Bogus debate on “decline of French” in Montreal fuels Quebec chauvinism

Hugo Maltais

In the midst of Canada’s raging COVID-19 pandemic and as Quebec, Ontario, and other provinces have registered record numbers of infections, provincial and federal politicians in Quebec have been absorbed in a manufactured controversy over the decline of French in Montreal.

On November 13, the Journal de Montréal published a report sensationally titled, “Incapable of being served in French.” It reported that during a visit to 31 stores and restaurants in downtown Montreal, 16 had greeted customers/journalists in English.

The Journal de Montréal is a daily tabloid published by Quebecor, a media and telecommunications empire that owns newspapers and television and radio stations. It is owned by Pierre-Karl Péladeau, a billionaire whose fortune is estimated at US$1.8 billion and who briefly served as leader of the pro-independence Parti Québécois (PQ) in 2015-16.

The Fleurdelisé flying at Place d'Armes in Montreal. (Image credit: Makaristos/Wikipedia [Public Domain])

The November 13 “exposé” was quickly followed by a chorus of op-eds from leading Journal de Montréal columnists, including Mathieu Bock-Côté, Richard Martineau, Mario Dumont, Josée Legault and Denise Bombardier. A fabricated controversy, this furor was aimed at promoting Quebec nationalism and pushing the right-wing populist Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ, Coalition for the Future of Quebec) provincial government even further to the right.

Quebecor’s media outlets have long played a major role in stoking Quebec chauvinism. After supporting the CAQ and its right-wing nationalist platform in the 2018 elections, Quebecor applauded and encouraged it as it passed two chauvinist laws during its first year in office.

The first, Bill 9, slashed the number of immigrants admitted to Quebec annually and introduced knowledge of “Quebec values” into the selection criteria. The second, Bill 21, prohibits the wearing of religious symbols by state employees, including public school teachers, deemed in “positions of authority,” while reaffirming Quebec’s Catholic “heritage.” It also bans Muslim women who wear a face-covering veil from receiving vital public services, including health care and education.

Virtually the entire Quebec establishment welcomed Bill 21’s attack on the basic democratic rights of religious and cultural minorities. It was hailed by Le Devoir, a daily newspaper close to Quebec’s indépendantiste circles, as well as by La Presse, which speaks for the federalist sections of big business. In other words, the Journal de Montréal ’s anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim agitation is only the most vulgar expression of a policy that is being supported and pursued by the ruling elite as a whole.

However, the Journal de Montréal and other hardline Quebec nationalists remain dissatisfied. In recent months, Quebecor’s flagship tabloid has published several editorials criticizing the CAQ, with headlines such as “Should the nationalism of the CAQ be taken seriously,” “The nationalist veneer of the CAQ is cracking” and “Is the nationalist credibility of the CAQ starting to wane?”

This campaign culminated in a series of articles published to mark 25 years since the October 1995 referendum on Quebec independence. The articles combined calls for the Quebec “people” to “awaken their souls” and “fight for their survival,” with hysterical attacks from Mario Dumont, who as leader of Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ) co-led the campaign in 1995 in favour of a “Yes” to independence, on the ostensible “left wing” of the contemporary independence movement. One after another, the Journal de Montreal’s columnists urged Quebec Premier François Legault and his CAQ government to adopt further ultranationalist measures attacking minority rights. Summing up their arguments, the right-wing ideologue Bock-Côté declared, “It is through the question of identity that we will achieve our independence.”

The CAQ government’s response was given by Simon Jolin-Barrette, who currently doubles as Minister of Justice and Minister for the French Language, and who was the minister principally responsible for drafting and winning parliamentary assent for Bills 9 and 21. In an interview with a television channel owned by Quebecor, Jolin-Barrette said he was “shocked” by the Journal de Montréal’s revelations about the “decline” of the French language. In Quebec, he thundered, “It has to happen in French,” adding that the CAQ government will do more to ensure the “francization” of immigrants.

A few weeks later, Jolin-Barrette announced that the government will introduce amendments to strengthen Bill 101 this spring. He was referring to a law passed by the Parti Québécois (PQ) in 1977 to curtail the rights of Quebec’s linguistic minorities in the name of defending the French language and making French the “public language” of Quebec. Its aim was to secure a larger share of executive and management positions for the francophone petty bourgeoisie.

Premier Legault, for his part, called the linguistic situation in Montreal “unacceptable.” A former CEO and multimillionaire, Legault began his political career in 1998 as a minister in the PQ government of Lucien Bouchard, at a time when it was making savage cuts in health, education and culture in the name of “balancing the budget.”

After leaving the PQ, Legault founded the CAQ in 2011, with the help of the billionaire Charles Sirois, to promote austerity, privatization and corporate tax cuts. At its founding, the CAQ absorbed what was left of Dumont’s ADQ, which had fueled Quebec chauvinism with its campaign against the supposed “excessive” accommodations granted to minorities. Legault led the CAQ to power in 2018 after an election campaign which included virulent attacks on immigrants and religious minorities.

When multimillionaire Legault and billionaire Péladeau talk about “defending the French language,” they are not talking about investing billions to rebuild dilapidated schools in working-class neighbourhoods, ensure free and quality education for all at all levels, or fund the arts so as to make culture accessible to working people.

For Quebec’s ruling class, this demand serves rather to promote the fraudulent nationalist notion that the primary divide in Quebec and Canadian society is between the French and the English, not that between the working class and the capitalist elite, as if a French-speaking worker in Quebec has more in common with a francophone billionaire like Péladeau than with an English-speaking worker in Ontario or Alberta.

In Canada, the ruling class uses language differences to undermine class consciousness and divide the working class, just as the bourgeoisie elsewhere manipulates racial, ethnic, cultural or gender differences.

In this, a pernicious role is played by the supposedly “left-wing” Quebec Solidaire (QS), which has criticized the CAQ on this issue from the right. After Jolin-Barrette announced that the government was preparing a plan to “protect French,” Québec Solidaire Member of the National Assembly Sol Zanetti condemned the CAQ’s “soft” nationalism and rejected its plan as inadequate.

On November 24, Québec Solidaire voted in favour of a motion passed unanimously by Quebec’s National Assembly that called on the federal government to work with the province to bring federally regulated companies under the antidemocratic Bill 101.

