Over 1,170 COVID-19 deaths as pandemic surges in Bangladesh

Wimal Perera

The Bangladeshi government’s lifting of its COVID-19 lockdown in late May has seen a rapid spread of the deadly virus and record numbers of deaths recorded each day.

According to the latest official figures, there are 87,520 confirmed cases and 1,171 deaths and a desperate crisis in the healthcare system, which only has 1,000 intensive care beds for the country’s 162 million people.

Since May the number of burials of COVID-19 victims in the capital Dhaka has increased by a third and twofold in nearby Narayanganj district compared to the previous four months.

The Awami League government lifted its nationwide two-month lockdown on May 31 and, apart from educational institutes, gave the go-ahead for almost all business and government offices, public transport, as well as the garment and other manufacturing industries, to reopen.

However, according to the New Age, the back-to-work has led to serious increases in the infection rate. The newspaper reported that the infection rate between May 31 and June 8 rose by nearly 21 percent, compared to 15 percent up until May 30. It also reported that new cases between May 31 and June 8, stood at 23,896, compared to a total of 44,608 in the previous three months (between March 8 and May 30). For the same periods, the death toll was 320 compared to 610.

These figures, however, do not reflect the actual situation in Bangladesh, which has one of the lowest testing rates in the world. According to the Worldometer, the country’s testing rate is 2,683 tests per million population and well behind rates in India, Pakistan and Brazil, which are 3,670, 3,419 and 4,707 respectively.

The Awami League administration, which is totally committed to big business and international retailers, ignored warnings by medical experts who publicly opposed any lifting of the lockdown. “It was a big mistake to go for reopening before the infection rate went into decline,” said virologist Nazrul Islam, a former vice-chancellor of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University. He warned that the country would suffer the consequences.

The World Health Organisation has warned that any relaxation in lockdown measures was only possible if “the positivity rate [percentage of positive cases out of those tested] stays below 5 percent for 14 days in a row.” The New Age has reported, however, that the “positivity rate was still about 20 percent” when the lockdown was lifted. It also revealed that under a government revised official health protocol “only those with severe [COVID-19] symptoms” were being given hospital treatment.

The failure of garment industry employers to establish adequate coronavirus protective measures has seen rising numbers of workers infected with the deadly virus. Some 264 have tested positive according to a June 5 Daily Star article. Garments account for 84 percent of Bangladesh’s $US40 billion annual export earnings.

In addition to domestic victims, over 840 Bangladeshi migrant workers, mainly in Saudi Arabia, the UK and the USA, have died of coronavirus. About 10 million Bangladeshi workers are employed in the Middle East and other regions with their remittances constituting over 5 percent of the country’s GDP. Over 13,700 workers are infected in Saudi Arabia out of about 2.2 million Bangladeshi workers in that country and about 5,000 are infected in Singapore out of 150,000 working there.

COVID-19 victim Md Rihan described the unsafe workers face: “We live in a row of bunk beds in a room with 18 people. We sleep just a metre apart from each other. There are four rooms on our floor where we share toilets, showers, etc.”

Last Monday, three Rohingya refugees were reported to have died of COVID-19, with the number of cases rising to 35. About one million Rohingya are being accommodated in grossly overcrowded refugee camps without proper medical facilities. At Cox’s Bazar, where the camps are located, nearly 100 local people have been infected.

The pandemic has resulted in a rapid rise in unemployment among formal and informal sector workers. About 17,579 workers from 67 garment factories lost their jobs between April and May. According to the Bangladesh Economic Association, around 36 million workers lost their jobs during the lockdown, with the highest losses in the service, agriculture and manufacturing industry sectors.

Garment worker Sampa Akter told the US-based National Public Radio on June 5 that she previously worked as a sewing machine operator in Dhaka for 12 hours a day for $95 a month and also had to look after her disabled brother, her sister and their parents.

“My factory was shut for six weeks. I fell behind on rent. I couldn’t pay my brother's medical bills,” she said. She was only paid 60 percent of her salary during the shutdown and her employer was contemplating a total closure of the plant.

Fearful of an explosion of workers’ strikes and protests, the government’s Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments issued a circular on June 7, urging garment factory owners “not to terminate workers.”

The pandemic has worsened poverty in Bangladesh. The national poverty rate has climbed by nearly 11 percent—from 24.3 percent of the population in 2016 to 35 percent in 2020—according to the Centre for Policy Dialogue, a local think tank.

Lack of adequate healthcare facilities and other medical logistics has severely impacted health care workers as well as army and police personnel who are supposedly enforcing “social distancing.”

Last week the Bangladesh Medical Association revealed that at least three nurses and 33 doctors have died from COVID-19 and almost 3,170 medical personnel have tested positive. At least 6,826 police personnel have also been infected and 21 deaths recorded.

Like its counterparts around the world, the ruling elites in Bangladesh have used the pandemic to enrich themselves. In Bangladesh the government announced a massive $8.56 billion bailout package, or nearly 2.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product, for the garment industry. Only $595 million of this was spent on workers’ wages.

The government also plans to announce an $11.8 billion COVID-19 stimulus package in its budget for the next financial year which will be tabled on Wednesday. GDP growth, however, is expected to drop to between 2.0 and 3.0 percent from a previously projected 8.2 percent. The World Bank has decided to provide a $250 million loan which will see even more ruthless social attacks on the masses by the Awami League administration.

New cases of COVID-19 reach 8 million with Latin America still to peak

Benjamin Mateus

Though for many countries, COVID-19 seems a permanent fixture of their national affairs, only six months have passed since the world was first made aware of the novel coronavirus. The pandemic continues almost unabated in its course, wreaking havoc and mayhem on any community that does not take the appropriate countermeasures.

According to Worldometer, India, Brazil, and Mexico had higher death tolls than the US yesterday. The number of new daily cases worldwide has been persistently more than 100,000 since May 27. Today, the total number of cases will exceed eight million, of which over 3.4 million continue as active cases, and over 435,000 people have perished, representing 5.4 percent of all known infections.

Service for COVID-19 victims in Lima, Peru. [Credit Rodrigo Abd]

The rapid increases in Brazil, India, Russia, Chile, Pakistan, Peru, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico indicate a broadening of the pandemic as it settles in geographic areas with excessive poverty. The per capita fatality rates for countries in Latin America are rising with reported time to peak still several weeks away.

Despite Europe's efforts to contain the epidemic, several countries remain in the precarious position of having persistent daily cases. The United Kingdom reported 1,425 cases on Saturday. Spain, France, and Italy had 396, 346, and 526 new cases, respectively. Sweden, whose national epidemiologist has gone on record that their lax measures led to unnecessary deaths, had 686 new cases on Saturday.

