Testing the waters: Russia explores reconfiguring Gulf security

James M. Dorsey

Russia hopes to blow new life into a proposal for a multilateral security architecture in the Gulf, with the tacit approval of the Biden administration.

If successful, the initiative would help stabilise the region, cement regional efforts to reduce tensions, and potentially prevent war-wracked Yemen from emerging as an Afghanistan on the southern border of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf of Aden and at the mouth of the Red Sea.

For now, Vitaly Naumkin, a prominent scholar, academic advisor of the foreign and justice ministries, and head of the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, is testing the waters, according to Newsweek, which first reported the move.

Last week, he invited former officials, scholars, and journalists from feuding Middle Eastern nations to a closed-door meeting in Moscow to discuss the region’s multiple disputes and conflicts and ways of preventing them from spinning out of control.

Mr. Naumkin, who is believed to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, co-authored the plan first put forward in 2004. The Russian foreign ministry published a fine-tuned version in 2019.

Russia appears to have timed the revival of its proposal to begin creating a framework to deal with Houthi rebels, seemingly gaining the upper hand against Saudi Arabia in Yemen’s seven-year-long devastating war.

The Iranian-backed rebels appear to be closer to capturing the oil and gas-rich province of Marib after two years of some of the bloodiest fighting in the war. The conquest would pave the way for a Houthi takeover of neighbouring Shabwa, another energy-rich region. It would put the rebels in control of all northern Yemen.

The military advances would significantly enhance the Houthi negotiating position in talks to end the war. They also raise the spectre of splitting Yemen into the north controlled by the Houthis and the south dependent on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“The battle for Marib could be a final stand for the possibility of a unified Yemen,” said Yemeni writer and human rights activist Nabil Hetari.

A self-declared independent North Yemen would potentially resemble an Afghanistan sitting on one of the world’s critical chokepoints for the flow of oil and gas. North Yemen would be governed by a nationalist Islamist group that presides over one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, struggles to win international recognition, restore public services, and stabilise a war-ravaged economy while an Al-Qaeda franchise operates in the south.

The Russian initiative also appears geared to take advantage of efforts by Middle Eastern rivals Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Turkey, and Iran to reduce regional tensions, get a grip on their differences, and ensure that they do not spin out of control.

Russia seems to be exploiting what some describe as paused and others as stalled talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran mediated by Iraq. Iraqi officials insisted that the talks are on hold until a new Iraqi government has been formed following last month’s elections. The discussions focused at least partially on forging agreement on ways to end the Yemen war.

Mr. Naumkin suggested that the Russian initiative offers an opportunity to carve the Middle East out as a region of cooperation as well as competition with the United States in contrast to southeastern Europe and Ukraine, where US-Russian tension is on the rise.

In the Middle East, Russia and the United States “have one common threat, the threat of war. Neither the United States nor Russia is interested in having this war,” Mr. Naumkin told Newsweek.

A State Department spokesperson would not rule out cooperation. “We remain prepared to cooperate with Russia in areas in which the two sides have common interests while opposing Russian policies that go against US interests,” the spokesperson said.

The Russian proposal calls for integrating the US defense umbrella in the Gulf into a collective security structure that would include Russia, China, Europe, and India alongside the United States. The structure would include, not exclude Iran, and would have to extend to Israel and Turkey.

UAE efforts to return Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the Arab, if not the international fold, although not driven by the Russian initiative, would facilitate it if all other things were equal.

Inspired by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the proposal suggests that the new architecture would be launched at an international conference on security and cooperation in the Gulf.

Russia sees the architecture as enabling the creation of a “counter-terrorism coalition (of) all stakeholders” that would be the motor for resolving conflicts across the region and promoting mutual security guarantees.

The plan would further involve the removal of the “permanent deployment of troops of extra-regional states in the territories of states of the Gulf,” a reference to US, British, and French forces and bases in various Gulf states and elsewhere in the Middle East.

It calls for a “universal and comprehensive” security system that would take into account “the interests of all regional and other parties involved, in all spheres of security, including its military, economic and energy dimensions.”

In Mr. Naumkin’s reading, Middle Eastern rivals “are fed up with what’s going on” and “afraid of possible war.” Negotiations are their only remaining option.

That seems to drive men like UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, his Saudi counterpart Mohammed bin Salman, Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Iranian leader Ebrahim Raisi to reach out to one another in a recent flurry of activity.

“These are talks between autocrats keen to protect their own grip on power and boost their economies: not peace in our time, only within our borders,” cautioned The Economist.

University workers in UK set to strike over pay, terms, conditions and pensions

Henry Lee

On December 1, workers at 58 universities across the UK are set to begin a three-day strike following the latest ballot over a years-long pensions dispute and what the University and College Union (UCU) refers to as the “Four Fights”: pay, workloads, casualisation and equality.

The attacks on pensions being pushed through by the employers increase contributions for many members of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) by thousands of pounds per year and will slash benefits by a third. University workers have faced real-terms salary cuts for many years, leaving real pay 20 percent below the level of 2009, while most researchers are on temporary fixed-term contracts, making it impossible to apply for a mortgage or make plans for the future. A UCU survey revealed that working conditions have deteriorated during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 78 percent reporting increased workloads.

The ballot showed that over 26,000 workers in higher education are ready to fight back against attacks on their pay and pensions, but they have run into a dead end due to the betrayal of the UCU and its pseudo-left apologists, grouped around the UCU Left.