QS thus found itself in the company of the six living former Quebec premiers, all of whom publicly supported the motion: Philippe Couillard, Pauline Marois, Jean Charest, Lucien Bouchard, Daniel Johnson and Pierre-Marc Johnson. Whether leading PQ or Liberal governments, every one of them pursued austerity policies and came into bitter conflict with the working class.

QS’s endorsement of a plan to restrict minority language rights is just the latest example of its long-standing efforts to integrate itself into the ruling establishment by supporting its turn to ever more strident forms of Quebec chauvinism.

QS called the ADQ-spearheaded, anti-immigrant “reasonable accommodation” debate “necessary”; welcomed the PQ’s chauvinistic campaign for a “Quebec Charter of Values” as “legitimate”; and has endorsed Quebec attacking the democratic rights of religious minorities under the guise of “state secularism.”

The latest bogus controversy over the French language also found an echo in the federal parliament. On November 14, Emmanuella Lambropoulos, a Liberal Party MP for the Montreal riding of St-Laurent, was forced to apologize for “questioning” the claim that French is in decline in Quebec.

The leader of the Bloc Québécois, Yves-François Blanchet, used this incident to attack federal Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the House. A sister party to the PQ dedicated to the promotion of Quebec nationalism, the Bloc adopted a particularly chauvinistic, even racist tone in the last federal election. Since then, it has worked with the Conservative Party to attack the Liberals from a right-wing perspective, notably over Trudeau’s allegedly weak response to the murder of a French teacher by a Muslim terrorist and the Liberals’ allegedly insufficiently aggressive policies towards China.

Adapting to the rise of the chauvinistic right, Trudeau and his Liberals have encouraged Quebec nationalists at every turn in this fabricated scandal. The federal Minister of Official Languages rebuffed Lambropoulos and announced that the Official Languages Act would be modernized. Trudeau responded to opposition attacks by supporting Bill 101. “Quebec must be first and foremost francophone,” he said, “and that’s why we support Bill 101 in what it does for Quebec.”

A proponent of Canada’s official multiculturalism policy, supposedly “progressive” and open to diversity, Trudeau speaks for those sections of the Canadian ruling class that promote identity politics and the division of the population into distinct ethnic and religious groups. Their ultimate goal is to strengthen Canadian nationalism, camouflage Canadian imperialist violence and divide the working class.

Workers and youth in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada must reject Quebec nationalism (as well as western Canadian regionalism, which foments anti-Quebec sentiment by claiming that Quebec is out to kill Alberta’s oil industry). They must also reject Canadian nationalism, which includes Trudeau-style multiculturalism as one of its essential ideological components.

Quebec nationalism and Canadian nationalism are two sides of the same chauvinist coin. Although they are promoted by different sections of the ruling class, they share the same objective: to pit workers against each other along linguistic, racial, ethnic or cultural lines; divide workers in Canada from their international class brothers and sisters; and prevent a unified struggle of the working class across Canada—French- and English-speaking, immigrant, and First Nations—against capitalist austerity and militarism.

What is required is an independent political struggle by the working class for a workers’ government to secure democratic rights, reject imperialist war and establish social equality.

Pioneering country music singer Charley Pride (1934-2020) dies of COVID-19

Matthew Brennan

Country music singer Charley Pride died from the COVID-19 virus on December 12 in Dallas at age 86. He was the first African American artist to achieve major success in country music, signing with the RCA Victor label in 1966. He produced at least 30 chart-topping country songs through the late 1980s and sold over 70 million records worldwide.

Pride is best known for songs of love and heartache, including “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’,” “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone?”, “All I Have to Offer You (Is Me),” “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” “Streets of Baltimore,” “I Can’t Believe You’ve Stopped Loving Me” and “Just Between You and Me.”

By all accounts, he was a kind and sincere human being, which generally comes across in his music. Moving tributes have come from former collaborators such as Dolly Parton, Marty Stuart and Jerry Lee Lewis, as well many other younger musicians. “The world is lost today,” said fellow musician and singer Tanya Tucker. “He’s one of the greatest singers of all time.”

Charlie Pride singing at Ronald Reagan's inauguration, 1981

Pride was born in the small town of Sledge, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region during the height of the Great Depression to a share-cropping family that eventually had 11 children, and began working in the cotton fields when he was 10 years old. He played guitar as a youth but pursued a professional baseball career for the early part of his adult life. He was a two-time all-star in the Negro Leagues (1956-57) for the Memphis Red Sox and played in minor league baseball until the early 1960s.

While playing baseball in Montana and working in a lead smelter he was encouraged to play songs in bars while the team traveled. For several years after his baseball career, he continued to play country songs in mining towns across Montana, eventually meeting other singers on the circuit such as Merle Haggard, Red Sovine and Red Foley.

With encouragement from such figures and others, Pride went to Memphis and Nashville to pursue a record contract despite there being no African Americans in the country music field at the time. On the strength of his captivating voice, he was signed to RCA by Chet Atkins and began recording mainly covers. The company sent the 1976 singles “The Snakes Crawl at Night” and “ Just Between Me and You ”out to radio stations with no promotion. The latter became a top 10 hit on the radio.

Pride’s musical style is generally associated with the studio-driven “Nashville sound” of RCA, Columbia and Decca Records in the 1960s, which later evolved into what is sometimes referred to as “countrypolitan” music. The “sound” generally involves tight but commercially safe musical compositions, the presence of steel guitars, softer string arrangements and backing vocals, and a standard rhythmic structure.

The creative talents of a great many artists tended to get blended into the mix in the money-driven “Nashville sound,” which ultimately had a somewhat predictable and repetitive quality. The 1960s “outlaw” country sound emerging from Bakersfield, California, and central Texas was in some ways a response to these limitations.

But Pride stood out from the Nashville crowd in large measure because of his remarkable voice, perhaps one of the greatest in country music history. A baritone capable of impressive depth and range, with crisp phrasings and an undeniably warm emotional palette, he possessed musical gifts almost immediately identifiable in each song.

He was a talented crooner and country balladeer but could also shift to a variety of styles, depending on the song. For instance, on early songs like “ Cotton Fields ,” written by folk singer Leadbelly, Pride shows an intriguing command of “Texas swing” in a number almost performed as a Buddy Holly song. His songs also often convincingly capture the “twang” and yodeling flourishes of talented singers like Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers, albeit in a less rowdy manner.

