India: A land in lament

Sarosh Bana

A farrago of failures of the authorities is confounding India’s desperate struggle against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), as the nation is facing a prolonged lockdown. As public services collapsed with the abrupt imposition of the world’s biggest – and toughest – lockdown that quarantined the population of 1.3 billion from 25 March, there are fears that the unfolding humanitarian tragedy will far eclipse the viral disaster that has hitherto slain 324 and afflicted 9,352 others in the country.

There was widespread panic when Prime Minister Narendra Modi came on television at 8 pm on 24 March to announce that the 21-day lockdown would begin that midnight, in four hours. Binge purchases stripped bare supermarkets, groceries and pharmacies in no time.

Also, with 93 per cent of the country’s 540-million workforce engaged in the informal sector with no social security and comprising largely migrant workers who are daily wagers, roadside vendors, servants, drivers and contract labourers, there was a mass exodus from the towns and cities where they worked, to their families back in rural India.

Out of job, and with meagre savings – they remit most of their earnings to their families – and with public transport revoked, most were left with no option but to trudge the vast distances, even 400 km and more, to their hometowns. They were, however, turned upon by the police who thrashed and humiliated them for venturing out. At least 17 of them died soon after while dodging police brutality in making their way home. One man was midway from his village 200 km away when he collapsed out of exhaustion, but was left to die in the streets by unconcerned policemen. One 11-year-old boy died of starvation. Groups of four and five workers were separately mowed down by speeding vans.

In a radio broadcast on 29 March, the Prime Minister apologised for the grim developments and said he understood what the poor were going through. However, the next day, state borders were sealed off, stranding those fleeing even further, without food, water or shelter.

Millions of them have started starving, even as some public-spirited individuals and organisations bribe the police for permission to distribute food where they can. Some of those in flight were lined up by officials posted at state borders and fumigated from head to foot with chemicals and then pushed back across the borders without food, water or rest. One lost an eye as a result. Some of them proudly proclaimed they were skilled cooks whose food was savoured by those patronising their eateries, but were now themselves suffering pangs of hunger.

The situation is little better in urban India. Though essential services like food and medicine have been exempt from the shutdown, roadside vegetable and fruit vendors have been chased away, their pushcarts upturned and their wares squashed by policemen on the rampage. Trucks freighting fruits and vegetables have been stopped by police seeking bribes to let them through, with catastrophic consequences. Truckloads of food items are thus rotting away, farmers too are suffering as their produce is not being picked up in time, and retail outlets are running low on stores. Most online retailers have ceased operations.

Curiously, the country has enough food reserves – including 59 million tonnes (mt) of foodgrain – to feed the population for the next one year, but these are not being released to tide over the on-going crisis.

The crisis of the poor exacerbates India’s struggle against the coronavirus. Two-thirds of the population lives on less than $2 a day and they have been the worst affected by the closure. The situation threatens to precipitate a manmade famine that will devastate especially these segments on the margins of society.

India’s first active case of Covid-19 was carried into the country on 30 January from China where it was first detected over a month earlier. But though the World Health Organisation (WHO) that very day declared the outbreak a ‘public health emergency of international concern’ and on 11 March designated it a ‘pandemic’, counselling a vigorous global response to counter it, India’s health ministry officials even on 13 March were telling reporters that coronavirus is “not a health emergency” and “there is no need to panic”.

The government’s attention was diverted by other issues. For instance, the entire administration was focussed on preparations for US President Donald Trump’s 36-hour state visit to the country in the last week of February, reportedly spending $17 million just for his three-hour sojourn in Ahmedabad, in Gujarat state. Besides, the nationwide unrest, provoked by the enactment of a communally discriminatory legislation, peaked while Trump was in the capital city of New Delhi, leading the authorities to counter it forcefully.

Opposition parties also alleged that the Modi government had delayed imposing the lockdown as it was devoting its energies in much of March towards horse-trading to pull down the Congress party-led government in the politically significant state of Madhya Pradesh and replacing it with that led by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Healthcare workers were besides alarmed by critical medical supplies running low. Even in the best of times, the country’s feeble health services are stretched, there being an average of only 0.6 beds per 1,000 population and one doctor for every 1,457 people, these dismal ratios plummeting in rural India. While the government budgets 2.1 per cent of the GDP towards Defence, the share of Public Health is a mere 0.44 per cent. Testing for the virus has remained weak, reaching a total 195,748 on Sunday.

Yet, India has been exporting planeloads of life-saving drugs to various countries in what is widely seen as an effort at “medical diplomacy”. The government retracted a ban it had itself briefly imposed on such drugs on 19 March, including the experimental Covid-19 treatment, hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), after Trump threatened retaliation if the anti-malarial medicine was not shipped to the US. While authorities insist there is no domestic shortage of HCQ, pharmacists say it has almost disappeared from the market.

Earlier, India had airlifted 15 tonnes of medical supplies by an air force plane to coronavirus-hit China that included surgical masks and gloves, infusion pumps, enteral feeding pumps and defibrillators. Drug consignments are also being sent to other afflicted countries like the UK, Spain, Germany, Mauritius, Seychelles and Bahrain.

Seized of the viral dilemma, the Prime Minister now says that his previous slogan on the pandemic, namely, Jaan hai to jahaan hai (if there is life, the world will exist) must be changed to Jaan bhi, jahaan bhi (life will be there, together with the world).

Australian governments refuse to assist international students amid pandemic

John Harris

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison told a press conference earlier this month that his government would not provide any support to international students and visa-holders whose lives have been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic and global economic downturn.

Speaking for the entire political establishment, Morrison callously declared that international students who cannot support themselves in Australia should “return to their home countries.”

There are some 2.17 million international students, workers and backpackers on temporary visas who currently reside in Australia. Many of them face visa expirations, unemployment and travel restrictions. It is estimated that there are as many as 570,000 student visa-holders in Australia.

When the crisis began, no concessions were provided so that visa-holders could afford tickets for flights which more than doubled in cost. Numerous countries rapidly locked down their borders limiting travel arrangements. The ending of most international flights from Australia means that hundreds of thousands are now effectively trapped.

