Time is Not on Our Side in Libya

Vijay Prashad

Ahmed, who lives in Tripoli, Libya, texts me that the city is quieter than before. The army of General Khalifa Haftar—who controls large parts of eastern Libya—has withdrawn from the southern part of the capital and is now holding fast in the city of Sirte and at the airbase of Jufra. Most of Libya’s population lives along the coastline of the Mediterranean Sea, which is where the cities of Tripoli, Sirte, Benghazi, and Tobruk are located.

Haftar, who was once an intimate of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is now prosecuting a seemingly endless and brutal war against the United Nation’s recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) based in Tripoli and led by President Fayez al-Sarraj. To make matters more confusing, Haftar takes his legitimacy from another government, which is based in Tobruk, and is formed out of the House of Representatives (HOR).

Ahmed says that the quiet is deceitful. Militias continue to patrol the streets along the Salah al-Din Road near where he lives; the rattle of gunfire is anticipated.

On July 8, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres made a statement that could have been delivered at any point over the last decade. “Time is not on our side in Libya,” he announced. He laid out a range of problems facing the country, including the military conflict, the political stalemate between the GNA and the HOR, the numbers of internally-displaced people (400,000 out of 7 million), the continued attempts of migrants to cross the Mediterranean Sea, the threat from COVID-19, and the “unprecedented levels” of “foreign interference.”

The UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution to send a Fact-Finding Mission to Libya to investigate human rights violations in this war, including the mass graves found in Tarhouna. The credibility of the Council is in doubt. An earlier Commission of Inquiry on Libya set up in 2012 to study war crimes in 2011-2012 was shut down largely because the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) refused to cooperate with the investigation. A second inquiry, set up in March 2015, closed its work in January 2016 with the political deal that created the Government of National Accord.

Guterres did not mention the NATO war in 2011. I am told that he wants to appoint a joint Special Representative with the African Union and he would like a full review of the UN mission. All that is well and good; but it is short of what is necessary: an honest look at the NATO war that broke the country, fomenting a conflict that seems without end.

Foreign Interference

Statements about Libya drip with evasion. These terms—“foreign interference” and “foreign-backed efforts”—are dropped into conversations and official statements without any clarification. But everyone knows what is going on.

I ask Rida, who lives in Benghazi (now under the control of General Haftar), what she makes of these phrases. “We all know what is going on,” she tells me via text. “The government in Tripoli is backed by Turkey and others; while Haftar is backed by Egypt and others,” she writes.

At the core, she says, this is a dispute between two regional powers (Turkey and Egypt) as well as a contest between the Muslim Brotherhood (Turkey) and its adversaries (Egypt and the United Arab Emirates). Wrapped up in all this are contracts for offshore drilling in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, which additionally involved Cyprus and Greece.

It is not enough that this is a regional conflict. There is accumulating evidence that General Haftar is being supported by armed mercenaries (from Russia and Sudan) and by arms shipments from France, while the United States seems to have hedged its bets with support to both sides in the conflict.

Last year, General Haftar’s forces moved swiftly toward Tripoli, but were eventually rebuffed by the intervention of Turkey (which provided the Tripoli government with military aid as well as Syrian and Turkish mercenaries).

In late December, Turkey formally signed a military and security agreement with the Tripoli-based GNA, which enabled Turkey to transfer military hardware. This agreement broke the terms of the UN resolution 2292 (2016), recently reaffirmed in UN resolution 2526 (2020). Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have openly been supplying Haftar.

Now, the forces of the Tripoli government have moved to the central coastline city of Sirte, which has emerged as the key hotspot in this contest.

The Tobruk government, which backs General Haftar, and a pro-Haftar tribes council urged Egypt’s General Abdul Fatah El Sisi to intervene with the full force of the Egyptian armed forces if Sirte falls to the Turkish-backed government. Egypt’s military drill—called Hasm 2020—came alongside the Turkish navy’s announcement of maneuvers off the Libyan coast—called Navtex.

This is a most dangerous situation, a war of words escalating between Turkey and Egypt; Egypt has now moved military hardware to its border with Libya.

Oil

Of course, oil is a major part of the equation. Libya has at least 46 billion barrels of sweet crude oil; this oil is highly valued for Europe because of the low costs to extract and transport it. Countries like the UAE, which are pushing the embargo of Libyan oil, benefit from the withdrawal of Libya, Iranian, and Venezuelan oil from already suppressed world oil markets. Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) has stopped oil exports since January; from about 1.10 million barrels per day, Libyan oil production fell to nearly 70,000 barrels per day.

Neither Haftar nor the Government of National Accord in Tripoli can agree on the export of oil from the country. Oil has not left the country for the better part of the past six months, with a loss—according to the NOC—of about US$6.74 billion. General Haftar controls major oil ports in the east, including Es Sider, and several key oil fields, including Sharara.

Neither side wants the other to profit from oil sales. The United Nations has intervened to try and resolve the differences, but so far there has been limited progress. The entire conflict rests on the belief that either side has that it could win a military victory and therefore take the entire spoils; no one is willing to compromise, since any such agreement would mean a de jure partition of the country into its eastern and western halves with the oil crescent divided between the two.

Demilitarized Zone

UN Secretary-General Guterres has surrendered to reality. In his recent statement on Libya, he listed a series of “de-escalation efforts, including the creation of a possible demilitarized zone”; this “demilitarization zone” would likely be drawn somewhere near Sirte. It would effectively divide Libya into two parts.

Neither Ahmed nor Rida would like their country to be partitioned, its oil then siphoned off to Europe, and its wealth stolen by oligarchs on either side. They had misgivings about Muammar Qaddafi’s government in early 2011; but now both regret the war that has ripped their country to shreds.

Financialization of Copper Mining in Chile

Yanis Iqbal

As Chile gets convulsed by the aggravating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the structural brutality of copper mining is being starkly outlined. At Codelco or the National Copper Corporation of Chile, approximately 3,000 workers have been infected with Coronavirus and El Teniente and Chuquicamata are the hardest hit regions with 1,044 and 636 cases, respectively. In June itself, unionized workers had reported the suspect deaths of 3 workers and had demanded a proper investigation. Codelco peacefully airbrushed these cases by saying that the workers contracted the virus from an outside area. Chile´s Federation of Copper Workers (FTC), in response to the sheer carelessness and profit-mindedness of Codelco, stated that “It is unacceptable that Codelco’s senior management tries to evade its legal responsibilities to protect … the health and safety of its workers,”. 

