Scale of forest fire devastation in Greece threatens to ignite social and political unrest

John Vassilopoulos

Over 100,000 hectares of forest and farmland were razed to the ground in Greece between July 29 and August 12, according to the European Forest Fire Information System.

The EFFIS report lays bare the scale of destruction unleashed by forest fires ravaging parts of Greece since the start of the month. The figure accounts for 90 percent of all land destroyed by fire since the beginning of the year and dwarfs the average 2,750 hectares that were burnt over the same period each year between 2008 and 2020.

The brunt of destruction has been borne by the northern part of the island of Evia, off the north-east coast of Attica, which encompasses Athens. At least 50,000 hectares have burnt since the start of August, according to a survey of satellite images carried out by Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth observation programme. The fire in Evia has been described as the biggest in modern Greek history.

A man runs as fire burns trees in Kirinthos village on the island of Evia, about 135 kilometers (84 miles) north of Athens, Greece, Friday, Aug. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Thodoris Nikolaou)

The ferocity of the fires was fueled by record high temperatures in Greece over the previous week as the country suffered its worst heatwave in 30 years with temperatures staying above 40 degrees celsius for extended periods.

In his address to the nation last week, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis sought to absolve his government of any responsibility for the disaster. Feigning sympathy with the thousands who have lost their homes and properties, he insisted that country was “facing a natural disaster of unprecedented dimensions” and firefighters were in a battle with “supernatural powers that often exceed their strength”.

There is no doubt that climate change is the chief cause of the fires. But events have not taken place in a vacuum. Both climate change and the inability of essential services to respond to its deadly effects are the consequence of the anarchic capitalist mode of production, which considers the destruction of the environment as one of the costs of doing business.

It wasn’t “supernatural powers” that hampered the response of firefighters but a decade of austerity which has decimated the fire service. Between 2020 and 2010 a total of €1.1 billion has been cut from forest protection and forest fire service due to successive bailout packages signed by the Greek government at the behest of the European Union and International Monetary Fund. The trend has continued, after forest protection agencies were only awarded a paltry €1.7 million for the year despite having requested €17 million.

The results are devastating. Ranger Stations in Greece are woefully understaffed with many, such as that on Mount Parnitha near Athens where a fire broke out this month, without a single full-time forest ranger on site. The fire service is reportedly understaffed by 4,000 personnel, with an over-reliance on seasonal and volunteer fire-fighters while the average age of full-time firefighters is 45.

The lack of fire-fighters was denounced by residents on live television, many of whom were forced to evacuate or were left to battle the flames on their own. The deputy mayor of the village of Afidnes, 27 kilometres north of Athens, where a fire broke out in the first week of the month, angrily exclaimed on Open TV, “There has not been a single fire engine here for three hours. Three hours we’ve been pleading! The fire is out of control and we don’t have the means to control it. The only people battling the fire are [volunteer fire fighter units]. They have sent us 1,000 police officers who are not doing anything! I want firefighters to save the village, whatever can be salvaged, because the fire has entered the village.”

Another indication of chronic underfunding are outdated fire fighting vehicles, with only 15 percent being 10 years old or less. The most striking example are the 18 Canadair fire-fighter planes in Greece’s fleet, most of which date back to 1979, with no new models purchased since 2000. Due to frequent breakdowns and repairs, a significant number of the planes are grounded at any one time. A former Canadair pilot told online news site news247.gr, “The Canadair planes can in theory fly from sunrise to sundown, but the ones we have in Greece are very old and don’t have that capability. Think about the fact there was problems with them when I was flying them in the 90s and since then 30 years have passed.”

Another issue limiting the effectiveness of the older Canadair planes is the fact that their engines are not designed to operate in temperatures above 38 degrees, hampering their ability to fly during heatwave temperatures when the fires were raging.

With anger seething among Greek workers, the pseudo-left opposition party Syriza has stepped in to contain it. In a press conference this week Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras stated that the government bears “criminal responsibility” for the disaster, but refused to call for its removal, stating that he would not follow the “well-worn path” of calling for “resignations”. He called instead for unity and the establishment of a cross-party national plan to combat climate change, as well as the adoption of Syriza’s proposals to overhaul, modernise and better co-ordinate the country’s disaster response. Such posturing costs Tsipras nothing and is in stark contrast to its own record in government.

Junking its massive popular mandate to end austerity in the summer of 2015, after being swept into power at the start of that year, Tsipras’ government signed a third bailout package from the EU, IMF and European Central Bank which depended on making even deeper cuts to the country’s budget.

Moreover, Tsipras and his party, which has long presented itself as a fervent defender of the environment, bear their own “criminal responsibility” for the forest fire in the summer of 2018 at Mati, a small coastal town a few kilometres outside of Athens, in which over 100 lost their lives. Its only action was the convening of an independent enquiry into the disaster, whose findings were published at the start of 2019, a few months before elections that Tsipras knew he would lose.

Kicking the ball down the road by convening an inquiry will no doubt be a move followed by the current New Democracy government, with Mitsotakis vaguely stating that “any failures [in the government’s response] will be identified”. Even his commitment that all forest land burnt will be earmarked for re-foresting cannot be believed. Much of Greece’s forest land is not formally defined as such, which has resulted in their status being disputed over the years. On August 6, one day after Mitsotakis proclaimed his commitment to reforestation, the status of a forest which was burnt in 2012 near the town of Kastri on the island of Crete was revoked, overturning a pledge by the local authority to re-forest the area.

Seeking to deflect attention from the government, Attica Prefect Giorgos Patoulis, a member of the ruling New Democracy Party, was one of many local authority politicians who raised the possibility of an organised plan of arson. In addition, an editorial in the conservative Estia, Greece’s oldest daily, lent credence to conspiracy theories that the Turkish Secret Service might be behind the fires.

