French state hands €15 billion bailout to Airbus and Air France

Kumaran Ira

Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a €15 billion bailout for the aerospace industry, after announcing a €8 billion bailout for the auto industry. Though the COVID-19 pandemic has already cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and placed tens of millions on short-time work in France alone, major corporations are receiving vast sums of public aid to carry out job cuts and restructuring in Europe and internationally.

The government justified the aerospace bailout by claiming it would save thousands of jobs and maintain the international competitiveness of airplane manufacturer Airbus and of Air France. Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire signed the plan into effect on June 9 together with the transport, defense and environment ministers.

The financial support package includes €7 billion for Air France and the rest for the industrial production chain. According to the Air-Journal web site, “the €8 billion apart from Air France will cover measures going from loan forgiveness to short-term work financing, to advancing military contracts and investing in a research and development fund, including an investment fund created by the state, Airbus, Dassault Aviation, Safran and Thalès to help small businesses.”

“We will do everything to support this French industry which is so essential to our sovereignty, jobs and economy,” Le Maire said. “If we do not intervene immediately, a third of jobs in this industry could disappear in the next six months, that means 100,000 jobs.”

The goal of this bailout is neither to protect nor to create jobs. The financial aristocracy is using the pandemic as a pretext to restructure industries and slash jobs, wages and benefits to boost profits.

After benefiting from billions of euros in state aid, plant shutdowns and job cuts are spreading across multiple industries. Automaker Renault received a €5 billion from the French government, which also announced a broader €8 billion plan for the automobile industry. Renault then announced 15,000 job cuts worldwide, including 4,600 in France. Now the government is giving billions to the aerospace industry, which will slash wages and benefits internationally.

“We must save our aerospace industry,” he said. “We must avoid any decline in the coming months against the American giant Boeing or the Chinese giant Comac. We will not let China and the United States divide the world aerospace markets between them. France and Europe will conserve their rank.”

Workers must reject the European imperialist powers’ calls to support trade war policies designed to allow businesses to extract the maximum profits from exploiting them. Workers in all countries, including the United States and China, face escalating social attacks. This is why it is critical to unite workers struggles across the world on a socialist program, so workers can take control of the productive forces created by humanity and use them rationally to meet social needs.

As for Airbus, the aerospace giant has not yet revealed what measures it plans to take. Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury indicated that Airbus will announce its decisions at the end of July. He refused to guarantee that there would be no job cuts. Speaking to France Bleu radio, he said that the bailout should allow the company “to resist the coming wave in the short term and to prepare for the future.”

On saving jobs at Airbus, Faury added, “It is very hard to answer this question with certainty. We must give people time to work, there can be no answer at this stage in the game. Airbus must absolutely emerge from this crisis with the capacity to innovate and invest. There will have to be give and take in the short and the long term, our work is very important.”

Airbus employs around 135,000 workers worldwide, including 13,500 in Britain, 46,000 in Germany and 48,000 in France.

In May, Britain’s Telegraph newspaper wrote that Airbus is preparing 10,000 job cuts and cited anonymous corporate sources as saying up to 10 percent of staff could be fired.

The pandemic is yet again exposing the criminal policies of capitalist governments worldwide. The Macron government neglected the struggle against COVID-19 after having imposed deep social austerity and working to isolate and strangle working-class opposition with the complicity of the trade unions. At the high point of the pandemic inside France, it reacted by issuing a plan to hand €300 billion to the banks and big business to make vast profits.

Airbus has already slashed thousands of jobs in recent years. Its last restructuring plan, Power8, for the 2007-2010 period led to 5,000 job cuts at Airbus and its suppliers. In Toulouse there were over 3,000 job cuts.

The unions are playing a key role to support this plan, coordinating closely with the government and corporate management to impose austerity and isolate struggles and strikes against these plans. They back the bailout, impotently asking Airbus to save jobs while negotiating behind closed doors with management how many jobs are to go—as they did in 2007.

After the state announcement, the Workers Force (FO) union, the principal union at Airbus and its French assembly and manufacturing plants, adopted the same line as the state. They insisted that the bailout should save jobs. “With so much state aid, large industries should go easy now on their restructuring plans. Management wants to use the crisis to re-size the corporation, but we will not accept any job cuts imposed on the workers,” said FO’s main delegate at Airbus, Jean-François Knepper.

However, since the 2008 economic crisis, the unions have worked closely with numerous firms, including the auto industry, to implement restructuring plans that shuttered plants and slashed tens of thousands of jobs. They did this while receiving billions of euros in bailouts and public subsidies, while strikes and protests that proceeded against this were isolated by the unions.

Indeed, FO has just agreed to a major concessions contract at Derichebourg, an Airbus supplier, claiming this was necessary to save jobs. The contract eliminates commuting and meal subsidies, as well as an extra month’s pay as a Christmas bonus for workers making over 2.5 times the minimum wage (€3047 per month). “We chose to save jobs,” claimed FO-Derichebourg official Éric Fabre.

While claiming to save jobs, unions are preparing to accept attacks on workers in countless firms in the name of boosting competitiveness. Workers need to take the struggle out of the hands of the unions, forming action committees independent of the unions and linking up their struggles internationally. The Parti de l’égalité socialiste advances the perspective of nationalizing these transnational companies under workers’ control in each country where they operate, in order to turn them into international public utilities meeting the social needs of humanity.

Macron unleashes riot police against French health care protests

Will Morrow

Yesterday thousands of doctors, nurses, paramedics, health care assistants, medical laboratory technicians and other health care professionals joined a nationwide demonstration across France to demand increased health care funding amidst the global coronavirus pandemic.

Several thousand workers protested outside the national health ministry offices in Paris. There were other major demonstrations of hundreds or thousands of people in many cities, and more than 220 separate protests outside local hospitals by staff.

In Paris, the Macron government ordered a massive deployment of riot police. At approximately 5:00 p.m., riot police violently attacked groups of protesters, firing tear gas on the protest near the Invalides.

Twitter videos show police arresting the same health care workers who only weeks earlier were being self-servingly hailed by the government for their sacrifice in protecting the population against the pandemic. In another video, police can be seen pushing a worker in a white hospital coat face down into the ground as she kneels and demands her ventolin asthma medication, before taking her away with her face bleeding.