Despite repeated warnings and censure by copper workers, the Chilean state continued to steamroller the country into sustained productivity and in fact, copper output has increased during the pandemic. As per the Chilean Copper Commission, Codelco  “saw production rise 2.8% year-on-year in April to 133 300 t and 3.8% in the first four months of 2020, while BHP´s Escondida, the world’s largest mine, pumped out 102 600 t, a rise of 11.4% on the same month the previous year, an increase of 9% so far in 2020.” The Collahuasi mine, operated by Anglo American and Glencore, “produced 54 100 t, a 45.8% year-on-year rise, and was up 22.6% in 2020.” The Chilean state’s grisly genuflection to the hallowed principles of “profit-first policy” was neatly aligned with the aim of the mining sector as defined by the Mining Ministry and InvestChile, a governmental “Chilean Investment Promotion Agency” advising the government on free market reforms: “to encourage overseas companies to explore our country,”. 

The dystopian picture of Chile’s copper mining sector is more clearly crystallized by InvestChile which defines itself as “responsible for promoting Chile in the global market as a destination for foreign direct investment, serving as a bridge between the interests of overseas investors and the business opportunities the country offers”. Chillingly and austerely proclaiming its primary objective, InvestChile further seeks to “implement all types of initiatives whose purpose is to publicize, promote, coordinate and implement actions that seek to foster the entry of foreign direct investment (FDI) into Chile.” InvestChile works with another consultancy firm named Kura Minerals which has a similar brutal blueprint of achieving a frictionless and class conflict-free mining environment. Kura Minerals was created to remove a perceived “market asymmetry” afflicting Chile. According to Kura Minerals, “This asymmetry is mainly derived from barriers to entry in terms of access to geological and legal information on areas of interest, availability of projects or areas to acquire mining rights, and legislative, political, and administrative difficulties facing foreign companies that wish to launch a venture in Chile.” Correspondingly, the simple solution is to disembowel, disrupt and strangulate local opposition to mega-mining through subtle political technologies and juridical sleights of hand. 

Mounting Covid-19 cases don’t seem to deter Chile’s ruling oligarchy from varnishing the economy to attract FDIs and already plans are being made to re-open the economy. Copper mining is also a part of these relentless efforts to “re-lubricate” the economy and “the mining sector continues to ramp-up previously suspended operations”. The Social Green Regionalist Federation (FREVS), a political party in Chile, has demanded that “for the next two weeks at least, all activities in large public and private mining companies be suspended. The business logic of maintaining operations at any cost is irresponsible and short-sighted,”. Sebastian Pinera, the president of the country, is not interested in this socialist baloney and has instead, opted to ruthlessly ram through the Covid-19 pandemic. 

As a natural result of suppression-saturated copper mining policies and a cruel profit-over-people paradigm, workers at Antofagasta Minerals’s Zaldivar copper mine voted to stage a strike on July 15, 2020. The union of Zaldivar copper workers has said that “If the company does not recognize our contribution and sacrifice, it will face an extensive strike that will completely stop production.” Similarly, workers at Antofagasta’s Centinela copper mine have also voted to strike after rejecting a pay offer by the company. The intensification of class struggle by Zaldivar and Centinela copper mine workers is quite predictable because the company operating there, Antofagasta PLC, has a long history of ferocious exploitation. Listed as the biggest company on the London Stock Exchange, Antofagasta PLC is notorious for its Los Pelambres copper mine in northern Chile where El Mauro dam, the largest tailing dam in Latin America, is situated. 

It is widely noted that tailing “dams frequently fail, releasing enormous quantities of tailings into river catchments. These accidents pose a serious threat to animal and human health and are of concern for extractive industries and the wider community.” The environmental impacts of tailing dam failures include contamination of water, soils and sediment. All this occurs on an environmentally enormous scale and “The sheer magnitude and often toxic nature of the material held within tailings dams means that their failure, and the ensuing discharge into river systems, will invariably affect water and sediment quality, and aquatic and human life for potentially hundreds of km downstream”. Apart from the normal risks associated with tailing dams, the El Mauro dam is extra-dangerous because it “is constructed on the same tectonic plate as the biggest earthquake ever recorded in 1960, which measured 9.5 Richter. If the dam collapses the community will have 5 – 10 minutes to escape. Because of its size it is likely to generate its own earthquakes, due to a phenomenon called induced seismicity. This occurs when a dam or reservoir reaches a certain size where it begins to generate its own tremors.”

Construction of El Mauro dam has included the death of at least three employees due to work accidents and according to a report produced by the London Mining Network, the excesses of Antofagasta PLC have not gone unchallenged. In October 2010, 11 residents from Los Caimanes went on a hunger strike for 81 days to protest against the highly unsustainable El Mauro dam and in July 2013, the Chilean Supreme Court ruled the dam as a “danger to human life”. In spite of the unrelenting efforts of local communities, no substantial action has been taken till this day to completely close down the El Mauro dam. Now, it has been 12 consecutive years that the inhabitants of Caimanes have been trying to prevent their region from being devastated by the dam of a murderous mining company. 

Considering the fact that Antofagasta mining company has been inter-wreathed in a web of long-drawn-out conflicts, it is not surprising that workers in Antofagasta-operated copper mines are agitating. The politico-economic potency of these strikes is indicated by the instant increase in the prices of copper to 2 year-high. The aforementioned increase in copper prices demonstrates that despite a supposedly complete hegemony of capital, there are factors which are strengthening the power of labor. To understand these factors, we need to look at the different ways in which the neoliberal globalization and imperialist integration of Chile into the institutional arrangements of capitalism is significantly impacting the economic-political directionalities of domestic copper production.

With the re-arrangement of Chile’s copper production as one among the many links in a global commodity chain, two contradictory processes have been unleashed: firstly, the socio-economic oppression of copper workers through subcontracting and the construction of a reserve army of labor; secondly, a process of political potentiation wherein copper workers have gained the economic ability to inflict greater damage upon global capitalist markets.  

