SpaceX launch of astronauts marks new stage of the privatization of space exploration

Bryan Dyne

On Saturday, May 30, SpaceX corporation successfully launched the Demo-2 mission, which brought NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley safely to the International Space Station. They have joined US astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner as members of ISS Expedition 63.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft is launched on NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley onboard, Saturday, May 30, 2020, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Photo: NASA/Joel Kowsky)

This is the first time that men have been launched into orbit from the United States since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. For the past nine years, the United States has been forced to launch astronauts from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard Soviet-era Soyuz spacecraft operated by the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

The event was heavily promoted by SpaceX founder and billionaire Elon Musk, the American media and President Donald Trump in a manner that should dispel any excitement that might otherwise accompany another step forward in manned exploration of space. Actually, the launch was not so much a step forward as a retracing of steps that were first taken 60 years ago, in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs.

Without in any way glamorizing the space race of the Kennedy-Johnson years, where the driving force was the Cold War struggle between American imperialism and the Soviet Union, there is something degraded and shabby about prostituting space exploration to the naked commercial interests of a billionaire whose expertise in technology is in the “engineering” of financial services—Musk made his first fortune as a co-founder of the Paypal web site, before going on to ventures like Tesla.

The launch was not primarily about the development of science or technology, but about elevating Musk’s wealth, which according to Forbes stands at $37.2 billion in the wake of the launch, and to promote nationalism and militarism in space, embodied by the #LaunchAmerica hashtag.

Saturday’s launch is being used to validate all aspects of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, above all its ability to safely deliver its crew to space and back to the ground. But this is not fundamentally new technology, despite claims that Musk was the “#1 Innovative Leader” in 2019. The Dragon capsule is essentially a bigger version of the Gemini and Apollo crew compartments developed in the 1960s, albeit with modern touch screen controls and navigation panels, instead of walls covered in buttons and switches.

And while the ability to consistently recover the Falcon 9 boosters and reuse them is an advance, the rockets are still based on the crude process of setting some combination of kerosene, liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen on fire and using the resulting detonation to lift human beings many thousands of miles above the earth—just as was done in the 1960s. Their safe delivery to orbit and back is due to the collaboration of hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers in the US and the Soviet Union who worked on this problem in the 1950s and 1960s, and their successors around the world today. Musk’s commercial enterprise is based on appropriating this work to build his private fortune.

In addition, there are still risks with the Dragon capsule itself. The history of private space flight is dotted with casualties caused by companies taking risks that have already been proven very high through the experiences of manned and unmanned space flight for the past 70 years. SpaceX itself has had three major failures involving the loss of a rocket, including one involving an explosion of a Dragon spacecraft after the launch abort system malfunctioned. The company has also had issues with its parachute system, the one that will be used to guide the ship to a soft landing when it returns to Earth.

The relationship of SpaceX and other companies with NASA is such that the agency has very little independent oversight of the technologies being used. Compared to the space program’s height in the 1960s, there is little transparency and a much hollowed-out NASA. The Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia disasters demonstrate the even the smallest oversights and errors can become catastrophic.

One should also not forget that Musk also runs Tesla, where he ordered 10,000 Tesla workers back into his Fremont, California factory to resume production of his electric car line. In his criminal pursuit of profits, the CEO openly defied public health authorities after the plant had been closed to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. While no one has died as a result of the Demo-2 launch, at least so far, the lives and health of thousands of workers have been put in danger by Musk’s reckless and ignorant trampling on science in pursuit of Tesla’s reopening.

Then there is Trump, who boasted that “the United States has regained our place of prestige as the world leader” in space flight, virtually on the same day that the United States confirmed its role as “world leader” in the COVID-19 epidemic, with 100,000 deaths and 1.7 million infections.

“We once again proudly launch American astronauts on American rockets—the best in the world—from right here on American soil,” Trump continued, although it is doubtful that the rocket or the capsule is “American” except in the sense of the corporate ownership: the components emerge from a global labor process involving workers in dozens of countries.

By “prestige,” Trump is referring to American geopolitical dominance in space, which existed in some fashion after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but which has been shattered in recent years, as NASA launches ceased and the US depended on Russian launches, while China conducted a successful landing on the far side of the Moon, while India carried out the destruction of a satellite in low-Earth orbit, among other space-based activities by other nations.

In Trump’s mind, freeing the United States from its dependence on Russia now enables the US military to more fully flex its newest branch, the Space Force, which was pushed for by his administration and formally created as part of the most recent $738 billion defense budget, with bipartisan support. When it was first announced, the Trump administration made clear that the creation of the Space Force was directly linked to war preparations against China and Russia.

As the Washington Post spelled out, the rockets developed by SpaceX expand the Pentagon’s “launch market.” In other words, new rockets can be transformed into new types of missiles, providing the US military with more options for the mass extermination of whole populations. In contrast, these new ways to get to space are not going to be used for many if any scientific programs, several of which Trump has cut funding for, particularly those that study the effects of climate change on the environment.

The launch was also the culmination of the drive to privatize human spaceflight that was initiated by the Obama administration. Since SpaceX and Boeing were awarded contracts to fly astronauts to the ISS in 2014, both the Obama and Trump administrations have put their weight behind the expansion of commercial space programs at the expense of NASA.

Trump has particularly thrown his support behind SpaceX and Musk, whom he considers a friend, over Boeing’s Starliner as well as Blue Origins, owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, whom Trump considers a political enemy. Some of the underlying politics of this came to the fore in the days before the launch: NASA’s head of human space exploration, Douglas Loverro, resigned after awarding a large contract to Blue Origins apparently made him an outcast at the White House. Loverro’s sudden departure almost caused the Demo-2 launch to be canceled.

The president has also asserted commercial and property rights in space, particularly for US companies. Trump signed an executive order in April, which declares that “the United States does not view it [space] as a global commons,” and that “[s]uccessful long-term exploration … will require partnership with commercial entities to recover and use resources,” and these will require “the right to commercial recovery.”

Trump is no doubt including Musk in these calculations, especially as the latter has designs about traveling to Mars, with the implication that he could personally own a whole planet.

It should also be noted that this is not the “first time in human history” that astronauts have “entered the @Space_Station from a commercially-made spacecraft,” as proclaimed by NASA. The Space Shuttle, which docked multiple times with the ISS as well as helping assemble it, was built by the United Space Alliance, Thiokol/Alliant Techsystems, Lockheed Martin/Martin Marietta and Boeing/Rockwell. These companies have also played major roles in producing the other rockets NASA has used or still uses to send people and satellites into space.

Whatever the pretensions of Musk or the Trump administration, however, the reality is that traveling to space is a necessarily international endeavor. Even the Crew Dragon launch itself required personnel stationed at various places in the Atlantic Ocean and in Ireland in case the mission had to be aborted after the rockets fired. Once in orbit, a network of satellites and ground stations operated by countries around the world were used to maintain contact with the astronauts in the Crew Dragon as they made their way to a space station built using the combined efforts of space agencies and engineering firms in 16 different countries–the US, Russia, Canada, Japan, Brazil, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

During the commentary before last Wednesday’s aborted launch, astronaut Leland Melvin spoke to this side of space travel, in remarks worth quoting at length. “When I first went to space, I thought my primary task of installing the Columbus laboratory would be my ‘aha’ moment, but it was when Peggy Whitson invited us over to the Russian segment to have a meal. She said, ‘You guys bring the rehydrated vegetables, we’ll have the meat.’

