UK think tank urges pension cuts to pay for pandemic

Margot Miller

The coronavirus pandemic is being seized on by the ruling elite to implement long-cherished plans to further erode UK pensions—a foretaste of massive austerity to come.

A new report by the Social Market Foundation (SMF) urges the Conservative government to abandon the “triple-lock” mechanism, which afforded pensioners a measure of income protection.

The triple-lock guarantees that state pensions increase each year, either by 2.5 percent, the average growth in wages in Britain, or the percentage growth in prices measured by the consumer price increase—whichever is the highest. Following this measure, pensions rose 3.9 percent in April, shadowing the rise in wages.

Anticipating a deep slump precipitated by global lockdowns, rising unemployment and collapsing wages, the SMF suggests the government replace the triple-lock with a double-lock, eliminating any guarantee of a 2.5 percent annual pension increase.

The SMF is a “top 12” UK think tank. Favoured by former Conservative Prime Minister John Major, it was closely associated with the Blair Labour government’s privatisation of public services. Current board members and policy advisors include Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge and Stephen Kinnock, along with Tory MPs Tom Tugendhat, Laura Farris and Liberal Democrat Baroness Susan Kramer.

Titled “Intergenerational Fairness in the Coronavirus Economy,” the report by SMF Research Director Scott Corfe is an argument for intergenerational warfare. Those of working age, he writes, “bore the brunt” of the 2008 financial crisis and are now shouldering the cost of the coronavirus pandemic—it is time for old people to “share the sacrifice.”

The current economic lockdown, he complains, is “aimed at saving the lives of those at greatest risk, a group that is largely (but not exclusively) made up of older people … As we emerge from the crisis, older generations must uphold their part of the contract by bearing a fair proportion of future tax rises and welfare reforms.”

Unsurprisingly, there is no suggestion that the obscene wealth of the financial oligarchy should be taxed or confiscated to meet urgent social needs. Instead, Corfe forecasts that “Austerity Round Two” is looming to pay for the £370 billion financial bailout in the government’s Emergency Coronavirus Bill—money overwhelmingly funnelled to the banks and financial markets.

The SMF dismisses hopes for a “V-shaped recovery” in favour of the sober outlook of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that “the global economy will potentially suffer for years to come.” Corfe warns of “years of tax rises and spending cuts as we emerge from the crisis.”

Echoing US President Donald Trump’s arguments for a return to work and profit making, Corfe writes, “Some are starting to question whether the cure for coronavirus might be worse than the disease.”

In fact, according to the Office for National Statistics, 93 percent of the population support lockdown measures to contain the pandemic. But governments around the world are hellbent on enforcing a return to work despite the complete absence of mass testing, contact tracing, quarantining or the resources demanded by public health workers to treat the sick and dying.

Corfe writes, “It is deemed crass to put a price on life (or at least to talk about it – the reality is that health care is rationed all the time on the basis of cost and whether treatment is worth it in terms of the perceived ‘value’ of the ‘quality-adjusted life years’ it adds).”

The SMF’s macabre proposals are combined with lying claims that “We have come together as a nation to protect our elderly and vulnerable.” The cynicism is breath-taking. The toll of the Johnson government’s “herd immunity” policy is over 16,000 dead— the majority aged 65 years and 39 percent in the over-85 age group. Meanwhile, care homes for the aged have become killing fields.

In the midst of immense human suffering, the SMF argues that “Austerity Round Two” must be “shared”—starting with ending the triple lock on pensions, saving the treasury £200 billion over five years.

The UK state pension is the lowest of any OECD country. The full weekly rate of the UK basic state pension is £134.25 a week. Men born after April 1951 and women born after April 1953 get the new state pension, up to a maximum £175.20. The Pension Policy Institute estimates, however, that only 45 percent of pensioners will qualify for the full amount .

Couples fare the worst—the value of their state pensions decreased 20 percent, from 1994/95 to 2017/18.

The triple lock was introduced in 2010 by the Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition government to sugarcoat plans to attack pensions. The government was determined to roll back so-called gold-plated pensions in the public sector, provoking the biggest strikes in the UK for decades.

In December 2011, over 2 million public sector workers, including civil servants, teachers and lecturers in 37 trade unions, launched a 24-hour strike against proposed attacks to pensions. The subsequent climbdown by public sector unions means that public sector workers now work longer and pay more for inferior pensions.

Further inroads into state pensions have included lifting the retirement age. Between 2010 and 2018, the age that women can apply for the state pension was raised to 65 from 60, and in 2020 it was lifted for both men and women to 66, with plans to raise it to 68 by 2039.

The Conservative Party’s 2017 manifesto proposed replacing the pension triple lock with a double lock by 2020, but this was shelved in a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party, after opposition from the Tories substantial pension-aged base.

Commenting on the SMF’s proposals, pensions expert Ian Browne at wealth management firm Quilter plc said, “[I]t is rightly being brought up again as something that needs to be changed to ensure intergenerational fairness.”

“With the increased borrowing from the government to help pay for the coronavirus lockdown, there has arguably never been a better time politically to replace the triple lock,” Browne commented.

The International Monetary Fund has long pressed the UK to abandon the triple lock and introduce means testing of pensions. An ageing population is viewed under capitalism not as a success story—a product of improved public health under the post war welfare state—but as a non-productive drain on society’s resources away from profits.

Europe’s pandemic death toll passes 100,000

Robert Stevens

Sunday marked a terrible milestone, as the coronavirus death toll passed 100,000 across Europe. An additional 3,287 deaths yesterday take the number of officially recorded fatalities across the continent to 102,565. Nearly 1.1 million coronavirus cases (1,088,651) have been announced, meaning the 102,000 plus deaths represent a fatality rate of nearly 10 percent.

Even as the big business media pointed to a lessening of the number of deaths in some countries, the gruesome death toll rises—an indictment of the entire profit system. The five major states in Europe—Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the UK—account for around 85,000 of the 100,000 plus deaths.

In Spain, 565 deaths were reported Saturday, and 410 new deaths announced yesterday. Spain’s death toll stands at 21,238 deaths—the third country to reach the horrific milestone of 20,000 behind Italy and the United States.

In Italy, 482 more people were announced dead on Saturday and 433 on Sunday, with 23,660 fatalities overall. This week, the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Italy’s leading technical-scientific body, published a report revealing that 2,724 elderly patient deaths in residential medical facilities were certified COVID-19 infections. There is no precise number of COVID-19 deaths in care homes, where doctors often do not arrive and the deaths are not reported to municipal authorities.

On Saturday, France recorded 642 deaths, and 395 more on Sunday (total deaths 19,718).

In Germany, 186 deaths were announced Saturday and 104, Sunday. Germany is routinely described in the corporate media as a model in how to confront the virus—but deaths there are now approaching five thousand (4,642). Some 145,184 cases of COVID-19 have been recorded by Berlin.

