Lufthansa, backed by unions, expands job cuts

Ulrich Rippert

Just days after the chairperson of Verdi, Christine Behle, signaled the union’s agreement to far-reaching concessions, describing resistance in the form of strikes as completely inappropriate, Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr announced that he would accelerate the company’s program of job cuts.

At a press conference in Frankfurt on Thursday, Spohr said the continuation of high losses meant the previously announced elimination of 22,000 full-time jobs had to be carried out faster than originally planned. The company’s promise to refrain from compulsory redundancies could not be maintained, he said, under conditions of an intensified crisis in global air traffic.

Investors reacted enthusiastically, driving up Lufthansa’s share price by 8 per cent.

It is now clear that the state aid for Lufthansa, amounting to €9 billion, is being used to rationalise the company at the expense of the employees, downsizing in order to increase profits. The coronavirus crisis is being used to push through massive cuts in wages, jobs and social provisions.

In doing so, Lufthansa is working closely with the three unions with which it negotiates: the Independent Flight Attendants Organisation (UFO), the Cockpit Pilots Union (VC) and, of course, Verdi, which has always functioned as Lufthansa’s in-house union. All three are represented on the Supervisory Board, with Verdi functionary Behle holding the influential and lucrative position of deputy chair.

The trade unions are significantly involved in all strategic decisions. Many of the savings measures and cutback programmes are designed and developed directly by the trade unions and their economic and social institutes.

This applies to the “ReNew” restructuring programme, which CEO Spohr presented at the press conference. Based on this programme, it has been possible to push ahead with job cuts. By the end of June, the number of employees had already been reduced worldwide by almost 8,300, to 129,400. However, this is only the beginning. In the next two years, productivity must be increased by 15 percent, Spohr said.

All three unions agreed to the German government’s multibillion-euro rescue package and even called rallies to support it. At the same time, they competed with each other in making savings proposals at the expense of the workforce.

UFO signed an agreement with Lufthansa that will save the company half a billion euros by the end of 2023. Applied to the 22,000 cabin employees of the parent company covered by the agreement, this means an average loss of income of €23,000 over three-and-a-half years!

The savings will be realised by suspending wage increases, reducing working hours with a corresponding reduction in wages, reducing management contributions to company pension schemes and cutting jobs. Also, there are “voluntary” measures such as unpaid leave, further reductions in working hours and early retirement. Those affected will thus not only lose a large part of their current income, but also their future pension provision.

By the end of April, Cockpit had already offered annual savings of €350 million at the expense of pilots at Lufthansa, Germanwings, Lufthansa Cargo and Lufthansa Aviation Training. There was talk of foregoing 45 percent of pilots’ salary. In the meantime, the pilots’ union has negotiated a cuts package totaling €850 million through June 2022.

Verdi was directly involved in the government’s negotiations on the Lufthansa rescue package, with Behle, who has been a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) for 27 years, playing a central role. Behle assured the executive board and shareholders that Verdi, too, was prepared to make massive cuts.

In an interview with news weekly Der Spiegel, she stated that the union was and remains ready for negotiations and concessions. “Necessary reductions in capacity are economic decisions that must not be considered wrong from the outset.”

The cuts being offered by the unions are so massive that Behle warned they were “difficult to convey to a workforce without concrete compensation.” She declared, “Just imagine: An employee gives up 20 percent of his salary for two years and still gets laid off as a reward. In the end, he even gets less unemployment benefit. That’s not possible.”

In other words, Verdi and Co. are ready for anything. However, they think the company should, at least verbally, continue to rule out compulsory redundancies to be better able to implement the planned cuts.

Verdi and the two other trade unions have always presented Lufthansa’s original announcement that it will not be making any “compulsory redundancies” for the next four years as a major consideration by the corporation. Now, Lufthansa boss Spohr has made it clear what it really amounts to—nothing! It was always just a declaration of intent that would not be maintained if the economic situation for the company became difficult.

It is quite possible that Spohr’s latest announcement is part of a dirty deal and that Verdi will end up renewing lip service to a temporary renunciation of “compulsory redundancies” in order to push through even more extensive wage and social benefit cuts.

But even if Spohr does not renew his already worthless promise and thousands of workers are summarily dismissed overnight, the unions will not lift a finger. When asked by Der Spiegel whether there was “any chance at all” of “preventing or even striking against large-scale job cuts” not only at Lufthansa but also at other European airlines, Behle replied, “In such a situation, strikes make no sense.” What was needed was “simply reasonable cooperation.”

Several weeks ago, we wrote on the WSWS: “The events at Lufthansa clearly show the bankruptcy of the trade unions and their perspective.” This has now been fully confirmed.

For decades, the trade unions have subordinated the workers’ interests to the profit interests of the corporations, within the framework of Germany’s much touted “social partnership.” In Germany and most other countries, there are no mass dismissals and plant closures that do not bear the signature of the trade unions and their works council representatives. At Lufthansa, the unions are now going so far as to offer the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs and massive wage and social cuts in the name of “rescuing the company.”

No job, no social gain, nothing at all can be defended within the framework of these organisations. In terms of their incomes and social status, the trade union officials, works council leaders and so-called “employee representatives” on supervisory boards stand much closer to the executives and major shareholders than to workers labouring on the assembly line or at office computers. Politically, they are vehement defenders of capitalism, whose bankruptcy is becoming clearer every day of the coronavirus pandemic.

The crisis in aviation cannot be solved on a capitalist basis and a national scale. It requires the expropriation of the companies and their transformation into democratically controlled public institutions that serve the needs of society, not private profit.

Workers in the aviation industry must break with the bankrupt trade unions and build independent action committees that network internationally and across company lines so as to organise the struggle to defend jobs and wages. The WSWS will support them in this.

Over a third of indigenous Canadians struggling to pay for essentials during pandemic

Alexandra Greene

A recently released Statistics Canada report found that over a third of indigenous people in Canada are struggling to pay for essentials during the pandemic. The report, “Economic impact of COVID-19 among Indigenous people,” is part of a series of four studies published by Statscan in recent months that examine how indigenous Canadians have been affected by the social, economic, and health care crises brought about by COVID-19.

These reports seek to encompass the following: the effects on the health and social conditions of indigenous peoples in rural communities; the vulnerabilities they face in urban areas to the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19; the pandemic’s impact on their mental health; and the aforementioned study of COVID-19’s effect on their economic well-being.