The government has declared its commitment to make arson a felony offence, while Supreme Court Prosecutor Vassilis Pliotas has ordered an inquiry into the possibility of an organised arson attack.

This campaign has been accompanied by media reports of people arrested for suspected arson, many of whom were released due to lack of evidence. Many reports focused on the case of an Afghan refugee woman who attempted to burn trees in the grove around the Pedion Tou Areos park in the centre of Athens on August 6. The notion that she was part of some criminal conspiracy is refuted by her suffering from mental health problems. The fire was quickly extinguished and was a non-event, compared to the infernos that raged throughout the country.

The attempt of the government to blame arson for the fires should be taken as a warning. An editorial in Estia declared that the country had “entered unchartered waters which may result in social unrest”. The editorial revealed that some government officials had advised the prime minister to invoke Article 48 of the constitution which officially proclaims a “state of siege”, giving him the power to suspend parts of the constitution and rule by decree in what Estia termed a regime of “democratic dictatorship”.

While ND’s spokesman Tassos Gaitanis dismissed such claims as “farcical”, they are in line with the government’s drive towards authoritarianism as shown by the draconian anti-protest legislation passed by the government last year .

A recent report by Amnesty International documented increased police brutality in the wake of the new legislation and under the guise of a second lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19. According to the report, “In November and December 2020, the Greek authorities penalized peaceful protesters or individuals calling for participation in peaceful protests. Human rights lawyers, women’s rights defenders, trade unionists and members of political parties were arbitrarily arrested and criminalized for allegedly breaching public health rules and were handed unjustified administrative fines.”

Thousands feared dead as devastating earthquake hits Haiti

Richard Dufour

Haiti was hit Saturday morning by an earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. Official reports currently place the number of fatalities at more than 700, but thousands remain unaccounted for, meaning the death toll will in all likelihood rise dramatically in coming days.

The long tremor was felt throughout the country, with its epicenter located near the city of Saint-Louis-du-Sud, 100 miles southwest of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

In 2010, Port-au-Prince was devastated by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people, injured even more, and displaced 1.5 million. The poorest country in the western hemisphere, Haiti has yet to recover from that disaster.

A family eats breakfast in front of homes destroyed by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in Les Cayes, Haiti, Sunday, Aug. 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Joseph Odelyn)

Even though the densely populated capital was spared this time, the toll from the latest earthquake in terms of deaths, injuries and material damage will nonetheless be high. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) issued a “red alert” for the disaster and estimated that fatalities could reach into the thousands. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” the USGS said.

In the southwestern peninsula, the hardest hit region of the country, the earthquake damaged or flattened many buildings, including churches and hotels, trapped people under debris and caused flooding after underground pipes ruptured. The largest city in the region, Les Cayes, with a population of 150,000, saw the collapse of several buildings, including the largest supermarket, jeopardizing the supply of food and other necessities to residents.

Complicating search and rescue efforts, a mountain road connecting Les Cayes to the peninsula’s second-largest city, Jeremie, has been cut off by boulders after major landslides and rockfalls that were triggered by the earthquake. The main public hospital in Jeremie, with a population of 130,000, rapidly filled to capacity with people with broken limbs, said Ricardo Chery, a local journalist. “The roof of the cathedral fell down,” said Job Joseph, a resident.

The official provisional death toll is already severe. According to a communiqué issued by the Haitian Civil Protection agency, 724 people are confirmed dead and more than 2,800 are injured. Its director, Jerry Chandler, said that the few existing hospitals in the region are struggling to provide emergency care. At least three hospitals, in the communes of Pestel, Corailles and Roseaux, are completely saturated with victims.

The communiqué reports that at least 949 houses, seven churches, two hotels and three schools were destroyed, while 723 houses, a prison, three medical centers and seven schools were damaged. Port, airport and telecommunications infrastructure, however, are said to have not been badly damaged.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who was appointed after last month’s murder of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, has declared a month-long state of emergency. But there has been little government help on the ground.

Rescue operations, carried out by the local population with their bare hands or with makeshift means, could be complicated by tropical storm Grace, which is expected to hit the country Monday evening. Significant rainfall could create mudslides and further destabilize buildings.

While Haiti has been repeatedly hit by disasters of a natural origin, such as earthquakes and hurricanes, their catastrophic impact is bound up with the conditions of abject poverty, endemic corruption, unending political instability and profound socio-economic crisis that are the legacy of decades of imperialist oppression, above all at the hands of US imperialism.

Swaths of the Haitian population face grinding poverty and hunger, and the country’s meager health care services are overwhelmed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Caribbean nation of 11 million has been in the throes of a political crisis since Moïse was assassinated on July 7 in what appears to have been an operation ordered by a rival faction of Haiti’s corrupt, pro-imperialist ruling elite. Citing concerns for his safety and a lack of security, the judge placed in charge of further investigating the assassination plot and bringing charges against those arrested withdrew on Friday.

The emergency response to the earthquake has been made even more complicated because road access to the peninsula region struck by the quake has been cut off by violent armed gang warfare at the southern entrance to Haiti’s capital. With the support of competing sections of the Haitian elite vying for power, criminal gangs have proliferated as instruments for the violent suppression of the Haitian working class and oppressed masses.

In a thoroughly cynical statement issued Saturday, US President Joe Biden claimed that “The United States remains a close and enduring friend to the people of Haiti” and “will be there in the aftermath of this tragedy.”