The sign says: “Check your rolex. It’s time for the revolt.”

The police crackdown shows that the Macron administration and the financial elite will violently repress opposition to its plans to use the pandemic to implement a massive transfer of wealth from the working class to itself.

In his televised address on Sunday announcing the end to all confinement measures, Macron declared that the government will not impose any taxes on corporations to pay off €500 billion in state debt incurred during the pandemic. Of this, almost four-fifths were allocated to guarantee corporate debts. This money is to be paid through savage austerity against the working class.

Macron is due to announce a new attack on health care before the end of the month. This has been fraudulently presented as a progressive reform. Macron was forced to pledge a wage increase for nurses under conditions of massive support in the population for their demands and opposition to the slashing of health care funding over decades by successive governments.

However, it is already clear that whatever limited wage increases are provided will be more than made up for with sharp attacks across the health care sector. Health Minister Olivier Véran announced on May 20 that the government would increase wages for nurses, but that this would be tied to “placing in question certain straitjackets that prevent those who want to work longer from doing so,” meaning an end to the 35-hour work week. The French health care system did not “perform” sufficiently well, he added.

Prime Minister Édouard Philippe declared that there could be “no taboos.”

The Macron administration and its former health minister Agnes Buzyn had already introduced legislation mandating major health care funding cuts into the parliament in the months before the coronavirus pandemic. These triggered rolling protests and wildcat actions throughout the summer of 2019 up until the pandemic.

Today, Le Monde reported that the national health insurance system faced a deficit of €31 billion, which will be used as a justification for deeper cuts. The Macron administration is meeting throughout the month with the trade unions, who are seeking to demobilize and isolate opposition among the health care workers.

The sign says: “The system is killing our health workers.”

Those who attended yesterday’s protest described the impact of decades of funding cuts on the health care system that have been laid bare by the pandemic. In the last six years alone, spanning both the Macron administration and the former Socialist Party government of Francois Hollande, more than 17,500 overstay hospital beds were closed.

“What we are demanding here today is the same thing we have been demanding since before the coronavirus pandemic,” said Jessica, who has worked as a nurse’s assistant for 13 years in a public hospital in Paris. “We do not have the materials we need. There are not enough staff. When staff leave, they are not replaced. Our maternity leave is not actually provided. Wages are not enough. All of this existed before but had been allowed to happen behind the scenes and was only exposed by the crisis.

“There are no safe conditions. There are staff who are assaulted in the wards by patients because there are not safe working conditions. There are health staff who have died from the coronavirus. We are not protected.”

Jessica and Amissa

Amissa, who came to the protest with Jessica and conducts home visits as a nurses assistant, added, “We were already fed up. Now we want there to be a change. We don’t want just a ‘thank you’ and the ‘applause.’” For health workers who conduct home visits, she said, nothing was provided in the height of the pandemic. “Normally we are the ones who have to supply our own materials. We had our own reserves of masks and some of our patients even had to give us masks. Then we depended on networks of colleagues.”

Jessica concluded: “There is always money when the government needs it. They have given billions to bail out Air France, Renault.” The rich “know that they have the means to buy their own health care,” Samira said, “and that they will be treated in any case.”

Aurélia

Aurélia, a laboratory technician laboratory at the Poincaré hospital in Paris, has worked in the hospital system for 22 years. “Our laboratory was focused on the coronavirus,” she said, “and we had 90 patients at the hospital in intensive care.” In the laboratory, “there were practically no masks. We were allowed to take a single mask at a time and the number we took was noted down. There were not enough blouses, not enough staff. We also lacked gloves. Even the swabs used for testing had previously come from Italy and we did not have enough.”

“Since the health care reforms introduced by Sarkozy,” she added, “we are provided a fixed amount of money for every type of operation we perform. That means if a patient requires more treatment, we bear the cost of the difference. The private hospitals take who they want to treat.”

She said she thought that “the Macron government has no intention of increasing spending. They have given us little crumbs—a one-off bonus of €1,000. They see patients as clients and not as patients.” She said that the money should be taken from the rich, “possibly via some other form of wealth tax,” to pay for increases in the hospital system. Commenting on Macron’s declaration that there would be no tax increases, she added, “Every time it is us who are forced to pay, the middle classes and the poor.”

In his speech on Sunday, during which he projected mass bankruptcies and layoffs of workers, Macron declared that he would continue to collaborate with the trade union “social partners,” which are working to suppress, isolate and demobilize the growing anger in the working class. Health care workers must strike out on a new road and take the conduct of this fight into their own hands, by forming independent workplace committees controlled directly by rank-and-file staff, and to make a direct appeal to other sections of the working class in France and internationally for a united struggle.

The response of the Macron administration to the just demands of the workers shows that the only answer of the ruling class to popular opposition is state repression. The struggle against the pandemic today and the guaranteeing of high-quality health care to all requires a revolutionary program, based on the fight for a workers government, the confiscation of the ill-gotten wealth of the financial elite, and the socialist reorganization of society.

UK: 600,000 workers already kicked off payrolls during COVID-19 lockdown

Robert Stevens

Millions of workers and their families in Britain are facing an unprecedented onslaught on their jobs, wages and working conditions.

Even as the government reopens the economy, with all non-essential shops allowed to open from this Monday, jobs are being shed by the tens of thousands.

The economic carnage wrought by the pandemic saw the UK economy collapse by more than 20 percent in April—the first full month after the lockdown was imposed on March 23.

Companies are responding by implementing long-planned restructuring operations. Mass layoffs, a halt to hiring, and pay cuts are the order of the day.

This week’s Office for National Statistics labour market report showed that the number of workers on payrolls in Britain fell by 612,000 (2 percent) in the first two months of the lockdown. Across the economy, the number of hours worked fell by a record 94.2 million in April—a drop of almost 9 percent. The number of vacancies fell by a record 436,000 (60 percent) between March and May to reach 318,000. Real average pay declined a further 0.8 percent between April and May, following the already sharp decline of 2.8 per cent between March and April.

