Berlin leads when it comes to child poverty, precarious jobs and mass unemployment

Wolfgang Weber

Berlin is being hit with full force by the economic and social consequences of the Corona policy adopted by the city’s government, a coalition of the SPD, Left Party and Greens.

According to the statistics of the Federal Employment Agency, unemployment in Berlin rose by 5,945 to 215,305 in July, a rate of 10.8 percent. In Germany as a whole the unemployment rate is 6.3 percent. This means Berlin is one of the 20 municipalities with the highest unemployment rate in Germany.

The number of recipients of unemployment benefit II (Hartz IV) rose in July by just under 30,000, to 140,403. Nearly 75,000 (74,902) unemployed persons are also receiving assistance from the Federal Employment Agency. This means that a total of about 430,000 persons and their families in Berlin are in some way dependent on payments from this despised agency.

Already in April (after the announcement of the country’s Corona lockdown in March), a total of 26,500 companies introduced short-time working. In July this figure rose to 38,945 companies with a total of 406,240 employees. Short-time working is associated with a considerable loss of income for employees, while companies can save a large part of their wage and social security costs thanks to state aid.

Most of the redundancies and cases of short-time working hit the service sector, restaurant and hotel businesses, travel and transport companies, and the arts and culture sector. In the German capital, these sectors are particularly significant, since the traditional large-scale industrial enterprises in the east of the city were almost all closed down following the reintroduction of capitalism in the 1990s.

Of the approximately 1,400 industrial firms with around 300,000 workers shortly after reunification, just over half remain today, employing less than a third of the number of workers. Only 7.8 percent of all workers are still employed in industrial concerns in the city-state of Berlin, compared to 30 percent in states such as Baden-Württemberg, or 22 percent nationwide.

Factory closures

Now, some of the large corporations remaining in Berlin, such as Daimler, Bombardier and MAN have announced a new round of layoffs and closures. These attacks on the working class always follow the same pattern: The main industrial union, the IG Metall and its works councils, hold long and intensive talks with management to plan how to implement the cuts step by step. Every jointly agreed step is then celebrated by the union as a “success” because it is not the last step.

For example, on August 3, 2020, the IG Metall announced the elimination of 151 of the remaining 429 jobs at MAN Energy Solutions—part of the VW Group—and, as expected, sold this as “good news” because not all jobs will be cut, thereby “saving the site.” So the union says, but in fact the closure of the plant is unavoidable if the trade union and its works councils’ functionaries are allowed to continue their collaboration with management.

Rolls-Royce, the manufacturer of aircraft engines, plans, together with the union and works council, to eliminate 550 jobs at its Dahlewitz site on the outskirts of Berlin in the course of this year and 2021, i.e., more than a quarter of the existing workforce.

The two Mercedes sites in Berlin-Marienfelde and Ludwigsfelde (2,000 employees) are also both under threat of closure as part of Daimler’s plan to cut 30,000 jobs.

On July 26, ManagerMagazin reported that Daimler CEO Ola Källenius “no longer wants to spare the already very expensive German plants any longer. To a small circle he even questioned the future of the company’s production of vans in Ludwigsfelde, Brandenburg; the formerly highly profitable light commercial vehicles now regularly post high losses.” And further: “...at the top of the board’s wish list: a sale of the component factories in Berlin-Marienfelde and Hamburg, sales of which have already failed twice in the past. Each factory employs 2,500 workers.”

The Ludwigsfelde plant was equipped with a new, highly automated production line in 2006, for manufacture of the Sprinter van. It is one of the largest employers in the region and employs around 2,000 people.

The Canadian aerospace and railway group, Bombardier, whose railway division is currently being taken over by the French manufacturer of high-speed trains, Alstom, is selling its T3 platform for the production of commuter railcars at its site in Hennigsdorf, to the north of Berlin. This operation is the condition for the EU commission to give its approval to the merger. 200 jobs will be lost as a consequence—all with the approval of the works council and trade union—leaving just 250 of the total of 2,500 workers involved in production.

At least 3,000, but possibly up to 5,000 industrial jobs, will be wiped out in the next few months at these five company plants in the Berlin region alone. This is taking place under conditions of rapidly rising unemployment in almost every other sector of the economy.

Self-employed and small businesses face a wave of bankruptcies

After the massacre of industrial jobs in the 1990s, Berlin’s economic output rose during the past 20 years mainly due to the creation of a huge low-wage sector by the SPD-Green federal government led by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (1998-2005) and supplemented by the SPD and Left Party Berlin Senate (from 2001 to 2011). Tens of thousands of mini-jobbers or single self-employed workers earn minimum or below minimum wages in the city’s culture and entertainment industry, building, security or cleaning services. In the restaurant and hotel industry they live mainly from tourism, i.e., as tour guides or as owners of boutiques, snack bars, taxi companies, small travel agencies, etc.

The Investitionsbank Berlin (IBB) counts around 193,000 self-employed persons in its current management report on the economy in Berlin, as well as 167,000 “mini-enterprises,” with a maximum of 10 employees. Another 16,000 firms have a workforce of between 11 and 100. It should be noted that most of the self-employed have had to adjust the price of their services to the conditions of the low-wage sector and widespread poverty in Berlin, i.e., they were in a very insecure financial position, even before the Corona pandemic.

A large portion of these self-employed persons and mini-enterprises are now threatened with the destruction of their livelihoods after tourism came to a standstill as a result of the pandemic. Theatre events and concerts have been cancelled completely for months and, from autumn onwards, can only be carried out with restrictions. Cinemas and museums can only reopen their doors with severe restrictions on the number of visitors. A wave of bankruptcies with devastating consequences for all those affected and their families is feared at the latest when short-time working support expires at the end of September.

Corona: Feeding time for the finance sharks

In this situation, the red-red-green Senate (city-government) of SPD, Left Party and Greens has not the slightest intention of defending jobs in industry, or preventing the ruination of several hundred thousand single self-employed and mini-enterprises. The clientele of the Senate are not such hard-working sectors of the population, but rather property sharks, major bank investors, industrial and service groups, media publishers, as well as the thin but very rich upper-middle class, who rake in huge sums from their managerial posts, ministerial positions, lobbyist associations and consultancy firms located in the city’s economic, financial and governmental hubs.

Typical in this respect is the deal negotiated a few days ago by leaders of the Senate parties with René Benko, the owner of the Signa construction and real estate group. In mid-June, Benko announced the closure of six of the 13 stores of his department store chain, Galeria Kaufhof Karstadt, and his sports store, Karstadt, in Berlin, involving the dismissal of around 900 workers. Berlin’s mayor Michael Müller (SPD), culture senator Klaus Lederer (Left Party) and economics senator Ramona Popp (Greens) then held talks with Benko, ostensibly aimed at rescuing the department stores. In reality, however, the senate fed Benko the shark red meat in order to persuade him to stay in the city.