What hypocrisy! Since its first invasion of Haiti in 1915, US imperialism has a record of ruthlessly suppressing popular opposition to the imperialist dominance of the island nation. For three decades during the 20th century, Washington backed the brutal Duvalier dictatorship. In 2004, American troops intervened at the head of an international military invasion to oust the elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and initiate more than a decade of neocolonial-style occupation by forces organized under the auspices of the United Nations.

The point-person who Biden has named to supervise the latest US “support” effort, USAID Administrator Samantha Power, is one of the leading political-ideological proponents of “human rights” imperialism. She played a major role within the Obama administration in pressing for the US regime-change war in Libya, a brutal air war that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people and plunged the North African country into a bloody civil war that continues to rage a decade later.

The type of “support” the Haitian people can expect from the Washington is exemplified by its response to the last major earthquake in 2010.

Under conditions of a popular groundswell of international sympathy and support for the Haitian people, Washington and its allies made a show of providing assistance to Haiti. International donors pledged $10.4 billion for Haiti, including $3.9 billion from the US. But while feigning humanitarian concerns, the western powers, led by the US, Canada, and France, pursued entirely predatory objectives. These included: propping up a puppet regime capable of maintaining political “stability,” that is subjugating Haiti’s impoverished masses; providing political cover for the brutal treatment and expulsion of Haitian refugees; and promoting Haiti as a cheap labor producer for the international garment and other industries (the Caracol project).

The chief figure overseeing this relief effort was former US President Bill Clinton.

In the ensuing decade, the Haitian masses saw very little of this money. The lion’s share of it was sucked up by the major transnational corporations in charge of “reconstruction” projects and by the handsomely-paid bureaucracy of various international Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). What little found its way into the country itself was gobbled up by various sections of the venal Haitian ruling class.

A high point in these sordid relations was the 2010-2011 presidential elections, which saw Hillary Clinton’s State Department intervene to install Michel Martelly as Haiti’s next president, a right-wing musician with close ties to the former Duvalier dictatorship. Before Clinton’s intervention, Martelly had placed third in the first round of the elections and would have been excluded from the second round, which was limited to the top two vote winners.

Martelly’s chosen successor was a little-known businessman, Jovenel Moïse, who came to power in rigged elections, again with US support. Moïse went on to head a corrupt, right-wing government that depended on political support from Washington and on armed criminal gangs at home to bloodily suppress growing popular opposition to its IMF-dictated austerity policies. This earned him the hatred of the population. Following Moise’s assassination last July, and amid a bitter power conflict within Haiti’s political elite, Henry was hand-picked by the United States, France, Canada, and the other members of the so-called “Core Group” of nations to take over.

Today, just as in 2010, Haiti remains the poorest and most socially unequal country in the Western Hemisphere. While the masses of Haiti remain mired in poverty, the former US president and his wife Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, have seen their own wealth soar, raking in an estimated $230 million in income since Bill Clinton left the White House.

New Zealand midwives strike over low pay and understaffing

Tom Peters

About 1,500 midwives based in New Zealand public hospitals held an eight-hour strike last week, with different areas of the country striking on different days. Members of the Midwifery Employee Representation and Advisory Service (MERAS) union, joined by supporters, including parents and students, held protest rallies throughout the country, including in Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin and smaller towns, culminating in a rally outside parliament in Wellington on August 12.

The strike is another sign of growing anger and opposition to Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party-led government’s pro-business policies, including a pay freeze across the public sector and the refusal to properly fund healthcare. New Zealand’s already overcrowded hospitals would be unable to cope in the event of a significant outbreak of COVID-19.

More than 30,000 nurses and healthcare workers in the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) held a nationwide strike on June 9. They are preparing a second eight-hour strike on August 19 after the union leadership cancelled an earlier scheduled strike to present a sellout offer, which nurses overwhelmingly rejected. MERAS members are planning a 12-hour strike on the same day.

Midwives protest outside parliament in Wellington on August 12. (Credit: WSWS Media)

More than 5,000 senior doctors are also considering strike action after receiving a zero percent pay increase offer from the country’s 20 District Health Boards (DHBs).

MERAS co-leader Jill Ovens told TVNZ on July 15 that low pay was pushing hundreds of midwives to leave the profession and called for “a 50 percent pay jolt.” However, this figure was not mentioned in union leaders’ speeches outside parliament last Thursday.

“All we’re asking for the actual pay increase is to meet the cost of living,” Ovens told Radio NZ on August 9. The official rate of inflation is 3.3 percent, but the actual cost of living, especially for housing, is much higher. MERAS members have already voted to reject a below-inflation offer consisting of just two increases of $1,200 spread over two years.

Like other healthcare workers, midwives have also been promised a “pay equity” deal, separate from their collective employment agreement. The government and unions say this will significantly increase pay to a level comparable to male dominated professions with similar responsibilities. But the deal is still being negotiated, decades after it was first promised, and it is not clear if it will result in a significant pay increase.

A major concern for striking midwives, like nurses and doctors, is the low level of staffing in hospitals, which places both workers and patients at risk.

In 2019, midwives also went on strike over low pay and deteriorating conditions. One factor in persuading them to settle in April 2019 for a minimal pay increase of about 3 percent per annum, plus lump sums and back-pay, was a “Midwifery Workforce Accord” signed by MERAS and the government. The government made vague promises to improve retention, training and recruitment of midwives.

Student midwives protest in Midland Park before marching to parliament. (Credit: WSWS Media)

Since then, however, the staffing situation has become even worse. Stuff reported on July 17 that 33 positions in the Wellington region’s maternity services are vacant, about one in four jobs. Nationwide, there are about 200 vacancies.

At the rally in Wellington, a number of midwives and supporters addressed the crowd, calling for better pay and staffing. One speaker said her 19-year-old sister earns more working as a barista than a new graduate midwife “who’s responsible for lives. We have such huge responsibilities and the pay just does not show that.”