Promoting divisive nationalism, Morrison declared at the press conference, “our priority is on supporting Australians.” In reality, the government, with the full support of Labor and the unions, has provided hundreds of billions of dollars to the major corporations, while virtually nothing has been done to assist the million of workers thrown into unemployment.

In an attempt to deflect anger over the lack of support, acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge later stated that temporary visa holders who have been in the country for over a year will be able to access their Australian superannuation for support.

Given that visa-holders are among the lowest-paid of workers, their superannuation will be woefully inadequate to cover their basic living expenses. They are, moreover, being forced to deplete their limited savings just to survive.

Under regressive visa laws, international students have a 20-hour weekly limit on paid work. They are also prevented from accessing essential medical and social services. This has made it virtually impossible for students to save money and secure full-time work.

Most with a job are exploited as cheap labour. Many have been forced into low-paying, sometimes dangerous, cash-in-hand jobs in the fruit picking, retail and hospitality industries. Others work in the “gig economy,” as ride-share and food delivery drivers.

A recent survey of over 3,700 visa-holders, conducted by Unions New South Wales, revealed that almost half of the participants had lost their jobs since the crisis began. A further 20 percent said that their number of working hours had been cut. Some 43 percent said that they had to skip meals.

Even before the pandemic began, many international students were living on the precipice of a crisis.

According to 2017 figures from Universities Australia, one in two international undergraduate students reported overall expenses greater than their income. About 50 percent were in paid casual or part-time employment with a median of 15 hours a week. Almost nine in ten were compelled to rely on financial support from relatives.

International students have been heavily affected by unaffordable housing costs in the major cities, especially Sydney and Melbourne. Thousands have been forced into crowded shared accommodation where the disease can spread like wildfire.

Many now confront the prospect of homelessness. Andrea Andrade from Venezuela , who has been studying at a TAFE in Perth since 2018 and recently lost her job, told SBS News: “I cannot pay rent, I cannot pay food. We did try talking to our landlords but they cannot help us. I have savings but it’s only a matter of time before that runs out. I do have family who can help me in case of an emergency … but they’re going through the same situation.”

Marcos Bento, a Brazilian student who came to Australia four years ago, told the Special Broacasting Services network : “If I had the four or five thousand dollars to buy one ticket back to Brazil… if I had money to go back to Brazil I would have money to support myself here.”

After losing his job in Sydney, he said: “I have no idea about the future, no money to pay rent… We are afraid about the situation, we know you are meant to stay home, but if you stay home you must have food and rent or else you go homeless.”

Bento said that he had spent over $40,000 to study in Australia for his master's degree in public health which is due to finish in September. He said leaving the country now could mean he will fail his course and that his fees will have been wasted. He said the university had not provided him with options to finish his degree remotely.

For decades, international students have been exploited as 'cash-cows' paying astronomical upfront tertiary course fees, usually in the tens of thousands of dollars a year. In 2019, the international student “market” was worth approximately $37 billion, comprising almost 40 percent of Australia’s exports of services and 9 percent of total exports.

It was the Hawke Labor government that in 1985 introduced full upfront fees for international students. This was a prelude to the abolition of free education two years later, with fees brought in for domestic students. Ever since, revenue from international students has grown considerably under consecutive Labor and Liberal-National governments.

Labor has bemoaned the impact that the crisis will have on the multi-billion dollar university model, but has said virtually nothing about the dire plight of international students, making clear that their abandonment is bipartisan policy. State governments, many of them Labor-led, have similarly done nothing to assist the students.

The indifference of the political establishment contrasts with the response of ordinary people. In a number of cities, workers have organised to provide international students with cheap or free groceries and other essentials. Some small businesses in Sydney and elsewhere have given international students a free meal each day.

The situation confronting international students is part of the offensive against the entire working class, which is being made to pay for the crisis triggered by the pandemic. It underscores the need for a fight by all students and workers for the social right to free, high-quality education for all, and for an end to the discriminatory measures targeting international students and visa-holders.

Apple and Google implementing smartphone-based contact tracing technology

Kevin Reed

On April 10, the tech corporations Apple and Google announced a collaborative effort to introduce COVID-19 contact tracing capabilities into their mobile technologies. In a joint statement, the Silicon Valley tech giants wrote that they intended to “enable the use of Bluetooth technology to help governments and health agencies reduce the spread of the virus, with user privacy and security central to the design.”

The statement elaborated further, “Apple and Google will be launching a comprehensive solution that includes application programming interfaces (APIs) and operating system-level technology to assist in enabling contact tracing. Given the urgent need, the plan is to implement this solution in two steps while maintaining strong protections around user privacy.”

Step one of the accelerated development plan will allow official apps from public health authorities to interoperate between the Android and iOS mobile operating systems. In step two, the companies will enable Bluetooth-based contact tracing in their underlying platform as part of the core capability of smartphones.

Apple and Google announced on April 10 the joint implementation of contact tracing technology into the Adroid and iOS operating system [Photo credit: Apple/Google Infographic]

The second phase of the project, according to the joint statement, “is a more robust solution than an API and would allow more individuals to participate, if they choose to opt in, as well as enable interaction with a broader ecosystem of apps and government health authorities.” The short press statement then repeats again for a third time, “Privacy, transparency, and consent are of utmost importance in this effort, and we look forward to building this functionality in consultation with interested stakeholders.”

Contact tracing is a primary scientific method for responding to and combatting a pandemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), contact tracing is the process of locating everyone who comes into direct contact with someone who has been infected and then taking certain specified actions to contain the virus from spreading further. The CDC calls for monitoring contacts of infected people after notifying them of their exposure and then “ensure the safe, sustainable and effective quarantine of contacts to prevent additional transmission.”

Most people who get COVID-19 are infected by their friends, neighbors, family or work colleagues, so these relationships are the ones that contact tracing is concentrated on. In countries and regions that have combined contact tracing with widespread testing—such as South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong—death rates have been relatively low compared to countries, like the US, that are testing only those who show symptoms of COVID-19.

