New German defense minister plans major escalation of NATO war with Russia

Johannes Stern

The new German Minister of Defence will be the former Interior Minister of the state of Lower Saxony Boris Pistorius (Social Democrats, SPD). He succeeds Christine Lambrecht, who resigned from her post on Monday. According to media reports, Pistorius will be sworn in on Thursday in Berlin.

Boris Pistorius [Photo by Wolfgang Wilde / CC BY 3.0]

The change at the top of the Ministry of Defense will initiate a massive escalation of German militarism and the NATO war in Ukraine against Russia. Before the next meeting of the so-called Ukraine Contact Group in Ramstein on January 20, the NATO powers are preparing, among other things, the delivery of main battle tanks to Ukraine. Pistorius will meet US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Berlin the day before the Contact Group meeting, immediately after his inauguration.

On January 6, the German government, together with the United States, announced the delivery of Marder and Bradley armored vehicles to Kiev. The decision appears already to have been taken for Berlin to send Leopard-2 battle tanks. Eighty-two years after the Nazi war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, which killed almost 30 million people, German tanks are again rolling against Russia.

As Minister of Defense, Pistorius has the task of enforcing the war and rearmament plans against the enormous opposition in the population. At his announcement of Pistorius’ appointment, Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) stated: “Pistorius is an extremely experienced politician who has proven his administrative skills, has been involved in security policy for years and, with his competence, his assertiveness and his big heart, is exactly the right person to lead the Bundeswehr (German army) through this epochal shift.” 

This statement is unambiguous. Already under Lambrecht, the biggest rearmament program since Hitler was launched under the slogan “epochal shift” and a €100 billion special fund for the Bundeswehr was adopted. Lambrecht stated in public speeches that Germany had to become a “military leader” again due to its “size, its geographical location and its economic strength.” Ultimately, however, she was not deemed capable of achieving this goal.

The task will now be taken over by Pistorius, who, as Interior Minister in Lower Saxony, has distinguished himself above all by an aggressive “law and order” policy and extreme right-wing agitation against refugees. His demands in the past included the establishment of concentration camps for refugees in Libya, deportations even to war zones, the massive rearmament of the security forces and the deployment of the Bundeswehr domestically. The media is celebrating him as a “red general.” The ruling class knows that the return of German militarism, as in the past, also requires the return of authoritarianism and dictatorship.

Immediately after his appointment, Pistorius openly stated that Germany is a party to the war in Ukraine—which the German government has always denied. “The Ministry of Defense is already a great challenge in civilian times, in peacetime,” he said, “and in times when one is involved in a war as the Federal Republic of Germany, indirectly, even more so.”

He promised to make the Bundeswehr “strong for the period that lies ahead.” This is a “tremendous task.” The troops can count on “me to stand in front of them whenever necessary,” he said.

The World Socialist Web Site already explained in an article on Lambrecht's resignation how far-reaching the plans currently being worked out behind the backs of the population are. For example, the current Der Spiegel cover story, citing leading military figures, calls for a tripling of the Bundeswehr’s special fund to €300 billion, an increase in the annual military budget to €120 billion, the introduction of a general staff and the elimination of civilian control over the Bundeswehr, the strengthening of the armaments industry, an increase in the number of troops and the reactivation of conscription. 

Other media and representatives of foreign policy think tanks are formulating similar goals and pressing for their rapid implementation. Shortly after Pistorius’ appointment, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) published a guest contribution by Christian Mölling, the deputy director of the DGAP think tank and head of the Center for Security and Defense. His “Ten Points for the New Minister of Defense” pursues one goal: Germany's transformation into a strong war power. 

Despite the “most threatening situation since the Cuban missile crisis,” the Bundeswehr is “in a desolate state,” Mölling complained. The “epochal shift” was “so far little more than lip service on a special mountain of debt.” “Germany has lost a crucial year to modernize the Bundeswehr,” he added. He went on to raise similar demands to Der Spiegel, “in order to get the epochal shift moving, to get the Bundeswehr back in shape in the long term and also to support Ukraine.”

All of this requires the complete militarization of society. Mölling wrote: “If one considers the defence sector as a picture, it is important to think and describe defence as an ecosystem, not as mechanical pillars. This system is open at its edges and connected to many other areas of security and public life. The more closed the system is, the more it remains a specialised organisation in life.”

This is the old, deadly spirit of German militarism, articulated in modern think tank German. The military must penetrate all the pores of society. It must not remain a “special organization in life”—it is life.

It is not merely these concepts that remind one of the darkest times in German history. The entire foreign policy is being conducted along similar lines as in the First and Second World Wars. In the statement No tank deliveries to Ukraine! Stop the threat of a third world war!, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) declared:

Since reunification, the ruling class has been systematically working to organize Europe under German leadership in order to advance its geostrategic and economic interests worldwide. … Now it is using Russia’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine as a pretext to launch the biggest rearmament since Hitler and to strike again against Russia. German imperialism is concerned not only with geostrategic interests and Russia’s vast reserves of raw materials, it is also driven by the desire for retribution for its war defeats in the 20th century.

The imperialist offensive increasingly raises the danger of a direct war with a nuclear-armed power, Russia. The Bundeswehr is currently relocating Patriot missile systems to Poland. A total of three squadrons with 600 soldiers will be stationed in the neighbouring country during the course of this week. 

