The United States and its NATO allies are intensively preparing for a third world war. Looking back on the First World War, the great powers were said to have “slithered” into the war, but now they are racing open-eyed into disaster.
The claim that the Ukraine war is about defending democracy and national independence is proving more specious by the day. In reality, it is about control over Russia’s vast landmass and rich mineral resources and the re-division of the world among the major imperialist powers. The Ukraine war joins those in the Balkans, the Middle East and North Africa with which the US and its allies have tried to secure their world domination.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz visiting Japanese head of government Fumio Kishida (Photo: Bundesregierung/Bergmann)
The reactionary and short-sighted decision to attack Ukraine militarily by Russian President Vladimir Putin in response to NATO’s encirclement of his country provided the latter with the welcome—and desired—pretext for a massive military escalation.
The US is flooding Ukraine with weapons and promising that there will be no let-up until Russia is “defeated” and its “backbone broken.” Germany is using the war to remove all obstacles that previously stood in the way of unrestrained rearmament.
What was considered a “red line” one day is crossed the next. First, the German government increased the arms budget by €100 billion in one fell swoop, without prior consultation, and abandoned the principle of not supplying weapons to war zones. Ukraine was first supplied with light and then with heavy weapons. In the meantime, Ukrainian soldiers are also being trained on German soil, although according to an expert opinion by the Bundestag (parliamentary) Scientific Service, this constitutes participation in war under international law.
The German government’s preparations for a Third World War are not limited to arming the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) and providing military support to Ukraine. Economic, foreign and even climate policy are also being put at the service of war policy.
The former editor-in-chief of finance daily Handelsblatt, Gabor Steingart, speaks bluntly about this in his “Pioneer Briefing” on Tuesday. Without the slightest qualms, he discusses the question of what is required to make a world war “manageable”:
“The waging of a Third World War is not just a military issue,” he proclaims. It is “first and foremost an economic issue. For without economic disentanglement along the power and military blocs, effective warfare that can be sustained over a longer period is impossible, as we can already see from Germany’s dependence on Russian natural gas.”
“Whoever wants to make world warfare manageable must first unbundle world trade,” Steingart emphasises. “Economic independence is more important than billions more for the Bundeswehr. So, it is not only the soldiers and their military equipment that must be gathered into an offensive formation, but also economic resources.”
“Viewed with this economic eye,” he then states, “the preparations for making a Third World War manageable are in full swing.”
Unfortunately, Steingart is right about that. Although a third world war would mean the end of humanity, the German government is busily making the economic and geopolitical preparations for it, in addition to the military ones. In recent weeks, it has set a course to re-organise trade and economic relations for a war against Russia and China.
For example, in his first trip to East Asia after taking office, Chancellor Olaf Scholz made a demonstrative visit to Japan. Unlike his predecessor Angela Merkel, who paid twelve visits to China and only five to Japan during her 16 years in office, Scholz did not go to Beijing. At €246 billion, Germany’s trade volume with China is six times as high as that with Japan. The value of German direct investment in China, at €96 billion, is also many times its €16 billion in Japan.
But Scholz, who travelled to Tokyo accompanied by a large business delegation, wanted to demonstrate that Germany is again committed to close cooperation with Japan. He agreed on closer cooperation in the strategically important high-tech sector and in the production and supply of liquid hydrogen as an alternative energy source. Regular government consultations with Japan, previously only held with China, were also agreed.
The escalating conflicts with Russia and China played a central role in the talks conducted by Scholz and the Japanese head of government Fumio Kishida. Germany and Japan also want to cooperate more closely militarily. After the German frigate Bayern conducted exercises with Japanese forces last year, six German Eurofighters are to take part in manoeuvres in Australia this autumn, from where they will also fly to Japan.
With his orientation towards Japan, Scholz is following bad historical traditions. Japan was allied with Nazi Germany in the Second World War and, along with Italy, was one of the so-called Axis powers. While Germany waged a murderous war of extermination in the Soviet Union, Japan committed terrible war crimes in China and other Asian countries, for some of which it still denies responsibility today.
While Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party, SPD) and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) are concerned with strengthening the international war front against Russia, Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) has taken on the task of cutting off Europe from Russian energy supplies that date back to Willi Brandt’s Ostpolitik of the early 1970s.
Having already imposed an import ban on Russian coal in April, the European Union is expected to decide this week on an oil embargo as well, thanks to Habeck’s efforts. Because the share of Russian oil in Germany’s oil consumption has fallen from 36 to 12 percent, the German government has given the green light for an embargo. Countries like Hungary and Greece, which are far more dependent on Russian oil, are to be given a transitional period.
In 2021, the EU was still buying 3.4 million barrels of oil and oil products a day, about a quarter of its needs, from Russia. How these are to be replaced is not clear. Sanctions are also in place against Venezuela and Iran, two major oil producers. OPEC, of which Russia is a member, has so far refused to increase production accordingly.
It is certain that the embargo will lead to a further increase in energy prices, which are already at record levels and are among the main drivers of inflation. So, it is the population who will foot the bill. Even Habeck had to admit that such a measure would not leave Germany unscathed. However, he considers the embargo important “because we are relieving ourselves of some of the moral guilt of keeping the Putin regime alive with our payments.”
The insane policy of preparing a third world war and making it “manageable” is supported by all parties represented in the Bundestag, up to and including the Left Party, which only expresses reservations on secondary issues.
The Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), now they are no longer in government, have lost all inhibitions. Yesterday, they published a “Cologne Declaration” advocating unbridled militarism under the title “Security in New Times.”
Germany must “urgently define its national interests against the background of the new reality” and “adopt a national show of strength to implement and safeguard them,” it says. “To meet this challenge, comprehensive military capabilities are needed, which will also entail many a sacrifice and burden.”
In addition to a “new security strategy” that addresses not only external but also internal threats—“such as targeted disinformation campaigns and all forms of extremism”—the document also advocates a “new globalisation strategy” focusing on Europe, the US and Africa and which “reassesses dependence on other states [meaning Russia and China].”
“Globalisation strategy and security strategy are two sides of the same coin and make it clear that Germany will have to assume more responsibility in the world,” it then says. Put in plain English: The global interests of German big business and the use of military means are two sides of the same coin, which Germany must use more of worldwide.
More than 15,000 construction workers have been on strike across Ontario since last weekend. The workers, who include high-rise and low-rise residential builders, floor fitters and operating engineers for cranes and other heavy equipment, are demanding wage increases to keep pace with skyrocketing inflation.
The center of the strike is in the Greater Toronto Area, where real estate speculators and banks have made a killing in recent years from astronomical and still-rising prices for residential properties built by the strikers.
Ontario building site (Photo Credit: IUOE)
The construction companies prevailed on the Ontario government to declare construction workers “essential employees,” so as to force them to work throughout the pandemic on job sites that lacked even the most elementary anti-COVID protection measures. Now they are demanding that construction workers accept below-inflation pay increases for the next three years.
Described as the largest strike in the sector for 20 years, the Ontario construction workers’ job action is part of an international upsurge of the class struggle. Recent months have seen strikes by rail workers and grocery store workers in Canada, nurses in the United States and bus drivers in Britain and India, driven by soaring inflation and decades of concessions and stagnant wages. In Sri Lanka, nationwide anti-government protests over the spiraling cost of living have been accompanied by strikes involving millions of workers.
The strikers are members of the Labourers International Union of North America (LiUNA) Local 183 and International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 793. Six groups of LiUNA affiliated workers walked out Sunday, the first day they were in a legal position to strike. The operating engineers joined the strike the next day, after voting down a three-year tentative agreement recommended by the Local 793 bargaining team. Although details are scant, the engineers appear to have been offered a wage increase of just 9 percent, spread over three years. With inflation currently rising at an annual rate of 6.7 percent, its highest in 30 years, workers were all but guaranteed to suffer a huge real-wage cut under the IUOE endorsed deal.
The builders are insisting that two earlier sell-out agreements should serve as a “pattern” for the industry. In February, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers imposed a three-year deal on electricians containing an “increase” of just 8.6 percent, while ironworkers accepted a 9 percent rise with a 0.5 percent premium for Toronto in March.
While the striking construction workers are no doubt determined to fight, they are being straitjacketed by LiUNA and the IUOE within a rigged labour relations system designed to give the employers most everything they want.
Every three years, collective agreements for all 30 trades in Ontario’s construction sector expire simultaneously on April 30. Provincial labour relations law stipulates that workers can only stage job action in support of their contract demands during a 45-day period beginning May 1 and ending June 15. If a negotiated settlement is not reached by mid-June, workers are forced to immediately return to work and any and all outstanding issues in dispute are sent to binding arbitration. Under this anti-democratic process workers are robbed of their legal rights to strike and bargain collectively, and their future terms of employment are dictated by a government-appointed arbitrator, who invariably sides with the employers.
Binding arbitration has become a favoured mechanism for the unions and employers to suppress workers’ struggles across all economic sectors. In March, the Teamsters turned an overwhelming vote for strike action by 3,000 CP Rail workers into a groveling capitulation to the demand of CP management and the federal Liberal government the dispute be resolved through binding arbitration. Not only have the CP Rail workers been stripped of any legal means of fighting for improved wages and the reversal of punishing pension cuts imposed in 2012. At CP Rail’s insistence, key issues for rail workers, including a brutal scheduling regime and serious safety concerns, have been excluded from the arbitration process, thereby guaranteeing that the anti-worker status quo endures.
Earlier this week, signal operators represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers were sent back to work at Toronto’s Union Station after the union accepted binding arbitration to bring a sudden end to a two-week strike.
LiUNA and the IUOE are undoubtedly preparing a no less rotten betrayal of the construction workers’ strikes behind the scenes. Both unions refused to lift a finger to defend their members’ safety during the pandemic, including when the Doug Ford-led Progressive Conservative government classified them as “essential workers” to ensure that the profits of property developers and rich investors were not endangered during lockdowns.
LiUNA officials have regularly boasted about their role in keeping workers on the job. In a comment summing up the friendly relations that exist between the LiUNA top brass and construction management, Local 183 spokesman Jason Ottey said, “We didn’t ask for pandemic pay, we do not have a work from home option, and as a result, we thought that our management partners would show their appreciation in this round of bargaining.”
While Ottey and the rest of the LiUNA bureaucracy never called for pandemic pay, thousands of construction workers most certainly would have done so if they had possessed their own fighting organizations committed to the shutdown of all nonessential activity with full pay for workers until COVID-19 was brought under control. Instead, because the privileged trade union bureaucrats wanted to stay on good terms with their “management partners,” they were forced to get infected on the job with COVID-19 and spread the deadly virus to their friends and loved ones.