Following talks, the Senate, together with the trade union Verdi, spread a “success story” in the press: i.e., that four out of the six department stores had been saved. In truth, Benko was not prepared to promise the continuation of any of the department stores for more than five years, and for three stores, he was unwilling to commit for more than three years. He received massive concessions for these lousy promises, which will secure him additional billions of euros of profit for many years to come.

The Senate trio assured him that they permit him to build giant high-rise buildings on Alexanderplatz, Hermannplatz and opposite Breitscheidplatz—i.e., in the very best business locations in the city—against all existing building regulations and resolutions. The Senate has, as Müller, Lederer and Popp arrogantly stated, taken this operation out of the hands of local parliaments and authorities, which are in charge of such issues, according to the constitution.

In March, the German coalition government of the CDU and SPD, with the support of the Left Party and the Greens, launched its €756 billion aid programme to rescue the banks, large corporations and stock exchange speculators in response to the pandemic. Now these same parties are stuffing additional billions down the throats of the rich at a state level, instead of spending the money on massive public investment programmes to eliminate unemployment and poverty.

Berlin: the capital city of poverty

The mini-programme of emergency aid for small businesses and the self-employed launched by the Berlin Senate at the end of March was a drop in the ocean, and only for those able to apply for funds in the first place.

At the same time, the Berlin Senate has pulled out all the stops to ruthlessly implement its policy of opening up schools and day-care centres in order to ensure the fastest possible return to work by workers in the city’s companies and authorities, regardless of the health risks and consequences for those affected and their families.

Above all, the poorer strata of the population, living in cramped housing conditions, will be particularly affected economically and in terms of their health by the inevitable increase in Corona infections, and they cannot expect a cent in support from the Berlin Senate or the German government.

This is clear from the relevant figures since the beginning of the pandemic. Berlin has been a centre for poverty and homelessness since capitalist reunification, but the situation worsened further following the measures taken by the SPD and Left Party federal government (2001 to 2011). In recent months, however, the spread of poverty has increased far above the national average.

The number of people dependent on basic subsistence payments (Grundsicherung) has increased by 44,000 to 529,471 (as of the end of July). This represents over 11 percent of all people in Germany dependent on Hartz-IV payments. In addition, there are thousands of people who have applied for benefits for the first time, but have not yet received any money.

The figures on child poverty are shocking. Single parents, mostly mothers, have been the first and hardest affected by the layoffs since March. Most single parents are employed as mini-jobbers or have irregular employment and can be dismissed on the spot. Nationwide, half a million mini-jobs were lost by the end of April alone, and it is estimated that between 75,000 and 100,000 such jobs have been lost in Berlin. This has plunged many families and single parents into even greater poverty.

According to a study published by the Bertelsmann Foundation at the end of July, more than 161,300 children in Berlin are already living in poverty, i.e., 29 percent of all children in the capital city. The national average is 13.8 percent. There are big differences between different districts of the city. For example, 38.6 percent of residents under 65 years of age in the working-class district of Wedding are dependent on Hartz IV payments. In the neighbouring area, Prenzlauer Berg, a home for the affluent middle class, the figure is only 5 percent.

The Left Party—champion of social inequality

These blatant social discrepancies have not come out of the blue, but have rather been systematically created in the last 30 years since the reunification of Germany and the restoration of capitalism in the East—by all coalition governments in the city, together with the trade unions.

The Left Party, however, has a special responsibility. After 40 years of Stalinist rule in the GDR, the SED, the predecessor of the Left Party, rolled out the red carpet 30 years ago for the entry of capitalists and their methods of exploitation in the East. Its functionaries played an active role in the privatisation and closure of a large proportion of the companies of the former GDR, thereby giving the starting signal for the unrestrained enrichment of the banks and insurance companies, real estate sharks and stock market speculators in both East and West in the subsequent decades.

The first official act of the Senate coalition of SPD and PDS, the renamed SED, 20 years ago was to plunge the city into huge debt by handing over €20 billion to save the Berliner Bankgesellschaft from bankruptcy and stop leading Christian Democratic politicians involved in the banking scandal from going to prison.

Over the next two decades, these funds were recovered, but by severe cuts in social spending, and salaries and wages in the public sector. The red-red Senate even quit the labour contract association of public employers in order to be legally allowed to impose lower wages than those of collective bargaining agreements.

Schools, hospitals, city infrastructure all suffered at the hands of the Left Party, together with its cronies in the SPD, the Greens and the CDU. Teachers were stripped of their status as civil servants and employed on the cheap or replaced by even cheaper non-qualified staff. Nursing staff and care workers were put under enormous pressure by austerity budgets and fobbed off with cheap wages. The brutal policies of the federal government’s Agenda 2010, aimed at the unemployed and their families, pensioners and the sick, were slavishly implemented by the red-red Senate and its successors.

Thus, mass unemployment, precarious jobs, increasing child poverty and poverty in old age, homelessness—all of these social cancers are not the product of the Corona pandemic, but have been merely intensified and brought to the surface by it. They are the result of the capitalist reunification of Germany 30 years ago and the brutal exploitation rolled out thereafter by the Left Party, SPD, Greens and CDU.

Millions of Indian workers strike to protest attacks by Modi government amid COVID-19 pandemic

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Expressing the growth of popular anger towards the anti-worker policies of the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and its ruinous mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of workers have joined strikes and protests in recent weeks to oppose the government’s attacks on their wages and working conditions.

Millions of scheme workers, mainly Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) and those attached to the Anganwadi network (rural child care centres that are part of the Indian public health care system), took part in a three-day strike from August 7 to 9. Workers were opposing draconian changes to labour laws and disinvestment in and privatization of PSUs (Public Sector Units). They also demanded the transfer of 7,500 rupees to the bank accounts of all non-income tax paying families for six months, financial aid for farmers, a halt to retrenchments and closures, the payment of lockdown wages and the reinstatement of workers thrown out of work during the lockdown, and the provision of all families with subsidized grain and other foodstuffs.

The action, called by 10 Central Trade Union federations (CTUs), was the third nationwide strike or protest within three months. There was a nationwide strike on May 22 against major attacks on labour rights by different state governments. A nationwide protest on July 3 opposed the Modi government’s pro-investor reforms, which the prime minister has vowed to dramatically intensify.

Showing the ruling elite’s fear of the protest movement, police arrested and detained participants in many states, according officials of the CTUs.