At the Zamość freight yard, the Patriots are to “protect an important transshipment yard for Ukraine aid,” writes Der Spiegel. At the station, located 30 kilometers from the Polish-Ukrainian border, “both relief supplies and military equipment will be loaded for Ukraine.” The Air Force’s task is to “protect the station from possible attacks from the air.”

In other words, the Bundeswehr will ensure that the planned tank deliveries reach the front safely. Germany is thus becoming an increasingly direct war party on the battlefield. The deputy head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and former president of Russia Dmitry Medvedev has threatened to turn Western tanks into “rusty scrap metal.” He described NATO countries involved in the war as legitimate targets. Nevertheless, Berlin is recklessly driving the escalation.

In his inaugural address, Pistorius should explain the consequences of this policy. How many millions of people does the ruling class intend to sacrifice this time to defeat Russia militarily and put their world power plans into action? What is the Federal Government’s scenario if the war escalates to a nuclear exchange? It is clear that even in a “conventional” war with Russia, millions of people across Europe would lose their lives.

As XBB.1.5 variant spreads across Canada, COVID-19 deaths hit 11-month high

Malcolm Fiedler

As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its fourth year, the virus continues to take an immense toll on the health of the population across Canada. This state of affairs has been enabled by the capitalist ruling class’ homicidal “forever COVID” policy, which has been overseen by the Trudeau Liberal government and enforced by all provincial governments irrespective of their political affiliation.

According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University published on the Our World in Data website, the rolling seven day average of COVID-19 fatalities in Canada reached 78 per day on January 12, the highest since February 28, 2022, when the Omicron first wave was cresting.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford promoting an end to all remaining anti-COVID public health measures, March 2022 [Photo: CUPE]

Provincial government figures show that the XBB.1.5 Omicron subvariant, which has spread rapidly in the North Eastern region of the United States, particularly New York City, is now showing signs of community transmission across the country. On January 4, Alberta announced that it had identified four cases of the variant, alongside rising viral detection rates in the city of Calgary’s wastewater. Quebec announced that 2.4 percent of the infections sequenced for the last week of December were positive for the variant, while Saskatchewan found two cases in its sequencing during the same time period. British Columbia announced on January 13 that the variant now accounted for 5.6 percent of all samples sequenced.

At the same time, over 5,500 Canadians continued to be hospitalized per day, a staggeringly high number that has stayed relatively constant over the past year. Health care systems continue to buckle under the weight of this increased burden, with emergency rooms hit especially hard.

Figures released by the province of Quebec show that more than a fifth of emergency rooms in the province are currently exceeding 150 percent capacity. The average length of time a patient waited on a stretcher was between 18-20 hours, and over 5 hours in the waiting room. The head of emergency medicine for Halifax, capital city of the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia, recently told the Toronto Star that ER deaths in the province were up 10 percent in 2022 compared to 2021, and that emergency care was “in a state of crisis.”

The comments came in the wake of the death of 37-year-old Allison Holthoff in the emergency room at Cumberland Regional Health Care Centre in Amherst on December 31. Holthoff waited for seven hours in excruciating pain to receive any primary care, according to her husband.

Charlene Snow, aged 67, died one day earlier after returning home following a seven-hour wait in the emergency room at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital. Snow’s tragic death prompted her daughter-in-law, Catherine Snow, to set up a website entitled Nova Scotia Health Care Crisis to gather similar stories. “We understand that the staff that work within the health care system are suffering as much as the patients that need to take advantage of it,” she told Global News. “We in no way want any anger or bad thoughts directed at staff members who are already working under such challenging conditions.”

As of January 17, Snow’s website had logged 559 ER deaths and received 1,100 stories about the impact of the health care crisis.

Health care workers across the country are expressing increasing concern that the situation could deteriorate rapidly in the event of a surge in COVID cases produced by XBB.1.5 or another variant. Dr. Melissa Yuan-Innes, an emergency physician at Hôpital Glengarry Memorial Hospital in Alexandria, Ontario, stated that there are no preparations “in a meaningful way” for a renewed surge because the health care system has no remaining capacity to deal with one. “We don’t have the capacity. Our health care system is starting to look like a set of dominos that you’re starting to knock over,” she commented to Global News. “It’s not a question of do we have enough experience with it, it’s do we have enough personnel. And we don’t.

“We want you to stay healthy and you want to stay healthy. So please don’t count on the system. We don’t have any magic.”

Dr. Brian Conway, medical director of the Vancouver Infectious Disease Centre, also speaking to Global News, explained his growing concern about the danger of a surge in Long COVID cases due to XBB.1.5. “It may spread more easily, it may attach to cells more easily, it may not be as susceptible to protection by vaccination as the original Omicron (variant) or as some of the other variants, so we need to keep an eye on this going forward,” he said, adding the crucial point that every infection compounds an individual’s risk of contracting Long COVID.

On January 6, BC Health Minister Adrian Dix announced that he was activating Emergency Operations Meetings protocols at 20 hospitals throughout the province as of January 5. The measure, a tacit admission that the health care system was already reaching over-capacity, aims to discharge patients earlier.

In Ontario, hospitals in Ottawa and Kitchener recorded the highest number of emergency room patients in a single day in their history last week. Yvonne Wilson, vice president of patient care at Queensway Carlton Hospital in Ottawa, told the Canadian Press that the main drivers of the increased admissions were influenza, COVID, RSV, mental health issues, and chronic illnesses. Commenting on the daily number of patients, she said, “We’ve been seeing about 240 to 250 patients coming through our (ER), and pre-pandemic we averaged around 200 to 220. So that makes a big difference, having that extra volume.”