The willingness to fight over these issues by Higher Education (HE) staff is combined with a growing understanding that the UCU will not wage a serious struggle. Only just over half of UCU members eligible to vote in the ballot did so. Most universities will not take part in the strike due to failing to meet the 50 percent turnout requirement set by the anti-strike laws, which were brought in with no resistance from the trade unions.

The UCU has divided Wednesday’s strike into four separate actions on an institution by institution basis, with staff at major universities—even in the same city—called out over different issues. 33 institutions will strike over both pay and pensions, 21 will strike over pay only, and four will strike over pensions only. Workers at six institutions will not strike, but take action short of a strike over pay.

In 2018, the mass opposition of UCU members to an initial attempt to sell out a national strike involving 50,000 workers forced General Secretary Sally Hunt to resign. The replacement of Hunt by current General Secretary Jo Grady was hailed by the Socialist Workers Party-led UCU Left as “a leap to the left,” amid claims that the union would be transformed into “a democratic fighting union that can send shivers down the spine of every employer.” Since then, Grady has worked just as hard as Hunt to prevent HE workers from unifying in a joint offensive against the employers.

Hundreds of striking lecturers and academic staff revolt against the UCU union outside its London HQ during the 2018 strike (WSWS Media)

Following the mandate for strike action, Grady put out a video statement calling for a single day’s walkout for each of the pensions and “Four Fights” disputes in the current term. This would have meant at most two days of strike action before Christmas, and in many universities where staff are not members of the USS pension scheme would mean only a single day.

Indicative of the way the UCU seeks to divide its members, Grady suggested trading off the interests of one section of workers in the “Four Fights” against another. A list of questions sent out to be discussed by each branch included, “Do members support the strategy of prioritising the injustice of casualisation, over pay, equality and workloads?” Days earlier Grady had acknowledged that the mandate of tens of thousands of workers for a strike put the union in “an incredibly strong position” to fight for its demands—only to turn around and suggest that workers can only win one demand by abandoning others!

Grady and the UCU are making last minute pleas in a desperate attempt to get this week’s strike settled and warning employers that many more workers could be involved in the new year. A November 25 article on the UCU site announced that “members at 42 universities will be asked to back strike action” over pensions, pay and working conditions, “in ballots that open on Monday 6 December and close on Friday 14 January.” This could result in “a period of sustained and escalating industrial action. There is still time to avoid this disruption, but that is in the gift of vice chancellors who sadly are still choosing to ignore the serious concerns of staff rather than address them,” said Grady.

This right-wing, corporatist response to workers’ demands for a struggle is typical of the unions, which aim not to fight for workers’ independent interests—a secure, well-paid job with decent retirement benefits—but to sell to workers what the employers consider acceptable. Hunt betrayed the 2018 pensions strikes to establish a corporatist Joint Expert Panel, whose suggestions were then partly used by the employers to form their current demands for an increase in contributions and reduction in benefits.

Grady has already established her own record of forcing through sweetheart deals.

After staff at 15 further education (FE) colleges voted in July to strike against a below-inflation pay offer, the UCU set about rapidly shutting down the dispute. Grady called on the other colleges to “follow the example of Weymouth [College]”, where workers accepted in a below-inflation 2.2 percent offer in a second ballot after they had already rejected the same figure. More recently the union agreed a pay deal of 2 percent for all but the lowest-paid staff at the four colleges in the South Thames College Group. With RPI inflation currently at 6 percent, these deals represent massive real-term pay cuts.

In higher education, despite claims of “victory” in multiple fights against university job cuts, the UCU only ever calls for compulsory redundancies to be cancelled. The aim is to convince the employers they can get what they want through pressuring workers to take “voluntary” redundancy. At the University of Liverpool, the union claimed that all the 47 jobs the university wanted to eliminate in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences had been saved, but by the end of the strike almost half of that number had taken voluntary redundancy or early retirement. Last Tuesday, UCU members at Goldsmiths University of London began a 15-day strike against a plan to make at least 52 redundancies. A statement from the local UCU branch calls only to “#OpenTheBooks” and “engage in meaningful consultation with the union”—a de facto pledge that it will undermine any fight against the redundancies themselves.

Grady’s proposals were slightly modified from two separate strike days to three days at each university, following two national meetings of delegates from UCU branches. The Socialist Worker, unable to make any more excuses for Grady in the face of the open attempts to undermine workers by the union bureaucracy—of which the SWP themselves comprise a substantial section—painted the polite criticism offered by the UCU Left as a “rank and file rebellion.” The UCU Left and SWP described a two-day stoppage as “tokenistic and ineffective,” but their own call was only for a five-day stoppage before Christmas.

Their mealy-mouthed criticism of Grady is paired with promoting the union’s own structures for diverting workers’ anger. The UCU Left describes the two branch delegates’ meetings, purely advisory affairs which can be entirely ignored by the Grady faction, as “an informal mechanism for a kind of direct democracy in UCU.”

The calling of strikes scattered about the term, and strictly limited in their scope—in this instance thanks to the UCU’s past betrayals—has been a tactic long used by the bureaucracy to avoid leading a genuine fight. While Grady’s former supporters in the UCU Left now offer up a few muted criticisms of her, and the SWP says that the strike must not be “left to the foot-dragging union leaders,” none of these groups explain why the previous rebellion against Sally Hunt has led workers back into a dead end.