The UK is engulfed in a social catastrophe for which the ruling class is fully responsible. Britain is around four weeks behind Italy and Spain in terms of the spread of the virus, but has become the pandemic’s epicentre in Europe.

On Saturday, 888 deaths were announced and 596, Sunday, as the death toll reached 16,060. Some 5,589 of these deaths have occurred in the last week. Claims of a “glimmer of good news” as the “first wave” of the virus reached its peak in the UK (Daily Mail) were shot down as Saturday's 5,525 new cases represented the third highest jump since the outbreak of the pandemic in the UK. An even higher 5,850 new cases were reported Sunday.

Boris Johnson’s Conservative government has refused to publish in its daily fatalities tally the number of people who have died in care homes or in their own home. It is estimated that the number of deaths in Britain could be double, if not more, than the official tally.

The Tories are also concealing the true number of health workers who have perished. The Nursing Notes web site reported that 86 had already died by Sunday morning—mainly through the chronic lack of personal protective equipment (PPE). This weekend, NHS hospitals ran out of protective gowns and many warned that they were running short of oxygen.

The devastating impact of the Johnson government’s policy of “herd immunity” is being played out in the mass loss of life. The Sunday Times Insight team reported Sunday that despite being warned by scientists from mid-January of an unfolding catastrophe, the government pushed through its “herd immunity” strategy that was officially announced as policy by government chief science adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, on March 12.

Johnson and his government did nothing to combat the virus for a five-week period from January 24 to March 2. On January 24, the government held an emergency COBRA meeting, but as the Times reports this was only to “brush aside the coronavirus threat… Matt Hancock, the health secretary, bounced out of Whitehall after chairing the meeting and breezily told reporters the risk to the UK public was ‘low.’”

Johnson, after holidaying with his fiancée, Carrie Symonds, from December 26 to January 5 in the Caribbean aboard a yacht and at a mansion—paid for him to the tune of £15,000 by mobile phone billionaire David Ross—was so unconcerned by the mounting coronavirus epidemic that he didn’t attend the January 24 COBRA meeting or four subsequent COBRA meetings on COVID-19.

On February 3, four days after the UK exited the European Union, Johnson gave a speech in London in which he declared, “we are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other.”

Johnson then disappeared for another 12 days for a “working” holiday from the middle of February, this time at government’s grace-and-favour 115-room Chevening country estate, with Symonds. By March 2, when Johnson finally attended a COBRA meeting, it was simply to sign off on the herd immunity strategy that was to be announced 10 days later. His “battle plan” consisted of telling the population the government would “contain, delay and mitigate the spread of the virus.”

Johnson and his partner attended alongside 81,520 other people the England v. Wales rugby game at Twickenham on March 7. Three days later the government allowed the Cheltenham horse racing festival to go ahead attended by 250,000 people over four days. A number of people immediately reported being taken ill after attending.

The scale of deaths being contemplated is revealed by the Sunday Telegraph, which reported, “Britain assumed a deadly virus would ‘inevitably’ cripple the NHS and kill up to 750,000 people during a secret cross-government exercise held in 2016 to test preparedness for an outbreak, officials have admitted.”

In 2016, the government held its Exercise Cygnus into the impact on Britain of a novel respiratory influenza pandemic. The exercise revealed that the National Health Service would rapidly collapse, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

The Telegraph cites a “senior Whitehall official involved in drawing up Cygnus,” who said, “Everything we planned for was based on the idea that a disease would kill lots and lots of people… We didn’t spend a lot of time exploring how we could prevent it in the first place. Instead we looked at how we could build up mortuary space and intensive care beds after it had already spread.”

The central theme of the British media, including the main supporters of the Tories in the Telegraph, Mail and Sun, is to insist Johnson return from nearly dying himself from COVID-19 and roll out a return to work to “save the economy.” The Sunday Mail headlined its front page, “Get Britain moving again.” It reported that a “grand coalition” of senior political and business figures is demanding the government “lift the shutters” and map out an end to the lockdown. Among these were “Former Cabinet Ministers David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith,” who have joined forces with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and City bosses to warn the lack of a clear exit strategy could wreak lasting damage on the UK economy.

This is the agenda of governments continent-wide.

In Italy, the government plans to use a smartphone app developed by Milan-based tech start-up, Bending Spoons, to track people who test positive for the coronavirus as part of efforts to speed up the government’s “back to work” before the end of the pandemic.

This weekend, Spanish Socialist Party Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, after sending millions back to work last week, said, “In the month of May we will begin taking the first steps towards a new normality.”

As US deaths exceed 40,000, Trump escalates reckless back-to-work campaign

Andre Damon

On Sunday, the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic crossed 40,000 in the United States, with nearly 20,000 deaths in the past week alone.

The pandemic has exposed the complete dysfunctionality of American society and its incapacity to provide the most basic necessities—medical care, protective equipment and even food—to its citizens.

The government did nothing to prepare for the pandemic, Trump downplayed the disease as a “hoax,” and the media ignored it for months. While thousands of heroic healthcare workers, forced to work in unsafe conditions, fell ill and died, banks and corporations received the largest bailouts in human history.

Images of mass graves in New York City and of bodies piled up in refrigerated trailers and stuffed into spare rooms at Sinai Grace Hospital in Detroit will never leave the consciousness of the health care workers who witnessed them or the working class as a whole.

A worker without a mask sanitizes shopping charts before they are reused by waiting patrons outside the 365 Whole Foods Market in Los Angeles Tuesday, March 31, 2020.. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

All over the country, hundreds of thousands of people are grieving the loss of their friends and loved ones. With millions laid off, countless households are just days away from total penury, turning to overstretched food pantries.

Despite Trump’s narrative that the pandemic has been contained, the disease is spreading to new parts of the country, with every state reporting at least one death, as the disease rampages through nursing homes and prisons.

In the midst of this disaster, the Trump administration is single-mindedly focused on re-opening American businesses, despite the lack of measures necessary to contain the pandemic. The Trump administration’s overriding concern is to ensure that the pandemic does not interfere with the enrichment of Wall Street and the major corporations.

The White House has made clear it is calling for businesses to reopen under conditions in which the infrastructure to test all suspected cases, quarantine those infected, and trace their contacts does not exist.

This is despite the warning by the World Health Organization and leading epidemiologists that it is utterly irresponsible to reopen businesses under these conditions, which would only fuel a resurgence of the pandemic.

Trump’s demand for a return to work has been supported by substantial sections of the media. On Sunday, NBC’s evening news program led not with the massive death toll, but with far-right protests, some with just dozens of participants, demanding the reopening of businesses. The media ignored the role of far-right groups in calling the demonstrations, occupying state capitols bearing assault rifles and flying Confederate flags and swastikas.

While the broadcast news downplayed the numerous strikes, sick-outs, and protests by workers taking place around the country and the world against a return to work under unsafe conditions, they have framed the tiny right-wing protests as the legitimate expression of the popular will.

