H5N1 avian flu virus found in cattle across six US states

Benjamin Mateus

Since the confirmation of infections with the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) virus, also referred to as H5N1 and bird flu, among dairy cows from Texas and Kansas in late March, the virus has been detected in 16 herds from six states: Texas, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, Idaho, and most recently, Ohio. This also includes detection of the virus in an animal handler in Texas whose only symptom was eye inflammation, a condition known as conjunctivitis.

However, Reuters recently reported that the outbreak of influenza among cattle may have started much earlier in the month when “a mysterious illness affected about 40 percent of the state’s dairy herds,” according to Texas’ Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller. Testing for Influenza was not routine, but now he suspects that it was the bird flu. “We were testing for every cattle disease we could think of and then somebody said, ‘What are all these dead birds doing around the dairies?’”

The latest outbreak of avian influenza is the same strain that has caused the spread of the virus across the globe since late 2020, killing millions of birds and crossing over to affect multiple mammalian species, including sea lions, minks, grizzly bears, red foxes, coyotes, seals, and dolphins. In October 2023, Alaska reported the first polar bear case, believed to be caused by the animal scavenging bird carcasses and consuming one infected with H5N1. 

A grocery store employee stocks cartons of eggs for display at a Petaluma Market in Sonoma County, on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, where avian flu infections shut down a cluster of egg farms in recent months. [AP Photo/Terry Chea]

Since 2022, more than 65 million birds and poultry have been culled in the US. Most recently, egg producer Cal-Maine said last week that a positive test at one of their Texas egg farms forced the company to cull 1.6 million laying hens.

The addition of infected bovines marks the first time that the virus has been identified in these animals. The disease appears to be mild in cattle, causing a transient decline in their appetites, lower milk production and symptoms like low-grade fever and lethargy. Migratory waterfowl infected with the virus have been blamed for the avian-flu outbreak in Texas. An infected bird can release viruses through its saliva and feces for up to 10 days. Contact with infected birds or surfaces contaminated by their droppings, saliva or feathers appear to be the biggest risk factor for contracting avian influenza. These birds are expected to make their way up north into Canadian forests and lakes to their nesting grounds.

Although the HPAI virus has been detected in cattle, it has yet to be determined if there has been respiratory transmission among cattle or from infected cattle to the worker with conjunctivitis. These questions need to be urgently addressed. 

At a meeting organized last Thursday by the World Organization for Animal Health and the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization, US Department of Agriculture official Suelee Robbe Austerman explained, “Right now, we don’t have evidence that the virus is actively replicating within the body of the cow other than the udder.” USDA’s Mark Lyons suggested that the virus could potentially be transmitted by contamination of workers’ clothing and gloves or the suction cups that are attached to cow udders during milking.

Clearly, the presence of dead infected birds in the fields adjacent to the cattle underscores the difficulties of protecting farm animals. However, it has yet to be ascertained how prevalent the virus is among cattle or the routes of transmission through which cattle are being infected. Some have suggested the water troughs could be a common source for viral transmission. These animals are kept together in close quarters and the virus can be present in their excrement. 

Similarly, the affected human being, who is in direct contact with cows, may have been infected through self-inoculation by simply touching his eyes. These workers are not offered personal protective equipment to protect them from these forms of zoonotic infections. They are also not being tested routinely and asymptomatic or mild cases may be occurring under the radar, providing the virus opportunities to adapt itself to the human host. 

The HPAI virus among cows has been little studied. Richard Webby, a virologist and expert on avian influenza at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, told MIT Technology Review, “Exactly what happens when an avian flu virus replicates in a cow and potentially transmits from cow to cow, we actually don’t have any idea at all.”

The virus that has infected cattle in Texas and the animal handler has been sequenced and belongs to clade 2.3.4.4b of H5N1. In particular, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found that the virus from the worker has a mutation with known links to host adaptation that has been previously detected in people and other mammals. However, the CDC assured the public that they haven’t found any markers associated with influenza antiviral resistance and noted that “the virus sequence indicates it is closely related to two existing HPAI A(H5N1) candidate vaccine viruses that are already available to manufacturers.”

Such reassurances are of little force, given the context of the ongoing COVID pandemic, its cover-up in the media and failure by public health agencies and the government to address it, and its deadly and debilitating ramifications like Long COVID, which is sickening millions with chronic neurologic and cardiovascular symptoms.

It is clear that the finding of H5N1 among bovine has unsettled the CDC. But agency officials have not taken these developments in any serious fashion or proposed to redirect much needed public health funding for an international approach to addressing surveillance and preventative measures. Instead, the main talking point supplied by public health authorities to the corporate press is that human to human transmission is unlikely and the current strain appears to lead to mild disease by comparison to the earlier clades of the H5N1 virus. 

Since H5N1 was first found in humans in 1997 in Hong Kong, it has infected almost 900 people and had a case fatality rate of over 50 percent. However, with the current lineage of the virus, virulence in humans and transmission to humans appears to have declined. In 2022 and 2023, there were only 14 documented human infections and only two deaths. Although this is welcome news, should this strain evolve efficient human-to-human transmission via respiratory aerosol pathways, a case fatality rate of over 10 percent would be catastrophic. 

This issue bears reviewing.

For COVID, case fatality in the first few months varied between two and thirty percent, but that figure has declined to below 0.3 percent after August 2022. Still, nearly 30 million deaths have been attributed to SARS-CoV-2. It has been repeated infections among elderly and those with multiple co-morbidities that have contributed to the ongoing death toll, while the impact of repeat infections is felt in uncounted numbers of deaths attributed to cardiovascular or neurological causes. 