Through the globalization of capital accumulation, extractivism too has got economically enmeshed in the interlocking blocks of different sectors. In the age of global capitalism, extractivism “embraces (and occurs through) considerable parts of food processing, finance, industrial production, trade and service provision.” The economic entangling of extractivism has been majorly propelled by the financialization of capital accumulation which has restructured behavior of mining corporations. Mining is a deeply capital-intensive venture and extraction “tends to be costly and technologically complex, not least because accompanying infrastructure often has to be built from scratch to make deposits accessible. New projects typically require large upfront fixed costs subject to long payback periods, exposed to high commodity price risk”. Between the mid 1960s and late 1980s, debt financing was a prominent modality through which the costs of high risk mineral exploration and heavy infrastructure were met. With the installment of neoliberalism as a Social Structure of Accumulation (SSA) in the 1990s, mining companies changed their mode of financing from debt financing to equity financing. This was the financialization of mining companies which drove “firms to maximize returns on equity and distribute value to shareholders.”

Contrary to mainstream understanding of financialization engendering a shift away from production, mining companies have expanded production and increased the number of projects to consolidate dividend appreciation. This has happened because “Stock valuations approximate the expected production throughout a firm’s lifetime, which is in turn coterminous with the mine life of its projects and operating mines.” Consequently, stockholder value could be increased through the continuation or indeed, the “sustained expansion” of mining projects which “could bring in higher cash flows, margins, and returns.” The imperatives of market capitalization and shareholder value maximization manifested themselves in off-shoring and the creation of exploitative “labor-value commodity chains”. 

Off-shoring or low-cost country sourcing helped in the reduction of unit labor costs through the hyper-exploitation of the impoverished workers of Global South.  By 2000, mining investment in North America and Australasia had declined by half to 25% of worldwide flows, an indication of the fact that extractive capital was moving to the Global South in search for cheaper labor. As said by Intan Suwandi, John Bellamy Foster and R. Jamil Jonna, in the Global South “the reserve army of labor is larger, unit labor costs are lower, and rates of exploitation are thus correspondingly higher.” All this helps in increasing the profit margin of mining companies and in enabling “them to secure additional strategic assets including technology, human resources, forms of production organization, intellectual property and marketing and design, which form barriers to entry for competitor firms.” At the end, all this helps in enlarging the revenue base of mining companies, thus allowing them to increase the payout ratio, measured as the ratio of dividends to net corporate profits. 

In Chile, the exploitation of copper workers by foreign corporations is visible through labor subcontracting and the bludgeoning informalization of the workforce which is taking place. From 24,000 workers in 1989, the number of workers directly employed by Codelco decreased to 17,936 in 2006. There was a contemporaneous rise in the number of contract workers in the same period from 1,371 to approximately 30,000. The breakneck speed of labor subcontracting is indicated by the fact that in a short span of 10 years from 1990 to 2000, subcontracted mineworkers increased from 6% of the labor force to more than 60%.  More tellingly, it is estimated that over 80,000 workers in the Chilean copper mining sector, representing two-thirds of the entire labor force, are subcontracted by private companies. Chile also has a large reserve army of labor due to the fact that extractive capital “is characterized by a high organic composition of capital and a very low propensity to use labour in the production process, with the result that labour in the extractive sector is apportioned a very low share of the social product.” In Chile, labor receives only 6% of the world market value of exported minerals, an indication of the high organic composition of Chilean mining capital. 

There is a direct correlation between a high organic composition of capital and a large reserve army of labor and as noted by Paul Sweezy, “the increasing use of machinery, which in itself means a higher organic composition of capital, sets free workers and thus creates “relative overpopulation” or the reserve army.” It is important to remember that the dualisation which a reserve army of labor creates in the form of stable employment vs. precarious employment is not present in a clear-cut form in Chile. Workers with permanent work contracts “do not necessarily experience greater job security than workers with contracts of limited duration. Twenty per cent of all indefinite contracts are less than one year old while 44.6 per cent are less than three years old, indicating significant employment turnover among workers with permanent contracts”. The “relative dualisation” of the Chilean workforce suggests that copper capitalism in Chile seeks to provide only “minimal stability” to formally employed workers. This helps in the efficient utilization of the wage pressure caused by the reserve army of labor wherein capitalists try to maintain the distinction between formal and informal employment using minimal investment. 

Consonant with the predatory surplus value extraction done by mining corporations in the Chilean copper sector, one can observe the rising shareholder value of companies in the stock market. BHP, for example, is a mining company operating the Escondida copper mine in the Atacama desert which produces 5% of the world’s copper. This company has a copious history of waging a brutal offensive against copper workers. Leo Gerard, International President of the United Steelworkers, has termed BHP’s activities in the Escondida copper mine as “shameless exploitation of its Chilean workforce”. This statement came following BHP’s attempts “to slash wages 14 per cent, increase working hours to more than 12 hours per day, and impose a two-tier benefit system for current and future workers.” When workers began striking and “agreed in near unanimity to protest against a series of abuses and violations by the company, and to show solidarity for the demonstrations against economic and social policies that affect us as workers”, BHP illegally withheld the last-year’s bonuses of the striking workers. All this happened in 2019 which can be regarded as the apogee of the capitalist combativeness of a financialized mining company. With the heavy financialization of BHP, the company was ruthlessly reducing unit labor costs to pay out greater dividends to shareholders and for consecutive years, it was successful in achieving its objective. In 2018, it paid out dividends of $6.3 billion (118 cents per share), representing an increase of 42% from FY2017. In 2019, it paid out dividends of $11.9 billion and pegged it total cash returns to shareholders at $17.1 billion. 