Trump’s proposal that businesses in substantial portions of the United States reopen by May 1, initially presented as an absurd pipe dream, has now become the baseline. Even Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced that her state, facing the highest COVID-19 case fatality rate in the country, would reopen businesses by the start of next month.

“Lockdown showdown” was the theme of ABC News’ Sunday talk show, which presented the prospect of reopening businesses as a conflict between those who, like Trump, advocate a “big bang” and those, like Utah Governor Gary Herbert, who say the process should be “more like a dial.”

Trump and dominant sections of the media frame the question of reopening the country as a choice between losing lives and mass impoverishment. But this dichotomy is false. It assumes the prerogatives of the capitalist system as given, in which the state extends unlimited resources to the financial and corporate elite, but cannot ensure the economic livelihoods of workers during a pandemic.

The demand for a premature return to work was accompanied with a massive intensification of US efforts to scapegoat China for the pandemic. As with the demand to reopen businesses, Trump has set the tone for the Democrats and the media. On Tuesday, Trump announced that the White House would end US funding for the World Health Organization in a statement falsely blaming China for the pandemic.

The next day, the Associated Press published an article entitled, “China didn’t warn public of likely pandemic for 6 key days,” bolstering Trump’s false claims that China is responsible for the pandemic. This narrative—referring to the week between January 14 and January 20—is contradicted by even the most cursory analysis of US media reports at the time, which makes clear that the progress of the disease was being widely and accurately reported in the international press by the first week of January.

The Democrats and their associated media outlets are seeking to beat Trump at his own game. In a front-page article on Sunday, the New York Times painted Trump as too eager to appease China. “Eager to continue trade talks, uneasy about further rattling the markets and hungry to protect his relationship with President Xi Jinping at a moment when the United States is relying on China’s manufacturers for lifesaving medical supplies, Mr. Trump has repeatedly muddied Republican efforts to fault China.”

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden took up this theme, accusing Trump in a new campaign ad of leaving “America vulnerable and exposed to this pandemic” by putting “his trust in China’s leaders instead.”

On Tuesday, The Washington Post published an article seeking to legitimize, without evidence, a right-wing conspiracy theory, pushed for months by Trump’s fascistic former campaign manager Stephen Bannon, that COVID-19 was created in a Chinese laboratory. The Post fished the claims out of Bannon’s private sewer and laundered it for use on the Sunday talk-shows, where it was a major topic of discussion.

The class struggle never rests, and imperialism never relaxes its predatory aims. This is especially true in a crisis. While workers are making these sacrifices, the US government provided a $6 trillion bailout to Wall Street and major corporations. The policy of quantitative easing and ultra-low interest rates, in effect for over a decade before the pandemic, was intensified in response to it.

If the ruling class has its way, the society that emerges from the crisis will be characterized by an intensification of all the tendencies that prevailed before the pandemic—more inequality, more exploitation, more poverty and more war.

While the ruling class’s assertion of its interests in the crisis is more immediate and direct, that of the working class will be more powerful. All over the world, from Italy to California, workers are refusing to labor in unsafe conditions and fighting to oppose a premature return to work. The efforts of the oligarchs to utilize the crisis to expand their wealth at the expense of thousands upon thousands of lives will produce immense social unrest.

The pandemic has made clear the bankruptcy of the capitalist system. In their struggle against the Trump administration’s back-to-work campaign, workers must take up the fight for the socialist transformation of society.

Banks levy numerous charges on customers for services

Shivani Dwivedi & Ashish Kajla

All the banks, especially the public sector banks have a moral obligation and social responsibility of promoting financial inclusion and social welfare. The banks run on the deposits and when a bank sinks, depositors lose their savings. Therefore, deposit holders have a right to the common and basic banking services for free of cost. If banks look at it only from the commercial angle, then they will not achieve the goal of serving common people. Ironically, now banks have begun foisting numerous fees on customers for very basic services. It starts with the balance amount becoming lower than the require limit, to charges whenever one swipes the debit card or even withdrawing more than a specified number of times at the ATM. Every transaction from bank account leads to fees.

Here are some details to understand that for which services and how much amount the banks are deducting as a charge from saving account holders:

Minimum Balance: Almost every bank asks its saving account holders to maintain a minimum amount of balance, as monthly or quarterly average balance. The penalty on failing to maintain the minimum balance varies from bank to bank. SBI deducts Rs 20 per month whereas private banks deduct as much as Rs 650 per month.

Cash Deposit Withdrawal: Saving account holders are not allowed to have unlimited cash withdrawals and deposits from banks, not even from their home branch. Banks are allowing only a handful of free transactions every month from bank branches. Upon exceeding the allowed number of free transactions, mostly 3 to 5 every month, customers need to pay charges anywhere between Rs 50 to Rs 150 depending upon the bank.

ATM, debit card and cheques: There was no restriction on number of financial and non-financial transactions done through ATM. Later, RBI put a limit on number of free transactions, 5 from own bank’s ATMs and 5 from other bank’s (3 in metro cities) ATMs. Now banks are charging between Rs 8 to Rs 20 depending upon the type of transaction such as balance inquiry, mini statement and cash withdrawal.

Additionally, from Rs 100 to Rs 500 are charged as annual fee on debit cards. Replacement or issuance of new debit card costs Rs 100-250. Banks also charge every time a customer resets the ATM PIN.

SMS Alerts of Banking Transactions: Banks are also charging for the text messages that customers receive as and when there is a transaction. A service which started to enhance the security and alert the customers of any unlawful or fraud transaction, has also become a way of extracting money from depositors. Banks are charging Rs 15-20 per month, quarterly in some cases for the text message service.

Documentation: Banks are even charging their customers when they update their KYC documents, for issuance of duplicate passbook and account statements.

Apart from these charges, there are many other charges that banks levy on services. It is clear that there is not a single service left which banks provide without any charge. Every service comes at a cost for poor and common depositors. In fact,many customers are not even aware about the deduction of these bank charges from their saving accounts. They are completely unaware about the quantum of amount and the kind of services for which banks deduct their money. Bank charges are making the condition of poor worse and vulnerable by making them more financially weaker.

It is evident from these charges against every banking service that bank don’t exist anymore for the common people. They have become business firms like any other business industry who are letting the corporates go free when they don’t pay back their loans but penalise the common people without whom deposits they won’t survive.

Through the ‘No Bank Charges’ campaign, we demand that RBI MUST ask banks to remove all the charges levied on savings accounts. RBI should set guidelines for the banks and ensure that the banks do not exploit depositors.

Internet Ban in Kashmir and Its Impact on People

Bilal Ahmad Dar

India’s Internet shutdown in Kashmir is the longest ever in a democracy.The Washington Post

Internet ban in Kashmir is a norm now. Prior to the abrogation of Article 370, the authorities would snap mobile connectivity and Internet services intermittently citing security reasons. But with the abrogation of Article 370 on 5th August 2019, Kashmir has remained cut off from the rest of India and the world for continuous eight months because of communication blockade and all that. The authorities on the dictates of the establishment cornered Kashmiris with every which way. Snapping communication conduits of the people is an act of colonial oppression. Had not there be a fear of dissent on the part of the people, the authorities would not have hampered the Internet connectivity! Abrogation of Article 370 without due consultations of the people of Kashmir is nothing but a kind of imperialistic move on the part of the people who are ensconced on the cozy and high profile seats at the Centre.