Traditionally, contact tracing requires the creation of large teams of trained professionals who trace relatives, neighbors and friends to find anyone who has come into contact with a sick person or someone who has died. The contact tracers stay in touch with those testing negative and ask questions, look for symptoms and recommend courses of action.

With the development of mobile and cloud-based computer technologies, advanced contact tracing systems have already been developed and used internationally. According to a report in the Atlantic, the governments of South Korea and Singapore used a combination of smartphone location data, video surveillance and credit card records to monitor citizen activity during the pandemic.

The Atlantic report went on, “When somebody tests positive, local governments can send out an alert, a bit like a flood warning, that reportedly includes the individual’s last name, sex, age, district of residence, and credit-card history, with a minute-to-minute record of their comings and goings from various local businesses.”

According to a report in Nature, in some districts of South Korea, the contact tracing information shared with the public “includes which rooms of a building the person was in, when they visited a toilet and whether or not they wore a mask.” The South Korean government argues that the public is more likely to trust it if it releases transparent and accurate information about the virus. Many of the laws allowing the information to be made public were passed since the country’s outbreak of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2015.

In Singapore, residents downloaded an app called TraceTogether, which uses Bluetooth technology to keep a log of those with mobile devices who are nearby. When someone gets sick, they upload the relevant data to the Ministry of Health, which then contacts the owners of all the devices logged by the infected person’s phone.

A fast-track discussion has been underway since the middle of March about the development of mobile technology-based contact tracing in the US led by the Silicon Valley tech giants. Papers have been published by leading academic and health policy research institutions and proposals have been advanced regarding guidelines for the use of location data and the collection of other information related to the pandemic.

On April 8, the American Civil Liberties Union published a document, “The Limits of Location Tracking in an Epidemic,” which is directed at US lawmakers and raises questions about the effectiveness of cell phone contact tracing capabilities. The ACLU statement says, “location data contains an enormously invasive and personal set of information about each of us, with the potential to reveal such things as people’s social, sexual, religious, and political associations. The potential for invasions of privacy, abuse, and stigmatization is enormous.”

Apple and Google are both well aware that any proposal containing the phrases “to help governments” and “strong protections around user privacy” will be viewed by the public as oxymoronic. This is why they are working to convince the public that their coronavirus initiative is only for the purpose of containing the pandemic and not a government surveillance operation.

A huge amount of data will be collected by contact tracing smartphones, such as geolocation and the device details of all those who come into contact with each person. For governments to gain access to this data—especially if it is stored in a national or international database—represents a trove of information on the entire population far beyond anything currently available.

In the case of Israel, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved rapidly on March 17 to pass legislation that authorized contact tracing of the public by the Shin Bet security service with previously secret technology that had been used for so-called “anti-terrorism” surveillance.

Meanwhile, there is no doubt that the aggressive collaborative effort by the Apple and Google—coming one month after a special meeting between the White House and the tech companies on March 11 to discuss the pandemic—is part of an effort make sure that any global implementation of pandemic track and trace technologies are dominated by US corporations.

With the potential for every smartphone owner on the planet—approximately 3.5 billion people—to install the contact tracing software on their devices, investors on Wall Street see an opportunity for a massive business opportunity.

Smartphone technology has the enormous potential to play a critical role in isolating and halting the spread of the coronavirus. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic intensifying national conflicts and the ruling elite exploiting the crisis to both intensify state surveillance and increase their wealth, the only way that this potential can be realized in a progressive manner is under the democratic control of the working class through the struggle for socialism on a world scale.

Millions of internal migrant workers suffering under India’s lockdown

Rohantha De Silva

Internal migrant workers across India are confronting increasingly harsh conditions, including lack of food and starvation, and unhygienic, overcrowded accommodation, as a result of the government’s coronavirus lockdown.

Prime Minister Modi’s 21-day lockdown was announced on March 24 without any prior warning or any substantial plan to provide the basic needs of working people and the rural toilers. This has brought immense hardship to millions of workers who are employed as daily low-wage workers in the textile, leather, retail, tourism, construction and other sectors.

When their workplaces closed, these workers had no money to buy food or pay rent and wanted to return to their home villages.

Last Tuesday, the government’s callous attitude toward these workers was displayed when police in Mumbai violently attacked protesting internal migrants.

A group of workers who have been trapped in Mumbai without their wages gathered to demand transport facilities to get back to their villages hundreds of kilometres away. They were attacked by the police who arrested 11 people, including a television journalist.

The incident is part of the growing wave of protests, walkouts and strikes by workers around the world against the appalling conditions they face amid the pandemic. While the financial elites are using the crisis to enrich themselves, as indicated by rising stock market values, the masses are trapped in ever-worsening and life-threatening social conditions.

With all public transport halted, up to 600,000 migrant workers were confronted with having to walk hundreds of kilometres to reach their villages. Those who failed to do so were herded into temporary shelters arranged by state governments. The shelters are unhygienic and without adequate amenities, including food and water. In most cases, the only meals are provided by charities and NGOs rather than state government authorities.

The rising anger of daily wage earners exploded on April 14 when Modi announced that the lockdown would be extended until May 3.

At around 4 p.m., a few hours after Modi’s announcement, jobless migrant workers in Mumbai, including many from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal, gathered at a railway station in Mumbai demanding transport back to their villages. Their numbers quickly swelled to around 1,500.

West Bengal worker Asadullah Sheikh told the Week magazine: “We have already spent our savings during the first phase of the lockdown. We have nothing to eat now.”

Police responded by declaring the protest an unlawful assembly and accusing the participants of rioting and disobedience. Later that night, they arrested Vinay Dubey and several others. Dubey posted a video on a Facebook page in which he declared: “We are stuck at home. We are dying. So we might as well die fighting.”

The posting has gone viral. The Hindu reported on April 15, a day after the protest, that the posting was liked by 16,000 people and shared by 15,000.

Television journalist Rahul Kukarni was among those arrested. Police claim that he had reported that train services would be resuming. This “outside agitation” allegedly prompted the protest.

According to the Scroll.in web site, Kulkarni had reported an internal note by South Central Railway authorities that suggested a decision to run special trains for stranded people.

The police attack on the demonstration is a desperate attempt to divert political attention from the government’s failure to provide any real assistance to these low-paid workers.