“We’re having this meal and it is with an African American, Asian American, French, German, Russian, the first female commander, breaking bread at 17,500 mph, going around the planet every 90 minutes. And when I think about that perspective shift that I got looking out the window, flying over my home town, flying over [French astronaut Léopold Eyharts’] home town in Paris, flying over [cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko’s] home town in Russia, it brought us all together as a civilization.

“And I think that’s what space flight does for us. The more people that have the opportunity to go to space will feel like it is an international family of people working together for the good of humanity and all humankind.”

Powerful sentiments, but not ones that can be realized in the world of Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Space exploration, as with all aspects of life, must be wrenched from the stranglehold of imperialism and the drive for private profit if the aspirations contained within it are to ever be fully realized.

Trudeau government exploits pandemic to renew $14 billion arms deal with despotic Saudi regime

Laurent Lafrance

Whilst workers, health professionals and the general population have been absorbed by the coronavirus pandemic and the ruling elite’s reckless push to “reopen” the economy, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has moved to patch up its relations with the despotic Saudi regime—including as a leading arms supplier.

On April 9, just as Canada was beginning to see a dramatic surge in COVID-19 infections across the country, the Trudeau government lifted its moratorium on the issuing of new export licences for arms shipments to Saudi Arabia. The ban was originally adopted as part of a hypocritical public relations exercise, undertaken by the Trudeau government after the Saudi regime’s grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 had provoked international anger and revulsion.

The Liberals’ “moratorium” was adopted above all to divert attention from revelations that the Saudi army used Canadian-made light armoured vehicles (LAVs) and other military equipment to suppress an uprising in the eastern part of the country in 2014. Canadian military equipment has also played a role in Riyadh’s bloody war on neighboring Yemen, which has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians and left the country in ruins.

The Trudeau government launched a year-long “review” of how the Saudis have used LAVs manufactured at a London, Ontario-based General Dynamics’ subsidiary under a $14 billion Canadian government-brokered arms deal. The probe was conducted by Global Affairs, the new name given to Canada’s Foreign Ministry, which plays a central role in advancing Canada’s imperialist interests and ambitions abroad.

Predictably, the government review, which will not be made public, concluded that there was “no substantial risk” that the Saudi government, which beheads dozens of people every year and tortures political opponents, would use Canadian-made arms to violate human rights. It even claimed that the exports would “contribute to regional peace and security.”

Amnesty International, Project Ploughshares, Oxfam and other groups have condemned the Trudeau government’s decision, which they claim will inevitably cause death and devastation in the entire region. These organizations also criticized the “hypocrisy of the Canadian government” for approving military exports to Saudi Arabia while voicing support, only days later, for a UN call for a global ceasefire during the pandemic.

The attempt by Canadian imperialism to pose as a defender of “human rights” merits unreserved condemnation and contempt. As the Trudeau government works behind the backs of the population to ratchet up exports of weapons to one of the most world’s repressive regimes, it has engaged in public criticism of China over its “human rights violations” in Hong Kong. In alliance with the Trump administration, which has incited police and National Guard troops to brutally attack the mass protests against police violence currently sweeping the US, Trudeau’s Liberals are cynically invoking human rights to facilitate an imperialist campaign of aggression against Beijing. This includes economic pressure and preparations for military conflict.

The government “review” of Canada’s Saudi arms exports was, from the beginning, a “democratic” farce not worth the paper it is written on. It is no secret that the absolutist Saudi regime—long the world’s largest purchaser of foreign weapons—has one of the world’s worst human rights records, at home and abroad. Now led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, it has invaded Yemen, financed al-Qaeda linked militias in Syria and Libya, and in close cooperation with Washington is engaged in intrigue across the Middle East, above all in US preparations to wage war on Iran.

While government officials still refuse to divulge details of the contract between Saudi Arabia and General Dynamics Land Systems Canada (GDLS), CBC obtained details of the 2014 contract two years ago. It called for the sale of more than 700 of the newly developed LAV 6s, including 119 with “heavy assault” 105-millimetre cannons. It also included a 14-year support program that involves maintenance, as well as ammunition and crew “training” in Canada and Europe.

Showing that the “humanitarian” rhetoric of Trudeau and his Liberals is nothing but demagogy, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne acknowledged that “the human rights record of Saudi Arabia remains troubling” even as he announced the lifting of the ban on new military export permits. Typical of the Liberals’ deceit and hypocritical cant, he went on to claim that Canada “will continue to advocate for human rights.” Champagne pledged to create an “advisory panel of experts” to “strengthen” Canada’s arms export approval process and to push for an “international inspection regime” for arms sales. These gestures are transparently “democratic” varnish meant to cover over Canadian imperialism’s criminal activities abroad.

With the aim of obscuring Canada’s support for the Saudi regime, Champagne justified Ottawa’s decision to resume issuing export licences for the LAVs with the claim that failure to do so would have “resulted in billions of dollars in damages.” He also said the decision would “save” thousands of Canadian manufacturing jobs and help alleviate the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Liberals’ supposed concern for jobs should not be taken seriously by anyone. It comes from a government whose response to the coronavirus crisis has focused on bailing out the major banks and big business to the tune of more than $650 billion, while placing workers on rations. The widely-touted wage subsidy program, through which the government pays 75 percent of a worker’s wages if their employer keeps them on the payroll, has largely been shunned by businesses determined to carry out job cuts, so they do not have to pay payroll taxes and any benefits. Even those companies that initially participated in the scheme, like Air Canada, have used it to buy time in order to carry out comprehensive restructuring plans at workers’ expense.

Another argument advanced by the Liberal government to justify the arms deal is that it was imposed upon them by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper. This claim passes over the fact that although the deal was signed under Harper, it was finalized under the Liberal government.

The Liberals employ somewhat different foreign policy rhetoric than did Harper, who celebrated Canada as “a warrior nation.” This includes Trudeau’s claims that Canada is pursuing a “feminist” foreign policy. But behind phony “human rights” rhetoric, the Liberal government has integrated Canada ever-more fully into the military-strategic offensives of US imperialism, the world’s most aggressive and lawless power, including in the Middle East.

Ottawa has lent support to the development of a US-led anti-Iranian alliance involving Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikdoms. This found its clearest expression in the Trudeau government’s endorsement of the Trump administration’s illegal assassination of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani in January.

The Trudeau government, like its Liberal and Conservative predecessors, has invoked “human rights” to justify a series of violent Canadian imperialist military interventions around the globe. Under Trudeau, Canada expanded its involvement in the ongoing US-led war in Syria and Iraq and is playing a major role in NATO’s drive to threaten and strategically encircle Russia and China.

The trade union-backed New Democratic Party and Bloc Quebecois have criticized the Trudeau government’s highly unpopular decision to continue arming the Saudi regime. But their criticisms of Liberal hypocrisy over “human rights” are utterly hollow since they themselves fully support Canadian imperialism’s alliance with Washington—the bulwark of the Saudi regime, Israel and reaction in the Middle East, as around the world. During the campaign for last October’s federal election, the NDP even attacked the Liberals from the right, demanding that their planned massive military spending increases be implemented more effectively to ensure the rapid rearmament of Canada’s Armed Forces.