Despite these grim statistics, provincial and federal public health agencies across the country show no indication that they are considering any mitigation measures whatsoever to slow the continued spread of disease and death. All remaining mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and other substantive public health measures were eliminated last spring when the Trudeau Liberal government and all provincial governments embraced wholesale the demands of the far-right “Freedom” Convoy. The results were disastrous, with 2022 becoming Canada’s deadliest year of the pandemic to date with close to 20,000 official COVID-19 deaths.

One of the few remaining reliable indicators of the pandemic’s impact is the tracking of excess deaths in the country by University of Toronto Medicine’s Dr. Tara Moriarty. Dr. Moriarty’s weekly updated tracking of excess deaths nationally shows that they have continued to trend at about 10 percent higher than the pre-pandemic baseline, a number that translates into almost 20,000 more deaths nationwide than we would have seen before the pandemic. The corporate-controlled media and political establishment have tried to pin such discrepancies on absurd pseudo-scientific claims, such as the supposed detrimental effects of lockdowns and “immunity debt.” But as Dr. Moriarty has noted, the most likely culprits for the rise in excess deaths are an over-burdened health care system and repeated COVID reinfections.

Public health agencies across the country speak openly the same language as the demands of the “Freedom” Convoy. This is not an accident. The convoy movement has been used as a battering ram by influential sections of the ruling class against the implementation of any public health mitigations. Provincial governments of all political stripes, from Danielle Smith’s right-wing United Conservative Party government in Alberta, to the “Quebec first” CAQ Legault government in Quebec, to the social democratic NDP government in BC, all now speak the language of the “Freedom” Convoy, claiming that the pandemic is over, public health mitigations harm the public and that there is no public support for any new mitigations.

Turning Influence Into Money in the EU Parliament

Patrick Cockburn

Photograph Source: Diliff – CC BY-SA 3.0

The spectacular unmasking of alleged bribery in the EU Parliament has attracted limited attention in Britain, despite police in Brussels discovering suitcases stuffed with hundreds of thousands of euros in cash and a vice president of the Parliament landing in jail.

Qatar and Morocco are accused of buying up Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in a scandal that revolves around a vote on a resolution criticising Qatar during the World Cup. The Greek MEP Eva Kaili is now suspended as vice president of the Parliament with many pointing derisively to a speech she made last year, saying “the World Cup in Qatar is proof actually of how sports diplomacy can achieve a historical transformation of a country with reforms that inspired the Arab world”.

She added that Qatar was a frontrunner in labour rights and that some members of the European Parliament were bullying and discriminating against the country.

Reforms are promised in the wake of the scandal but tighter regulations have been successfully resisted in the past. Damagingly, the latest scandal is assumed to be only the tip of a giant iceberg of corruption in the Parliament which has long been targeted by Transparency International, the anti-corruption watchdog, which has identified some of the Parliament’s more blatant boondoggles.

British disinterest in the scandal is not so surprising since a curious feature of the Brexit “debate” that raged before and after 2016 was that the actual workings of the EU never attracted much interest. Leavers ludicrously scapegoated all the EU institutions as bureaucratic monsters trampling on British freedoms and thwarting its global ambitions. Remainers portrayed the EU as a sort of warm and cuddly Paddington Bear-like institution, operating much like a UN agency.

The denouement was inevitable since MEPs made little secret of their willingness to turn their influence into money, something which they could generally do without breaking the law. One German MEP who wrote to companies in 2018 to advertise his services was not even reprimanded. Another declared earnings of €40,000 a month for business consultancy and other activities, though later he modified this figure down to a measly €5,000-€10,000 monthly.

Rules forbidding MEPs from selling their influence to the highest bidder are lax and are, in any case, little enforced. “Time and time again,” explains the online magazine Politico, “members of the [EU] Parliament have resisted proposals to shine more light on their work and shrugged off the lack of enforcement of rules already in place – all the while taking advantage of perks and privileges that would make a member of the Borghese family blush.”

It is not as though MEPs are poorly remunerated to begin with, each of them earning about €9,400 a month as well as €4,800 general expenses for which they need not produce receipts. In addition, they are allowed to hold as many other jobs as they want with the nature of their activities often declared in the most general and untransparent way.

The known rewards of MEPs through what Transparency International politely calls “moonlighting” are excessive, but these are only known about because of voluntary declarations. An analysis by Transparency International suggests, the true extent of MEPs being bought up is far greater: “The findings demonstrate once again the prevalence of ‘moonlighting’ among elected members in Brussels,” reads the TI analysis. “The actual figures may be even higher, given that MEPs self-declare their earnings and their declarations are not subject to institutional checks.”

Beneath the Radar

Is the age coming to an end when companies claiming to be delivering greater “efficiency” simply sack their experienced work forces and outsource their services to whoever makes the cheapest bid? The “more efficient” enterprises cruise along for years until a crisis or disaster capsizes them. Something like this happened to Southwest Airlines in the US during the storms.

UK recorded 50,000 more excess deaths in 2022 than in 2019

Robert Stevens

There were more excess deaths in Britain in 2022 than almost all of the past 70 years. According to an analysis by the Times, more than 50,000 more people died last year than in 2019.

Excluding the first two years of the pandemic (2020/21), this was the highest excess death toll since 1951.