A joint statement issued prior to the August 7-9 protests by the 10 CTUs noted the conditions faced by the scheme workers, many of whom are frontline workers in the fight against COVID-19: It complained that “none” of the “minimum requirements” for their safety and security, including personal protective equipment (PPE), insurance and risk allowance, are being provided by the government.” As a result “many of the workers have died” due to COVID-19.

The strike was joined by close to 90,000 ASHA workers in Bihar, who had been on strike since August 6 demanding PPE and the payment of delayed wages. One ASHA worker, Sarita Roy, told the Hindustan Times on August 8 that the workers are “not provided with the (protective) equipment even as we carry out all immunization tasks and even document maternity rates.” They are paid just 5,000 rupees ($US67) a month. However, even this paltry sum has not been paid for the last four months.

According to figures from the CTUs, nearly 10 million workers participated in the latest nationwide three-day action, which underscores the mounting popular anger towards Modi and his right-wing BJP. The growth of working-class struggles is not just an Indian phenomenon, but rather part of a worldwide upsurge of class struggle as workers express their opposition to social inequality and the ruling elite’s homicidal drive to reopen the economy as the pandemic continues to rage.

The strike took place as the spread of the virus across India continued to accelerate. Over the last two weeks, India has reported the highest number of daily cases in the world, surpassing the US and Brazil, according to the World Health Organisation.

India’s total reported COVID-19 cases has now surpassed 2.7 million. On August 17, the death toll surpassed the grim milestone of 50,000. Roughly 900 deaths are being reported on a daily basis.

The week of August 10-16 was the deadliest week of the pandemic in India thus far, with 434,003 new infections (an increase of 5.9 percent from the week before) and 6,555 deaths (an increase of 4.4 percent from the previous week). From August 1 to August 17, 1 million new COVID-19 cases were recorded.

The rapid spread of the disease is the direct product of the Indian ruling elite’s adoption of a murderous policy of “herd immunity.” During Modi’s two-month-long, ill-prepared lockdown, the ruling elite failed to use the time to do anything to strengthen the country’s chronically under-resourced public health care system. The government also refused to provide financial assistance to tens of millions of impoverished workers in the informal sector who lost their jobs, plunging them into destitution. Having created conditions of unbearable social misery for tens of millions of workers, the government began a premature and reckless reopening of the economy so as to allow big business to begin extracting profits from the super-exploited working class.

Following in the footsteps of capitalist governments around the world, the Modi government has seized on the COVID-19 pandemic to carry out long-planned “economic reforms” aimed at intensifying the exploitation of the working class, attracting international investment, and boosting the wealth of India’s super-rich. Measures being implemented include the privatization of public services, further cuts to social spending, and changes to labour laws, including attempts to lengthen the workday from 8 to 12 hours.

By forcing workers back into factories and other crowded workplaces with virtually no safety protection, Modi and the state governments, many of them opposition-led, bear responsibility for mass workplace infections and deaths. Reuters reported in July that workers at Bajaj Auto, India’s biggest exporter of motorbikes, were demanding the temporary closure of one of its plants after 250 employees tested positive for the coronavirus.

This is merely one example of the mounting opposition among various sections of the working class to the criminal indifference of the entire ruling elite towards their lives. The NewsClick website listed on August 6 at least 17 major workers’ protests over the preceding four months. They include:

• On June 1, over 50,000 women protested across the country demanding income support for needy families and grain.
  
• On June 25, nearly 100,000 ASHA workers held protest demonstrations across various states demanding better protective gear, better salaries and service conditions.
  
• On July 2-4, over half a million coal workers participated in a three-day strike against the government’s opening up of coal mining to private investors.
  
• On July 13, over 200,000 construction workers protested against the merging of a law and fund specifically meant for their protection on the job with the general Labour Code and the fund’s diversion to other purposes.
  
• On July 23, a workers-peasants’ joint demands day was observed with over 200,000 people participating. They were protesting against proposals to privatize agricultural trade, scrap labour laws, and for basic needs.
  
• On August 4, over 80,000 defence production employees held demonstrations at the gates of their production units protesting against the impending privatization ordered by the Modi government.
  
• On August 5, thousands of road transport workers held protests across India demanding the revocation of a new law that favours big transport companies over small providers.

Each week brings new protests. On August 10, about 700,000 truck and small commercial vehicle operators in Madhya Pradesh went on a three-day strike against a tax hike on diesel. They also demanded insurance coverage for truck drivers, as they are exposing themselves to health risks while operating during the pandemic.

Under such explosive conditions, the 10 CTUs which called the three-day strike of scheme workers earlier this month did so with the aim of maintaining control over the mounting social opposition and directing it behind their own reactionary political agenda. The CTUs involved in calling the strike were the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC), which is affiliated to the opposition Congress Party, the Stalinist Communist Party (Marxist) or CPM-led Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), the Stalinist Communist Party of India or CPI-led All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), and the right-wing Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam or DMK-led Labour Progressive Federation (LPF).

In a display of their right-wing orientation, which includes demands for a dialogue with the BJP government, they invited the Bharatiya Mazdur Sangh (BMS), which is affiliated to the Hindu supremacist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to participate in the joint union action, but it declined.

A joint statement issued by the CTUs on July 18 noted that COVID-19 has resulted in 140 million workers losing their jobs within three months. This figure increases to 240 million if casual employees and contract workers are included. The statement pointed to the catastrophic outcome of these job losses, including an increase in malnutrition and hunger related deaths. It also warned of depression and suicides among desperate jobless workers.

In spite of these horrific conditions, all the CTUs could muster was a pledge to submit a petition to the Modi government calling for improvements. Needless to say, such appeals will fall on deaf ears.

Sudanese refugee drowns attempting to cross English Channel

Robert Stevens

A Sudanese refugee was found dead on Wednesday morning, washed up on the beach of Sangatte, near Calais in France. It emerged that he died after attempting, with another refugee, the treacherous Channel crossing from France to the UK.

The victim, initially identified as a 16-year-old boy, has since been named as Abdulfatah Hamdallah. Also known as Wajdi, the Guardian reported that family members told its reporters that he was 22. The family members said he had his claim for asylum in France refused recently, and risked the dangerous sea crossing seeking a better life than the “horror” he had lived in. He reportedly told a cousin in Calais that he might not see him again.

Abdulfatah Hamdallah (Credit: Facebook)

It is understood that the two refugees attempted the crossing in a tiny three-foot inflatable dinghy and were using shovels as oars. According to reports, a shovel blade accidently punctured the boat. The Guardian cited Charles Devos, head of a Calais rescue service, who said the boys were in “a small boat that you can find in supermarkets and that you inflate by mouth... Crossing the Channel in that was impossible. The wash from ferries passing at 22 knots would have capsized it.”

The Mail reported, “A night fisherman on the shoreline spotted the boat sinking and immediately called the emergency services.”

