Mephistopheles of Wall Street: Goldman Sachs, 1MDB and the Malaysian Settlement

Binoy Kampmark

Malaysia’s politicians were crowing.  “We are confident that we are securing more money from Goldman Sachs compared to previous attempts, which were far below expectations,” stated Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz.  “We are also glad to be able to resolve this outside the court system, which would have cost a lot of time, money and resources.”

The second part of this statement is worth pondering.  Not willing to go the distance with Goldman?  Costs in terms of litigation and time?  Such language is surely not the sort a sovereign power uses regarding a corporation, which speaks much to the problem.  Malaysians would have reason to be suspicious, wondering if their government had thrown in the towel a bit too early against a company famed for its financial vigilantism.  The very fact that the Malaysian government made a deal with Wall Street’s Mephistopheles should have also done its bit to cause alarm.

Whichever way the financial mind looks at this, Goldman is certainly getting more out of the bargain than their despoiled clients.  In the current settlement, no one from their piratical outfit will spend time behind bars for the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal, which saw the hearty plundering of Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund under their watch.  The company will have to fork out a manageable $3.9 billion, a heavily discounted sum considering the original total being sought: $7.5 billion.  Having been one of its clients, the Malaysian government pursued the bank, which had underwritten and arranged bond sales for the fund to the vast sum of $6.5 billion.  Enabling the raising of capital in 2012 and 2013 was something the bank was also handsomely remunerated for: $600 million, no less.

Goldman’s tactics of negotiation lived up to expectations and down to base ethical considerations.  First came a compensation offer of $243.73 billion last year, rejected by the then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad for its slap-in-the-face value.  It was “peanuts”, he scoffed at the time.

The offer was duly increased. In November 2019, Mahathir rejected the sum of $1.75 billion. “We are not satisfied with that amount so we are still talking to them … If they respond reasonably we might not insist on getting that $7.5 billion.”  A key feature of Goldman’s negotiating strategy had worked: their accusers and prosecutors were not going to get full satisfaction.  Attrition seemed to be working.

Both parties are indelibly stained in this enterprise.  Malaysian politics is fairly adept at funneling funds and looting assets in the name of the public good and there was no more fitting company than Goldman to oversee the pinching.  Despite Chief Executive David Solomon’s apology to the Malaysian people, the bank has also made it clear that it was not working for the easiest of clients.  As it asserted in a statement in December 2018, “Certain members of the former Malaysian government and 1MDB lied to Goldman Sachs, outside counsel and others about the use of proceeds from these transactions.”

Those proceeds – some $4.5 billion – were certainly put to use, implicating former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak and his wife Rosmah Mansor in numerous indulgent purchases.  (When robbing the public purse, do it with appropriate extravagance.)  Most fittingly, some of the proceeds went to fund a Hollywood film whose very premise is animal greed as virtuous, self-destructive pursuit.  Razak’s stepson, Riza Aziz, was the producing arm behind The Wolf of Wall Street, using amounts drawn from 1MDB amounting to $248 million.

For some time, it was alleged that the entire effort had one name behind it: Low Taek Jho, known as Jho Low.  In an effort to shift the keenly focused spot light on his sizeable contribution, the Malaysian financier insisted in January that he was merely a humble operator, greasing the palms, oiling the wheels. “People and companies act as introducers or intermediaries all the time.”  He had been asked “to assist because of my good relationships with influential foreign businessmen and decision makers.”  Jho Low is right – to a point – and certainly in his interlocutor’s claim that he is “an easy target for all those above given the fact that I’m not a politician.”  More thought had to be given to “global and financial and other institutions and advisers that actually organised and facilitated the fundraisings at issue”.

When lawsuits were filed in July 2016, the US attorney general Loretta Lynch described the 1MDB affair as “the largest kleptocracy case” in US history.  “A number of corrupt IMDB officials treated this public trust as a personal bank account.”  Lynch spoke of the laundering of money “through a complex web of opaque transactions and fraudulent shell companies, with bank accounts in countries around the world, including Switzerland, Singapore and the United States.”  The enigmatic hand prints of Goldman go far.

The Wall Street giant is also facing the prospect of another settlement with the DOJ which threatens to raid its profits.  The staff are no doubt ready, and additional money is already being put aside for regulatory reasons.  With supreme insincerity, the bank promises to reflect about this latest chapter in international financial kleptocracy.  “There are important lessons to be learned from this situation, and we must be self-critical to ensure that we only improve from the experience.”  The sinner, chastened, readies for the next transgression.

Mahatma Gandhi, in one of his more quoted remarks, observed that “the world has enough for everyone’s need, but not everyone’s greed.” The Goldman approach has a different take to his sagacious observation: the greed will always come before the need and there is ample amount to be had.  It is a philosophy that has enabled it to escape the calamities of the subprime market collapse in 2009 and survive such catastrophes as the Wall Street crash.  While it has received something of a battering, the company has seen worse.  Expect much and more of the same: greed sells, and while stumbles are bound to take place, budget for them.

Nazi-colluder Bayer Starts COVID Treatment Centre In India

P. S. Sahni & Shobha Aggarwal

Bayer being allowed to hawk its drugs and agri-products in India like any other multinational corporation is one thing; being permitted to have COVID facility right within its plant premises leaves room for mischief given its track record since the Holocaust days. Bayer’s parent company – Bayer AG became a Nazi party donor and was the single largest donor to the election campaign of Adolf Hitler. One of its subsidiaries supplied the poison gas, Zyklon-B which speedily exterminated one million people in concentration camps under the watchful eyes of the SS personnel and Gestapo. Bayer AG conducted illegal drug and vaccine trial on Jews.

The correspondence between the Bayer managers and the commander of Auschwitz concentration camp reads:

“With a view to the planned experiments with a new sleep-inducing drug we would appreciate it if you could place a number of prisoners at our disposal,”

“We confirm your response, but consider the price of 200 RM [reichsmarks] per woman to be too high. We propose to pay no more than 170 RM per woman. If this is acceptable to you, the women will be placed in our possession. We need some 150 women,”

“We confirm your approval of the agreement. Please prepare for us 150 women in the best health possible,”

“Received the order for 150 women. Despite their macerated condition they were considered satisfactory. We will keep you informed of the developments regarding the experiments,”

“The experiments were performed. All test persons died. We will contact you shortly about a new shipment.”