Workers in HE want a way forward, after tens of thousands have repeatedly voted for strikes despite the UCU undermining every action. The latest strikes have been curtailed before they even start, and education staff need to learn the lessons. No amount of pressure can cause the union bureaucracy—who are thoroughly integrated into management structures and who form a privileged layer within society—to stop agreeing deals favourable to the employers. Any political perspective that seeks to tie workers to these corporatist organisations will lead to betrayals and demoralisation.

Amid record deaths from COVID-19, Ukrainian president accuses Russia of planning a “coup”

Jason Melanovski

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage the health care systems of both Russia and Ukraine as Kiev and its NATO allies fuel military tensions with Russia.

On November 25, Ukraine reported 15,936 new cases. Throughout November the country has regularly reported record highs in both deaths and new cases, a testament to the criminal failure of the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky to take any serious measures to curtail, let alone stop, the spread of the virus in a largely unvaccinated population.

Last Tuesday, the country reported a record 838 deaths. Just two days later the country’s National Academy of Sciences reported that the peak of the country’s COVID-related mortality had passed between the dates of November 8 and November 12 and that the pandemic was now likely to decline.

Medical staff treat a coronavirus patient at a tent hospital erected for COVID-19 patients in Kakhovka, Ukraine, on Sunday, Nov. 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

However, with vaccination rates among the lowest in Europe and the spread of the new Omicron variant, it is likely that prognosis of a decline may turn out to be little more than wishful thinking. Just 21 percent of Ukraine’s population are vaccinated, and 96 percent of severe COVID-19 cases are among the unvaccinated, according to the Ministry of Health.

Doctors working in the country’s underfunded and dilapidated hospitals continue to deal with new cases and mass death.

“We are extinguishing the fire again. We are working as at the front, but our strength and capabilities are limited,” Doctor Oleksander Molchanov told the Associated Press in the southern city of Kakhova.

“The situation is only getting worse. Hospital beds are running out. There are more and more serious patients, and there is a lack of doctors and medical personnel.”

The situation has reached such a severe level that Kiev’s crematorium was working around the clock to keep up with the spike in daily cremations.

“To date, compared to the summer period, the number of cremations has doubled,” Andrey Yashchenko, a spokesman for the Kiev crematorium, told Euronews. “If during the summer there were on average 60 processions per day, there are now between 100 and 120,” Yashchenko reported.

Opposition to the vaccine has been promoted by the Orthodox priesthood and far-right elements who continue to spread lies of “micro-chipping” and other misinformation that is common worldwide among the right wing. On Wednesday, over 1,000 right-wing anti-vaccine protesters rallied in Kiev to denounce even the limited measures introduced by the Zelensky government.

“We are protesting against the compulsory vaccination and demanding (that the government cancel) restrictions,” said Mykola Kokhanivskyi, who is also the leader of the far-right OUN Volunteer movement.

The organization which Kokhanivskyi leads derives its name from the World War II-era Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), whose military component, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), was involved in the mass killing of Poles and Jews. Like other far-right formations, it has been systematically promoted by the Ukrainian government and ruling class, especially since the 2014 US-backed coup that toppled the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovich.

Neighboring Russia also reported record deaths several days in a row two weeks ago. While the number of deaths slightly declined last week, Russia still reports deaths in the 1,200s, more than during any previous wave of the virus. Case numbers have slowly been declining as well but still hover well over 33,000 every day.

As in Ukraine, vaccine misinformation has been spread by the country’s Orthodox priesthood. The influence of the Church and the promotion of irrational and unscientific conceptions has been compounded by widespread distrust of authorities. As a result, less than 40 percent of the country’s 146 million people have been vaccinated.

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, Russia has reported approximately 265,000 COVID-19 deaths while Ukraine has reported 89,307, although the true numbers for both countries are undoubtedly much higher, according to several independent analyses.

The Financial Times reported that there have been 753,000 excess deaths during the pandemic in Russia. Data from the Institute for Health and Metrics and Evaluation suggest that Ukraine’s real COVID-19 death toll could be above 120,000.

The working class in Russia has also been hard hit by inflation, as prices for basic food staples have increased by over 10 percent and sometimes more, since the beginning of the year. The Russian ruble has devaluated significantly vis-à-vis the dollar in recent months, almost reaching 80 rubles per dollar. In Ukraine, the government has promised the IMF that it will eliminate gas price subsidies, putting many working-class Ukrainians at risk of losing heat this winter as gas prices continue to soar. Zelensky’s approval ratings have already plummeted to just 24.7 percent in October.

This public health and social crisis is unfolding as the US and NATO are systematically fueling tensions over the almost eight-year-long civil war in East Ukraine between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatists. Over the past few weeks, the US has sent several warships to the Black Sea, while claiming that Russia was planning an “invasion” of Ukraine.

Russia, which has been accused of amassing close to 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border, continues to deny it is preparing for an invasion of Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed such claims as “hysteria.”

During a marathon press conference on Friday, Ukrainian President Zelensky vowed that his country was ready for war while accusing Moscow of sponsoring a coup against him in early December. “There is a threat today that there will be war tomorrow. We are entirely prepared for an escalation,” Zelensky ominously stated.

Zelensky stated, “I received information that a coup d’etat will take place in our country on December 1-2.” He accused Russia of having planned the coup against him and suggested that the Ukrainian billionaire oligarch Rinat Akhmetov was involved in the plot.