The Mumbai protest was not unique to that city. That night in Surat, in the neighbouring state of Gujarat, hundreds of migrant workers held a sit-down protest on a road in the Varachha area on Tuesday evening demanding to be sent home.

Surat is a busy seaport and a commercial and economic centre. Eighty migrant workers were arrested four days earlier, on April 10, for staging a protest and demanding they be sent back to their home villages.

Migrant workers’ demonstrations have been held in other states, including Haryana, New Delhi, Telangana and Kerala. Participants voiced their anger to the News.18 site last Wednesday.

News.18 reported that most of the workers were attempting to survive on just one meal per day and were entirely dependent on donations from charities. It cited a comment from Manohar Kumar, a construction worker stuck in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, who said he was living on “rice and starch, which was doubling up both as dinner and lunch.”

Kumar added: “Some of my co-workers are planning to go to the nearest police station and demand transport to return home.” He explained that he was so desperate to escape the appalling conditions created by the lockdown that he had even considered walking the 350 kilometres to his home.

There are currently over one million people unable to return to their home cities and villages, trapped in so-called relief camp accommodation. Government authorities are currently running over 22,500 of these camps, accommodating about 630,000 people. The remaining 400,000 people are in 3,909 NGO-run facilities.

These facilities are dangerously cramped and unhygienic. While the World Health Organisation and other medical experts insist that social distancing must be practised, this is impossible for those stranded in these camps.

According to a recent survey by Jan Sahas, an NGO, 90 percent of migrant workers have lost their only source of income since the lockdown began and four out of 10 lack enough resources for one day’s rations. The extension of lockdown until May 3 will worsen the situation they face.

The Indian ruling elites, like their capitalist counterparts around the world, refuse to provide the most minimal requirements to sustain the lives of millions of the poorest and most exploited sections of the working class.

How German CEOs are profiting from the coronavirus crisis

Peter Schwarz

The executives of major German corporations are raking in millions from the coronavirus crisis. This emerges from an article in the economic section of the Süddeutsche Zeitung April 15.

The newspaper report is based on figures related to so-called director’s dealings—the buying and selling of shares in a company by its own managers. Such trades are not the same as share buybacks, i.e., the buyback of shares by the company itself. In the latter case, executive members also benefit if they own shares in their own company—the buyback reduces the number of total shares and thus increases the value of the shares remaining.

Director’s dealings should be prohibited as a form of insider trading because top managers invariably have inside information relevant to the future development of the company and their decisions directly influence the share value of the company. Nevertheless, such trading is allowed—managers merely have to follow certain rules and report transactions.

The article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that many executives from Germany’s leading firms registered on stock indexes (e.g., Dax, M-Dax and S-Dax) bought up shares of their own companies after share prices plummeted because of the coronavirus crisis. The article mentions in particular Carsten Spohr (CEO, Lufthansa), Stephan Sturm (Fresenius), Martin Brudermüller and Saori Dubourg (BASF), Rudolf Staudigl (Wacker Chemie) and almost the entire board of Lanxess.

When they bought the shares, the chief executives suspected or knew that the federal government was planning a €600 billion package to support major German corporations and that their share prices would rise again soon. The companies were in close contact with the government at the time.

And it worked. After the Dax tumbled below 8,500 points on March 18 it has since risen steeply and is currently stable above 10,000 points. On April 14, it even reached 10,700 points—an increase of 25 percent within four weeks. This means that leading executives have made a killing while most workers have been forced on to short-time work allowances of 60 percent of salary and must fear for their jobs.

The managers had made use of the same strategy during the 2008 financial crisis, the Süddeutsche reports, citing Olaf Stotz from the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, who has studied the subject for years.

“Prior to the bankruptcy of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers in mid-September 2008, members of boards of directors, of supervisory boards and persons close to them sold off shares on a large scale,” the article states. “In 2009 they then used the low prices to buy shares in their own companies. The almost 200 share purchases by insiders within just two weeks represented a record high at the time.” The Süddeutsche article does not reveal how many so-called worker representatives sitting on German company supervisory boards also cashed in on these trades.

To recall, at the height of the financial crisis of 2008–2009 the Dax had plunged to a record low of 3,666 points. In February this year it reached a historic high of 13,580 points. Those buying and selling at the right moment could almost quadruple their assets in just 11 years.

Following the 2008 crisis the German government intervened with hundreds of billions of euros to “save” banks and companies. Since then these funds have been recovered through a policy of zero indebtedness and massive cuts in social spending—one reason for the devastating effects of COVID-19, which hit at a time when the German health system was cut to the bone.

It is noteworthy that one of the beneficiaries of this orgy of enrichment is Fresenius CEO Sturm. On March 16, Sturm bought shares in his own company for €57,000. Fresenius is an international health care company and one of the largest private hospital operators in Germany with a market value of $30 billion.

Sturm bought shares when it was reported that the Spanish government intended to nationalise the country’s hospitals, a measure which would have hit Fresenius hard. Two days later, Fresenius announced that speculation about any such nationalisation lacked any basis and the company share price soared by 14 percent.

Compared to BASF CEO Brudermüller, however, Sturm is a small fish. On March 9, Brudermüller bought up shares in his own company to the tune of nearly half a million euros. Two weeks later, the Bundestag passed its €600 billion injection for large corporations. “Were Brudermüller or other company executives involved in drawing up the deal?” Süddeutsche asks. “The response by BASF was evasive: Management is ‘always in regular exchange with many levels of federal and state politics, especially of course in times of crisis.’”

The board of directors of the chemical company Lanxess also intervened heavily in the markets. Its members bought €784,000 worth of shares on March 11, shortly after the company announced a share buyback program.

The enrichment of the Dax bosses is just one example of how the coronavirus crisis is massively exacerbating class conflict in capitalist society. While millions of workers in hospitals, shops and factories risk their lives for starvation wages, lose their jobs, are plunged into debt, or die of COVID-19, the wealthiest social layer is exploiting the crisis to enrich itself even more.