The Apex Court of the country has time and again issued orders for the restoration of high speed Internet in Jammu and Kashmir but the authorities have always given a deaf ear to it. The authorities are playing a kind of delaying tactics. They keep on deferring the restoration of the high speed Internet without any ha and hum. Deferment of this kind is a sheer intent to oppress people mentally. Mental oppression of the people is worse than the physical oppression. David Kaye, the U.N special rapporteur on freedom of expression called this internet blockage “draconian” and “worse than collective punishment”

Without Internet, as we know, life is almost impossible. These days every institution is largely dependent on the Internet. Health Department, Education Department etc. cannot provide services to people without Internet. Major tests conducted in the Health Department are done online. How can this particular department do these tests when Internet works but at a snail’s pace! Because of this, both doctors and patients suffer. The lockdown because of the pandemic has made life complex and complicated. The Education sector of Jammu and Kashmir has suffered a lot because of this Internet blockade. These days we have a trend of online classes throughout India. The authorities have directed teachers for the online classes. How is it possible in Jammu and Kashmir where people are entitled only to 2G Internet speed! Where we are not able to browse a simple file! Where we are not in a position to open our email because of very slow Internet speed!

The Internet ban is a human rights violation. The Supreme Court said that the access to the Internet is a fundamental right under Article 19 of the Constitution. But in Kashmir, authorities do not consider it so. The authorities cite many implausible and preposterous reasons for this Internet ban.  Recently NITI Aayog member V.K Sarswat said that Internet suspension in Jand K does not have any impact on the economy, as people use it there ‘to watch dirty films online’. This kind of statement is only meant to defame people of the valley. The statement further connotes a kind of mind set of Mr. Sarswat and his ilk.

The authorities are so callous and indifferent to the woes and miseries of people here that even after the country wide lockdown was announced by Prime Minister Narendera Modi, high Internet has not been restored in Kashmir.  In this lockdown, Internet is one of the means of survival for people, in a way. People can use Internet to know about the measures and precautions that are to be taken to prevent themselves from the virus. But in Kashmir people have been relegated to dark ages. People in Kashmir are not able to use email etc. because of Internet ban. Students are not able to apply for the courses offered by the Universities both at the State and National level.  The students preparing for competitive exams are badly affected. The Internet outage has forced many people to move out of the valley at very dear costs. The students are suffering from mental, physical and emotional unease because of this. Internet is a means through which students can explore about the career opportunities but the Internet ban in Kashmir has put a permanent lockdown on the career avenues of students.  The research scholars enrolled in different universities of the valley were badly affected by this Internet ban. I myself suffered a huge loss with reference to Phd research work. Prior to the abrogation of Article 370, I had communicated two of my research papers to the reputed International Journals for publication. But as the Internet was suspended, I could not get any response with regard to the manuscripts. After five long and traumatic months, I boarded a flight for Delhi to resume my research work At Aligarh Muslim University. On landing at Delhi airport, as I switched on my mobile data, a flood of emails flooded my mobile phone. As I sorted my emails, I found a response email to my communicated manuscripts. The response was sent by the chief editor of the journal. The duration for the editing of my manuscripts was only twenty days, when already five months had gone by. I could not publish my research papers well in time. The same story could have happened to many researchers of the valley as well. How can the students of the valley compete at National or International level, when they do not have access to the Internet!

The prolonged Internet ban in the valley has left the lives of people, their jobs and their economy in  ruins.  Many software engineers and those who provide online services have been rendered jobless. And India is the biggest democracy and brazenly claims Kashmir as its “Integral part”.

US-China Trade War

Naveed Qazi

The conflict between the US and China is not simply economic — it has political, cultural and military dimensions.

For quite a while, world’s two largest economies, or superpowers, as a matter of fact, have been locked in a trade war. The result has been imposition of tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of each other’s goods.

While U.S. President Donald Trump has long accused China of unfair trading practices, forced transfer of American technology, and intellectual property theft, China on the other hand believes that United States is trying to curb its rise as a global economic power. The reason behind it is China’s military expansion into the South China Sea, and its expansive Belt and Road Initiative, as well as an ambitious plan to move up the value chain ladder, which was outlined in 2015.

The trade war has changed the global landscape, disrupting supply chains, most notably in the technology sector. Lucy Colback, in an Oped for Financial Times wrote: “perhaps the most significant consequence of this is the potential for a longer-term decoupling of China and the U.S., and the emergence of two rival and separate spheres of influence, in both trade and technology.”

Trump’s “America First” campaign ignited the trade war in recent times, and the uncertainties around the trade war eventually harmed the global economy. Trump’s tariff policy aims to encourage American consumers to buy American products, by making imported goods more expensive. During his election campaigns, he wanted to bring more production back into the country, in order to protect U.S. jobs.

But, the reality lies somewhere else, as many Americans don’t care about these new developments. Americans would rather pay as little for computer, electronics or clothing, even if it means other Americans lose their jobs.

Many are also concerned about the political leverage of China over U.S. fiscal policy. If it was not China, that bought Treasury’s on a large scale, interest rates would have risen in U.S. and thrown the country into a recession. However, this would not be of China’s interests, as of now, because U.S. shoppers would then buy fewer Chinese exports.

According to a recent B.B.C. report, U.S. has imposed tariffs on more than $360 billion of Chinese goods, and China, in retaliation has levied tariffs on more than $110 billion of U.S. products, lately. This has led to higher costs for U.S. businesses and consumers. In this scenario, the annual trade deficit wouldn’t likely change, which has risen and fallen, over the years, and hovered around $345.6 billion, in 2019. When it comes to U.S. companies competing with cheap Chinese goods, they must reduce their costs, or go out of business. To reduce costs, they often outsource jobs to China, or India.

If Trump were to start a continual trade war, the most immediate effects would be felt by American companies such as Walmart, which import billions of dollars of cheap goods. The price of these goods would skyrocket, because of new set tariffs. The end result would likely be a war of attrition that China is infinitely in a better position to win.

In current times, China’s foreign currency reserves now stand at more than $3 trillion. In contrast, the U.S. has foreign exchange reserves that levitate at $120 billion. An increase of tariffs would automatically trigger penalties in the World Trade Organisation, and might even lead to WTO’s collapse, which would then lead to higher tariffs against U.S. exports. While all of this might take a little while, China would likely emerge unscathed, but the scenario will be catastrophic for American businesses and employment.