Pride’s appearance on the Johnny Cash Show in 1970, in which the two baritones trade songs in a medley, is a great example of his range as a vocalist in an abbreviated appearance.

Pride of Country Music (1967)

Much has been made in the media, to a certain extent justifiably, about the significance of Pride’s role as the first African American to emerge in the country scene and the second African American to play at the Grand Ole Opry (founding member DeFord Bailey being the first) in Nashville. However, at least on the surface, it does not appear that this fact was terribly important to Pride himself.

In interviews throughout his career, which always tended to focus on the “unusual” appearance of an African American country singer, he often pointed out, in one way or another, the connected character of early “roots” music. In a PBS documentary about his life, at one point Pride contends that “American music is made up of three types of music—gospel, country and blues—and each borrows from each other in some way. I grew up listening to music that way.” He also mentions that his family preferred Appalachian and bluegrass artists like Bill Monroe on the radio while they worked in the fields.

Undoubtedly Pride faced trying social and personal circumstances, including struggles with depression, throughout his career. There is a well-known story of Pride working in a very inhospitable Dallas club early in his career, in which Willie Nelson gave him a kiss on stage to break the tension and indicate his support. According to Texas Monthly, the Shreveport, Louisiana-born country singer Faron Young once told a radio station manager that “if the station stopped playing Pride’s records, it could forget about Young’s too.”

Pride often claimed that he used his charm and self-effacing manner to address racial differences and issues with audiences before beginning many of his early shows. The picture drawn in portions of the media, and Pride’s own comments, may include an element of glossing over, but it does seem clear, in its own way, that the singer’s career and great success helps put the lie to the reactionary slanders about perpetual and insurmountable “white racism.”

The circumstances of Pride’s death on December 12 prompted several country music artists, including Maren Morris, Brandi Carlile and Mickey Guyton (the first black female solo artist to receive a Grammy nomination in a country category), to publicly voice concern over the fact that the Dallas-based Pride was invited to perform at the Country Music Awards (CMA) in Nashville November 11. Receiving a lifetime achievement award, he performed a live duet of his hit song “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’” with artist Jimmie Allen at the ceremony. Video of the event shows Pride backstage speaking in a room with members of the media and others without masks on. CMA claims he tested negative after leaving the award show.

Country Music Charley Pride (1966)

Whatever the truth of these reports, Pride’s death from COVID-19 is another in a lengthening list of artists who have died preventable deaths due to the criminally reckless “herd immunity” policies of the ruling class.

This sad death toll also includes songwriter John Prine, jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis, jazz saxophonists Lee Konitz and Manu Dibango, guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, bassist Henry Grimes, trumpeter Wallace Rooney, pianists Onaje Allan Gumbs and Mike Longo, bossa nova singer Dulce Nunes, The Soft Boys bassist Matthew Seligman, producer Hal Willner, Fountains of Wayne singer Adam Schlesinger, rapper Fred the Godson (Frederick Thomas), Tejano guitarist Guadalupe “Shorty” Ortiz, Four Seasons singer Tommy DeVito, violinist Vincent Lionti and conductors Alexander Vedernikov and Joel Revzen.

Most of these artists were over the age of 70 or had pre-existing medical conditions, which made them particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. More importantly, they were considered expendable by American and global capitalism.

As we noted in our obituary of Ellis Marsalis and Bucky Pizzarelli: “The cold calculations of these spokesmen for profit stand in stark contrast to the warmth and humanity exhibited by the large numbers of ordinary people now grieving the loss of these artists. Well into their 80s and 90s, Marsalis and Pizzarelli continued to give something meaningful to the world they lived in, just as they always had, and just as many countless others do, in large and small ways, most of whose names will never be widely known. In the context of the homicidal debates raging among the various mouthpieces for governments and corporations, the lives of these veteran artists somehow come to represent the humanity of an entire generation.”

Charley Pride’s life, unfortunately, now gets added to this group.

The new UK variant of coronavirus raises urgent questions about pandemic policy

Benjamin Mateus

“The bottom line is that we need to suppress transmission of all SARS-CoV-2 viruses as quickly as we can. The more we allow it to spread, the more opportunity it has to change. I cannot stress enough to all governments and people how important it is to take the necessary precautions to limit transmission.” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

On December 14, Public Health England (PHE) informed the World Health Organization (WHO) of a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, designated VUI-202012/01, which stands for the first Variant Under Investigation in December 2020. By December 13, 1,108 cases of this specific variant had been identified, predominantly from south and east of England.

Commuters in London during the pandemic [Credit: AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth]

What concerned scientists were the high number of mutations it carried and the speed with which it was becoming the dominant strain. After first appearing in the county of Kent on September 20, it was responsible for 28 percent of infections in London in early November. By December 9, that figure had climbed to 62 percent.

Jeffrey Barrett, the director of the COVID Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, told the Financial Times, “This new variant is very concerning, and is unlike anything we have seen so far in the pandemic.” There have been 23 letters in its genetic code that have undergone a change, of which 17 could affect its behavior or improve its ability to adhere to human cells and propagate.

The UK is one of few countries, including the United States, Australia, Iceland, the Netherlands, South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, sequencing the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Since the pandemic began, close to 285,000 sequence submissions have been made to GISAID, a global science initiative and the primary source for open access to the coronavirus’s genomic data. The UK’s SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequencing consortium is the largest contributor to the GISAID database, with more than 120,000 sequences.

Dr. Susan Hopkins, PHE Joint Medical Advisor and epidemiologist for the Department of Infectious Disease at the Imperial College, London, added to the press release statement on December 14, “We are investigating a new strain of SARS-CoV-2, predominately in Kent and the surrounding areas. It is not unexpected that the virus should evolve, and it is important that we spot any changes quickly to understand the potential risk any variant may pose. There is currently no evidence that this strain causes more severe illness, although it is being detected in a wide geography especially where there are increased cases being detected.”

In a query from journalists at the WHO Press Brief on December 21, Dr. Mike Ryan explained that their colleagues at the PHE monitor complete sequences of a proportion of cases all the time. They became aware of increased transmissions in the population in the south and east of England towards the end of November. When they began to look at the cases and the characteristics of the viral sequences, they identified the variance now under investigation. Their retrospective analysis determined that this variance had emerged in late September. Once they recognized the epidemic implications, they notified the WHO through their International Health Regulations reporting mechanisms.