Over 1,000 sailors on French carrier Charles de Gaulle sick with COVID-19

Anthony Torres

France’s nuclear aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle arrived at its home port in Toulon a week ago with 50 confirmed cases of COVID-19 on board. After more testing, the Defense Ministry announced that 1,081 sailors were infected with the coronavirus out of 2,010 sailors tested on the carrier and its escorting fleet. Currently, 24 sailors are hospitalized with one in critical condition, and 545 sailors are presenting symptoms.

Since January 21, the Charles de Gaulle had been operating in the Mediterranean as part of Operation Chammal targeting Syria and Iraq, and then the North Atlantic for a mission slated to end on April 23. In the North Atlantic, according to the Navy, it was tasked with “deepening knowledge of the areas traversed and contributing to stabilizing the Euro-Mediterranean and Euro-Atlantic regions.” Its escorts included German, Belgian, Spanish and Portuguese frigates.

There is growing anger among the carrier’s crew, whose commander was refused permission to end the mission as the ship arrived at the Atlantic port of Brest on March 13 with confirmed coronavirus cases aboard. A month before arriving at Brest, the carrier had put in at a port in Cyprus. Initial reports suggested the first cases could have emerged after a five-to-eight-day incubation period and spread very rapidly.

Charles De Gaulle nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (Image credit: U.S. Marine Corps photo by Maj. Joshua Smith)

One sailor anonymously told the press, “The armed forces played with our health and our lives. … It is impossible to respect social distancing measures aboard an aircraft carrier.”

The infected sailors are victims of the imperialist war drive in the Middle East threatening Iran, Russia and China. Like Washington, Paris is sabre rattling against Russia in the Mediterranean, where Moscow backs the Syrian regime against NATO, and in the Euro-Atlantic area. Putting its imperialist geostrategic interests first, including above all intensifying war threats against Russia and China, President Emmanuel Macron’s government acted with contempt for the sailors’ health with its refusal to allow the sailors to disembark to safety.

The disaster on the Charles de Gaulle follows the outbreak aboard the US aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, whose captain was sacked after asking for authorization to evacuate the vessel as COVID-19 tore through the crew.

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper refused to grant authorization to the crew to leave the ship, as the Trump administration insisted that the carrier be ready for war in the Pacific despite the many of the crew falling ill. Since then, several hundred American sailors have tested positive due to Washington’s insistence on continuing its threats against China in the Pacific. The US sailors are currently being treated at the US military base on Guam.

Similarly, the mass infection of three-fifths of the Charles de Gaulle’s crew took place after the French Navy refused an urgent appeal from its commander for an emergency evacuation.

L’Express reported, “as early as March 13, the ‘pasha’—this is how the ship’s captain is called—reportedly sent a message to his superiors asking to halt the ship’s mission. As it was preparing to enter in Brest harbor for a three-day stop, cases of COVID-19, or at least suspected as such, had emerged aboard. Ship captain Guillaume Pinget was concerned and therefore asked to scrap the aircraft carrier battle group’s moves northwards to instead return to Toulon, its home base, to confine the entire crew to try to avert the worst.”

Now, the French armed forces are undertaking a disembarkation operation to place 1,900 sailors in quarantine. The spokeswoman for the maritime prefecture of Toulon, Christine Ribbe, said: “Our objective is to protect all our sailors but also their families and the French people by deploying an unprecedented operation to greet them that will be as humane, as coordinated, as concerted but also as effective as possible.”

The disembarkation of the crew required a heavy logistical operation. Sailors were evacuated by ship as well as by buses, trucks and other vehicles to avoid all contact with the exterior and thus limit the risks of further infections. An operation to decontaminate the carrier as well as its complement of warplanes began last Tuesday so that they can “recover as soon as possible their full operational capacity,” the Defense Ministry stated.

The sailors who tested positive and those presenting symptoms, it added, are being “transferred to dedicated locations … in accord with the armed forces’ health services and the Saint-Anne military hospital” in Toulon. It is only after the health quarantine and further testing that the carrier’s crew will be allowed to return to their families.

Ribbe stressed that “Everyone will be tested.” The sailors, including the roughly 1,700 serving aboard the Charles de Gaulle and over 200 aboard an escorting frigate, are to be confined for a two-week period without contact with their families, “on military installations of the Var region and surrounding areas.”

Celyne Flandrin, the wife of an infected sailor, spoke to the press about the dismay of the sailors’ families. “They maintained hygienic measures and tried to enforce social distancing,” she said, including “the same restrictions that we know on land due to the shelter-at-home order,” with the ship’s bar and other non-essential services being closed. However, she noted, as in all aircraft carriers, “the size of common areas and installations is quite narrow, everyone is packed in.”

On Friday, French Navy spokesman Captain Eric Lavault insisted that all precautionary measures applicable in France had been respected aboard the vessel. Lavault also denied the reports in L’Express that Pinget had requested to halt the ship’s mission and disembark, instead telling RTL: “Very officially, I deny this report. It is erroneous.”

Lavault immediately admitted, however, that many are asking questions about the decisions taken at the time of the Brest port call and demanded incoherently that the public refrain from asking about the causes of the disaster: “I think we must avoid formulating hypotheses, as I see now that some people are doing. Indeed, we are all thinking about the port call at Brest, but there probably will be some other hypotheses and an epidemiological investigation will give answers.”

Last Wednesday, journalist Justine Brabant reported for the Médiapart news site on further errors in the handling of the epidemic aboard. Fourteen days after the March 13-16 port call in Brest, the armed services reportedly relaxed social distancing orders among the crew.

As the sailors themselves are saying, this event has exposed that the Navy brass and the Macron government treat them as cannon fodder—just like workers, whom Macron is ordering back to work in the middle of the pandemic, endangering countless thousands of lives.

French prime minister outlines end to quarantine as coronavirus deaths reach almost 20,000

Will Morrow

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and Health Minister Olivier Véran addressed a press conference last night, outlining the government’s plans to end prematurely the nationwide quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic.

The press conference, which lasted more than two hours, consisted of a series of lies, evasions and self-congratulations in regard to the French government’s own disastrous and criminally negligent policies.