In the last weeks, over 43,000 job losses have been announced by major UK firms in many sectors. Nearly 14,000 of these are to go in the UK. Among the sectors hardest hit are aviation, aerospace, builders’ merchants, and car manufacturing. This week Jaguar Land Rover announced another 1,100 job losses among agency staff/contractors as part of a “transformation programme”. These are on top of 5,000 job cuts announced last year. Builders’ merchants Travis Perkins announced 2,500 job cuts this week and outsourcing firm Capita is shedding 200 jobs.

The job losses could well run into the millions, as the Johnson government’s furlough scheme is phased out from August to October. This week the government announced that 9.1 million workers were being paid 80 percent of their wages, up to a ceiling of £2,500 a month, under its Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. On top of this, 2.6 million self-employed workers have made claims from the Self-Employed Income Support Scheme. This means that more than a third of the entire workforce are currently being paid by furlough schemes.

Without these cushions, the unemployment rate would have already rocketed far beyond the nearly 4 percent in the first three months to April. As it is, the crisis has forced 1.6 million workers into claiming work-related benefits since the lockdown began—a rise of 125.9 percent.

The cost of these schemes, around £29 billion, is dwarfed by the hundreds of billions made available to the corporations and banks. But the ruling class hates the concessions it has been forced to make to working people.

Those who are not forced back to work under dangerous conditions over the next weeks face losing their jobs, as there is no indication that companies will pay 20 percent of the costs or more to keep workers furloughed. From August to October, workers on furlough will continue to receive 80 percent of their salary, but the amount paid by the state will be reduced each month, with employers expected to make up the shortfall.

Last month, the Office for Budget Responsibility’s was forced to raise its estimate of the cost to the state of the pandemic to £123.2 billion, from its previous calculation of £103.7 billion. Annual borrowing shot up to 15.2 percent of UK GDP. In the intervening weeks, this will have risen again.

These staggering sums are to be clawed back from the working class in an offensive that will make the last 10 years of austerity pale in comparison.

Commenting on the new figures, “Tej Parikh, chief economist at the Institute of Directors, warned, “The furlough scheme continues to hold off the bulk of job losses, but unemployment is likely to surge in the months ahead.”

This is already confirmed in HMRC data pointing to the number of employees in the labour market falling by 160,000 in May. On Tuesday, the Resolution Foundation commented, “This [May figure of 160,000] has so far showed up in a rise in economic inactivity (up 425,000 in April) rather than unemployment, with the lockdown limiting the numbers actively searching for work …

“The claimant count—a measure which includes those claiming unemployment benefits and some low-income workers—reached 2.8 million in April, an increase of 530,000 on the month, far surpassing the peak of the last crisis (1.6 million).”

Speaking to Sky News, Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, warned, “This is economically catastrophic on a scale literally never seen before in history. The real question is what happens next.”

Johnson said the virus disappearing over the next few months and the economy returning to normal was not about to happen. “The real risk, and the more likely outcome, is that the furlough scheme gradually begins to be withdrawn and a lot of jobs will be lost,” he said, adding, “Remember unemployment rose by a million last month, and it will continue to rise.

“More businesses will go out of business and then the issue is that next year we’ll still be in a position where there are fewer businesses operating and fewer people in work.”

The British economy was particularly fragile, he said, with a “unique triple threat” of the coronavirus impact, gathering economic crisis, and Brexit taking place next year—with the likelihood that the UK will not finalise a trade deal with the EU and crash out with a “hard Brexit.”

Any notion that there is any correlation between the policies of capitalist governments and the concerns of working people has been blown to smithereens during the pandemic. Now workers are being shown that all efforts to justify the reopening of the economy with expressions of concern for jobs and livelihoods are rank deception. All that matters for big business and its parties is profit.

The Johnson’s government’s “herd immunity” policy has led to around 70,000 deaths according to modelling based on data from the Office for National Statistics. The public health implications of Exercise Cygnus—carried out in 2016 by the National Health Service to analyse the impact of a pandemic similar to the coronavirus—were totally ignored despite predictions of hundreds of thousands of deaths. Now, nothing is being done to alleviate a mounting social and economic catastrophe, in which millions of households face a future of unemployment and poverty.

The working class must take things into its own hands. What is required is the expropriation of the major corporations who are determined to make their workers’ pay for a crisis for which the ruling class is solely responsible.

Action committees must be formed in every workplace and community, to ensure safe working conditions and to oppose all demands for cuts and closures in the “national interest.” The ruling class defends only its interests. The interests of the broad mass of society can only be defended by the independent action of the working class, not only against the government and the employers, but the Tories’ allies in the Labour Party, and trade unions that act as the workplace police force for big business and the state.

The stranglehold of the corporate and financial oligarchy and their dictatorship over economic and political life must be ended. This requires the expropriation of the major corporations, the seizure of their assets, to make available the resources needed to provide for decent jobs, housing, education and health care for all. Such a programme demands the implementation of a rational economic plan by a workers’ government committed to a fight against capitalism and for socialism internationally.

Outbreaks of COVID-19 in Brazil’s meat processing plants and mines

Tomas Castanheira

The return to work policy and the suspension of all measures to contain the coronavirus is the new accepted reality advanced by Brazilian politicians, the media and the corporate-financial elite. They are not shaken by the eruption of new cases and deaths from the disease, which, according to official numbers, has killed 45,000 people in Brazil.

A video commercial published by Bradesco Bank declares: “Everyone understands the importance of staying home now. But we know that this was not possible for you.” It then presents images of workers at industries, cleaning, health care, delivery and a several other services, including, of course, their own bank employees: “People who wake up early, who work hard, who take risks. People who are doing what needs to be done”.

In the name of resuming the flow of profits to banks and shareholders, these workers are being sent into extremely unsafe workplaces that are contaminated with COVID-19. Those workers then bring the disease home to their families and neighbors. This is what has guaranteed the “best May since 2009” for the Brazilian stock market.

Workers at JBS meat processing plant in Rio Grande do Sul. (Credit: MPT)

Outbreaks of coronavirus are taking place in large companies, impacting hundreds of thousands of workers across the country. Cities built around large meat processing and mining plants are suffering from mass contamination.