During the Nuremberg trials, the U.S. prosecutor commented that the role of Bayer AG was more dangerous than that of the Furher yet only a few top level management people were sentenced to one and a half to eight years imprisonment, but then set free early.

During the AIDS pandemic in 1980s Bayer’s medical products – Factor VIII & IX – for use in thalassemia patients were found to be contaminated with HIV, the virus causing AIDS. Bayer management was aware of this; its technical experts then informed the management that the technology to remove HIV from its products was too costly. Bayer management then decided to export its contaminated products to Asia and Latin America in 1984-85 – much after such products were taken off the U.S. market. This criminality was like awarding death sentence to thalassemia patients who were administered this drug and contracted HIV infection. Bayer escaped unscathed in Asia, Latin America but was sued in USA.

We at ABVA (AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan) wrote to the government and staged a protest on 28 February, 1990 i.e. National Science Day outside the ICMR office, New Delhi urging the authorities to:

“Institute and enforce strict screening procedures and criminal penalties for blood banks and blood product manufacturing companies.”

The response of the Indian Government was not surprising. A few months after the contaminated blood product issue was made public, the AIDS Bill was introduced in Parliament without any clause indicating specifically that hospitals, blood banks and large pharmaceutical companies manufacturing blood products which could spread HIV –would be criminally prosecuted or black-listed. The big blood product manufacturing companies were let off the hook!

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic hit China in January 2020, Bayer has been pushing the drug HCQ (Hydroxychloroquine) for treatment of severe cases of COVID-19. Most countries fell into the trap. In USA over 1300 Veterans were administered the drug; not only no benefit was noticed but the number of deaths increased; the WHO withdrew the drug in June 2020 for use in patients.

In early July 2020 Indian authorities gave permission to Bayer to start a 100-bedded COVID care centre in Aurangabad, Maharashtra for treatment of n-Coronavirus cases. Bayer has few other products ready for trial on patients. What is the guarantee that the facility right in its plant premises – outside the public glare and state scrutiny – would not be used to conduct secret trials of newer products and vaccines? Bayer could repeat its role of experimenting on patients in illegal, unethical, and surreptitious manner.

Julian Assange’s Political Indictment: Old Wine in Older Bottles

Binoy Kampmark

The book of hours on Julian Assange is now being written.  But the scribes are far from original.  Repeated rituals of administrative hearings that have no common purpose other than to string things out before the axe are being enacted.  Of late, the man most commonly associated with WikiLeaks’ publication project cannot participate in any meaningful way, largely because of his frail health and the dangers posed to him by the coronavirus.  Having already made an effort to attend court proceedings in person, Assange has come across as judicial exotica, freak show fodder for Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s harsh version of Judge Judy.  He was refused an application to escape his glass commode when he could still attend in person, as permitting him to descend and consult his defence team in a court room would constitute a bail application of some risk.  This reading by the judicial head was so innovative it even puzzled the prosecutors.

What we know to date is that restrictions and shackles on Assange’s case are the order of the day.  Restricted processes that do nothing to enable him to see counsel and enable a good brief to be exercised are typical.  Most of all, the ceremonial circus that we have come to expect of British justice in the menacing shadow of US intimidation has become gloomily extensive. On July 27, that circus was given yet another act, another limping performance.  As before, the venue was the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London.

During the proceeding, Assange did appear via video link from Belmarsh Prison, albeit it an hour late, and only at the insistence of his legal team.  The Guardian report on his presence reads like an account of a sporting engagement.  “Wearing a beige sweater and a pink shirt, Assange eventually appeared from Belmarsh prison after an earlier attempt was aborted.”

Others were alarmed.  During his call-over hearing, noted Martin Silk of the Australian Associated Press, “neither the Australian, nor his guards, were wearing face masks.  I don’t understand the reason for that given we have to wear them inside shops.”  This point was also made by Assange’s partner, Stella Moris: “Belmarsh hasn’t provided Julian with a face mask throughout this #covid crisis.  The prison guards he interacts with don’t wear them either.”  WikiLeaks supporter Juan Passarelli also felt that Assange “was having trouble following the proceedings due to the Judge and lawyers not speaking loud enough and into the microphones.”

Arrangements for the hearing for observers proved characteristically sloppy.  Freelance journalist Stefania Maurizi was unimpressed by being on the phone for two hours during which she “couldn’t understand more than 20 percent of what has been discussed.”  She was adamant that “UK authorities don’t care at all about international reporters covering” the Assange proceedings. “Dial in system is, as usual,” agreed Passarelli, “a shambles!”

The topic of discussion during this administrative hearing was what was announced by the US Department of Justice on June 24, namely the second superseding indictment.  That document proved to be a naked exercise of political overreach, adding no further charges to the already heavy complement of eighteen, seventeen of which centre on the US Espionage Act.  The scope of interest, however, was widened, notably on the issue of “hacking” and conferencing.  Assange is painted as devilish recruiter and saboteur of the international secret order, a man of the conference circuit keen to open up clandestine governments and make various reasons for doing so.  “According to the charging document, Assange and others at WikiLeaks recruited and agreed with hackers to commit computer intrusions to benefit WikiLeaks.”

Edward Fitzgerald QC, in representing Assange, fulfilled his norm, submitting that the recently revised document did little to inspire confidence in the nature of clarified justice.  “We are concerned about a fresh request being made at this stage with the potential consequences of derailing proceedings and that the US attorney-general is doing this for political reasons.” Fitzgerald reminded the court that US President Donald Trump had “described the defence case as a plot by the Democrats.”

This should have been obvious, but Baraitser’s court would have none of it.  To admit at this point that Assange is wanted for political reasons would make it that much harder to extradite him to the United States, given that bar noted in the US-UK Extradition Treaty. Whilst it was good of Fitzgerald to make this point, he should know by now that his audience is resolutely constipated and indifferent to such prodding.  Assange is to be given the sharpest, rather than the most balanced, of hearings.  Accordingly, Baraitser insisted that Fitzgerald “reserve his comments” – she, in the true tradition of such processes, had not been supplied, as yet, with the US indictment.  This made the entire presence of all the parties at the Westminster Magistrates’ not merely meaningless but decidedly absurd.

Assange’s defence team could draw some cold comfort from Baraitser’s comments that July 27 was the deadline for any further evidence to be adduced by the prosecution before the September extradition hearing.  One exception was permitted: psychiatric reports.