Citing data from the statistics offices of the countries of the United Kingdom, the newspaper reported, “Overall the 656,735 UK deaths last year were 51,159 above the pre-Covid five-year average. The figure was exceeded only in four years prior to 1951 since records began 130 years ago.”

It reported 1,600 more deaths than usual during Christmas week, due to “long waits for ambulances, cold weather and surging flu infections” that “increased mortality rates by a fifth.

Ambulances wait outside the Royal London Hospital in east London, January 4, 2023. Ambulance staff are set to strike again on January 11 and 23, while nurses will do the same January 18-19. [AP Photo/Alastair Grant]

“Figures from the Office for National Statistics yesterday [January 11] showed the third consecutive week of more than 1,000 excess deaths in England and Wales and confirmed that last year one of the highest death totals in Britain was recorded.”

Excess deaths are rising among all age groups. Stuart McDonald, a partner at LCP Health Analytics who works on the Faculty of Actuaries’ Continuous Mortality Investigation, commented, “Had we not just had two years of very extreme mortality, 2022 would really stand out… At the start of the year we were seeing fewer deaths among older people because a lot of those people had frankly already died [of COVID], but it was clear even then that we were seeing higher deaths among younger people. Since the spring and beyond we’ve had fairly consistently high levels at all ages.”

While the UK saw tens of thousands more deaths last year due to COVID (around 40,000), the excess deaths, concluded the Times study, were prominently not due directly to COVID.

Years of brutal austerity, including the slashing of the National Health Service (NHS) budget, which was underfunded by £400 billion over the last decade, have resulted in many people dying earlier. In December 2022, ambulance response times were the longest since new call categories were introduced in 2017.

Cambridge University statistician Professor David Spiegelhalter said it was “very difficult to divide up the causes of the excess, but I find evidence around delayed admissions compelling”.

The Times reported Speigelhalter saying that since the summer “there had been more than 40,000 excess deaths in England and Wales. Adjusting for an ageing population and subtracting Covid ‘still leaves an average of around 450 excess non-Covid deaths each week since June.’”

According to Spiegelhalter, “multiple factors will be contributing to this: early flu, Covid, the impact of disrupted care in the pandemic, and the acute crisis in the NHS”.

The excess death analysis of the Times backs up the recent estimation by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) President, Dr. Adrian Boyle, who said that Accident and Emergency (A&E) delays and problems with urgent and emergency care are leading to 300-500 additional deaths per week.

NHS England said it did not accept the RCEM figures on excess deaths, but the BBC noted, “it's roughly what you get if you multiply the number of people waiting long periods in A&E with the extra risk of dying estimated to come with those long waits (of between five and 12 hours).”

Another study by the Economist magazine published last week concluded that hundreds of deaths per week were taking place, with extended waiting times a key factor. It concluded , “Our model suggests that an additional 3,400 A&E-associated deaths occurred between August and November 2022 compared with a scenario in which waiting times remained at 2019 levels. At around 260 per week, that number is below the ballpark figure from the RCEM, but would still account for one-quarter of the excess deaths in England over that period.”

The Financial Times provided further evidence of surging excess deaths in an analysis by chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch in December. It noted, “Life expectancy has stagnated, with Britain arcing away below most other developed countries, and avoidable mortality — premature deaths that should not occur with timely and effective healthcare — rising to the highest level among its peers…”

The author found, “In the last decade Britain has dropped away from its peers on overall health spend, while investment in healthcare infrastructure halved between 2010 and 2013. This left the NHS with less spare capacity than any other developed country when the pandemic hit. This proved a huge drag on productivity, leaving UK health workers hamstrung by shortages of beds and equipment.”

He concluded, “The impacts have been stark, from ballooning waiting lists and worsening A&E performance to a rise in avoidable deaths and stalling life expectancy.” These were due to “The effects of the Conservative austerity programme during the Cameron-Osborne years,” that “have been steadily accumulating over the past decade, but this winter that trickle has become a torrent.”

The COVID pandemic is far from over, with even the Conservative government’s own manipulated measure of COVID deaths now passing 200,000 (202,157), due to a surge in winter deaths. In the last 14 days, according to Worldometers, and using government data, nearly 1,700 people have died in Britain from a disease that everyone is being told to live with and which is not being tested for or monitored.

That right-wing publications such as the Times, Economist and Financial Times cannot ignore the terrible impact of a decades-long social offensive by the ruling elite which was accelerated during the pandemic, attests to real state of class relations.

Their findings are in line with studies showing that hundreds of thousands of people have died since the onset of mass austerity imposed by successive governments following the 2008 global financial crash. A 2019 study, based on years of data before the pandemic, titled “Premature mortality attributable to socioeconomic inequality in England between 2003 and 2018: an observational study,” was compiled by the University College London and published in The Lancet Public Health. It found that between 2003 and 2018, there were 877,000 dead victims of rocketing social inequality. The authors concluded that “nearly 900,000 deaths in England could have been avoided in a more equal society, according to a UCL study of 2.5 million premature deaths over the last 16 years.” 

The ruling class has deliberately run down the National Health Service for decades. Their agenda now centres on using the crisis of their own creation to insist that nothing can be done to save the NHS, with privatisation and sell-off of its most profitable sectors the only option.