Latin America accounted for nearly 50 percent of all new daily COVID-19 deaths though it makes up only 8.42 percent of the world population. Dr. Carissa F. Etienne, the director of the Pan American Health Organization, warned last week that the crisis in Latin America has "pushed our region to the limit." Brazil has the second-highest death toll, with over 43,000 deaths officially confirmed. Conditions in Brazil are reportedly so ominous that last week, the New York Times wrote, "that some of the most powerful military figures in Brazil are warning of instability—sending shudders that they could take over and dismantle Latin America's largest democracy." The president’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, told a prominent blogger a military takeover was coming: "It's no longer an opinion about if, but when this will happen."

Figure 1 Cumulative Covid-19 daily cases

Peru, a country of 32 million people, is in desperate crisis as measures to contain the virus early on have proved ineffective. After 230,000 COVID-19 cases and nearly 7,000 deaths, President Martin Vizcarra has extended the lockdown until July.

Experts have cited the country's vast informal economy that accounts for 70 percent of the workforce, according to the Financial Times. Necessity forces these workers into crowded public markets to sell their goods. In Latin America, informal workers account for half of the workforce. Therefore, the measures taken by the US and EU nations to contain the outbreak are much harder to impose or regulate in Peru or developing countries. People living close quarters in squalid conditions and without access to adequate healthcare are made vulnerable to the coronavirus' indiscriminate attack.

Many policymakers are already forecasting that the economic fallout for these regions will throw millions of people back into poverty. Social tensions may spark another wave of protests that shook the area in November of 2019. According to IMF's western hemisphere department director, Alejandro Werner, "It's going to worsen the already unequal income distribution and poverty levels. When the sense of emergency is gone, we may see a forceful return of social discontent throughout the region."

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that the imposition of strict controls might be necessary if the number of cases increased dramatically but have mostly ruled out any future lockdowns. In a press briefing from Friday, CDC Director Robert Redfield said, "I know the people are eager to return to normal activities and ways of life. However, it is important that we remember that this situation is unprecedented and that the pandemic has not ended. As I said earlier, it is going to be critical to continue to embrace the principles of social distancing, hand hygiene, and wearing a face-covering in public. That is why today we are releasing some commonsense suggestions people can take to reduce their risk as their communities open up and they reengage in daily life and attend larger gatherings." These new guidelines come as the country is seeing a spike in COVID-19 cases – notably in Florida, Arizona, the Carolinas, and California – with each state reporting more than 1,000 new cases.

Figure 2 cumulative fatalities

On Saturday, the US tallied another 25,302 cases and 702 deaths, bringing its total to 2.14 million cases with 117,527 fatalities. Presently, there are 1.25 million active cases. California has exceeded 3,000 daily cases for the last three days. Arizona's total identified cases climbed to 34,458 on Saturday, a 4.7 percent increase over Friday. Yesterday, the state reported 1,540 new cases. Florida posted 2,625 new cases on Saturday, an almost 30 percent increase from the previous day as case numbers have started to accelerate.

The Florida Department of Health analyst who was fired last month for refusing to falsify reports told NPR, "When I went to show them what the report card would say for each county, among other things, they asked me to delete the report card because it showed that no counties, pretty much, were ready for reopening, and they didn't want to draw attention to that." They asked her to make the data look as if the state was ready to open. This begs the question, how is knowingly withholding critical information that could help prevent loss of life any different from the cover-up of an outright murder by cops in a police precinct? Except that thousands are at risk at the same time, not just individuals.

President Trump will go ahead with his campaign rally next week in Tulsa, Oklahoma, moving it to one day after June 19, better known as Juneteenth, the day commemorating emancipation from slavery in Texas in 1865. Despite low cumulative numbers of COVID-19 cases, Tulsa saw 82 new cases on Saturday, a new daily high. The Trump rally is being held indoors in a 19,000-seat arena. The campaign will ask attendees to sign waivers absolving them of any legal responsibility should they become infected. With large crowds expected and much shouting and cheering, and not wearing masks a virtual badge of honor for the Trump supporters, a new contagion vector is inevitable.

China has returned into the spotlight this weekend with 51 confirmed local cases in an outbreak that started at a Beijing food market. Only last month, the Stalinist propaganda machine had used the success against the virus to restore pre-pandemic national confidence. President Xi Jinping had offered conciliatory words, "Great historical progress always happens after major disasters. Our nation was steeled and grew up through hardships and suffering."

19 Testing center at Guang'an Sports center in Beijing. [Credit Li Hao]

News of the new outbreak seemed to pierce forgotten but still unhealed wounds as shock reverberated throughout the country. Immediately talk of the second wave of coronavirus caught the populace's imagination.

Beijing quickly began the forced lockdown of several residential compounds and the Xinfadi market, the largest fresh seafood and vegetable complex of shops and stores in the city, located in the western district of Fengtai. China had been 55 days without documenting a new case. Now more than 100 people are in quarantine, more than 10,000 have been tested, and close to 50,000 are to be tested. Health authorities have reported two new cases in Liaoning with ties to residents in Beijing. Samples from cutting boards used to prepare imported salmon returned positive, promoting new conspiracy theories.

Workers’ anger grows as auto companies continue coverup of COVID-19 in the factories

Shannon Jones

The major US automakers are continuing their policy of covering up the spread of the coronavirus in auto plants as reports filter out of new cases in several factories.

The attempt to hide the extent of COVID-19 infection is a transparent effort to keep production going in the face of mounting workers’ anger over the danger to themselves and family members amidst a nationwide resurgence of the virus due to the ending of all lockdown measures.

Auto workers leave the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Warren Truck Plant after the first work shift, Monday, May 18, 2020, in Warren, Mich. (Image credit: AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

General Motors and Ford have made it an official policy not to report the number and locations of confirmed COVID-19 cases at their factories. Fiat Chrysler has also apparently stopped reporting coronavirus cases as well. GM has reported no deaths, but there is no reason to trust its declarations.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that Japanese carmaker Toyota has seen 40 new cases at its US operations since it reopened factories in early May, with no indication which facilities are impacted. There have been six cases reported at electric carmaker Tesla’s massive operations in Fremont, California, and cases have been reported at parts operations such as Lear and Flex-N-Gate.

A new case of COVID-19 has just been confirmed at the General Motors Arlington, Texas assembly plant, as the facility returns to full operation this week. The factory goes to three-shift operation Monday, meaning close to 5,000 workers will be in the plant.

According to a post on the local United Auto Workers website, a worker in the chassis department at Arlington Assembly reported feeling ill on June 5 and went home. Two days later the worker tested positive for COVID-19.

GM is ramping up production at the Arlington, Texas plant outside Dallas as the coronavirus spreads rapidly in the state. Dallas County Health and Human Services reported Friday that there were 328 new cases, following several days of record-high positive cases, and there are currently almost 14,000 cases. As of Sunday, there were 87,903 cases in the state of Texas with almost 2,000 deaths.