The Guardian reported, “At 1.09am, a regional search and rescue operational centre was alerted that a migrant was on the Sangatte beach. In a state of hypothermia, he was immediately treated and taken to hospital in Calais.” In initial statements, the refugee confirmed that the dingy had capsized and his friend was still in the water and could not swim. “At 8am French time, the border police were told a ‘lifeless body’ had been found on the beach at Sangatte.”

The Times reported, “A beach walker found the body after dawn at Sangatte, near the mouth of the Channel tunnel. … The dead youth was identified by his friend and from his passport, which was on his body.”

Such desperate measures are commonly undertaken by refugees and migrants fleeing the horrors of their devastated homelands. Those attempting the journey have even done so in garden paddling pools. One man attempted to swim to the UK through the 21-mile Channel with empty lemonade bottles strapped to his body as a makeshift flotation device. Kayaks and small wooden rowing boats are being increasingly used in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

The death of Abdulfatah and near death of his companion are another tragedy resulting from the displacement of millions of people throughout the Middle East and Africa by imperialist-inspired wars over resources, geopolitical advantage and famine.

The population of South Sudan has suffered years of civil wars since declaring independence from Sudan in 2011. South Sudan has around about 1.6 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), some living in densely packed tent camps inside UN peacekeeping bases. A further 2.2 million refugees are displaced in neighbouring countries. Uganda has over 1.6 million refugees, three quarters of them from South Sudan. More than half of the population of oil-rich South Sudan faces acute food insecurity, while the leading causes of death are treatable diseases and conditions like malaria, tuberculosis and diarrhoea.

The death sparked a war of words between the French and British authorities over which country was responsible. The MP for Calais, Pierre-Henri Dumont, asked, “How many more dramas will it take for the British to regain an ounce of humanity? The inability to apply for asylum in Great Britain without being physically present is causing these tragedies.”

Speaking to Channel 4 News, UK Conservative MP Tim Loughton declared, “It is appalling that the French are allowing people to endanger their lives. … That is where the lack of humanity is, I’m afraid.”

As soon as these crocodile tears were shed, both countries got down to the agenda of how best to strengthen their borders to stop migration. The media were on hand to lend support, with fascists utilising the comments section of a Daily Mail article on Abdulfatah’s deaths to rejoice.

This month, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel created a new post, the Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, tasked with making the “Channel route unviable for small boat crossings.”

Marlène Schiappa, France’s citizenship minister, claimed in a tweet that the death of Abdulfatah was an “unbearable tragedy [that] moves us even more with [French Interior Minister] Gérald Darmanin against smugglers who take advantage of the distress of human beings.”

Responding to Schiappa, Patel tweeted, “This horrendous incident serves as a brutal reminder of the abhorrent criminal gangs and people smugglers who exploit vulnerable people.”

The fact is there were no people smugglers involved in the latest tragedy, with the lies of Schiappa and Patel aimed at absolving their respective governments of any responsibility and justifying a yet more brutal clampdown on migrants.

A few hundred desperate people attempting boat crossings from France to the UK have elicited hysteria about the country being subjected to an “invasion” in the pages of the right-wing media. Earlier this month, the UK’s Ministry of Defence was mobilised to deploy RAF surveillance aircraft to assist the Border Patrol off the UK’s south coast, and the intervention of the Royal Navy was demanded.

The vitriol is aimed at whipping up the most backward, right-wing layers through the scapegoating of immigrants and asylum seekers for all social ills as the government seeks to scale up its attacks on the working class.

Last Sunday, a thug attacked a migrant on a beach at the village of Kingsdown, near Deal in Kent. The assault took place only minutes after the migrant landed in a rubber dinghy. Only hours previously, Natalie Elphicke, Conservative MP for Dover & Deal, demanded that the government “stopped and returned” migrant boats back to France. She shed crocodile tears for the death of Abdulfatah when, just hours before after watching eight migrants come ashore at Cliffe, she said, “This is unacceptable that people are breaking into Britain in this way.”

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has spent weeks whipping up the same xenophobic sentiment against an “invasion” of the English coastline by a few people in dinghies and rowing boats.

There is nothing more degrading and hypocritical in this context than the handwringing by the liberal media and various Labour MPs over the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees. They are all in agreement that what is taking place with the Channel crossings is “illegal” and, at most, can only bring themselves to demand “safe and legal” routes to the UK to be enforced by a ferociously anti-immigrant Tory government.

It is only a few months ago that the Labour Party and nominally liberal figures at the Guardian were up in arms as Johnson announced a tightening of immigration policy that shored up the “hostile environment” agenda of his predecessor, Theresa May.

The agenda now being embraced by the entire political establishment can only facilitate further horrors and more deaths. Underscoring the scale of the catastrophe facing immigrants and asylum seekers, the death of the Sudanese young man took place as the mass deaths of at least 45 people, including five children, took place off the coast of Libya. They perished on a boat headed towards the EU southern border. This was the highest death toll yet among the more than 300 who have already died this year trying to reach Europe from Libya. The deaths continue to mount, with Spain confirming on Wednesday that the bodies of 10 migrants had been found in a semi-submerged boat near the Canary Islands.

Israel launches airstrikes against Gaza and threatens war

Jean Shaoul

Israeli warplanes bombed the besieged Gaza Strip for an eighth successive night Tuesday in response to the launching of dozens of incendiary balloons and rockets into southern Israel by Palestinian militants.

The airstrikes and drone attacks came as Israel threatened Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the besieged Palestinian enclave, that it was risking “war” by failing to stop the balloons. The balloons have caused small fires, no casualties and almost no damage.

The Israeli airstrikes, which according to military sources, targeted “a military base, underground infrastructure and observation posts belonging to the Hamas terror group,” included Hamas observation posts near al-Maghazi and al-Bureij refugee camps and the southern town of Khan Younis.

A Palestinian boy inspects the damage in his family home following Israeli airstrikes in Buriej refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, Saturday, Aug. 15, 2020. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

They also hit a United Nations-run elementary school in al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, where around 1,000 children were present. There were no reports of casualties.

On August 18, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that his government would make no distinction between rockets and airborne arson attacks by balloons, warning that “There could be another major flareup.”

Benny Gantz, Israel’s defense minister and deputy prime minister, warned, “Hamas is playing with fire, and I will make sure it turns on them.”

On Tuesday, President Reuven Rivlin, on a visit to southern Israel to talk with firefighters, said, “Terrorism using incendiary kites and balloons is terrorism just like any other.” He added, “Hamas should know that this is not a game. The time will come when they have to decide... If they want war, they will get war.”

Israel’s politicians are preparing for war on the besieged Palestinian enclave, even as they up the ante against Hezbollah in Lebanon in the wake of the devastating Beirut port blast, and against its primary target, Iran, threatening a wider conflagration.