Construction workers were not alone in making this bitter experience. Unions across all sectors played a similarly disgraceful role, from the teacher unions in the education sector to Unifor in the auto plants and the UFCW in the meat packing industry.
If any doubt remained about whose side LiUNA is on, it was dispelled last week when its international vice-president for eastern and central Canada, Joseph Mancinelli, came out in support of the re-election of the Ford government in the June 2 Ontario election. In a laudatory op-ed comment in the Toronto Sun, a far-right tabloid, Mancinelli asserted that Ford, who has gutted public spending, attacked workers’ rights, and prioritized corporate profits over the protection of human life during the pandemic, had introduced “fair labour laws” and “cut red tape” over the past four years.
The construction strike is unfolding amid a provincial election campaign dominated by the impact of the rising cost of living for working people. None of the political parties have any intention of improving workers’ living standards and guaranteeing decent-paying, secure jobs. In fact, the Liberals and New Democrats, who are routinely hailed as “progressive” parties by most trade unions, are preparing to collaborate in the formation of a pro-austerity government. They are already in a governmental alliance at the federal level, where they are leading the charge to war with Russia, massively hiking military spending and enforcing “fiscal responsibility.”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) reported on Friday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) searched through the electronic data of Americans 3.4 million times in 2021.
FBI headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington D.C. (Credit: cisko66) [Photo by cisko66]
The searches were revealed in the ODNI’s “Annual Statistical Transparency Report Regarding the Intelligence Community’s Use of National Security Surveillance Authorities” for calendar year 2021. The data shows that there was nearly a tripling of these unconstitutional searches from 1.3 million in 2020.
In typical fashion the ODNI report waives away this intensification of the surveillance state by claiming it was a technical matter related to vital national security matters, the details of which are never explained. The report says, “In the first half of the year, there were a number of large batch queries related to attempts to compromise U.S. critical infrastructure by foreign cyber actors.”
This is the ninth such annual report issued by the ODNI. As with everything associated with the Orwellian world of the US intelligence community (IC), there are a large number of acronyms and terms that can be generally understood to have the exact opposite meaning of what they purport to be about.
For example, this annual report was drafted by a sub-department of the ODNI called the Office of Civil Liberties, Privacy and Transparency. However, the content of this document shows that civil liberties, privacy and transparency are nowhere to be found when it comes to the FBI and its use of US intelligence data.
Contrary to the misinformation spread by the political establishment and the media that the US government has stopped its unconstitutional dragnet of everyone’s electronic communications, the National Security Agency (NSA) is still vacuuming up and storing a massive repository of data under the authority of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA).
Under the terms of Section 702, US intelligence can routinely collect both upstream and downstream communications of both Americans and non-Americans without a warrant under the guise of “targeting” foreign intelligence. Even though the existence of this program was exposed to the world by former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden in 2013—and he has been threatened with prosecution under the Espionage Act for it—and promises were made by the Obama administration that it would be halted, mass surveillance continues.
Even when the Section 702 NSA program was officially “ended” in 2017, it was revived and renewed by Congress and signed back into the FISA law by President Donald Trump in 2018. According to Snowden, the program was never stopped, and it has only grown more comprehensive and invasive in the nine years since he made his exposures.
While the ODNI report acknowledges a massive number of searches of the NSA database by the FBI—3,394,053—it does not say that these “queries” were illegal or unconstitutional. Instead, the report presents these searches as being entirely consistent with FISA rules.
In response to public outrage over the ongoing illegal spying by the US government, several corporate media sources have claimed that more than half of the 3.4 million queries—about 1.9 million—were part of an FBI investigation into an alleged “cyber threat from Russia,” as though this makes it legitimate.
Although this detail is not in the ODNI report and no details have been provided about the purported Russian threat, it is reminiscent of justifications made by the Bush administration about mass domestic electronic surveillance that violated the democratic rights of Americans as part of the “war on terror.”
The FBI searches the NSA database for up to 10 US Person (USP) identifiers, including names, phone numbers, email addresses, social security numbers, passport numbers, company names and IP addresses. These identifier queries are combined with hundreds and thousands of other search terms to find and identify individuals, their whereabouts and communications. None of the thousands of search terms are disclosed in the report.
In a report by the Wall Street Journal, it is pointed out that the ODNI does not say that there are any “systemic problems” with the searches even though “judges have previously reprimanded the bureau for failing to comply with privacy rules.”
When the Journal asked the Biden administration about the information in the report, unnamed officials said that the actual number of searches is “likely far lower, citing complexities in counting and sorting foreign data from US data.” In other words, there is a massive number of queries being conducted by the FBI in which there is no way to distinguish between who is a “citizen” and who is a “foreigner.”
The ODNI was created in the aftermath of the 9/11 Commission Report, released on July 22, 2004, and was a central part of the assault on democratic rights associated with the illegal and aggressive wars launched by the administration of George W. Bush in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The officer, which was established based on a proposal from leading congressional Democrats in 2002, is a senior, cabinet-level government official who is essentially a figurehead who reports to the president but is not in charge of the primary departments of US intelligence, such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the NSA.