Proportion of VUI-202012-01 variant sequences among all UK sequences [Credit: European CDC]

The ability to trace in real time the changes in the genetic sequence of a virus around the world during a pandemic is unprecedented in human history. However, understanding how these mutations will affect the nature of the virus is a laborious and uncertain undertaking. It will require retrospective and prospective studies to appreciate scientifically how they will impact the population.

Kristian Andersen, director of infectious disease genomics at Scripps Research Institute in California, said, “I have seen many articles stating, ‘no effect on immunity or vaccines or clinical features.’ That is not correct. The fact is we don’t know but we will in coming weeks.” Given that the vaccines target multiple spike protein sites, many experts in the field have agreed that it is unlikely that these therapeutics would be ineffective.

Dr. Andersen added, “This spread is happening at a moment in time when there are already many lineages circulating, and despite that, it is displacing them all. We can’t say for sure, but to me, it looks like this very explosive growth is primarily because of the new mutation.” His report on the origin of the virus published in the journal Nature Medicine was critical in refuting the claim that the SARS-CoV-2 was produced in a laboratory.

However, this unknown factor in the change in the virus’s capabilities has created the present social consternation on the B.1.1.7 variant of the SARS-CoV-2 that makes the policy of herd immunity such a dangerous and demented proposal.

On December 18, the PHE notified the government after modeling analysis revealed the seriousness of its findings. The new strain is considered to be 70 percent more transmissible than the previous ones. According to Dr. Maria Kerkhove, technical lead for the WHO, the reproduction factor increased by 0.4. In other words, it climbed from 1.1 to 1.5 despite the measures that were already in place. This implies that before the emergence of this strain, the region's epidemic’s growth factor with all its measures in place was only at a standstill. However, now the public health scientists see the epidemic grow despite these measures.

Regarding the term reproduction number (R0), it is a number that defines the number of expected secondary cases that are produced by a single infection in a completely susceptible population. In the above instance, ten people will go on to infect 15 others. The R0 is affected by numerous biological (virus and host factors, duration of transmissibility, etc.), socio-behavioral (social distancing, lockdowns, mask usage), and environmental (season, population density, indoors versus outdoors) factors that govern the SARS-CoV-2’s transmission. The R0 is not a constant number for the virus, and is estimated through complex mathematical models.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has frequently downplayed the pandemic's health risks and called it “inhuman” to cancel Christmas, issued a sudden about-face on Saturday, placing London and most of England’s Southeast into lockdown and banning Christmas-season gatherings beyond single households. The measures imposed were even more severe than those issued in March, reflecting the fear that has taken hold within the political establishment of this variant of the virus.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson

On Saturday, speaking to a live audience on camera, he said, “When the virus changes its method of attack, we must change our method of defense. We have to act on information as we have it because this is now spreading very fast.” According to the New York Times, the pace of new infections has almost doubled over the last two weeks. Faster spread due to higher transmissibility implies more hospitalizations, which will lead to more fatalities, even if the mutated virus is no more deadly.

Viruses are constantly changing through random mutations, and monitoring these changes is useful in phylogenetic studies and contact tracing. In most cases, the mutations are benign and do not contribute any particular characteristics to the variant. They rarely impact clinical outcomes in the population. In the present case, however, the B.1.1.7 variant has demonstrated multiple mutations in the spike protein, which could aid the virus in binding to human cells more efficiently and entering them. In a particular comment regarding B.1.1.7 variant, the GISAID website notes, “Mutations in the spike protein have relevance for potential effects on both host receptor as well as antibody binding with possible consequences for infectivity, transmission potential, and antibody escape and vaccine escape. Actual effects need to be measured and verified experimentally.”

These include mutation N501Y, in one of six key amino-acid residues in the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein, critical for binding to the ACE2 receptor on human cells. Other notable mutations include the spike deletion 69-70 del, which has been described in the context of evasion of the human immune response, and mutation P681H, which plays an essential role in viral infectivity. It has been hypothesized that these changes are providing the virus with a selective advantage over other variants.

In a December 20 threat assessment brief, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control writes, “The unusually high number of spike protein mutations, other genomic properties of the variant, and the high sequencing coverage in the UK suggests that the variant has not emerged through gradual accumulations of mutations in the UK. It is also unlikely that the variant could have arisen through selection pressure from ongoing vaccination programmes as the observed increase does not match the timing of such activities.”

The last observation is important, since it means that the vaccination drive which began in Britain three weeks ago is not the cause of the mutations, and the mutated viruses are thus unlikely to be more resistant to the vaccination. But the very fact that there is as yet no convincing scientific explanation of how so many mutations could take place without being detected at an earlier stage appears to have shaken the British authorities.

South Africa has also reported a similar mutation in the virus that has become the dominant form in more than 90 percent of cases. The new variant, known as 501.V2, is dominating the second wave of their battle with the pandemic, leading to sterner lockdown measures. Though this South African variant shares with the UK variant mutations in the N501Y region of the spike protein, they have no close evolutionary relationship. It does suggest “that the emergence of successful variants with similar properties may not be rare.”

SARS-CoV-2 virions (yellow) emerging from a human cell [Credit: Wikipedia]

Since the announcement on Saturday of the UK lockdown, one country after another in Europe, Asia, South America, and the Middle East, now totaling at least 38 countries, is imposing restrictions on travel from the UK or other countries with documented cases of the variant. The US has avoided imposing such bans yet. Most experts believe these bans will not prevent the spread of the variant across their borders.

Dr. Ravindra Gupta, a virologist at the University of Cambridge, who detailed the recurrent emergence and significance of onward transmission of the deletion 69-70del in a publication dated December 15, noted that “this thing’s transmitting, it’s acquiring, it’s adapting all the time. But people don’t want to hear what we say, which is: this virus will mutate.”

In the concluding remarks of the bioRxiv preprint, he writes, “Given the emergence of multiple clusters of variants carrying RBD mutations and the deletion 69/70del, limitation of transmission takes on a renewed urgency. Concerted global vaccination efforts with wide coverage should be accelerated. Continued emphasis on testing/tracing, social distancing, and mask-wearing is essential, with investment in other novel methods to limit transmission. Detection of the deletion by rapid diagnostics should be a research priority as such tests could be used as a proxy for antibody escape mutations to inform surveillance at a global scale.”