The 1918 Influenza pandemic, with a case fatality rate of nearly two percent, killed around 50 million people worldwide, disproportionately affecting healthy young adults. A case fatality rate of 10 percent would make any previous pandemic pale by comparison, with the exception of the black death that ravaged Europe and North Africa from 1346 to 1353, killing 30 to 60 percent of the population.

In the modern era there are at least seven worldwide pandemics that killed over one million people: 

• The 1889-1890 pandemic (influenza or human coronavirus) killed one million
• 1918 Influenza pandemic (Spanish flu) killed 17 to 100 million
• 1957-1958 Influenza pandemic (Asian flu) killed one to four million
• Hong Kong flu (1968-1970) caused by Influenza A H3N2 killed one to four million
• HIV/AIDS epidemic (1981 to the present) killed 42 million
• COVID-19 Pandemic (2019 to the present) killed seven to 35 million

Notably, influenza plays a major role in the ongoing threats to human populations as evidenced by the major epidemics documented in the industrial age. The threats posed by coronaviruses and similar respiratory pathogens in the current era of globalization and climate catastrophe only elevate the threat for another pandemic-potential pathogen to run roughshod over the global human populations.

With respect to H5N1, in a recent interview published in News STAT, Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier, explained the implication of the infection of cows with HPAI virus: “We have never seen this scale of infections in mammals, and in such diversity of mammals. We have now seen more than 40 species of mammals infected during the last outbreaks, which is unprecedented. We know the flu is unpredictable. But we also know that adaptation of virus to mammals is not a good thing … And so the high presence in nature, and the large number of infections I find concerning, despite the fact that we think current zoonotic [transmission into humans] risk is low. And that’s because these viruses are changing. And we have no experience of how H5 behaves in all these species. We can’t predict what’s going to happen.”

And as these developments are ongoing, the right-wing reaction to the COVID pandemic and attempts to blame Chinese authorities by promoting grotesquely false lab-leak conspiracies are essentially handcuffing the very same researchers whose work and collaboration is urgently required to address important questions posed by these ongoing threats.

Thai court accepts case to dissolve largest parliamentary party

Robert Campion

Last Wednesday, Thailand’s Constitutional Court accepted a petition seeking the dissolution of the “progressive” Move Forward Party (MFP), the largest party in the country’s National Assembly. The party has been given 15 days to respond with evidence in its defence after which a ruling is expected. The proceedings demonstrate the utterly anti-democratic character of the Thai parliamentary system.

Former leader of Move Forward party Pita Limjaroenrat during news conference at parliament in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024 [AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit]

The grounds for dissolution arise from the party’s previous pledges to reform Article 112 of the Thai Criminal Code, the lèse-majesté law, which forbids any criticism of the monarchy. The Thai Election Commission (EC) submitted the petition to the court after it came to the unanimous decision on March 12 that the MFP, in seeking to amend Article 112, sought to “undermine the democratic system with the King as the Head of State.”

The EC’s petition followed a separate unanimous decision by the Constitutional Court in January that determined the MFP’s attempts to amend Article 112 violated Section 49 of the constitution, written by the military after its 2014 coup. The court ordered the party to cease activities related to the law’s amendment, with which the MFP promptly complied.

January’s ruling led to the EC reviewing the MFP’s status under Section 92 of the Political Parties Act that empowers the EC to petition for the dissolution of any party that is deemed unconstitutional or that “may be adverse” to the government.

Both the Constitutional Court and the EC are comprised of military appointees, installed following the 2014 military coup led by General Prayut Chan-o-cha. The military used its power to impose a new constitution in 2017 and strengthened reactionary laws to protect the monarchy, which is a key linchpin of bourgeois rule. The lèse-majesté law is routinely used to intimidate political opposition to the government. Each offence is punishable with up to 15 years in prison and can be cumulative, resulting in effective life sentences.

If the MFP is dissolved, party executives may be banned from politics—even voting—for 10 years. Additionally, the National Anti-Corruption Commission is overseeing a separate case which could potentially impose lifetime bans on 44 MFP members of parliament who had explicitly endorsed proposed reforms to the lèse-majesté law. The party’s dissolution would represent the disenfranchisement of 38 percent of those voting in last year’s election, or 14.4 million people who voted for the MFP, more than any other party.

Millions of people no doubt backed the MFP hoping it would bring about genuine changes in government. But despite its electoral success and the formation of a majority coalition immediately after last year’s election, the MFP was blocked from taking power by the military-appointed Senate in parliament. The concern in ruling circles was that the party would be unable to control the demands of workers as social and economic conditions continued to decline as a result of the growing crisis of capitalism internationally.

Those concerns persist, no doubt fueling the drive to dissolve the party. According to polling in March from Thailand’s National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA), Pita Limjaroenrat, the MFP’s prime ministerial candidate last year and de facto party leader, is still the most favoured candidate for the premiership, with support of 42.75 percent, up from 39.4 percent in NIDA’s previous poll in December. This is greater than the popularity of Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin and Pheu Thai leader Paetongtarn Shinawatra who combined with only 23.75 percent. Similarly, the MFP’s approval rating has risen to 48.45 percent from 44.05 percent in the previous survey. Pheu Thai’s rating has dropped to 22.1 percent compared to 24.05 percent in December.

Srettha and the ruling Pheu Thai Party have stated that the government had nothing to do with the moves against the MFP which could defend itself in court. While in Germany in March, Prime Minister Srettha responded to a reporter’s question on Thailand’s democratic credentials considering the ongoing attempts to dissolve the MFP. Srettha insisted that his government was formed following democratic elections and that freedom of speech exists in Thailand. However, it “must be under the law,” he added.