A mother declared: “I want to say to Labour, you are losing women on this issue, because women have had enough.” This prompted cheers from the crowd. “We cannot lose another midwife in our community… It is beyond a crisis and we are going to start losing women and babies if you don’t get it sorted,” she said.

A few Labour and Green MPs declared their “support” for midwives, while making no concrete commitments. Health Minister Andrew Little, who was booed when he attempted to address the nurses’ protest in June, told the midwives: “I’m confident we can meet the demands that you’re putting out there” for safe staffing and “pay equity.” He gave no details on either of these issues.

Diana, a midwife with decades of experience, told the World Socialist Web Site: “The main issue is that midwives have huge amounts of responsibility, and they don’t have enough money… If we want to attract and keep quality midwives, we’ve got to pay them properly.” After several years outside the profession, she said she had decided to return at the start of the year “because [the hospitals] are so desperate.” She worried about patient safety, saying “it feels like a warzone sometimes.”

Madison, who is studying to be a midwife in Wellington, had joined the protest “to support the workforce that I’m going into. I’ve got two more years until I graduate and I don’t want to be going into a system as broken as this one.”

She is borrowing about $9,000 a year for her four-year course, and more for living costs, and she expects to finish with a debt of over $50,000. “Because we’re on call and doing 40-hour weeks in placement some weeks, we can’t work as much as normal uni students would,” she said. The starting rate for midwives is about $24 an hour—not much more than the minimum wage of $20.

Because of the staffing shortage, midwives did not have as much time to teach students who were doing their placement, Madison said. Sometimes there was one midwife working with eight or nine women, and nurses were called in to fill the shortages in the maternity ward.

Madison said the government had taken some steps to train more midwives, but she described the government’s pay offer as “insulting.” “Something needs to change. I know that myself and a lot of my colleagues who are studying aren’t going to stay in New Zealand very long,” she said.

The major obstacle facing workers who are entering into struggles is the union bureaucracy, which seeks to divide workers and to subordinate them to the state and big business. Like other unions, MERAS has close links with the Labour-led government and campaigned for its re-election last year. One of the Labour MPs present at Thursday’s rally was Helen White, MERAS’s former lawyer.

The unions aim to convince workers that the government, which is carrying out major attacks on the working class and starving the healthcare system, can be pressured to make “progressive” reforms. This is a completely bankrupt perspective.

German federal and state governments escalate policy of mass infection by reopening schools and dismantling public health measures

Gregor Link

The threat of a renewed wave of mass death in Germany will increase over the coming weeks as millions of students return to school after the summer holidays. On Friday morning, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s federal agency for infectious diseases, reported 5,578 cases in the previous 24 hours, a 14-fold increase compared to the number of cases recorded in early July. As of Sunday, the national incidence rate, which is the number of those infected with the virus per 100,000 inhabitants within a seven-day period, was 35.

Helge Braun, the minister of the chancellor’s office, recently stated that 100,000 cases per day was “not unrealistic.”

The number of COVID-19 patients in hospital is also rising once again, said Gernot Marx, president of the association of intensive care medics, DIVI. Over the preceding seven days, 99 people fell victim to the pandemic in Germany alone.

Schoolchildren crowd at a school center in Dortmund-Hacheney

COVID-19 is spreading most dramatically among young adults and children. According to the RKI, the 15- to 24-year-old age group had the highest incidence rate over the past week, with 60 infections per 100,000 inhabitants. The rise in infections among children, who remain largely unvaccinated, was also explosive.

Under these conditions, the decisions taken last Tuesday by Germany’s federal and state governments amount to a political crime. While the highly infectious Delta variant spreads in factories, offices and, with the end of the summer holidays, schools, the remaining public health measures are being systematically dismantled. The public and private network of rapid testing and vaccination sites is being largely liquidated and future lockdowns ruled out at any price.

The text of the final agreement allows large events and football matches with up to 25,000 attendees, while no quarantine will be required for people who are vaccinated or who have recovered from an infection when they return from a high-risk area. Under the slogan “tested, vaccinated, recovered” (3G), the focus will shift away from the incidence rate as a key indicator of the spread of the virus, while recreational and indoor activities will be permitted in principle for people who have had a recent test, have been vaccinated, or have recovered from COVID-19.

The 3G rule, which is itself totally inadequate to guard against infections, can be suspended by the states as they see fit, so long as “the state’s pandemic indicator system shows a low infection rate,” and an increase in infections “through the suspension of the rule (is) not to be expected.”

Instead of the incidence rate, the focus will shift to the rate of hospital bed occupancies, a demand that has long been raised by far-right advocates of mass infection.

As of 11 October, rapid tests will be offered to most members of the public only if they pay out of their own pocket, irrespective of their vaccination status. Anyone who wishes to get tested for the coronavirus after that date, for example in order to decrease the risk of a meeting with relatives, will have to pay between €18 and €40 for a rapid test, or, depending on the provider, over €130 for a PCR test.

As demand increases due to rising incidence rates, test prices could multiply. According to NDR, due to “market economy considerations” there is simply “no upper cost limit” for private tests.

The government’s claim that this is aimed at combating a supposed widespread unwillingness to get vaccinated among the unvaccinated population is a lie on many counts. In reality, workers, as has been the case throughout the pandemic, are being asked to choose between their health and their income.

First, a representative survey based on public broadcaster ARD’s Deutschlandtrend shows that 83 percent of the population either want to get vaccinated or have already been vaccinated. This is 20 percentage points higher than the current vaccination rate. The 83 percent figure, which has risen by 8 percent since May, suggests that at least one in five people who want to get vaccinated has yet to be able to do so.