Released between April 17 and July 14, the four reports show that over 36 percent of indigenous survey respondents said that the pandemic had a “strong or moderate” impact on their ability to pay for essentials, compared to 25 percent of non-indigenous Canadians said they were similarly impacted.

The reports also revealed that in comparison with the rest of the population, higher percentages of indigenous people say they are struggling financially, distrust the decision-making capabilities of the federal government, and have applied for federal income support.

The results of recent polls conducted by other groups, such as the Native Women’s Association of Canada, support this evidence. Their findings suggest that indigenous women, in particular, are experiencing greater financial struggles than many other Canadians, as well as increased domestic violence rates that directly correlate to this financial hardship.

If anything, the figures presented by Statistics Canada understate the horrific social conditions facing this very oppressed section of the population.

The findings in the reports were gathered using a data collection method known as crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is the process of obtaining information and opinions from a large group of people who submit their data via the internet. In this case, Statscan had those surveyed participate in an online questionnaire. This method automatically excludes a large number of indigenous people who have no or extremely limited internet access due to poverty and homelessness.

A small footnote in the last report in the series makes a disclaimer to this effect, stating, “It is important to note that Indigenous people are often overrepresented among those experiencing precarious housing or homelessness. These populations may not be represented by these crowdsourced data.”

The method used to measure poverty in the report is also outdated. Canada’s official poverty line, the MBM or Market Basket Measure, is based on the cost of a specific “basket” of goods and services representing a modest, basic standard of living. It includes the cost of food, clothing, shelter and transportation, and other items considered necessary for a family to live in contemporary Canada.

The MBM in place at the time these recent studies were undertaken was last updated between 2008 and 2010. An update to this MBM was launched in 2018, but was not completed until June of 2020; the recent studies were published from April through July, and thus for some if not all of the reports, the referenced poverty indicator used was over a decade outdated. Canada has seen a countrywide inflation rate of 19.89 percent from 2008 until 2020, meaning the cost of living is certainly much higher than it was 12 years ago.

The second report in the series states that approximately 24 percent of indigenous people living in urban areas are living in poverty; by comparison, 13 percent of the non-indigenous population in urban areas are in poverty. A stunning example of misinformation, however, sees this data completely excluding those living in the Territories and in on-reserve communities, even though the latter absolutely meets Statistics Canada’s own geographic classification standards for what constitutes an “urban area.”

Statistics Canada justifies this exclusion by saying it is due to a “different context.” Yet it is a very safe bet to assume that if data collected from indigenous peoples residing in the Territories and on reserves were to be included in their reports, the results would highlight a much more acute crisis.

Nunavut, for example, has the highest rate of food insecurity in Canada, with immense wage inequality and criminally high food prices leading 57 percent of the territory’s population to experience severe food insecurity. The most recent census of Nunavut showed that 83.8 percent of the population identified as Inuit.

On-reserve communities facing the threat of COVID-19 are especially important to take into account when attempting to comprehend the effects of the pandemic on indigenous people. For example, 55 First Nations reserves across the country have boil water advisories, but a further six have “do not consume” advisories. Anyone living in this kind of environment will find it virtually impossible to comply with hand washing and sanitation recommendations intended to limit the spread of the pandemic.

If official figures indicate that First Nation reserves have fared comparatively well in preventing the spread of COVID-19 thus far, this can largely be attributed to their relative isolation and local officials deciding to largely seal them off from the surrounding area. Additionally, the lack of health infrastructure makes it likely that there are lower levels of testing among on-reserve populations.

The endemic poverty and social misery confronting the vast majority of native peoples is the direct product of Canadian capitalism. Having destroyed the communal forms of property of the indigenous peoples during the 19th century to establish the basis for capitalist expansion from coast to coast, the Canadian ruling elite shunted natives onto reserves, sought to eliminate their cultures, and starved thousands to death. More recently, the ruling elite’s drive to access land that remains under native control has been intensified thanks to Canadian capitalism’s reliance on resource extraction industries, including oil and gas and the pipelines to export these products to market.

It was in pursuit of this policy that the Trudeau government announced with great fanfare a “nation-to-nation” policy of “reconciliation” with Canada’s indigenous population. In reality, this policy amounts to a push to “reconcile” the increasingly restless native population with capitalist exploitation. To this end, the Liberals have worked since returning to power in October 2015 to cultivate a small but privileged native elite represented by the Assembly of First Nations and other groups with which it can do business. The fact that the horrendous levels of poverty and social misery revealed in the Statistics Canada reports persist provides a damning refutation of the Liberals’ claim to be working to improve conditions of life for the majority of the native people.

Since the pandemic’s outbreak, the federal government has provided only paltry additional support to native Canadians: $303 million to help indigenous communities prepare for the virus in March, and a further $285 million in May to “support the public health response.” This is a drop in the bucket given that successive Liberal and Conservative governments have systematically underfunded health care and other critical social services for indigenous communities both on- and off-reserve.

The working class must mobilize as an independent political force in the struggle for social equality and for a workers’ government that will reorganize the economy along socialist lines to meet the social needs of all, thereby ending the systematic oppression and ongoing mistreatment and disenfranchisement of indigenous people.

Africa’s one million coronavirus cases “the tip of the iceberg”

Stephan McCoy

Africa, a continent of 1.2 billion people, has now recorded 1 million COVID-19 cases and 21,617 deaths. While the virus was initially slow to take off, the number of cases has risen steadily as lockdown measures and restrictions put in place to stem the spread of the coronavirus have been lifted.

Stacey Mearns, Senior Technical Adviser of Emergency Health at the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said, “The doubling of confirmed COVID cases in July across African countries is alarming, but we are worried that this could be the tip of the iceberg.

“For all the countries where we work in the region, testing rates fall far below WHO guidelines. Without testing, there are indeed ‘no cases’—but this does not mean the virus is not spreading unchecked.”

South Africa is by far the worst affected country, accounting for nearly half the infections, with more than 500,000 cases and more than 9,600 deaths. But Mike Ryan, the World Health Organization (WHO)’s top health emergencies expert, warned that South Africa foreshadows what is likely to happen across the continent.

Other severely affected countries include Egypt with 95,000 cases and nearly 5,000 deaths, Nigeria with 45,000 cases and 930 deaths, Algeria with 34,000 cases and 1,273 deaths, Sudan with 12,000 cases and 763 deaths, Morocco with 30,000 cases and 449 deaths, and Ghana with 40,000 cases and 206 deaths.