The current chief publisher of WikiLeaks Kristinn Hrafnsson had a few choice words for the prosecutors of Wikileaks.  “All the alleged events have been known to the prosecution for years.  It contains no new charges. What’s really happening here is that despite its decade start the prosecution are still unable to build a coherent case.”  The scrapping of the previous indictments suggested that they were “flagrantly disregarding proper process.”

Assange is facing one of the most disturbing confections put together by any state that claims itself to be free.  Should this stratagem work, the publisher will find himself facing the legal proceedings of a country that boasts of having a free press amendment but is keen on excluding him from it.  What is even more troubling is the desire to expand the tent of culpability, one that will include press outlets and those who disseminate classified information.

To the next circus instalment we go: a final call-over hearing in Westminster Magistrates’ Court on August 14, then the September 7 extradition hearing, to be held at the Central Criminal Court most of us know as the Old Bailey.  Will justice prove blind, or merely blinded?

New Zealand’s largest retail chain axes 1,080 jobs

John Braddock

The carnage being inflicted on workers’ jobs continued when New Zealand’s largest retail chain, The Warehouse, announced on July 19 up to 1,080 sackings. It followed the recent decision by the global conglomerate Rio Tinto to mothball Southland’s Tiwai Point aluminium smelter next August, at a cost of 2,600 jobs within the region.

In the wake of COVID-19, the number of jobs fell by a record 37,000 or 1.7 percent in April alone, according to Statistics NZ in June. It was the biggest monthly fall in percentage terms in 20 years since the measurement was established. There are now 208,577 people on either Jobseeker Support or a COVID-19 payment. More than 63,000 have signed up since March 20.

Job cuts by major businesses thus far include: 4,000 at Air NZ, 1,000 at Fletcher Building, 910 at Millennium & Copthorne Hotels, 900 at Sky City casino and 1,100 temporary and contractor jobs at the Auckland Council, led by Labour Party figures. Unemployment is forecast to hit 10 percent this year.

Like other corporates, The Warehouse is using the pandemic and the resulting economic downturn to accelerate a pro-business restructuring involving the elimination of jobs and destruction of working conditions.

Staff at The Warehouse’s 92 stores were called into meetings on July 19 to be told of the company’s restructuring process, cynically titled “Project Agile.” Chief executive Nick Grayston claimed the restructure was made necessary by consumers’ changing spending patterns, including the rise of on-line shopping and different on-site hours.

From August 31 staff hours will be reduced across the board while job cuts will hit 782 workers, plus another 137 through store closures. There will also be cuts at the company’s head office. The Warehouse confirmed six store closures on top of three already under way, accounting for the projected 1,080 job losses, 9 percent of the company’s total workforce.

The closures involve the Noel Leeming Henderson Clearance Centre, and stores in Birkenhead, Tokoroa, Papanui and The Palms in Christchurch. Stores in Dunedin, Whangaparāoa, Johnsonville and Warehouse Stationery in Te Awamutu will also now be shut down.

The announcement comes after The Warehouse took $NZ67.7 million from the Labour government’s wage subsidy scheme, paid out following the March COVID-19 lockdown. The cumulative $12.3 billion in handouts, falsely promoted as a means of saving jobs, have not stopped businesses slashing wages and sacking workers. SkyCity’s subsidies reached $31 million after it was granted a $9.4m top-up last week, despite already having sacked 900 workers.

The Warehouse had also imposed wage cuts on some staff. At the end of April, those earning more than $60,000 were told to take a 10 percent salary cut and those earning more than $100,000 a cut of 20 percent. The cuts were subsequently repaid because sales during the reduced Level 2 COVID-19 restrictions were higher than expected.

The brazenness of The Warehouse’s money-grab forced Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who is facing an election in September, to cynically declare she was “angry” after the company first foreshadowed the closures last month. Ardern told Radio NZ that The Warehouse had promoted itself as being “in the community and for the community.” She contrasted the company with small-business owners “trying to keep their staff and stay afloat” by running down their reserves.

The Warehouse founder Stephen Tindall regularly postures as a “socially conscious” businessman and philanthropist. He was among an international group of 83 millionaires who, fearing the growth of anti-capitalist sentiment, recently called on governments to tax them more to counter the economic blow of COVID-19.

The company has grown into a billion-dollar enterprise by exploiting the social crisis confronting working people at home and abroad. In 1982, Tindall set up his first “Red Sheds” in working class suburbs, selling large volumes of cheap imported items from low-wage countries. The operation grew exponentially, benefiting from decades of attacks on the social conditions of working people, including its own employees, buttressed by the wholesale deregulation of business.

Many workers will be devastated by the recent announcements. One Hamilton worker told Stuff she broke down crying when she heard her hours will be cut. “I will be losing between eight and 10 hours a week. It doesn’t seem like much, but that’s more than $250 a week after tax,” she said. “That’s a huge chunk of money to lose when you’re on a sole income.”

Single mother Anna Grey told Radio NZ she was being made redundant after more than 10 years working at the Birkenhead store. “To be honest, it’s going to be really hard,” she said. “I can tell you now I will be really struggling… Everybody else is losing their jobs, and there’s nothing there.”

Far from launching a struggle to defend jobs and conditions, FIRST Union, which represents about 2,000 Warehouse workers, is playing a central role facilitating the company’s onslaught. General secretary Dennis Maga told the media that the union had received advance “information about the new model in confidence,” but withheld it from workers while engaging in “consultation” with management behind closed doors.

Maga said union delegates had “brought ideas to the table and generally felt the discussions were meaningful.” The company, he complained, then “went ahead and did everything they’d already decided.”

The union’s crocodile tears flowed. Maga declared: “Members are expressing their frustrations. They would like to know and understand what this process is all about. They need to understand if they will keep their jobs after the consultation.” He fraudulently claimed the union will “continue to engage with The Warehouse executives and challenge the business model” as it is imposed around the country.

This dishonest and bankrupt perspective yet again exposes the unions for what they are: corporatised entities that function as an industrial police force of governments and big business. Throughout the COVID-19 crisis the unions applauded the Ardern government’s billion dollar bailouts while pushing for worksites and schools to remain open regardless of health risks.