The Biden administration’s Director of National Intelligence is Avril Haines, the first woman to hold the position. Haines was the first Biden nominee confirmed by the Senate in an 84-10 vote on January 20, 2021 and was sworn in the next day by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Previously, Haines served as Deputy National Security Advisor and Deputy Director of the CIA under Obama. In 2015, as deputy CIA director, Haines protected the agency personnel who hacked the computers of Senate staffers during the investigation into CIA torture programs. Once the Senate issued its report, Haines was involved in redacting 6,200 of the 6,700 pages of the document.
Haines also worked closely with Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CIA Director John Brennan on the extra-judicial targeted assassination program of the Democratic Party administration. According to a report in Newsweek in 2013, Haines was repeatedly called in the middle of the night to help make the decision as to whether a “suspected terrorist” could be “lawfully incinerated” in a drone strike.
Like the lawyers working in the Bush White House who came up with the infamous legal justification for “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Haines specialized in establishing the legal framework and guidelines for the drone assassination program, which targeted individuals for death in Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan. According to a report in In These Times, Haines is responsible for policies that “made targeted killings all over the world a normal part of US policy.”
With such people in charge of auditing the activities of US intelligence and issuing reports that claim to “ensure compliance with the Constitution and laws of the United States” and “enhance public understanding of intelligence activities,” the only thing that is transparent is that they are engaged in covering up the criminality of US imperialism both within America and throughout the world.
The war in Ukraine is beginning to spill over the country’s borders, threatening to light the entire region on fire. The US and NATO are funneling ungodly amounts of arms to Kiev, as more than 12 million flee the violence, with masses of people pouring into the neighboring states of Poland, Romania, Hungary, Belarus, Moldova, Slovakia and Russia.
Smoke rises from the Metallurgical Combine Azovstal in Mariupol, in territory under the government of the Donetsk People's Republic, eastern Ukraine, Wednesday, May 4, 2022. [AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov]
On Tuesday, officials in Transnistria, a Russian-controlled breakaway enclave in Moldova, which borders Ukraine to the southwest, reported intercepting an unmanned vehicular drone loaded with a bomb at a radio tower. On April 26, two explosions at this and another radio transmission station in the Grigoripol district left significant damage.
Also on May 3, representatives of the region, whose independence neither Moldova nor international institutions recognize, said they foiled a planned terrorist attack on Transnistrian soil. They did not provide details, but in this and all other attacks they have blamed Ukraine. Kiev insists these are Russian false flag operations. Its military just declared that Moscow is evacuating the families of Russian servicemen and officials from Transnistria, a claim that the Kremlin has not confirmed.
The Moldovan government, which in March officially applied for EU membership, passed a law on Tuesday that authorizes the European border police and coast guard to patrol its borders. This creates conditions in which, depending on the course of the Ukraine war, EU security personnel could end up stationed directly across from Russian troops.
Charles Michel, president of the European Council, declared Wednesday following a visit to the capital city Chisinau that the EU will “significantly increase [its] support to Moldova by providing its armed forces with additional military equipment.” It will also help to beef up its logistics, cyberdefense and “military-building capacities.” In short, the EU aims to turn the tiny country of 2.6 million, which competes with Ukraine for being the continent’s poorest state, into an armed camp.
In addition, tensions are rising along Ukraine’s northern border. On Wednesday, Belarus announced it is conducting a previously unplanned review of its military readiness. It is checking both its ground and air defenses, as well as its combat plans and ability to respond to crises. Minsk, an ally of Moscow, said in February that Russian troops with which it had been conducting joint exercises would remain on its territory indefinitely.
The situation along Belarus’ western frontier is also strained, with reports of Polish border guards harassing their counterparts with floodlights and slingshots. Last year, a massive conflict erupted between the governments of Minsk and Warsaw, when refugees from the Middle East, who were attempting to cross into the EU via the Belarusian-Polish border, were beaten back with water cannons.
The most significant cross-border conflict is happening in Russia. In late April, there was a series of eruptions at military sites in three regions just to the east of Ukraine—Voronezh, Belgorod and Kursk. There have been unexplained fires at ammunitions and oil depots, as well as mid-air explosions near a military base, which the Russian government says were from their air defense systems responding to an attack. Residents of the region reported hearing fighter jets take off just after the blasts. A Ukrainian drone has also allegedly been shot down 140 miles into Russian territory.
The Zelensky government has said that it neither denies nor confirms launching attacks on Russian territory, which is simply an underhanded way of acknowledging that it is behind these events while attempting to shield itself and its backers in Washington and Brussels from their grave implications.
The weaponry, intelligence and training enabling Kiev to strike across the border all come from the United States and NATO. If Ukraine is lobbing bombs on Russia, then the American and European governments are waging an undeclared war on Moscow.
On April 30, just days after these events took place, the UK’s minister of armed forces, James Heappey, declared it was “completely legitimate” for Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia.
In response, Maria Zakharova, press secretary for Russia’s foreign ministry, said, “Do we understand correctly that for the sake of ‘disrupting the logistics of military supplies’ Russia can strike at military targets on the territory of those NATO countries that supply weapons to the Kiev regime? After all, this directly leads to death and bloodshed on the territory of Ukraine. As far as I understand, Britain is one of these countries.”
The US and the EU are consciously preparing the groundwork for a European-wide war, which will rapidly spiral into a global conflict driven by Washington’s desire to crush Russia and, above all, China.