These figures must be treated with caution since most of the continent lacks adequate testing facilities. While the WHO recommends at least one test per 1,000 people per week, some of the poorest countries, including Niger and South Sudan, have carried out fewer than one test per 1,000 since March, so the number of cases is vastly underestimated.

The number of deaths is also only a rough estimate, as many countries do not have rigorous systems for registering either births or deaths. Even in South Africa, where statistics are broadly reliable, more than 28,000 excess deaths have been recorded since early May, indicating that the real number of COVID-related fatalities is three times higher than the 9,000 confirmed deaths.

With numbers rising all over the continent, Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, said, “We are concerned that ... we will see an increase in cases as we have seen in [other] countries where restrictions have been eased too soon.”

Between June and July, the number of cases grew by 500 percent—more than doubling in the month of July despite “dire testing shortfalls and poor access to data” in most African countries, suggesting that the actual incidence of the disease could be much wider than the official figures suggest.

WHO Secretary-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s warning at the beginning of the pandemic to “plan for the worst and prepare today” and his calls to African governments to “wake up,” fell on deaf ears. Most governments imposed strict lockdowns and curfews that led to severe hardship for millions of people living in overcrowded and insanitary conditions, and dependant for their livelihoods on finding work as day labourers or street traders.

Africa’s health care systems are fragile, to say the least. While the WHO recommends a ratio of 83 nurses per 10,000 people, sub-Saharan Africa has fewer than 20 nurses for every 10,000.

In Côte d’Ivoire there are just six nurses for every 10,000 people compared to 82 in the UK, and in the Democratic Republic of Congo there are 11 nurses per 10,000 compared to 132 in Germany. Rural areas fare worse: only 15 percent of health workers in Angola and 17 percent in South Africa serve rural areas, where roughly half the population lives.

According to Bloomberg , Africa accounts for 3 percent of the world’s health care workers and 1 percent of its financial resources, leaving hospitals overflowing with coronavirus patients, and running short of oxygen and ventilators.

African health systems, ill-equipped, underfunded and understaffed, have left health care workers exposed to the virus. Over 18,000 health care workers have contracted the coronavirus on the continent—while at least 258 have already died—largely due to the lack of personal protective equipment.

According to the WHO, in Liberia, which lost 8 percent of its health care workers to Ebola, 184, or 16 percent, of its health care workers have already been infected. In the small west African nation of Guinea-Bissau, 176, or 9 percent of the country’s 2,000 health workers, have tested positive for COVID-19, while 16 percent in Niger and 15 percent in Sierra Leone have tested positive—compared to 3 percent in the US.

The impact of the pandemic overwhelms and disrupts health care systems and services for HIV/Aids, tuberculosis, and malaria—illnesses that also compound the effects of the coronavirus—leading to an additional loss of life.

East and Southern Africa have the highest rates of those living with HIV. According to Avert, despite containing only 6.2 percent of the world’s population, these regions account for 54 percent of the world’s 20.8 million people diagnosed with HIV.

In 2018, South Africa added 240,000 new infections, while Mozambique (150,000), Tanzania (72,000), Uganda (53,000), Zambia (48,000), Kenya (46,000), Malawi (38,000), and Zimbabwe (38,000) accounted for 50 percent of all new infections. In 2018, a massive 1.1 million children aged between 0-14 years were living with HIV in East and Southern Africa.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that the Sub-Saharan African economy will contract by 3.2 percent this year—while the World Bank predicts the African economies will contract between 2.1 and 5.1 percent.

The worst affected economies are expected to be in South Africa, Nigeria, and Angola—primarily due to their reliance on the export of mineral and oil resources. In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation of 200 million, 70 percent of the population, in both rural and urban areas, have suffered a reduction in income since the pandemic began.

Africa’s economy is heavily dependent upon agriculture, accounting for 23 percent of GDP and 60 percent of economic activity, and on food imports—both hard hit by restrictions and lockdowns. At least $47 billion worth of food was imported in 2018. Trade and value chain disruptions due to world transportation and lockdown restrictions mean these imports could decline by 25 percent, turning the health care crisis into a food security crisis.

Before the outbreak, 670 million Africans were food insecure—with 270 million severely food insecure. The number had increased by 10 percent across 13 countries in southern Africa in the last year.

According to Relief Web , 40 percent of the population in southern Africa will become food insecure as a result of the pandemic and climate shocks. In Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, 17 million are already food insecure due to drought. Even Zambia, considered Africa’s breadbasket, has witnessed “acute food and water insecurity, high chronic malnutrition, livestock diseases, and crop destruction.” As a result of the pandemic at least 2 million people will become severely food insecure. Excluding South Africa, 60 percent of the population in the region relies on small scale farming.

Across the entire continent, at least eight in 10 workers are employed in the informal sector. Some 20 million are set to lose their jobs as a result of the pandemic.

Just 17.8 percent of workers are covered by a social protection scheme, with only South Africa and Zimbabwe offering any social safety net. Even this is minimal, with South Africa excluding some of the most vulnerable workers—such as its 4 million migrants—and failing to deliver much of the promised $2.2 billion support package to many workers.

In Zimbabwe, the National Social Security Authority (NSSA) lost $22 million in a botched deal with a real estate developer. Between 8 million to 10 million Zimbabweans are expected to require social protection during the coming peak hunger season.

US moves to delist Chinese companies from stock exchanges

Nick Beams

The economic conflict between the US and China began as a trade war, then extended to a technology war, and has now escalated into a capital war, with moves by the Trump administration to delist Chinese companies from American stock markets.

The presidential working group (PWG) on financial markets, instructed by Trump in June to undertake an investigation, brought down recommendations on Thursday that would see companies already trading on US stock exchanges delisted from the beginning of 2022, unless US regulators gain access to their audits.

Companies seeking new listings on US markets would have to comply by the end of this year.

The move has been couched in terms of protecting investors in the face of bans by the Chinese government that prevent reviews of listed Chinese companies by the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. But the real reason for the move has nothing to do with investor safety. The dispute has been going on for more than two decades, and the move has been brought forward now as part of the widening economic offensive against China.

The sudden concern for investor safety rings somewhat hollow under conditions where the arcane and secretive dealings on Wall Street, beyond regulatory oversight, have the capacity to plunge US and global markets into turmoil virtually overnight.