FIRST Union has a long history of enforcing closures and mass sackings. Following nearly 200 redundancies in 2013 at Summit Wool Spinners in Oamaru, for example, the union boasted it was “expert now in looking after people after these events. We coordinate with WINZ [social welfare], with local mayors, MPs … to try and get things in place for those workers.” That is, the union provided its services to ensure that layoffs went ahead smoothly.

The fight against this assault on jobs and working conditions cannot be carried out through the trade unions. To protect jobs and living standards, workers need to build their own independent organisations: rank-and-file committees, to link up workers in different industries and internationally. Such struggles must be guided by the fight for a workers’ government that will implement socialist policies, including the nationalisation of major industries under democratic control.

Canada’s Liberal government shaken by WE Charity scandal

Roger Jordan

Canada’s Liberal government has been shaken in recent weeks by a scandal triggered by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s close ties to the WE Charity, an ostensibly philanthropic organization with powerful corporate backers.

Some media outlets have suggested that the scandal—which is bound up with the government’s awarding of a lucrative contract without tender to WE to manage a $912 million COVID-19 pandemic relief program—could threaten Trudeau’s continued prime ministership and the very survival of his minority Liberal government.

At the very least, the scandal has exposed a web of incestuous and corrupt ties between the top ranks of the Liberal government and WE; and between WE and corporations like the Royal Bank of Canada, Dow Chemical, Microsoft, and Teck Resources, which the charity promotes as environmentally and socially responsible.

WE’s modus operandi is itself something of a metaphor for the Trudeau government, which attempts to conceal its rapacious defence of the interests of big business at home and abroad behind a smokescreen of “progressive” rhetoric.

In late June, Trudeau announced that WE had been granted the contract to administer the government’s newly created Canada Student Service Grant (CSSG). The program was supposed to provide a financial boost for students unable to find summer jobs by offering stipends of up to $5,000 for volunteer work done during the coronavirus pandemic. It quickly became clear that WE stood to gain handsomely from the contract, thanks to the government’s commitment to pay it up $43 million in administration fees.

More questions were raised when the close ties between the Trudeau family and WE were revealed, including the fact that Margaret Trudeau, the Prime Minister’s mother, had been paid $312,000 since 2016 to speak at 28 WE events. Alexandre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau’s brother, also received $32,000 for eight speaking engagements, while Finance Minister Bill Morneau and his well-connected family were wined and dined by WE with complementary travel in 2017 worth $100,000. Morneau, whose father cofounded Morneau Shepell, one of Canada’s largest pension and benefit management firms, and is married to a member of the billionaire McCain family, has since repaid these sums, including $41,307 just last week.

Justin Trudeau, for his part, has enjoyed a long relationship with WE, going all the way back to an appearance he made at the first WE Day event in 2007. He has continued to appear at WE events since coming to power in 2015, while his wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, hosts a podcast for the organization. It was on a trip to a WE event in London, England, in March that Gregoire Trudeau caught COVID-19.

Trudeau claims that he has never been paid for his appearances at WE events. But he and Craig and Marc Kielburger, the brothers who founded Free the Children, which became WE in 2016, and continue to lead the charity, have clearly found their relationship mutually beneficial. His government, which came to power in October 2015, has substantially increased the value of contracts awarded to the organization. Prior to the CSSG deal, WE received $5.8 million in government contracts under the Trudeau Liberals, compared to less than $1 million during the ten years of Stephen Harper and his Conservative government.

Trudeau and Morneau’s failure to recuse themselves during cabinet discussions on awarding the CSSG contract to WE has triggered an ethics inquiry by federal Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion. In an attempt to stanch the scandal, Trudeau has taken the rare step of agreeing to appear before the House of Commons Finance Committee tomorrow to answer questions about the affair. His chief of staff, Katie Telford, will testify before the same committee immediately after him.

Evidence has come to light suggesting that the government contract was tailored to offset mounting financial problems at the charity. In 2019 WE reported a $2.4 million loss. Then, with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, donations dried up and WE began announcing mass layoffs of staff.

On April 9, WE sent an unsolicited offer to Small Business Minister Mary Ng to create what it described as a “social enterprise” opportunity for young people. The same day that Trudeau publicly unveiled his intention to establish the CSSG, April 22, Craig Kielburger sent two proposals to an Employment Ministry official that have many similarities with the government’s scheme.

The government only publicly announced the awarding of the contract to WE in late June, a decision it justified on the ground that it was the only charitable organization in the country with the wherewithal to run such a program. However, documents obtained by the Toronto Star show that WE had already begun working on the CSSG program by May 5. A separate Globe and Mail report revealed that WE was set to collect $33 million, the vast majority of the administration fee, within the first week of the contract.

Amid mounting controversy, WE backed out of the CSSG contract on July 3, but not before it had received most of the project’s administrative fees. The federal government was left to manage the student program, which, with the summer now almost over, appears likely to amount to nothing, leaving those financially stressed students who hoped to benefit from it in the lurch.

The Trudeau government has conspicuously failed to provide any explanation as to why it was necessary to outsource a program supposedly aimed at providing financial assistance to students unable to find jobs during the pandemic. However, the approach is in keeping with the Liberals’ promotion of public-private partnerships, which have proven to be a boondoggle for the corporate elite over recent decades, and “social entrepreneurship” and “social financing”—that is, schemes to outsource the provision of public services and, to use the words of Canada’s Ministry of Employment and Social Development, “mobilize private capital for the public good.”

Although WE is publicly portrayed as a philanthropic organization engaged in charity activities in the developing world and with young people in Canada, it is in reality a multimillion-dollar business operation with substantial interests in real estate and private education. Vice News, which conducted a comprehensive investigation of the charity’s affairs, described it as a “charitable corporate hybrid” with “friends in high places.” The organization, which includes a charity and a separate for-profit business known as ME to WE, has incorporated status in Canada, the United States, and United Kingdom, and holds a real estate portfolio worth approximately $50 million. Prominent backers include Oprah Winfrey and Al Gore. The Dalai Lama, Martin Sheen, and Kendrick Lamar are among the many celebrities who have appeared at public WE events.

WE used its celebrity-studded events to appeal to young people, who were offered volunteer trips to developing countries, summer camps, and training programs. Its education materials, which are used in 18,000 schools across North America, serve to promote major corporate brands to a young, impressionable audience. Major backers include behemoths like KPMG, Unilever, and RBC. An internal WE document aimed at potential sponsors of its education programs bluntly declared that support from sponsors would “improve partners’ brand reputation particularly by increasing consumer perception of partners’ investment in their local community.”