While being careful not to accuse Akhmetov directly, Zelensky stated, “I believe [Akhmetov] is being dragged into the war against Ukraine.” Without providing any evidence or details, he said that the coup had a price tag of $1 billion. Zelensky added, “It’s not only intelligence that we have, it’s also audio intercepts, where representatives of Ukraine, so to speak, discuss with representatives of Russia [about] Rinat Akhmetov’s participation in the coup in Ukraine.”

With a net worth of $7.3 billion, Akhmetov is Ukraine’s richest man and owns a number of media outlets, which have criticized Zelensky in recent weeks. Earlier this year, Zelensky shut down a number of media outlets associated with Viktor Medvedchuk, an oligarch and opposition politician with ties to the Kremlin, for supposedly spreading “Russian propaganda.”

Akhmetov described Zelensky’s accusation as “an absolute lie” and stated that he was for a “united Ukraine with the Crimea and my home region, Donbas.” The Kremlin also rejected the claims, with press secretary Dmitry Peskov stating, “Russia never engages in such things. There have never been such plans.”

On the same day of Zelensky’s press conference, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg again publicly backed Ukraine, stating, “If Russia uses force against Ukraine, that will have costs, that would have consequences.”

As Omicron spreads in Europe, Paris commits to mass COVID-19 infections

Samuel Tissot & Alex Lantier

Speaking yesterday on the far-right CNews TV channel, French government spokesman Gabriel Attal confirmed that the highly-mutated and contagious Omicron variant of the coronavirus has likely arrived in France, but that the government will not take action in response.

“We’re still at the monitoring stage,” Attal said. “We have several possible cases, 10 or so. For now, these are potential cases. … These cases will be genetically sequenced, and we will know in the coming hours if they are cases of the virus.” Nonetheless, Attal insisted that President Emmanuel Macron’s government would not take action to tighten health restrictions and slow or stop the spread of the virus “in the short or medium term.”

Yesterday morning, Health Minister Olivier Véran said it was “a matter of hours” before Omicron cases are confirmed in France but dismissed its significance. “Currently, whether there are two or 10 infections by this variant in Europe or in France does not change the profile of the pandemic wave we are seeing,” Véran said. Complacently declaring that “a new variant does not necessarily mean a new wave,” he admitted that he could not say whether currently existing vaccines would give any protection from the Omicron variant, saying it is “too early” to tell.

Like at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, governments in France and across Europe are responding to a deadly surge in the virus with politically criminal indifference and complacency.

A COVID-19 patient under Ecmo (Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) remain unconscious, at Bichat Hospital, AP-HP, in Paris, Thursday, April 22, 2021. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly)

With nearly 2.7 million cases and 29,298 deaths of COVID-19 confirmed in Europe last week, a surge driven by the Delta variant is already devastating the continent. Seven-day averages of new cases are at all-time highs in Germany (57,598), the Netherlands (22,257) and Denmark (3,994) or surging towards them in Belgium (17,162) and Poland (22,964). As hospitals collapse in parts of Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, patients are already being sent across national borders to less affected parts of Germany and Italy for treatment.

France is rapidly catching up to its worse hit northern neighbors. On November 27, 37,218 cases were COVID-19 cases were reported in France, and ICU occupancy for COVID-19 patients reached 1,617 with 9,271 people hospitalized for COVID-19, levels not seen since the peak of the fourth wave in mid-September. The seven-day average for infections is 27,597, and each day averaged 61 deaths last week in France, respective increases of 61 percent and 38 percent on the previous week.

Under these conditions, the spread of the newly identified Omicron variant, which is thought to be at least partially resistant to existing vaccines and more infectious and lethal than the Delta variant, threatens to provoke a horrific wave of death in the coming weeks.

The spread of the Omicron variant threatens to deepen already devastating conditions across the continent. The variant has been identified in Germany, Italy, Czechia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK. On Sunday, it was reported that 13 people on just two flights from South Africa to the Netherlands tested positive for the variant.

One worrying sign about Omicron’s resistance to existing vaccines is a report that a person who tested positive for the Omicron variant in Israel had received three doses of the vaccine. The French Health Ministry has also announced that those who have been in contact with individuals infected with the Omicron variant will have to self-isolate, whether or not they are vaccinated.

In South Africa, the Omicron variant is already “out-competing” the Delta variant and has become dominant in just 13 days, compared to the 50 days it took for the Delta variant to account for more than 50 percent of cases in the country, according to data from the Financial Times. As this variant has become dominant, South Africa has witnessed a huge surge in infections and deaths. In the last seven days, infections rose 231 percent to 11,661, and deaths rose 128 percent to 219.

Any circulation of the Omicron variant threatens another massive increase in infections and deaths, creating a further wave on top of the current surge. Despite the immediate and deadly risk posed by both Delta and Omicron variants to the French population, there are no significant health measures in place. Schools, workplaces, universities, restaurants and even nightclubs all remain open, creating conditions where the current surge will only continue to spiral.

The WHO’s projection released last week that 700,000 Europeans will die before March 2022 without further restrictions was based on the Delta variant. If, in addition, a highly infectious and lethal variant unaffected by existing vaccines were to tear across an unprotected population, the death toll could easily be in the millions.

Preventing this requires immediate implementation of social distancing measures, including strict lockdowns, closing schools and nonessential production, to eliminate transmission of all variants of the virus. This also entails the allocation of trillions of euros to workers, the self-employed and small businesses to allow them to survive without hardship for a period.