In August 2019, when US Treasury Department officially designated China as a currency manipulator, the news had prompted further selling in global financial markets and raised speculation that China could take even more aggressive steps to devaluate its currency. A year earlier, exporters from most U.S. states also experienced dismal sales to China. Total U.S. merchandise exports to China fell 11% to about $107 billion, according to U.S. Commerce Department. Particularly hard hit were Texas, Florida and Alabama –each state saw sales plunge to more than 25%.

As the trade war has dragged, the companies have had to consider finding alternative sources of inputs for their production chains, too. It was less simple than buying completed goods, from new vendors, and switching to new component suppliers that come with friction costs as well as, potentially higher prices. With the result, trust, quality assurance, and logistical networks were all to be rebuilt. As the chain is not well oiled, at least to start with, the manufacturers lose.

Also, due to an uncertainty paralysis around the globe, nearly one third of respondents to an AmCham China survey said that they had delayed or cancelled their investment decisions. In a September 2019, EUCham survey, nearly two thirds of respondents said that they had left their strategies unchanged, but were monitoring the situation closely. A previous questionnaire of the same survey reflected that majority respondents were trying to adapt to the trade war, while the remaining had delayed investment and expansion decisions.

The conflict between the US and China is not simply economic — it has political, cultural and military dimensions. For these reasons, the trade war will unlikely diminish anytime soon. Over the longer term, the U.S. and China would split into two spheres of influence, one centered around the U.S. and abiding by its standards — from technology to governance — and another centered around China.

Former Federal Reserve chair, Janet Yellen had also warned that competition between the United States and China could also slow the development of artificial intelligence, 5G mobile networks and other technology related to America’s national security.

During the Future Forum panel discussion, the Financial Times’s Martin Wolf noted that even the Americans don’t seem to have decided what they want. Mr Wolf said that the phase one trade deal came “in the context of America going through a massive rethink in its relations with China, and it hasn’t made its mind up yet”.

With phase one trade deal signed, it is now possible for China to respond to Trump’s tariff pressure. The deal tests the limits of U.S. power, however, in the past, the Trump administration has sent contradictory messages, at times insisting U.S. companies to get better access to the Chinese market, and at other times, ordering the U.S. companies to leave China.

The centerpiece of phase one deal is a pledge that China will buy some $200 billion in U.S. goods and services. In return, the United States will suspend some of the new tariffs Trump previously announced. But, this appeal to managed trade will ultimately increase Chinese leverage over U.S. So long as U.S. exports depend on the appeasement of Chinese politicians, the threat that China will pull the plug on the system will continue to hang over U.S.–China trade relations.

According to an Oped by Geoffrey Gertz in Brookings: “the phase one deal does not achieve any of the complex structural reforms U.S. policymakers have been seeking around industrial policy, the Made in China 2025 program, and broader state influence in the economy. Earlier experiences suggested neither U.S. diplomatic appeals nor WTO trade restrictions would sway China into giving up these core aspects of its economic model. The lesson of the phase one deal is that aggressive tariffs won’t either.”

The Trump administration continues to insist these problematic issues will be resolved in a phase two deal. But, its highly unlikely that it would happen. By using different tactics, U.S policymakers have always had a limited ability to change Chinese behavior. The moot problem is that Washington needs a strategy that deals with China as it is, not as it hopes it might be. That’s how the problem with China would be resolved.

New Zealand businesses, media call for lifting of lockdown measures

John Braddock

On April 14, nearly three weeks into a month-long nationwide lockdown to combat COVID-19, the New Zealand Treasury painted a dire picture of the country’s economic prospects.

The announcement preceded the International Monetary Fund forecast that the world economy is entering its worst slump since the 1930s Great Depression and that the loss of output will “dwarf” that which flowed from the 2008 global financial crisis.

Treasury’s modelling predicted a surge in NZ’s unemployment to 13 percent, even if COVID-19 infections are contained and the nation’s lockdown is eased after four weeks, beginning on April 23. Attempting to browbeat workers into accepting a prompt return to work, it forecast a massive increase in unemployment to 26 percent and a fall in GDP of 23 percent if the strictest shutdown level remains in place for six months.

The unemployment rate, currently just over 4 percent, is expected to be higher in the June quarter than the 6.7 percent reached during the 2008 crisis. In the latest onslaught, the NZME media group revealed last week it had cut 200 jobs, while the owner of restaurant franchise operator Burger King was placed in receivership and mobile phone operator 2Degrees announced it would cut its staff of 1,200 by 10 percent.

Following the Treasury’s report, Finance Minister Grant Robinson ratcheted up the government’s fiscal stimulus package above the $NZ20 billion already pledged. He told BusinessNZ that small enterprises will get a $3 billion boost through tax breaks.

As of Friday, authorities had reported eight new cases of coronavirus in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total to 1,409, with two more deaths, for a total of 11.

Like governments around the world, the priority of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s Labour-led coalition has been to prop up the wealth of the super-rich and big businesses, with billions in corporate bailouts at the expense of working people. Even as the pandemic continues to rage internationally, campaigns are underway for workers to return to work in order to shore up profits.

Sections of NZ’s business elite and the media are already braying for the lockdown to be ended, and demanding that working people risk their lives and health to defend the capitalist economy. Taking their cue from US President Donald Trump, prominent media commentators have begun calculating the “cost” of saving lives versus the measures they deem necessary to restart the economy.

Even before the first hints that the number of new COVID-19 cases was beginning to decline, a drumbeat was initiated calling for more shops and businesses to reopen. Under the headline “Kill or Cure?” the Sunday Star Times demanded to know on its April 5 front page: “When will this end, and could the solution be worse than the disease?”

The next day, TV3 breakfast host Duncan Garner told viewers: “Businesses are screaming for a signal we are returning to work soon.” Heather du Plessis-Allan on Newstalk ZB declared: “I’m starting to feel desperate for businesses who have been told they’re not allowed to operate during this lockdown.”

Broadcaster Mike Hosking said on April 17: “Basically, we have lost a month economically.” The lockdown had “failed” and “Australia’s numbers are equal if not better than ours,” he declared.

Some of the commentary bordered on the fascistic, identifying cohorts of people whose lives could be sacrificed. Commentator Matthew Hooton wrote in the New Zealand Herald on April 4: “It may be repulsive to express it explicitly, but a protracted suppression strategy would materially and perhaps permanently damage the lives of the two million New Zealanders under the age of 30 to briefly maintain the life expectancy of some thousands of people in their 80s.”

Speaking on Radio NZ on April 14, Hooton criticised “more extreme elements in the public health community” who are advocating some form of lockdown for six months or longer. Former National Party Finance Minister Steven Joyce told Newstalk ZB it was a “pie in the sky” fantasy to suggest COVID-19 could be eliminated, and said that staying in lockdown would cause “irreparable financial damage” to businesses.

Health experts have warned, however, that the government does not yet have sufficient scientific information on which to base a decision. Otago University epidemiologist David Skegg told a parliamentary committee the government would be playing “Russian roulette” with people’s lives if it exited the lockdown without ramping up its contact-tracing work.