The shareholder value maximization strategy followed by BHP was not entirely smooth and it involved an intensified exploitation of labor. According to the company, its Escondida unit costs declined by a steep 22% in the period 2012-13, suggesting the implementation of a wage squeeze policy by BHP. Along with wage squeeze, BHP also began massive layoffs, affecting 3% of the operation’s workforce. Water scarcity imposed by mining companies is another important factor which has indirectly impacted workers. In the age of financialized companies, the problem of water scarcity becomes acute because the “rapid extraction of large volumes of resources becomes a primary driver of firm strategy.” Since the price elasticity of supply in copper production is low due to “the capital intensity of production and long lead times for new capacity”, there is the “potential for price spikes related to under-supply, and prolonged price slumps when excessively optimistic capital expenditure creates a glut.” When companies get heavily dependent on equity financing and follow the logics of shareholder value maximization, this potential for over-supply gets aggravated. Whenever there is an inkling of demand increase, copper companies intensify resource extraction with the hope of increasing cash flows, increasing dividends and making one’s company attractive for investors. 

BHP too has internalized the “rapid extraction” strategy and in 2018, its production increased by 34%. This productivity increase was in part driven by the demand for EVs which are expected to consume more copper than internal combustion engines: “while typical internal combustion engine cars require around 23kg of copper, a hybrid electric vehicle uses 40kg of copper, a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle uses 60kg, a battery electric vehicle 83kg, and a hybrid electric bus 89kg. A battery-powered electric bus can use between 220kg and 560kg of copper, depending on the size of battery used. In total, copper demand from passenger car EVs is forecast to be nearly 1.9 million tonnes of copper per annum by 2035, overtaking demand from internal combustion engine cars.” 

As argued before, BHP’s rapid extraction strategy proved to be unsustainable and in 2016, it was “accused by some Chilean environmental organisations of illegally extracting water from a local water system, the Salar de Punta Negra. They allege that this is causing damages such as the disappearance of animals and insects that support life in the driest desert in the world”. In response to growing opposition, BHP developed desalination as an effective strategy in 2018 to continue its water-depleting operations in new forms. As explained by Maria Christina Fragkou and Jessica Budds, “the replacement of existing freshwater sources used for drinking water with desalinated water serves to create a freshwater surplus that can be diverted to dominant local industries. Furthermore, that the surplus comprises freshwater is also important, because this entails extraction (mainly groundwater pumping) costs, as opposed to production costs in the case of desalinated water, and is thus cheaper.” Desalination, apart from providing BHP with cheap fresh water, is disadvantageous for Chilean copper workers because “as a produced (rather than extracted) source, desalinated water is more expensive, and production costs depend primarily on the costs of materials and consumables (e.g., membranes), and energy…. Furthermore, transferring the entire urban water supply to desalination exposes the system to power cuts, mechanical failures, algal blooms, or damage from seismic events.”

While it may seem that BHP was unantagonistically progressing through its agenda of dividend appreciation and destructive copper mining, the strikes staged by workers presents a different scenario. In 2018, a 44-day strike by copper workers at the Escondida mine raised copper prices to more than $7,000 a tonne [a four-and-a-half year high] and in this way, the workers “rattled the global copper market.” In 2019, BHP acknowledged that “Escondida unit costs increased by seven per cent to US$1.14 per pound” due to “labor settlement costs” or what can be alternatively and less euphemistically called “counter-capitalist class struggle”. 

Workers at the Escondida mine derived the power to exponentially raise copper prices in a short span of time due to the globalization and financialization of copper production. A result of the financialization of copper mining companies has been the increased inter-imbrication of a wide range of financial actors in the production of copper. The inclusion of financial actors in the copper production process greatly increases the fragility of the entire process as market fluctuations in copper prices start occurring “on variations of confidence on the part of the investors, on current belief as to the probable policy or tactics of the business men in control, on forecasts as to the seasons and the tactics of the guild of politicians, and on the indeterminable, largely instinctive, shifting movements of public sentiment and apprehension.” In this way, a worker’s strike gains increased potency as the anticipated effects of a strike are greatly magnified by financiers who, instead of assessing material facts, “observe other’s observation of the market”. Further, through the collapse of the equity financing edifice, copper mining corporations lose their foundational pillars of resource extraction and are compelled to negotiate with workers. 

Another effect of the financialization of copper mining companies has been the increase in the organic composition of capital. As mentioned before, due to the prioritization of shareholder value, mining corporations sought to increase their cash flow through increased productivity and lower costs. While the latter has been achieved through off-shoring, the former has been actualized through the increasing use of machinery. It is pertinent to note that in financialized mining, the objective is to not only drive down input costs but also to expand the output for increasing the shareholder value through tactics such as share buybacks. Copper mining companies enlarge their output by deploying more machinery and increasing the organic composition of capital. 

In Chile, the most recent large-scale mechanization of copper production happened in 2019 in which Codelco replaced a third of its workforce at Chuquicamata with the introduction of mega-machines. While the mechanization of copper production does lead to the creation of a reserve army of labor, it also provides the proletariat with the power to control greater productive forces and therefore, stall production on a larger scale. As Leon Trotsky once wrote, “[The working class’s] social power comes from the fact that the means of production which are in the hands of the bourgeoisie can be set in motion only by the proletariat…. This position gives the proletariat the power to hold up at will, partially or wholly, the proper functioning of the economy, through partial or general strikes. From this it is clear that the importance of the proletariat—given identical numbers—increases in proportion to the amount of productive forces which it sets in motion.”

With the increasing financialization of copper mining companies, Chile is witnessing an intensified antagonism between labor and capital. The disproportionate enrichment of financiers in New York and London is being violently driven by the accelerated assault on the existential conditions of the Chilean working class. But the finance-driven exploitation of Chilean copper workers is not unavoidable and as we have seen, the proletariat has gained enormous power to destabilize and destroy the fragile scaffold of capitalism. What remains to be done is the initiation of an organized class war against the capitalists which will finally bring an end to the structural brutality of copper mining. 

Plight Of Children Of Migrants During COVID-19 Pandemic

Madhu M Gohain & Aditya Raj

In the midst of pandemic Covid-19, attention is on migrants because of their unimaginable plight. When their adopted milieu showed them the back, they longed to return “home”. Now they are being lured back. Several news and views have been about them. However, migrant as a category is not homogenous. The plight of women and children are worse. Some voices have started about women but hardly anyone is talking about children. During the pandemic when children are expected to stay inside, as they are more prone to be infected, these migrant children are on the streets. They are facing some serious issues while returning to their hometown. The problem demands proper strategy to safeguard these children rather than mere media coverage. Several social actors as we see have felt pride in giving them food packets and clicking photographs for their personal psychological gratification.