An autoworker in Texas told the Autoworker Newsletter, “I think it’s terrible. I work for a plant right now, Lear, in Arlington, Texas. We are a supplier for GM. We build car seats. We were called back to work May 31, and on June 7 four Lear employees on third shift tested positive for the virus. The union and management kept it quiet. The employees on the third shift found out Wednesday night, June 10. We are still working just like nothing is going on. We are all afraid. How do you stop employers from hiding this virus?”

A GM worker in Bedford, Indiana said, “There are two confirmed cases of the virus that are being kept quiet. Management is not following their own rules. They keep doors closed and hide. They rarely come to work. They are forcing overtime while they cowardly stay home.”

This follows reports of at least five cases at the GM Wentzville, Missouri Assembly Plant. There has also been one new case reported at the GM Bowling Green, Kentucky factory.

Despite the increase in the number of new COVID-19 cases, the UAW has refused to demand even the temporary closure of a single plant for cleaning. UAW Local 2250 President Glenn Kage in Wentzville told the Detroit Free Press that if cases at the plant reach about 20, he will have a “serious conversation” with management. He added, “hopefully” GM will do the right thing.

UAW spokesman Brian Rothenburg issued a statement, declaring, “We are working right now with the local union and General Motors to monitor the situation in Wentzville and every other plant.” In other words, the UAW will do absolutely nothing to defend workers.

The auto companies’ refusal to be transparent about the spread of coronavirus makes it impossible for measures to be taken to prevent the spread of the virus, such as contact tracing and quarantining of exposed workers. It further confirms the well-founded belief that management does not give a damn about workers' lives, only profits.

Under these conditions, many workers, including a substantial number of older workers, have not been reporting to work to preserve their health. In response, the auto companies are intensifying their superexploitation of temporary part-time (TPT) workers, while issuing threats of loss of benefits against more senior workers who do not show up for work.

One auto parts worker in Tennessee wrote to the Autoworker Newsletter, “I work at a plant that manufactures parts for the Big 3 in Tennessee.

“Now herein lies the major concern for myself and anyone else that works in a manufacturing plant like ours. We got called back to work starting this Monday and were told basically that if we didn’t feel safe and didn’t show up, ALL of our benefits would be shut off and job terminated, along with it being sent to unemployment.”

Not only are the auto companies refusing to close plants for cleaning, workers are literally suffocating in the hot environment of the plants, wearing facemasks with inadequate air circulation. Even the largely cosmetic safety measures implemented by the auto companies, such as extended times for cleaning, have gone by the wayside.

The Tennessee autoparts worker said, “As a leader I also get the mass management emails. We’re going to be required to wear face masks, along with other PPE (i.e., cutting sleeves, gloves, eye protection) in a hot plant with barely functioning AC and fans stations six feet away (and in a plant that manufactures hot parts, it’s like having NO fan at all).

“It’s 110 percent not right, all the way up to the state level, considering we were SUPPOSED to phase back if cases spiked, and in which case they absolutely have in the last two weeks. So now, I have to go work elbow to elbow in a lot of cases and pray to God I don't bring it home to my wife and children.”

A worker at GM’s Spring Hill facility in Tennessee added, “The masks are drenched with sweat because it is so hot in the plant. [In the area I work] the [machines] throw off so much heat, my goodness, we sweat in the winter time.”

She added, “Once those masks are wet from sweat or you move them to take a drink of water, they are now contaminated.

“Then GM management wants numbers and expects you to run your butt off, and you’re sick from the heat. Three people got heat exhaustion last summer, and that was without masks.”

The worker also described how sick workers were being turned away from the plant’s medical unit, saying, “Four people went to medical and were sent back to the line because their symptoms were not BAD ENOUGH. My goodness, [the virus] takes 14 days to show up. Medical has ALWAYS been a joke, [and] it’s even more so now.”

Another GM worker employed at the Fort Wayne assembly plant (Roanoke, Indiana) wrote, “It’s a mess here. They herd us in like cattle through the same entrance, then we put our belongings on a table and there’s jumbo-sized containers of hand sanitizer that’s so watered down that any cut on your hand does not sting.

“We pick our dirty belongings up from the table and then we move down to another table and receive our mask. Then someone sitting in a chair takes our temperature (with a gun that we learned gives false readings) from 10 feet away. Then once we get to our workstation, we’re given 6 minutes to clean our area with a disinfectant that says you have to let it sit for 10 minutes.

“We just had a positive case confirmed Wednesday. We didn’t shut down. We went to break 30 minutes early and they wiped her desk off but not any of her tools, materials, parts or trucks. Two people from her team are being made to quarantine, but the guy here who has had the most contact with her wasn’t even tested and is out here working with everyone."

A veteran worker at the Ford Chicago Assembly Plant reached out to the Autoworker Newsletter after hearing how fellow workers at the Ford Kentucky Truck Plant were threatened with job losses by the UAW if they did not report to work under unsafe conditions.

"I will walk out if I feel uncomfortable or unsafe," he told the Autoworker Newsletter. "The union is no good [and] never will be. I have seen a lot of backhanded BS go on in my 35 years.

“At Ford Chicago Assembly, they are making us work days shift Monday through Friday, 11 hours for day and night shifts [A crew and B crew]. C crew is working half on days and half on nights to cover people not coming to work. Forty percent of the regular day’s shift has not come to work, so they split up C Crew to cover both shifts.

“When they get enough workers to run for the day or night shift, they are sending some home on a 3.9-hour shift or less. After you go through all the mess to get into work, the company or the union doesn’t do anything about people not wearing the masks, no social distancing and no cleaning. It’s like ‘the virus is gone,’ and we know it’s not, but Ford and the union people think that way.”

The auto companies’ single-minded focus on production and the lack of any genuine representation for workers on the part of the UAW raise sharply the need for workers to organize independently to safeguard health and safety. The Socialist Equality and the Autoworker Newsletter call for the building of rank-and-file factory committees to enforce safe working conditions in the plants, including the full disclosure of coronavirus cases, testing, contact tracing and adequate rest time. If safe conditions cannot be maintained, workers should assert their right to stop production.

India: A massive explosion in Gujarat chemical plant kills 10 workers

Arun Kumar

Early this month a massive blast in a storage tank and resulting fire at the Yashashvi Rasayan Private chemical plant in Dahej Industrial Estate in the Indian state of Gujarat killed 10 workers. Six workers were killed on the spot and another four later succumbed to burn injuries after they were hospitalised. Some 77 other injured workers were sent to nearby hospitals.

The enormous June 3 blaze at the plant, which is located in Bharuch district, took 11 fire units about six hours to bring under control. Thousands of people had to be evacuated from nearby villages, including 3,000 from Lakhi and 1,800 from Luvara.

The tragic loss of life and terrible injuries are a direct result of the callous indifference towards mandatory work safety measures by company management and the Hindu communalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which holds power in Gujarat and leads the central government.