The PWG, which includes representatives from the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Exchange Commission, started its deliberations in June. The new offensive came in the wake of a decision in May by the main US federal government retirement fund to scrap plans to move some of its investments into Chinese companies, following criticism by Trump.

Members of the administration said the retirement funds would be exposed to “significant and unnecessary risk” by investing in companies that posed national security and humanitarian concerns and violated US sanctions.

A letter signed by National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow warned against investments because there was a “possibility that future sanctions will result from the culpable actions of the Chinese government with respect to the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Announcing the PWG investigation two months ago, Trump said that “while China reaps advantages from American markets,” the actions of its government to “thwart our transparency laws raise significant risks for investors.” The time had come, he wrote, to “put an end to the practice that has tacitly permitted companies with significant Chinese operations to flout protections United States law requires for investors in United States markets.”

Accordingly, the PWG decided unanimously to recommend that the SEC take steps to “enhance the listing standards on US exchanges” by demanding access to audit working papers. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took the high ground of financial rectitude as he outlined the findings.

“The recommendations outlined in the report,” he said, “will increase investor protection and level the playing field for all companies listed on US exchanges. The United States is the premier jurisdiction in the world for raising capital, and we will not compromise on the core principles that underpin investor confidence in our capital markets.”

But the fact that it has taken two decades for these “core principles” to be invoked makes clear that there are other motivations at work.

One need only recall the findings in 2011 of a Senate committee investigation into the 2008 financial crash, which found that “the crisis was not a natural disaster, but the result of high-risk, complex financial products; undisclosed conflicts of interest; and the failure of regulators, the credit rating agencies, and the market itself to rein in the excesses of Wall Street.”

According to the committee chairman, Carl Levin, the investigation discovered “a financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest, and wrongdoing.”

But no one was jailed, and the speculation that led to the crash has escalated in the 12 years since then, fueled by the endless supplies of money pumped in by the Fed.

The PWG said continued listing on US exchanges would require Chinese companies to provide access by the Public Company Oversight Board to the working papers of the firms carrying out audits, or failing that, due to Chinese government restrictions, a co-audit would have to be carried out by a firm the Public Company Oversight Board determined was able to undertake such work.

Given the interconnections between Chinese firms and Wall Street investors, the PWG said that to “reduce market disruption” there would be a transition period extending to the start of 2022 to allow currently listed companies to comply.

It will also take some time for the SEC to draft new rules and regulations to cover the new stipulations.

The real significance of the latest moves and their underlying motivations can be grasped only when placed within their broader context. They form part of the escalation of the economic and technology warfare being waged by the US against China, which both the Republicans and Democrats are placing front and center of their presidential election campaigns.

This war has been further escalated with the bans imposed by Trump on the very popular Chinese-owned social media app TikTok and the social media platform WeChat.

It remains to be seen whether there will be any push back from Wall Street over the moves to delist Chinese companies, because of the impact it may have on significant US financial interests. But if there is, the administration has a response already prepared.

In major speech last month, Attorney General William Barr issued a broadside against American corporations seeking to curry favor with Beijing and warned they would be subject to foreign interference laws if they became pawns in China’s supposed plans to take over the global economy and dominate the world.

President Trump signs executive orders banning Chinese social media apps TikTok and WeChat

Kevin Reed

In a significant escalation of anti-Chinese aggression by the White House, President Donald Trump issued a pair of executive orders on Thursday banning the mobile apps TikTok and WeChat in the US pending a takeover of the two platforms by American companies within 45 days.

Both social media apps are owned by companies based in China. TikTok, a short-form video sharing platform with 800 million worldwide and 80 million US daily active users, is owned by ByteDance with corporate headquarters in Beijing. WeChat, a multipurpose messaging app with 1 billion worldwide and 19 million US daily active users, is owned by TenCent with corporate headquarters in Shenzhen.

In his “Executive Order on Addressing the Threat Posed by TikTok,” the President states that “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China (China) continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”

Relating the executive orders to presidential national emergency powers, Trump states that “action must be taken to address the threat posed by one mobile application in particular, TikTok.”

Without providing any evidence or detailed proof, the executive order repeats the unsubstantiated assertions made by the President, other White House officials and Congressional leaders that TikTok “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories.”

Exposing the unsubstantiated nature of the official reasons given for banning the use of the apps, the executive orders stop short of claiming—as the President and his advisors have done repeatedly in public over the past three weeks—that the data is being gathered by the Chinese government.

Instead, the document says that the data collection by TikTok “threatens” to allow “the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information” and “potentially” allows the Chinese government to “track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”

The document similarly states that TikTok “reportedly” censors content that the “Chinese Communist Party deems politically sensitive” such as “content concerning protests in Hong Kong and China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.”

One purpose of Trump’s proclamations is to mobilize his right-wing and extreme nationalist supporters with unsubstantiated anti-Chinese talking points. The documents state that the banned apps “may” be used for “disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party, such as when TikTok videos spread debunked conspiracy theories about the origins of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus.”

The two executive orders are virtually identical in form and content with the exception of additional paragraph referring to the electronic funds transfer features of WeChat.

Under the terms of the orders, if the apps are not taken over by an American firm within the 45 day limit, business transactions with the China-based companies will be prohibited. This means, for example, the American companies doing business with ByteDance and Tencent—such as advertisers or Apple, Google and Amazon where TikTok and WeChat are downloaded by users from app stores—must end their relationship with the Chinese firms.

Microsoft Corporation, operating under the direction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) headed by Secretary of the Treasury Stephen Mnuchin, has been in negotiations to acquire the assets of TikTok, initially those in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Now these talks are reported to include the forced divestiture of all assets of the company, including those in Asia and Europe, not including China.

A potential deal between TikTok and Microsoft is now complicated both by the 45-day deadline and the challenges of divesting the firm from its Chinese owners. A report in the Financial Times on Thursday said, “Any eventual deal may take a variety of forms … a long list of obstacles stand in the way of a transaction, including price. … Two people following the talks closely said that the timeframe would be difficult to meet, with one of them going so far as to say it could take between five and eight years to fully separate the software.”

Critics of the ban are pointing to the fact that TikTok and WeChat are just two of many China-based consumer products and apps used in the US. TenCent owns RiotGames, for example, the developer of the massively popular League of Legends video game and is also an investor in Epic Games, the developer of the popular Fortnite.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, said on Thursday of the orders, “I just think it’s a really bad long-term precedent, and that it needs to be handled with the utmost care and gravity whatever the solution is. I am really worried…it could very well have long-term consequences in other countries around the world.”