In layman’s terms, this means that it is essential for the struggle against COVID-19 to monitor in particular any mutations that would make it better able to evade the body’s own immune systems. COVID-19 is not merely a moving target. It is constantly mutating in ways that, through natural selection, tend to make it more efficient. The longer the virus is allowed free rein, and the greater the number of people it is allowed to infect—through the criminal policy of “herd immunity”—the more likely it is to become more infective and, potentially, more lethal. That is why the only rational, scientific response to the pandemic is to shut it down as quickly as possible, through a lockdown of all non-essential businesses and schools until mass vaccination brings it under control.

Spain’s Podemos deliberately downplayed COVID-19 danger starting in January

Alejandro López

Revelations from the conservative daily ABC confirm that Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)–Podemos government knew about the deadly implications of COVID-19 by late January. In the following month and a half, while it downplayed the risks posed by the pandemic, the Ministry of Defence busily procured, evaluated and contracted the latest military-grade personal protective equipment (PPE) for the army. At least four major contracts were signed in this period.

Last September, the WSWS noted that well-known journalist Bob Woodward’s revelations that US President Donald Trump deliberately misled the public about the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic also exposed Podemos. As part of the government, it had access to similar information as Trump through Spanish intelligence. Moreover, just like Trump, they issued misleading statements downplaying the risks posed by the virus.

This has now been confirmed by the conservative ABC ’s article, “Defence Signed Four Contracts to Protect Itself to Face Covid before the State of Alarm.” Collating the information presented by Woodward’s revelations in conjunction with that of ABC shows a clear chronology that criminally implicates Podemos.

Pablo Iglesias, Secretary-General of Podemos. (Image Credit: PODEMOS/Youtube)

Bob Woodward revealed that on January 28, Trump was told by his national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien: “This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency. ... This is going to be the roughest thing you face.”

As the WSWS noted, this was undoubtedly shared at the time with the PSOE–Podemos government and the National Intelligence Centre (CNI), Spain’s main intelligence service. Deputy Prime Minister and Podemos General Secretary Pablo Iglesias sits on the commission that directs, supervises and controls the CNI’s activities. The CNI works closely with the CIA and other NATO intelligence services, assessing issues identified as major threats to Spanish national security—including pandemics, according to its latest strategy documents.

On February 1, days after Trump was briefed on the dangers of COVID-19, Spain’s Ministry of Defence issued a contract for cleaning and disposable products in anticipation of the pandemic. This was the first of four contracts it issued before the PSOE–Podemos government announced the state of alarm and shelter-at-home policy on March 14, as strikes spread from Italy across Europe, including to Spain’s auto parts industry.

As the contract was issued, however, the public was not being alerted to the dangers of the virus. Mass events like the Mobilise World Congress, with an annual attendance of around 100,000 people, had yet to cancel.

The day before, on January 31, Fernando Simón, coordinator of health emergencies, was saying that “Spain will have, at most, a few diagnosed cases,” adding that he hoped that “there will be no local transmission and in that case, it would be very limited and very controlled.”

On the day of the contract, the first confirmed COVID-19 case was detected in the Canary Islands. Pedro Sánchez said the health emergency “worries” him, but that “we are in good hands.” He added, “Spain has a strong health system and an alert and detection network with professional experts who from the first minute work following the recommendations of the WHO.”

On February 7, Trump told Woodward that Chinese President Xi Jinping had warned him about COVID-19: “This is deadly stuff. It’s also more deadly than…even your strenuous flus…this is 5 percent [case fatality rate] versus 1 percent and less than 1 percent.” Trump added, “It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch.”

Nonetheless, no measures were taken by the Spanish PSOE–Podemos governments. Flights to and from Italy and China, two hotspots, continued. In public, Podemos, like Trump, downplayed the virus.

Podemos spokesperson Pablo Echenique, who is also a scientist at the Spanish National Research Council, tweeted on February 25 that COVID-19 was “a less aggressive flu than that of every year” and that it was “absolutely controlled in Spain.” He attacked the “pseudo-journalism of reporters with masks” for warning about the threat of COVID-19. He gave as an example the “rigor and professionalism” of journalist Lorenzo Milá, who was downplaying the seriousness of the virus.

While Echenique ridiculed the deadly pandemic, and his government’s Health Ministry took no significant measure to stop its spread, the Ministry of Defence signed another three contracts. ABC reports: “The four contracts awarded before the state of alarm are for the purchase of material of different types. In all cases, these are useful elements to avoid contagions, or at least prevent them: from the aforementioned PPE kits to disposable cleaning materials through hydroalcoholic gel or disinfectant substances.”

While the army obtained PPE and other protective gear, health care workers would soon face the virus nearly empty-handed; many would fall ill and die. Figures released in July show that Spain had one of the highest infection rates among health workers—51,849, according to the European Federation of Salaried Doctors. This was higher than the number of health care workers infected in Italy (24,683) and France (25,727) combined. Sixty-three died in Spain during the pandemic.

On February 24, Spain detected its first COVID-19 case on Spain’s mainland, in densely populated Madrid, Catalonia and Valencia. On March 2, the Ministry of Defence issued another PPE contract. Nevertheless, Spain’s National Security Council still downplayed the threat posed by the virus two days later, placing a pandemic as one of the least likely of 15 risk scenarios contemplated. Iglesias attended this meeting.

They ignored the WHO, which was already issuing warnings that the virus had spread to Spain. Italian schools were already closed at the time.

At the time, Podemos was focused on its brainchild, the Sexual Liberty bill, to define all non-consensual sex as rape and establish special courts to deal with sexual offences. In early March, it made repeated calls to participate in the upcoming feminist march for Women’s International Day, on March 8. By then, there were already 17 confirmed dead and nearly 600 recorded infections. Against WHO advice, the government let the demonstration proceed, with 120,000 people in attendance, including PSOE and Podemos ministers.

On March 10, the PSOE–Podemos government adopted limited measures, like banning sports events and flights to Italy—then the European country worst hit by COVID-19. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence signed another two contracts, on March 11 and March 13, a day before the government adopted an abrupt shift in policy among a wave of strikes throughout Europe. On March 13, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez suddenly announced a nationwide lockdown.