Epidemiologist Michael Baker, who is on the Health Ministry’s COVID-19 technical advisory group, said some of the data he needed to see to be confident of reducing to alert level 3 may not yet exist. He told Radio NZ that he had been asking the Health Ministry for weeks for key data about border control, contact tracing and testing but had not received it, nor had the advisory subgroup he was on with four other epidemiologists.

Baker previously predicted a “long, drawn-out battle with the virus” as waves of the pandemic hit separate countries at different times. “Anyone who says it will be over by Christmas hasn’t thought about it enough,” he said.

In contrast to the growing back-to-work agitation, a survey released last week found that almost two-thirds of people would accept an extension of the lockdown beyond April 22.

Research NZ asked if they would be willing to remain in lockdown for at least another two weeks beyond when it is due to finish. Sixty percent agreed they would, 14 percent disagreed, and 26 percent didn’t know. This was despite many respondents’ fears about losing jobs and paying mortgages and rents.

Despite this, and the continuing emergence of new cases of COVID-19, government leaders have begun preparing the way to drop the current lockdown from alert level 4 to level 3. While still restrictive, a level 3 lockdown would enable many businesses to begin operating again. Significantly, schools will reopen, raising concerns among teachers and parents that they could once again become centres for the spread of the virus.

Prime Minister Ardern is set to announce on Monday whether the lockdown will end.

Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, from the right-wing populist NZ First Party, declared on April 16 that the country is “likely” to come out of lockdown next week, meaning “a whole lot” of businesses could immediately reopen if they met guidelines. Peters also criticised the World Health Organisation for not declaring the pandemic earlier and claimed it did not act fast enough, in line with recent statements by US President Donald Trump.

Canadian elite promotes anti-China campaign over coronavirus

Roger Jordan

Canadian politicians, ex-diplomats, and academics are playing a leading role in an international campaign to blame China for the global coronavirus pandemic. This reactionary initiative has a two-fold purpose: to divert public attention away from Western capitalist governments’ disastrous response to the pandemic, which has manifestly prioritized investor profit over human lives; and to further expand Canadian imperialism’s military-strategic partnership with Washington in preparation for intensified great-power conflict, including war, with China.

US President Donald Trump led the way this week with his denunciations of China, blaming Beijing for allegedly failing to inform the international community quickly enough about the coronavirus. Trump also gave succour to conspiracy theories about the virus having been released from a Chinese high security lab and accused the World Health Organization of being under Beijing’s thumb. He used this latter claim to justify his criminal decision to slash Washington’s contributions to the WHO in the middle of a pandemic—a decision that risks the lives of millions of people worldwide.

Just hours before Trump launched his attack on the WHO, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI), an Ottawa-based think-tank with close ties to Canadian policy-making circles, published an open letter that asserted “the current global crisis has been caused by the (Chinese) regime.” The letter, signed by right-wing East European and British politicians and dozens of so-called China experts, was published by the MLI in conjunction with the London-based Henry Jackson Society, notorious for its ties to US intelligence agencies, and the Prague-based European Values Center for Security Policy. It termed the coronavirus China’s “Chernobyl moment,” adding, “The roots of the pandemic are in a cover up by CCP (Chinese Communist Party) authorities in Wuhan.”

There are undoubtedly criticisms to be made of Beijing’s response to the coronavirus. But the reality is that it is the criminal negligence of the major imperialist powers, Canada included, that is responsible for a pandemic—both long foreseeable and long foreseen—having a catastrophic impact on the lives and livelihoods of working people across Europe and North America.

If the pandemic has spread so rapidly, it is because the Trump administration, the Trudeau Liberal government, and the European powers failed to respond in a timely manner to the early warnings issued by China and the WHO. The Chinese authorities released the full sequencing of the virus on January 13, just two weeks after the first cases of an unknown lung disease were reported to the WHO. Although cases were reported in over a dozen countries by the end of the month, both the Trudeau and Trump governments continued throughout February to downplay the threat of a pandemic.

Only when it became clear in March that the coronavirus was spreading out of control in North America, and a number of strikes and protests by workers demanding more protection on the job had broken out, did Ottawa and Washington adopt social distancing measures and Canadian provinces and US states begin to order school shutdowns, later expanded to “non-essential” businesses. However, there was no emergency investment made by either Ottawa or Washington in strengthening their countries’ dilapidated and overstretched health care systems, or even anything comparable to the resources mobilized in China, where new hospitals were built in a matter of days to treat the sick.

As soon as the open letter was released, interim Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer, the two leading candidates to succeed him, Peter MacKay and Erin O’Toole, and Conservative defence policy spokesman James Bezan rushed to sign it. From the start, a leading promoter of the letter was former Liberal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler. Two days before the open letter was officially launched, an article Cotler co-wrote with his former chief of staff and fellow letter endorsee, Judith Abitan, appeared in the Times of Israel, under the title “Xi Jinping’s China did this.”

These right-wing figures are attempting to use the pandemic as a pretext to intensify a long-running anti-China campaign that is intimately connected with the Trump administration’s aggressive anti-Beijing policy, but which enjoys widespread bipartisan support in Washington and increasingly in Canada.

This is underscored by a conveniently timed interview with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that also appeared this week in the hard-right Toronto Sun. Pompeo decried China’s handling of the coronavirus, before getting down to what was his real concern. He urged Canada to follow Trump’s “America First” lead and reduce its reliance on supply chains dependent on Chinese-based production.

He then turned to the issue of Chinese tech giant Huawei’s involvement in Canada’s 5G network. “We think that installing Huawei equipment in a country’s telecom infrastructure presents an enormous national security risk,” he declared. “This is an entity controlled by the Chinese government.” Pompeo went on to warn that the US would only transfer intelligence to allies through networks they know are “secure,” an implicit repetition of the threat to downgrade US-Canada intelligence sharing if Ottawa does not exclude Huawei from Canada’s 5G network.

While the Trudeau government has repeatedly delayed issuing a final ruling on Huawei, it has consistently lined up behind Washington’s ever more aggressive economic and military-geostrategic offensive against Beijing. In 2017, the Liberal government declared China to be one of the principal “global threats” confronting Canada in the 21st century, alongside Russia, as it announced plans to increase military spending by more than 70 percent by 2026.

The Liberals, with pivotal support from the trade unions, also negotiated an updated version of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Trump so as to consolidate North America as a US-dominated trade war bloc against China and the other overseas rivals of US and Canadian imperialism. The Trudeau government has also overseen the expansion of Canadian Armed Forces’ involvement in the US’ provocative military build-up in the Asia-Pacific region.

Moreover, Trudeau personally approved the RCMP’s Dec. 2018 arrest and detention of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou at Washington’s behest on trumped-up charges of breaching its illegal economic sanctions against Iran.