The organization’s website describes Marc Kielburger as a speaker who has expertise in “purposeful and profitable business strategies.”

The close ties between the Trudeau government and the WE organization are just the tip of the iceberg. Federal and provincial governments of all political stripes have a symbiotic relationship with the business and financial elites who dictate government policy. They also regularly transfer vast sums of public funds to private corporations, charities, and non-profits to run public services in what amounts to privatization by other means. According to a study by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, the federal government spent over $11.9 billion between 2011 and 2018 on external contracts for management consultants, IT services, and temporary contractors for services that could have been performed by public sector workers.

The role of WE as a shill for big business is symbolic of the character of the Trudeau Liberal government. The trade unions, the NDP and countless middle-class “left” organizations have promoted the Liberals as “progressive,” supporting Trudeau’s election in 2015 and return to power in 2019. The reality is Trudeau’s “feminist,” “diverse and multicultural” and pro-“native reconciliation” government has pursued the austerity and militarist agenda of Canada’s capitalist elite. It has slashed tens of billions from health care, while dramatically hiking military spending, cutting corporate taxes, and further integrating Canada into Washington’s military-strategic offensives against China, Russia, and in the Middle East and its regime-change intrigues in Latin America.

Following the eruption of the coronavirus crisis, the Liberal government used its close ties to the trade unions to orchestrate a $650 billion bailout for the major banks and financial oligarchy, while placing workers on rations. Then, with the wealth of the super-rich guaranteed, it organized the reckless back-to-work drive, which threatens to produce a resurgence of the pandemic and cost thousands of working people their lives.

Many will no doubt take satisfaction that the WE scandal has delivered yet another blow to Trudeau and the Liberals’ smug, cynical “progressive” image. But the working class can gain from this crisis only if it intervenes as an independent political force. If youth and workers are to be protected from the ravages of the pandemic and its devastating economic fallout, the working class must develop a counteroffensive against the capitalist elite’s insistence that their profits take precedence over workers’ safety and lives and their attempts to make workers pay for the crisis through job and social spending cuts and evictions. Militant actions, such as the formation of rank-and-file workplace safety committees and the shutting down of unsafe workplaces, must be tied to the fight for a workers’ government and the socialist reorganization of economic life.

Absent the development of such a movement, the WE scandal will be exploited by big business, the Conservative opposition, and corporate media to push politics further to the right. Whilst the Tories rail on about the WE scandal, hypocritically demanding “accountability” and full disclosure, their real complaint is that the Trudeau Liberals are not moving even faster to eliminate the meager Canada Emergency Response Benefit, and otherwise slash “profligate” social spending, so workers are compelled to return to work amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Johnson government scientific adviser claims UK schools should never have closed

Tania Kent

The first day of the school summer break began with claims published in the Times that schools are safe to reopen in September, with little evidence to suggest that children are vectors for COVID-19.

The article, cited widely, confirms how science is being cherry picked in the service of a “back to work” agenda to guarantee profits for the wealthy, in which the opening of schools is key. The broad-based hostility among teachers and parents to the unsafe reopening of schools is being met with a barrage of propaganda to confuse, disorient, and dissipate this opposition.

The Times article, published July 22, quotes Mark Woolhouse, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Edinburgh University and a member of the UK government’s scientific advisory group, Sage. He said, “One thing we have learnt is that children are certainly, in the five to 15 brackets from school to early years, minimally involved in the epidemiology of this virus. They are probably less susceptible and vanishingly unlikely to end up in hospital or to die from it.”

Number of acute respiratory infection incidents by institution in England (credit Public Health England)

He goes on to assert, “There is increasing evidence that they rarely transmit. For example, it is extremely difficult to find any instance anywhere in the world a single example of a child transmitting to a teacher in school. There may have been one in Australia but it is incredibly rare.”

The comments reveal the highly politicised character of the science of the pandemic and how science is increasingly subordinated to the profit interests of the ruling class. The reality is that there have been numerous studies that challenge Woolhouse’s claim.

As his comments were published, data was released in the US of alarmingly high numbers of COVID infections of children. The Tennessee Department of Health revealed that 7,572 school-age children—those between the ages of 5 and 18—have been diagnosed with COVID-19. In Mississippi, more than 4,900 children had tested positive for COVID-19. In Florida, over 23,000 minors have tested positive.

A recent study from South Korea, the largest of its kind, showed that of 5,706 infected people and their 59,073 contacts, only children under 10 transmitted less often to adults, but those between the ages of 10 and 19 spread the virus as readily as adults. Households with the older children had the highest rate of spread to other members—18.6 percent—of any age group, while households with younger children had the least spread, just 5.3 percent. The overall average was 11.8 percent.

An article in the Smithsonian Review highlighted evidence that children, including those without symptoms, are as likely to be as infectious as adults. It noted that the reopening of schools in Israel was one of the most significant factors in the renewed circulation of the virus. The number of new cases there had risen from fewer than 50 per day two months ago, to more than 1,500 per day in early July. The increase followed school outbreaks that infected at least 1,335 students and 691 staff.

Jeffrey Shaman, an infectious disease expert at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, explained that it is impossible to get a clear picture of the effects of COVID on children, as the “studies to date about COVID-19 and children have been too small or too compromised by factors such as school closings, lack of testing, or much smaller community caseloads than the United States.”

He insisted, “The question is, what happens when the children get it? Are they effectively dead ends? Or are they capable of communicating the virus and spreading it to other people? I think the evidence is not conclusive. We don’t know enough to know that children to some degree are less capable of transmitting this virus.”

But Shaman indicated the very real pressure being exerted on science under a system which is driven in the interests of defending profits rather than the health and well-being of society. He understood the need to get children back to school but stressed that it is hard to gauge the risk, “given the current state of knowledge and information slanted by governments looking to reopen schools. We don’t have a policy model and an experience model that allows us to understand what will be appropriate.”

“We’re dealing with a novel coronavirus,” he added.