A report published by the Taquari Valley University (Univates) in Lajeado, a city with a high concentration of meat processing plants in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul, concluded that the contamination rate in the city is 14 times higher than in the rest of the state. Among the more than 16,000 workers in meat plants, the chance of being infected is 207% higher.

In early May, a BRF Foods plant in Lajeado was closed by the State Labor Department (MPT) for posing a serious risk to the city’s health. It was reopened eight days later, after a plea deal involving the allocation of 1,200,000 reais (around US$ 230,000) to local hospitals.

The same pattern is repeated in meat processing plants across Brazil. In Mato Grosso do Sul, in the central region of the country, the MPT has already given notice to more than 30 industries in the sector for not following the most basic health recommendations.

One of the worst outbreaks in the state occurred at the JBS factory in Dourados, where more than 400 of the approximately 4,000 employees tested positive for COVID-19.

The indigenous reservation of Dourados, the largest concentration of indigenous people in the country, where around 16,000 people live, already has 86 confirmed coronavirus cases. Community transmission at the reservation started after a resident who works at the JBS plant became contaminated at work.

In an emergency statement, the Guarani & Kaiowá indigenous leaders warned that the population of the reservation, which lacks health infrastructure and adequate housing, “stands in the face of yet another massacre with the arrival of COVID-19.”

JBS responded by sending home the infected workers and indigenous people working in the plant and continuing the production as before, claiming it follows “a strict protocol for controlling and preventing the disease.” They also announced a donation of 21,000,000 reais (around US$ 4,000,000) to the public health care system of Mato Grosso do Sul, to “compensate” the devastation it is causing.

The already terrible working conditions in the Brazilian meat processing plants may worsen. On behalf of the meat corporations, Federal Deputy Celso Maldaner of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), is proposing the elimination of legally-required breaks for workers working under low temperatures in the meat plants.

Another series of outbreaks of COVID-19 occurs in the cities where Companhia Vale do Rio Doce carries out its mining operations. In Canaã dos Carajás, in the state of Pará, where Vale’s largest complex and the world’s largest iron mine are located, the rate of COVID-19 contamination among its inhabitants is almost 4 percent. In June 10, the city had 1,417 confirmed cases for a population of 36,027.

After the company carried out rapid tests among its employees, the various cities in Minas Gerais where Vale carries out its explorations revealed high levels of contamination. In Itabirito, out 100 confirmed cases, 94 are of Vale employees. In Ouro Preto and Barão dos Cocais, miners account for about 80 percent of confirmed cases.

Vale’s mining complex in the city of Itabira—where around 10% of the company’s production is carried out—was shut down by the MPT for the second time on June 6, after a surge of dozens of new coronavirus cases among the approximately 5,000 workers. At the end of May, the complex had already been closed after a report showed more than 200 had been infected.

The working conditions exposed by the investigations are totally unsafe: workers are crowded at shift changes and are transported in tightly-packed vans. Operation inside closed cabins is also a potential risk factor, which helps transform mines into COVID-19 breeding grounds.

The workers of the National Steel Company (CSN), the largest steel company in Brazil and Latin America, are also under high risk. The MPT requested the closure of a CSN mine in the city of Congonhas, which was denied by the courts. According to the MPT, a health investigation “found flaws in the protective measures, agglomeration in transport and lack of distance between workers in some points of the company, such as cafeterias.”

Even in the company’s offices, located in São Paulo, employees reported that the company is keeping its on-site activities operating under unsafe conditions, such as lack of proper cleaning and crowded cafeterias, even after dozens of employees had been contaminated.

There is growing anger among the CSN workers, who, in addition to the high risk at work, receive very low wages. In Volta Redonda, where their main mill is located, workers were furious at the beginning of the month with the signing of an agreement by the union that freezes wages for two years.

In hundreds of comments on the Internet, workers have denounced the online voting process as a fraud. They claim that they were coerced by high ranking employees to vote against the strike and threatened with being fired if they voted in favor. “The voting, as always, is manipulated, we were not allowed to follow the process. I can’t believe the workers accepted that. You can’t trust this union,” said one worker.

The situation of workers at the meat and mining plants is just one case of many. Workers’ lives are in danger in most workplaces.

Last week, Petrobras workers held demonstrations in front of the Presidente Bernardes Refinery in Cubatão, São Paulo, where more than 130 oil workers were infected and three died from COVID-19. According to Petrobras, there are more than 1,000 confirmed cases among employees across the country.

More than 40 percent of all US deaths from COVID-19 are in nursing homes

Benjamin Mateus

According to a Wall Street Journal account yesterday, the number of US coronavirus fatalities tied to long-term care facilities and nursing homes exceeded 51,000. “Death among senior-care center staff and residents appear to represent at least 40 percent of the overall count,” the newspaper reported.

The number of COVID-19 cases in these facilities is at least 250,000, as reporting lags and information is incomplete and untimely. Consistent with early clinical reports, the virus is lethal in this fragile population.

According to the report, many states are struggling to strike the right balance between allowing families of nursing home residents to reunite while preventing the virus from silently finding its way back into the quiet, dark corridors and still rooms. As the weather grows warmer, a few facilities have shifted to allowing outdoor visitation. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has abdicated giving guidance in favor of the states, and local officials who are still unprepared to “reopen” are scrambling to issue new rules.

Nursing Home in King County. (Ted Warren)

More concerning, Politico reported on Monday that only 50 percent of all US nursing homes had been through recent inspections, prompting CMS chief Seema Verma to issue a warning that states needed to complete their surveys by the end of July or face losing federal recovery funds. Findings published last week by CMS noted that of 5,724 inspection surveys released by the federal government this month, only 3 percent had found any discrepancies.

“These data show a dramatic and implausible decline in infection control deficiencies. Less than three percent of infection control surveys since March cited an infection control deficiency, and 161 of 163 of the deficiencies were classified as causing residents ‘no harm.’ Even if some additional deficiencies were cited but are not publicly reported because the facilities have appealed them, the number of reported deficiencies is startlingly low.”

Translated into plain English, this means that nursing homes are lying wholesale about the conditions that prevail in what have become deathtraps for tens of thousands of elderly people unfortunate enough to live in them, and the Trump administration is doing nothing about it.