Second, alongside the closure of test sites, which were no longer turning a profit due to relatively low incidence rates and high vaccination rates, vaccination centers are also being shut down. This is taking place even as experts warn that the spread of the Delta variant could require another “refresher” dose of the vaccine.

Even prior to the expiration of federal funding for vaccine centers on September 30, centers in eight states are already being dismantled. This applies to the main vaccination center in Hamburg, all centers in Hesse (28) and Baden-Württemberg (8), four centers in Berlin, two in Bavaria, and three out of four centers in Thuringia.

Third, it has long been proven that the Delta variant can strike the fully vaccinated, and that they can suffer extensive long-term complications, acute illness and even death. This was recently confirmed in a study by the Israeli Samson Assuta Ashdod University hospital, and by the rise in hospitalizations in Britain. The number of daily admissions to hospital doubled from 390 to 800 in a matter of two weeks, due to the Johnson government’s brutal reopening policy.

In the United States, physicians across the country have reported that children’s hospitals are totally overwhelmed, which is a product of the Biden administration’s back-to-school policy. On Saturday August 7 alone, 259 children were admitted to hospitals across the country, which took the total number of children hospitalized at the time to 1,450.

The German government is heading towards the same scenario. While the federal and state governments are determined to abolish the network of test sites and vaccination centers, millions of unvaccinated students will be sent back to in-person classes in schools where they will be exposed to infection by the Delta variant, virtually without protection.

The ruling elite knows full well that it is putting the lives of children and their relatives at risk. Its representatives are not only familiar with publicly accessible international studies, but have also recently commissioned investigations into the spread of the virus in schools, the results of which are being kept under lock and key by the Conference of Education Ministers (KMK).

In addition, there are the effects of Long COVID, which have yet to be fully researched, and potential delayed symptoms following a COVID-19 infection. A recent nationwide study carried out by the AOK health insurance provider found that one in four of those hospitalized with COVID-19 had to be treated in hospital again at a later date. Thirty-six percent of the cases related to breathing difficulties, while 29 percent concerned neurological disruption.

An interactive graphic from the Berliner Morgenpost, which shows the course of incidence rates in age groups and each state, reveals that the seven-day incidence rate in the 5- to 14-year old age group was constantly the highest from April 20, the peak of the third wave, until the beginning of the summer holidays. International studies have repeatedly proven that if the virus spreads widely among children, it rapidly shifts to other age groups through infections in households.

Despite this, schools in every state will return to full in-person learning with no cohorts for students. The chief aim is to ensure that the labor power of parents is freed up in order to secure the profit interests of German big business.

Brandenburg Education Minister Britta Ernst (Social Democrats), who is also president of the KMK and the wife of the federal finance minister, demanded as early as June that all schools be opened after the summer holidays, irrespective of the vaccination status of students and their relatives. With the KMK decision on August 6, all 16 states adopted this demand.

In the struggle to safeguard those who depend on them most for protection, teachers and parents confront a united front of politicians, business associations and trade unions.

In the states in northern Germany, where schools already opened in early August, the incidence rate among the 5- to 14-year-old age group is already 39 per 100,000 inhabitants (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania), 148 (Schleswig-Holstein) and 211 (Hamburg). In Schleswig-Holstein’s state capital, Kiel, the incidence rate among the 5- to 14-year olds is a staggering 391 per 100,000 inhabitants. According to the RKI, 60 children in the city from this age group have been infected over the past week. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the requirement to wear a mask in school will be lifted today, despite an increasing incidence rate.

As of today, the seven-day incidence rate will no longer play a role in the coronavirus policies of the state of Baden-Württemberg. The Green-led government’s pandemic indicator system will only call for public health measures when hospitals start to fill up. Education Minister Theresa Schopper (Greens) plans to eliminate the requirement for students to be divided up into cohorts when schools return on September 13, even though air filters are lacking in most schools. This will be followed two weeks later by the abandonment of rapid testing and mask wearing.

In June, Schopper told the pro-business newspaper Die Welt, “We shouldn’t kid ourselves, Delta will spread throughout the schools.” To survive the threatened sickness, children and young people merely need “a pack of tissues,” according to the minister. In this way, Schopper is intensifying the policy of mass death for which her predecessor, Susanne Eisenmann (Christian Democrats), was punished in last March’s state election.

The Greens’ policy of mass infection is outdone only by the Left Party. In Thuringia, a coronavirus ordinance has been in force since 1 July that includes no future generalised prohibitions or closures. Contact restrictions and the requirement for students to get tested have been totally abandoned. By the end of the month, large events with up to 500 people indoors and 1,000 people outdoors will be permitted, with the approval of the Left Party-controlled Health Ministry.

For the start of the school year on September 6, Left Party Education Minister Helmut Holter plans to abolish the mask mandate in schools and prohibit testing. The Thuringia state government, whose leader Bodo Ramelow could not take part in the meeting between federal and state government representatives because he was on holiday in the Tyrol Alps, demanded the inclusion in the final agreement of the statement, “The delivery of lessons in-person and the maintenance of open schools has top priority.”

This is also the demand of the Education and Science trade union (GEW), whose new leader, Maike Finnern, told Der Spiegel in June that it is “inconceivable” to close schools for a long period of time once again.

Although she was “quite sure” that not all children and young people, and their parents, will be vaccinated by the beginning of the school year, the goal must be “routine operation in the coming winter.” Finnern, who is following in the footsteps of the long-term GEW president Marlis Tepe, played a key role as head of the GEW in North-Rhine Westphalia in imposing the policies of austerity and mass infection pursued by the state government led by Armin Laschet and his hated education minister, Yvonne Gebauer (Free Democrats), against the resistance of parents and teachers.