Imposing this entails building a political movement in the working class against the European Union (EU) and the Macron government, which have demanded a policy of mass infection to keep workers on the job, producing profits for the financial markets. This is what Véran meant last week when he said: “We can succeed in crossing this wave without further constraints for the population.” In reality, the Macron government does not care about lives but about the profits of the major banks and corporations.

On Friday, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer affirmed the Macron government’s commitment to the anti-scientific notion of immunity by infection among school children. With 9,000 classes closed due to COVID-19 across the country, Blanquer confirmed to France Inter that classes with positive cases will no longer be closed. This will inevitably accelerate the spread of the coronavirus in schools, after the government’s school policy has already led to hundreds of thousands of cases, thousands of Long COVID cases and over a dozen deaths among children.

Indeed, COVID-19 incidence rates per 100,000 children in France doubled last week to 70.53 among children under 3, 172.83 among those aged 6-10 and 212.42 among those aged 11-14. It rose by 60 percent to 141.18 among teens aged 15-17. It tripled to 346.19 among children aged 6-10.

The current situation has sinister echoes of the situation in February and March 2020. At that time, the government was firmly opposed to any social distancing measures. As late as March 3, 2020, with the danger of the virus already well known to French health authorities, Blanquer said, “It wouldn’t make sense to confine everyone at home, to paralyze the country.”

It was only following a wave of wildcat strikes that began in Italy and spread through France, the UK, and eventually to the US that compelled European governments in mid-March to implement significant lockdown measures which rapidly brought down cases and deaths in the region.

Herd immunity policy creates explosion of COVID-19 infections in German nurseries and schools

Tamino Dreisam

Although the number of official COVID-19 deaths in Germany has exceeded 100,000, the infection figures are escalating and a new, dangerous variant (Omicron) of the virus is spreading, all the bourgeois parties refuse to take the necessary protective measures. Significantly, last Thursday in the Bundestag (federal parliament), the “traffic light” coalition members—Social Democrats (SPD), Greens, Liberal Democrats (FDP)—decided to end the designation of an “epidemic emergency” and thus removed the legal basis for comprehensive lockdowns.

A woman waits for her vaccination at a vaccination Drive-in center in Cologne, Germany, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Since then, the numbers of those infected have really exploded. By Friday morning, the seven-day incidence rate per 100,000 inhabitants was 438.2, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), with more than 76,000 people confirmed infected with COVID-19 in the last 24 hours alone. With a mortality rate of 0.8 percent, about 610 of these people will succumb to the virus. Already, between 300 and 400 people are dying from coronavirus every day.

The incidence of infection is particularly drastic in schools and nurseries. In the 5- to 14-year-old age group, the seven-day incidence level of 1,021 is already in the four-digit range. In the last four weeks, 468 outbreaks at nurseries and 1,265 outbreaks at schools were reported to the RKI—values that are far higher than in all previous waves. And the statistics do not yet include the last two weeks.

In North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany’s most populous state, the number of infections at kindergartens more than doubled from 504 to 1,096 within one week. Later reports mean this number will also increase.

In Leipzig, a health office explained that due to the high incidence of infection, at times, children and nursery staff were no longer sent into quarantine in the event of positive cases. Since almost 20 nurseries are currently affected, the health department simply cannot manage to process infection cases until two to three days after the test results are available. In some cases, one-sixth of all staff in nurseries have already been infected.

The number of deaths among children and adolescents is also increasing. So far, “35 validated COVID-19 deaths among under-20s have been reported to the RKI,” the institute writes in its latest weekly report.

Yet schools and nurseries are to remain open at all costs. “It must now be our top priority to keep nurseries and schools open,” said German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) in a video address to the 10th German Congress of School Principals on Friday.

In Saxony, where the incidence rate among 5- to 14-year-olds is currently around 3,080, the Education Ministry writes on its web page on the Coronavirus School and Nursery Ordinance, “Despite restrictions in public life: schools and nurseries remain open.”

In the same way, the Ministry of Education in Bavaria, where the incidence rate among 5- to 14-year-olds is 1,330, declares that schools will remain open—explicitly “also in regional hotspots.”

Baden-Württemberg’s Minister President Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) also announced that schools should remain open “as long as possible.” In the southern German state, the incidence rate among 5- to 14-year-olds is 1,130.

In NRW, Health Minister Karl-Josef Laumann (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) claimed on Tuesday that the rising coronavirus numbers would have no effect on attendance—a bold-faced lie aimed at justifying the CDU-FDP state government’s criminal policy of deliberate mass infection. In NRW, even the compulsory wearing of masks in classrooms has been dropped for the last month. Since then, the number of infections among schoolchildren has increased fivefold.

Last week, the school policy spokesperson for the FDP parliamentary group in NRW triggered a wave of outrage on Twitter. She had called for cases to be reported to her where teachers were exerting “moral pressure or peer pressure” on students about wearing masks. The week before, NRW Education Minister Yvonne Gebauer (FDP) had already warned against exerting pressure on students to continue wearing masks in class.

In Hamburg, ruled by the SPD and Greens, the state is also relaxing protective measures. School Senator (state minister) Ties Rabe (SPD), for example, declared that in the future, there would be no contact tracing at schools if only one child was infected. At the same time, only the infected person would have to be quarantined. The rest of the class, including those sitting immediately adjacent, could continue to attend classes.