Nursing homes have been a focal point of the coronavirus pandemic since it first began in the United States. On February 28, the public health department for Seattle and King County was notified of an elderly female patient recently admitted to a local hospital that tested positive for COVID-19.

A resident of a skilled nursing facility in King County, Washington, she first developed respiratory symptoms on February 19, which progressively worsened, necessitating oxygen, and was then transferred for emergent treatment on February 24 to a nearby hospital. She had high fevers, fast heart rate, labored shallow breathing, and was acutely oxygen-deprived. She also suffered from obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure, including an assortment of other ailments. An astute clinician was able to obtain a COVID-19 test kit from the CDC that confirmed her diagnosis. She was intubated on February 25 but died on March 2.

A case investigation conducted by the CDC at the nursing facility found that by March 18, a total of 167 cases of COVID-19 had been diagnosed, of which 101 were residents of the facility and 50 staff at the nursing home. Fifty-five residents needed hospitalization, and 34 died. Additionally, by March 18, CDC found an alarming 30 long-term care centers had identified at least one COVID-19 case in King County. On March 13, CMS had ordered nursing homes to cease all visitations.

More than three months later, the United States has 2.2 million cases of COVID-19, with close to 120,000 deaths.

The application of a Trumpesque approach to all social functions of the nation appears to be par for the course, but one with deadly consequences for the most vulnerable population. Routine inspections of long-term facilities were paused in March. Instead, they requested focusing state resources on inspecting these nursing homes for infection control practices. Yet, two months into the shutdowns, state inspectors had barely visited half these care homes. Many conducted their surveys remotely.

Arguably, such a lack of oversight has contributed to the horrific rates of infection amongst nursing home residents as any accountability for ensuring essential controls has fallen by the wayside. This makes the prospect of “reopening” even more troubling.

In a report released on June 15 by the CDC, outcomes among 1,320,488 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases from January 22 to May 30, 2020 found a cumulative incidence of 404 cases per 100,000 persons with equal distribution between genders. The elderly, specifically those over the age of 80, had the highest rate. Of 599,636 cases with known racial demographics, 45 percent of the total, 36 percent were white, 33 percent were Hispanic, and 22 percent were black.

As previously noted, chronic health conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and chronic lung disease were common, leading to higher rates of hospitalization among these cases. Overall, 14 percent of patients were hospitalized, 2 percent were admitted to an ICU. They also noted that 5.4 percent of confirmed COVID-19 patients had died. Those with underlying health conditions were 12 times more likely to die than those without chronic medical health issues.

With 18 states reporting a rise in new cases over the last week and several with more than a 50 percent day-to-day jump in new cases, concerns are rising that measures need to be reinstituted to regain control of these outbreaks. Dr. Anthony Fauci told the press Sunday, “It’s going to be really a wait and see. My feeling, looking at what’s going on with the infection rate, I think it’s more likely measured in months rather than weeks before restrictions can be rolled back.”

Meat processing facilities and prisons continue to be hotspots for large clusters of COVID-19 cases. While prison populations continue to be hotspots for the pandemic they are frequently disregarded by prison administrators and states. The Marshall Project, in association with the Associated Press, has been tracking the COVID-19 statistics in prisons. By June 9, at least 43,967 people in prisons had been tested and confirmed with COVID-19, an 8 percent increase over the previous week. Over 500 have died.

As of June 12, Ohio’s Marion Correctional Institution had 2,439 cases, Pickaway Correctional Institution in Ohio, 1,791 cases, Trousdale Turner Correctional Center in Tennessee had 1,316, Harris County Jail in Houston, Texas had 1,283, Lompoc Prison Complex in California, 1,114, and Cook County Jail in Chicago 1,057 cases. Overcrowded facilities, inability to maintain social distancing and lack of necessary hygiene supplies have created a disastrous situation for inmates.

North Korea blows up liaison office to send message to Trump

Peter Symonds

In a measure of the sharp tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the North Korean regime yesterday melodramatically demolished its joint liaison office with South Korea. While nominally directed at Seoul, Pyongyang’s action expressed its deep frustration with the failure of the Trump administration to conduct any meaningful negotiations to end North Korea’s isolation.

In June 2018, Trump abruptly shifted from his previous bellicose threats to annihilate North Korea and held an unprecedented summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un which vaguely outlined a deal to end economic sanctions on North Korea in exchange for a shutdown of its nuclear program.

The liaison office located in the North Korean city of Kaesong was established in September 2018 as a sign of good will following summit meetings between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. The office has been closed since January after North Korea sealed its borders in a bid to isolate the country from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Relations between the two Koreas rapidly began to deteriorate after a second summit between Trump and Kim in Vietnam in February 2019 broke down over the US refusal to offer any sanctions relief to North Korea prior to the complete dismantling of its nuclear facilities and arsenal.

North Korea lashed out at the Moon administration in March 2019 declaring that it was not playing a mediating role, but rather was “a player, not an arbiter” because it remained a US military ally. While offering the prospect of better relations between the two Koreas, Moon did nothing to lift sanctions on North Korea. The joint industrial complex in Kaesong, where South Korean businesses exploited cheap North Korean labour, remained closed.

After it ended its testing of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, Trump has simply strung North Korea along offering nothing in return. Trump briefly met with Kim last June in the demilitarised zone separating the two Koreas, but working level talks in Sweden came to nothing. Pyongyang set a deadline of the end of last year for a deal with the US, which the Trump administration simply ignored.

By blowing up the liaison office and criticizing South Korea, the North Korean regime has chosen to send a message to Washington, indirectly rather than directly. As South Korean analyst Lee Seong-hyon told the New York Times: “It [North Korea] had to vent its frustration and domestic discontent, but it feared retaliation if it directly provoked the United States. So, as Koreans like to say, ‘If you hate your neighbor, you kick his dog’.”

Lee pointed to North Korea’s economic frailty which has only worsened after it was forced to close its borders due to the pandemic. The crippling US-led sanctions had already impacted heavily on the North Korean economy by cutting off much of its foreign trade by banning or restricting exports of minerals and imports of many items included much needed petroleum products.