A considerable number of child migrants who are victim of the Covid-19 are from the less developed provinces in India. These children have innumerable difficulties both in the place of origin and destination. India has 15 million child migrants. Internal child migrants include children of labour migrants who are internally displaced migrants, seasonal migrants, distress migrants. In the current circumstances, the lives of child migrants are shattered which is quite evident from the cases reported nation-wide. Currently the victim of the pandemic includes various categories of internal child migrants. These children generally have a poor socio-economic background. However there are other categories namely- children left-behind when either or both parents are migrating, and children migrating independently for work. NSS has reported that 70% of the children who accompany their parents are engaged in work. So, they have a high vulnerability during the pandemic.

There are innumerable cases of emergency reported regularly across India concerning internal child migrants. The cases are deplorable, reported from the less developed states where out-migrants are highest. So, the bigger question is why are we facing such tragic situation throughout nation? To understand the problem comprehensively few cases are noted from the highest out-migrants states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Chhattisgarh. The first case was reported around mid-May which is the image of an exhausted boy child dragged in a trolley by his mother walking from Punjab to UP covering a distance of 800 km reflects the haplessness of migrants. The second was reported within a fortnight from the railway platform of Muzaffarpur in Bihar. The image shows how a child makes effort to wake up his dead mother who died after travelling in the shramik special train because of inadequate food and water. The third case was reported after few days in Mumbai Mirror. The 12-year old child died after walking 150 km from Telengana to  Chhattisgarh due to exhaustion and dehydration.

These three cases are examples of the tip of the iceberg and reveal the crisis of child migrants on transit because of inadequate planning and management by the competent authorities. The cases are addressing the situations of reverse migration where children are equally affected with adult. However, if we observe keenly, the cases reported on child migrants are releasing only a part of the story. Problems faced by other categories of child migrants remain unaddressed. This is a wake up call for every stakeholder in our country. The huge populations of children left-behind in India who solely remain dependents on the remittances are out of picture.

So, what are the shortcomings which become hurdle to address the plight of internal child migrants in India? The major problem is the data on migrants and child migrants. The Covid 19 pandemic is an alarm to take the issues of internal migrants especially child migrants at the policy level. The impact of pandemic on internal child migrants should force the policy makers to independently address the crisis faced by these children on their health, education, and social security.

Environmental Disaster and Health Crisis in Cerrejon

Yanis Iqbal

At Cerrejon (Colombia), the largest open-pit coal mine in Latin America owned equally by BHP (Australia), Anglo American PLC (United Kingdom) and Glencore (Switzerland), the situation of the indigenous people is progressively worsening. Cerrejon Limited has informed the workers that “all the existing shifts will be unified into a single 7-day work, for three days off.” With the enforcement of the new shifts, “workers would go from working 15 to 21 days and the mine would go from 4 to 3 shifts, leaving at least 25% of the current workforce unemployed.” The new shift pattern is likely to aggravate the health of workers as long working hours increase the number of work-related pathologies. Current work shift arrangements have already led to more than “700 pathologies associated with musculoskeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular and ear diseases, among others.” As the level of work becomes more stressful, these occupational diseases will start multiplying.

The present-day actions at the Cerrejon mine are one among the myriad manifestations of transnational capital’s cruelty. Cerrejon mine is located in the dry department of La Guajira which is home to more than 900,000 people. 45% of the population is indigenous, with most of the people belonging to Wayuu and the remaining coming from smaller groups such as Arhuacos, Koguis and Wiwas. 8% of the population is Afro-Colombian, thus making La Guajira the department with the highest presence of indigenous people in Colombia. When mining companies arrived in 1983 in La Guajira, they encountered these indigenous people as an obstruction in the path of development. Consequently, the appropriate solution to this problem was the initiation of “development-induced displacement.”

In 1981, the brutal behemoths of mining began shredding the social fabric of indigenous existence and left deep scars of development on the collective psyche of indigenous people. In order to make way for the Puerto Bolivar Port, mining multinationals chose to systematically exterminate the Wayuu village of Media Luna. Paradoxically, negotiations began after the displacement in which “Some 750 residents who lived in Media Luna entered into negotiations with the company for their collective relocation, but were targeted with anonymous threats of violence, which appeared to be linked to the negotiations and later led to the collapse of talks…. Subsequently, the company ordered the village to relocate for a second time and, when seven families refused, a metal fence was erected around their homes and armed guards stationed to watch over – a strategy interpreted to intimidate them into leaving.” This was a particularly counter-intuitive way of conducting negotiations wherein irregular violence, strategically organized arm-twisting and silent terrorization forced the Wayuu into accepting development.

The largest displacement came later in August 2001 when the Afro-Colombian community of the Tabaco village was violently dragooned into fleeing from the region. Eviction happened through the carefully coordinated action of the military, police and armed forces, interspersed with the presence of marauding bulldozers. Ines Perez, one of the victims of the calibrated evisceration of Tabaco, said that “The community was evicted from the land by force, with anti-riot police, in cold blood. We were thrown off our land. They destroyed our homes with machines. They punched us. They hit me and my papa. We were left nearly in a coma, with the houses torn down, in ruins. We’ve been struggling for 13 years and we’re still fighting for our health, for our food, for everything. We are demanding to be relocated and to receive compensation. We just want our lives back.”

Cerrejon mining companies have, till date, no qualms for plundering, gutting and decimating an entire village through an expeditious eruption of violence. Comprehensive reparations, relocation and apportionment of productive lands have not occurred. Even where such processes have commenced, the efforts are insubstantial and inadequate. Samuel Arregoces, a former inhabitant of Tabaco, expresses the plight of those who have been devastatingly relocated and impoverished by the dehumanizing operations of money-grubbing mines: “They destroyed the entire village. They took all our land away. We lost all our livestock, everything. They relocated us to other districts, where we now live in poverty since we cannot grow anything. Where we used to live, where the Tabaco river flows, we grew cassava, maize and bananas. For many years, our cattle grazed the land and we also had fruit trees, but today we have to buy everything. We have become destitute, since we no longer have a village.”