In reality, Pheu Thai only came to power because the Senate used its de facto veto power to block the MFP from forming government. Pheu Thai, which had at first agreed to join an MFP coalition, quickly abandoned its former partner as Pita was temporarily suspended from parliament on phony pretexts. Pheu Thai agreed to a new coalition with the two primary military-backed parties as well as other right-wing groups. Srettha then stacked his cabinet with numbers of officials who had served in former Prime Minister Prayut’s cabinet or who are close to the military.

In reality, the MFP is not a real threat to the Thai ruling establishment, but rather functions to contain growing political opposition to the ruling class within the narrow confines of what passes for parliamentary democracy in Thailand. It is a bourgeois party, representing aspiring sections of the corporate and financial elite, that masquerades as a “progressive” opponent of the military and more right-wing sections of the Thai state.

This is clear through the MFP’s passive response to its possible dissolution. Pita, for example, posted on Instagram, “I am confident that whatever will happen to the party, we will surely go towards the change we are looking for. Inadvertently, the party’s dissolution will make us reach the finish line even faster. Every action [equals] reaction.”

The MFP is not making any attempt to mobilise workers and youth in opposition to the Thai state’s flagrant attack on democratic rights. This was made clear by MFP leader Chaithawat Tulathon, who told reporters, “We plan to talk to the public about how we will fight this case in our way… It will not affect our work in parliament.”

The MFP is just a fearful as its political opponents of any independent movement of workers and youth and is seeking to head off any mass protests, such as those that followed the dissolution of the MFP’s predecessor, the Future Forward Party (FFP), in 2020. The FFP was dissolved by the Constitutional Court after winning 17 percent of the votes in the 2019 general election and coming in third with 81 seats. The court dissolved the party on trumped-up allegations of receiving illegal campaign donations. It contributed to a wave of student-led mass protests during 2020 and 2021, where participants demanded democratic reforms.

The MFP has placed itself at the mercy of the judicial system while remaining a “loyal opposition” to the government and the military. The party is meekly setting plans for as smooth a dissolution as possible by minimising the legal repercussions while preparing its MPs to jump ship. Rumours are already swirling in the media about the creation of a new party, “Kao Mai” or “New Step” that MFP members would join.

Irish premier Leo Varadkar’s resignation prompts demands for general election

Dermot Quinn

Opposition parties in Ireland called for an immediate general election following the resignation of Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar who heads Ireland’s three party—Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and Green Party—coalition.

Varadkar, who took over as Taoiseach in 2022 from Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin, in line with the coalition agreement, resigned as leader of Fine Gael on March 20.

Simon Harris, the current Fine Gael Minister for Higher Education has been enthusiastically endorsed by the party as his successor. This means that when the Dáil returns on April 9, after the Easter recess, Varadkar will formally resign and Harris will be nominated Taoiseach.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar gives an address on Ireland’s role in the world and relations between the European Union and the United States, Foreign Policy at Brookings, March 13, 2018 [Photo by Brookings Institution / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Varadkar’s resignation came just two weeks after the government suffered a humiliating defeat in a two-part national referendum to amend the Irish constitution. Held on March 8, it sought to expand the definition of a family from a relationship founded on marriage to include other “durable relationships”. The referendum was rejected by 67.7 percent of voters.

A second referendum on replacing language about a women’s supposed duties in the home included a clause recognizing the role of family members in the provision of “care”, and was rejected by 73.9 percent of voters.

The amendment proposal was fiercely opposed by disability rights activists and carers. Spokeswoman Ann Marie Flanagan from the “Equality Not Care” group summed up the government’s campaign by saying, “It seeks to deny us the right to State support such as personal assistance services. What is required is constitutional obligations to provide support services to enable everyone to participate in economic, social and cultural life. This referendum is made up of smoke and mirrors which is designed to confuse and mislead women and men, requiring support and providing support.”

Varadkar, who along with all the main parties in the Dáil, including Sinn Féin, expected a clear majority in favour of the proposals, swiftly resigned, saying, “I knew that one part of leadership is knowing when the time has come to pass on the baton to someone else. And then having the courage to do it. That time is now.”

There does not appear to be any hidden scandal stalking Varadkar, nor is there any sense that his recent very limited criticism of the Biden administration’s genocidal policy in Gaza played a role in his departure. Varadkar, it seems, had just had enough of his efforts to package escalating attacks on workers’ living standards as socially progressive.

In line with this, the corporate-controlled Irish state broadcaster RT É immediately piled in, lavishing praise on Varadkar and interviewing a succession of Fine Gael councillors and party members paying homage and insisting everything was business as usual.

Despite this, a picture later emerged of discontent and disintegration within Fine Gael. Eleven of its TDs (Members of Parliament), almost one third, had communicated that they would not contest the next general election due within the next twelve months.

Simon Harris, who takes over the office of Taoiseach from Varadkar, could be faced with more rats jumping ship. He takes over as the three-party coalition government becomes ever more widely loathed.

Far from providing “continuity and stability”, as the corporate media has claimed, Varadkar presided over economic hardship for millions of Irish workers. According to Social Justice Ireland, there are now 671,183 people living in poverty in the country, in a population of just 5 million, with 133,565 of these in employment—a working poor composed mainly of young, super-exploited workers.