For the Canadian ruling class, the Saudi arms deal will serve to improve relations with the despotic regime in Riyadh, as well as pleasing Washington. Canada-Saudi diplomatic relations soured in 2018 when Riyadh reacted angrily to Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland’s criticism of the Saudi security forces’ arrest of women’s rights activists, including Samar Badawi, the sister of jailed blogger Ralph Badawi, whose wife is a Canadian citizen.

Freeland’s social media post was part of the Liberal government’s efforts to conceal Canada’s substantial economic ties with, and political support for, the Saudi dictatorship. But to the ruling elite’s dismay, Saudi Arabia retaliated with punitive economic and diplomatic measures, including threats to block commercial deals with Canada and conduct a fire-sale of Canadian-held assets, with no opposition from the Trump administration.

Behind the diplomatic standoff, the two countries pursued their commercial relations. It was revealed that even pending the outcome of Ottawa’s “investigation” of Saudi human rights violations, Canada sent military equipment to the country, including LAVs worth more than $1 billion.

Reports have documented how the Saudi regime has deployed Canadian-made weaponry as part of its near-genocidal war against the Yemeni population. The conflict, launched in 2015, has killed tens of thousands of people, including countless innocent women and children. According to relief agencies, 80 percent of Yemen’s population is in need of humanitarian aid, while over half of the 30 million population is on the brink of starvation.

Australian bushfire inquiry examines the terrible impact of smoke inhalation

John Mackay

The federal government’s Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements began its hearings last week into the unprecedented and devastating 2019–2020 Australian bushfires. The fires were responsible for 33 deaths, the destruction of at least 3,000 homes, 7,000 outbuildings, the burning of more than 12 million hectares of land and the death of more than one billion native animals.

Initial presentations focused on climate change, as well as the wildlife and health impact of the fires. The commission will continue this week with the final report due in August, the beginning of the next bushfire season.

Sydney’s central business district enveloped in smoke in December (Photo: Climate and Health Alliance)

A study published in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) in March and presented to the commission analysed the death rates in the regions impacted by the bushfires. It demonstrated there was a significant increase in deaths and hospital admissions in areas affected by high levels of bushfire smoke. It estimated that the number of deaths was more than ten times the number killed directly by the bushfires.

The data presented by Associate Professor Dr Fay Johnston from the University of Tasmania, the author of the study, revealed bushfire smoke was responsible for an estimated increase of 445 premature deaths. There was also an increase of 3,340 hospitalisations due to heart and lung conditions, while a further 1,373 presented to emergency departments due to asthma.

The poorest air quality from the bushfires was predominately in south eastern regions of Australia where millions were exposed to record fine particulate levels for many weeks. At this time, many of the major cities and surrounding regions recorded levels of air pollution higher than the top polluted cities in the world, such as Delhi in India, Lahore in Pakistan and Shenyang in China.

For days and weeks on end, the cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, as well as smaller regional towns and cities such as Canberra, experienced air pollution levels up to 26 times above levels considered hazardous to human health. A pollution index value of 5,185 was reached on the highest day in Canberra—a rating of 200 is considered hazardous to health. The authors of the MJA study using data on existing death rates and hospital admissions were able to estimate the numbers of excess deaths, hospitalisations for cardiovascular and respiratory problems, and emergency department presentations with asthma in the Australian states that were directly impacted by bushfire smoke exposure.

These were New South Wales (NSW), Queensland (Qld) and Victoria (Vic) and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) over the spring and summer months from October 2019 to February 2020. This equated to 19 weeks of continuous fire activity.

Dr Johnston told the Guardian in March that this type of study was important, as it was “the only way to get a quick ball park idea of the health impacts.” To understand other aspects of the detrimental health effects of air pollution can take many years for the data to be collected and the impact assessed and published.

“The fires were unprecedented in Australia’s history, in terms of vast amounts of smoke, the huge populations affected by the smoke and the long duration,” she told the Guardian. Sydney, Australia’s largest city, experienced 81 days of poor or hazardous air quality in 2019, more than the total number days in the previous 10 years. Johnson said that 80 percent of Australia’s population was exposed to the bushfire smoke.

Many of those who had died would have likely been older patients with pre-existing heart or lung disease. However, asthma does not discriminate on the basis of age and it is likely many of the premature deaths could have involved younger people.

The bushfire smoke presented a significant public health threat. It is well known that it contains fine particulates small enough to be inhaled that can then be deposited in the airways of the lungs and absorbed into the bloodstream.

These particles are known to have negative cardiovascular effects leading to cardiovascular disease, or can exacerbate established cardiovascular disease, as well as causing or exacerbating other medical conditions . The study’s findings are likely to be conservative estimates. As one of its co-authors, Professor Bin Jalaudin from the University of New South Wales, stated: “We only looked at four states for a defined period from the first of October 2019. There were some fires in September which we did not take into account and also those in other states.”

“Secondly, we only looked at the outcomes where we have strong evidence. There are many other health effects caused by bushfires, for example mental health effects, hospital admissions or ED visits for other conditions which we did not evaluate—either because it is difficult to obtain such information, or because the links between air pollution and these conditions are not as strong.

The study was not able to account for the full impact of the fires and smoke on people on the frontline, including firefighters and the communities directly affected. Those with burns, acute smoke inhalation and other injuries may not have attended hospital at this time and thus may not have been included in the data analysed.

Studies of bushfires as well as the burning of agricultural land have found links to increases in cardiovascular mortality, the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and heart attacks.

In 2014, the journal Environmental Health demonstrated by looking at 46 days between 1996–2007 affected by bushfire smoke that there were increases in hospital emergency department attendances for respiratory and cardiac disease. It found the increase persisted up to three days after each event. An earlier study by the same group in the journal Environmental Research in 2011 found a 5 percent increase in non-accidental mortality in examining 48 days of fire smoke.

Other studies internationally point to longer term health issues. In children, the link between smoke exposure and declines in lung function in non-asthmatic children has been established as well as increased visits for respiratory problems. In those with known lung disease, the need for increased medication use following bushfires has also been established.

Other studies suggest smoke exposure can impact birth outcomes. One study published in 2012 in the journal Environmental Research investigating birth outcomes after the 2003 California wildfires found lower birth weights in babies born after fire. Low birth weight is implicated with a variety of negative health outcomes later in life that can include respiratory and cardiovascular disease, as well as cancer and psychiatric problems.

Climate change has resulted in an increased frequency of fires. Measurements of global surface temperatures have found 17 of the 18 warmest years from 1880-2017 have all occurred since 2001, with the exception of 1998. A study published as far back as 2006 in the prestigious journal Science found strong correlations between increased wildfire activity on the US West Coast and climate change.

The study found the number of wildfires from 1987 to 2003 was almost four times the average of 1970 to 1986. The total area burned by these fires was more than six times higher. The study also noted that the fire season was longer, increasing by 78 days—a 64 percent jump compared to the earlier period between 1970–1986.