Podemos’s conspiracy against workers and youth continues to this day. The Spanish government’s priority continues to be forcing workers back to work and children back to school to produce profits as billions of euros in European Union (EU) bailouts are doled out to the banks and big corporations. Iglesias himself will sit in the commission to distribute €140 billion to the super-rich.

This policy has led to more than 70,000 deaths and over 1.8 million infections in Spain. Worldwide, the death toll is now over 1.7 million and nearly 78 million worldwide. Like most of Europe, Spain now faces a third wave, without having ever controlled the second.

An answer to the social and public health crisis facing millions can only be found by opposing the “left populist” politics of Podemos and fighting for an internationalist, socialist movement of the European and international working class.

It is critical to assimilate the Podemos experience in Spain and internationally. It is a warning that its international allies—the DSA in the United States, Die Linke in Germany, La France insoumise, and Syriza in Greece—would implement “herd immunity” as well, were they in government. Drawn from the affluent middle class and based on the identity politics of race and gender, these parties are entirely oriented to protecting the privileges they derive from the capitalist system.

Hunger in the Philippines reaches all-time highs

Robert Campion

Hunger has risen to historic highs in the Philippines, according to the latest findings from the country’s pollster Social Weather Stations. The finding is an indictment of the capitalist system and the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in which millions have lost their livelihood and employment without compensation.

Residents try to salvage belongings after their homes were toppled from Typhoon Goni in San Andres, Catanduanes province, eastern Philippines on Monday Nov. 2, 2020 [Credit: Philippine Red Cross via AP]

Social Weather Survey released its findings last Wednesday based on its first survey conducted through face-to-face interviews since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Between November 21–25, the pollster sampled 1,500 adults and probed the issue of involuntary hunger—that is, hunger due to the lack of food to eat. The results were extrapolated to the general population with the assistance of the government’s Philippine Statistics Authority population projections for 2020.

The questions asked were, “In the last three months, did it happen even once that your family experienced hunger and not have anything to eat?” If the answer was yes, respondents were asked: “Did it happen only once, a few times, often or always?” The answers “often” and “always” were taken as constituting severe hunger, the two other answers as moderate hunger.

The findings show that 16.0 percent of the population, or an estimated 4.0 million families, experienced involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months. This is actually a drop from the record high in September which reached 30.7 percent (almost a third of all families) owing to prolonged periods of unemployment and loss of income as a result of government lockdowns. However, it is still double the pre-pandemic levels of 8.8 percent which were recorded in December 2019.

Combining the quarterly hunger surveys in May (16.7 percent) and July (20.9 percent) with those in September and December, the average hunger rate for Filipino families in 2020 assumes an historic high of 21.1 percent. This surpasses the previous records of 19.9 percent in 2011 and 2012.

Hunger was most prevalent in Metro Manila with 23.3 percent (almost 1 in 4 families), followed by 16.0 percent in Mindanao, 14.4 percent in Balance Luzon, and 14.3 percent in the Visayas.

The record high hunger rates of September are being used by the government of Rodrigo Duterte to economically bludgeon the population back to work, accept the risk of getting infected and to produce profits. Virus restrictions have been eased in recent months in order to revive the economy which is reportedly set to contract by 9.5 percent this year.

“I've never seen hunger at this level before,” said Jomar Fleras, executive director of Rise Against Hunger (RAH) in the Philippines in an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“If you go out there everybody will tell you that they’re more afraid of dying from hunger than dying from COVID. They don’t care about COVID anymore.”

The latest figures show 459,789 total coronavirus cases, with 8,947 deaths. There are currently at least 28,000 active cases, down from a high of 83,000 in August, but this is set to rise in the months ahead as businesses reopen.

Charities are also under immense strain to meet the demand.

Flavie Villanueva, Food Programme Manager of ‘Society of the Divine Word’, began giving out free meals, 5 days a week in April. What began with 250 people lining up for meals each day has ballooned to 1,100.

“I believe that hunger has affected us severely to the point that even those with homes, but [who] are living already in that desperate mode would come and ask food from us,” Villanueva said. “Hopefully we can continue to provide until Christmas or January.”

Hunger was already at the highest levels in Southeast Asia prior to the pandemic, according to a report from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. It stated that between 2017 and 2019 about 59 million people were “moderately or severely food insecure.”

In addition, hunger has been exacerbated by an intense season of typhoons that have destroyed tens of thousands of homes.

The latest unemployment data from the government shows 8.7 percent out of work in October (almost double from a year ago) down from 10 percent in July. The underemployment rate—which depicts those willing but unable to find additional work—reached 14.4 percent in October, lower than July’s 17.3 percent.

Daniel Auminto, who became unemployed due to government lockdowns, told AFP that it was “painful” to have lost everything and be on the street where he says the police treat them “like animals.”

“They should understand our situation, not treat us like pigs,” he said. “We’re already living like pigs.”

From the outset, the Duterte administration has neglected the social crisis and reacted with hostility to the growing unrest in the working class. Its repressive “war on drugs” in which around 30,000 people have been murdered in cold blood by police and vigilantes since 2016 is an attempt to terrorize the working class.

When a protest in Quezon City erupted in April over the lack of sufficient government food aid, protesters were arrested and President Duterte publicly encouraged the police to “shoot them dead.” The government has criminalized journalists, shutdown the TV network ABS-CBN and signed a new Anti-Terror Act granting sweeping police state powers.

The social devastation in the Philippines is a sharp expression of international processes. All over the world, the cost and horrors of the pandemic have been borne overwhelmingly by the working class and the poor.

According to a report from the World Bank in October, an additional 88 million to 115 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty (less than $1.90 a day) this year, with the figure rising to 150 million by 2021, depending on economic conditions.

So-called middle income countries such as the Philippines, the report stated, make up 82 percent of the total, widening the international inequality between nations. The latest Social Weather Stations data on hunger makes clear that the social gulf within countries like the Philippines is also rapidly widening.

Dire warning from CDC on US life expectancy: “A drop of two to three years for 2020 isn’t out of the question”

Kate Randall

As of Thursday evening, the United States had seen more than 18 million cases of the coronavirus and more than 330,000 had died from the disease, according to the Worldometer web site. These grim statistics show that 2020 is on track to be the deadliest year in US history, with deaths topping three million for the first time.