Underscoring Trudeau’s determination to preserve Canadian imperialism’s strategic partnership with Washington at all costs, the Prime Minister deliberately avoided making any criticism of Trump’s criminal decision to suspend funding to the WHO. Instead, he uttered a meaningless phrase about Canada’s determination to promote international collaboration in combatting the virus. It was left to the Minister of International Development, a second-rank figure in the government, to meekly note Canada’s “disappointment” at the White House’s move.

Notwithstanding the Trudeau government’s firm commitment to the Canada-US strategic partnership, sharp differences persist within the Canadian bourgeoisie over its China policy. The support of virtually the entire leadership of the Official Opposition for the open letter castigating Beijing is part of a long-running campaign of anti-China agitation that has also targeted the Liberal government’s supposed failure to adopt a hardline stance towards Beijing.

Prior to last year’s federal election, Scheer delivered a keynote foreign policy address, received with enthusiasm in ruling circles, that called for a “total reset” of Canada-China relations. He demanded Ottawa withdraw from the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank; pledged, à la Trump, to file a complaint against Beijing at the World Trade Organization for “unfair trading practices”; and vowed Canada, under a Conservative government, would join the US-led ballistic missile defence shield. The aim of this “shield” is to enable US imperialism to wage a “winnable” war against its nuclear-armed rivals, above all Russia and China.

From the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, the Conservatives and their accomplices in right-wing media outlets like the National Post sought to foment anti-China sentiment in their criticisms of the Trudeau government. While they have railed against the Trudeau government for not joining Trump in imposing a travel ban on China in late January, they have, naturally enough, scrupulously avoided mention of the austerity policies, pursued by federal and provincial governments of all stripes for decades, that have ravaged the health care system and left it totally unprepared to deal with the pandemic. Nor have they made an issue of the astonishing fact that the federal government only bothered to write the provinces on March 10, over two months after China notified the international community about the virus, to inquire about their medical supply inventories and possible shortages.

Australian ruling elite seizes on pandemic to demand harsh economic restructuring

Mike Head

Big business and its governments in Australia are not just pushing for a premature return to work amid the worsening global COVID-19 pandemic, regardless of the obvious dangers to working-class lives. They are demanding a complete economic restructuring to accelerate the decades-long assault on social spending and workers’ jobs, wages and conditions.

“Never let a good crisis go to waste,” Australian Financial Review senior writer John Kehoe declared yesterday, invoking the phrase made infamous by British Tory Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

In fact, the escalating drive for a rapid reopening of workplaces, even as the international death toll continues to soar, and Australia’s deaths near 70, is bound up with a bid to use the emergency to impose drastic cuts to working class conditions as quickly soon as possible.

People queuing for coronavirus tests at Royal Melbourne Hospital

In increasingly rapacious language, the ruling elite is insisting that the coronavirus crisis provides a golden opportunity to pursue a brutal agenda, while introducing repressive measures, such as mass mobile phone surveillance, to monitor and suppress working-class unrest.

There must be no return to any sense of “business as usual,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared on Thursday, following the latest meeting of the bipartisan “national cabinet” of federal, state and territory leaders that currently runs the county by decree.

His Liberal-National government’s previous catch cries of securing a business “snap back” after “hibernation” have been replaced by calls for an aggressive “pro-growth agenda.”

Election promises would have to be ditched, Morrison said ominously. Nervous of the public response, he refused to specify, but that would certainly include slashing social programs to pay off the estimated $1 trillion government debt incurred by bailing out big business over the past month.

Yesterday’s Australian Financial Review editorial described “the coming recession” as a “burning platform.” It would be the launching pad for a multi-pronged program of expanded corporate tax cuts, more business de-regulation and the transformation of industrial relations to entrench the slashing of pay and conditions agreed to by the trade unions over the past month.

Perversely, the ruling class sees the international health disaster as a chance to inflict an historic assault on the working class. Such is the ruthless logic of the private profit-driven capitalist system that has failed to avert such long-predicted pandemics.

The editorial decried that the failure of one government after another to prosecute the “productivity drive based on enterprise bargaining” launched by the Keating Labor government and the unions in the 1990s.

Every government over the past two decades, from the Howard Liberal-National Coalition government of 1996 to 2007, and the Greens-backed Rudd-Gillard Labor governments of 2007 to 2013, to the current Coalition government, first under Tony Abbott and then Malcolm Turnbull, has tried but failed to deliver in the eyes of the financial elite.

Likewise, today’s editorial in the Australian, the Murdoch media flagship declared: “For two decades, Australia and its political leaders have been policy complacent—yet, at times, lucky, insulated, distracted, dysfunctional and exceptional. As bizarre and confronting as COVID-19 is proving to be, this curious malady presents a breathtaking opportunity for national reinvention.”

Speaking on Melbourne’s 3AW radio yesterday, Morrison was more explicit. He described the global financial breakdown of 2008–09 as “an entrée” compared to the “really bad news” now hitting the economy.

That meltdown a decade ago was exploited to boost corporate wealth to astronomical heights while imposing harsh austerity measures. These included cuts to public healthcare, contributing directly to the criminal lack of resources—testing, personal protection gear, intensive care beds, ventilators and hospital staff—to protect the population from COVID–19.

The new offensive will go far further as the burden of the bailouts is imposed on the working class. Economists are forecasting a federal government budget deficit of more than $100 billion by the 2020–21 financial year. This dwarfs the deficits left after 2009.

Business Council of Australia CEO Jennifer Westacott spearheaded calls at an Australian Financial Review Business Summit last month for governments and employers to exploit the crisis. The demands issued at that summit included massive tax and investment incentives for major corporations, on top of the $200 billion in high income tax cuts already legislation for commencement in 2022.

“And once and for all we need to make it easier to do business,” Westacott insisted. “We must not waste a second of this new level of co-operation in our society to get important things done.”

This “co-operation” referred to the role of Labor and the unions, which have backed all the massive bailout packages provided to big business, together with their provisions for employers to slash pay and conditions. Fearful of the working-class outrage that its agenda will provoke, the corporate elite is relying heavily on them.

This month, Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) Secretary Sally McManus vowed on national television that employers could get “everything you want” by cooperating with the unions. She signed off on a deal with Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter, who described her as his “best friend forever,” to back the government’s $130 billion wage-subsidy scheme, which gave the government and the employers the green light to slash jobs and conditions.

At the same time, on April 8, the ACTU hailed a Fair Work Commission ruling that altered 99 industrial awards to allow employers to force workers to take their annual leave at half their usual rate of pay and coronavirus-affected workers to take two weeks unpaid pandemic leave.

This week, McManus issued a statement hypocritically complaining that companies were asking the Morrison government for Fair Work Act regulations to permit them to force workers to agree to tear up their work agreements with just a day’s notice. But that power was granted by the legislation that Labor and the ACTU helped pass.

Last Thursday’s national cabinet meeting said one pre-condition for lifting pandemic restrictions, in just four weeks, was the introduction of a phone app to enable the government to track everyone’s movements, supposedly to contact anyone who has been in close proximity to a coronavirus victim.