Another catastrophic byproduct of Cerrejon mining operations has been the unprecedented and utter ransacking of regional ecosystems. Open-pit mining is environmentally destabilizing because it “flattens mountains and devastates ecosystems. In this process, forests are clear-cut to expose the tops of mountains, which are then blown off with explosives. Coal is extracted using large machinery and the unused soil and rock are dumped into adjacent valleys, filling them up and creating a flat landscape.” After this, “New, gigantic, flat-topped walls of debris called overburden are dumped between tiny communities and along the periphery of open pit mines. They swallow farmers’ fields, impede the movement of grazing animals, disrupt rivers and streams, and leach poisons into the earth and water.”

The cultural loss associated with this disruptive process is profound as territories are spiritually significant for indigenous collectivities such as the Wayuu. In Wayuu community, communication with ancestors is a part of the primordial ethics of indigeneity and this happens primarily through the interpretation of dreams. The dream world, therefore, is the main modality for dialoguing with spirits and ancestors. But Wayuu people can only dream when they live on their own sacred territories. Correspondingly, when sacred territories are destroyed by open-pit mining, Wayuu lose their ability to dream and get culturally stripped of their distinctive identity.

Apart from cultural loss, Cerrejon mining extractivism has ecologically-materially impacted the department of La Guajira through two phenomena: water scarcity and high levels of pollution. In La Guajira, “people are dependent on tributary streams and their corresponding aquifers as a water source for agriculture, household use, and animal ranching”because the department “is a drought-prone region with two rainy seasons that are unpredictable and inconsistent.” Rivers are, therefore, extremely important for the existence of indigenous communities. Cerrejon Limited has apparently failed to comprehend the importance of rivers and has been trying consistently to completely colonize the rivers.

In 2012, Cerrejon companies had tried to divert 26km of the Rancheria River (the primary source of water) to access the 500 million metric tons of coal contained underneath the river bed. But this planned diversion was met with organized resistance and Wayúu spokesperson Jazmin Romero Epiayu has appropriately described the social unity with which the diversion was met: “In 2012, the proposal of this multinational was to divert the Ranchería River, the principal river we have in our department, and the principal river that feeds the whole department of La Guajira… Since before colonialism this [river] has represented the veins of Mother Earth, Wounmainkat, which is to say, it’s the blood of the earth. And one of the proposals in 2012 was to divert this river we have because below it there were 500 million tons of coal. But what did we say? Us, Wayúu communities, Afro-descendant communities, campesino communities, the union, the magistrates… all these sectors united in protest to stop the diversion of this river.”

Despite the united efforts of the La Guajira community, the Rancheria River has been contaminated by the mining companies. According to a study by Fulbright researchers, the Rancheria River contains high levels of mercury, making it potentially dangerous for consumption. Furthermore, the Cerrejon mine consumes more than 24 million litres of water per day (which is equivalent to the consumption of more than 70,000 people) while the Wayuu people don’t even “have access to the basic requirement of 2 l of water per person per day for cleaning and for preparing food.” Due to the aggravated effects of water scarcity, approximately 5000 children of the Wayuu tribe died in the 2007-17 period.

Not contented with contaminating water, cumulatively increasing the hardships of the Wayuu tribe and killing children, Cerrejon mining companies have embarked on a neo-colonial voyage to divert the Arroyo Bruno stream to the La Puente pit. Bruno stream has 40 million tons of coal reserves under its river bed, a valuable treasure for avaricious mining corporations. On July 8, 2020, the affected communities of La Guajira visited the artificial channel and natural channel of the Arroyo Bruno stream and observed that “the company plugged the natural channel to divert the waters in 3.6 kilometers to the new artificial channel. The alarming thing is that there is no water in either of the two channels. This situation worries the experts…who warn that the Bruno stream is at high risk of disappearing.”

In order to completely colonize the river, the company has tried three times to displace El Rocio, the community living on the bank of Arroyo Bruno. In spite of Cerrejon Limited’s aggressive efforts at strong-arming indigenous people, the general mood is militant in the department and the following statement from the Guajira Dignity Group reflects the anti-imperialist fervor of the masses: “The government cannot continue granting mining titles here, and Cerrejón cannot come every two years and say – we are planning the deviation of this stream – and tomorrow another, and so on. We have to limit this expansion because this is a deserted region and has a limited water supply. Cerrejón cannot continue diverting streams to increase profits.”

Pollution levels in La Guajira are high due to the spontaneous ignition of mined coal, daily coal blasts and coal dispersal happening due to the movement of open-top coal wagons every day. This has led to a staggering number of people afflicted with respiratory diseases, indicated by the fact the 48% of the patients arriving at the local hospital Nuestra Señora del Pilar (Our Lady of Pilar) suffer from acute respiratory problems. Air pollution has made the indigenous communities of La Guajira more vulnerable to Coronavirus as it has been found that air pollution is directly correlated to an increased Covid-19 death risk.

In La Guajira, children are more likely to get negatively affected by the presence of toxic materials and pollutants in air, soil and water. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, “Children are more vulnerable to the localized environmental impacts of mining activity than adults – particularly water, air and soil pollution – due to their progressive and incomplete physical development; the fact that they spend more time playing than adults and hand to-mouth behaviour that makes children more likely to ingest pollutants; and their varying stages of mental development, for example, inability to read hazard and warning signs.”

As the Covid-19 pandemic wreaks havoc on La Guajira, it is becoming clear that transnational coal interests have existentially damaged the indigenous communities. Through years of imperialist pillage, multinational mining companies have converted La Guajira into one of the poorest departments of Colombia with 65% of the population living in poverty. Decades of coal mining by corporate giants to quench the coal thirst of Europe and USA has methodically undermined local agricultural arrangements and disallowed indigenous communities from achieving food sovereignty. Eder Arregoces Pinto, president of Chancleta’s community action council, pithily encapsulates the adverse effects of large-scale mono-industrialization: “It [Cerrejón Coal] may be one of the largest coal mines in Latin America but most families here can eat only one meal a day.”