The continuous outbreaks of violence are the inevitable byproduct of the 13-year-long Israeli siege of Gaza that has turned the enclave into an open-air prison for its two million inhabitants.

The siege—aided and abetted by Egypt and the Palestinian Authority—has devastated Gaza’s economy, limiting the entry of food, pharmaceuticals and essential commodities as well as access to basic services. Also blocked is the flow of construction materials needed to rebuild Gaza’s infrastructure, much of which was damaged or destroyed in Israel’s murderous assaults in 2008-09, 2012 and 2014.

Living conditions in Gaza are atrocious. Half the population is unemployed, and poverty is endemic. A 2012 UN report predicted that Gaza would become uninhabitable by 2020, given the extreme overcrowding, collapsed infrastructure, lack of electricity and water, and the poor sanitary conditions. Gaza needed 1,000 more doctors. Conditions have further deteriorated after Washington cut off all US aid to the Palestinians through its funding of the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA).

In January, the Israeli rights group B’Tselem described the unprecedented health crisis in Gaza, as its barely functioning hospitals try to deal with the horrendous injuries and amputations inflicted on the Palestinians by Israel’s armed forces during the weekly “Great March of Return” that started two years ago.

As yet, Gaza has been spared the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, having reported 81 cases and one death, with none due to community transmission, thanks to its isolation. But the lockdown has exacerbated the economic hardship and suffering.

Eighty percent of Gazans already rely on humanitarian aid, with the World Bank expecting poverty in Gaza to increase from 53 percent to 64 percent due to cuts in public sector wages across the Palestinian Territories and the impact of the lockdown restrictions.

Israel has rejected numerous international calls, including from Nickolay Mladenov, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, a European Parliamentary delegation, and Israeli High Court Justice Elyakim Rubenstein, for it to ease the blockade in the light of the pandemic.

Michael Lynk, UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian territories, stressed, “The legal duty, anchored in Article 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, requires that Israel, the occupying power, must ensure that all the necessary preventive means available to it are utilized to ‘combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics.’”

With no future in Gaza, particularly for its young graduates, 32 percent of Palestinians said they want to emigrate because of the economic, political, and social situation, according to a recent poll.

The recent escalation in rocket and incendiary balloon attacks followed accusations by Hamas that Israel had failed to implement an agreement reached in October 2018. The deal was aimed at easing the blockade and stipulated the establishment of two industrial zones east of Gaza City to create jobs for tens of thousands of unemployed Palestinians. The agreement also included electricity and water projects, as well as projects aimed at increasing the volume of Gaza’s imports and exports.

On August 12, Gantz halted fuel transfers into Gaza, restricted its fishing zone to eight nautical miles from 15, and halted all transfer of goods through the Erez land crossing. This has forced Gaza’s only power station to stop producing electricity, reducing the Palestinians’ already meagre daily power supply of 8 to 12 hours to just 3 or 4 hours, amid the intense heat of summer. Gaza’s only remaining source of electricity is that supplied directly by Israel. Egypt stopped providing electricity in February.

The International Committee of the Red Cross warned that this would create problems for Gaza’s limited and ill-equipped hospitals and access to a clean water supply. The Gaza Neonatal Network said that the frequent electricity outages were threatening the lives of more than 100 newborn babies currently in intensive care incubators.

The latest attack on Gaza has been spurred on by the protracted political crisis in Israel, where the fractious coalition of Netanyahu’s far right Likud bloc and Gantz’s Blue and White party, formed after three inconclusive elections within a year, could blow apart. This could set the stage for fresh elections if the Knesset fails to agree a two-year budget by Monday.

There is increasing opposition within the country to the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic that has seen unemployment rise to 21 percent, the government’s failure to provide PPE for its nurses and medical and social workers—who have taken strike action in support of their demands—and the reopening of schools that has led to an increase in infections. Among the most economically unequal advanced economies in the world, Israel has one of the highest poverty rates within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

For Netanyahu, who faces weekly protests calling for him to step down in the wake of his indictment on charges of bribery, corruption, and breach of trust in three separate cases, a war would provide a convenient mechanism for deflecting immense social tensions outward.

The air strikes come in the wake of the US-brokered deal between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, aimed at cementing an alliance with the Sunni Arab states against Iran. Hamas, along with Hezbollah in Lebanon, is routinely portrayed as part of Iran’s “destabilizing presence” in the region.

Amid the orchestrated demands for Hezbollah to be removed from its government role—based on blaming the Shia group for the explosion that devastated Beirut—Israel, backed by the US, is demanding that the mandate for UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, either be changed or ended at an upcoming UN Security Council vote on August 31. Washington maintains that it must stop Hezbollah from violating UN Resolution 1701 by attacking Israel or give way to another military policing force. Eugene Kontorovich, director of international law at the Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum, told Germany’s Algemeiner that UNIFIL “serves as Hezbollah’s de facto human shield, limiting the [Israel Defense Forces] freedom to manoeuvre in a potential conflict.”

Amid French occupation pro-imperialist coup topples Malian president Keïta

Alex Lantier

A military coup Tuesday toppled Malian President Ibrahim Bouba Keïta, who is widely hated for his complicity in the bloodbath that has followed the French occupation of Mali begun in 2013. The opposition June 5 Movement-Rally of Patriotic Forces (M5-RPF) linked to imam Mahmoud Dicko is organizing celebrations today of Keïta’s ouster in the capital, Bamako.

The sharpest warnings must be made about the class character of this coup. Led by a self-proclaimed National Committee for Popular Salvation (CNSP), it is not opposed to the French occupation, which has dragged Mali into bitter ethnic conflicts that Paris uses to divide and rule the country. The CNSP has declared its loyalty to the French intervention force, Operation Barkhane. The coup is aimed at opposition among the workers and oppressed masses of Mali and all of Africa against imperialism and the failure of official attempts to halt the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Malian news site Bamada, the mutiny began around 8a.m. Tuesday, at the Kita army base, from which the 2012 coup that paved the way for the French intervention in 2013 was launched. The mutineers put government districts in Bamako on lockdown, called on public service workers to go home, and entered discussions with other army units.

Around noon on Tuesday, the mutineers were fighting loyalist troops of the Anti-terrorist Special Forces (Forsat), who had cracked down on previous M5-RPF demonstrations in Bamako. Reports on social media stated initially that the mutineers had been arrested, as well as Defense Minister Dahirou Dembélé.

Dembélé, who became head of the military after the 2012 coup, is now reportedly a leading figure in the CNSP junta.

Around 1p.m. Tuesday, Oumar Moriko, the leader of the SADI (African Solidarity for Democracy and Independence) party, linked to France’s petty-bourgeois New Anti-capitalist Party, launched a public appeal to Bamako youth to mobilize behind the putschists.