There are now over 13,500 homeless, with 290,000 people living in so-called “hidden homelessness”, forced to move around or enter emergency accommodation. At the beginning of March, homelessness reached new records, with a 21 percent increase in the number of families homeless and a 17 percent increase in the number of homeless children. The average price of a house in Dublin is an astronomical €430,000.

As class and social divisions have widened, Varadkar and the coalition government have remained in office with the cooperation of the trade unions and the backing of the corporate elite. Recent figures from the Central Statistics Office show the combined wealth of the richest eight people in Ireland now stands at €35 billion. Just one percent of the Irish population owns 27 percent of wealth, with the two richest people having 50 percent more wealth than the poorest half of the population.

Varadkar, touted in the media as a socially progressive leader, Ireland’s first openly gay Taoiseach, will be remembered in the working class for introducing measures to target the poorest in society, such as his “The Welfare Cheats Cheat Us All” campaign, while the super-rich continued to siphon wealth from the rest of the population.

He hands over to Harris to continue the same anti-worker and pro-imperialist agenda, including the government’s commitment to increased military spending and cooperation with European Union military projects, using the alliance’s proxy war in Ukraine directed against Russia to push for ever-deeper Irish cooperation with NATO.

Harris, despite his supposed appeal to a younger demographic on TikTok, where he has over 1 million followers, and easy-going, self-deprecating image, has a reactionary political record. As Minister for Health in 2020, he presided over a health service which failed miserably to curb the COVID pandemic, while the coalition government put the interests of big business and profit above all.

He has signalled his intention to pull Fine Gael further to the right, outlining his committed support for more powers for An Garda Síocháona (the police). He also plans to roll back the numbers of asylum seekers claiming international protection in Ireland.

In what was described as a comprehensive account of his views last year, Harris called for a new social contract which “balances rights and responsibilities.” He continued, “If you work hard and play by the rules, the State will play its part too” and stressed that “your hard-earned money you pay in tax must be linked to the delivery of the services.”

Ten dead after major quake strikes Taiwan

Peter Symonds

Taiwan was hit by a major earthquake estimated at magnitude 7.2 on the Richter scale—the most severe since 1999 when the island was devastated by a quake measuring 7.3. As of Friday afternoon, 10 people had been killed, 13 were still missing and more than 1,000 had been injured. Hundreds remained trapped in remote areas due to damaged and blocked roads.

Debris surrounds a titled building a day after a powerful earthquake struck, in Hualien City, eastern Taiwan, Thursday, April 4, 2024. [AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying]

The earthquake struck the less populated east coast of the island at around 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning, impacting the city of Hualien, damaging buildings and sending people fleeing into the streets. Schools and workplaces were closed across large areas of the city and thousands of homes were without power.

According to the Central Weather Administration (CWA), there had been 502 aftershocks up to noon on Friday, including two exceeding a magnitude of 6, and 18 ranging from magnitude 5 to 6.

Emergency workers have begun to repair dozens of damaged buildings and demolish four deemed impossible to save. These include the 10-storey red-bricked structure, known as the Uranus building, shown in many news reports leaning at a precarious angle. Much of the city, however, appears to be largely unscathed.

To date, most of the deaths occurred in rural areas outside of Hualien. Citing local authorities, CNN reported that four people had been killed while hiking in the remote Taroko Gorge, another four died on mountain roads and one was working in a quarry. One person was killed in the collapsed Uranus Building when she returned to retrieve her pet cat.

Rail services which were suspended have mostly returned to normal after workers removed huge boulders from the tracks. Taiwan’s Centre for Science and Technology (CST) said that initially people and vehicles had been trapped in the Dachingshui tunnel. The fire agency reported that 64 workers were trapped in one coalmine, and six in another. Food and supplies have been air dropped to people trapped in remote areas.

In Taipei, the capital located in the north of the island, news footage has shown damaged buildings, smashed cars and businesses disrupted by damage. On Wednesday, the earthquake also triggered tsunami alerts in Japan and the Philippines, but these were later downgraded.

International news reports have contrasted the relative low level of death and destruction compared to the devastation caused by the earthquake of comparable magnitude that hit the island on September 21, 1999, as known as “921 quake.” It caused 2,415 deaths and severe injuries to 11,305 people as well as extensive destruction—with 51,711 buildings completely destroyed and 53,768 severely damaged. Power was lost for days due to damage to power stations, transmission lines and the automatic shutdown of the island’s three nuclear power plants.

Anger over the extent of the destruction and chaotic rescue and relief efforts was reportedly a factor in the defeat of the ruling Kuomintang in the presidential election in March 2000. Following the 1999 quake, stricter building codes were instituted to ensure greater quake resistance. A program began to strengthen existing public buildings and encourage private owners to do the same.

While earthquakes cannot be predicted with any precision, an early warning system was established that sends messages to mobile phones and automatically cuts into live TV programs if a large tremor is detected. The warning is just a matter of seconds, but can give people near the epicentre enough time to get outside to safety.

The Western media has painted a rosy picture of Taiwan’s earthquake protection measures. One obvious difference between the quake this week and in 1999 was that the later occurred in the middle of the night when most people were asleep and unaware of what was happening.

It is undoubtedly true that tougher building codes have made a difference. The shoddy buildings at the time became death traps. Prior to the 1999 quake, only buildings over 50 metres tall underwent a process of peer review. None of those collapsed while many just under 50 metres in height did.

Nevertheless, as in every aspect of capitalist society, profit rules. Tai Yun-fa, a structural engineer who runs Taiwan’s Alfa Safe that develops quake-resistant building materials, told the Japan Times that some developers were still cutting corners. “The focus when it comes to development is still the lowest price, so in that case you can’t have the best quality,” he said.