“I don't think it’s appropriate at all at this point to talk about further school restrictions,” Rabe said. Rabe believes even minimal measures, such as extended Christmas vacations or a suspension of compulsory in-person attendance—which so far only a few states with the highest incidence rates have adopted—are wrong. Schools are “one of the safest places in the pandemic,” he claimed provocatively.

The mass infection policy in the interests of the financial markets is also supported by the trade unions. “The GEW believes it is right to keep schools and nurseries open in the coronavirus pandemic,” reads a statement on the official website of the Education and Science Union on November 19.

While all the bourgeois parties and the unions are driving through a reckless herd immunity policy, resistance is growing among parents, students, teachers and scientists. In a poll conducted as part of broadcaster ZDF’s political barometer report at the end of November, 52 percent of all respondents said that the state’s coronavirus measures “should be tougher.” Only 15 percent described the existing measures as “excessive.”

There was a high risk of “losing control of the pandemic at schools,” Heinz-Peter Meidinger, president of the German Teachers’ Association, warned the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland. He said the governments responsible were putting their own political desires ahead of scientific expertise. “We can’t just accept this as if nothing were wrong. This is all the more true since there are also cases of Long Covid among children.”

Scientists are speaking out clearly about what is needed. “If policy-makers want to get anything done now, they need to act fast: Hard lock-downs and schools closed—that’s the only thing that can still help,” explains Professor Markus Scholz from the University of Leipzig, for example. The current measures were far from sufficient, he said. Last year, there were much harsher interventions at lower incidences, “And it took eight weeks for the numbers to drop.”

Scholz expects 2,500 to 5,000 additional deaths in the next few weeks in Saxony alone. A major driver of this, he said, was schools. “Until now, the entire school and youth sector has remained excluded from the measures. Although it is precisely there that the infection figures are particularly high. We’ve been talking about air filters for a year, but they’re still missing almost across the board.”

In July 2021, the German government had allocated €200 million on paper for mobile air filters. So far, however, not a single euro has been called upon. Many schools are not in a position to raise the contribution they are required to make. In addition, air filters are only subsidized for classrooms in which the windows “can only be tilted” and in which children under the age of 12 are present. Education officials estimate the percentage of eligible classrooms is about 10 percent.

The lack of protective equipment in classrooms, as well as the murderous reopening policy in general, stem from deliberate political decisions. Politicians of all the bourgeois parties have worked throughout the pandemic by downplaying the virus, organising cover-ups, spreading falsifications, and misinformation to keep businesses open under deadly conditions and to ensure the maximization of profits.

New Zealand Labour-led government continues attacks on immigrants

John Braddock

The immigration minister in New Zealand’s Labour-led government, Kris Faafoi, announced in September that migrants living in NZ on temporary work visas would be “fast-tracked” for residency. Trumpeted as a major breakthrough, the decision provides for a one-off residency “pathway” for an estimated 165,000 migrants.

Applications for the new residency process will be opened up between December and July. “Critical workers” who cross the border before the end of July next year will also be eligible. Faafoi said family members who meet certain criteria will be able to join migrants already in NZ.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern answers a question during a press conference at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand. (Robert Kitchin/Pool Photo via AP)

The Labour-Green Party government has come under mounting pressure over its stalled, chaotic and inhumane immigration system. The COVID-19 pandemic was used to bring immigration to a virtual halt, with a net migration gain of just 6,600 people last year. Labour suspended the processing of residency visas under the Skilled Migrant Category in March 2020, blaming the impact of COVID-19, leaving more than 30,000 applicants in limbo.

Millions of immigrants and refugees around the globe are being subjected to vicious anti-democratic measures. Like governments internationally, New Zealand’s ruling coalition, which is backed by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups, is actively discriminating against migrants, in order to divert popular anger over worsening poverty and the spiraling cost of living.

The Indian Weekender reported in July that around 60,000 Indian migrants with temporary work or student visas faced “uncertainty and despair,” as the government continued to “throttle the pathway to residency.” A decision to lapse 50,000 temporary visa applications, filed offshore after August 2020, and bar visa holders from re-entering the country, prompted protests in India and fueled fear among current residents. Many partners and children, trapped overseas, have still not seen their family members for nearly two years due to NZ’s border restrictions.

The announcement of the new policy was understandably met with considerable relief and jubilation among the immigrant community. Hundreds of migrants and supporters participated in a series of protests and a petitioning campaign organised by the Migrant Workers Association, and pseudo-left Unite Union, since last year.

Claiming credit, the Unite Union declared the “pathway” decision was a “win for all working people.” Unite praised the NZ Council of Trade Unions, along with some employers and the Green Party which came “fully on board” the campaign. The “victory” was attributed to the protests which the union said it led “from the beginning” and which were “getting bigger and bigger as the year went on.”

In fact, Labour’s shift had nothing to do with the protests, which were oriented towards petitioning the government and to which it, in turn, paid little attention. Rather, it dovetailed with the government’s preparations to “transition” from its perspective of eliminating COVID-19 to one of “opening up” the borders and the economy, in line with the increasingly strident demands of big business and announced by Prime Minister Ardern on October 4.

Business NZ chief executive Kirk Hope declared the immigration reset would provide “welcome relief” to employers who had been trying to retain workers to remain “globally competitive.” With major skill shortages across a number of industries and regions, and ongoing pressures at the border, “New Zealand cannot afford to lose any more skilled people from the workforce if we want to maintain economic momentum and bounce back from the latest Auckland lockdown,” he said.