Beyond the immediate political motivations of the President’s reelection campaign, the aggressive moves by the Trump administration against TikTok and WeChat have significant bipartisan support and express the increasingly desperate and inexorable drive by US imperialism into economic and military conflict with China.

By issuing the executive orders under the auspices of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (1977), the Trump administration is making it clear that these measures are of a preemptive character and in anticipation of a major escalation of a confrontation with China. The text of the executive orders expresses this logic, explaining that the “Department of Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration, and the United States Armed Forces have already banned the use of TikTok on Federal Government phones.”

It is significant that just hours before Trump signed his executive orders, the US Senate voted unanimously for a bill expanding the banning of TikTok for all federal employees. Senator Josh Hawley (Republican of Missouri), who introduced the bill, said of the vote, “I’m encouraged by the bipartisan support we have seen in this body to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable and that includes, by the way, holding accountable those corporations who would just do China’s bidding. And, if I have anything to say about it, we won’t be stopping here.”

The bipartisan support for aggression against China was also expressed in the New York Times which published an article on Friday entitled “Trump’s Orders on WeChat and TikTok Are Uncertain. That May Be the Point,” which extends friendly advice to the Trump administration.

Calling for an extension of the TikTok and WeChat policy, Times trade and international economics reporter Ana Swanson writes, “Other Chinese tech companies could find themselves as the next target of the Trump administration. U.S. officials viewed the executive orders on TikTok and WeChat as a template that could be applied to other Chinese companies, and some have discussed whether services like Alibaba’s Alipay pose a similar national security concern, according to people with knowledge of the matter.”

In an important development on Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that a small company with ties to the US military intelligence establishment embedded its software in hundreds of apps allowing it to “track the movements of hundreds of millions of mobile phones world-wide.”

The report says, “Anomaly Six LLC a Virginia-based company founded by two U.S. military veterans with a background in intelligence, said in marketing material it is able to draw location data from more than 500 mobile applications, in part through its own software development kit, or SDK, that is embedded directly in some of the apps. An SDK allows the company to obtain the phone’s location if consumers have allowed the app containing the software to access the phone’s GPS coordinates.”

Such relationships with intelligence gathering services completely exposes the fraud of US government statements—especially those of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—about the privacy and personal information rights of American citizens. The activities of Anomaly Six LLC and many others like it shows that the largest electronic surveillance operation in the world is the intelligence state of US imperialism.

Massive anger erupts following Beirut port explosion

Jean Shaoul

Security forces used tear gas to disperse anti-government protesters near the parliament buildings in downtown Beirut Thursday, as anger and frustration at successive governments’ responsibility for the massive port explosion erupted.

Demonstrators shouted “Revolution,” the slogan of last October’s protests demanding an end to social inequality, government mismanagement, corruption and the sectarian political system imposed in the aftermath of the Lebanese civil war of 1975–89 that handed the country over to various warlords.

The Beirut explosion and fires have killed at least 157 people and injured 5,000 others, of whom at least 1,000 require hospital treatment in Lebanon’s already overwhelmed health care system, and 120 are in a critical condition.

With many listed as missing on social media, the number of victims will only rise as rescue workers and family members sift through the rubble of the tens of thousands of buildings that have been destroyed or damaged.

Some 300,000 people, 12 percent of the city’s population, were made homeless as the force of the blast blew buildings apart and shattered windows, and fires raged, leaving much of Beirut like a warzone. Officials have estimated losses at $10 billion to $15 billion.

The tragic outcome is an indictment of the entire ruling elite that have for decades enriched themselves at the expense of Lebanese workers, turning Beirut into a playground for the region’s millionaires and billionaires.

The protests grew as thousands took to the streets yesterday, with mass rallies planned for today against the government of Prime Minister Hassan Diab, brought to power earlier this year after months-long protests brought down the government of Saad Hariri.

A former engineering professor at the American University of Beirut with no political affiliations, Diab was appointed to head a “technocratic” government in an attempt to stem protests, following a long line of billionaires and scions of Lebanon’s ruling dynasties in recent years. No more able to resolve the country’s longstanding economic, social and political problems, he defaulted on a $1.2 billion Eurobond in March and is seeking a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Tuesday’s catastrophic explosions engulfed the port area of Beirut and residential areas to the east of the city. The massive blast, one fifth as powerful as that produced by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima 75 years ago, was apparently triggered by welding work on a warehouse hangar adjacent to residential neighbourhoods. The storage depot had been storing 2,750 tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate for years, without proper safety controls.

The powerful chemical, used as mine explosives and in fertilizer production, had been stored there since the authorities impounded a defective ship transporting the cargo from Georgia to Mozambique after its owner absconded, despite orders for its removal and repeated warnings about the danger. A similar explosion in the Chinese port of Tianjin in 2015 killed 173 people and injured hundreds of others.

The government said that 16 officials who knew about the ammonium nitrate, including port and customs officials, judges, and former ministers, were under house arrest and/or subject to a travel ban, but it has not released their names. The central bank has reportedly frozen the accounts belonging to the head of Beirut’s port, the director of Lebanese customs, and five other officials.

President Michel Aoun has set up an investigation into the blast, which will look at whether “external interference” in addition to negligence was a factor, to report within four days. This was a nod in the direction of those who have sought to attribute the blast to the Iran-backed bourgeois clerical group Hezbollah, saying that the warehouse was an explosives dump for the group that prompted an air strike by Israel, with whom Lebanon has been in a state of war for decades.

None of these measures has done anything to reassure the public. Anger against the political elite has only intensified as the government has announced no measures to help the bereaved or the homeless. Such is their distrust of all the politicians and official institutions that relief organisations in Lebanon have called on individuals and governments alike to donate directly through them to bypass the corrupt politicians.

Not one minister has been to visit the stricken areas, let alone comfort the bereaved and homeless families, doubtless in fear for their lives. Politicians who have appeared in public, including former Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Justice Minister Mari-Claude Najm, were booed. Angry demonstrators told Hariri, “Don’t you even think of returning to power,” while Najm was showered with water.