Pollution and water scarcity have drastically weakened the collective health of indigenous communities and now, these immiserated people are left unprotected from the virus. Luz Ángela Uriana, an indigenous woman from Province Reserve in the south of La Guajir, painfully expresses the historical injustice which has been done with them: “What we are demanding of Cerrejón is our children’s health. We are fighting for our rights to live in a healthy territory, in a reserve without pollution, just as it was before Cerrejón came in. Here, we are exposed to mining pollution 24 hours a day. I have children, and if I have to fight against the whole world for them, I will do it. I will go wherever I have to, for my family and to honour the memory of all of the children that have died or fallen sick because of the pollution. How is it possible that we, as Cerrejón’s neighbours, don’t have access to healthcare? We don’t have potable water. We don’t have decent housing. We live in absolute poverty.” The present-day imperative is to help these people fight against the predatory and remorselessly exploitative practices of Cerrejon mining companies.

Celebrity Culture, Propaganda and Capitalism

Bhabani Shankar Nayak

The triumph of capitalist chimeras based on false propaganda and its criminal follies at the millennium, raises several questions on the rise of celebrity culture of fame and fortune. The celebrity cultures use popular culture and establish its grip over public imagination on different issues in the society, politics, economy, culture and religion. The celebrity culture shapes people’s ideas, interests, everyday needs and desires by the means of mass adulation, identification and emulation of well-known faces; the celebrities.   These three qualities are central to the idea of propaganda in which celebrities and celebrity cultures play vital roles. Edward Bernays (the nephew of Sigmund Freud) has written a book called “Propaganda (1928)”, which laid the foundation of 21st century advertisement and marketing industries. The celebrity cultures serve the purposes of the ruling and non-ruling elites. Both American politicians and corporations used the ideals of propaganda for their ascendancy in the form of public relations exercise with the help of celebrities.  The politicians use propaganda to win elections and corporations use it for profit maximisation. The mysterious abilities of the invisible weapon called propaganda has played a major role in shaping public desires and opinions, which derives its historical and philosophical lineages from European colonialism. ‘Colonialism as a civilising mission’ and ‘Sun never sets in British empire’ are some of the classic examples of false propaganda in the making of colonial and imperialist Europe. The Nazis and fascists were adherent admirers of propaganda as a weapon to manipulate and control the masses. The organised manipulation of mind is the core of celebrity culture, which diverts people’s attention from everyday hardships and other ugly realities of life. These genealogies continue to inspire the 21st century capitalist propaganda led by celebrities across the globe.

The American corporations like; the American Tobacco Company, Procter & Gamble, General Electric and many other media outlets have used propaganda as a tool with the help of celebrities to expand their businesses. The American Tobacco Company has used the ideals of Edward Bernays to overcome cultural barrier to smoking by combining smoking with female empowerment, freedom and personal choice. The female celebrities led by Bertha Hunt have flaunted their ‘smoking touches of freedom” in the form a protest by smoking during 1929 Easter Parade. The New York Times captioned it as ‘Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of “Freedom”’. This so-called emancipatory logic has led to huge growth of female smokers and smokers among college and university going students. The tobacco market and its profit increased significantly. The Procter & Gamble has used Edward Bernays to organise soap yacht race in the Central Park and National Soap Sculpture Competition to expand its shop business as cleaning up act. Similarly, the Beech-Nut Packing Company’s unhealthy food was branded as ‘Hearty Breakfast’ in the name of freedom of choice within the culture of consumption. The celebrities and celebrity cultures have played a major role in these master spin acts of corporate capitalism and transformation of American society.

The history of celebrity cultures and from Bronze age, silver screen to social media keep redefining boundaries of popular culture, that is concomitant with the requirements of the ruling and non-ruling capitalist classes. The modern celebrity cultures are represented by performative language in which consumers adore the celebrities, fantasises their life styles and trust in the products they advertise.  There are few celebrities who lend their voice for peace and prosperity for all. There are very few celebrities in cinema and sports, who stand with the struggles of marginalised communities and fight against all forms of injustices and exploitations. However, celebrity culture is an integral part of capitalism, which glorifies individualism over collective values. The idea of utility, pleasure and satisfaction is central to the celebrity culture that is synchronous with commercial interests of corporates. The celebrities celebrate meritocracy, which is primarily the benefits of being within a network of power and wealth. There is nothing new in the bemoaning of celebrity culture. Thomas Busby questions celebrities as pretty women with nice dresses in his book The Age of Genius (1786). It has highlighted the hollowness of celebrity culture, which continues to resonate with the exhibitionism of modern celebrity culture. In 2020, Busby would have written on celebrities as people with beauty without a brain and heart.

There are two forms of celebritisation in history. From 18th century to 19th century, celebrities were known for their sacrifices and contributions to society, science, literature, politics, history economy and philosophy. The celebrities came from all walks of life and people continue to idealise and celebrate their lives till today. These celebrities have helped the processes of progressive social transformation with their ideas and actions. The 20th and 21st century celebritisation is an art of constructing an individual as an object of desire for mass consumption with the help of propaganda. Such celebrity cultures are detrimental to celebrities themselves. It commodifies the creativity of celebrities and their other abilities. From sports to cinema and in many other fields of life, celebrities are treated like commodities based on their popularity. Their popularity defines their value in the market. These celebrities are primarily from the world of cinema, TV entertainment industry and sports. There is no more glamour attached to the works and contributions of scientists, historians, philosophers and poets. The mass media and their propaganda play a major role in the making of these celebrities in terms of praise, validation and reproduction of consumable celebrity identity with social, cultural, political and economic currency. Their names are associated with brands and values. The commercialisation and commoditisation of celebrities betray their followers as everyone finds out quickly that the fair is not lovely for the skin. The hollowness of celebrity industry alienates celebrities from their own work and separates them from their fellow beings. The alienated celebrity culture forces celebrities to live a parasocial and lonely life. The glamour world of celebrity culture is alienating experience for all and results in mental illness and suicides. And alienation is an integral part of capitalism, which is suicidal.