That political ends and not the search for truth dominates government policy is sharply revealed in the totally negligent response to COVID-19 in Sweden, the favoured model for all advocates of a “herd immunity” strategy and opponents of lockdown measures. Sweden is the only country in Europe that did not go into a national lockdown. Schools and businesses all remained open. However, sciencemag.org explains, “The one country that could have definitively answered that question (whether children are vectors) has apparently failed to collect any data. … Swedish officials have not tracked infections among school children—even when large outbreaks led to the closure of individual schools or staff members died of the disease.”

The Karolinska Institute (KI), Sweden’s flagship medical research centre, developed a protocol to study school outbreaks, “but the lack of funding, time, and resources” placed huge hurdles before their efforts. The KI did scan Swedish newspapers, which made clear that school outbreaks had occurred. In the town of Skellefteå, a teacher died and 18 of 76 staff tested positive at a school with about 500 students, in preschool through ninth grade. The article states that “several teachers” have died in Sweden.

The KI found that in the Swedish Public Health Agency’s preliminary results from antibody surveys of 1,100 people from nine regions, the antibody prevalence in children and teenagers was 4.7 percent, compared with 6.7 percent in adults age 20 to 64 and 2.7 percent in 65- to 70-year-olds. The relatively high rate in children suggests there may have been significant spread in schools, it concluded.

There have been many concerns by the scientific community that reopening schools can increase the spread of the virus. Anita Cicero, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security, noted; “In Japan, South Korea, Finland and France, each of those countries had about 1 or fewer cases per 100,000 people when they reopened,” she says. In contrast, there are currently some US counties with 80 or more new daily cases per 100,000.” She stressed the importance of the rate of infection circulating before reopening schools.

In England, the Conservative government was forced to acknowledge that children are vectors for the virus, following the local lockdown imposed in Leicester in July. Health Minister Matt Hancock said that one of the main reasons for imposing the Leicester lockdown was an increase in the number of under 18 year olds who have tested positive, explaining, “Because children can transmit the disease, although they are highly unlikely to get ill from the disease, we think that the safest thing to do is to close the schools…”

Leading up to the Leicester lockdown, Public Health England’s Weekly COVID-19 Surveillance Report revealed that the number of acute respiratory infection “incidents” increased from 43 in week 26 of the pandemic to 55 in week 27. Although the number of incidents has been declining in both care homes and hospitals, and remain stable in workplace settings, it has increased in educational settings so that they have overtaken care home incidents. This is a grave warning as to the impact of a full return to schools in September.

The tremendous pressure exerted on scientists, the agreement of the education unions to the reopening of schools, the support of the Labour Party for Johnson’s criminal agenda all point to the need for workers and educators to take independent action to protect their lives.

The Socialist Equality Party insists that a genuine fight against the pandemic can only emerge through establishing a broad network of rank-and-file safety committees, independent of the unions and both big business parties, in every school and neighbourhood, working in conjunction with a panel of trusted scientists and health experts. These committees, democratically controlled by workers themselves, should formulate, implement, and oversee measures that are necessary to safeguard the health and lives of workers, their families and the broader community.

Major League Baseball confronted with major COVID-19 outbreak

Alan Gilman

Major League Baseball’s (MLB) pandemic-shortened season, which began last week, is already in jeopardy after a major COVID-19 outbreak amongst the Miami Marlins involving 17 players and staff.

The Miami Marlins began their season last Friday with a three-game series in Philadelphia against the Phillies. Either late Thursday or early Friday, catcher Jorge Alfaro tested positive for COVID-19 and was quarantined. Three more players tested positive after the second game on Saturday, including the next day’s scheduled starting pitcher, Jose Urena, infielder Garrett Cooper and outfielder Harold Ramirez.

Incredibly, in spite of this knowledge, which according to the Marlins was shared with both the MLB front office and their opponents, Sunday’s game went forward as planned, after a vote by the Marlins players to take the field. The Marlins won 11-6.

By Monday morning it was announced that 11 players and two staff had tested positive. At that point MLB postponed the Marlins home opener against the Baltimore Orioles, which was scheduled for Monday night, as well as the New York Yankees game the same evening against the Philadelphia Phillies. The Yankees would have been in the same clubhouse the Marlins used last weekend.

On Tuesday afternoon, MLB announced that the Marlins season was suspended for the rest of the week, “to allow the Marlins time to focus on providing care for their players and planning their Baseball Operations for a resumption early next week,” according to a statement. The Yankees’ four games this week against Philadelphia have also been postponed.

“This is off-the-charts bad,” epidemiologist Zachary Binney told the Washington Post. “I anticipated an outbreak on a team, especially on a team from a city with a high incidence of the virus. Unfortunately, I’m not surprised to see it happened to a team from Miami,” one of the main centers of the pandemic in the United States.

On Monday critics quickly took aim at MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred. “Remember when Manfred said players’ health was PARAMOUNT?!” Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher David Price, who opted out of the season due to the pandemic, asked on Twitter. “Part of the reason I’m at home right now is because players’ health wasn’t being put first. I can see that hasn’t changed.”

Washington Nationals manager Dave Martinez told reporters that his concern went from “an 8 to about 12.” Martinez, who took a leave of absence for heart surgery last September, added, “I’m scared. I really am.” Martinez and the Nationals were slated to travel to Miami for a series against the Marlins this coming weekend, but the players voted to refuse to travel even before MLB postponed the series on Tuesday.

The outbreak raises serious questions about MLB’s much-touted 100-plus-page “safety protocols.” MLB has not explained why it allowed the Marlins to take the field Sunday even though four players had already tested positive.

Moreover, the incident makes clear that there is no independent decision-making process led by medical experts to suspend games or take other measures to prevent the spread of the virus. According to MLB’s guidelines, the season can only be suspended at the discretion of Manfred, who has told media outlets that this has not even been discussed with team owners.

Dr. Andrew Morris, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Toronto, told the Associated Press the Marlins’ outbreak isn’t a surprise because Manfred’s plan was seriously flawed.

“Baseball is in huge trouble, huge trouble,” Morris said. “It makes me wonder if they are listening to the advice of experts or whether their experts are giving them good advice. This was not a plan anyone who knows what they are talking about would have conceived. It’s playing out like it was supposed to play out.”

Unlike the National Basketball Association (NBA) and Major League Soccer (MLS) which have assembled their teams in quarantine “bubbles” at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and the National Hockey League (NHL), which will hold its annual playoffs under similar conditions at two arenas in Canada, most MLB teams are playing in their usual stadiums and following a schedule designed to limit travel.