After it closed its border with China, its top trading partner, North Korea has been starved of foreign exchange and vital goods. Chinese customs has reported a 24 percent decline in trade with North Korea for the first two months of 2020. Chinese exports fell to $198 million and imports from North Korea to just $10 million, a 74 percent decline compared with the same period in 2019.

For the first time since 2003, North Korea has been compelled to resort to raising bonds in order to plug a huge hole in its budget. The bonds are reportedly needed to cover 60 percent of the budget. While the majority will be sold to state enterprises, some 40 percent will be sold to private entrepreneurs or donju, who have been encouraged by the regime. Desperate for relief, Pyongyang has appealed to the United Nations, non-government organisations and some countries for pandemic assistance.

At the same time, tensions with South Korea have sharpened after right-wing groups have again started sending anti-communist propaganda across the border via balloon. While the Moon administration has cracked down on such activities, Kim Yo Jong, the sister and ally of the North Korean leader, declared on Saturday: “Before long, a tragic scene of the useless north-south joint liaison office completely collapsed would be seen.”

The destruction of the liaison office has been accompanied by North Korea’s cutting off of the most important communication channels with South Korea’s military, diplomats and the presidential office. Pyongyang has also announced that it will return troops to areas close to the DMZ that were previously removed as a token of better relations between the Koreas.

The refusal of the Trump administration to make any concessions to Pyongyang is threatening once again to inflame one of the world’s most dangerous flash points. While North Korea tested short range missiles in March, it has refrained from testing long range missiles or nuclear weapons. To do so would end the possibility of a deal with Washington and result in a return of Trump’s previous belligerent threats.

The US State Department yesterday responded to the demolition of the liaison office with a pro-forma appeal to North Korea “to refrain from further counterproductive actions” and a declaration that it “fully supports” Seoul’s efforts to maintain peaceful relations. But that could change.

The Trump administration is already engaged in an escalating confrontation with China, attempting to make it the scapegoat for the COVID-19 pandemic as well as imposing economic penalties and ramping up the US military build-up in the region. It has also recklessly encouraged its strategic partner India in its tense border stand-off with China that threatens to trigger a war between the nuclear-armed powers.

In his determination to challenge China across the board, Trump has increased provocative US “freedom of navigation” operations in the South China Sea, and boosted relations with Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a sovereign part of China. In this context, the Korean Peninsula could rapidly become another arena for geo-political rivalry and conflict between the US and China.

Dozens die in India-China border clash

Keith Jones

The most serious border clash between Indian and Chinese troops since the two countries fought a brief border war in 1962 has reportedly resulted in dozens of fatalities.

Fighting erupted Monday night in the Galwan Valley, one of at least four places along the disputed Sino-Indian border where troops have been arrayed against each other in close quarters for more than a month.

Initial Indian government reports said three Indian army personnel, including a commissioned officer, died in the fighting. But later Tuesday, the fatality figure was dramatically revised, with the Indian Army issuing a statement that said a further “17 Indian troops who were critically injured … at the standoff location and exposed to sub-zero temperatures in the high altitude terrain have succumbed to their injuries.”

Tanks of Indian army in the Changtang area by the Chinese borders, Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, India, July 31, 2018. Photo/Karel Picha (CTK via AP Images)

Till now, the Chinese government has not acknowledged any fatalities. But the editor of the Chinese state-aligned Global Times indicated in a tweet that at least some Chinese soldiers were killed in the clash, which reportedly lasted for several hours.

The Times of India has claimed that Indian intercepts of Chinese communications have revealed that there were at least 43 Chinese casualties, including unspecified numbers of dead and critically injured. U.S. News and World Report, meanwhile, reported that “American intelligence believes 35 Chinese troops died,” in the clash, “including one senior officer.”

If news accounts are to be believed, neither side discharged firearms during the clash, adhering to an understanding that to avoid escalation Indian and Chinese troops on border patrol should refrain from carrying guns. Instead, the two sides reportedly attacked each with stones, iron rods, and clubs, some possibly studded with nails or other sharp objects.

While the cold temperatures and inhospitable terrain—the fighting took place in a Himalayan valley that lies more than 14,000 feet above sea level—and the associated difficulties in evacuating the wounded were likely contributing factors, the large number of fatalities attest to the ferocity of the fighting.

In the days prior to Monday night’s clash, New Delhi and Beijing had begun a so-called process of de-escalation of a border crisis that began in early May with two nonlethal clashes between Indian and Chinese troops, at points more than a thousand miles apart. Subsequently, both sides deployed thousands more troops, artillery, and other weaponry to their respective border regions.

Both New Delhi and Beijing continue to insist that the crisis can and will be defused. China’s Vice Foreign Minister, Luo Zhaohui, met Tuesday with India’s ambassador to Beijing.

The disputed India-China border

But each power is adamant that it is the other that bears responsibility for the first fatalities along their disputed border in 45 years and must stand down.

In what could be a further complicating factor in any attempt to dampen down tensions, the New York Times is reporting that an Indian commander has told it that dozens of Indian troops are missing and presumed captured.

India’s foreign ministry has blamed the “violent face-off” on “an attempt by (the) Chinese side to unilaterally change (the) status quo” along the Line of Actual Control, the un-demarcated border the two countries have agreed to adhere to pending final resolution of their rival territorial claims. The Chinese Foreign Ministry countered with a statement that said Indian troops had “crossed the border twice to conduct illegal activities and launched provocative attacks against Chinese personnel, leading to a serious physical conflict between troops from both sides.”

Events could easily spin out of control. Indeed, they manifestly have already begun to spin out of control.

The world’s most populous countries, nuclear-armed India and China are rivals for markets, resources and geostrategic influence in South Asia, South-East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

But it is the enmeshing of the Sino-Indian rivalry with the strategic confrontation between China and US imperialism that makes the border dispute so combustible and incendiary.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, Washington, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, has worked assiduously to harness India to its predatory strategic agenda. The Indian bourgeoisie, in pursuit of its own reactionary great-power ambitions and desperate to secure the favour of Wall Street and Washington has reciprocated.

Building on the “Indo-US global strategic partnership” entered into by its Congress Party-led predecessor, India’s ultra-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has transformed India into a veritable frontline state in Washington’s military-strategic offensive against Beijing. This has included throwing open Indian naval and air bases to US forces, and developing an ever-expanding web of bilateral, trilateral, and quadrilateral military-strategic ties with the US, and its principal Asian-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia.