The Yashashvi Rasayan Private plant, which manufactures over a dozen industrial chemical products, is owned by the Patel Group and supplies to a global network of clients, including in Europe, the UK, South Africa and Scandinavia. The company has announced a pittance in compensation of 500,000 rupees ($US6,600) to the victims’ families.

The Indian Express reported that a preliminary investigation compiled by Vijaysinh Parmar, a sub-divisional magistrate, said the fire followed a storage tank blast and “there was no responsible person present in the factory” at the time.

Bharuch district collector, Dr M.D. Modia, who told the media that senior officials were investigating the incident, said: “There were Methanol and Xylene chemical tanks near the storage tank that exploded. Both these chemicals are highly poisonous and flammable.”

The Gujarat state government quickly shut down the plant under Section 4(2) of the Factories Act with Vipul Mittra, an additional chief secretary for labour and employment, announcing an official investigation.

“To ensure the safety of workers, the unit will not be allowed to resume operations until adequate safety measures are in place,” he told the media. He also “promised” increased safety audit inspections of all factories in the Dahej Industrial Estate.

Mittra’s assurances are worthless and designed to cover up the criminal negligence of government authorities towards basic workplace safety.

Indian central and state governments systematically turn a blind eye to company violations of industrial safety norms, ensuring that profits take precedence over worker’s lives.

The real attitude of Prime Minister Narendra Modi towards the health and safety of workers is revealed in its determination to reopen all industries, even as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rapidly spread throughout the country.

No arrests have been made over the Yashashvi Rasayan chemical blast and fire. Justifying its failure to arrest anyone responsible for the disaster, a police report into the incident declared that company owners have “not yet come before the police; we are trying to contact them.”

Rohit Prajapati, a spokesperson for the Prayavaran Suraksha Samiti (PSS) environmental group, told the Week that the chemical blast is probably related to the lack of proper monitoring of the plant during COVID-19 lockdown and its reopening.

Chemical plant facilities are not like normal industries, he said, and questioned if the necessary monitoring had been carried out before and after the lockdown. The PSS has warned that other industrial disasters are waiting to happen if these industries are not properly maintained, and especially during reopening periods.

In fact, there have been increasing numbers of industrial accidents reported since the Modi government’s premature and reckless return-to-work was initiated.

Last month, 11 people died and around 800 were hospitalised by a poisonous gas leak at an LG Polymers India plant in the port city of Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. Four workers were also killed by a large explosion at the Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC)-owned thermal power plant in Tamil Nadu.

On June 11, just eight days after the Yashashvi Rasayan blast, one worker was killed and five others injured in explosion at the Hemani Industries agrichemical facility. The Hemani plant is also located in Gujarat state’s Bharuch district.

A few hours before last month’s Visakhapatnam poisonous gas accident a similar toxic leak occurred at a Chhattisgarh paper mill. Up to seven workers at the mill were hospitalised after being exposed to gases while they were cleaning the paper pulp tank in preparation for a resumption of operations at the facility.

Ahmed Patel, senior Congress party leader from Gujarat and a member of the Rajya Sabha (upper house of the Indian national parliament), issued a tweet denouncing the BJP-led state government over the Yashashvi Rasayan disaster and calling for all factories to face work safety audits.

“The buck stops only with the state government ensuring safe working conditions [and] that factories have completed safety audits. We are concerned that recent changes in labour laws will incentivise unsafe working conditions,” he declared.

Patel’s concerns are bogus. The Congress party, which has systematically imposed socially-disastrous economic reforms in order to transform India into a cheap labour heaven for global investors, is equally responsible for allowing these companies to violate basic safety measures.

Service Prosecuting Authority drops all but one investigation into British war crimes in Iraq

Jean Shaoul

The Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) Service Prosecuting Authority (SPA) has acknowledged that none of the allegations of war crimes made against British soldiers in Iraq are likely to lead to a criminal prosecution.

SPA Director Andrew Cayley, speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Law in Action programme last week, said that most of the cases had been dismissed at a very early stage in the investigations because of the “low level” of offending and lack of credible evidence. Even the last remaining case was unlikely to result in a prosecution.

The government has summarily dismissed countless allegations of mistreatment by British troops that emerged following the illegal invasion, war and occupation of Iraq in 2003—including videos of soldiers carrying out wanton acts of cruelty—as trivial or without corroborating evidence. But there have been scores of well documented cases of British troops committing war crimes in Iraq, in relation to the abuse of detainees, including murders by a soldier from the SAS special forces, as well as deaths in custody, beatings, torture and sexual abuse by members of the Black Watch.

These crimes are not the result of some “bad apples” but flow inexorably from the thoroughly predatory and criminal motives behind the US-led invasion of Iraq.

The case of Baha Mousa, a hotel worker in Basra, who died after being tortured and beaten by troops while in custody in a British base in 2003, is the most well-known. After six years of public campaigning, six soldiers finally appeared before a court martial, before being acquitted of wrongdoing. One soldier pleaded guilty and served just one year in jail. Most of the cases of alleged abuse and torture never even reached a court hearing.

The Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) investigated 3,405 war crimes allegedly committed by British troops during the occupation of Iraq between 2003 and 2009. It found evidence of widespread abuse and mistreatment, including the killing of unarmed civilians and children.

Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May’s government closed down the investigation in 2017 without any prosecutions, using the excuse that Phil Shiner, a lawyer who had taken more than 1,000 cases to IHAT, had paid fixers in Iraq to find clients. May pledged, “We will never again—in any future conflict—let those activist, left-wing human rights lawyers harangue and harass the bravest of the brave.”

Penny Mordaunt, her defence secretary, announced that the Tories would introduce legislation protecting British troops and veterans from investigation over actions on the battlefield abroad after 10 years, except in “exceptional circumstances,” to prevent the “repeated or unfair investigations” that followed operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a carte blanche for future war crimes.

Both the civil courts and public inquiries have found extensive evidence of torture by British forces in Iraq, with government being forced to pay out millions of pounds in out-of-court settlements to avoid criminal prosecutions.

So damning was the evidence in some cases that, in 2014, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Fatou Bensouda accepted a complaint alleging UK military personnel committed war crimes against Iraqis in their custody between 2003 and 2008 and ordered a preliminary investigation.

It was the first time the ICC had opened an enquiry into a Western state. Almost all the ICC’s indictees have been African heads of state or officials. The US—not a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the ICC in 2002—and the other major powers get off scot-free, even as the imperialist powers cynically use the court to target people hostile to their interests.

The ICC has turned a blind eye to the most blatant human rights abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the West Bank and Gaza, where their perpetrators are protected by a US veto at the United Nations Security Council. On Thursday, US President Donald Trump announced sanctions against ICC officials investigating claims of abuses by Americans and its allies, meaning Israel, freezing the assets of targeted ICC investigators in the US and banning them and their families from entering the country.

Andrew Cayley once served as a Senior Trial Attorney at the ICC Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the ICC in The Hague between 2001 and 2007, where he was responsible for the investigation and prosecution of serious violations of international humanitarian law in the Darfur region of Sudan. He expressed his confidence that the ICC’s separate investigation into allegations of war crimes by British soldiers would end later this year without any prosecutions.