Taiwan, which lies on the fault lines of the Pacific “Rim of Fire,” is prone to earthquakes and major companies have spent heavily on quake protection. In 1999, the Hsinchu Science Park, housing the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and other companies that produced a significant portion of the world’s computer memory chips, shut down for six days causing a trebling of prices on the world market.

TSMC, which has expanded to manufacture around half of the world’s computer chips and 90 percent of the most advance ones, instituted a long-term program to protect its plants and was quick to announce that it was back in production after this week’s quake. While its plants were some distance from the epicentre, TSMC did suspend some operations. A small number of tools were damaged, but there was no harm to critical tools, it said.

As has been the case with earthquakes around the world, the areas of Taiwan’s Hualien city worst affected are most likely to have been in poorer areas where older buildings have not been strengthened and newer shoddy ones have been constructed by developers cutting corners.

While the Central Weather Administration suggested on Friday that aftershocks were moderate, there is still the possibility of further large tremors. An earthquake in one area of the island has the potential to destabilise faults in other parts. One area of particular concern was Chiayi County in southern Taiwan, where the Meishan Fault is nearing its once-in-a-century activity cycle.

75 years of NATO: From Cold War to hot war

Peter Schwarz

On April 4, the NATO military alliance marked its 75th anniversary. NATO was founded in 1949 less than four years after the end of World War II, in the initial years of the Cold War, as an alliance aimed against the Soviet Union. Today, it is plunging mankind into a Third World War.

A general view of the round table meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Thursday, April 4, 2024. [AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert]

The anniversary was marked by a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels that was devoted to a major new escalation of the war against Russia in Ukraine. Only a few weeks after French President Emmanuel Macron proposed to send ground troops to Ukraine to fight Russian forces, NATO is preparing to take over the Ukraine Defense Contact Group that coordinates aid to Ukraine. Ukraine’s war against Russia is emerging as an operation commanded by NATO.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said NATO support for Ukraine was “rock solid” and vowed, “Ukraine will become a member of NATO.” The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland—Annalena Baerbock, Stéphane Séjourné and Radosław Sikorski—stated in Politico that NATO powers have given Ukraine over €200 billion. They pledged: “Our support will continue for as long as it takes and as intensively as needed.”

The NATO powers are presently backing Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, which has killed over 40,000 people. This is seen as part of an expanding global war.

“We know that our security is not regional—it is global,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in his anniversary remarks. “The war in Ukraine illustrates this clearly. Russia’s friends in Asia are vital for continuing its war of aggression. China is propping up Russia’s war economy. In return, Moscow is mortgaging its future to Beijing. North Korea and Iran are delivering substantial supplies of weapons and ammunition. In return, Pyongyang and Tehran are receiving Russian technology and supplies that help them advance their missile and nuclear capabilities.”

The claim that NATO serves the “defence” and “security” of Europe has been a propaganda lie since its foundation. As the Trotskyist movement always insisted, NATO was from the outset a war alliance of the great imperialist powers.

When NATO was founded 75 years ago, the magazine Fourth International, which at the time was published by the American Socialist Workers Party under James P. Cannon, declared: “The North Atlantic Pact is not just another military alliance. … The immense significance of this event transcends by far its effect on the ‘cold war’ for which it is immediately designed.”

The crisis of the old imperialist powers of Europe—whose “efforts to ‘pacify’ the insurgent peoples of the East is proving one of the most costly and colossal failures in history”; for whom “it has become well-nigh impossible to achieve ‘stability’ at home with their own resources alone”; and who “are admittedly impotent without outside help, either individually or collectively, to cope with the power of the Soviet Union”—had “obliged American imperialism to become the caretaker of world capitalism.”

“But it can only fulfil this role effectively on a global scale,” the editorial of the Fourth International warned. “For this reason, we have predicted time and again that the road to world domination must be the road to world war.”

These lines are once again of burning relevance today. Seventy-five years after its foundation, NATO is closer to triggering a third world war than ever before.

At NATO’s foundation in 1949, as the division of Germany was sealed and revolution triumphed in China, NATO pursued a violent, counterrevolutionary policy. The US, France and other NATO imperialist powers waged brutal colonial wars in Indochina, Korea, Algeria and beyond. NATO went on to back coups in Greece and Turkey and against left-wing, nationalist governments across Africa and Latin America to curb the influence of the Soviet Union.

In the American ruling elite, however, a conflict broke out over whether to fight the Soviet Union through “containment” or through a military “rollback,” risking nuclear war. In the initial period of the Cold War, those in favour of “containment” gained the upper hand. However, US imperialism never gave up its long-term goal of reversing the achievements of the October Revolution and destroying the Soviet Union.

The Cold War ended, however, in 1991, when the Stalinist bureaucracy took the final step in its historical betrayal and liquidated the property relations created by the October Revolution, restored capitalism and dissolved the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union.

NATO, which had always justified its existence with the danger allegedly posed by the Soviet Union, did not dissolve itself. As the Fourth International had written in 1949, the founding of NATO “transcends by far its effect on the ‘cold war’ for which it is immediately designed”, and that “the road to world domination” was “the road to world war.”

American imperialism saw the dissolution of the Soviet Union as an opportunity to re-establish its world domination and reverse the defeats it had suffered in Korea, Vietnam and elsewhere. Not satisfied with the fact that Gorbachev, Yeltsin and later Putin had opened up the Soviet Union to exploitation by international capital, they wanted Russia’s colonial subjugation.

America’s European allies, pursuing their own imperialist interests, followed its lead. NATO is the instrument with which they pursue this goal. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, NATO or its members have been waging war practically without interruption.