Behind the refusal of all parties to protect the health and lives of children are the interests of German imperialism, which will not tolerate any intervention into its accumulation of profit. On the eve of the summit between the federal and state governments, the Institute of German Business, a pseudo-scientific think tank aligned with the employers’ associations, warned that even a limited lockdown would cost German capitalists tens of billions of euros.

The German debacle in Afghanistan: Politicians and media drum up support for renewed military deployment

Johannes Stern

Politicians and the media in Germany are reacting to the Taliban advance following the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan with a mixture of disillusionment, anger and calls for a renewed military intervention.

Taliban fighters at a checkpoint in Kunduz on 9 August, 2021 (AP Photo/Abdullah Sahil)

The Afghan people had been “handed over to the resurgent Taliban,” Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. It was “cynical to say that it is the right of the Afghans to determine their own future,” he continued. “They will not be able to do that, because only the new masters will decide.” To “talk of diplomacy” now was “eyewash.”

In Die Zeit, Wolfgang Bauer expressed outrage that for “most Germans” the withdrawal of the Bundeswehr from Afghanistan was “a moment of relief.” This proved “once again how detached the mood of the German public has become from large parts of world events.”

Bauer, who in earlier years reported on war crimes committed by US troops in Afghanistan, is now incensed by their withdrawal and complains about the West’s unwillingness to intervene militarily once again. One could “not help just with money,” he wrote, or with “meagre expressions of sympathy from our foreign ministers.” Like “Pontius Pilate after Jesus’ death sentence,” the West was washing its hands of the matter.

Der Spiegel called for a “military option” to force the Taliban back to the negotiating table. “International troops would have to draw a protective wall around Kabul, the capital, and the surrounding provinces, from the air but also on the ground,” it declared.

The chair of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, Norbert Röttgen (Christian Democratic Union—CDU), is beating the drum particularly aggressively for a renewed war effort. On Wednesday, in an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio, he castigated “the hasty, premature, unnecessary, unilateral decision by the USA to withdraw from Afghanistan, made without any consultation with the allies.” Now it was a matter of “countering the offensive of the Taliban… with something.”

Röttgen pleaded for a massive air war, in which the Bundeswehr would actively participate. The US had already “intensified air strikes from its military base in Qatar,” and had now to “do so even more intensively.” Germany had to support the US mission, he said. “Whether it’s logistics, whether it’s other help they need, then we should say, of course we’re ready to use that.”

Foaming at the mouth, Röttgen demanded that the German government force through an intervention and take the lead role. If one pursues “a No policy” and says, “we will do nothing,” then “nothing will happen,” he argued.

This was “no longer the world” of the 20th century, with “Germans saying we will do nothing but formulate expectations for others,” he declared. Germany would have to “manage this change,” and then we would see what the Americans say.

With remarkable candour, Röttgen stated that the invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent occupation were never about human rights or democracy, but about imperialist interests.

“Turning Afghanistan into a modern democracy” was “never pursued by anyone” and was “real nonsense,” he said. It was “our interests that were always at stake.”

Röttgen noted that as early as 20 years ago, Peter Struck, the then-Social Democratic defence minister, had declared that “Germany’s security is defended in the Hindu Kush.” And that was exactly how it was. Germany could not defend its security “only within our walls, and that is why we now have the opportunity to stop this until winter sets in.”

The reasons for the aggressive calls for a renewed war offensive in Afghanistan are clear. The fall of Kunduz and numerous other provincial capitals to the Taliban within a few weeks is not a debacle only for Washington, but also for German imperialism.

After the Social Democratic-Green Party government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (Social Democratic Party—SPD) and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (Greens) decided to support the US invasion in 2001, the Afghanistan mission was the Bundeswehr’s most important war operation in almost two decades. For many years, there were continuously several thousand Bundeswehr soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. Over 160,000 soldiers were deployed in all. The mission officially cost some 10 billion euros.

The province of Kunduz, which has now been overrun by the Taliban, was in the Northern Regional Command of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission and was thus under German control for a long time. Beginning in October 2003, the Bundeswehr maintained a field camp in Kunduz, which it handed over to the Afghan forces 10 years later.

Taliban land gains between April 2021 and August (Credit: Associated Press)

The Taliban advance has once again revealed the real nature of the Afghanistan mission and exposed the official propaganda. The Bundeswehr has brought not “stability” and “security,” nor “human rights” and “democracy,” to the country, but chaos and war. The fact that the Taliban can take the country back by storm shows how hated the pro-Western regime in Kabul and its backers in Washington, Brussels and Berlin are within the Afghan population.

German troops were engaged in a bloody combat mission from the very beginning. In the strategically important north, the Bundeswehr conducted Operation Harekate Yolo in October and November 2007, the first offensive military operation under German command since the end of World War II.

The fighting had deadly consequences not only for the Bundeswehr (a total of 59 soldiers killed), but above all for the local civilian population. According to research by the broadcaster ARD’s Monitor programme, up to 27 civilians were killed in Operation Halmazag (“Blitz”) alone in the autumn of 2010.

The horrific climax of the German mission was undoubtedly the “Kunduz massacre.” On 4 September 2009, the then-Bundeswehr commander of Kunduz, Colonel Georg Klein, ordered an air strike on two tanker trucks. At the time of the bombing, hundreds of people, including many women and children, were near the trucks. According to official NATO figures, up to 142 people were killed or injured in the flaming inferno.

Neither Klein nor any other responsible military figure or politician was held accountable for the crime. On the contrary, in 2013 Klein was promoted to brigadier general and head of the personnel management department, responsible for recruiting and leading soldiers. Lawsuits by the victims’ relatives were repeatedly rejected by German and European courts.