The damage to the port, one of the busiest in the eastern Mediterranean that handles 60 percent of the country’s imports, will have devastating consequences for Lebanon, causing shortages of essential items such as food, fuel and medical supplies. The fire has also damaged or destroyed the grain terminal and the silos that normally hold 85 percent of the country’s cereals, with the potential to cause an immense food shortage.

But the ramifications spread far beyond Lebanon. Beirut is also the port of entry for food and basic commodities heading to Syria, which then transports goods overland to Jordan, under conditions where Israel’s ports are off limits to both Lebanon and Syria and Lebanon’s northern port of Tripoli is too small to replace Beirut.

The country of 6 million people, including 2 million refugees, was already reeling under the impact of its worst ever economic and financial crisis—including a currency that has lost 80 percent of its value in recent weeks, soaring inflation, the doubling of food prices, job losses and widespread and ever-expanding poverty, all exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron, visited the country, the first international figure to do so. This representative of the former colonial power in Lebanon and Syria and suppressor of the year-long “yellow vest” protests in France walked through the historic neighbourhood of Gemmayzeh, home to Lebanon’s wealthy Christian and Sunni citizens.

His mission, ostensibly to offer aid, was in reality to ensure that Lebanon’s elite intervene to organize a counterrevolution against the working class and engineer the elimination of the Iran-backed bourgeois clerical group Hezbollah as a political and military force in Lebanon and Syria.

A report in Haaretz cited those enthusiastically greeting Macron stating, “Mr. President, you’re on General Gouraud Street, he freed us from the Ottomans. Free us from the current authorities.” Others shouted, “Mr. Macron, free us from Hezbollah,” A petition calling for Lebanon to be put under a French mandate garnered 55,000 signatures in 24 hours.

Macron’s promise to deliver urgent international aid was conditional upon the demand for “radical political reform” aimed at channeling the legitimate anger of Lebanese workers behind French imperialism’s local stooges. Claiming he would “never interfere in Lebanese politics,” but seek a “new political deal” from the country’s leaders, pressing hard for change, he said, “I will hold them accountable.”

There is a real danger that in the absence of a revolutionary leadership advancing a perspective for unifying the working class that protests initially opposing sectarian politics and social inequality will again be diverted along reactionary lines as in Egypt in 2011–13.

The demands of the masses of Lebanese workers and youth, like those of workers who have risen in revolt across the region, in Europe, the US and elsewhere, are diametrically opposed to those of their political leaders. They cannot be resolved outside of the struggle by the Lebanese working class alongside their class brothers and sisters internationally for the overthrow of capitalism and the building of socialism in the Middle East and on a world scale.

US coronavirus death toll predicted to reach 295,000 by December

Bryan Dyne

The latest projection from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington estimates that 295,011 people will have died from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States by December 1. This figure is almost double the current tally, which stands after yesterday at more than 164,000.

Chris Murray, the lead researcher on the project, noted in an interview with National Public Radio that the coming onset of fall and winter weather played a large role in the IHME’s projection. “November is a month when we expect the increase of transmission due to seasonality will start to be stronger,” he said. “We would see approximately a 50 percent increase in transmission, everything else being the same.”

While Murray’s team does not publish this figure, the doubling of deaths over the next four months also implies a doubling of cases in the US to about 10 million by the end of the year, up from the current count of nearly 5.1 million cases. Worldwide, there are currently 19.5 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, 6.2 million of which are currently active, and more than 720,000 deaths.

The model has two additional projections: one involving mass mask wearing and another where social distancing restrictions are eased. In the former scenario, if 95 percent of Americans wear a mask, the number of graves that need to be dug will rise by “only” 64,000. In the latter scenario, including sending potentially infected children back to school, the number of men, women and children dead will soar to 391,723.

Such a drastic increase in the death toll further exposes the lie by President Donald Trump that it is safe to reopen schools. This homicidal policy is, however, not limited to Trump and the Republicans. The Democrats are fully complicit in the rush to reopen the schools even as the pandemic rages out of control, just as Democratic governors and mayors have overseen the reopening of businesses and the campaign to force workers back to work without any real protection from the virus.

The essential unity of both parties in forcing workers to resume pumping out profits for the corporations and banks was underscored Friday by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s announcement encouraging the reopening of schools across the state, including in New York City.

As teachers, students and parents are very aware, the pandemic is not abating and opening schools will result in a vast increase in the transmission of the virus, endangering the lives of the students as well as their teachers and family members. The suffering and death caused by the premature reopening of workplaces across the country will be revisited by the Trump administration on the nation’s children.

These grim figures are coming from what has been generally treated by the White House as the definitive projection model. The IHME (funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) and Chris Murray first rose to prominence at the end of March when they predicted that the peak of the disease would be April 15 and that 84,000 would ultimately die. The methodology was heavily criticized at the time and ultimately shown to be a vast underestimation of both the deadliness and duration of the pandemic. In that same vein, their current scenarios are likely lower limits on the true scale of what is to come.

In addition, there are a variety of societal impacts of the disease not measured by the IHME model. As early as March, researchers noted that a significant percentage of survivors of COVID-19 in China had developed persistent heart, lung and brain damage. In the ensuing months, this has been borne out, as more studies reveal that even those with no or mild symptoms can develop coronavirus-related blood clots, muscle weakness, fatigue, strokes and liver and kidney failure. For every patient who dies from the coronavirus, dozens more suffer from a myriad of long-term medical conditions that may plague them for months, years or even the rest of their lives.

Nor is there any accounting of how many have died from other deadly illnesses or conditions. During the height of the pandemic in New York City, dozens of people were found dead in their homes from strokes or heart attacks because the medical system was unable to reach them amid the deluge of severe and critical coronavirus cases that emerged over several weeks.

Others were prevented from getting cancer treatments and other lifesaving procedures, resulting in even more so-called excess deaths. It is likely that the real death toll as a result of the pandemic is 50 percent higher than what is officially reported.

The coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Deborah Birx, has also warned of an increase of coronavirus cases in the coming weeks. Nine cities—Portland, Omaha, Kansas City, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, Washington DC, Baltimore and Boston—as well as California’s Central Valley region are all seeing an increase in the number of tests that are returned positive, indicating that the virus is entrenched and spreading in even more areas of the country.