Yesterday, another 395 COVID-19 deaths were reported across the country, bringing the total number of French dead to 19,718. Of these, 7,469 deaths have been reported in aged care homes, where the real rate of mortality is likely far higher. At least 45 percent of aged care homes have reported one or more infection among residents. More than 5,900 people remain in hospital emergency beds, in excess of the 5,000 emergency beds that were officially available prior to the outbreak.

Neither Philippe nor Véran provided any rational scientific or medical basis, during their press gathering, for the reopening of the economy on May 11 announced last Monday by President Emmanuel Macron. Having already provided hundreds of billions of euros to the corporate and financial elite to ensure that their fortunes are protected from the economic crisis triggered by the pandemic, the government is pushing—like its counterparts internationally—for a rapid return-to-work under unsafe conditions.

Philippe declared that the population would have to “learn to live with this virus.” What this means in practice is that thousands of workers will continue to die, and that this must come to be seen as a normal part of life, so that the corporations can continue to extract profits from the working class.

A large portion of Philippe’s remarks were devoted to defending the government’s own reaction to the virus. The latest CEVIPOF poll for the month of April released on Saturday showed that only 39 percent of the population believed the government had “managed this crisis well.” The website Gala cited an unnamed ministry adviser on Friday stating that “there will be a dégagiste [demanding the downfall of the government] movement after the crisis. It’s the end of all of us.” The term dégager [resign] was a main slogan of the Tunisian revolution of 2011.

In one characteristic lie, for example, Philippe stated that the government had maintained 107 million protective masks in stock prior to the pandemic, and that this would be sufficient to supply the health system for 20 weeks under normal conditions. He did not specify that these were virtually all lower-grade masks not designed for use by medical personnel, but only suitable for the general population to prevent the spread of an illness.

In 2009, the government had maintained in stock over 460 million higher-grade FFP2 masks, designed for use by medical professionals, which the government had calculated would suffice for 90 days in the midst of an epidemic. In 2011, the Sarkozy government cancelled the programme of maintaining FFP2 mask stocks completely, as part of the drive by the political establishment to slash health care spending. By the time the first coronavirus cases were detected in France, the government had no centralized stock of FFP2 masks.

The government has provided few details about how it intends to end the quarantine, and Philippe stated that the details were still being worked out and would only be revealed some time in the next two weeks.

Health Minister Véran announced that beginning today, limited visits of no more than two people at a time, will be permitted in aged care homes and facilities for the disabled and without any physical contact.

Beginning on May 11, schools will reopen, though possibly not all at once. Philippe raised the possibility that they will be reopened progressively by region, or that half the students will attend classes in one week, and half the other.

The reopening of schools has been widely opposed by health care professionals and by teachers on social media. Philip Klein, a French doctor preparing to return from Wuhan, where he has worked through the pandemic, told Europe 1, “In the case of an end to quarantine … the last thing you should do is reopen schools.” Klein stated that children are “often asymptomatic carriers and are therefore transporters of the epidemic,” and reopening schools too quickly would be “an enormous risk.”

From the standpoint of the ruling class, however, the reopening of schools is a necessity in order to allow employees to return to work.

Philippe reported that the reproduction rate of the infection had been reduced to 0.65 during the quarantine, meaning that every 100 people with the disease infect, on average, another 65 people. The aim of the measures put in place after the quarantine would be to maintain this rate “at or below one.”

However, the government has not provided any scientific basis for the claim that an end to confinement will not lead to an immediate and catastrophic resurgence of the pandemic’s spread. The total number of cases across France remains unknown. Official policy remains testing only those most at risk. GP clinics are unable to carry out tests, and people who present COVID-19 symptoms, unless they have already developed respiratory difficulties, are told to go home. Véran claimed the government would seek to increase the total number of tests from 125,000 per week to 500,000 by May 11.

Despite the full support of the media, the end to quarantine remains opposed by the majority of the French population, which does not wish to be forced back to work in order to allow the spread of the disease to kill themselves and their family members. The most recent Yougov poll for the Huffington Post showed that 51 percent of the population still supported total confinement, with over 80 percent believing the government should have imposed confinement earlier.

The Macron government is seeking to utilize the economic pressure on the working class caused by its own refusal to provide adequate support throughout the pandemic as a cudgel to drive people back to work—this despite the fact that the conditions of the pandemic have only deepened the conditions of social inequality and poverty.

On Wednesday, hundreds of people waited in a line for a free food distribution run by a private charity in the Saint-Denis suburbs north of Paris—some arriving at 8:00 a.m., three hours before the beginning of the distribution, to secure their place.

The charity had run three food distributions in the previous eight days; the first was attended by 190 people, the second by 490 and the third by 750. Several workers spoke to Le Monde, including a 42-year-old nurse’s assistant and single mother with three children, who could not afford to provide food for her children during the confinement. A restaurant worker and father of seven children receiving state unemployment benefits, said his payments did not cover the cost of food for his children, who normally eat at the school canteen under state-subsidized programmes for €1 per day: “My children are hungry the whole day and what I receive is not enough.”

The alternative presented by the government, however, between a prolonged continuation of quarantine in deepening poverty, and a return to work in unsafe conditions, is a false one. The real alternative is a massive mobilization of public resources and organization of production to provide vital medical equipment and safe conditions for health workers and employees involved in essential production, and maintain quarantine for the rest of the population, with decent living conditions. Such a policy could only be carried out through the mass mobilization of the working class to expropriate the ill-gotten wealth of the financial oligarchy and rationally allocate the wealth of society in the fight against the pandemic.

Spanish workers strike against being forced to work without protection

Alejandro López

Workers of the Spanish pizza restaurant chain Telepizza went on strike on Saturday after 11 employees were sanctioned for refusing to work in unprotected environments. Days before, Glovo, Deliveroo and Uber Eats workers staged a protest in Madrid, which was dispersed by the police.

Strikes and protests are growing against the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government’s murderous policy—endorsed by the Stalinist Workers Commissions (CCOO) and social democratic General Union of Labour (UGT) unions—of sending millions of non-essential workers back to work, no matter the death toll. Spain’s COVID-19 deaths rose to 20,453 yesterday, while the number of recorded infections has passed 195,944, including 30,000 health care workers.