Last week’s Daily Telegraph comment by Fraser Nelson was indicative of the frothing response in ruling circles who have never reconciled themselves to the post-war consensus of a welfare state with the NHS its jewel in the crown. He declared, “the NHS is a central plank of our national secular religion. It goes to the heart of our modern understanding of Britishness, a symbol of the supposed ‘fairness’ of our social-democratic, post-war identity… this 75-year experiment in health socialism has failed appallingly, culminating in a surge in excess deaths, waiting lists that aren’t worthy of a civilised nation, inhumane strikes, intolerable delays for ambulances, explicit rationing and underpaid, demoralised, overworked staff.”

Nelson insisted, “We must move to a mixed public-private system, as in almost every other country, based around a competing social insurance model, a mix of for-profit and charitable ownership, some user charges to prevent abuse and waste…”

German defence minister resigns as government prepares to triple special fund for the military

Peter Schwarz

On Monday, Germany’s Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht officially resigned. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (both SPD) reportedly will announce a successor today.

German Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht meets with her U.S. counterpart Lloyd Austin at NATO headquarters in Belgium [Photo by US Secretary of Defense / CC BY 2.0]

The reason for Lambrecht’s resignation is not the trifles she has been publicly accused of for weeks—a botched New Year’s Eve video, taking her son on a government service flight, etc. The real reason is that despite her best intentions, the Social Democrat politician has been insufficiently assertive in advancing Germany’s militarization quickly enough and ensuring the generals get everything they want.

In its Saturday edition, Der Spiegel published a long cover story that could be described as a “manifesto of the generals.” Partly anonymous, partly naming names, it lists one demand after another that amount to a massive rearmament and enhancement of the military. Chancellor Scholz’s “turn of the times” announced in the spring is modest in comparison.

Below a cover picture showing a soldier with a wooden rifle sitting on a green toy car complete with a tank barrel, the article paints a picture of an ailing army that has lost “its core competence: fighting.”

This is underscored with vulgar barrack room jokes, such as the claim that the Defence Ministry’s procurement office prescribes air quality values for tank crews that “strictly rule out the threat of ‘amniotic fluid damage among female Puma crew,’” and that passageways in frigates must be so wide that “two people using walkers can easily pass each other.”

This crude propaganda serves to justify a massive rearmament campaign in the tradition of Hitler and the Nazis. The most important goals raised in Der Spiegel are:

• Tripling the special fund for modernizing the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) from €100 to €300 billion

• Increasing the annual arms budget from the targeted 2 to 3 percent of GDP, which would correspond to an increase from the current level of €50 to €120 billion

• Introducing a general staff and eliminating civilian control over the Bundeswehr

• Increasing troop strength and reactivating conscription

• Strengthening the arms industry, which is to supply weapons directly to the Bundeswehr without tendering, ministerial control and approval by the Bundestag.

The Spiegel article is part of a broad campaign. Over the weekend, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) published an interview with Eva Högl (Social Democrat, SPD), the parliamentary defence commissioner, who is being talked about as a possible successor to Lambrecht and is making similar demands to Spiegel.

Högl, too, is calling for a tripling of the special fund for rearming the Bundeswehr: “You would need €300 billion to make significant changes in the Bundeswehr.” Adding, “That doesn’t seem to me to be pulled out of thin air. At least €20 billion are needed to procure ammunition alone. New frigates, tanks or F-35 fighter jets also cost billions, and we haven’t talked about personnel costs, energy-efficient building renovation, the necessary €50 billion of investment in infrastructure, or even inflation.”

Referring to the former chairman of the Munich Security Conference, Wolfgang Ischinger, who calls for the introduction of a “war economy” in Germany, Högl makes the case for “fundamentally rethinking the legal provisions covering the Bundeswehr.”

“We need even more far-reaching special rights for the Bundeswehr,” she demands. “We cannot respond adequately to war and the new challenges for German defence and security policy without changing the legal basis, at least temporarily.” Procurement law must be “streamlined” and the planning process “shortened” through special laws, she said.

The highest-ranking general in the Bundeswehr has also spoken out. Der Spiegel quotes from Inspector General Eberhard Zorn’s report on the operational readiness of the armed forces, which is classified but immediately circulated throughout the capital.

Except for deployments to Mali, Kosovo and, in some cases, Lithuania, the traffic light is set to yellow or red everywhere, Spiegel reports. This is followed by a long list of ammunition, weapons and spare parts that the Bundeswehr urgently needs. The report only refers to “the more than 20,000 men and women who are currently scheduled for missions and NATO, EU and UN obligations.” The situation was much worse for the 163,000 soldiers not currently scheduled for deployments, he said.

“For the core mission of the Bundeswehr ‘national and alliance defence,’ operational readiness must be restored for the entire armed forces,” the inspector general’s report states. Above all, “the shortage of necessary materiel (for example, modern large-scale equipment, command and control equipment, ammunition, spare and replacement parts) must be made up.” Only fully equipped and manned forces are “cold-start capable” and thus “key to credible deterrence by the Alliance because of their short-term response capability.”

The “full materiel equipment” of the force requires a huge amount of funding, Spiegel concludes. “The €100 billion from the special fund will not be enough for this. If the Bundeswehr’s ‘capability profile,’ which is still valid but already four years old, were fully implemented, about three times that amount would be needed.”

Der Spiegel considers the generals’ lack of influence in the Defence Ministry to be a central problem. “Germany may now be the only country in the world that has armed forces that are not led by a general staff or comparable military body,” the article says.