The US first attacked Iraq in 1990. In 1999, NATO bombed Serbia without a UN mandate—in violation of international law—and forced the secession of Kosovo. In 2001, NATO invoked the mutual defence clause, for the first and only time, and occupied Afghanistan, conducting a war that lasted 20 years and ended with the destruction of the country and the return of the Taliban. Although subsequent wars against Iraq, Libya and Syria took place outside the official NATO structures, they were supported by most NATO member states.

Parallel to the wars in the Middle East, NATO systematically advanced towards Russia and incorporated the whole of Eastern Europe and—with the Baltic states—parts of the former Soviet Union.

The world’s most powerful military alliance grew from 12 to 32 members. Last year, it spent $1.3 trillion on defense, or 60 percent of global military spending. The US military budget alone totaled $905 billion, more than the next 15 countries combined. In contrast, China only spent $220 billion and Russia $109 billion on defense.

NATO has systematically prepared for war with Russia since 2014, when the US and Germany backed a coup to install a pro-Western puppet regime in Kiev. NATO relentlessly armed Ukraine, ultimately provoking the desperate, reactionary attack by the Putin regime in 2022. NATO then waged a war on Russia using Ukrainians as cannon fodder, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives, that threatens to escalate into nuclear conflict.

Mexico faces economic tug of war between US and China

Don Knowland

Mexico is attempting an economic balancing act between the United States and China, but without success.

Due to US attempts to sanction China and “nearshore” production, Mexico has surpassed China as Washington’s top trading partner. Mexico is now also the US’s second largest export market. The US is the largest source of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Mexico, accounting for roughly 40 percent of the total of US$36 billion in 2022, and is increasing its investments. 

By way of example, in February, Amazon's computing services subsidiary Amazon Web Services announced that it will invest $5 billion in an infrastructure cluster in the central Mexican state of Querétaro. The investment is higher than the $4.5 billion Tesla previously pledged to invest in its factory near Monterrey in the northeastern Mexican state of Nuevo León, the state with the highest total gross production.

Presidents Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Donald Trump sign the launching of the USMCA trade accord, July 8, 2020 [Photo: White House, Shealah Craighead]

But even as the Mexican and American economies further integrate, China has reacted to the 2023 fall of US imports from China of over 25 percent by focusing on Mexico. China has become Mexico’s fastest-growing foreign investor, more than quadrupling its investment in the last four years.  In the northeastern state of Nuevo León, Chinese corporations are now responsible for over a third of foreign investment. 

In another example, 12 Chinese-owned companies currently operate in one small central Mexican state, Aguascalientes, providing more than 4,000 jobs in the auto, textile, service and clean energy sectors. 

Chinese Tier 1 supplier Xinquan Automotive, which manufactures car interiors for luxury brands. recently announced a $100 million investment in its Aguascalientes plant. Xinquan opened its facility in Aguascalientes in 2021 with an initial investment of $40 million and capacity to produce 600,000 luxury car parts annually. This is the second time the company has decided to increase investment, after a previous $30 million expansion a year ago.

Mexico currently imports about nine times as much as it exports to China. After Russia, Mexico is the second largest recipient of Chinese cars, which are increasingly popular in Mexico.

The Mexican auto industry produced more than 922,000 cars from January to March, but 90 percent are exported; only the remaining 10 percent are sold domestically. Since that is not enough to supply the domestic market, 60 percent of cars are imported.

But just as investments from the world’s two largest economies boomed, Mexico in August decided to increase tariffs between 5 and 25 percent on a total of 392 products from countries with which it does not share a free trade agreement, including China. This will impact around 90 percent of Chinese exports to Mexico and remain in effect until July 2025.

This is plainly a response to persistent and intense American pressure. 

The intention of Chinese companies to open vehicle assembly plants in Mexico has particularly alarmed lawmakers in the United States, who view China’s investments as an attempt to take advantage of Mexico’s permissive trade compact with the US and Canada and thereby avoid the impact of US tariffs on China. 

We are told that China will attempt to enter the US market by skirting Washington’s trade sanctions through slapping a “made in Mexico sticker” on parts and products assembled in Mexico.

There are widespread warnings that Chinese vehicles built in Mexico, which would qualify for government credits to consumers, will “flood” the US market. 

It is likely that quality electric vehicles from China, such as those produced by electric vehicle (EV) giant BYD, that retail at a considerably lower price than US vehicles, would be popular.

Particularly hysterical is the current claim that the Chinese Communist Party will be collecting data on US citizens through tracking devices in “smart vehicles.”

The Biden administration has said it will investigate such cars, citing potential national security risks. The Commerce Department is in fact issuing a notice of a proposed rule making that will launch an investigation into “national security risks” posed by such vehicles from China and other countries considered hostile.

American imperialism, in league with its Canadian minion, seeks a fortress North America against China, and even Europe, in its march to war. Forcing Mexico to align itself with this aggression is seen as key to its success.

In order to maintain its close relationship with the US, still the country’s closest security “partner,” currency lender and largest foreign direct investor, Mexico will capitulate, as it has in kowtowing to US demands for crackdowns on immigrants. 

At a North American summit in 2021, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) called for “stopping China,” making clear his alignment with the US-led war drive against Beijing.  

His administration is moving to cancel the lithium concessions of Chinese lithium giant Ganfeng, forcing the Chinese company to indefinitely postpone its plan to start mining the battery metal in Mexico.