As youth sacked and burned the residences of several leading figures of the Keïta regime, several military units joined the mutiny. At 4p.m., Keïta as well as Prime Minister Boubou Cissé were arrested and interned at the Kita base. They then announced that they were in talks with Dicko and that they would make a public statement that evening.

It was around midnight that Keïta gave a brief, five-minute address announcing his “decision to leave all my positions effective immediately, and with all the legal consequences: the dissolution of the National Assembly and that of the government.”

While the M5-RFP presented this putsch to the Malian people as a popular uprising against crimes committed during the Mali war under Keïta’s presidency, the CNSP was busily reassuring Paris. CNSP spokesman Colonel Ismaël Wagué spoke at around 3a.m. Wednesday to insist that order would be restored in the face of growing demonstrations against French troops in Mali, and that the CNSP would work with the Operation Barkhane forces to suppress internal opposition.

Wagué declared, “For some time, politico-social tension has prevented our country from working properly… Mali is sinking ever day further into chaos, anarchy and insecurity, and it is the fault of the men tasked with overseeing its destiny.” Wagué declared that the CNSP wanted “all trade union and socio-political groupings to act with calm.”

He raised the violent inter-ethnic attacks and tensions that have accompanied French occupation troops’ operations in Mali: “Entire villages are burned, peaceful citizens are massacred, and every day we must grieve for losses among our comrades-in-arms. Horror has become a daily event in the lives of Malians.”

Wagué stressed that the Malian army would continue its close collaboration with French and German troops of Operation Barkhane, as well as their UN (Minusma) and Sahel auxiliary forces: “We ask sub-regional and international organizations to accompany us in seeking Mali’s happiness. The Minusma, the Barkhane force, the G5 Sahel force, the Takuba force are still our partners for stability and the restoration of security. Speaking to my comrades in arms, I ask you to ensure the continuity of your police and military missions.”

European authorities have barely masked their support for the coup. The UN Security Council adopted a pro forma declaration criticizing the putschists and calling for the re-establishment at some point in future of an elected government. Their statement emphasizes “the urgent necessity to re-establish the rule of law and to go in the direction of a return to constitutional order.”

French President Emmanuel Macron met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel whose troops are deployed to assist Operation Barkhane. He insisted that criticisms of the coup should not stop French troops’ collaboration with the Malian army. Having himself briefly criticized the coup, he added, “But it not our task to substitute ourselves for Malian sovereignty… Nothing should distract us from the struggle against the jihadists.”

The French daily Le Monde almost applauded the coup, writing in an editorial, “It is an understatement to say that there are no regrets in Paris about ‘IBK’’s fall.” Complaining of the “wave of protests” now engulfing Mali, the daily added that the coup against Keïta had been carefully prepared: “The visit in Bamako last July of five West African heads of state come to help their Malian colleague to find a solution—no doubt themselves fearing that the protests could be contagious—ended in failure. From then on, ‘IBK’’s days were numbered.”

An international wave of strikes and demonstrations against the neo-colonial interventions of France and its European allies is shaking Africa. The strikes of Malian teachers and railworkers, as well as several demonstrations demanding the withdrawal of French troops had further staggered the Keïta government. Last year also saw a mass movement of workers and youth in Algeria against the French-backed military regime, and protests are growing in Ivory Coast against President Alassane Ouattara, installed by a French military intervention in 2011.

This international opposition to imperialism among workers and oppressed masses finds no genuine reflection in the African political establishment. Struggling against imperialist war requires building an international socialist movement in the working class, where workers in struggle against imperialist war and plunder in Africa would appeal to the class solidarity of European workers in struggle against social austerity and police-state forms of rule at home.

The cynical role of SADI, Dicko, and the M5-RFP is a warning: they are complicit in a pro-imperialist putsch, which they are trying to pass off as a popular uprising. After the putsch Dicko has tried to minimize his role and gave an interview on Radio France Internationale to insist he has no ambitions for the next presidential elections: “In 2023, I will be a candidate for no position.” This comment led the news site Sénégal7 to note: “The M5 has done the work, and the mutineers are collecting the results.”

Dicko and Mariko have served as tools of French imperialism, whose troops in Mali are closely following the political situation and decided not to intervene to try to save Keïta. Everything points to the fact that this coup was made in France.

In July, Le Monde published a column hailing Dicko and declaring: “Imam Dicko can offer a way out of the crisis for France in Mali.” It continued, “Imam Dicko is a skillful politician, who is aware of power relations. He represents the possibility of negotiating peace with the jihadist groups… Let us recall that after 18 years of war, the Americans were finally forced to cut deals with the Taliban” in Afghanistan.

As for the putschist general Dembélé, trained according to his official biography at the Applied Infantry School in Montpellier, France in the 1990s, his services for French imperialism have led him to receive the Gold Medal of French National Defense and the citation of Commander of the French National Order of Merit.

It is not difficult to foresee that a junta led by such reactionaries is preparing to turn violently against Malian workers and youth seeking to oppose the neo-colonial French occupation of their country.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny hospitalized as crisis in Belarus deepens

Clara Weiss

The leader of the pro-Western opposition in Russia, Alexei Navalny, was hospitalized in critical condition on Thursday.

Navalny reportedly fell ill while on a plane from Tomsk to Moscow. After an emergency landing, he was brought to a hospital in Omsk. The doctors treating him have so far made no diagnosis, but his supporters and family allege that he was poisoned with a cup of tea in Tomsk. As of this writing, Navalny is in critical but stable condition. He was put on a ventilator and is in a coma. It is not clear whether the coma was a result of his condition or medically induced.

Alexei Navalny

Russian media reports note that several representatives of the FSB as well as the state prosecution are stationed outside his room. His assistant Kira Yarmysh, who was travelling with him, said that he had only consumed a cup of tea at the airport on that day, and stated that she was “convinced” that the tea had been poisoned.

Navalny’s personal doctor and his family have said from the beginning that they want him transferred to a hospital in Europe. The Kremlin has offered to help with the transfer.

Hours after the news of his hospitalization broke, French President Emmanuel Macron offered Navalny both medical help and political asylum. German Chancellor Angela Merkel similarly declared that she was “deeply shaken” by the news. According to the Spiegel, a German plane already left Berlin on Thursday night to fly to Russia and transfer Navalny to a German clinic. EU High Representative Josep Borrell demanded on Twitter that “those responsible must be held to account.”

Even though it has not even been confirmed that Navalny was poisoned, Masha Gessen, a leading figure in the anti-Putin campaign in the US, pondered in the New Yorker, “Why assassinate Navalny now?” She noted that it may have either been that “an eager self-appointed Kremlin avenger struck without being given explicit authority” or that the Kremlin was terrified of the protests in Belarus and was trying to protect itself “by killing the presumptive leader of the uprising to come.”