Thomas de Maizière (Christian Democrat, CDU), defence minister from 2011 to 2013, had disbanded the Armed Forces Command and Planning Staff, “ousted” the inspectors (the senior commanders of the branches of the armed forces) from the ministry, and created “three central monster authorities.” To the outside world, “the inspector general is still the face of the force,” but his domain now includes only three of the ministry’s ten departments, the news magazine says.

Lambrecht refused to change this, “She categorically rejects major reforms,” complained Der Spiegel. She preferred “to turn ‘small adjusting screws’ rather than the big wheel.” Even the goal agreed in 2018 of increasing troop strength from the current 183,000 to 203,000 by 2031 will not be achieved, it complains. “Because the Bundeswehr is not growing, it is stagnating.”

To replace the 20,000 men and women who leave military service each year and increase troop strength by 18,000, the Bundeswehr would have to recruit 22,000 new recruits each year, a “Mission Impossible,” according to Der Spiegel. In addition, “the Bundeswehr is finding no means to depress the stubbornly high dropout rate among regular soldiers and voluntary conscripts.”

Even though Der Spiegel does not explicitly mention it, preparations are obviously underway to reactivate compulsory military service, which was suspended in 2011, but not abolished.

These are apparently the real reasons why Lambrecht had to go. Under her, “the Ministry of Defence and the Bundeswehr leadership have fallen into a deep lethargy,” complained Der Spiegel. The money from the “turn of the times” was slowly arriving at the troops, but its spirit was not. Now “nothing less than a revolution is called for.”

New Zealand’s COVID wave continues as XBB.1.5 variant found

Tom Peters

New Zealand’s third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic continues, with dozens of deaths and hundreds of people being hospitalised each week due to the virus.

Medical staff test shoppers who volunteered at a pop-up community COVID-19 testing station at a supermarket carpark in Christchurch, New Zealand, 2022. [AP Photo/Mark Baker]

In the week ending January 15, another 57 people were reported to have died within 28 days of contracting the coronavirus, and 333 people were in hospital due to the virus at the end of the week. A total of 19,215 new cases were recorded, but the real toll is undoubtedly far higher. The Labour Party-led government is deliberately limiting testing in order to keep people at work, if they have COVID but no symptoms.

Since Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced an end to New Zealand’s elimination strategy in October 2021, and her government proceeded to abandon lockdowns and other public health measures, the country’s COVID death toll has shot up from around 30 to more than 3,000. In fact, the health ministry reports that 3,766 people have died within 28 days of contracting COVID, but claims that 699 of these deaths were not COVID-related, providing no further details.

More than 2.1 million infections have been recorded for the whole pandemic, in a population of 5 million, and 25,427 people have been hospitalised for COVID, including over 3,000 children.

With no steps taken to stop or even slow the spread, the toll of illness and death will continue to rise sharply in the coming months. The new Omicron variant XBB.1.5, also known as Kraken, was detected in New Zealand during the first week of January. This variant, the most transmissible and immune-evasive so far, is fueling a surge in several countries, including the United States where it is estimated to account for over 40 percent of COVID cases.

In the face of this new threat, the government is promoting maximum complacency. A ministry of health statement on January 9 declared: “The detection of XBB.1.5 is not unexpected.” Despite clear evidence of Kraken’s heightened transmissibility, it said: “It remains unknown how XBB.1.5 will compete against other variants in a New Zealand context, and whether this could affect the level of COVID-19 circulating in the community in the coming months.”

Portraying the mass infection of the population as a positive, the ministry said: “New Zealand currently has a high level of immunity based on high vaccine uptake, combined with a recent wave of infections (so-called ‘hybrid immunity’).”

This is totally misleading. In fact, more than a third of COVID cases reported in recent weeks are repeat infections. Every time someone gets the virus, it increases the risks that they will become seriously ill and develop long-term conditions, or Long COVID.

Vaccines provide some protection against serious illness but their efficacy is limited. Nearly half the population has still not received a third dose (or first booster) of the vaccine, and only 14 percent have received a fourth dose (second booster), which is needed to remain up-to-date.

In contrast to the government, experts issued blunt warnings about the new variant.

Speaking to NewstalkZB, epidemiologist Michael Baker warned that XBB.1.5 is “better at infecting people and quite likely to cause a new wave of infections.” He added: “People often say ‘we have to wait and see if it’s more severe or less than other sub-variants’ ... but actually sub-variants that affect a lot more people is much worse in some ways because it just means a lot more people will get sick, in some cases dying.”

Microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles wrote in Stuff that the proliferation of new variants including XBB.1.5 was “really worrying,” adding that “it looks like monoclonal antibody treatments are no longer able to protect immunosuppressed people from some of the Omicron sub-variants.” She expressed concern “that we are no longer working collectively to reduce the spread of Covid.”

On January 8, epidemiologist Amanda Kvalsvig wrote on Twitter: “Unless the NZ Govt changes their Covid strategy in 2023, this is the certainty we now have: of ongoing, cumulative, inequitable damage to population health and wellbeing, including (unforgivably) our children.”

The corporate media, meanwhile, continues to report as little as possible on the pandemic. Writing in the New Zealand Herald on January 14, former opposition National Party MP Steven Joyce noted, approvingly, that politicians have “quickly moved on to playing down the virus and normalising it.” News bulletins, he said, are now reporting COVID deaths in “just a thirty-second summary” before the weather report.