The scientific community has been warning for years of the potential impact of climate change with the increased likelihood of warmer temperatures and drought. There were ample warnings that the Australian bushfire season over the spring and summer period of 2019–2020 was going to be a significant danger, amid severe drought conditions.

In April 2019, a letter by 23 top fire and other emergency service officials warned the federal government that the coming fire season would be catastrophic. They called for a national summit to discuss preparations, which included increases in the number of firefighting aircraft. The government ignored the warning, and refused to provide the largely voluntary rural fire services with increases in fire-fighting equipment.

Firefighting services, as well as funding for public health and hospital services, have been run down by governments at the federal and state levels, both Liberal and Labor. All of these parties bear responsibility for the tragic loss of life and broader health problems caused the latest bushfires as well as the devastation of agricultural land, bushland and rural communities.

Australia’s richest “Top 20” soar further in wealth during pandemic

Mike Head

Amid the worsening global COVID-19 pandemic, while working people in Australia are facing extreme financial hardship, the accumulation of society’s wealth in the hands of a tiny elite is accelerating.

Alongside mass unemployment and under-employment, the combined fortunes controlled by the richest 20 people are soaring. The Australian Financial Review reported last Friday that the “Top 20” had “enjoyed a cumulative increase in wealth over the past year from $143 billion to $189 billion, a 32 percent bump at a time of wage stagnation for most workers.”

The newspaper’s Chanticleer column celebrated the fact that the wealthy few were either recovering or profiting from the COVID-19 disaster far faster than they had from the 2008–09 global economic breakdown.

“Crisis? What crisis?” Chanticleer asked. “It took more than 12 months for the wealth of Australia’s 20 richest people to recover in the wake of the financial crisis. But COVID-19 has barely dented the fortunes of this elite group.”

At the top of the list, profiting from high iron ore prices, mining heiress Gina Rinehart’s worth “leapt a staggering 53 percent to $21.2 billion, making her Australia’s wealthiest person.”

Fellow mining magnate Andrew Forrest did even better, mainly because of iron ore production problems in pandemic-blighted Brazil. He catapulted to fifth spot from eighth with $17.6 billion, a 120 percent rise, on the back of a 65 percent rise in share prices for his Fortescue Metals Group. He also netted $1.4 billion in dividends during the past two years alone.

Others have benefited from the pandemic, and its associated share price boom, even more directly. “The worldwide lockdown and resulting work-at-home revolution have pushed software developers Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar into the top three with fortunes above $18 billion [each],” the newspaper reported.

The two software entrepreneurs rose to number 2 and 3 on the list because speculative investors have driven up the price of the US Nasdaq-listed shares of Atlassian, their company, by nearly 50 percent in the past year.

While these fortunes were being expanded, millions of workers—20 percent of the workforce—were unemployed or under-employed, even by the vastly under-stated official statistics. Many face financial disaster and impoverishment, and were in danger of losing their homes due to inability to pay rent or mortgage repayments.

One of the most obscene examples of the super-rich benefitting from the misery of the population is the rise of the two founders of buy-now, pay-later provider Afterpay, which profits by offering credit to cash-strapped households.

“Nick Molnar and Anthony Eisen, are, so far this year, the biggest winners of those occupying the Financial Review Rich List,” the newspaper reported.

After initially suffering a share crash when global lockdowns began, their fortunes reversed as governments unveiled huge and unprecedented business bailouts. “Afterpay had a Lazarus moment. Its shares hit a record high $50 this week, valuing equity stakes held by both its founders at over $1 billion apiece.”

Due to the uncertainties generated by the still-spreading pandemic and the escalating US confrontation with China, the financial newspaper delayed its annual Rich 200 List until later in the year. One of the greatest doubts hangs over the future of lucrative exports to China, including iron ore, as the Trump administration ratchets up its measures against Beijing.

However, the results for the richest 20 so far are enough to illustrate the immense concentration of wealth since governments around the world bailed out the financial elite after the 2008 global economic breakdown.

The 20 people on the list are a far more privileged layer than the top 1 percent. They represent an even tinier fraction—0.00008 percent—of the population.

Between 1990 and 2000 the total worth of the 20 wealthiest members of the Rich List grew 221 percent. In the next decade, the same number rose 99 percent. But between 2010 and 2020, the wealth of the top 20 grew a staggering 235 percent.

Even within this layer, the top five of the Rich List command an ever-growing share of the Top 20’s wealth. In 2015, the most affluent quintet represented 30 percent of the Top 20’s $86 billion combined fortune. By 2020, the top five accounted for half the Top 20’s $189 billion total.

This year’s Top 20 result was achieved even though nine of the 20 suffered a decline in wealth, due to the pandemic. They included shopping centre barons Frank Lowy and John Gandel, Crown Resorts major shareholder James Packer and the wealthiest property billionaires, Harry Triguboff, Lang Walker. Drops in rents and property prices reduced their pre-pandemic valuations.

The astronomical surge in wealth in the hands of so few began to take off four decades ago, spurred by the pro-corporate economic restructuring imposed by the Labor governments of Hawke and Keating, working in close partnership with the trade unions.

When the Rich List was launched in 1984, the first full year of the Hawke government, the 200 richest people had a combined wealth of $6.4 billion. Now the top 20 alone hold 30 times that much.

The Top 20 List is just the latest proof that the social polarisation has widened since the 2008–09 crash. A Roy Morgan survey last year showed that people in the top 10 percent obtained a more than 60 percent rise in wealth between 2007 and 2019. They went from an average of $1.2 million to almost $2 million per person, while the bottom 50 percent of the population went backward, marking an historic decline in living standards.

Despite the much-peddled myth that Australia is a relatively egalitarian country, this concentration of wealth is in line with the trend of global capitalism, increasingly dominated by handfuls of oligarchs. According to charity Oxfam, the planet’s 26 richest billionaires own as much as the 3.8 billion people in the poorest half of the world’s population.

Thousands of retail jobs eliminated in Sprint and T-Mobile telecom merger

Kevin Reed

When the $30 billion merger between wireless carriers Sprint and T-Mobile was finalized on April 1, T-Mobile CEO John Legere claimed that the combined company was about “creating new, high-quality, high paying jobs,” and the deal would be “jobs positive from Day One and every day thereafter.”

However, reports are now emerging that thousands of jobs are being eliminated as T-Mobile has moved aggressively to close down between 1,200 and 2,000 of its Metro prepaid phone retail locations. The total number of layoffs from these closures are projected to be around 6,000. Prior to the closures and layoffs, it was estimated that there were 10,000 Metro by T-Mobile locations in the US.

According to TotalTelecom, “T-Mobile have argued that this move has nothing to do with the coronavirus pandemic—which, in fact, could have provided them a handy excuse—but have rather positioned the closures as ‘optimizing their retail footprint.’ The company has not responded to those noting that this mass of job losses runs contrary to their pre-merger promises.”

T-Mobile CEO John Legere outside the New York courthouse on the eve of the approval of the merger with Sprint. Legere claimed that the merger would be "jobs positive from Day One."

In response to the reports, T-Mobile issued an official statement that said, “We are always optimizing our retail footprint as a normal course of business to ensure we are in the best position to support the thousands of communities we serve across the U.S. We recently notified some dealer stores that we will transition them to T-Mobile stores and we will also close a small number of redundant locations.”