The policy remains highly restrictive, offering an opening only to those migrants deemed a benefit to the economy. According to Stuff, applicants must meet one of six criteria: “have lived in New Zealand for three or more years, earn above the median wage ($NZ27 per hour or more), work in a role on the long-term skill shortage list, hold occupational registration and work in health or education, work in personal care or other critical health worker roles, or have jobs within the primary industries.”

Faafoi said that initially 5,000 health and aged care workers, 9,000 primary industry workers, and 800 teachers would be eligible. A “portion” of the 15,000 construction and 12,000 manufacturing workers on temporary visas could be eligible. Some 910 people meanwhile signed a petition to parliament protesting against the exclusion of international PhD students from being able to apply.

Such selective measures are in line with Labour’s long-standing anti-immigrant stance. The Labour Party’s platform for the 2017 election, carried through with its then-coalition partner, the right-wing anti-immigrant NZ First Party, was to cut net migration—at that time around 70,000 a year—by up to 30,000 by winding back on international students and “low skilled” workers.

In a major policy speech in May, Economic Development Minister Stuart Nash said the government intended to make it harder for employers to take on workers from overseas, other than in areas of “genuine skills shortages.” Wealthy investors were targeted while entry for those classed as “low-skill” and low-wage workers closed off. Labour has also kept the annual refugee intake at just 1,500, one of the lowest in the world.

Endorsing the ongoing clamp-down, the Productivity Commission reported this month that pre-pandemic rates of immigration were “unsustainable” in the face of an “inability or unwillingness” to build the infrastructure to support would-be migrants. Higher levels of immigration without the necessary support had added to “burdens for the wider community,” the commission declared.

Cruel attacks on the conditions of migrants continue. Since September’s announcement, the rights of tens of thousands of immigrants, would-be immigrants, family members, foreign students and visa holders stuck offshore have continued to be systematically abridged, with devastating results.

Green Party MP Ricardo Menendez March recently admitted that thousands of migrants are still excluded under the policy because they are on an ineligible visa, they are not paid enough to qualify as “essential work,” are stuck offshore, or don’t meet the “settled” criteria. “It is a shame that we have to fight for a review of something that we were initially very excited about,” March told the Indian Weekender.

Labour’s stance has provided the opportunity not only for the Greens—who are part of the government—but the right-wing opposition parties, National and ACT, to falsely pose as supporters of immigrants, asserting that their conditions can be addressed by pleas to parliament. Indicating the illusions being promoted, one post to the Facebook group ‘NZ Work Visa Holders Stuck Overseas’ declared: “Support friendly MPs... Left for Green, Centric for National, & Right for ACT. Make them raise more & more voices against the Labour party that has made our life hard & difficult.”

However, anti-immigrant laws and harsh bureaucratic measures have been imposed by successive governments of every stripe. Labour’s record demonstrates that it has zero concern for the rights of migrant workers. But the same goes for the entire ruling elite, which pursued a racist “White New Zealand” policy for much of the past century, with the support of the unions. The major parties still routinely demonise immigrants for everything from low wages to job losses and the housing crisis.

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Justin Trudeau and Liberals inaugurate third term in office—austerity and mass infection at home, militarism and war abroad

Roger Jordan

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to reporters from the roof of the Canadian Embassy in Washington [Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite]

With the presentation Tuesday of the Speech from the Throne that inaugurates a new session of Canada’s parliament, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his minority Liberal government laid out their agenda at the start of their third term in office. Whilst there was much media hype over it being delivered by Canada’s first indigenous Governor General and it abounded with vapid election rhetoric, the throne speech made clear the government is moving sharply right. The main thrusts of its program will be austerity and mass infection for workers at home, coupled with militarism and war abroad.

The cutting edge of the Trudeau government’s stepped up onslaught on working people is its elimination of the limited pandemic relief provided workers. Late last month, Trudeau announced that the Canada Recovery Benefit, which paid workers a miserly $400 per week if they were unable to work due to COVID-19 restrictions, would be immediately abolished.

In its place, a new benefit is to be introduced that will be available to workers only in the event of an anti-COVID-19 lockdown and limited to just $300 per week. Given that all of Canada’s provincial governments have ruled out future lockdowns even as they let the virus run rampant, this effectively means an end to all financial support for workers.

To underscore its determination to deny further financial aid to working people, the Liberal government unveiled even more stringent requirements for the new lockdown benefit this week. According to the bill introduced in parliament Wednesday, the Liberal cabinet will have the power to determine what constitutes a lockdown. As a minimum, workers must be ordered to stay home for 14 straight days by their employer. In addition, the government intends to bar any financial support to unvaccinated workers.

The “best way” to get “the pandemic under control” is “vaccination,” declared the Throne speech. In fact, the Liberal government’s reliance on vaccines alone, with virtually all non-pharmaceutical anti-COVID-19 public health measures now withdrawn, has facilitated widespread transmission of the virus.

Reports of the emergence of a new (Omicron) variant in southern Africa that potentially is resistant to existing vaccines underscores just how dangerous is the ruling elite’s rush to “reopen” the economy and its class-based opposition to implementing a science-based strategy to eliminate the deadly virus.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, the Liberal government’s spending cutter-in-chief, summed up the ruling elite’s callous indifference to the lives and well-being of working people, declaring that the bill establishing the bogus new Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit is “the last step in our COVID support programs. It is what I hope and truly believe is the final pivot.”