In addition, the US could see a decline of two to three years in life expectancy, the steepest drop since World War II. The drive on the part of the Trump administration, aided by both big business parties, to keep factories and schools open and stock prices soaring is directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. These deaths could have been prevented by closing all non-essential businesses and schools to contain the virus and allocating the funds needed to cover the lost earnings of laid-off workers and small businesses impacted by the pandemic. Instead, at the behest of the corporate-financial oligarchy, Congress has sanctioned trillions of dollars in handouts and subsidies to the banks and big corporations.

Life expectancy in the US increased nominally in 2018 and 2019 after three consecutive years of declines. However, in January, before the widespread impact of the coronavirus, the United Nations projected that US life expectancy in 2020 would still lag behind that of 35 other nations, including much of Europe.

David J. Sencer CDC Museum in Atlanta, GA [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

Data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Tuesday showed that life expectancy rose to 78.8 years in 2019, an increase of one-tenth of a year. The main drivers of the increase were lower death rates from heart disease and cancer, the number one and number two causes of death, respectively.

Robert Anderson, head of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), said Tuesday that he had performed a simple simulation based on mortality figures through August and found that life expectancy had already declined by about one-and-a-half years. Anderson said he expects that life expectancy could fall by two or three years for the full year. “We’ve had a lot of deaths added since August,” he said, “so I think a drop of two to three years for 2020 isn’t out of the question.”

The US hasn’t seen a decline in life of expectancy of this magnitude since 1943, when World War II pushed that metric down by 2.9 years. The largest drop was in 1918, when tens of thousands of US soldiers died in World War I and the so-called Spanish Flu claimed an estimated 675,000 lives. Life expectancy that year fell by 11.8 years compared to 1917. This large decline was in part due to the particularly high death rate from the flu among children, whose deaths disproportionately drive down life expectancy.

More than 2.85 million people died in the US last year, the highest number on record. This included about 659,000 deaths from heart disease, nearly 600,000 from cancer and about 173,000 from accidents (including drug overdoses). COVID-19 is now poised to become the third leading cause of death in 2020. There were some periods during the year when the coronavirus was the number one killer.

Other types of deaths have increased alongside the pandemic. Early this year, a surge in pneumonia deaths may have actually been COVID-19 deaths that were not recognized as such.

NCHS’s Anderson said there has also been an unexpected number of deaths from certain types of heart and circulatory disease, diabetes and dementia. These may also be related to COVID-19, with the virus weakening patients already suffering from other diseases.

It is also likely that the care of these vulnerable patients was compromised due to the overwhelming of hospitals with coronavirus patients. Patients have also been less likely to seek treatment out of fear of contracting the virus at a hospital.

The deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans has also been accompanied by a sharp rise in drug overdose deaths. The CDC reports that there were 81,000 drug overdose deaths in the 12 months ending May, the highest number on record in a one-year period.

Substance abuse experts point to the disruption of in-person treatment and recovery services as a factor. The pandemic has left many people living on their own and at greater risk of overdosing without the help of friends of family members who could seek emergency help or administer overdose-reversing medication.

Another key to the increase in overdose deaths is the disruption of supply for drug dealers, who are increasingly turning to fentanyl, which is both cheaper and deadlier, and mixing it into heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines.

Illicitly manufactured fentanyl appears to be the primary driver of this increase in deaths, according to the CDC. The role of fentanyl in overdose deaths increased by a staggering 38.4 percent from the 12-month period leading up to June 2019 compared to the 12-month period leading up to May 2020. Overdose deaths involving cocaine increased by 26.5 percent.

A sharp rise in mental health issues among adults has also been seen. The CDC reports that four in 10 US adults say they’ve had at least one mental health event this year. A CDC study in late June found that 40 percent of adults struggled with mental health or substance abuse. Thirty-one percent reported anxiety or depression; 13 percent started or increased substance abuse; 26 percent reported trauma or stress-related disorder symptoms; and 11 percent said they seriously considered suicide.

The Guardian reports that Kenneth M. Johnson of the University of New Hampshire, a demographer, projects that the pandemic will cause deaths to outpace births in more than half of US counties this year for the first time in history. “We’ve got people dying and hospital rooms jammed,” Johnson said. “Who’s going to want to have a baby?”

Plunging life expectancy, increases in heart disease, diabetes and dementia; a sharp rise in drug overdose deaths; increased mental health issues and suicide; decreased birth rates—this misery is not a natural phenomenon. The pandemic’s horrific death toll tells only part of the story. Its horror has seeped into every facet of American life.

The incoming Biden administration has pledged to continue the drive to open schools and “not shut down the economy.” The $900 billion coronavirus relief bill adopted by Congress on Monday is totally inadequate to meet the vast social needs of the population in the pandemic.

It offers a pittance at best to alleviate the poverty, hunger, joblessness and housing insecurity faced by millions of workers and their families. It will not pay for workers to stay home from unsafe factories, or technology to provide high-quality at-home learning for their children. Nor will it provide increased funds for hospitals to treat patients suffering from heart attacks and strokes, or provide treatment and counseling for the millions suffering in isolation with substance abuse issues.

The projected two- to three-year decline in US life expectancy is part of the colossal social cost of an economic and political system focused on the stock market and corporate profits at the expense of workers’ very lives.

Only the working class, organized as an independent political force, fighting for the closure of nonessential workplaces and schools, with full income protection for workers and small businesses, can provide a way forward in opposition to the ruling elite’s policy of death and suffering.

Russia imposes sanctions on German officials as Navalny story assumes farcical character

Clara Weiss

The story about the alleged poisoning of the leader of the imperialist-backed anti-Putin opposition in Russia, Alexei Navalny, is assuming an ever more openly farcical character.

Alexei Navalny

While the very fact of Navalny’s poisoning with Novichok has not been proven to this day, last week, CNN, the German magazine Der Spiegel, working in collaboration with Bellingcat, an obscure publication with ties to NATO think tanks, as well as the Russian pro-opposition outlet The Insider, published features alleging that they had personally identified the members of an “elite unit” of the Russian secret service FSB that had supposedly poisoned Navalny with Novichok.