While portrayed by the Western media as a defender of “democracy” against the Putin regime, in reality Navalny is a right-wing operative who maintains close ties to the US, sections of the Russian elite and the country’s far right. In 2010, Navalny participated in the Yale “World Fellowship” program, which has also trained several figures who played key roles in the Ukrainian Orange Revolution of 2004 and the pro-Western coup in Kiev in 2014. He has participated numerous times in marches of Russia’s far right.

Navalny is also known to have ties to sections of the oligarchy and the Kremlin and state apparatus. One commentary in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta noted that “Navalny is not inconvenient to the Kremlin, but to individual figures.” The article pointed out that many of his revelations of corruption, crimes and personal wealth of politicians and officials bore the character of the dossiers that the Russian secret service compiles about its real and potential opponents, suggesting that they may have been leaked to him from within the state apparatus.

Navalny’s hospitalization comes amid an escalating crisis around the protests and mass strikes in Belarus which have shaken the Lukashenko regime. The movement has provoked enormous concerns in the bourgeoisie across Europe and Russia that the strikes might get out of control and spread to other countries. At the same time, the crisis has heightened geopolitical tensions in a region that has become the main staging ground for the NATO-led war preparations against Russia.

In an extraordinary summit on Wednesday, the EU publicly sided with the opposition against Lukashenko, demanding that his government initiate negotiations with its opponents. However, Lukashenko has rejected multiple offers by the opposition to initiate negotiations. On Thursday, he launched a criminal investigation into the opposition’s Coordination Council, accusing it of an “attempt to seize power.”

Navalny has prominently supported the opposition in Belarus, focusing most of his coverage and publications in recent weeks on developments in the country. Regardless of what actually led to Navalny’s hospitalization, it is set to deepen tensions between the imperialist powers and Russia, and in the political crisis in Russia itself.

The Kremlin has taken an ambiguous and cautious attitude toward developments in Belarus, refusing to offer unconditional support to Lukashenko. Lukashenko’s government has long tried to balance between Western imperialism and the Kremlin and has recently moved closer to NATO.

As strikes escalated in Belarus, both Merkel and Macron called Putin to discuss the situation. In a recent piece for the Atlantic Council, one of the most belligerent think tanks in Washington vis-à-vis Russia, Anders Aslund urged the EU to step up its involvement in Belarus and seek to “mediate” the situation together with Russia in order to bring the crisis under control.

However, there are clearly growing concerns in the Russian ruling class that NATO and the EU will exploit the crisis in Belarus to further tighten the military and political noose around Russia.

After Wednesday’s EU summit, Putin’s press secretary Dmitri Peskov denounced the meddling of “foreign powers” in developments in Belarus. The Kremlin has also rejected the attempts by the opposition’s Coordination Council to initiate negotiations with Moscow.

Russian press commentaries were divided in their assessment of the Coordination Council. While Russia Today pointed out that the opposition does not seem intent on turning against Russia, Gazeta.Ru has described several members of the Council as “Russophobes” who were seeking a “secession” of Belarus from Russia.

Meanwhile, Lukashenko has escalated his crackdown on the strikes. On Tuesday, he mobilized the military on the country’s western borders with the EU and NATO, where several of the biggest strikes have been taking place. Lukashenko has also instructed the forces of the interior ministry to prevent “all unrest” in Minsk and other cities.

Strike leaders and striking workers have been arrested. Dozens of people are still unaccounted for, and there have been widespread reports of the torture and rape of prisoners. The government also seeks to starve strikers into submission by withholding their meager salaries.

There is little doubt that the brutal crackdown by the Lukashenko regime on workers and youth enjoys the backing of the Kremlin. The Russian oligarchy, which emerged out of the Stalinist destruction of the Soviet Union and restoration of capitalism, is acutely aware of the danger that the mass strikes can spread to Russia.

Much as in Belarus, the coronavirus pandemic in Russia has brought social tensions to the boiling point. Russia has reported over 942,000 cases, the fourth highest number in the world. Hospitals have been brought to the brink of collapse. Hundreds of thousands of workers have been laid off or are not receiving their salaries.

The Russian oligarchy also relies heavily on Belarusian manufacturing. Over 40 percent of Belarusian exports go to Russia, including machinery, but also a large number of agricultural products and food. Production for the Russian Ministry of Defense has been hit hard by strikes in Belarus, whose factories account for about 15 percent of Russia’s military production procurement. According to the Nezavisimaya Gazeta, the defense ministry is considering suing the Belarusian companies where the strikes are delaying production, in an attempt to further step up pressure on the Belarusian government to put an end to the strike movement.

Steve Bannon arrested on fraud charges involving border wall fundraising scheme

Kevin Reed

The former adviser to President Trump and extreme right-wing nationalist Steve Bannon was arrested on Thursday and charged with two counts of conspiracy for defrauding donors of a private fundraising scheme called “We Build the Wall.”

The indictment against Bannon and three others—Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea—was unsealed by Acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Andrew Strauss.

President Donald Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon leaves federal court, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2020, after pleading not guilty to charges that he ripped off donors to an online fundraising scheme to build a southern border wall. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

A press release accompanying the indictment said that all four men had been arrested and quoted Strauss saying, “the defendants defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction.”

The scheme began in December 2018 when the defendants set up an online crowdfunding site ultimately called “We Build the Wall” to raise private money in support of President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign to build a wall along the southern US border.

The campaign raised $25 million with Kolfage, a veteran of the US Air Force who lost both legs and his right hand in Iraq in 2004, as the public face of the organization. On the website and in social media posts and email messages, the organization made repeated public statements to donors that 100 percent of the money would be given to the US government for the wall project.

However, as explained in the indictment, “those representations were false” and “the defendants collectively received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donor funds from We Build the Wall, which they used in a manner inconsistent with the organizations public representations.”

Kolfage was secretly paid $350,000—$100,000 up front and $20,000 per month thereafter—for things such as, “home renovations, payment towards a boat, a luxury SUV, a golf cart, jewelry, cosmetic surgery, personal tax payments and credit card debt.”

Bannon, according to the indictment, through a nonprofit organization under his control, received “over $1,000,000 from We Build the Wall, which Bannon used, among other things, to secretly pay Kolfage and to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bannon’s personal expenses.”

The indictment explains the method by which the donor money was transferred to the individuals. It says that the men “devised a scheme to route the payments from We Build the Wall to Kolfage indirectly through Non-Profit-1 and a shell company” and “by using fake invoices and sham ‘vendor’ arrangements,” they attempted to ensure that the “pay arrangement remain ‘confidential’ and kept on a ‘need to know’ basis.”