On Wednesday, German Chancellor Olaf Schulz appealed to Kosovo to resolve its tensions with Serbia in order that “all the western Balkans” can join the EU—in other words, be completely drawn into the anti-Russian war campaign. The region, which straddles the Adriatic, Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Seas, is of major geostrategic significance.
The same day, US Admiral and Chair of the NATO Military Committee Rob Bauer said that the alliance no longer considers itself limited by the 1997 Russian-NATO Founding Act. One of the central stipulations of that agreement is that NATO cannot station atomic weapons or build nuclear arms storage facilities on the territory of countries entering the alliance after it was signed. It also prohibits both sides from deploying large numbers of nuclear weapons on their borders.
Yesterday, at the European parliament in Strasbourg, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for an EU embargo on Russian oil to crush Russia’s financial system.
As Washington and its European NATO allies pour tens of billions of dollars of arms into Ukraine, risking total war with Russia, the EU is waging economic war on Russia and on the working class. An embargo would devastate both Europe and Russia: the EU imported $147.8 billion in energy from Russia last year, including $104.4 billion in crude and refined oil. Even if the EU successfully arranged alternative deliveries of oil, such an embargo would produce a surge in energy prices and massive job losses and economic hardship across Europe.
[AP Photo/Martin Meissner]
Von der Leyen announced multiple punitive measures. New EU sanctions target “high-ranking military officers and other individuals” including Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. The EU will ban Russian broadcasters from its airwaves and remove three Russian banks, including Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, from the SWIFT system for international dollar-denominated transactions.
The EU’s goal, von der Leyen said, is “the complete isolation of the Russian financial sector from the global system.”
She called to ban financial and public relations services to Russia: “the Kremlin relies on accountants, consultants and spin doctors from Europe. And this will now stop. We are banning those services from being provided to Russian companies.” Europe’s spin doctors, it appears, are to be employed exclusively in promoting NATO and EU policy.
On the oil embargo, she said, “it will not be easy. Some Member States are strongly dependent on Russian oil. But we simply have to work on it. … We will make sure that we phase out Russian oil in an orderly fashion, in a way that allows us and our partners to secure alternative supply routes and minimizes the impact on global markets. This is why we will phase out Russian supply of crude oil within six months and refined products by the end of the year.”
She finally called for an “ambitious recovery package” of economic reconstruction to “pave the way for Ukraine's future inside the European Union.” She ended by calling out “Slava Ukraini,” the battle cry of the Nazi-collaborationist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) during World War II and of far-right Ukrainian-nationalist militias that are fighting Russia today.
Her speech triggered a sharp rise in oil prices yesterday, up 5 percent to $107.81 per barrel in New York and $110.14 in London. Russia for its part is shipping oil to India and China and urgently building more overland pipelines to China. New projects include a pipeline from Sakhalin island via Vladivostok and the “Soyuz Vostok” pipeline via Mongolia to China. Russia is also planning inter-connector pipelines to redirect gas previously exported to Europe eastwards to China.
The EU oil embargo is economically suicidal, and EU officials are well aware that they are setting into motion a confrontation with the working class. In March, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck warned that the dislocation caused by an embargo would provoke mass strikes and protests. “I wouldn’t support an embargo on imports of fossil fuels from Russia,” he said. “I would even speak out against it, because we would threaten the social peace in the republic with that.”
Before von der Leyen’s speech yesterday, however, Habeck said Germany has made “great progress” in finding alternatives to Russian oil, though “other countries may need more time.”
The oil embargo, which EU member states must unanimously agree on, faces opposition. Hungary and Slovakia, both dependent on Russian energy, have warned that the one-year exemption the EU is offering them is insufficient. Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said, “We do not see any plans or guarantees on how a transition could be managed based on the current proposals, and how Hungary’s energy security would be guaranteed.”
On Tuesday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Hungary would oppose sanctions “that will make the transport of natural gas or oil from Russia to Hungary impossible. … It is currently physically impossible for Hungary and its economy to function without Russian oil.” Yesterday, however, he said he could support the embargo if Russian crude oil exports to Hungary were exempted.
Slovak Deputy Economy Minister Karol Galek supported action against Russia but asked for three years’ delay before the embargo begins. He warned that an embargo would cripple Austria, the Czech Republic and Ukraine: “This will destroy our European economy.”
Von der Leyen’s speech shows that though the embargo is economically suicidal, the leading EU powers are pushing for it. The NATO alliance is recklessly escalating conflict with Russia, with utter contempt for the lives and well-being of workers across Europe.
The EU is abandoning its concerns at war with Russia. As recently as April 22, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Der Spiegel that everything must be done “to avoid a direct military confrontation between NATO and a highly armed superpower like Russia, a nuclear power.” He said it was a matter of “preventing an escalation that would lead to a third world war.” Now, Germany and the EU are taking measures directly posing the risk of a nuclear Third World War.
The EU, which already in mid-April had pledged €1.5 billion in arms to Ukraine, is accelerating arms deliveries. Newly re-elected French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to send Caesar artillery systems and Milan anti-tank missiles.
After a two-day closed-door German government meeting in Schloss Meseberg, Chancellor Olaf Scholz boasted: “We have supplied from Bundeswehr stocks and are always looking at what else is possible … We have made sure that there is a list of arms deliveries that we have coordinated with industry.”