At present, it remains to be seen whether the dreams of Röttgen and company of a renewed military intervention in Afghanistan will come to pass. Although the US intelligence services now assume that the capital, Kabul, will fall to the Taliban within the next 30 to 90 days, on Tuesday, President Joe Biden defended the withdrawal of US troops. The Afghans had now to “fight for their state themselves,” he declared cynically.

Then, on Thursday, the Pentagon announced it was sending 3,000 US soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan—with the ostensible mission of securing US diplomatic facilities in Kabul and organising the evacuation of American civilians.

Regardless of whether this is the case or whether the troops are just the vanguard for a new military intervention, what is at stake is an intensification of the disastrous war policy that has killed millions of people, turned tens of millions into refugees and destroyed entire societies over the last three decades. In a recent perspective on the US intervention, the World Socialist Web Site wrote:

Far from deterring the growth of American militarism, the debacles produced by the “war on terrorism” have only paved the way to the shift of US global strategy to “great power conflict,” in the first instance, confrontation with nuclear-armed China and Russia. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was carried out not to end America’s longest war, but rather to shift the Pentagon’s resources to the South China Sea, Eastern Europe and the Baltic.

The same fundamental contradictions of capitalism that lie behind the explosion of US imperialism and raise the danger of a third world war are fueling Germany’s war and great power offensive. Since the beginning of this month, the “Bayern,” one of the largest German warships, has been on its way to the Indo-Pacific with the declared aim of asserting Berlin’s geostrategic and economic interests in the region—above all against the nuclear power China.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the ruling class is now seeking to exploit the withdrawal from Afghanistan to push for the return of German militarism. On 31 August, the German government plans to commemorate “the end of the twenty-year deployment of the Bundeswehr in Afghanistan state-wide,” according to the official website of the Ministry of Defence. A roll call is planned in the Bendlerblock, with its imperial military connotations, with Federal President Steinmeier as keynote speaker. This is to be accompanied by a grand tattoo in front of the Reichstag, the former imperial and now federal parliament building.

Military on standby ahead of UK lorry drivers’ strike

Harvey Thompson & Laura Tiernan

The British Army has been placed on standby ahead of a national lorry drivers’ strike due to take place August 23. Soldiers are being readied on the pretext of dealing with a threatened breakdown in UK supply chains due to Brexit, the coronavirus pandemic and an unprecedented shortage of long-haul lorry drivers.

TNT Solo Lorry Units (Credit: John Carver, Wikimedia Commons)

Army personnel with Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) license qualifications “are being put on [a] five-day stand-by notice for driving jobs at major distribution centres around the country,” according to a report in Rupert Murdoch’s Sun on Sunday.

“Soldiers will be put up in hotels where necessary and will be working extended hours to assist with the crisis. They will be involved with food distribution as well as the transportation of other essential goods and medical supplies,” the Sun reported.

Unnamed military sources were cited after news broke of a national stay-at-home strike being organised by rank-and-file lorry drivers. According to reports in the Sun, Telegraph and Daily Mail, the military’s involvement would come under pandemic response legislation enacted by Boris Johnson’s Conservative government as part of Operation Rescript. This was described by the Ministry of Defence as the UK’s “biggest ever homeland military operation in peacetime”, involving up to 23,000 personnel within a specialist task force, named the COVID Support Force (CSF).

The significance of the military’s involvement goes well beyond its stated purpose of maintaining “essential goods and medical supplies”. It is a clear threat to growing industrial unrest and points to state preparations for a direct confrontation with the working class.

Lorry drivers are planning a one-day strike to protest lengthening working hours, low pay, intolerable conditions and the consequences of a recruitment and retention crisis that has resulted in a shortage of 100,000 drivers across the UK.

The strike call was started by the HGV Drivers on Strike Facebook group, formed in March and since renamed Professional Drivers Protest Group, UK. More than 3,000 drivers have reportedly signed up for the “stay at home” strike day.

The group’s mission statement is to “unite professional drivers across the United Kingdom, all of you, who would like to see some changes in their profession” including an end to “low wages, long hours, general disrespect and disregard to needs of drivers, including being denied access to toilet facilities etc., no family or social life, more and more rules and expectations, increased responsibility and finally—massive exploitation. All this with wages going down.”

It continued, “We are the backbone of the economy. The spine and the blood. Without transport, any country would be on its knees within a few days. There is a power in that. We should unite and stand together to try to change things. Let’s start with forming a petition to the government, stating our demands. If they won’t be met, then a protest should start. With 100,000 drivers short at the moment, there has never been a better time.”

The lorry drivers have drafted a list of demands, including a £15 per hour minimum wage, a 45-hour working week, time-and-a-half for overtime and double-time for Sunday work, and a penalty charge for companies that refuse drivers the use of toilet facilities. They call for “employment rather than self-employment”, noting “if an agency can charge their customers up to £30/hour, they shouldn’t be allowed to pay drivers £11.”

Drivers have taken to Facebook to vent their anger over these conditions and to correct the mainstream media’s narrative surrounding the lorry driver shortage.

As one HGV driver explained, “There is no shortage of drivers. There is a shortage of cheap drivers. There are 3.7 million drivers in the UK who will not do HGV because of the long hours, poor wages and lifestyle…

“The industry doesn’t give a toss about its drivers, only keeping the costs as low as possible by exploiting drivers from poorer areas of the EU. Now this option is gone, suddenly there’s a crisis.”

Another driver wrote, “Everyone treats you like nobody, and nobody gives a damn about you. Same wages as 15 years ago; Companies push drivers to work abnormal load; 24h a day; Shift 13–15 hours; Travel to work and home 1.5h… then only 5h left for sleep… It is a joke and not a job… Few more months and I’m leaving this industry so you can count 1 more driver.”