Since early on in the merger process, industry and Wall Street analysts have projected that layoffs from redundant staff will impact anywhere from 15,000 to 30,000 jobs. The upper end of this estimate is greater than the total number of pre-merger Sprint employees. With the majority of the layoffs expected in retail, approximately 4,500 jobs will be cut at the corporate headquarters of Sprint in Overland Park, Kansas and T-Mobile in Bellevue, Washington.

The merger between the number three and number four largest wireless companies, T-Mobile (70 million subscribers) and Sprint (54 million subscribers) is creating the second largest firm in the US market, leapfrogging the current number two AT&T (100 million subscribers) and still behind Verizon (154 million subscribers).

The deal was approved on February 11 when Judge Victor Marrero of US District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled over the objections of the attorneys general of 13 states and the District of Columbia who said that the reduction in competition would harm consumers with higher prices.

With a transparently pro-monopoly position, Judge Marrero wrote that he was not persuaded that the combined company “would pursue anti-competitive behavior that, soon after the merger, directly or indirectly, will yield higher prices or lower quality for wireless telecommunications services, thus likely to substantially lessen competition in a nationwide market.”

The lawsuits against the merger concentrated on the impact on consumers and did not raise the issue of job redundancies and the likelihood of mass layoffs.

The merger between Sprint and T-Mobile was long in the making. After an earlier attempt to merge the firms was blocked in 2014 during the Obama administration, ongoing discussions eventually led to a new deal in the spring of 2018.

With the prospect of the wireless carrier industry being reduced to just three giant monopolies, the merger was finally engineered through the intervention of the US Justice Department’s antitrust division and the Federal Communications Commission. These agencies came through with a convoluted arrangement involving the entry of Dish Network—a direct-broadcast satellite TV provider—as a fourth competitor in the market.

The deal required Sprint to sell to Dish, at a price of $5 billion, its prepaid wireless business units Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile and move 9.3 million mobile subscribers to the satellite TV company, which was otherwise going to go out of business. The idea that Dish represents a legitimate “major” competitor with about 2 percent of the market indicates the fig leaf nature of the arrangements involved in getting the Sprint and T-Mobile deal to go through.

As analyzed by The Motley Fool, “Aside from the massive investment, Dish must excel at something it’s never done—operate a nationwide mobile network. And it will have to go up against three entrenched competitors. That’s a huge challenge that many doubt Dish can pull off …”

The backdrop to the consolidation of the wireless carriers is the transition to 5G networks. The ultra-highspeed, fifth generation of broadband wireless technologies is being rolled out to consumers by Verizon and AT&T currently with marketing promises that “it will change everything” and “transform the future.”

The next-generation 5G wireless technology promises to enable things like ultra-high definition (4K) video streaming, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and the much-vaunted internet of things (IoT). Through IoT, millions of intelligence devices will be wirelessly connected, enabling the self-driving vehicle and transportation infrastructure and creating “smart” cities and factories.

In all of these endeavors the improvement of life is a tertiary concern behind the enormous profits that are expected from the anticipated $1.1 trillion in investment being poured into 5G development projects internationally. In the consolidation process that is required to implement the latest generation of wireless broadband communications technology, the wireless carriers and the manufacturers of devices are being driven to reduce the number of employees and extract greater profits out of those who still have jobs by reducing their wages.

Knowing full well about the impending job destruction from the Sprint and T-Mobile merger from the start, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) has collaborated with the wireless carriers in the restructuring of the industry that is underway. By diverting the struggle of telecom workers in defense of jobs, wages and benefits into various fruitless appeals to the Democrats in Congress and keeping the workers at the different firms isolated from each other, the CWA operates as a willing accomplice in the attacks on workers.

The first step in the fight against the destruction of jobs is the development of rank-and-file committees of wireless employees in every workplace whether it is the corporate offices, technology centers or retail locations. Telecom workers must reject the anti-Chinese chauvinism of the Trump administration, the Democrats and the unions and must unite across borders in a common fight for a socialist program, including the transformation of telecom monopolies into public utilities, owned and controlled by the working class.

Indian government abandons lockdown measures as coronavirus infections soar

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government yesterday initiated phase one of their so-called “unlockdown,” under which all remaining closures and restrictions on gatherings to halt the spread of the highly contagious and potentially lethal virus are to be lifted. Even as COVID-19 infections soar across India, Modi’s Hindu-supremacist government is making clear that it is abandoning any concerted effort to fight the pandemic’s spread.

Yesterday, with confirmed COVID-19 cases reaching 190,535, India displaced France to become the country with the seventh highest number of novel coronavirus infections in the world. Just in the past week alone, India recorded more than 50,000 new cases. Monday saw yet another daily record for new cases, with 8,392 registered. India’s official COVID-19 death total now stands at 5,164, with more than 2,000 deaths reported in the past 12 days.

Under the “unlockdown,” the government is accelerating the process launched in late April of lifting the sweeping lockdown measures Modi imposed, with just a few hours’ notice, on March 25.

A Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) statement issued on the weekend announced the removal, as of Monday, of all central government restrictions on intra- and interstate travel and the reopening of places of worships, hotels, restaurants and shopping malls beginning June 8, outside specially designated containment areas. Under phase two of the “unlockdown” set for July, decisions on reopening schools and other educational institutions will be taken “after consultations with States and Union territories’ administrations.”

Metro (subway) systems, cinemas, gymnasiums, bars and meeting halls are to remain closed until the third phases of the “unlockdown.” International air travel also remains suspended.

In line with the central government’s reckless push to reopen the economy, even India’s worst-hit states—like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan—have announced their own “conditional easing” of restrictions.

Although Maharashtra’s Shiv Sena-led, Congress Party-supported government said it was extending the state’s lockdown until June 30, it announced a “phase-wise resumption” of activities under its own “Mission Begin Again” plan. Under this plan, even in “red zones”—that is, the areas of the state with the highest infection rates—offices can now open with 10 to 15 percent of their regular staffing levels. Intra-district bus travel will resume with 50 percent passenger capacity, and religious sites can open from June 8. All markets and shops, except malls, have been given the green light to reopen from June 5 on an “odd-even basis,” which means half of the shops in an area will be opened every alternate day, with the claim this will avoid crowding.

Already on April 20, the Modi government gave the go-ahead for the reopening of industrial worksites, even within COVID-19 “hotspot areas.” Although the authorities claimed businesses would have to operate in “strict compliance” with existing lockdown guidelines, this proved to be a sham. The government’s order for employers to arrange the transportation of workers to workplaces “in dedicated transport” and “ensuring social distancing” has been widely flouted by industrial bosses without any consequences. As for the government’s claim that factory owners would be “booked” if a worker tests positive for COVID-19, this predictably proved to be simply bluster.

Showing its indifference to the fate of the impoverished workers and toilers, India’s ruling elite is determined to accelerate the reopening of the economy even as the pandemic rages, so it can resume the process of extracting massive profits through the sweatshop exploitation of the working class.

Like his counterparts around the world, including US President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Modi has embraced the ruinous “herd immunity” policy under which the disease is allowed to run rampant so profit-extraction can proceed unhindered.