Birx noted in a leaked phone call with state and local officials on Wednesday that “Although we’re seeing improvements in some of the red states and some of the states have actually moved from being in a red category—that was more than 10 percent test positivity—to under 10 percent, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia moved back into the yellow states status.” This is also reflected in data from CovidExitStrategy.org, which shows that 30 states have “uncontrolled spread of the disease.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top US expert on infectious diseases, concurred with Birx in an interview with CNN. “What Dr. Birx is saying,” he said, “is now is the time to accelerate the fundamental preventative measures that we all talk about: masks, social distancing, avoiding crowds, outdoors greater than indoors, washing hands, et cetera.” He continued, “Those kinds of simple things can actually prevent that uptick from becoming a surge. So, she was warning the states and the cities to be careful, because this is a predictor of trouble ahead.”

What neither mentioned is the disastrous role reopening factories and plants has played in driving up the case numbers in the states mentioned. Auto plants in Kentucky have been some of the major vectors of transmission after they were reopened with only token safety measures in May. Recent data from the Tennessee Department of Health has revealed that more than 7,500 children between the ages of 5 and 18 have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in the months since the state lifted social distancing restrictions.

These are the essential “superspreader events,” a term coined by Birx, which have caused such a sharp rise in cases over the past month. While parties and large gatherings are certainly a way for the disease to jump from person to person, those are encouraged and made possible by the muddled, improvisational and piecemeal approach to reopening by local, state and federal officials. Instead of a comprehensive and coordinated national lockdown to halt the pandemic in its tracks, the piecemeal approach approved by Trump allowed states to lock down (or not) on their own timetable. As a result, since May 1, when states began reopening, 4 million cases and 96,000 deaths have been recorded in the US.

White House, Congress combine to cut off supplemental unemployment benefits

Jacob Crosse

After meeting for less than two hours on Friday, Democratic leaders and Trump administration officials broke off negotiations on a fifth coronavirus stimulus bill with no additional meetings planned.

Two weeks of fruitless negotiations between Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer on one side, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on the other, have yielded nothing.

Despite the social and economic catastrophe millions of workers and their families face following the expiration of the federal $600-a-week unemployment enhancement and the partial eviction moratorium, neither side felt compelled to reach an agreement. While the $2.2 trillion CARES Act can be rightly characterized as the organized theft of trillions of dollars in social wealth by a parasitic ruling class, the extra jobless pay and ban on evictions included in the law have helped over 30 million jobless workers remain fed and housed over the past four months.

Citing the jobs report released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which showed that 1.8 million jobs were added in July, President Donald Trump tweeted out a graphic extolling the supposedly “Great Jobs Numbers!” He also touted them repeatedly in a bizarre press conference at which he threatened to issue an executive order that would temporarily extend the supplemental benefit, likely at a sharply reduced level, as well as the eviction moratorium, but tie these measures to a suspension of the payroll tax, which would halt funding for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

The 1.8 million jobs added in July is nearly one million less than the 2.7 million recorded in June and well below the 4.8 million added in May. Overall, the BLS reported that unemployment fell to 10.2 percent, still the highest level in 38 years. The BLS figure for underemployment, a more accurate representation of the objective situation, which includes unemployment, involuntary part-time work and other considerations, is 17 percent.

Schumer and Ron Wyden (Democrat from Oregon) introduced legislation in early July that would reduce the federal jobless supplement in phases as the unemployment rate in a given state drops: a $100 reduction in payments for every percentage point below 11 percent. This means that had the Democratic proposal been signed into law, the federal weekly benefit would be reduced in most states to $500.

Of the 1.8 million jobs added in July, nearly 600,000 were in leisure and hospitality, the sector of the economy most impacted by the pandemic. The second largest growth sector, roughly 502,000 jobs, was in restaurants and bars. Both of these are low-wage sectors with large numbers of part-time and temporary jobs.

The July jobs report showed that the average hourly pay of blue-collar workers declined by 11 cents in July, a sharp drop indicative of the campaign of job destruction and wage cutting launched by the ruling class under the cover of the pandemic.

The expiration of the $600-a-week federal enhancement has reduced the average income of over 30 million jobless workers by between 60–80 percent, leaving millions unable to afford basic necessities. The Urban Institute estimates that 12.3 million households, or 28 percent of the 43.8 million rental units in the US, were covered by the now expired federal moratorium.

Researchers for the National Low Income Housing Coalition, in a report published August 7, estimated that “30–40 million people in America are at risk” of eviction throughout the rest of the year. The researchers bluntly wrote that the US “may be facing the most severe housing crisis in its history.”

The housing crisis is already here, as attested to by surveys conducted by the Census Bureau beginning in late June through July. Survey results indicate that “some 19 million children (more than 1 in 4) live in a household that is behind on rent or mortgage payments, isn’t getting enough to eat, or both.”

Reporters for the World Socialist Web Site spoke to Gerald from Pennsylvania, who was laid off recently. “I was working as a teller,” he said. “It wasn’t a very good job; I was just making $12 an hour and we didn’t get full time. They didn’t trust us. They would move us around from one branch to another, so we never had the chance to get to know anyone.

“When the shutdown started, at first they said it was just going to be two weeks, but that stretched out longer and longer. I checked my account. I got my last extra payment last week. I only get about $180 from the state and they take taxes out of that.”

“I live with two roommates. One’s still working but the other is like me, laid off. Rents are outrageous and we don't know what we will do. Amazon is hiring. They either already have or will be soon opening a new warehouse. They haven’t called me yet.

“They say they are cutting unemployment because people would rather stay home then go to work. That’s not true. There aren’t enough jobs for everyone who is out of work.

“The politicians had all this time to fix things. Trump thinks he can talk his way out of everything, and they don’t want to listen to the scientists. They can give all this money to the banks and corporations, why can’t we have masks and testing?”

“Before this, I never had to file for unemployment,” said Amanda, a former dog walker and childcare worker who lives in Manhattan. “I was self-employed. I only received $182 a week from the state. I did receive the $600-a-week bonus, which was a real help, but that ended last week.”

Asked about the bipartisan ruling-class drive to force workers back on the job without protection from the virus, Amanda said, “It is completely unethical, and the pandemic is worse now. They are trying to shove people back to work. There are no jobs because the service industry is only half open. I think the [benefit] should be extended until we have a vaccine or a solution to the pandemic.

“Now they [the Democrats and Republicans] are fighting and it will take weeks for them to pass anything. I know the Republicans are talking about a $300-a-week benefit, but only half of the Republicans want to pass that. In cities, you can’t survive off $300 a week. They don’t want to extend it, because if they wanted to extend it, they would have done so.