Allegations of abuse and worse against British troops have provoked fury in the ruling class. Political leaders and the corporate media have dismissed them, saying that the soldiers were “betrayed” by “vexatious claims,” “vile slurs” and a “witch hunt.”

In March, the government introduced legislation proposing a five-year limit on prosecutions for soldiers serving outside the UK. The Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) bill creates a “presumption against prosecution” that gives the green light to future war crimes, including the mass murder of civilians. Henceforth, the military will be above the law. It will further serve to encourage the culture of delay and cover-up within the MoD, which repeatedly covered up war crimes committed by British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The government’s exoneration of the soldiers constitutes a sharp warning of how far the government will go to block any prosecution for alleged war crimes. This is in marked contrast to the treatment meted out to the WikiLeaks journalist and publisher Julian Assange. Assange’s only “crime” was to expose war crimes—including killings, torture, abuse—regime-change operations, and global spying committed by the US and its allies, including Britain. In the eyes of the ruling class, whistle-blowers, not the perpetrators, are the real criminals.

Assange sits in London’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison, dubbed the UK’s Guantánamo Bay—amid the spread of COVID-19 through the facility—as the US seeks his extradition to face jail for life, if not execution, on US Espionage Act charges.

The media’s silence on the significance of Cayley’s announcement and the proposed legislation, as well as the persecution of Assange, makes plain that the fight for truth and justice—and compensation for the Iraqi people—can proceed only in struggle against the capitalist ruling class.

It marks an explicit repudiation of international law and the abandonment of any pretence that the UK is guided by anything other than its own predatory interests. On this, Boris Johnson’s Conservative government and Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party are agreed. Their unconditional defence of Britain’s war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere is a warning to the working class that far greater crimes are being prepared, as London demonstrates its support for US imperialism in its escalation of economic war and military confrontation with China, amid growing social and political unrest.

The only force that can prevent war is the working class, the great revolutionary force in society, uniting behind it all progressive elements in the population across national borders, in a struggle for socialism.

VW leadership dispute prepares way for massive job cuts and austerity

Dietmar Gaisenkersting & Ulrich Rippert

On June 8 the CEO of Volkswagen (VW), Herbert Diess, was dismissed from his post as manager of VW’s leading brand. His dismissal was preceded by fierce disputes within the company management. Diess will remain, for the time being, head of the VW group as a whole, although the company’s supervisory board had discussed his dismissal as CEO. It was allegedly only legal issues that prevented his sacking as CEO.

Diess was recruited from BMW in 2015 on the recommendation of the VW works council and the IG Metall trade union to take over management of VW’s core brand. In 2018, Diess took over as CEO of the world's largest vehicle manufacturer with its 13 different brands, including Audi, Porsche, SEAT, and Skoda.

Until now, the central works council head, Bernd Osterloh, and IG Metall had worked closely with Diess, drawing up and implementing an entire series of company savings programs, all of which bore the hallmark of Osterloh. Conflicts within management increased in recent months, however, and at the end of May the Bild newspaper reported on an “attempted coup” by Osterloh and IG Metall chairman Jörg Hofmann, both of whom sit on the VW supervisory board.

The VW combined heat and power plant in Wolfsburg

Osterloh and Hofmann accuse Diess of making serious mistakes regarding the new Golf—VW’s most important model—and the ID.3 electric car. Of the 100,000 Golf VIIIs planned, only 8,400 were built in 2019. To date, more than half the cars that roll off the assembly line have defects, especially with their software and electronics. In May, VW stopped delivering the new Golf model due to a problem with its emergency call mechanism, and a recall of the model was imminent.

The same applies to the ID.3. It was planned to replace the Golf as the new alternative in the age of electro-mobility transport and, above all, to put pressure on VW’s competitor, Tesla. But here, too, problems have emerged with the software, and the vehicle is currently scheduled to come on the market in late summer or autumn with a slimmed-down software.

In a letter a few weeks ago, Osterloh listed the shortcomings of the board: unclear division of competences, a lack of responsibility and a rude style of leadership. The company’s arrogant business approach, which has not changed since the 2015 diesel scandal, has led to the best software developers seeking out VW’s competitors, and is one reason for VW’s specific problems.

Buyers of VW autos have had to wait years for any sort of compensation following the diesel scandal; VW recently published a racist advertising clip on Instagram for which the company was forced to apologise; and three weeks ago, VW expended €9 million to prevent the prosecution proceedings against Diess and ex-CFO and current supervisory board chairman, Dieter Pötzsch. All of these issues were raised in the management dispute with Diess.

Additional charges include the accusation that Diess did not campaign sufficiently for a government premium to encourage the purchase of petrol and diesel vehicles and that he acted clumsily in public.

The dispute then escalated last week. In a video conference with 3,000 executives on June 4 Diess accused individual members of the supervisory board of disclosing internal information and thereby committing crimes.

“The events on the supervisory board in the last week and communications about incidents on the supervisory board do not help the company,” Diess said, according to the Wolfsburger Zeitung. “They are also a sign of a lack of integrity and compliance. These are crimes that occurred in the supervisory leadership and are evidently located there.”

Without naming names, everyone knew who Diess meant. He was then forced to make an apology in a special meeting of the supervisory board.

The allegations against Diess are certainly justified. He is a ruthless organiser who is determined to cut costs and increase profits for shareholders. The reason why the works council, IG Metall and the Lower Saxony state government (a major VW shareholder), are all striving to change VW’s management, however, goes much deeper.

The Volkswagen Group, with its global production network and total of 650,000 employees, has been rocked to its foundations by the international economic crisis which has been dramatically exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the beginning of the week, Germany announced an export decline of 31 percent compared to the previous month. This is the severest export slump in the country’s history and far worse than expected.

The auto industry has been hardest hit. Here, the decline in exports was 73.6 percent compared to April last year. In absolute terms, this means that while German companies sold autos and other vehicles worth almost €19 billion last April, this figure fell to €5 billion this April.

In view of this situation, the VW works council and IG Metall are demanding that the company’s already close cooperation with the federal and state governments be significantly intensified. Similar to the example of the German air carrier Lufthansa, VW also expects a special aid program worth billions to be provided by the government to finance the restructuring of the company and its preparations for global trade war.

Osterloh and company want to use the coronavirus crisis to strengthen the “auto pact” with the government. They believe that the €50 billion earmarked for the auto industry in the economic stimulus package—hidden behind the title “Investing in climate protection and future technologies”—is insufficient to halt the elimination of hundreds of thousands of jobs, cuts to wages and social benefits, and raise the return on capital owners’ finance.

They want a change of leadership at VW to bolster their pact with the government. In a background article on the current leadership dispute at VW, the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote that CEO Diess was regarded as insufficiently partisan.