Jayaprakash Muliyil, an outspoken proponent of herd immunity who advises the government as the head of the Scientific Advisory Committee of its National Institute of Epidemiology, blithely acknowledges this reckless policy will led to a massive loss of life that will be counted in the millions. Last week, Muliyil told Outlook, “With a substantial opening up of the lockdown, India may see at least two millions deaths. … Mortality is low, let the young go out and work.”

The government’s herd immunity policy is the cutting edge of an intensified class war assault on the working class, which aims to “revive” India’s economy by pushing through socially incendiary policies long demanded by domestic and international capital, but which successive governments have been unable to implement due to massive opposition from working people. Modi has vowed a “quantum jump” in pro-investor “reforms,” including the massive sell-off of government-owned enterprises, the gutting of labour laws, and the abolition of restrictions on the amassing of large tracts of land for agribusiness and industrial and commercial projects.

With enthusiastic support from India’s ruling elite, the Modi government is also doubling down on New Delhi’s reactionary anti-China military-strategic alliance with US imperialism. It has unreservedly welcomed the Trump administration’s call for India to serve as a cheap-labour platform for US arms manufacturers and an alternate production-chain hub for US transnationals that are curtailing production in China due to increasing US-China trade and geostrategic tensions.

The premature push to “reopen” Indian’s economy has already led to a spate of new infections, including at Hyundai Motor Company’s plant in Chennai, Tamil Nadu; Muruti Suzuki’s Manesar, Haryana car assembly plant; and smartphone manufacturing facilities owned by Vivo and Oppo in Noida, on the outskirts of Delhi.

In their campaign to force working people to return to work under such dangerous conditions, the Modi government and Indian big business are exploiting the social misery they have created. As a result of the government’s calamitous, ill-prepared lockdown, at least 120 million people, the overwhelming majority of them day labourers, lost their jobs and income, and were provided at best famine-relief style rations. Millions of other workers have had their wages cuts or received no wages at all during the now 10-week lockdown.

The Modi government failed to use the lockdown to mount a systematic campaign of mass testing and contract tracing—which the World Health Organisation considers essential to any viable strategy to deal with COVID-19 in the absence of a vaccine—or to pour the requisite massive resources into strengthening India’s ramshackle health care system.

As a result, despite the massive sacrifices imposed on the population by the lockdown, it has manifestly failed to stop the spread of the virus as can be seen by its accelerating spread in both major urban centres and rural India.

Maharashtra has continuously been the worst-hit state with 67,655 cases and 2,286 deaths as of Monday. Almost half of all cases and one fourth of all deaths have been recorded in Mumbai, India’s second largest city.

Maharashtra is followed by Tamil Nadu with 22,333 cases and 173 deaths; Delhi, 19,844 cases and 473 deaths; Gujarat, 16,779 cases and 1,030 deaths; and Uttar Pradesh, 7,823 cases and 213 deaths.

According to the government, close to 10 million migrant workers whom it blocked from walking home to seek food and shelter in their home villages and instead herded into makeshift, prison-like internal refugee camps, have now made their way home.

However, the authorities’ failure to test and treat the migrant workers before they travelled to their home villages means that many have carried the virus into rural areas, where health care facilities are virtually non-existent. Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, which have received most of the returning migrants, have witnessed the “maximum increase in number of districts affected by COVID-19,” reported the Hindustan Times on May 18. As a result, new infections have been recorded in 180 additional districts over the past two weeks, taking the total of districts with infections nationwide to 550.

The health and socio-economic crises triggered by the pandemic are erupting in a society that was already at the breaking point prior to the outbreak of COVID-19. Thirty years of economic “liberalisation” have produced poverty and misery for hundreds of millions of workers and toilers through privatisation, the gutting of public services and agricultural supports. and the imposition of poverty wages. Meanwhile, the wealth of India’s millionaires and billionaires has exploded.

Before being temporarily interrupted by the pandemic, mass protests rattled the Indian government between December 2019 and March. These included a one-day general strike in January, in which tens of millions participated, and mass demonstrations, uniting working people of all communal and caste backgrounds, against Modi’s anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The cruelty and indifference shown by the ruling elite towards the impoverished masses during the pandemic are providing further fuel to this opposition, ensuring an even more powerful eruption of mass working class anger in the days and weeks to come.

Modi’s BJP government is preparing to meet this opposition with violent repression and fascistic communal reaction. Modi spelled this out in a “letter to my fellow Indians” he penned to mark one year of his second term in office.

As proof of his boast that BJP rule has ushered in “a golden chapter in the history of Indian Democracy,” Modi gloated over a series of authoritarian, Hindu-supremacist measures. He claimed his government’s anti-democratic abrogation of the semi-autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s lone Muslim-majority state, had “furthered the spirit of national unity and integration.” He also enthused over the Supreme Court’s ruling that sanctioned the razing of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, by Hindu communalist thugs incited by BJP leaders in 1992, and its “order” that the BJP government oversee the building of a temple to the mythical Hindu god Lord Ram on the site. The Court’s ruling, declared Modi, had brought an “amicable end to a debate persisting for centuries.” And he hailed the CAA, which denies millions of Muslims citizenship rights and makes religion a criterion for determining citizenship for the first time in post-colonial India, as an “expression of India’s spirit of inclusiveness.”

No genuine opposition to the ultra-right-wing course being charted by the Modi government—herd immunity, intensified exploitation of the working class, deeper integration into US imperialism’s war drive against China, authoritarianism, and communal reaction—exists within the political establishment. On May 22, 22 political parties, including the Congress Party (till recently the ruling elite’s preferred party of government), the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, and the fascistic Shiv Sena met to “exchange views on [the] extraordinary situation in the country arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic.” Expressing their willingness to support the government’s reactionary agenda against the working class, the joint statement issued by the parties urged the BJP government to “reach out and engage in a dialogue with all political parties.”

Germany and EU expand military deployment in Africa

Gregor Link

The coronavirus pandemic is acting as a catalyst in the scramble by the great powers to redivide Africa. German imperialism sees the crisis as an opportunity to assert its global geopolitical interests by force of arms. In the last few days, the Bundestag (parliament) decided to extend or prolong two military operations. Besides Libya, Mali and Somalia, German forces may operate in Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Chad and Niger in the future.

Sahel region

On Friday, by a large majority, the Bundestag gave the starting signal for a massive escalation of the German military deployment in the Sahel region of west Africa. The stationing of 1,100 Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) soldiers in Mali under the umbrella of the United Nations (UN) MINUSMA mission was extended. At the same time, the training of African troops has been expanded.

The Bundestag resolution provides for the European Union Training Mission (EUTM) programme, which has been running for seven years, to be extended until May 2024 and extended to the entire Sahel region. This means that in the future, European soldiers will also train the armed forces of the pro-Western regimes in Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger and Chad. The European Council had already created a corresponding mandate a week ago.

In Mali, the EUTM “training mission” has so far built up an army of 20,000 troops. However, in a recent editorial, Lorenz Hemicker, political editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, considers the results achieved so far to be insufficient. He complains that the Malian armed forces are not yet capable of “fighting insurgency on their own,” although the Bundeswehr informs the government troops “about the best tactics in local and house fighting.”