“Working-class people are seeing that they don’t care about us. More people are waking up now. But they are pitting workers who are employed against the unemployed.”

Speaking about the immediate future, she said: “I think it is only going to get worse. Politicians are pretending the pandemic has gone away so they can open the economy back up. But I do have hope. And if the SEP continues to talk to people and workers, I have a lot of hope. The key is to educate them and to tell working-class people that they can change things.”

German schools reopen despite increase in coronavirus infections

Marianne Arens

Although the number of COVID-19 infections are on the rise in Germany, all 16 state governments are pressing ahead with their plans to reopen schools, endangering the lives of hundreds of thousands of teachers, students and their families. More than 1,000 new infections were reported by the Robert Koch Institute in its daily bulletin yesterday for the first time since May. New hotspots are developing in several regions.

A total of 231 seasonal workers have tested positive for COVID-19 at a vegetable farm in Mamming, Lower Bavaria. This means almost half of the company’s workforce has been infected with COVID-19. In the same area, another 166 workers at a vegetable processing plant tested positive. In Schwäbisch Gmünd in the state of Baden-Württemberg the number of people infected following their attendance at a funeral has risen to 100. In Wiesbaden, 18 attendees at a party tested positive. The test centre at the Rhein-Main airport reported that more than 1 percent of returning tourists have tested positive.

A college-preparatory high school in Germany [Credit: Wikimedia Commons]

As in other countries, the ruling elite bears full responsibility for the resurgence of cases. The renewed spread of the virus is the product of the premature reopening of the economy, which is aimed at sending workers back to their jobs as quickly as possible and reviving the tourist sector. The return to “normal procedure” in schools is part of this ruthless policy, which will provoke a situation similar to that in March and April, when health care systems collapsed across Europe and tens of thousands died.

The situation in Germany has already changed dramatically, warned Ute Rexroth of the Robert Koch Institute earlier this week. No single district or state stands out any longer as an epicentre, she added. There are “unfortunately many affected ... there were between five and 25 new infections over the past week in 112 districts.”

“We are in the midst of a permanent wave,” stated Frank-Ulrich Montgomery, president of the World Medical Association and former head of the doctors’ trade union. He pointed to the high risk of infection and noted that in countries with poor health care systems, between 10 and 12 percent of those infected would die. But even in Germany, where conditions are “a lot better,” a “single-digit percentage of those infected by COVID-19” will die, he added.

According to the Robert Koch Institute’s official figures, 9,168 people have died due to COVID-19 in Germany. Around the world, over 700,000 people have lost their lives.

In an opinion piece for Die Zeit, Christian Drosten, the chief virologist at Berlin’s Charité hospital, warned that a second wave of the coronavirus would develop an entirely different dynamic than the first. The virus will “spread out of the population,” appearing simultaneously nationwide. It would therefore be “harder to trace.” To combat newly developing outbreaks in a more targeted way, all members of “clusters” would have to be quarantined. “Many could be highly infectious without knowing it,” stated Drosten.

These warnings are being ignored by the state governments and all parliamentary parties. As the holidays come to an end, all previously implemented school closures are being abandoned. In order to ensure the capitalists can turn a profit, all established parties, from the Christian Social Union to the Left Party, are pushing for a return to regular in-person teaching. Schools in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania opened on Monday. Hamburg’s schools opened yesterday, and Berlin, Brandenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein will follow next Monday.

Children are often returning to buildings where classrooms are overcrowded, technology is outdated, and sanitary facilities are dilapidated, which increases the likelihood of infections. Already on the second day of school, a case of COVID-19 was confirmed in a student at a sports high school in Neubrandenburg in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

“Initially, sources around the school stated that everyone would stay home on Wednesday,” reported the Nordkurier. But “this order” was subsequently “changed.” There were also “no additional safety measures taken in the school, no extra disinfectant and no stricter requirement for masks in classrooms.”

The official safety and protection measures adopted by the various state governments are not worth the paper they are written on. A teacher from North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populace state, expressed his anger at the approach taken by the state government in a letter to the World Socialist Web Site. As he wrote, the health of all involved “is a high priority in name only,” while in reality it is being trampled underfoot. The North Rhine-Westphalian government’s requirement that masks must be worn in schools, which has been widely praised in the media, is merely “a fig leaf to conceal the total disregard for social distancing.”

Teachers with relatives in at-risk groups are also being exposed to the risk of infection. Teachers with pre-existing conditions do not need to attend school, together with students who have relatives at high risk. However, teachers with relatives at greater risk from the coronavirus are not permitted to do so. “Hardly a word” is uttered in the information leaflet from Education Minister Yvonne Gebauer “about the unnecessary risk of infection created by the normal operating of schools, especially for the large numbers of family members of students and employees. In the view of the ministry, young people don’t play a particularly important role as transmitters of the disease,” wrote the teacher.

North Rhine-Westphalia’s Schools Ministry “is also showing with its approach to testing that it does not understand how the coronavirus spreads,” continued the teacher. “Although teachers can get tested on a voluntary basis every 14 days, the ministry simply ignores the hundreds of thousands of students as transmitters of the virus. No tests at all are being made available for students, even though studies from South Korea, Germany and the US demonstrate that children aged 10 and over spread the virus at least as much, if not more, than adults.”

What the ministry refers to as “adjusted in-person teaching” will, in practice, mean that “students will arrive in large class groups in classrooms that are far too small, but will also be taught in mixed groups for selected subjects and project groups ... after primary school. Following up infections is therefore not only complicated and time-consuming due to the use of public transport, but also because of the varied mixing of groups in the schools,” the teacher noted.

Against all scientific advice, school celebrations, excursions and school trips “are not only being approved, but actually encouraged,” he explained. “What the minister describes as cultural life should promote what she believes is the general enthusiasm over the reopening of schools. For example, in music class, wind instruments can even be played with some (undefined) distancing. Group singing is only allowed outdoors or in holiday camps. ... Sports class will take place without any masks or distancing requirements.”

The latter is even planned to take place in indoor sports halls in the autumn. “Although the changing rooms are small, they should just be used by smaller groups (for lessons lasting 45 or a maximum of 90 minutes!) and what will happen with the showers??? Swimming classes are also back on, including with the use of school buses to get there.” None of this is accidental, concluded the teacher. Politicians are deliberately imposing the reopening policy “to complete their experiment of herd immunity.”