The sole exception is the Toronto Blue Jays, who have been prevented from playing in their home field by the Canadian government, out of fear that visiting US-based teams could spread the virus into Canada. Instead, the Blue Jays will play their “home games” across the border at a minor league park in Buffalo.

In fact, MLB guidelines implicitly accept that outbreaks are all but inevitable. Team rosters have been expanded to 60 players, with 30 players assembled at a “satellite” location apart from the team’s starters. MLB also allows teams a three-player “taxi squad” of substitutes on road trips. In other words, MLB’s approach has not been to prevent infections, but to assemble large numbers of suitable replacements for infected players.

MLB is providing testing for all players and coaches every two days. However, the test results, which until recently were funneled through a single lab, have taken up to 48 hours. This means that a player can unknowingly infect others for up four days.

Much is at stake for baseball team owners, who are desperate to recoup at least some of their $10.7 billion in annual revenue. Forty percent of this is normally derived from ticket sales, but without fans in the stands, they are attempting to salvage what they can through broadcast revenue.

“They are kind of at the razor’s edge at this point,” Bob Dorfman, a sports marketing expert at Baker Street Advertising in San Francisco, told Yahoo Sports. “The last thing they would consider doing is canceling the season, and I think they will exhaust every other possibility, whatever that might be. There is just too much money on the line.”

But far more is involved here than the colossal and bloated revenues for American sports, which are heavily subsidized by taxpayer dollars. To call off the season would be a serious blow to the back-to-work drive by the capitalist ruling elite, led by the Trump administration.

If Major League Baseball, with its virtually limitless resources, is forced to shut down because it cannot guarantee the safety of roughly one thousand players, then how can the rush to re-open schools, factories, restaurants, meatpacking plants and other workplaces be justified? This question was raised by one sportswriter in a column for CNN.com, titled, “If baseball can’t be safe, how can schools?”

The worst may yet still be to come. The National Football League (NFL) is scheduled to open training camps next week. It has canceled all preseason games and several players have already announced that they are opting out because of the health danger posed by COVID-19.

The NFL, the most lucrative sports competition in the world with $15 billion in annual revenue, will be playing its regular season games as scheduled from September through early January, with its playoffs ending with the Super Bowl in early February. This is the period when the “second wave” of COVID-19 is expected, combined with the flu season.

In June, when asked about football being played this year, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci replied: “Unless players are essentially in a bubble—insulated from the community and they are tested nearly every day—it would be very hard to see how football is able to be played this fall. If there is a second wave, which is certainly a possibility and which would be complicated by the predictable flu season, football may not happen this year.”

Even more dangerous is the looming start of the college football season, similarly a multi-billion-dollar business. However, unlike professional football, amateur college athletes lack the resources to protect themselves from infection. Moreover, because they live in university dormitories, attend classes and interact with other students, infections on college football rosters could easily spread throughout university campuses in general. There have already been dozens of confirmed cases on several high-profile teams even before pre-season camp starts.

Under pressure from large money-making football schools, the governing NCAA has postponed a decision on whether to cancel its non-football fall championships, a move which would pressure football to follow suit. This is in spite of the fact that dozens of smaller, less lucrative athletic programs have already canceled their seasons.

The University of Texas, whose football team generated $144.5 million in revenue last season, is still considering allowing 50 percent capacity crowds at its home games, more than 50,000 people. Over 400,000 Texans are confirmed to have contracted COVID-19 and more than 6,300 have died, as of this writing.

US adopts policy of regime-change in Beijing

Peter Symonds

In what marks another dangerous step towards a US clash with China, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week made a keynote speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum entitled “Communist China and the Free World’s Future”.

By couching American foreign policy as a choice between a future dominated by “Communist China” or the “Free World,” Pompeo set the stage for greatly intensified US confrontation with China on all fronts—diplomatic, economic and military. One, moreover, implicitly aimed at regime-change in Beijing.

“If we want to have a free 21st century,” Pompeo declared, “the old paradigm of blind engagement with China” has to be replaced by a strategy to ensure “the free world must triumph over this new tyranny.”

The speech effectively overturns nearly half a century of US engagement with China, which, Pompeo notwithstanding, was never “blind”—that is unlimited or uncritical.

It began with Nixon’s rapprochement and trip to Beijing in 1972. Its strategic purpose was to form a bloc against the Soviet Union, and not as Pompeo claimed, to transform China into a so-called “democracy.”

Pompeo’s resort to Cold War demagogy is simply an absurdity. No one who is politically literate believes that China is “communist.” The US-China détente established by Nixon and Mao opened the door for an accelerating process of capitalist restoration that transformed China into the world’s largest cheap-labour platform for American and global corporations.

Moreover, to speak of the “free world” when the Trump administration is rapidly dispensing with democratic rights and using police state measures against protesters, is a grotesque lie. Nor is the situation different elsewhere among Washington’s “free world” allies where far right and openly fascist parties are promoted and governments increasingly resort to autocratic forms of rule.

Pompeo is not just speaking for the Trump administration, but for the dominant section of the American ruling class, which when confronted with a profound economic, social and political crisis at home, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is seeking to project immense social tensions outwards against an external enemy.

An editorial on Monday in the New York Times, a mouthpiece for the Democrats, fully supports the Trump administration’s aggressive policy towards China, arguing only that it has to be more effective and coherent. Entitled “China’s Claims to the South China Sea Are Unlawful. Now What?”, it denounces Chinese “aggression” and “bullying” in “one of the world’s most critical waterways” and backs Pompeo’s recent statement declaring Chinese territorial claims in the disputed waters to be “illegal.”

Hypocrisy abounds. The editorial praises Pompeo’s declaration for bringing the US into line with international law, but Washington has not ratified the very international law—the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea—it claims Beijing is in breach of. It was President Obama, whom the editorial hails, that transformed the South China Sea into a dangerous global flashpoint, by inciting China’s neighbors to press their own South China Sea claims, and provocatively deploying American warships in Chinese-claimed territorial waters.

As for bullying and aggression, US imperialism has engaged in one criminal war after another in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa over the past quarter century, creating humanitarian disasters for the peoples of these regions. Obama’s “Pivot to Asia”, continued and expanded by Trump, involved a huge military build-up throughout Asia targeting China, which responded by consolidating its control of islets in the South China Sea, adjacent to key Chinese naval bases.