In other words, as a winter wave of infections and death gathers pace, which current developments in Europe suggest could prove to be the worst yet, Trudeau’s Liberal government is telling workers, “You’re on your own.” This is no different from the fascistic let-it-rip pandemic policy pursued by the German establishment, whose political representatives voted this week to declare the COVID-19 emergency over. Freeland and Trudeau would no doubt agree with German Health Minister Jens Spahn, who asserted chillingly that by the end of this winter, people would either be “vaccinated, recovered, or dead.”

While the Liberal government strips workers of any financial aid so they are forced to return to the labour market to generate profits for big business, the government’s support for corporate Canada continues to know no bounds. After transferring over $650 billion to the banks and corporate elite virtually overnight in the early stages of the pandemic, the Liberals made clear that wage and rent subsidies for a wide range of businesses will continue at least until May 2022. These programs have largely functioned throughout the pandemic as slush funds for corporate executives and super-rich shareholders. Canada’s 48 billionaires saw their combined wealth shoot up by $78 billion during the pandemic’s first year.

Under conditions where British Columbia is being devastated by floods in the latest in a series of climate change-driven extreme weather events that have ravaged the country’s West Coast province since June, the Liberals’ throne speech again made clear that any action they take to mitigate global warming will be entirely subordinate to the profit and geo-political interests of the Canadian elite. It called for Canadian capitalism to seize on the climate change crisis to become a leader in clean tech. “By focusing on innovation and good, green jobs, and by working with like-minded countries—we will build a more resilient, sustainable, and competitive economy,” stated the speech. “As a country, we want to be leaders in producing the world’s cleanest steel, aluminum, building products, cars, and planes.”

The Throne speech underscored that the Trudeau government intends to heed the demands drummed home by Canada’s corporate elite in recent months for a pivot to austerity and will dramatically curtail social spending. “[W]ith one of the most successful vaccination campaigns in the world, and employment back to pre-pandemic levels, the Government is moving to more targeted support, while prudently managing spending,” the speech declared.

Tellingly the government has dropped all talk of incorporating the millions of gig economy and other involuntarily self-employed workers into the Employment Insurance system, meaning they will continue to have no protection against a sudden loss of income.

The main area to which “fiscal responsibility” and “prudence” do not apply is military spending. The Trudeau government remains committed to hike military spending by over 70 percent compared to 2017 levels by 2026. But even this vast increase, which amounts to the allocation of more than $12 billion in additional spending each year on weapons of destruction and death, is a mere down payment.

The Throne speech referred to comprehensive plans for an aggressive militarist foreign policy across wide swaths of the globe. “A changing world requires adapting and expanding diplomatic engagement,” stated the speech. “Canada will continue working with key allies and partners, while making deliberate efforts to deepen partnerships in the Indo-Pacific and across the Arctic.” Discussions are reportedly ongoing about an expanded deployment of Canadian troops to Ukraine, justified with lurid claims of “Russian aggression,” although it is NATO that has systematically encircled Russia and ratcheted up tensions.

Coming just five days after Trudeau met with US President Joe Biden and pledged his government’s firm support for Washington’s diplomatic, economic, and military offensive against China, the Throne speech’s reference to the “Indo-Pacific” is highly significant. It underlines that Canada’s foreign and military policy is being adjusted to conform even more closely with the Pentagon’s aggressive plans for an all-out conflict with Beijing, which top military commanders have asserted is only a few years off.

Senior foreign policy experts speaking to the right-wing National Post described the Throne speech as offering “a new foreign policy direction.” Guy Saint-Jacques, a former Canadian ambassador to China, told the newspaper, “This is not only about bringing India and the Indian Ocean into perhaps greater emphasis in Canadian activities, but Indo-Pacific as a frame is essentially a response to the rise of Chinese influence and power.”

On the eve of the federal election campaign, the Trudeau government signed an agreement with the Biden administration to modernize NORAD, the Canada-US aerospace and maritime defence command. This Cold War-era bilateral alliance for continental defence is to be upgraded with the aim of providing Washington and Ottawa first-strike capabilities against rivals like Russia and China and enabling the North American imperialist powers to wage a “winnable” nuclear war.

The fact that no party, apart from the Socialist Equality Party, raised Canada’s NORAD modernization commitment during the election campaign was tacit admission that they all unreservedly support this provocative move. The multibillion-dollar bill for upgrading NORAD is not included in Canada’s planned defence spending increases.

To enforce this deeply unpopular agenda of austerity at home and militarism and war abroad, the minority Liberal government can rely on an effective all-party coalition in parliament. Over recent weeks, Jagmeet Singh’s New Democrats held secret, high-level talks with the Liberals on concluding a formal confidence-and-supply agreement, under which the social democrats would be committed to propping up the Liberals in parliament for two or more years. Singh bluntly explained why this plan was shelved last week, telling the media that Trudeau could rely on the Conservatives or the Bloc Québécois—a close ally of Quebec’s chauvinist, unabashedly pro-big business CAQ government—to impose the elimination of COVID-19 supports for workers, and the NDP to secure a majority for other policy items, like the Throne speech.

Outside of parliament, the Trudeau government will rely on an even closer corporatist alliance between government, big business and the trade unions to suppress working-class opposition. As the speech noted with respect to the government’s climate change policy, which is in reality a massive government subsidy program to make corporate Canada profitable in the emerging “clean energy” economy, “The Government will bring together provinces, territories, municipalities, and Indigenous communities, as well as labour and the private sector, to tap into global capital and attract investors.”