China and Pakistan, India’s historic archrival, have responded to the common threat they perceive in the burgeoning Indo-US alliance, by strengthening their own intimate military-strategic partnership. The Indo-China and Indo-Pakistani borders have thus been transformed into potential trip lines for a global conflagration.

Yesterday, Pakistan, which continues to regularly exchange artillery fire with India across the Line of Control that separates Indian and Pakistan-held Kashmir, blamed India for the border clash with China. “India should have never built roads and airstrips in a disputed area,” said Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

Thursday evening, an unnamed US State Department official made anodyne comments about the India-China clash, saying Washington is “closely monitoring” events and “supports “a peaceful resolution of the current situation”

The Trump administration has dramatically ratcheted up tensions with China in recent weeks. This has included blaming Beijing for the mass loss of life from the COVID-19 pandemic that has been caused by its own negligence and incompetence, and dispatching three aircraft carrier strike groups to the Pacific as a part of its continuing provocative military buildup against China

In keeping with this aggressive posture, Washington has conspicuously intruded into the Sino-India dispute, goading India on in taking a hard line against China. On May 20, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Alice G. Wells accused China of “aggression” against India and linked it to the South China Sea dispute, as proof of a pattern of “disturbing behaviour” by Beijing.

This was followed by repeated provocative interventions by Trump, including a barbed offer to have the US act as mediator or even arbitrate a resolution to the India-China border conflict.

All this is in marked contrast with the public posture of neutrality Washington took in 2017 when Indian and Chinese troops confronted each other for 73-days on the Doklam Plateau, a Himalayan ridge claimed by both China and Bhutan, a tiny kingdom that New Delhi treats almost like a vassal state.

The Trump administration’s guarded response to Monday night’s dramatic escalation of Sino-Indian tensions indicates that it is still evaluating their significance and calculating how best to exploit them.

But whatever its immediate steps, the use of India as a means to exert strategic pressure on China’s southern border and maintain US dominance of the Indian Ocean, whose sea lanes are the conduits of China’s oil imports and its trade with much of the world, remains pivotal to US imperialist strategy. Indeed, to further harness India to US objectives, the Trump administration, to the delight of the BJP government, is publicly pressing US companies to decamp from China and make India their new production-chain hub.

Stretching across the Himalayas, the Sino-Indian border is sparsely populated and largely barren terrain. But under conditions of a systemic breakdown of world capitalism and a consequent surge in inter-imperialist and great-power conflict it has suddenly taken on huge strategic significance.

One of the US strategies for weakening China is to exploit grievances among its ethnic minorities. India borders China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

No less importantly, the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), passes through China’s Aksai Chin region, territory claimed by India. The $60 billion CPEC, which is to be anchored by pipeline, rail and road links between the Pakistan Arabian seaport of Gwadar and China, is an important element in Beijing’s efforts to counteract US plans to strangle China economically by seizing Indian Ocean and South China Sea chokepoints.

Monday night’s fighting and three of the four areas where Indian and China troops have squared off against each other in recent weeks are along the Line of Actual Control between Indian-held Ladakh and Aksai Chin.

In pursuing its border confrontation with China, India is engaged in a reckless game of brinkmanship. But the Narendra Modi-led BJP government is hugely politically invested in projecting India as a regional hegemon, and in promoting Modi’s illegal 2016 and 2019 “surgical” military strikes on Pakistan, which precipitated weeks-long war crises, as proof of a bold new India. On Sunday, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh vowed India “will not compromise with national pride under any circumstance. India is no longer a weak India.”

Under conditions where its ill-prepared COVID-19 lockdown has resulted in a social disaster—120 million unemployed and a dramatic surge in coronavirus cases across the country—Modi and the BJP will no doubt attempt to use the clash with China as a means to intensify their promotion of a bellicose, communalist-laced Indian nationalism, with the aim of diverting mounting social anger behind reaction and intimidating the working class.

Predictably, the Congress and other opposition parties have rushed to extend their support to the BJP government. "It is time now that the country stands up to these incursions,” bellowed Congress leader and Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh yesterday.

China’s Communist Party regime, which restored capitalism three decades ago and now serves as the political instrument of a new capitalist oligarchy, has no progressive answer to the military-strategic pressure that is being placed on China by the US and other imperialist powers with the support of their Indian bourgeois satraps. Incapable of making an appeal to the international working class, the Beijing regime oscillates between building up its military, while whipping up nationalism, making its own bellicose threats and seeking a deal with the US and other imperialist powers.

The global capitalist crisis is impelling the imperialist and great powers, led by the US, to war and a catastrophic global confrontation. But it is also fueling a global upsurge of the working class. The fight against war is the fight to politically arm this incipient movement with a socialist internationalist program.

Donald Trump: Finally Caught Crossing A Red Line

Melvin A. Goodman

Donald Trump has crossed many red lines over the past three and a half years, but he has finally crossed one that could cost him politically.  The trappings of his fascist march to St. John’s Episcopal Church and his blasphemous display of a bible (held backwards and upside down) in front of the church have elicited significant criticism, including from the highest military and civilian leaders of the Pentagon.  The military obviously didn’t share the view of Trump’s press spokeswoman, Kayleigh McEnaney, who compared the president’s bible-toting stroll to something “Like Churchill…inspecting bombing damage….”

The crossing of well-established lines in his “American Carnage” inauguration speech; his racist Muslim travel ban that the Supreme Court upheld; his failure to condemn the ugly display at the Charlottesville, VA protests in 2018 (“very fine people on both sides of the rally”); and his outrageous efforts to extort a political favor from the embattled president of Ukraine, which led to his impeachment in the House of Representatives, had short-term consequences that didn’t last.

But unprecedented public criticism from Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley may have enormous staying power.  Milley’s apology to the graduating class of the National War College ten days after walking through Lafayette Square is one of the most unusual and important events in civilian-military relations.  His apology reaffirmed the importance of the oath to uphold the Constitution and the values of free speech and assembly that Trump and his sycophants trampled on.  Milley reportedly challenged Trump’s interest in invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to put active-duty U.S. forces on the streets.