To identify these men, Bellingcat wrote, they only had to do some “creative Googling (or Yandexing) and a few hundred euros worth of cryptocurrency to be fed through an automated payment platform, not much different than Amazon or Lexis Nexis, to acquire telephone records with geolocation data, passenger manifests, and residential data.” They then compared the material with databases that had been “leaked” to them from anonymous sources in recent years.

Last Thursday, the Russian president Vladimir Putin indicated in a press conference that the FSB had, indeed, been following Navalny, but denied that any involvement in the alleged poisoning of Navalny, stating, “If we had wanted to kill him, we would have finished the job.” He called the “investigation” by CNN and Spiegel the work of “American secret services.”

This Monday, CNN and Spiegel published another story entitled, “Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny dupes spy into revealing how he was poisoned.” On August 14, the story goes, Navalny, based on the “investigation” of Bellingcat, Spiegel and CNN, picked up the phone, hours before the outlets published their “revelations,” to call one of the members of the “FSB elite unit”, a certain Konstantin Kudriatsev. Using a “very simple software” that, according to Navalny, is used by “phone prankers” to hide his real number, Navalny pretended to be calling on behalf of Nikolai Patrushev, the former head of the Russian secret service FSB and current secretary of the Russian Security Council, which consults directly with President Vladimir Putin. Navalny has released a video recording of his call on his own YouTube channel.

Navalny asked Kudriatsev to provide assessments of all the team members, and to describe in detail what he had done. Kudriatsev explained that the nerve agent had been planted on Navalny’s “underpants” a full two days before Navalny went on the notorious flight to Moscow. (Kudriatsev could, in fact, not give a clear answer as to where they put the poison but Navalny, saying vaguely that it was “the trousers” or “underpants” but Navalny, CNN and Spiegel, apparently for the sake of a good story, chose to go with the “underpants.”)

Navalny also asked whether “any more problems” had to be expected with traces of Novichok on the clothes of Navalny. “No,” Kudriatsev assured him, “we went there several times” afterward to “clean up.” CNN concluded triumphantly that the phone call had allowed them “to complete the picture of Navalny's poisoning by the Russian state.”

As Navalny himself stated in a video introducing the latest “revelations”: “this whole poisoning story is better than any Hollywood movie.” One might add that most script writers in Hollywood would have given more consideration to basic common sense and logic than those behind this bizarre parody of a spy crime.

If the poison was planted on Navalny’s clothes two days earlier, why did he not fall ill earlier? Why did no one fall ill who came in touch with him at the airport, or on the flight if the clothes he wore were poisoned? After all, the alleged Novichok poisoning of the Skripals in Britain required the evacuation of entire buildings. And how could the nerve agent find its way from his underwear to a water bottle which suddenly appeared with traces of Novichok in a laboratory working for the German Bundeswehr weeks later? (Conveniently, CNN dropped the water bottle, which had suddenly appeared in the media narrative in September out of the blue, from its latest reports.)

Why would Kudriatsev, member of an “FSB elite unit,” chat over a regular phone to an unknown man for over 45 minutes, describing in detail a supposedly massive operative failure of the FSB that had taken place almost four months ago and has since become the subject of enormous political tensions between Moscow, and the leading imperialist powers, including Germany, the US and France? And how could a man, who has supposedly followed Navalny and his blog for years, not recognize the latter’s voice over the phone?

As if all of this was not enough, the Spiegel—which breathlessly reported on a “vacation sickness” of Navalny’s wife in the summer, which did not even last 24 hours, interpreting it as a possible attempt at Navalny’s life, and ascribed “muscle cramps” Navalny experienced while jogging to the ongoing impact of the nerve agent—now also suggested that “back in 2019,” Navalny was experiencing “similar symptoms” on another flight. But, we are told, they only lasted “15 minutes.”

The Navalny story becomes even more farcical if one reads it alongside others of the anti-Russia campaign. While one attempt on Navalny’s life by the Russian state after another has failed miserably despite an enormous expense of resources, and while FSB officers seem not to mind chatting with strangers about operative secrets over the phone, the American and European public has been told, time and time again, over the past years, that the same Russian state is responsible for monumental hacks that have undermined the “integrity” of the US 2016 election, and almost brought down its cyber security system.

And while CNN, Spiegel and Bellingcat, through “creative Googling,” and by using software employed by “phone prankers,” were able to establish the identity and modus operandi of FSB murder squads, the entire national security apparatus of US imperialism with all its ties to German and British intelligence, has been unable, despite years of feverish work and propaganda, to uncover any proof for these massive hacks.

Russia has responded to Monday’s story by imposing sanctions on Tuesday on as yet unnamed German officials who will not be allowed to enter Russia anymore. The sanctions were announced by Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in a meeting with representatives from Germany, France and Sweden, and will likely be extended to countries other than Germany. The FSB called the recording published by Navalny a “fraud” and stated that the telephone software used by Navalny was frequently employed by American services.

The feverish quality of the concocted stories about “Navalny’s poisoning” must serve as a deadly serious warning to the working class about the advanced character of the war preparations against Russia. No lie is too big, and no story too absurd, to not be employed in the service of war propaganda.

Within hours, the latest Navalny story has been picked up not only uncritically by the bourgeois media but also by government officials. In Germany, Franziska Brantner, a leading representative of the Green Party, stated that these revelations indicated that Russia “is making policies in a criminal manner. The appeasement policy of recent years has not worked.” Brantner called for an immediate stop to the construction of the Russian-German gas pipeline Nord Stream 2, which has already been sanctioned by the US. Echoing these calls for a tougher stance on Russia, the spokesperson of the Left Party for matters of foreign and defense policy, Matthias Höhn, called the alleged employment of Novichok against Navalny “a violation of international law.”

In the US, the Washington Post, owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, published an editorial last week on the Navalny case, entitled “The U.S. can’t keep ignoring Russia’s brazen use of chemical weapons,” calling upon the incoming Biden administration to escalate sanctions against Russia. The objective logic of the endless provocations and war propaganda by US and German imperialism is to prepare the grounds for all-out war with the country with the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world. As the WSWS noted last week: “The flood of anti-Russian propaganda in the immediate wake of the Electoral College’s vote to confirm Biden as the elected president of the US and with little more than a month till Inauguration Day serves as a warning. If the Democrats succeed in securing a peaceful transfer of power on January 20, it will be on the basis of a program of intensified war abroad and stepped-up attacks on the democratic and social rights of the working class at home.”