The New York Times editorial tacitly endorses the Trump administration’s aggressive policies towards China, including its cynical invocation of “human rights” over Hong Kong and the Uyghur population in China’s Xinjiang province and unsubstantiated allegations of Chinese spying and intellectual property theft.

Significantly, like Pompeo, the editorial draws a distinction between the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and Washington’s increasingly dangerous confrontation with China. It states: “China is a major trading partner with the United States and much of the rest of the world. It does not command an empire, and its economy is not likely to crumble under the weight of Western challenges the way Moscow’s command economy did.”

As a result, Pompeo concluded in his speech that there could be no return to a Cold War policy of “containment,” or of “peaceful coexistence” as the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy termed the standoff. The rejection of “containment” is an ominous warning sign. In the debate in American ruling circles in the 1950s, the alternative to containment was the policy of “rollback”—that is, to use the economic and military might of US imperialism to aggressively undermine and ultimately destroy the Soviet Union.

While the New York Times does not explicitly draw the same conclusion as Pompeo, the implication is obvious: if China is not going to crumble like the Soviet Union, then more aggressive and forceful methods will have to be used. Like Joe Biden, the presumptive Democrat presidential candidate, the Times criticized Trump for failing to formulate a comprehensive strategy to bring down the Chinese regime.

While the debate over China is a key issue in the US presidential election, the underlying bipartisan agreement points to the more fundamental interests at stake for US imperialism. Amid its accelerating historic decline, the United States regards China as the chief threat to its efforts to retain global dominance, which it is determined to retain by any and all methods, including military.

Pompeo’s speech as well as announcing a definitive shift in US policy towards China brought together all the lies and unsubstantiated accusations that the Trump administration is using to poison public opinion and create a war atmosphere. This includes the attempt to shift the blame onto Beijing for the catastrophic loss of life caused by Washington’s criminally negligent response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

All of Pompeo and Trumps’ lies and charges are linked to Washington’s strategic designs: the promotion of “human rights” in Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang is aimed at fostering separatist movements to divide China, and the calls for “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea are meant to ensure the “freedom” of US aircraft carriers to prowl the Chinese coastline.

The US is preparing for a calamitous war with nuclear-armed China that has the potential to rapidly engulf the world. Workers and youth cannot stand by as the world slides towards catastrophe. The only social force capable of halting this war drive is the working class, which must be mobilized through the building of a unified, international anti-war movement based on socialist principles to overturn the capitalist system that is the source of war. That is the perspective for which the International Committee of the Fourth International fights.

Prostitution and the Pandemic: Social Distancing and Stigmatisation during Covid-19

Nupur Pattanaik

Covid-19 presents a new muddle and risks for sex workers, pandemic of poverty has affected the lives of sex workers; Desperation has kicked in for vulnerable, undocumented workers unable to access help, it has left them with distress, uncertainty, with social distancing rules getting more stringent there is a fear of losing livelihood, health issues troubling, as sex work is intimate by its very nature, and workers are at heightened risk of contracting the virus if they keep working. But without work, as strip clubs close and clients dwindle, sex workers struggle to survive. In the midst of pandemic they are working, nobody wants to work in hazardous profession due to lockdown regulation, but survival is a major issue, they have no support from other parts. The pandemic has brought an era of uncertain days for sex workers, pre-existing inequalities, has disproportionately affected them as the communities live outside societal protection mechanisms, often in financially precarious situations. The cost of Covid-19 pandemic is highly expensive on the part of sex workers, and they struggle to survive it.

The Fragile Existence of Sex Workers During the Pandemic

Paid sexual labour is a form of employment that most people generally don’t think about. From street workers to escorts to exotic masseuses, jobs in the sexual services industry have been disrupted during the coronavirus pandemic that is, if they wish to keep themselves safe. The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979) safeguards the right of female sex workers against discrimination but there is a lack of safety protocols for women. Street prostitution is one of the most dangerous professions in the world, already associated with high risks of abuse and sexually transmitted diseases. Now, adding to those hazards is the coronavirus. The sex workers are plunged into poverty, scarcity of customers, which leads to no remuneration, poor housing conditions and ultimate uncertainty. Being a sex worker is isolating and the social distancing have led to another form of isolation. Extending a red light closure has pushed them into perils of marginality vulnerability and stigmatisation. Desperation forces sex workers into the risk of Covid-19.They are criminalized and left without any governmental support during this era of distancing. With no income, no food, no shelter they are pushed into the brinks of hunger and violence. There is a lack of safety net for the workers. Challenges and barriers to work in these times are quite consequential.

Gendered and Racist Prostitution

Sex workers are often from groups that are already marginalized economically and socially, such as undocumented migrants, people of color, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, some of whom have been pushed out of their families due to homophobia. Sex work may, for them, be one option among bad ones. A new report by the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSWE) notes that sex workers in the continent live in the “economic margins” and often have less savings and government support to fall back on. They are also plans. The ICRSWE report also predicts that hard economic times may mean more people will turn to sex work. Brothels exist everywhere in the social distancing era, the transgender prostitutes do suffer as they don’t have any means of livelihood, due to stereotyping of transgender in our country are completely ignored in some way or the other. With client’s gone women, men and transgender suffer from destitution as their livelihood is affected. They are more afraid of hunger than the virus. In the longer term, as the ICRSWE argues, governments should carry out meaningful consultations with sex workers to establish a framework that “respects their human rights and improves their safety and working conditions.”LGBTQ sex workers do suffer from huge ostracization due to the pandemic. Color has become an ideal type of discrimination among the Trans people and they have been also questioned about the national identity. Homophobia and Transphobia are some of the significant prejudices which are experienced by the sex workers.

The Prostitute, the virus and the City

The pandemic has affected the entire industry and the workers, sex workers struggle to make ends meet as coronavirus spreads as they are at corona cross roads there is an immediate need to address their issues. Brothels are fined for staying open during the pandemic, so some have taken recourse to online mode of prostitution but that too has not been sustainable enough. The pandemic has been tough for many sex workers, and the post lock down era can brings new challenges. On anonymity a sex worker said that taking into account the corona protocols proper hygiene is taken into account. There is a need for empowering the civil society groups who can come forward to rescue them. There are many still active NGO’s which are working but still there is need of proactive steps to empower them from the crisis.