The government now plans to make children, one of the most contagious age groups, leave home next week and return to school, as part of its “de-escalation of confinement measures.”

The vast majority of workers oppose this policy. Last Saturday, Telepizza workers went on strike, called by the General Confederation of Labour (Confederación General del Trabajo-CGT), their third strike this year. While previously they struck against precarious jobs and wages, now they are striking against management’s decision to impose disciplinary sanctions on 11 workers, including suspending them from employment and wages for 20 days, after they refused to work without personal protective equipment (PPE) and health and safety protocols.

Telepizza workers have been denouncing the lack of health and safety equipment for weeks. When the state of alarm and lockdown was announced three weeks ago in Spain—lifted partially last week for millions of non-essential workers—Telepizza was classified as an “essential service.” Many Telepizza staff opposed this, saying junk food offered by Telepizza is not an essential service. This did not stop the Madrid region from striking a deal with the firm to offer meals to 12,000 schoolchildren from low-wage families while schools remain closed.

The following day, workers in Palencia decided to not go to work. One worker told El Norte de Castilla: “Most of the workers agreed not to go to work. So we didn’t go because we consider it unsafe and we are not offering an essential service, like supermarkets.”

On Saturday, the strike ( huelga ) became a trending topic on Twitter, #HuelgaTelepizzaCovid, with tens of thousands of tweets in support from workers in similar situations. One worker wrote, “All my support to our sanctioned colleagues. All of us have to do the same. I hope the example sets a spark. Self-organisation and strike!”

While the CGT has been forced to call the strike amid mounting anger, in truth it has done everything possible to isolate the strikers. While it is smaller than the CCOO and UGT, it controls layers of the union bureaucracy in auto manufacturing (GM, SEAT, Renault, Nissan, Volkswagen, and Ford), as well as in the civil services, post offices, banking, health and education sectors. It has received over a million votes in trade union elections, but has not mounted any broader action during the pandemic and is working to isolate the Telepizza strike.

CCOO and the UGT have remained completely silent on the strike, working as policemen for the PSOE-Podemos government. Both union confederations have sanction the policy of the government and companies to not provide safe working environments and PPE, declaring the day before the government ordered millions back to work that such precautions “are difficult to apply in the vast majority of work places.”

On Thursday, nearly 100 riders from Glovo, Deliveroo and Uber Eats—the on-demand courier services that purchase, pick up, and deliver meals and food products—protested in the centre of Madrid against pay cuts, precarious conditions and the lack of PPE. Protests also happened in Seville, Malaga and Cartagena. All erupted outside the official trade unions.

Protesting on their motorbikes and bicycles in the empty streets of Madrid, they demanded the companies provide them with PPE and a bonus for working in an unhealthy environment. The companies have refused so far, claiming the workers are independent contractors and therefore the company is not required to cover these costs.

Workers at Glovo, a Spanish start-up founded in 2015 and valued at over $1 billion, also went to company headquarters in Madrid to protest the unilateral reduction of the base rate per order, from €2.50 to €1.20 per order. Soon after, police intervened to identify protesters and disperse the demonstration.

This represents the second open confrontation between the police and the workers since the start of the pandemic. A few weeks ago, police assaulted steelworkers in the Basque country protesting against being forced back to unsafe, non-essential jobs amid the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.

Podemos—a petty-bourgeois populist organisation, hailed by the pseudo-left as Europe’s next “radical democratic” party after the defeat of the Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) government in Greece—is showing its true face. Syriza went down in history for blatantly betraying its election promises, imposing the most austerity measures and anti-refugee policies of any recent Greek government. Podemos is following suit, using its time in government to force millions of workers back to work amid a deadly pandemic, a move endangering the lives of countless thousands of workers.

The criminal role played by Podemos exposes its allies such as Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, Jean-Luc Mélenchon of La France Insoumise, and Katja Kipping of Die Linke, and is a warning of what would happen if they came to power in the US, UK, France or Germany.

While it is not yet known how many infections and deaths will result from this policy, it is clear that the “progressive” PSOE-Podemos government is terrified at growing social opposition to their policies and is working with the armed services to prepare repression of the working class. On Sunday, the head of the General Staff of the Civil Guard, Colonel José Manuel Santiago, commented overtly on this in the daily press conference on the pandemic. He said that one of the Civil Guard’s functions in the pandemic is to “minimize the opposition climate to the government’s crisis management.”

He made this remark while discussing how the Spanish government monitors “fake news,” which, Santiago said, is provoking “social stress.” The Interior Ministry was forced to make a statement hours later, claiming this was a “lapse” on Santiago’s part.

Santiago’s statement underscores the terror of the PSOE and Podemos at growing opposition among workers to their back-to-work policy amid the pandemic, and highlights the growing sentiment in ruling circles to use the army against the population.

According to a poll on Saturday by El País, 59 percent of the population supports the argument that “Confinement must be kept to the maximum, even if this implies greater economic deterioration and more unemployment.”

The role of Podemos, which includes significant sections of the officer corps within its ranks, is a warning to workers in Spain and internationally. It is critical to fight for the formation of rank-and-file action committees in workplaces and factories, to fight to defend lives and livelihoods and to build a new revolutionary leadership in the working class fighting for a socialist perspective against Podemos. Only through the formation of such committees can the Spanish working class fight to halt all non-essential production, and provide protection to all workers in essential industries.

Millions in the UK go hungry in the shadow of COVID-19

Harvey Singh

The number of people facing food insecurity in Britain has quadrupled under the COVID-19 lockdown.

This was the finding by Dr. Rachel Loopstra from King’s College London, in her analysis of data provided in a YouGov survey commissioned by the Food Foundation charity. The survey results indicate that more than three million UK residents have gone hungry in the first three weeks of lockdown.

Respondents said, “someone in their household has been unable to eat, despite being hungry, because they did not have enough food.”

According to the survey, of 8.1 million people (16 percent of the population) in Britain believed to be facing food insecurity during the crisis, just over one fifth (21 percent) did not have enough money to buy adequate food supplies, half were unable to get the food they needed from the shops due to shortages and a quarter were unable to leave their homes and had no other way to get the food they needed.