Against the Russian offensive in the Donbass, where “air defense now plays a role,” he added, “We have therefore said that we will supply up to 50 Gepard tanks suitable for this purpose. We've also said that we want to provide the support, together with our allies, that artillery can be deployed.”
Berlin plans to deliver Howitzer-2000s to Ukraine. German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said Berlin has “made the decision” to train Ukrainian fighters on these howitzers, which the Netherlands are supplying. A March 16 expert report from the Bundestag's Scientific Service found that training Ukrainian soldiers on German soil constitutes war participation under international law.
The EU is demanding that the billions of euros for war with Russia be taken from the workers. Speaking after the Meseberg retreat, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner left no doubt that the German and European working class is to be made to pay.
“In view of inflation,” he stressed, “we will also have to adjust questions of financial policy in Germany and Europe.” Because of what he called “the changed financial possibilities of the state,” Lindner opposed anything that could “additionally drive up prices—for example, subsidies—or curtail the European Central Bank’s scope for action, namely by placing members of the monetary union deeper in debt.”
The working class is increasingly driven into struggle by social attacks and skyrocketing energy and food prices. Recent weeks have seen warning strikes by nurses and educators in Germany, a massive truck drivers' strike in Spain, protests in France after the presidential election, and postal workers’ strikes in Britain, among others.
“Paxlovid will remain a boutique treatment available to the well-to-do, but the majority of the working class will not be able to access it in time for it to be effective.”—Gregory Travis, health care expert and data scientist
If one thing characterized the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents’ Association that brought together 2,600 rich and famous people—establishment journalists, high-level politicians, including President Joe Biden, and Hollywood celebrities—it was their utter contempt for the impact of the pandemic on the American population. COVID-19 has killed more than one million, left more than 200,000 children orphaned, and has caused millions more to suffer from the debilitating post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, better known as Long COVID.
The derision was most notably affirmed by comedian Trevor Noah, who knowingly quipped, “It is my great honor to be speaking tonight at the nation’s most distinguished superspreader event. No, for real, people. What are we doing here?” And unsurprisingly, CNN has confirmed that dozens of reporters and staffers have since tested positive for COVID-19. Yet, without any contact tracing and testing in place, health officials are relying on text messages, social media and emails being shared among attendees to place an estimate on the number infected.
The net worth of the attendees most likely places every one of them in the top one percent of the financial pecking order. What this means is that they all have premier access to first-rate health care, with their physicians on speed dial should they need various post-infection and anti-viral treatments.
Indeed, Vice President Kamala Harris’ use of Paxlovid after contracting asymptomatic COVID-19 only brought to light the class issues behind Pfizer’s highly effective anti-viral medication that has been touted as a magic bullet by the Biden administration. Some have questioned why Harris was given the medication when she is not deemed a medically high-risk individual. New York University Professor and medical ethicist Arthur Caplan said of the revelation, “It’s what I make of the American health care system— better to be rich and connected.”
Speaking for this layer, celebrity physician and Washington Post columnist Dr. Leana Wen recently told the Wall Street Journal, “We have many different ways of protecting ourselves at this point. People are going to choose different levels of protection based on their own tolerance of risk and how much they want to avoid COVID-19, and at this point, the role of government needs to be to empower people to use the tools that are readily available.”
The Journal said most succinctly, “Health officials are leaving it up to people to assess if they need booster shots, whether to wear a mask and how long to isolate after a positive test. Businesses, schools and other entities are scaling back specific guidelines as they prepare a return to normal.” And to achieve this normality requires the complete abandonment of all public health principles and any effort to enlist them in protecting the life and welfare of the population.
From the perspective of the well-fed and well-financed, it is easy to dispense opinions to the public that are analogous to the infamous saying associated with Queen Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution: “Let them eat cake!” Working people in America are no more likely to have access to high-priced drugs like Paxlovid than the starving population of 1789 Paris could obtain cake.
Over 30 million Americans are uninsured and another 70 million are underinsured, with high deductibles and large out-of-pocket expenses. Many may disregard their symptoms as another flu and risk waiting it out or fear repercussions at work for taking time off. Amazon recently announced that workers will no longer receive paid time off for COVID-19. The company added that it would not be sending out site-wide alerts about positive COVID-19 cases nor require masking at work.
In a report published in 2018 by the Commonwealth Fund, “41 percent of underinsured adults said they delayed needed care because of cost … [and] almost half report medical bill and debt problems.” And these are being compounded by the intensification of the inflationary pressures that are driving up costs for all basic goods and services. And this must be placed in the context that four in 10 adults, or approximately 93 million people, have risk factors for developing serious illness if infected with COVID-19.
Individuals at risk for severe COVID-19 include cancer patients, those with chronic kidney disease, prior stroke, chronic lung or liver disease, diabetes and obesity. Also at risk are those with immune deficiencies, heart conditions, mental health disorders, smokers, transplant patients and those who take corticosteroids or immunosuppressives.
What Dr. Wen fails to take proper account of is how limited the current tools are in fighting COVID-19. They come with major caveats that the mainstream press does little to bring to light, including the failure of current monoclonal antibodies, rapidly waning antibodies from existing vaccines, the continued waves of infection that propel the present versions of the Omicron variants towards even more contagious and immune-evading variants and concerns over development of viral resistance to Paxlovid and other treatments.