The German bourgeoisie is also using the coronavirus crisis in other spheres of the economy to realign German companies in the global battle for markets and profits, especially against the US and China. To this end, broad swathes of industry are to be rationalised to create “global champions.” Osterloh and IG Metall want VW to be one of these “global champions” and are ready to take responsibility for the resultant austerity programs and rationalisation measures.

The union bureaucrats already have a favoured alternative for Diess: Gunnar Kilian. Two years ago, Osterloh secured the employment of Kilian, a social democrat and IG Metall man, as the new personnel manager at VW. He has been with the company for 20 years and is closely networked with the trade union, the SPD and the main family shareholders.

The 45-year-old started in the public relations department at the VW headquarters in Wolfsburg. From 2003 to 2006, Kilian was an assistant to the Bundestag MP Hans-Jürgen Uhl (SPD) before the VW works council appointed him as its press spokesman. At the time, the scandal about illegal pleasure trips by works council members financed by the company was still relatively fresh. Osterloh then took over the chairmanship of the works council after then-chairman Klaus Volkert had to answer charges of corruption in court.

In Salzburg, Kilian temporarily headed the office of long-time VW patriarch Ferdinand Piëch, “a key position in the inner circle of power of the controllers and owner families Porsche / Piëch,” wrote Die Welt at the time. Osterloh then brought Kilian back and made him general secretary and managing director of the combined works council, before securing his position as head of human resources two years ago. At the time, Deutsche Welle wrote: “Gunnar Kilian, a long-standing, close colleague of the almighty works council chief Bernd Osterloh has moved up into the executive. As a guardian for Diess?”

At VW, the collaboration between the executive committee, the works council, the union and the government has always been particularly close. The current leadership dispute ushers in a new phase of this corporatist policy, aimed at preparing the company for global trade war at the expense of the workforce.

Scottish government moves to end lockdown as COVID-19 deaths hit 4,000

Stephen Alexander

As of June 7, 4,000 deaths were registered in Scotland where coronavirus has been mentioned on the death certificate.

While weekly deaths related to the virus have fallen well below a peak of 659 deaths between April 20 and April 26, there were 89 COVID-19 deaths—seven percent of all deaths registered globally—in the week ending June 7.

Scotland has the third worst coronavirus death rate in the world: “With 4,000 deaths from a population of 5.454 million people, the rate of coronavirus deaths in Scotland has reached 733 for every million, behind England on 767 and Belgium on 842,” according to the Scotsman newspaper.

Most fatalities have occurred in care homes, where 1,861 residents have died, 47 percent of all COVID-19 fatalities across Scotland. A further 46 percent occurred in hospitals and seven percent in homes and non-institutional settings. Poor working class neighbourhoods have borne the brunt of the pandemic, with the Glasgow and Clyde region suffering an astronomical death rate of 10.8 per 10,000 of population—greater than one in a 1,000 people.

Excess deaths above a five year average, also known as preventable deaths, are far higher and considered a more accurate measure of the pandemic’s death toll—under conditions in which capitalist governments globally have failed to provide any systematic testing of the population. Scotland has recorded 841 excess death per million, according to the Financial Times, just below the UK average, but greater than Wales and Northern Ireland, and 30 times greater than Norway, which has comparable population size and density.

In addition to deaths linked directly to COVID-19, there have been 581 preventable deaths in care homes and a massive 1,821 preventable deaths in individual households. A large proportion of these comprise of people dependent on residential care and home care, who died horrendously of neglect as these services were brought to the point of collapse and medical care was rationed at the expense of the elderly, sick and disabled. There have been more than 400 preventable non-COVID-19 deaths among people with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

Care deaths were exacerbated by the genocidal government policy pursued across the UK of discharging the elderly from hospital to care homes without screening for the virus. At the height of the pandemic, according to research by the National Audit Office, 25,000 people may have been discharged from hospitals into care homes without being tested. In Scotland alone, nearly 1,000 patients were discharged to care homes without being tested, which helped to seed the virus in more than half of all care homes.

This was carried on in the full knowledge that care standards were rapidly deteriorating because of woefully inadequate supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) and massive staff absences due to uncontrolled infection. Even in normal conditions, many care homes do not directly employ medically trained staff and cannot deliver humane medical treatment or palliative care to the very sick or dying. Nevertheless, only nine percent of COVID-19 fatalities among Scotland’s care home residents occurred in hospitals, according to the International Long Term Care Policy Institute.

Had the Scottish government wanted to intervene to relieve the abject suffering in care there was sufficient hospital capacity to do so, including the 1,000 capacity temporary National Health Service hospital, the NHS Louisa Jordan in Glasgow, which stood completely unused since opening to great fanfare in April. Many other hospital wards stood empty as non-critical health care was suspended.

Scotland’s First Minister and Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon claimed that the care admissions policy was the product of the latest scientific thinking. On May 31, Sturgeon said, “Back then, the view was that people who didn’t have symptoms, either because they were pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic didn’t shed the virus.”

This was a lie. The SNP has replicated the fascistic “herd immunity” strategy of Boris Johnson’s Conservative government from the very beginning, prioritising corporate profit over the health and lives of workers and the retired.

Parroting the pseudo-scientific justifications peddled by the Tory party for its barely concealed policy of social euthanasia, Scotland’s national clinical director, Jason Leitch, advocated measures to “manage the infection safely across our whole population,” in an interview with Channel 4 News on March 16. “We have no choice, you can’t get rid of the virus,” he said. This was just four days after Johnson declared at a Downing Street conference, as herd immunity was confirmed as official policy, “I must level with the British public: many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.”

Despite having months to prepare on the back of repeated emergency warnings issued by the World Health Organisation dating back to January, both Westminster and Holyrood instituted only a belated and partial lockdown, allowing big business to exploit millions of workers in unsafe conditions. Epidemiologists at Edinburgh University, led by Professor Rowland Kao, have estimated that up to 80 percent of COVID-19 deaths in Scotland could have been prevented if the lockdown had been instituted just two weeks earlier.

In the face of widespread scientific evidence, as well as the experience of countries such as China and South Korea, the SNP government rejected the necessity of proactive testing, contact tracing and quarantine protocols. The former chief medical officer, Catherine Calderwood—who stepped down after being caught breaching lockdown rules—denounced criticism over Scotland’s limited testing capacity on April 2, stating, “The thought that in some way testing slows the virus or is a part of our strategy to prevent transmission is a fallacy, I’m afraid.”

To date, only one-third of care home staff, for instance, have been provided with one-off tests. Safe levels of screening, requiring repeated testing at regular intervals, are nowhere in sight.

It was only in April, at the height of the initial outbreak, that the Scottish government bothered to order increased supplies of the substandard PPE prescribed by health authorities. Shortages remain widespread.

