign corporations from the country, the devastating consequences of which are just beginning to come into full relief. The pullout is hitting virtually every sector of the economy—finance, aviation, automotive, energy, technology, telecommunications, service, entertainment, food production, fashion, and consumer goods.

The list of major companies suspending sales, production, and service in Russia includes Mastercard, VISA, American Express, Google, Apple and Apple Pay, Samsung, General Electric, Shell Oil, BP, ExxonMobil, Ikea, Nike, Reebok, Hyundai, Ford, BMW, Daimler, General Motors, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Nokia, Ericsson, Dell, Siemens, BMW, Renault, Netflix, Walt Disney, Universal, Lego, Expedia, FedEx, Valio, Fazer, Danone, Arla, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Starbucks and hundreds more.

While medical and pharmaceutical companies are legally allowed to do business in Russia, the removal of the country from the SWIFT system for international financial transactions is making it increasingly difficult for them to do so.

In short, masses of ordinary people in Russia are being ejected from the global marketplace with the express aim of depriving them of jobs, incomes, and access to essential goods, like food and medicine. The aim of this “total economic and financial war,” in the words of French Foreign Minister Bruno La Maire, is “the collapse of the Russian economy.”

Apple logo sign. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

The American and European ruling classes are extracting their pound of flesh. The bodies of dead Ukrainians, who were used as a cat’s paw to drag Russia into a disastrous military conflict long prepared, are not enough for them.

The Russian government has not released any official data on inflation, part of its desperate attempt to cover up the impact of the sanctions on the population. But experts estimate that inflation in the country is currently running at just under 17 percent. The price of foodstuffs is going through the roof.

Some areas are creating hotlines that consumers can call to report skyrocketing prices. The cost of vegetables in Moscow has risen between 2 and 17 percent. In Stavropol, a city of about 400,000 in southwestern Russia, sugar is now 120 rubles, about a fourfold increase from several weeks ago. Sverdlovsk has set limits on the amount of some items that consumers can purchase, such as dairy products. People trying to buy food before they can no longer afford it are clearing grocery store shelves.

In Kazan, one mother told the press, “Four days ago, I bought baby food for 1,381 rubles, but yesterday it already cost 2,233 rubles.” Local officials in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug just decided that they will start to officially “check the prices of food and essentials, including baby clothes, diapers and baby food,” as complaints have begun to pour in from the public. “Prices for some children’s goods have doubled,” said one regional representative.

Layoffs are spreading throughout the economy, due to the shuttering of factories and retail stores because of a combination of the pullout of foreign firms, shortages of parts, sanctions that make it impossible for Russian companies to do business, and falling demand.

The food producer Fazer will let go of 2,300 workers at its operations in Saint Petersburg. Nissan, which employs about 2,000 people at its facility there, is shutting down, as is Hyundai, with another 2,500 workers. Bonava, which has about 370 people on its payroll, is suspending its construction projects in the city. А paper manufacturer in the larger region of which Saint Petersburg is a part, Leningrad Oblast, may close and axe 1,700 jobs.

The auto industry is being particularly hard hit, with American and German manufacturers with large-scale facilities in Kaluga, Nizhny Novgorod, Togliatti, and elsewhere announcing either permanent or temporary shutdowns. Hanover-based automotive company Continental just declared that it would end its operations in Kaluga, which is south and east of Moscow and has a population of about 325,000, placing 1,300 jobs in jeopardy.

In addition, food manufacturers Valio and Paulig are closing up shop in Tversk Oblast, with 600 layoffs expected.

McDonald’s, which has a workforce of 62,000 in Russia, just declared it is halting its operations, as are Starbucks and Coca-Cola. There has been a crazed campaign in the Western press over the last several days singling out companies that have not yet closed up shop, with the express aim of achieving what was just achieved.

This is just the beginning. The companies exiting the Russian economy employ directly hundreds of thousands of people and indirectly, millions. According to one analyst writing on the Russian economic news site Investing.com, depending on the industry in question, Russian producers rely on foreign supplies and services for anywhere between 40 percent to all of their parts and operations. This includes companies in food production, the service sector, metallurgy, aviation, and shipping, for instance.

The information agency of the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic, located in Russia’s north Caucasus, had a short news report up that listed the number of employees of some of the firms closing down their operations in the country. It listed the following: Ikea, 15,000 jobs, Renault-Nissan in Togliatti, 35,000 jobs, BMW’s Avtotor, 3,500 jobs. It noted that Yandex, the top Russian search engine, warned its 12,000 employees that it was at risk of default.

This news report was affixed with a large red label that said, “Fake.” It has since been removed, an action less likely the result of the actual false character of the information and more likely the product of the danger it poses to the government. President Putin just signed into law fines and prison sentences for the dissemination of “fake” news that would undermine the war goals of the government.

The Kremlin is attempting to manage the spiraling crisis by projecting a false image of calm, scrubbing the internet of damaging news reports, announcing a limited number of social measures, and declaring total support for the business sector.

The Ministry of Finance announced Tuesday that 455 billion rubles are being allotted for payments to families with children between the ages of 8 to 16 years old. Depending on where they live in Russia, they will receive between 50 and 100 percent of the official subsistence minimum for a child, which is between 6,000 and 12,000 rubles.

If the mother in Kazan trying to buy baby food were to receive such an amount—which she will not because her child is under 8—she could purchase maybe another three to five confections of the product.

The government also declared a moratorium on audits of small and medium enterprises and IT firms from now through 2024. Businesses that need to renew their licenses will be allowed to continue to operate, the process of selling products to the state is being simplified, and authorities have been given the right to raise pensions. In addition, those earning less than 20,000 rubles a month will no longer have to pay taxes, saving them about 2,600 rubles. Given that millions of Russians work in the shadow economy, particularly those at the lower end of the pay scale, this is hardly any help at all.

At the onset of the war crisis, President Putin declared that Russia would ensure “maximum freedom for business.” This can only mean giving Russian corporations free rein to cut labor costs as they sees fit and, when workers object, using the power of the state to keep them at their jobs.