Though the immediate goal of holding the White House Correspondents’ Association gala was to disarm the concerns raised by COVID-19, the objective evidence demonstrates that the insane and cavalier policy of ignoring the pandemic, now being pursued by almost every country across the globe, is only exacerbating the dangers posed by allowing the virus to persist in human populations.
From vaccine-only to Paxlovid-only
One of the last elements in the shutdown of pandemic measures by the Biden administration has been the promise to ensure that post-infection treatments and anti-viral medications are made readily available to the general public. This might be termed the “Paxlovid-only” strategy, a revival in even more threadbare form of the pragmatic vaccine-only strategy that has guided the Biden administration.
A recent study published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine on the durability of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccines against hospital and emergency department admissions for Omicron found that nine months after the original course of two doses, the vaccine was only 41 percent effective in preventing hospitalization and 31 percent effective in preventing death. A third dose raised effectiveness to 85 percent for both. But only three months after the third dose, effectiveness fell to 55 percent.
The share of fully vaccinated people in the US has remained static at 66 percent. Half the population was vaccinated back in mid-July 2021. By mid-January 2022, four months ago, 25 percent had received a booster. Vaccination has appeared to have reached an insurmountable barrier.
Concerns regarding the declining effectiveness of vaccines are intersecting with evidence of reduced efficacy of the current monoclonal antibodies against the subvariants of Omicron.
Presently, Evusheld’s long-acting antibody combination—tixagevimab and cilagavimab—remains active against Omicron and is given as an intramuscular injection. Manufactured by AstraZeneca, it is authorized only as a prevention of COVID-19 for vulnerable populations who have medical conditions or are receiving immunosuppressive treatments and would not be able to mount an immune response with a COVID-19 vaccination. Additionally, individuals for whom COVID-19 vaccinations are not recommended for other reasons can receive the treatment.
In April the FDA removed its authorization for Sotrovimab, as it was found ineffective against the dominant BA.2 subvariant ending its nationwide distribution. Similarly, in January, both REGEN-COV and the combination treatment of Bamlanivimab and etesevimab were shown to be ineffective against BA.1, with the announcement by the FDA that they “were not currently authorized for use in any US region because of markedly reduced activity against the Omicron variant.”
Only Eli Lilly’s Bebtelovimab, authorized by the FDA in February, has been shown in-vitro to work against BA.1 and BA.2. However, real world data in the form of placebo-controlled trials is lacking.
This leaves Paxlovid as one of the main choices for treatment after mild to moderate infection to block the risk of severe disease. Remdesivir also remains in the limited arsenal, although it has proven over the course of multiple studies to be suboptimal.
Paxlovid is the brand name for Pfizer’s anti-viral treatment for COVID-19. It contains two medications—Nirmatrelvir and Ritonavir—and was given emergency use authorization by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for patients infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus with mild to moderate symptoms at risk for severe disease or hospitalization.
Though the medication is taken orally, it requires a prescription by a licensed provider due to its extensive potential drug interactions. If taken within five days of symptom onset, it has shown to reduce the chance of hospitalization or death by about 88 percent. It is approved for those weighing over 40 kilograms (88 pounds) and aged 12 or more. Of note, recent prevention trials (involving exposure to someone with COVID-19 at home) did not significantly reduce infection rates.
The rollout of Paxlovid and “test-to-treat”
Last week the Biden administration said it had secured 20 million treatment courses of the Pfizer antiviral COVID-19 pill. Dr. Ashish Jha, the new White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator, told NPR, “Now we’ve got to turn those pills into prescriptions and into the things that patients can get so that they can get better if they get infected.” However, a senior White House administrator said that without further funding, “We will not be able to purchase more.”
Nearly all those seeking testing in the US are symptomatic. (Health expert and data scientist Gregory Travis said that 95 percent of the 70 million documented infections in the CDC database were listed as symptomatic.) This means, in the context of a very unhealthy population, most of those infected even mildly could derive some benefit from the anti-viral treatment.
But the supply is entirely inadequate for that purpose. And considering the scale of the effort to deliver these treatments to such a large population, with the tight time limits prescribed—five days or less from test to treat—and with the current rise in cases in the US, the only outcome that can be expected will be disorganization, chaos or even the abandonment of the effort entirely.
Speaking on the issue of access, Politico said, “Only physicians, physician assistants and certain registered nurses—not pharmacists—can prescribe the drug. That means patients may have to visit a testing site, a doctor’s office and, in the worst-case scenario, visit a participating pharmacy just to get the pills.” Added to this is the five-day window between symptom onset, testing and actual taking of the antiviral.
However, about a quarter of Americans do not have a primary care physician. And if they do, a return call can take several days when time is of the essence. Though the test-to-treat initiative sounds cogent on paper, a service map of nationwide locations by the Department of Health and Human Services shows many of them are concentrated in major metro regions.
And despite attempts to claim that treatments are plentiful, according to Travis there are roughly only 660,000 courses available. Because of lack of any real metric on the amount held at pharmacies across the country, Travis designed a tracker to list pharmacies’ supplies of Paxlovid and other treatments, which can be accessed through this link. Based on the state and county, it provides an address to pharmacies in the region and the number of courses available to the antiviral treatment.