The US-Mexico-Canada trade accord, which was signed by López Obrador, Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau, not only increased the minimum components of vehicles that must be produced within the region but prohibits the signing of trade agreements with “non-market” economies, a classification aimed against China.

Despite the populist AMLO’s occasional nationalistic bluster, Mexico’s government will fall into line, in service to its own billionaires, and ultimately the American ruling oligarchy.

Dangerous heatwaves in West Africa exacerbated by climate change

Mark Wilson

A heatwave in the West African region of Guinea has reached extraordinary levels in the early months of 2024, affecting millions of people living in Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Togo, Liberia, Ghana, Benin and Guinea-Bissau.

Demonstrators in Lagos, Nigeria demand action on climate change in November 2019. [AP Photo/Sunday Alamba]

The heatwave has produced dangerously high Heat Index (HI) levels, which calculate the combined effects of actual temperatures with relative humidity. High humidity increases the risk of heat-related morbidity because it reduces the body’s ability to cool itself down through sweat. It can make “40C feel like 50C.”

Compounding the danger is that this event has occurred early in the year. Heat warnings for the Guinea region are not often issued to the population until March-April, when the hottest season usually occurs.

Public health experts from Nigeria have warned that these hot humid conditions increase the risk of death and serious adverse health outcomes such as strokes and respiratory issues, especially for outdoor workers.

Systematic under-reporting of the effects of such a heatwave makes it difficult to assess the full impact on people’s lives. One of the authors of a World Weather Attribution (WWA) study of the extreme heat event, Maja Vahlberg, described heatwaves as a “silent killer.” They do not leave an “evident trail of destruction” but they are “incredibly deadly,” especially for vulnerable people with existing chronic health conditions.

In some media reports, people report that the heat has made it “very difficult to work.” They “feel like there’s no air,” faint from the heat and feel “dehydrated all day.” Doctors reported increases in patients “presenting for heat-related illness” in recent weeks.

One Nigerian man said enduring this heat without air conditioning or fans was “like being trapped in an oven.”

The livelihoods of workers as well as their health is being impacted. An Uber driver in Lagos who has been forced to bear the heat without air conditioning in his car to save on fuel costs said: “I am concerned about my health, but I am willing to go to any length to pay off my car and put food on the table”.

An Ivory Coast cocoa farmer described the heat as “unbearable” and worried that the heat and corresponding lack of soil moisture would damage the mid-year harvest.

The link between heatwaves and increased mortality/morbidity has been well substantiated scientifically. A 2022 systematic review of 32 studies found that “cardiopulmonary-related diseases” were the main causes of heat-related impacts globally, especially affecting children, the elderly, and people with underlying cardiovascular or respiratory conditions.

These serious and debilitating impacts are the result of an increasingly warming world, caused by decades of fossil fuel emissions from corporations with no regard for the impact on millions of ordinary people around the world.

The WSWS recently reported on record global temperatures observed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service.  2023 was the first year in recorded human history of average global temperatures exceeding 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. January and February of 2024 were also above this threshold.

However, it is not immediately clear if a specific extreme weather event can be linked to climate change. To determine this, researchers in the field turn to the peer-reviewed methodology of attribution science.

Previous studies by WWA, an international team of climate scientists, demonstrated that for a number of extreme events, climate change has been largely responsible for their exceptionality, such as the ongoing Amazon River Basin drought.

A new report published by the WWA on March 21 concluded that the humid heat in southern West Africa was about 4°C hotter due to human-induced climate change.

The report found that not only the severity but also the frequency of such an event is exacerbated by climate change. The analysis found that on the lower end of estimates, this type of heatwave has become at least 10 times more likely because of climate change.

The study warned that if the Earth warmed an additional 0.8C, these events could become a further 3 to 10 times more frequent and a further 2.3 C hotter. That would expose the population of West Africa to dangerous levels of humid heat every two years.

The report outlined some strategies and adaptation measures to combat these rising dangers. First, better reporting was necessary to measure how heatwaves affect the population. The impacts of heatwaves in southern West Africa were severely undercounted, which “does not mean there were no impacts but suggests limited awareness about heat risks.”

The researchers recommended that to limit the magnitude of death and poor health from extreme heat events, there should be a focused effort to improve the monitoring and research on the effects they have on human health.

Better adaptation was also needed, especially in impoverished regions where people have limited access to basic needs like water and energy. (In Nigeria, for example, at least half of its 200 million people have no access to a stable energy source to power their homes.)

As temperatures rise, consistent access to energy will be even more important for basic services like air conditioning to keep people from overheating. Solar energy has been identified by researchers as the best solution to Nigeria’s energy crisis.

Such a commitment to renewable energy, however, would require significant up-front financial resources. The WWA study noted that “rich countries haven’t yet met the promises they have made to help developing countries become more resilient to the growing risks of climate change.”

COVID-19 pandemic continues to pose major challenge for healthcare system across Canada

Dylan Lubao

Over four years after the first recorded case of COVID-19 in Canada, the disease remains a major fixture in the social and political life of the country and the world. Although infection, hospitalization, and death rates have declined since the recent winter wave, very little stands in the way of a major resurgence of the pandemic.

Victoria Hospital in Ontario, Canada. [Photo by Nephron / CC BY-SA 3.0]

The federal and provincial governments have dismantled all COVID-19 public health measures as part of their “profits before life” policy of protecting the economic interests of the corporations and the wealthy. As a result, the SARS-COV-2 virus continues to infect tens of thousands of Canadians every week, killing dozens and afflicting hundreds with the debilitating effects of Long COVID.