Joyce, a former transport minister, complained that the Ardern government didn’t remove public health measures earlier, and that the shutdown of transport projects during lockdowns had “likely cost billions of dollars and years in delays.”

He called for the cost to business to be investigated by the royal commission into the government’s pandemic response. This inquiry, announced by Ardern last month, will start in February and is expected to finish its work in mid-2024.

The commission’s terms of reference say it will investigate “the overall response, including the economic response, identify what we can learn from it and how that can be applied to any future pandemic.” The purpose of the inquiry is to ensure that there is no return to any policy of elimination, or even mitigation measures, which are deemed an unacceptable impost on big business’ profits.

The inquiry will be chaired by University of Melbourne epidemiologist Tony Blakely, a prominent minimiser of COVID-19. When Omicron emerged, Blakely echoed false claims that the variant was “mild” and advocated a policy of mass infection in Australia and New Zealand. In February 2022, he told Radio NZ that New Zealand was being “too cautious,” and urged the Ardern government to work faster at dismantling public health measures in order to “let Omicron wash through in a timely manner.”

Assisting Blakely with the inquiry are two seasoned representatives of the capitalist state: former National Party education minister Hekia Parata and ex-Treasury secretary John Whitehead.

Oxfam report documents “explosion of inequality” during pandemic

Jacob Crosse

In the face of an unending pandemic, war and inflation, the wealthiest people and multinational corporations on the planet became “dramatically richer,” driving an “explosion of inequality,” according to the latest report from the UK-based charity Oxfam.

In the report, titled “Survival of the Richest” and delivered ahead of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the charity documents an enormous concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny corporate and financial oligarchy.

The report refers to what it calls a “global polycrisis” developing throughout the world: 

Tens of millions more people are facing hunger. Hundreds of millions more face impossible rises in the cost of basic goods or heating their homes. Climate breakdown is crippling economies and seeing droughts, cyclones and floods force people from their homes. Millions are still reeling from the continuing impact of COVID-19, which has already killed over 20 million people. Poverty has increased for the first time in 25 years.

In the midst of this social catastrophe, the report notes, “the very richest have become dramatically richer and corporate profits have hit record highs.”

In the first page of its executive summary, Oxfam lays out the following staggering facts:

• Since 2020, the richest 1 percent have captured almost two-thirds of all new wealth—nearly twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population.

• Billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.7 billion a day, even as inflation outpaces the wages of at least 1.7 billion workers, more than the population of India.

• Food and energy companies more than doubled their profits in 2022, paying out $257 billion to wealthy shareholders, while over 800 million people went to bed hungry.

• Only 4 cents out of every dollar of tax revenue comes from wealth taxes, and half the world’s billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax on money they give to their children.

• A tax of up to 5 percent on the world’s multimillionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, and fund a global plan to end hunger.

The extreme growth of social inequality continued through the pandemic, though there was a slight dip in the wealth of the oligarchy last year, due to the increase in interest rates by central banks aimed at beating back demands for higher wages by workers. 

In a stunning graph, Oxfam showed that the top 1 percent siphoned 63 percent of all new wealth created, more than $26 trillion between 2020-2021. The top nine percent below them gobbled up 27 percent of all new wealth, a bit more than $11 trillion, leaving only 10 percent, or about $5 trillion for the bottom 90 percent, or 7.2 billion people.

[Photo: Oxfam]

Based on these figures, one can only conclude that the pandemic, which is a massive catastrophe for hundreds of millions of people, has been a miracle for the rich.

This concentration of wealth has been facilitated by capitalist governments. Citing a study conducted by the Research School of International Taxation (RSIT), which covers 142 countries, Oxfam noted that states throughout the world have reduced taxes on corporations, while increasing Value Added Tax (VAT) or consumption taxes, which disproportionately affect the incomes of workers and the poor.

For every $1 of tax revenue, 44 percent of it was generated via VAT or consumption taxes, in 75 countries measured by RSIT from 2007 through 2019. Corporate income taxes meanwhile only accounted for 14 percent of tax revenue, four percentage points less than payroll taxes.

Notably, for the first time in 25 years, Oxfam reported an increase in wealth inequality and poverty, “simultaneously.” In another “first,” the United Nations’ Human Development Index—which measures life expectancy, expected years of schooling and inequality within a country—fell in nine out of every 10 countries in either 2020 or 2021.

No matter where they live, workers around the world have had to contend with skyrocketing inflation, which Oxfam, using data from the International Labor Organization, estimated wiped out “$337 billion” in wages from workers last year. Revealing the global character of the crisis, Oxfam conducted an analysis of wage data from 96 countries in 2022 and found that at least 1.7 billion workers, nearly a quarter of humanity, live in countries where inflation is outpacing wage growth, driving up inequality and poverty.

In contrast to claims of US President Joe Biden and other leaders of the major capitalist countries, the authors of the report squarely place the blame for once-in-a-generation inflation on corporate profiteering. Noting that this began well before the pandemic, Oxfam wrote that Global Fortune 500 firms increased their profits by 156 percent, from $820 billion in 2009, to $2.1 trillion in 2019, and that this trend has only accelerated.

The report revealed that these price increases were the result of a small number of corporations which have “effective oligopolies” allowing them to “maintain high prices” while passing on savings when the costs fall to “shareholders rather than consumers.”

The charity analyzed the profits of the largest 95 food and energy companies in the world, and found that “Corporate price profiteering is driving at least 50 percent of inflation in Australia, the US, and Europe, in what is as much a ‘cost-of-profit’ crisis as a cost-of-living one.”