Morrison yesterday refused to rule out trying to make this system of mass surveillance compulsory, although the public outcry forced him to retreat today to making it “voluntary.”

In the name of belatedly carrying out the testing and careful contact tracing that was required months ago, the governments, Coalition and Labor alike, are preparing police-state measures to suppress resistance by workers to being pushed back to work under these unsafe and transformed conditions.

Events in northwest Tasmania over the past few days, where eight people have died and thousands more have been placed in quarantine, provide another warning of the dangers facing workers. They also give an indication of the opposition building up, including among the health workers on the frontline of the pandemic, to the disastrous official response to the crisis.

More than 150 staff at the Mersey community hospital in Devonport wrote to the state government complaining of a “breakdown of trust” after a senior emergency doctor was told not to speak to staff about the hospital’s ability to manage the coronavirus outbreak.

The letter said the government’s promises of personal protective equipment and stronger infection control protocols were not delivered, with “an enormous, snowballing effect on staff wellbeing and anxiety.” The transfer of patients from hospitals in nearby Burnie, which had to be closed because of widespread COVID-19 infections, had “caused major unrest and undue stress” to staff and patients.

The hospital workers’ letter epitomises the determination of workers to protect themselves and the population from the catastrophic operations of the ruling class, and poses the necessity for the working class to take charge of society to reorganise it on the basis of human need, not private profit.

Ukrainian capital Kiev engulfed in smog from wildfires near Chernobyl

Jason Melanovski & Clara Weiss

Since early April, wildfires have raged in the exclusion zone surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Although temporarily extinguished on Tuesday, April 14, they reignited by Wednesday.

The fires broke out on April 4 within just 1 km of the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power station, according to Greenpeace Russia. While Ukrainian authorities blamed the fires on a local 27-year old man, the reasons for the outbreak remain unclear.

Smog over Kiev [Credit: AFP/Sergei Supinsky]

The Chernobyl nuclear power station and the nearby town of Pripyat have been located in a 30 km exclusion zone since 1986 when Chernobyl’s Reactor No. 4 exploded causing the worst nuclear accident in history, spewing over 50 tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere.

According to the New York Times, most of the radiation released by the 1986 disaster had settled into the soil. However, some was also absorbed by the roots of moss, trees and other vegetation in the surrounding area. The wildfires brought it to the surface, spreading radioactive particles in the smoke. Radiation readings close to the wildfires were elevated in the first half of April.

Initially, the wind carried the smoke mostly toward rural areas of Russia and Belarus. For the past week, however, smoke has also clouded the Ukrainian capital Kiev, home to 3 million people and located just 60 miles (100 kilometers) from Chernobyl. The smoke has become so thick that Kiev is now considered the city with the worst air pollution in the world, outstripping even cities like Shanghai.

While authorities have insisted that radiation levels in the capital were within the normal range, they urged residents to drink a lot of water, and stay indoors. They also advised the population to keep their windows shut and cover them with wet fabrics when opening them. The country is currently under lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic, minimizing to some extent the exposure of the population to the smoke.

There have been 4,662 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 125 deaths in Ukraine.

There are many indications that authorities are downplaying the scale of the disaster. According to ABC News, 1,000 firefighters backed by aircraft have now been deployed to contain the fire, up from 450 a week ago. Firefighters have been forced to work 24-hour shifts within the Chernobyl contamination zone without radio-protective equipment. Photos circulating on Facebook showed exhausted firefighters sleeping on the ground without protective equipment. It was also reported that they were not even provided accurate maps of the exclusion area.

Throughout the ordeal, Ukrainian authorities have maintained they had the “situation under control” and that the fires had caused no increased risk of radiation to surrounding areas including the capital of Kiev which is located just 100 km (62 mi) from Chernobyl. On Monday, Volodymyr Demchuk, a senior official from Ukraine’s emergency service stated that “There is no threat to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, waste fuel storage or other critical facilities.”

However, on April 4, the Ukrainian government was caught deliberately lying about the scale of the fires claiming that they were a mere 20 hectares in size, while satellite imagery from Greenpeace showed the fire covered around 12,000 hectares. Other satellite images taken by NASA Worldview and confirmed by Reuters also proved fires had extended far into the exclusion zone.

Rashid Alimov of Greenpeace Russia also contradicted the government’s claim that the fires posed no radiation risk by stating the fires could release radionuclides or atoms that emit radiation into the atmosphere. “A fire approaching a nuclear or hazardous radiation facility is always a risk,” Alimov said.

On April 5, just two days after the start of the fire, Yegor Firsov, head of Ukraine’s state ecological inspection service, posted on Facebook a video with a Geiger counter showing radiation levels at the fire 16 times above normal. According to Greenpeace, the fire spread to at least 20,000 hectares, the equivalent of 7 percent of the area.

The government’s brazen lies were further exposed by Chernobyl tour operator leader Yaroslav Yemelianenko who posted on Facebook that the fires were now only a kilometer from the station itself and around 2 kilometers from a site containing radioactive waste. He added that “The local authorities report that everything is under control, but in fact the fire is rapidly spreading across new areas.”

Yemelianenko also appealed to President Volodmyr Zelensky for help and suggested that Zelensky’s incompetence in dealing with the fires was a result either of the cabinet “not being told the real situation, or they’ve chosen the Soviet policy of hushing it up, as they did in ’86.”

The haphazard and self-serving response from the Zelensky government mirrors the behavior of both the capitalist and Stalinist regimes that have preceded him.

The scale of the disaster in 1986 continues to be deliberately downplayed and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people affected by it have been left without adequate medical and financial support.

A 2006 United Nations report contends that the Chernobyl accident caused just 56 deaths, but the Ukrainian government continues to pay 35,000 pensions to spouses of victims of the disaster. However, the historian Kate Brown spoke to Ukrainian scientists who estimated that at least between 40,000 and 150,000 people died in Ukraine alone. The radioactive materials also spread widely into Belarus and Russia, contaminating tons of milk and other produce that were sold in the Soviet Union at the time.

The fact that firefighters are now forced to work around the clock shifts without radio-protective equipment is an indictment of both Zelensky and the previous capitalist regimes. It is well known that wildfires occur regularly in the area surrounding Chernobyl. Yet there was clearly no plan whatsoever to contain, let alone, prevent another outbreak of fires around the world’s most dangerous radioactive site.

While the initial explosion at Reactor No. 4 took place over 30 years ago, the sarcophagus that was constructed around it in the years immediately following the accident now faces “the high probability of collapse” and is scheduled to be dismantled by 2023. The sarcophagus itself was covered by a “New Safe Confinement structure” in 2016, which is essentially a shell that will surround the reactor while the sarcophagus is dismantled and the area is remediated. Scientists estimate that radiation remediation efforts will last until 2065. Ukrainian governments have turned much of the area immediately surrounding the site of the disaster into a tourist attraction.