It found that an estimated 7.1 million people had someone in their household who had to reduce or skip meals because they could not access or afford sufficient sustenance.

The findings reveal that more than 1.5 million adults in Britain are worried about obtaining enough food for themselves and their families, including 53 percent of workers employed in the National Health Service (NHS). Over one million people must go a whole day without food since the UK went into lockdown.

With schools closed, half of parents on low incomes with children eligible for free school meals reported they had not yet received any of the substitute meals promised by the government. This means an estimated 830,000 children are likely to be going without adequate daily nourishment.

In a further threat to life and welfare, 12 percent of those surveyed—equating to 6.1 million adults—said they were struggling to follow the “stay at home” regulations because they had to keep working to survive.

Based on the responses, an equivalent of over one million people had lost all their income, with 43 percent of those who reported a drop in income expecting to receive no help from the government.

The long-term consequences of the current food insecurity will be the further indebtedness of the very poorest. This is indicated by the share reporting they had already had to borrow money (6 percent) in the form of a loan, just a week into the lockdown. Households with children were two-and­-a-half times more likely to have borrowed in order to survive.

On March 21, the government instructed people at greater risk from COVID-19 to self-isolate for 12 weeks. It said it would contact 1.5 million people in this category and set up a system, including local authorities, voluntary organisations, and business, to deliver food parcels to the homes of those who lacked family support.

But according to a report in Guardian, one week later “the scheme [was] not yet running and will take a few weeks to scale up to supplying food to 400,000 people.” The Food Foundation has calculated that already more than twice that number—860,000 people who fall into the medically vulnerable categories—were suffering from food insecurity even before the pandemic crisis.

The antecedent history of the coronavirus pandemic in Britain, as internationally, is one of 12 years of economic and social austerity imposed on the working class. This has been the unrelenting programme of the financial elite following the 2008 global economic crisis.

Years of austerity and below inflation wage increases have had a devastating impact on the conditions of millions of the most vulnerable. In fact, the Food Foundation itself released a report just 18 months ago, revealing that half of all households in the UK were unable to spend enough to meet the cost of the government’s own basic recommended dietary requirements.

As well as a food crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, deteriorating housing conditions are also a major negative factor for workers, placing them at increased risk of infection.

A recent report by the New Policy Institute (NPI) titled “Accounting for the Variation in the Covid-19 Caseload across England: An analysis of the role of multi-generation households, London and time” —placed particular emphasis on the two largest and most affected regions: the capital, London and the second largest city, Birmingham, in the Midlands.

Looking at a single day, April 5, the research established “there is a statistical link across local authority areas between the confirmed COVID-19 caseload and the proportion of households where pensioners and working-age live together, especially in areas of high deprivation.”

Even after allowing for the much higher infection rates in London, the NPI study finds that the top five most-crowded areas in the country have seen up to 70 percent more coronavirus cases than the five least-crowded, where better-off homeowners are likely to live in larger homes, often including spare bedrooms and more than one bathroom.

London, which has 21,357 confirmed cases (with 3,825 deaths in hospitals alone), followed by the Midlands, which has 16,903 cases (with 2,900 hospital deaths) and is fast becoming a new epicentre of the disease in the UK. Both include areas of extreme overcrowding. Over 11 percent of homes in the capital and 9 percent of homes in Birmingham are classed as overcrowded–the two highest rates in the UK.

The report confirms fears that the cramped living conditions in the poorest and most overcrowded parts of Britain’s cities are accelerating the spread of the virus.

NPI director Peter Kenway told the Observer newspaper, “Our models show that even when you allow for the obvious factors, there is still a heightened risk to overcrowded households, especially when you have older people living with younger people,” he said.

Professor Gabriel Scally, President of Epidemiology at the Royal Society of Medicine, said, “Houses in multiple occupation must be in the same category as care homes because of the sheer press of people. I have no doubt that these kinds of overcrowded conditions are tremendously potent in spreading the virus.

“The Victorians paid the price for housing people in fundamentally unsatisfactory, unhealthy places when cholera and typhoid came calling. We’re now in an era of new novel diseases, which will just love the modern equivalent of Victorian slums, where people do not have enough space or, quite possibly, enough ventilation or sunlight.”

The Observer cited the conditions of a handful of families in London and Birmingham.

Walid Alhusien, a 46-year-old pizza delivery driver, “lives with his wife and five children in a room just four metres square in Mitcham, south London. They must share a bathroom and kitchen with four strangers. He fears what might happen if the virus strikes. ‘I can hear two of my neighbours coughing all the time,’ he said. ‘It is really scary. I want to protect my family but what can I do?’”

He is also compelled to work four days a week, “I feel guilty I am taking this risk. I know I could bring it into the house, but I need the money. I have to look after my children’s needs.”

Aisha Malik lives in a severely overcrowded house in Ladywood, Birmingham with elderly parents and her husband, who developed coronavirus symptoms while working in a local supermarket. Malik, her husband and her two children squeeze into one bedroom while her parents sleep on the sofa downstairs. Her sister’s family cram into another bedroom and her siblings must share beds elsewhere in the house.

“My mum and dad are old and vulnerable … they both suffer from diabetes and my dad’s got heart disease as well,” she said. “We are literally all living on top of each other–how can we stay safe?”

The Birmingham constituency of Ladywood has the highest rate of overcrowding outside London and the city also has one of the highest proportions of families sharing with elderly relatives in the country.

The NPI analysis suggests that areas with a high proportion of over-70s sharing with younger families had almost three times the coronavirus cases compared with neighbourhoods where more elderly people lived in their own homes.

The report concludes, “the lockdown is revealing the inequality in our housing … this research shows there is a clear link between local area deprivation and Covid-19 cases.”

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government stated recently, “We’ve given councils access to £1.6bn to help them during this national emergency, including for finding safe and suitable accommodation for families who need it.”

To put class relations in coronavirus Britain into perspective: £1.6bn is barely one tenth of overall local funding cuts by central government since 2010. The richest 15 individuals in Britain had a collective fortune of £184 billion in 2019, which has only grown since then, far exceeding the annual budget for the NHS throughout the UK.