Oxfam noted that in response to widening inequality, the vast majority of governments around the world, 95 percent, did not increase taxes on the rich; instead they, “either did not increase, or even lowered, taxes on rich people and corporations.”

That is, instead of enacting hugely popular policies to lessen inequality, capitalist governments the world over have foisted the “polycrisis” onto the back of the working class, while enriching a tiny parasitic few.

Beyond starving society of resources, the Oxfam report states that the corporate and financial oligarchy is a massive factor in the crisis. It notes that “the richest are key contributors to climate breakdown: a billionaire emits a million times more carbon than the average person…” It adds that “the very existence of booming billionaires and record profits, while most people face austerity, rising poverty and a cost-of-living crisis, is evidence of an economic system that fails to deliver for humanity.”

The facts and details presented in the report should be studied by every worker. However, as liberal reformists, they evade the fundamental issues. Oxfam presents as a panacea a “one-off solidarity wealth tax” which would eventually lead to “permanent tax increases” with the goal of eventually eliminating “billionaires.”

Such a proposal evades two fundamental facts: 1) Those who have used their power to accumulate their wealth, and who control capitalist governments throughout the world, are not going to just give it up; and 2) The massive concentration of wealth is rooted in the capitalist relations of production, based on the exploitation of the working class for corporate profit.

Heinrich Boll Foundation Scholarships 2023/2024

Application Deadlines:

• 1st March 2023

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Universities, Universities of Applied Sciences, or Universities of the Arts in Germany

Accepted Subject Areas: Any subject area is applicable

About Heinrich Böll Foundation Scholarships: The Heinrich Böll Foundation grants scholarships to approximately 1,000 undergraduates, graduates, and doctoral students of all subjects and nationalities per year, who are pursuing their degree at universities, universities of applied sciences (‘Fachhochschulen’), or universities of the arts (‘Kunsthochschulen’) in Germany.

The special focus regions for international students are Central and Eastern Europe; EU neighborhood countries and the CIS; the Middle East and North Africa; transition and newly industrialized countries; and conflict regions worldwide.

Selection Criteria: Heinrich Böll Foundation Scholarship recipients are expected to have excellent academic records, to be socially and politically engaged, and to have an active interest in the basic values of the foundation: ecology and sustainability, democracy and human rights, self determination and justice.

Eligibility: The following general requirements apply to international student applicants (except EU citizens) who wish to study in Germany:

• You must be enrolled at a state-recognized university or college (e.g. Fachhochschule) in Germany at the time the scholarship payments begin.
• You should provide proof that you have already graduated with an initial professional qualification. This programme mainly supports students aiming for a Masters degree.
• You need a good knowledge of German, and require you provide proof of your proficiency. Please note that the selection workshop (interviews, group discussions) will normally be in German. Exceptions (interview in English) are, however, possible.
• Unfortunately, the current guidelines specify that the foundation cannot support foreign scholarship holders for stays abroad in third countries for more than four weeks.
• You should definitely apply for a scholarship before the start of your studies, in order to ensure long-term support and cooperation.
• The Heinrich Böll Foundation cannot award you a scholarship, if you are studying for a one-year Masters degree and were not previously supported by the foundation.
• Applications are possible before you begin your study programme or within the first three semesters.
• Applicants must provide proof that they have been accepted as a doctoral student by an institution of higher education in Germany or an EU country (for doctoral scholarship).

Number of Scholarships: Approximately 1000

Duration of Heinrich Böll Foundation Scholarships: Scholarship will be offered for the duration of the undergraduate, Masters or Doctoral programme

How to Apply: The application form will be completed online; additional application documents will be submitted as PDF.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for Details

HFG Foundation Young African Scholars Program 2023

Application Deadline: 1st March 2023

Eligible Countries: African countries

Eligible Fields: Applicants’ projects are expected to highlight the issues of violence and aggression.

About the HFG Foundation Young African Scholars Program: Harry Guggenheim established this foundation to support research on violence, aggression, and dominance because he was convinced that solid, thoughtful, scholarly and scientific research, experimentation, and analysis would in the end accomplish more than the usual solutions impelled by urgency rather than understanding. We do not yet hold the solution to violence, but better analyses, more acute predictions, constructive criticisms, and new, effective ideas will come in time from investigations such as those supported by our grants.

The foundation places a priority on the study of urgent problems of violence and aggression in the modern world and also encourages related research projects in neuroscience, genetics, animal behavior, the social sciences, history, criminology, and the humanities which illuminate modern human problems. Grants have been made to study aspects of violence related to youth, family relationships, media effects, crime, biological factors, intergroup conflict related to religion, ethnicity, and nationalism, and political violence deployed in war and sub-state terrorism, as well as processes of peace and the control of aggression.

Type: Grants

Eligibility: Applicants must be aged 40 or younger, currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program at an African higher education institution, and living on the continent.

Number of Awardees: 10

Value of HFG Foundation Young African Scholars Program: The program includes:

• a methods workshop
• fieldwork research grants of $10,000 USD each,
• editorial and publication assistance,
• and sponsorship at an international conference to present research findings.

How to Apply: The March 1 application deadline occurs every other year, in accordance with the program application cycle. Applicants must create an account to access the application. The guidelines are also available through the second link below.

Online Application (Login required)

Application Guidelines (PDF)

Visit Programme Webpage for details