The capitalist celebrity culture is an organised plunder of creativity in the name of hero or heroine worship. The available alternatives are in the processes of democratisation of fame and fortunes, celebration and socialisation of all kinds of creativities, moving away from marketisation and objectification of arts and artists, humanising celebrity status. Such transformations can ensure sustainable future for creative industries to survive all onslaughts of capitalism and its celebrity culture of consumerism. History is the witness to the greater glamour in the works of greater common good in the society than the narrow celebration of unabashed individualism. The aesthetic of fashionable ‘self’ only survives with others and not in isolation. The ordinariness of creativity does not domesticate but inspire the masses to celebrate and emulate creative culture. It is only possible if celebrities can write their own narratives and transform themselves from intimate strangers to socially concerned and politically committed citizens by ending their self-isolation and breaking their tinsel ghettoes. The power of creative performance survives in mass interactions and consumed in a patriarchal class, caste and racial hierarchy.

ASOS: Fast fashion makes a killing in the UK during the pandemic

Joe Mount

Online fashion retailer ASOS has announced it will voluntarily repay the £1.8 million it claimed through the Conservative government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (JRS). The JRS covers 80 percent of furloughed workers’ wages.

The company was spurred to act after reporting recent profit hikes. It has made so much money during the COVID-19 crisis that, to save face, it feels it must give back some of the funds it claimed from the public purse.

The JRS was part of unprecedented handouts to big business worth hundreds of billions, introduced by the Chancellor Rishi Sunak in March following the delayed introduction of lockdown measures to combat the spread of the pandemic. Despite many workers being neglected by such schemes, the wage furlough prevented immediate mass redundancies on a scale not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Another factor in ASOS repaying the money may be the calculation that a public relations exercise is required following media exposures of inadequate health and safety measures risking the lives of its workforce.

Financial analyst William Ryderat, of Hargreaves Landsdown, commented, “ASOS intends to return the taxpayer’s cash it received under the furlough scheme as trading has been stronger than anticipated, which shows confidence.”

Sales jumped 10 percent between March and June—at the height of the pandemic in Britain—due to a rapid rise in overseas sales. Domestic sales only fell slightly. The international market was boosted by the early lifting of restrictions in many European countries.

ASOS engaged in profiteering during the public health emergency, continuing its operations in defiance of lockdown restrictions that only “essential” workplaces should remain open. It quickly moved to increase its warehouse operational capacity following the government’s recent easing of lockdown restrictions.

ASOS CEO, Nick Beighton, stated, “While we remain cautious about the consumer impact of Covid-19 looking forward, we are on track to deliver strong year-on-year profit growth and to return to positive free cash flow for the full-year.”

The ASOS distribution centre in Barnsley

The company operated its warehouses and online store throughout the lockdown. It furloughed 1,000 of its 3,500 workforce in April but steadily increased production since then at its Barnsley distribution centre, denying the option to furlough to many, who were forced to either work or subsist on Statutory Sick Pay at just £95 a week.

Commenting on the refund in a staggering display of hypocrisy, CEO Beighton told the Evening Standard, “It’s important given the fact that as an organisation we were allowed to continue to operate. Sometimes you have to do the right thing for society.”

A company press release accompanying its latest financial result brazenly claimed: “Our main priority through the period was protecting the health and wellbeing of our people and our customers through the global pandemic and this was reflected in the strict social distancing protocols implemented and adhered to across our business.”

This flatly contradicts the real conditions exposed by journalists and workers that provoked a mass walk-out in March following fears of a COVID-19 breakout at their Barnsley warehouse. The company refused to perform a deep-clean of the facility following a breakout in May.

One anonymous ASOS warehouse worker told the World Socialist Web Site, “they took advantage and risked workers’ safety” and that “every day is a huge risk.” Regarding the reopening of the economy he insisted, “they need to make sure it’s safe for employees that do these day-to-day jobs and stop putting profits before health.”

The firm’s main priority is their business strategy to utilise the conditions created by the pandemic to dominate the British and international fashion markets by out-performing competitors more closely tied to closed high-street shops. “It’s clear that the online retailer is a pandemic winner,” noted industry analyst Julie Palmer, from the Begbies Traynor consultancy.

While warehouse operatives risk their lives to keep production running, the super-rich beneficiaries of their exploitation enrich themselves and keep safe from the pandemic.

The company’s biggest shareholder is Anders Povlsen, who inherited large slices of major clothing companies in several countries. In addition to being the richest man in Denmark, he placed first in the Scottish “Rich List” as a new entry this year with his £4.7 billion in declared wealth. He is Scotland’s biggest private landowner, owning a castle on the banks of Loch Ness and several other estates.

The retail industry has long been notorious for dangerous factories and warehouses where exploitation is rampant. While the bourgeoisie line their pockets, recent revelations of sweatshop conditions in Leicester’s textiles industry—affecting the supply chains of ASOS’ competitors Boohoo and Quiz—have further exposed the real class relations of capitalist society. ASOS no longer produces in Leicester, after withdrawing citing human rights concerns. However it has now been forced to withdraw its line of products made by Boohoo, which operates from Leicester and is mired in scandal. Investigators have exposed unsanitary, overcrowded working conditions and wages as low as £3.50 per hour, far below the minimum wage.

Many confirmed COVID-19 cases have occurred in the fashion and retail industries caused by the unsafe working conditions. Last week, it was revealed that at least 28 workers were affected at a distribution centre for online fashion store Pretty Little Thing in Sheffield, Yorkshire. The company is part of the Boohoo Group.

Retail Week opined that ASOS’s unexpectedly high profits are a “sparkling exception” to a generally “dismal” market situation. The British Fashion Council warned last week that 27 percent of jobs in the industry (about 240,000) are likely to be destroyed over the next 18 months. Businesses have wound up almost 650,000 jobs during the crisis as the UK economy tanks and entire industries are restructured to protect profits. The mythical “V-shaped” recession some had predicted, characterised by a sharp economic collapse at the onset of lockdown followed by a predicted rapid recovery, is a chimera.

Every aspect of the official response to the coronavirus pandemic has been determined by the class interests of the corporate and financial aristocracy that runs society. The working class are the only social force that can advance a progressive response to the crisis, fighting for its independent class interests by means of rank-and-file committees to demand safe working conditions and decent wages and benefits in opposition to big business and the capitalist state.