Other drivers agreed, “DVLA have confirmed in a government enquiry there are more than enough LGV [Large Goods Vehicle] licence holders to meet demand. What there is is a lack of drivers willing to leave home at 4am Monday morning, be out all week putting in 60–70hrs getting home late Friday night doing one of the 10 most dangerous jobs in the country just to earn the same money as the median UK wage for a 37hr week. Some companies in my area advertising for drivers are still advertising an hourly rate I was earning in 2008. And then they wonder why they can’t find drivers.”

The last national lorry drivers’ strike took place on January 3, 1979, during the “Winter of Discontent”, when more than 1.7 million workers took strike action against James Callaghan’s Labour government’s imposition of wage restraint policies demanded by the International Monetary Fund. Callaghan had readied the army for use against the lorry drivers’ strike, but drivers won pay increases of up to 20 percent.

Labour’s betrayals, backed by the trade union leaders, paved the way for the election of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, beginning a process of deregulation by successive Labour and Tory governments that has resulted in brutal and degrading conditions for drivers. The success of this offensive rested on the collusion of the transport unions, which suppressed industrial action over four decades. Today, of 320,000 HGV drivers currently working, only about 15 percent are unionised.

A warning must be sounded over the role being played by today’s pro-company trade unions. Last month, after the Johnson government announced a dangerous extension of working hours to ten hours per day, the unions rubber stamped the move. Unite merely issued a mealy-mouthed statement that the government’s brutal measure would “not resolve” the shortage of HGV drivers, adding, “Unite will be advising its members to not place themselves in danger and that if they are too tired to drive safely they have a legal right to refuse to do so.” Unite proposed no collective action, merely promising it would “fully support” any individual who refused to work the longer shifts.

With drivers’ anger reaching boiling point, Unite has announced disputes at logistics firm GXO and Booker Retail Partners. At GXO, around 1,000 drivers at 26 UK sites are due to strike for 24 hours on August 24, followed by a second walkout on September 2. The strike vote saw 97 percent of drivers reject the company’s miserly offer of a 1.4 percent pay rise for 2021. GXO supplies 40 percent of the UK hospitality industry’s beer.

Lorry drivers at Booker Retail Partners, a wholesale company delivering to around 1,500 convenience stores in London and the southeast, are to be balloted for industrial action over the last two weeks of August. The ballot only covers the 30 Unite members at Booker’s Thameside depot, who are demanding the same £5 an hour temporary pay increase given to the company’s Hemel Hempstead drivers in response to the nationwide shortage of drivers.

The union is seizing on the driver shortage and threat of wildcat industrial action to position itself as a peacemaker and partner to the Johnson government and the transport companies. It has submitted a 6-point plan to Transport Minister Grant Shapps, the centrepiece of which is the call for a “national council to determine industry standards” that would “vastly reduce the ability of rogue employers to undercut rates at the cost of drivers’ safety, pay and conditions.”

Unite’s attempt to reduce the problem to a few bad apples is belied by the reality of brutal exploitation across the industry.

This pitch to the Tories mirrors efforts by Unite, the RMT and ASLEF in joining the Johnson government’s Rail Industry Recovery Group, collaborating with railway company executives to drive through cuts, with plans to axe thousands of jobs, gut pensions and introduce full “labour force flexibility”.

The planned lorry strike takes place amid the biggest crisis in global supply chains since the Second World War, triggered by the pandemic and Brexit. The owner of one of Britain’s largest food producers, 2 Sisters, warned last month that the government must act or face the “most serious food shortages that this country has seen in over 75 years”. The situation will reach crisis point after new Brexit border checks on animal and plant products entering the UK take effect on October 1.

Workers are seizing on a crisis created by the ruling class to fight for long-suppressed demands as part of a resurgence of class struggle internationally. Lorry driver Mark Schubert told the Guardian last month that in nearly forty-years he had never seen such desire for change, “For far too many years we have been ignored, exploited and taken for granted. Now our time has come, now we have a window of opportunity to be listened to.”

Significantly, Schubert condemned the British government’s treatment of foreign workers. Lorry drivers from Poland, Romania and other Eastern European countries have long been used as cheap labour by transport companies in the UK and western Europe. At least 25,000 HGV drivers are thought to have left the UK because of Brexit. “Looking at the way [home secretary] Priti Patel and her cohorts in the Home Office treat foreigners, they’re not going to be overly keen on coming back,” Schubert told the Guardian. “Even if they can, are they going to be treated like criminals when they arrive at the border?”

Over the past 40 years, lorry drivers have become part of a globally integrated workforce, shattering national insularity and parochialism. Last December’s lorry queues at Dover, sparked by tensions between Britain and France over Brexit, exposed the brutal conditions facing drivers of all nationalities. Left for days without food, water or toilet facilities, such conditions showed the indifference of transport companies and capitalist governments on both sides of the English Channel to the rights and dignity of workers whose labour is essential to everyday life for millions of people.

The planned stay-at-home strike on August 23 deserves the support of working people everywhere. The precondition for its success is complete independence from the pro-company trade unions and an appeal for a unified struggle of workers in transport, logistics and aviation across Britain, Europe and internationally. The pandemic, the national antagonisms within Europe leading to Brexit, and the explosive growth of social inequality are global problems that require a global solution.

The Johnson government’s plans to mobilise the military against striking lorry drivers goes hand in hand with trade war measures against Europe and Asia, stepped-up border protection measures against refugees and immigrants, and the growing threat of militarism and war. Such authoritarian measures are born of the central contradiction of the capitalist system: between the world market and its division into rival nation states each defending the wealth and power of a tiny financial oligarchy.