With Omicron BA.2 and its sub-lineage BA.2.12.2 rapidly spreading across the US, and with hospitalization rates climbing, even the New York Times has acknowledged that Paxlovid and other drugs are sitting on shelves because people do not know how to access them due to the inefficiencies in the process and inadequate messaging. People infected with COVID-19 do not know they are eligible, and overworked providers oftentimes read the eligibility guidelines very narrowly or raise concerns about the drug interactions as listed in the FDA packaging.
And though Paxlovid is currently free, there are consultation fees that customers must be able to pay at test-and-treat sites that are not included in the Biden program. Public health officials have also noted that appointments are difficult to get and can often require long drives to reach an available site.
The Times wrote, “test-to-treat is supposed to let people visit hundreds of qualified pharmacy-based clinics, community health centers and long-term care facilities across the country to get tested for the coronavirus and, if positive, receive Paxlovid on the spot. But almost two months later, it is still limited in its reach and has not dramatically sped up access to the drug beyond what its sites were already equipped to do, experts said.”
Rebound infections and the limitations of anti-virals
These issues are being compounded by reports of rebound coronavirus levels after COVID-19 patients complete the five-day Paxlovid treatment. Clifford Lane, the deputy director for clinical research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told Bloomberg last week, “It is a priority! [The issue] is a pretty urgent thing for us to get a handle on.”
Little is currently understood about rebound cases—how frequently they occur and if the Omicron variant plays a role in it. Dr. Paul Sax, an infectious disease specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said, “providers who are going to be prescribing this should be aware that this phenomenon occurs, and if people have symptoms worsening after Paxlovid, it’s probably still COVID.” As these experts have noted, such information was not included in the drug labeling.
Immunologist Dr. Michael Mina explained in a Tweetthat possibly Paxlovid acts as a crutch for the immune system by preventing the virus from replicating. If the virus rebounds after treatment, the immune system kicks in, leading to the reappearance of the symptoms of infection. He warned that if rebound occurs, then the person should consider himself or herself still infectious.
He wrote, “To be clear, this is not likely because the virus is becoming resistant, but rather an interaction between the immune system not having to work as much to clear the virus while on treatment, and so when treatment ends, the virus grows fast before immunity turns on again. In my view, this is a serious issue and one that may increase chance of a resistant mutation in a virus forming and spreading.” Health officials and Pfizer officials are considering increasing the length of treatment for high-risk individuals to 10 days.
The issue of resistance to Paxlovid was raised in January in Nature. The journal wrote about the success of the two antivirals that includes Merck’s less robust Molnupiravir antiviral, which reduced the risk of hospitalization and deaths by only 30 percent. Nature continued:
“It’s too soon to tell whether SARS-CoV-2 is likely to develop any resistance to these first-generation antivirals,” says Tim Sheahan, a corona-virologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Although its sky-high rate of replication is a breeding ground for mutations, he says, the virus also caused acute infections that offer relatively little time for resistance-causing mutations to accumulate.
The journal then added:
But the threat of resistance is particularly severe for monotherapies such as Molnupiravir and Paxlovid that each target only one part of the virus. That’s why it’s imperative to develop new antivirals aimed at different targets, or ones that can be combined into a single treatment to attack the virus on multiple fronts, says Sheehan.
The article then explains that if the antivirals do not destroy the virus lurking in the body or the medications are not taken as prescribed, the treatment could lead to the virus developing various defenses against the drug. Second generation broad-spectrum treatments will require significant time and investments that simply are lacking, though hundreds of billions are dollars are readily made available for the military destruction of human life and property.
A report from Rutgersin March 2022 on the fears of developing resistance in SARS-CoV-2 against such treatments noted that though Paxlovid still remained effective, “scientists discovered through genetic analysis that the virus is beginning to evolve in ways that may produce strains that can evade present treatments.”
The key protein that Paxlovid targets which jams the virus’s machinery is called Mpro, which the virus uses in replicating. The most common new mutation found in the main protease of the Omicron variant is called the P132H mutation. Though Paxlovid remained effective against Mpro with the P132H mutation, Dr. Jun Wang, author of the study on the P132H mutation, said, “Although this mutation does not cause drug resistance to Paxlovid, this implies that the virus can still evolve to create additional mutations that might cause drug resistance. When a drug gets widespread use, it is just a matter of time before resistance appears.”
BA.2.12.1, a descendent of the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron, now accounts for more than 30 percent of all recently sequenced strains. In New York, where hospitalizations are up, it accounts for 58 percent. Meanwhile, the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, more infectious than BA.2, which are causing the fifth wave of infections in South Africa, have also been recently detected in the US.
Deborah Birx, former White House coronavirus taskforce member in the Trump administration, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” on Sunday that the US should prepare for another surge in cases this summer due to the natural waning of immunity.
As evidenced by the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, there is little interest on the issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic as all the necessary measures have been put into place to ensure schools, businesses and financial markets operate undisturbed.
The current Paxlovid-only strategy, the latest iteration of the overarching construct of malign neglect, poses serious dangers to the working class population. Entering the third year of the pandemic, the dangers posed by the virus have only been heightened.
As detailed in these findings, without an elimination strategy the war against the pandemic will never end and the current available treatments will be exhausted. These life-saving treatments were never intended nor can they stand alone against a virus that has nimbly evaded every defense put in front of it. The only one that has proven effective has been demonstrated by China in its current effort, and that is Zero-COVID.