Because of the governments’ information blackout on the pandemic, the task of informing the public of the continued threat of COVID-19 has fallen to civil society groups like COVID-19 Resources Canada, which publishes weekly data sets and risk assessments.

According to the group’s most recent figures, around 32,600 Canadians were infected with COVID-19 on March 16, the latest date for which they had access to official data. The group estimates the true number to be closer to 42,600 based on wastewater data, which itself only covers half of the population. Roughly 2.28 percent of the population, or more than one in 50 people, is currently infected with the virus, predominantly the JN.1 variant.

From March 3 to March 9, there were 54 official deaths from COVID-19 in Canada. However, the group estimates that the government only reports 61 percent of COVID-19 deaths. This would put the actual number at 90 deaths in just under one week. By comparison, federal government data shows influenza deaths at roughly five per week.

The discrepancy between the sanitized official pandemic death toll and that compiled by COVID-19 Resources Canada illustrates the immense cover-up conducted by every level of government in Canada.

Officially, 51,710 Canadians have died of COVID-19 since January 2020. Taking into account the government’s reporting rate of 61 percent, the true number of people killed by the capitalist “profits before life” policy is 84,389, a number roughly equivalent to the population of the city of Peterborough, Ontario.

In effect, over 32,000 COVID-19 dead have simply been “disappeared,” their families told a mixture of official lies and half-truths to conceal the fact that their deaths were entirely preventable. 

In the initial phase of the pandemic, the federal Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pursued a mitigation policy of letting the virus spread while disbursing vaccines and providing some meagre financial benefits to the working population. Following the first lockdown in the spring of 2020, the trade unions joined the Liberal government in enforcing a vicious back-to-work campaign, which led to hundreds of thousands of infections and thousands of deaths. This policy was designed to allow workers to continue to work, churning out profits for the banks and corporations.

While several smaller Atlantic provinces temporarily implemented an elimination policy that dropped infection rates to near zero and initially saved countless lives, the most populous provinces, like Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta allowed the virus to run rampant. Every political party, from the supposedly progressive New Democratic Party (NDP) and Quebec Solidaire (QS) to the arch-reactionary Conservative Party and Bloc Quebecois, fundamentally support these policies and have implemented them where they hold office.

This turned nursing homes and hospitals into killing fields. COVID-19 became the third-leading cause of death in 2022 after heart disease and cancer. With the emergence of the highly transmissible and virulent Omicron variant at the end of 2021, this policy also ensured that the vast majority of the Canadian population contracted the disease.

Life expectancy declined for the third straight year in 2022, a byproduct of the capitalist response to the pandemic. Statistics Canada’s analysis showed a staggering decline of one year between 2019 and 2022, from 82.3 to 81.3 years. Some provinces like Saskatchewan saw even larger declines of two years during the same period, from 80.5 to 78.5.

After the far-right “Freedom” Convoy provided the federal and provincial governments with the pretext to dismantle what little remained of COVID-19 safety precautions and testing capacity in early 2022, absolutely nothing has stood in the way of the spread of the disease.

COVID-19 Resources Canada notes that their pandemic forecast is the lowest it’s been since the emergence of the Omicron variant. However, the risk level remains “High” for the country as a whole, and some provinces like Saskatchewan have risk levels of “Very High.” At the time of publication, infections were up 3 percent nationwide compared to the previous report. The effects of spring break travel will likely drive up these numbers in the weeks to come.

The mass murderers on Parliament Hill and in the provincial capitals, and their media accomplices, remain tight-lipped about the ongoing impact of Long COVID, widely recognized by principled epidemiologists as a “pandemic within a pandemic.”

About 1,977 people developed Long COVID on March 15, according to the COVID-19 Resources Canada report. This is down from 4,152 on the first day of the year, but still over ten times higher than the lowest point of the pandemic. To date, an estimated 3.5 million Canadians have experienced long-term symptoms following a bout of COVID-19.

Long COVID, otherwise known as Post COVID-19 Condition, covers a multitude of symptoms, including fatigue, shortness of breath, and cognitive dysfunction. The exact nature of this lingering malaise is still being researched but is often characterized as symptoms that persist or re-emerge twelve weeks after the initial infection phase. Some estimates put the Long COVID affliction rate at between 4 and 10 percent of all those who contract COVID-19.

Government support for those suffering from Long COVID is sparse and inconsistent. The indifference shown by governments at all levels towards a debilitating illness that has affected upwards of 10 percent of the population is no less criminal than the murderous policy of allowing COVID-19 to spread in the first place.

To date, the federal government has pledged a measly $29 million over five years to fund research into Long COVID and support those suffering from it. Meanwhile, an estimated 40 percent of those with Long COVID symptoms have reported difficulties with accessing relevant healthcare, according to a December 2023 Statistics Canada report. They have desperately resorted to informal sources like social media for assistance in diagnosing and treating their symptoms.

In contrast, the NDP-backed Liberal Trudeau government has allocated billions of dollars for war, including over $13 billion in economic and military aid for the far-right Ukrainian regime in the US-NATO war on Russia. This is on top of the $36.3 billion that Canada spent on defence in the 2022/2023 fiscal year.

The knock-on effects of the government’s “profits before life” pandemic policy are felt across society. Thousands of nurses and other healthcare workers have left their professions, citing burnout and dangerous working conditions. The shortage of family doctors, exacerbated by the pandemic, affects millions of Canadian households and has led to inundated hospital emergency rooms, which were already reeling due to the stresses caused by the pandemic. Measles, long considered an eliminated disease, is surging, with 31 infections so far this year as of March 16, the largest annual total since 2019 and more than double the total number of cases reported in 2022.