As a result of these policies, hospitals have also become hubs of viral transmission, with almost 900 known infections among NHS staff and uncounted dozens of fatalities. According to official figures, there have been 125 separate outbreaks on non-COVID-19 hospital wards resulting in 201 known patient fatalities.

For months the Scottish government and Edinburgh City Council, controlled by an SNP/Labour coalition, withheld information about the first known mass transmission event in Scotland, which took place at a Nike conference in Edinburgh on February 26 and 27. This was attended by 70 employees from around the world. None of the retail and restaurant workers, a tour guide, or those who stayed in same hotel as the international delegation were informed of the outbreak. The same is true for another case of international transmission, identified in February, involving a passenger on a flight from Italy to Edinburgh.

The SNP is now moving aggressively toward reopening the economy even as the pandemic continues to accelerate globally. Phase three of easing the lockdown will begin next month, with the tourism industry scheduled to reopen on July 15, together with nurseries, offices, shops, gyms, and museums, subject to token social distancing measures. This is informed not by scientific expertise, but rather by the demands of big business to resume extracting profits from the exploitation of workers.

Despite receiving a pandemic bailout totaling hundreds of billions in public money, the corporate and financial elite are utilising the situation to impose mass layoffs. Rolls-Royce, as part of their plans to shed 9,000 jobs globally and 3,000 in Britain, will cut 700 jobs at its Inchinnan site, near Glasgow. Ovo Energy will make 1,400 redundant in England and Wales and 1,000 in Scotland. The Macdonald hotel group is considering 1,800 redundancies, with another 240 jobs in danger at Crieff Hydro hotels.

Brazil registers world’s second-highest COVID-19 toll as stock market soars

Miguel Andrade

Having surpassed the United States to become the country with most confirmed new daily COVID-19 deaths, Brazil has now topped the United Kingdom as having the world’s second highest total death toll—41,828 vs 41,556 as of Friday—trailing only the US in both total deaths and total cases.

The last week also saw an acceleration of the pandemic’s spread throughout Latin America’s largest country, with more than 32,000 cases registered daily and an average of 1,073 deaths a day.

The official numbers, however, have no credibility, due to the de facto herd immunity policy pursued by the Bolsonaro administration. The government has refused to take any action against the pandemic and withheld funds from local governments. In pursuit of its goal of hiding the pandemic’s real toll, it has charged local administrations with over-counting deaths, without presenting any evidence.

The latest numbers were provided by the government after it had decided, over the weekend, to “reformulate” its reports, by presenting them late in the evening, in order to bypass nightly television news programs, and, more gravely, accounting only for deaths occurring on the given day, instead of all those confirmed in a given day, including those that happened previously.

Such data manipulation would have reduced the number of deaths reported daily by 60 percent, according to a May 31 report by Folha de S. Paulo. The report looked into data released on May 2 and found that the total number of COVID-19 death confirmed by the government since the start of the pandemic stood at 6,724. But another 16,144 deaths from COVID-19 and from severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) had also taken place by that day but were still waiting for autopsies or COVID-19 exams. In other words, two thirds of the actual COVID-19 deaths as of May 2 were not known and were diluted in the reports of the following days.

The late inclusion of deaths would mean that, for a given day, of the total COVID-19 deaths, only 40 percent are immediately identified as such, and that the daily deaths reported by the government represent a constant and gross underestimate. At the same time, the decision to report only deaths confirmed to have been caused by COVID-19 on a given day would throw late confirmations into a statistical limbo and give the public the impression of a much lower death count. The government’s decision to change the daily COVID-19 reports was struck down by the Supreme Court (STF) on Monday, but the government has also revealed it is looking for ways to revise downward the total number of deaths, mainly by questioning the non-COVID-19 SARS deaths.

SARS cases have jumped four-fold in Brazil this year, and in 98 percent of the post-mortem exams of SARS patients, the cause of death was the new coronavirus. This condition has led many local governments to add part of the SARS deaths to the COVID-19 numbers, resulting in charges of “fraud” by the Bolsonaro administration. It has also lent further credibility to estimates by experts that the number of COVID-19 cases is at least one order of magnitude larger than the official count, if not higher. If the under-notification patterns of the beginning of May were used for the current death toll, they would bring deaths to over 100,000.

On Tuesday, Folha de S. Paulo also reported that low rates of official COVID-19 cases is strongly correlated with high rates of “unidentified” SARS, with state capitals having fewer official COVID-19 deaths presenting up to 12 times higher rates of unidentified SARS deaths.

However, taking absolutely no notice of the catastrophic situation gripping the country, state governors and mayors of the worst-hit areas have authorized the scrapping of whatever limited quarantine measures that were imposed in the last three months, which they took pride in declaring had not hit most of the economy.

All of the governors previously attacking the fascist Bolsonaro for his neglect of the pandemic and feigning to follow scientific advice and defend “life” now consider the reopening of factories and stores a settled matter.

In the three worst-hit states, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Ceará, street trade and malls are already open, after a slow return to work in the factories in the last weeks.

In São Paulo, the reopening of stores has proceeded amid new daily death toll records on Wednesday and Thursday, of over 330 deaths a day. The state government itself has acknowledged that the next 18 days will probably see the doubling of the number of deaths over the last three months, from 11,000 to 22,000. Cases are projected to double from the current 123,000.

An even worse fate is to be expected in the impoverished northeast of the country, where Ceará is located, which has just passed the richer southeast of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro to be the country’s pandemic epicenter. The northeast now accounts for more cases than the southeast, despite having only 56 million inhabitants, as compared to the 85 million in the southeast.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation of the University of Washington School of Medicine now projects Brazil will have 5,000 deaths a day in August and surpass the United States in total deaths by the end of July, even considering the suspect official Brazilian data.

Yesterday also saw the release of the numbers of a sampling research conducted by the southern Pelotas Federal on the antibody presence among the population, finding that 2.6 percent of the population has been infected in 120 of the largest Brazilian cities, home to 68.6 million people. The numbers show that the success of the so-called “herd immunity” policy would require at least 25 times more infections and deaths to “succeed” in immunizing the population, or more than 500,000 in these cities alone, assuming long-term immunity is developed by those infected.

The murderous policies of the Brazilian ruling class have provided nothing less than a feast for finance capital, which has enjoyed a bull market that has reclaimed pre-pandemic values. São Paulo’s B3 stock index now stands at 94,000 points, having gained almost 50 percent since the day of the beginning of São Paulo’s partial quarantine on March 23. The Brazilian Real has also reached its highest value compared to the dollar in three months. This stands in stark contrast to the fraudulent campaign of the Workers Party-led opposition to remove Bolsonaro, based upon the reactionary claims that he is “scaring off investors” threatening capitalist “internal security.”

The Brazilian stock market is responding to not only the unity of the whole ruling class around the back-to-work campaign spearheaded by Bolsonaro, but also their silence and collaboration in face of the brutal repression unleashed against the initial signs of social opposition expressed by the demonstrations of workers and youth in the last two weeks.