For this reason, the new mandate provides for the mission to be strengthened by Germany with 100 additional soldiers. The troops of the Bamako regime, which is hated by the population, will thus be able to go into action in the future accompanied by up to 450 German “trainers.” In this way, the Bundeswehr is provoking violent clashes between German soldiers and local oppositional militias, which in turn could provide the pretext for the deployment of armed combat drones in the region. A currently unarmed Heron combat drone has been in service with the Bundeswehr in Mali since 2016.

In addition, the EUTM mission is being transferred from Koulikoro in southern Mali directly to the war zone in the interior of the country. The new base will be in Sévaré near Mopti, where the heaviest battles between government troops and militias are raging. Only a few kilometres away, unknown persons murdered the inhabitants of the village of Ogossagou last March, including many women and children.

As eyewitnesses told broadcaster Deutschlandfunk radio at the time, the murderers included heavily armed men in uniforms of the Malian army. They were equipped “with bulletproof vests and modern weapons, as the Malian army has them,” a witness reported. The Malian government troops, according to their own statements, had “withdrawn” from the village a few hours earlier and did not return to the scene of the massacre until hours later—although the villagers had sent desperate distress calls to the authorities.

For years, the Malian regime has been demonstrably committing atrocities against the civilian population. A report to the UN Security Council spoke of at least three “attacks on civilians” in 2018, including a “suspected mass execution with 44 dead” and an attack on a cattle market in which “12 civilians were killed.” UN investigators also discovered several mass graves. In 2019, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which also supports military action, wrote that the regime-supported “militias…terrorise the population in order to impose its influence in disputed regions.”

This policy is now being extended to Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Chad in the interest of German and European imperialism. A strategy paper of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik) states that “the regional security forces” are indeed “part of the problem”—but “without them, it is not possible.”

Since “overcoming the corona crisis will temporarily push everything else into the background,” the German government should work towards “including countries like Burkina Faso and Niger and better linking all missions [in the Sahel]. The focus initially should be on civil and medical projects, rather than military capabilities [emphasis added].”

In other words, under the pretext of the fight against COVID-19, Bundeswehr troops and the murderous “regional security forces” trained by Europe should “link up” their combat strength with the UN mission MINUSMA and the French military mission code-named Barkhane.

MINUSMA comprises up to 15,200 foreign soldiers and police officers who were stationed in Mali “following Opération Serval” in order to “stabilise” conditions. Barkhane, the successor mission to Serval, in turn officially includes 3,000 French soldiers for “counterinsurgency” measures and the killing of “Islamists,” as well as special forces and mercenaries of the Foreign Legion.

In addition to access to gold, uranium, and labour, involvement in the region, from the German point of view, is particularly concerned with combating so-called “illegal migration”—i.e., using armed force to fight desperate refugees.

People fleeing from ethnic violence and colonial oppression and seeking a way through the Sahara meet watering points that are blocked by the Nigerian military. The result is a gigantic death strip right across the African continent. The International Organisation for Migration estimates that the number of people who die in the desert is at least twice as high as the number of dead migrants in the Mediterranean. The organisation estimates that more than 30,000 people “disappeared” in the Sahara between 2014 and 2018.

In Niger, which has been armed to the teeth by Germany in particular, the Bundeswehr also maintains a military base that, according to media reports, acts as a “hub” for all German military operations in the Sahel region. Chancellor Merkel had thanked Nigerian President Issoufou Mahamadou in 2018 for the “highly successful cooperation” in the “fight against illegal migration.”

Germany is directly involved in this bloody “fight.” For at least half a year now, elite German navy troops (KSM) have been on combat duty in the country and training special units of the Nigerian military. The secret mission had previously taken place without a Bundestag mandate, but with the extension of EUTM, a mandate has now been created for the so-called Operation Gazelle.

Those who do not die of thirst in the Sahara are threatened with enslavement. In Mauritania, whose troops will in future also be trained by European soldiers, slavery was legal until 2007, though the economic structures of it still exist. According to estimates by local anti-slavery organisation SOS Esclaves, there were still 600,000 slaves in Mauritania in 2010.

Horn of Africa

On Wednesday, the Bundestag extended the European “Atalanta” mission off the coast of Somalia by another year, by an overwhelming majority of 536 parliamentary deputies. This means that up to 400 German soldiers will continue to participate in the European Union’s so-called anti-piracy mission, which has been ongoing since 2008. The German and European naval forces are defending imperialist interests in a region that has suffered unprecedented social devastation due to Western overfishing, unilateral trade agreements and decades of civil war.

“Through its presence in the sea area off the Horn of Africa, the EU...protects European interests and contributes to the stabilisation of the region,” reads the German government’s mission statement. Among other things, the mission plans to use armed force to shield UN food supplies from unauthorised access and to fight local “pirates” with naval forces.

The military mission has not failed to have its effect over the past 12 years. According to a report by weekly Die Zeit, which welcomes the mission, the number of attacks on transnational trawlers has “decreased enormously” in recent years. Illegal fishing by foreign fleets, on the other hand, has continued to increase in the slipstream of European warships, according to UN sources.

Somalia and other countries in East Africa are currently suffering the worst floods in 40 years. The massive rains have caused dams to burst, which in turn have destroyed infrastructure and homes, forcing people to stay in home-made huts. Nearly 1 million people have been affected, and 400,000 have lost their homes.

The flood disaster is also hampering the humanitarian work of the UN, including the fight against COVID-19, and has created the conditions for the second plague of locusts since the beginning of this year. Twenty million Somalis are at risk of starvation, and almost 3 million are refugees. The country’s infrastructure has been largely destroyed after three decades of armed conflict.

As for COVID-19, the country is threatened by the epidemic. The US Johns Hopkins University lists the country in second last place in its Global Health Security Index (GHS Index), which represents the state of preparedness to deal with epidemics in 195 countries. The university currently measures the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Somalia at 1,731. The number of cases has been rising rapidly since the beginning of April, and the number of unreported cases is likely to be high; the 67 officially registered fatalities include the Minister of Justice of the state of Hirshabelle.

Although the imperialist powers have created the conditions for this maelstrom of displacement, natural disasters and pandemic in the last decades, they are now using the devastating situation as a pretext to prepare a geopolitical redivision of the region using military force. The Atalanta mission also fulfils a “deterrent function” in this respect, Die Zeit notes.

“Germany and Europe face several challenges in dealing with COVID-19 in the Horn of Africa, but there are also opportunities,” notes a current strategy paper published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. Germany has proven to be a “reliable partner” for the East African regimes and should now “lead the way” in taking on the role of “coordinator” within the EU.

In this context, the paper suggests “hosting a Sudan conference,” as the country on the Red Sea is of “enormous strategic importance” for the entire region. At the beginning of May, the Bundestag sent almost 300 Bundeswehr soldiers to Libya, where such a conference was held in January chaired by Germany.

UK: Allowing mass-attended sporting events to go ahead led to COVID-19 deaths

Margot Miller

Scientific research established that the decision of the Johnson government to permit mass-attended sporting events to go ahead in March directly contributed to the spread of the coronavirus and the number of fatalities.