It is ironic that military leaders are turning against Trump’s efforts to turn them into a domestic political errand in support of his reelection effort.  At the very start of his presidency, Trump displayed his authoritarian style and personality by appointing retired and even active-duty general officers to key national security positions, receiving positive reviews from both conservative and liberal commentators for doing so.  Trump was helped by the fact that Gallup polls revealed unparalleled support for the military across the political spectrum, registering high confidence from more than 70% of the people in numerous surveys.  Even liberal Senator  Richard Blumenthal (D/CT) remarked that placing generals in powerful jobs provided a “steadying hand on the rudder.”  Very few pundits in the United States deplored the fact that we had reached the point where political stability relied on the steady hand of general officers.

One-by-one, however, these officers wore out their welcome, not with the public, but with the president of the United States.  General Michael Flynn didn’t last a full month as National Security Adviser, but in that short period he managed to politicize the National Security Council as never before.  He was replaced by an active-duty Army general. H.R. McMaster, who had never served a tour of duty at the Pentagon or in Washington and whose public remarks revealed little understanding of geopolitical issues confronting the United States.  Key pundits in the mainstream media, such as David Ignatius and Michael Gerson in the Washington Post, and even liberals Nicholas Kristof and Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, praised McMaster as someone who would stand up to the president and his anti-establishment coterie in the White House.  Unfortunately, McMaster, a three-star general, could not even stand up to the four-star general who took over the Pentagon, let alone the president.

General James Mattis was confirmed by a vote of 98-1 as Secretary of Defense even though he had been out of uniform for only four years instead of the statutorily required seven. Trump immediately humiliated Mattis by traveling to the Pentagon of all places to sign the Muslim travel ban and making a huge display of handing one of the pens used in the signing to an embarrassed secretary of defense.  Mattis knew that any policy aimed at the Muslim community put at greater risk U.S. military forces serving throughout the Middle East.  Additional embarrassment came in the form of a troop deployment on the border with Mexico in 1980, which found Mattis truckling to the president by favorably citing U.S. efforts against Pancho Villa in 1916 as a precedent for the president’s actions. Mattis lasted until the end of 2019, but a series of clashes with National Security Adviser John Bolton and his opposition to the awkward announcement of a U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria convinced Mattis to move on.

For a brief period, General John Kelly became the most influential military officer in the Trump administration, starting out as Secretary of Homeland Defense, but soon becoming Chief of Staff.  There was no aspect of Kelly’s background to suggest he had the ability to successfully fill the second most important position in the government, and it was only a matter of months before his personal and political integrity were compromised and he revealed himself as a right-wing ideologue.  But like McMaster, who was quoted as calling the president an “idiot” and a “dope,” with the mind of a “kindergartener,” Kelly eventually lampooned Trump’s general intelligence and labeled the White House  “crazytown.”  Kelly lasted until December 2018.

Finally, with the appointments of Esper and Milley, Trump appeared to have the loyalists he wanted at the top of the military chain of command.  Immediately prior to the bible-waving stunt at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Ester supported the use of the U.S. military to “mass and dominate the battlespace” in U.S. cities holding massive protests against the sadistic murder of George Floyd, and Milley showed up for the march to the church in battlefield fatigues, which countered the traditional image of generals in full dress uniform at the White House.  However, after scathing comments from retired generals such as James Mattis and David Petraeus as well as former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff such as Colin Powell, Martin Dempsey, and Mike Mullen, Esper and Milley clearly separated themselves from the president and regretted their role in compromising the Constitution’s emphasis on avoiding politicization of the military.  The fact that hundreds of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne had been summoned to Washington to control peaceful protests punctuated the threatening response from the Trump administration.

The Pentagon’s opposition to the use of active-duty forces is important on several levels.The military leadership may recognize that Trump’s dangerous militarism nearly involved the deployment of U.S. forces against peaceful American protesters.  The violent force used against the protesters in Lafayette Square, including National Guard helicopters that employed techniques used against insurgents in Iraq, must have shaken even the most loyal civilian and military officials in the Pentagon.

The military’s challenge to Trump’s misuse of U.S. forces could even lead to a reexamination of the mindless bipartisan support for bloated defense spending.  Criticism of Trump from the military, a credible institution, could assist groups seeing to expand the popular opposition to Trump.  Finally, Trump’s actions and rhetoric point to the importance of reversing his efforts to expand the War on Terror to U.S. soil by exaggerating the role of leftist groups such as Antifa.  Attorney General William Barr’s linkage of Antifa to “domestic terrorism,” which must be “treated accordingly,” could be preparing the ground for such an expansion.

Trump has managed to weaken most of the guardrails that protect our fragile democracy from authoritarian leanings.  He has neutered the entire Republican leadership; captured the command of the Senate; used the appointment of a lapdog attorney general to politicize the Department of Justice; selected a record number of conservative judges and created the most conservative Supreme Court in history; hollowed out some of the consequential departments and agencies of government; politicized the intelligence community; and illegally fired important inspectors general throughout the bureaucracy.  In crossing swords with the U.S. military, however, he has alienated some segments of the conservative community and has finally alerted the entire country to the political threat that he represents to U.S. governance and even democracy.

Neither Esper nor Milley attended Trump’s commencement address last Saturday at West Point, where he distorted his own record on funding the Pentagon and ending “endless wars,” and made no mention of his dispute with the military over renaming U.S. Army bases throughout the South.  Trump co-opted the military from the very start with a sweeping expansion of all land, sea, and air assets as well as an unnecessary modernization of nuclear forces and creation of a Space Force.  The fact that Trump’s military spending has never been linked to a military strategy is one more problem that his successor will face.  Trump’s militarism has been abetted by the national veneration of force for political uses, but the military’s challenge to Trump’s excessive use of the military for domestic reasons could bring a seminal shift in U.S. attitudes.

The widespread call for fundamental change in our political, economic, and social policies may ultimately inspire a new generation of voters and end the cynicism that has dominated political debates in the past several years and helped elect an arrogant and ignorant president.  The separation of the professional military from the authoritarian policies of the Trump administration could restore faith in U.S. governance.