Bolsonaro’s bourgeois opposition, led by the PT, voted with the government for the massive injection of public funds into the financial markets. It has swiftly changed the focus of its opposition to Bolsonaro from his neglect of the pandemic to the charges leveled by former Justice Minister Sérgio Moro. These center on Bolsonaro having sought to interfere in the Federal Police to stop investigations into his criminal ties to Rio de Janeiro organized crime and possibly to the death squad murder of Rio city councilor Marielle Franco. The PT-led opposition has cast these crimes as a threat to Brazilian capitalism and the credibility of its repressive apparatus.

Now, they are also concentrating their efforts on piling pressure on the Electoral Court (TSE) and the STF to remove Bolsonaro from office on the fraudulent and reactionary pretext that “fake news” decided the 2018 election. This campaign has been accompanied with pushing for “fake news” regulations and denouncing Bolsonaro’s ties with the far-right as a threat to the state.

Meanwhile, they have denounced the youth demonstrations, claiming that they only feed pro-Bolsonaro red-baiting and strengthen his rule. Such cowardice and complicity was summed up by the leader of the pseudo-left PSOL, Marcelo Freixo, who justified his party’s inaction in face of the far-right by saying: “Bolsonaro is clearly feeding chaos through his political militias to justify a military intervention”—in other words any mass opposition only plays into Bolsonaro’s hands.

Workers and youth facing the fascist policies of Bolsonaro and of Brazilian capitalism as a whole must reject the reactionary maneuvers of Bolsonaro’s bourgeois adversaries, led by the PT, and their attempted cover-up by PSOL. The policies of these parties only serve to disarm the working class in the face of the massive repression being prepared by the government.

US Navy deploys three aircraft carriers to Pacific against China

Peter Symonds

For the first time in three years, the US Navy has mobilised three aircraft carrier strike groups to the Pacific as a part of a provocative military build-up against China. The deployments underscore the strategic shift by the Pentagon from the so-called “war on terror” to great power competition that heightens the danger of conflict between nuclear-armed powers.

As of Thursday, the nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and their associated groups of destroyers and cruisers set to sea in a massive show of force. While there are no details of their planned movements and exercises, all will be operating in the Western Pacific in strategically sensitive waters off the Chinese mainland.

An F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet is seen on the deck of the U.S. Navy USS Ronald Reagan in the South China Sea, 2018 [Credit: AP Photo/Kin Cheung]

USS Theodore Roosevelt, which has been sidelined in Guam after a major outbreak of COVID-19, is now operating in waters off Guam. The USS Nimitz strike group left the US West Coast earlier this week while the USS Ronald Reagan together with its battle group has left its base in Japan and is currently operating in the Philippine Sea.

In comments to the Associated Press about the deployments, Rear Admiral Stephen Koehler, director of operations for the US Indo-Pacific Command, specifically referred to China as the chief target. He accused Beijing of slowly and methodically building up military outposts in the South China Sea and putting missile and electronic warfare systems on its islets.

Koehler declared that the US “ability to be present in a strong way is part of the competition… you’ve got to be present to win when you’re competing.” He then boasted: “Carriers and carrier strike groups writ large are phenomenal symbols of American naval power. I really am pretty fired up that we’ve got three of them at the moment.”

The dispatch of three aircraft carrier battle groups to waters near China comes as the Trump administration has deliberately inflamed tensions with Beijing by blaming it for the global COVID-19 pandemic. Without a shred of evidence, Trump has accused China of covering up the outbreak and given credence to far-right conspiracy theories that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory.

While Trump is attempting to deflect attention from his own criminal negligence in dealing with the pandemic, the scapegoating of China is part of Washington’s aggressive efforts that began under President Obama’s “pivot to Asia” to undermine and confront Beijing. US strategists regard China as the chief obstacle to American imperialism halting its historic decline and reasserting its global hegemony.

Under President Obama, the Pentagon launched a “rebalance” to the Indo-Pacific to station 60 percent of its naval assets and warplanes in the region by 2020. As part of this strategy, the US has been restructuring its extensive bases in Japan, South Korea and Guam, forging basing agreements throughout the region, including in Australia, Singapore, India and Sri Lanka, and strengthening military alliances and strategic partnerships.

In the current standoff with China, the Trump administration has encouraged India’s dangerous confrontation with China along their contested border. Both sides have mobilised thousands of troops who face each other at several points along their mountainous border areas. The two regional powers, both of which are nuclear-armed, fought a border war in 1962 and the border disputes have never been resolved.

The deployment of aircraft carrier strike groups is just part of the US build-up of military forces in the Western Pacific. Fox News reported this week that the US Air Force has deployed nuclear-capable B-1B Lancer bombers to Guam last month that have been conducting operations over the South China Sea. The Air Force has also sent long-range, high altitude Global Hawk drones to Japan to carry out surveillance in the Western Pacific.

Under the Trump administration, the US Navy has stepped up its so-called “freedom of navigation” operations that deliberately violate territorial waters claimed by China around its islets in the South China Sea. In late April, the Navy carried out two South China Sea operations in as many days followed by another on May 7. On May 28, the guided missile destroyer USS Mustin passed within the 12-nautical-mile territorial limit of Woody Island in the Paracel group that has been occupied by China for decades.

Washington’s claim that it is simply asserting “freedom of navigation” is a fraud. The US Navy is determined to maintain a presence in the South China Sea which is critical to the Pentagon’s AirSea Battle plans for a massive assault on Chinese military bases in the event of war. The South China Sea is adjacent to sensitive Chinese military bases on Hainan Island, including for its nuclear submarines.

The US Navy has also increased its transits of the Taiwan Strait that lies between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan which China claims as part of its territory. On June 5, the guided missile destroyer USS Russell passed through the narrow strait—the second US warship to do so in three weeks and the seventh this year. The Chinese state-owned media responded by branding the transit as “another provocative move.”

Taiwan is another sensitive flash point that the Trump administration is deliberately inflaming. While not officially abrogating its “One China” policy recognising Beijing as the legitimate government of all China including Taiwan, Trump has steadily strengthened diplomatic and strategic relations with Taipei. He has backed Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen whose Democratic Progressive Party advocates a more independent role for Taiwan from China.

The carrier group deployments follow a further escalation of tensions between the US and China when Taiwan’s defence ministry allowed a US Navy cargo plane to make an unprecedented flight through Taiwanese air space on its way from Okinawa to Thailand. Beijing responded by condemning the incident as “provocative.”

The Trump administration’s dangerous escalation of military tensions with China emerges as the global crisis of capitalism revealed and accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Like his counterparts around the world, Trump is not only preparing class war against the working class, but is driven to force rival powers to bear the lion’s share of the burden of the economic crisis.

The reckless US military intervention in areas of key strategic importance for China risks a confrontation, whether by accident or design, that could rapidly spiral out of control into a catastrophic war that would envelop the world.