Boris Johnson greets rugby players after England vs Wales match, March 7 2020 (Credit: Boris Johnson/Facebook)

On March 10, the Cheltenham horse racing festival opened, attracting crowds of 250,000 over the four-day event. The following day in the north of England, Liverpool hosted a football match against Atletico Madrid at its Anfield stadium. Some 52,000 fans watched, including 3,000 Spanish fans from Madrid.

Speaking to BBC Radio File on 4 programme, “Game Changer: How the UK played on during coronavirus,” Professor Tim Spector said, “I think sporting events should have been shut down at least a week earlier because they’ll have caused increased suffering and deaths that wouldn’t otherwise have occurred.” Spector is Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London.

Ignoring the World Health Organization’s (WHO) announcement on January 30 that the emergence of the novel SARS-Cov-2 (coronavirus) represented a “public health emergency of international concern,” the Conservative government made no preparations to stop its spread in Britain. Valuable weeks were lost while the virus took hold in the UK in February and early March.

When countries on the continent were banning mass gatherings in early March, Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was “business as usual.” Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden agreed, “There’s no reason for people not to attend such events or to cancel them at this stage.”

In Ireland, the planned Six Nations rugby match in Dublin was called off by the authorities, as well as St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. Football matches in northern Italy, where the virus was running rife, were banned. In China, the Grand Prix had been postponed as part of virus containment.

The first weeks of March was a busy time in the UK for sporting events and provided an ideal vector for the spread of the virus. Professional league football went ahead as planned in England and Scotland. The government’s main scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, insisted it was fine to attend events in stadiums on the basis that transmission of the coronavirus occurred mainly within families and between friends.

On March 7, Johnson and his heavily pregnant partner Carrie Symonds, joined the 81,000 crowd at the Six Nations Rugby tournament between England and Wales in Twickenham. The same day, Leicester City football club played Aston Villa with 32,000 fans in attendance. Both Johnson and Symonds both later contracted the virus, and Johnson—who was rushed into hospital on April 5 after being ill for weeks—almost died.

Journalist Melanie Finn, visiting from Ireland, described the atmosphere at the races, “It was like the last days of the Roman Empire, and I think there was a little bit of a sense that if it was open, by God they were going to party.” Afraid there “could be an unmitigated disaster and the crowds were huge,” Finn left for home two days into the event. A week later, she developed COVID-19 symptoms and had to take two weeks off work.

At the time, the Department of Health and Social Care reported 373 cases of COVID-19. Imperial College London and the University of Oxford, however, estimated there were 640,000 cases in Spain, and already 100,000 in the UK, but this was no matter, as far as the government was concerned.

On March 11, the WHO declared coronavirus a global pandemic. WHO Director-General Doctor Tedros Adhanom said he was “deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction [by governments].”

That evening, the gates opened at Anfield football ground—located in a densely populated area of Liverpool—and the fans crowded in. The 3,000 visiting fans from Madrid joined Liverpool supporters in bars and restaurants. At that point, Madrid was the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak in Spain, and the Atletico football club and the Spanish government cautioned against travelling to the UK for the match.

The only concession to the pandemic was the absence of pre-match handshakes.

Liverpool supporter Joel Rookwood believes he contracted the virus that night and was ill for eight weeks. “The celebrations were some of the most physical that I’ve experienced,” he told the BBC. “People were jumping all over each other.”

From an analysis of NHS statistics, data modelling group Edge Health concluded 41 people died after attending the game, 25–35 days after the match.

One victim was Liverpool fan, Richard Mawson. Aged 70, Mawson went to the game and began experiencing symptoms two weeks later. He died in Anfield Hospital on April 17. His wife Mary and son Jamie are demanding a full inquiry into why the game was allowed to go ahead. Mary told BBC News that her husband was a fit and healthy man, who went to the gym two or three times a week.

She said, “Obviously, the coronavirus was going around, but when your government is standing up and saying, ‘Oh it’s fine, go ahead’ and you’re a lifelong supporter and you feel so passionate about them, you go with what your government tells you.

“Cheltenham was on, so everything was alright according to the government, which then, the following week, they decide they were going on lockdown. But the government acted too late; they knew this was coming up, but they didn’t do anything about it.”

Jamie commented, “My dad seldom went out, maybe to pick my daughter up from work. Given the time when he developed the symptoms and then he became really ill, then two weeks after that he passed away, I’m 99 percent certain he did pick it up from the game.

“He had to walk past the away fans, the Atlético fans, and I’m 99 percent certain he did pick it up from that game. But for us as a family it’s so difficult to take because ... he was 70, but he was fit and healthy, he had no underlying health issues, and for him to deteriorate in such a fashion, it’s very hard for us to take.”

The Liverpool supporters’ club, Spirit of Shankly, had voiced concerns at a safety meeting two days before the match, which was chaired by Labour-led Liverpool City Council. But the meeting declared that only football’s governing body UEFA could stop the match, which should go ahead anyway because of government advice.

The Jockey Club said it was following “clear and ongoing guidance” from the government, so horse racing at Cheltenham continued according to schedule, as well as other public events.

Former chief scientific adviser (2000–2007) Sir David King condemned the decision to proceed with Cheltenham as “reckless” and “foolhardy,” saying that the event contributed to the appalling number of COVID-19 deaths. He told File on 4, “If you think of the best way to spread a virus—bring 250,000 people from around the country, get them crowding together to watch a horse race ... and afterwards … go all round the country to spread it.”

Evidence for his assessment was provided by research results of a “COVID Symptom Study” by Professor Spector. In collaboration with an Austrian-based software company, Spector devised an app to track people with COVID-19 symptoms—downloaded by three million since March. Described by Spector as the largest citizen health project in the world, the data collected flagged up coronavirus hotspots around Cheltenham and Liverpool that coincided with the incubation period after the above events. Hospitals in the two areas also reported a surge in cases. In the last week of March, Liverpool and Cheltenham were among the areas with the highest number of suspected cases. The COVID-19 Symptom Study found an estimated 5–6 percent of the population, aged 20 to 69, having symptoms in those two regions.

Sporting events and other mass gatherings were allowed to continue over the next days. On March 14, European boxers met in London for an Olympic qualifier, while the following day the all-England badminton six-day event attended by 300 players ended in Birmingham. Some 25,000 fans from around the world watched the matches. Finally, despite protests from doctors, the popular band Stereophonics played before 15,000 music fans at Cardiff’s Motorpoint Arena March 14 and 15.

It was not until March 16 that large sporting events were banned in the UK, by which time community transmission was out of control. A full lockdown of the economy to contain and dampen the virus’s spread was not imposed until March 23—fully 12 days after the WHO declared a global pandemic.

These actions have led to Britain having the second highest COVID-19 fatality rate in the world. It also has the highest number of fatalities in Europe, at more than 63,000 according to a Financial Times estimate last week.

Other countries, such as South Korea and Norway, with low death rates, introduced lockdowns at a much earlier stage in the pandemic, resulting in tens of thousands of lives being saved.

What happened in Britain was not down to a mistake or incompetence on the part of the Johnson government, but the deliberate application of its pseudo-scientific “herd immunity” policy to tackle the virus. At a March 12 press conference Chief Scientific Advisor Sir Patrick Vallance declared, “Our aim is not to stop everyone getting it, you can’t do that. And it’s not desirable, because you want to get some immunity in the population.”