The indictment also explains that the defendants, once they learned from a financial institution that “We Build the Wall” might be under federal investigation, took steps to conceal their fraudulent scheme, including removing from their website the promise that Kolfage would not receive any salary for his work with the organization.

Bannon, Kolfage, Badolato and Shea were each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, each of which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

New reports published late Thursday said that Bannon appeared before a Manhattan court and pled not guilty to the charges against him before being released on $5 million bail secured with $1.75 million in assets. The Associated Press reported, “When he emerged from the courthouse, Bannon tore off his mask, smiled and waved to news cameras. As he went to a waiting vehicle, he shouted, ‘This entire fiasco is to stop people who want to build the wall’.”

Bannon—the former investment banker, entertainment industry producer and executive chairman of the fascistic Breitbart News—served as chief executive of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and chief strategist and senior counselor for President Trump for the first seven months of the administration.

As a founding member of the board of Breitbart News, Brannon was a principal force in proclaiming the site “the platform of the alt-right” and using it to promote anti-immigrant, racist, American nationalist, white supremacist, neo-Nazi and fascist views.

Bannon brought all of this to the Trump election campaign and presidency and, along with the fascist White House adviser Stephen Miller, was responsible for the adoption of extreme nationalist anti-immigration policies in months immediately following the inauguration in January 2017. Bannon and Miller, for example, were central to the creation of the Muslim travel ban (Executive Order 13769), which restricted travel to the US by people from seven countries.

Bannon left the White House less than a week after the fascist rampage in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which counter-protester Heather Heyer was killed by a self-proclaimed Hitler admirer who drove his car into a crowd. It has been reported that Trump’s statement that there were “very fine people on both sides” was suggested by Bannon.

Donald Trump’s border wall project was a central theme of his 2016 election campaign, and he included a proposal in the wall plans to allow private money to support it. The Kolfage/Bannon campaign initially said that the millions raised in their crowdfunding initiative would go to the government. Then they shifted to privately building a portion of the wall in Sunland Park, New Mexico and near McAllen International Airport in Mission, Texas.

Clearly aware of the pending indictments against “We Build the Wall,” Trump tweeted last month that he “disagreed with doing this very small (tiny) section of wall, in a tricky area, by a private group which raised money by ads.” He also claimed, “It was only done to make me look bad.”

The website for “We Build the Wall” is still up and features a photo of Kolfage with the following quote next to it: “If you are sick and tired of watching politicians in both parties obstructing President Trump's plan to build a wall on our southern border, then you have come to the right place. We The People are coming together to build segments of border wall on private property and the best part is, we’re going to do it for a fraction of what it costs the government.”

Weekly jobless claims again top one million as mass evictions loom

Shannon Jones

The US Department of Labor reports that 1.1 million workers filed new claims for unemployment insurance last week, continuing the record levels of filings that began in March with the explosion of the COVID-19 pandemic. An additional 543,000 workers filed claims under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program that extends benefits to so-called gig workers, self-employed individuals and independent contractors.

New unemployment claims rose by some 11,000 in New Jersey, 10,000 in New York, 9,000 in Texas and 5,000 in Florida. In Massachusetts, new claims rose by 2,000 while new requests under PUA rose by 8,750.

An employee wearing a face mask and gloves is waiting for the next patient behind the door of a corona diagnostic centre in Germany. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

The overall numbers represented an increase from the previous week and belie claims that the worst of the economic crisis has passed. The continued massive job losses take place following the lapse last month of the $600 weekly federal unemployment supplement and the federal ban on evictions. The unemployment supplement was all that was keeping many households afloat given the paltry levels of most state benefits.

Neither leaders in the Republican-controlled Senate or the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives have shown any particular urgency or interest in restoring the supplement wholly or partially. Demonstrating their contempt for the plight of the near 30 million unemployed, Congress has taken a month-long recess without addressing the cutoff.

The impasse in Congress has given the Trump administration the opportunity to cynically posture as the friend of the unemployed, bypassing Congress in a Bonapartist fashion to order the payment of $300 weekly benefits to unemployed workers using disaster relief money. It is not clear when or if that money will materialize. So far only one state, Arizona, has issued any payments. Further, it is likely that the $300 figure will serve as the benchmark for Congress, rather than the previous $600, if it ever gets around to renewing the supplemental benefits.

The ending of the federal ban on evictions and the concurrent expiration of state and local eviction moratoriums raise the danger that millions may be soon tossed out onto the streets. Since the federal ban required a 30-day waiting period, large numbers of evictions are likely to start in September .

According to a report by CNBC, up to 40 million could lose their homes as a result of the economic catastrophe triggered by the pandemic. One out of five renters were behind on their payments at the end of July. Some 60 percent of renters in West Virginia were in danger of eviction.

Since mid-July, state eviction bans ended in Maryland, Maine, Michigan and Indiana. Louisiana reported a threefold increase in evictions over the same period last year.

While the number of US workers receiving unemployment assistance fell to 14.8 million last week, that is still more than twice the high point of the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Another 11.2 million unemployed gig workers were receiving benefits under the federal PUA program.

Some 57.3 million workers have filed for unemployment assistance in the last 22 weeks, a massive number that is only likely to increase. Prior to the pandemic, the highest weekly number of new unemployment claims was 695,000 in the 1982 recession. Despite the push by the Democrats and Republicans to reopen businesses, the US economy has only regained 9.3 million of the 22 million that were lost since March.

Job losses and the threat of job losses are continuing. Last week, New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio, a Democrat, warned of the layoff of 22,000 city workers in the fall. Aircraft maker Boeing said it is preparing for more job cuts as demand for airliners declines. American Airlines has said it will halt service to 15 smaller US cities after federal funds under the CARES Act expire in October. Terms of the legislation required airlines to maintain a certain minimum level of service, and American had received a massive $5.8 billion bailout under the program.

Most businesses have now exhausted funds from the Federal Paycheck Protection Program, which provided incentives to companies not to lay off workers. A wave of small business closures appears all but inevitable, with the leisure and hospitality sector hardest hit.

According to researchers at the University of Illinois, Harvard Business School and the University of Chicago, 100,000 small businesses have closed permanently as a result of the pandemic. A survey done between May 9 and May 11 found that at least 2 percent of all businesses in the US have been wiped out. The National Restaurant Association reports that 3 percent of restaurants have permanently closed, a number that seems conservative given the restrictions on indoor dining in many states.

The carnage is likely to increase, as small businesses lack the cash reserves to survive a long shutdown. The result will be a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the super-rich. In 2017, 47 percent of US workers were employed at small businesses, a percentage that is sure to see a sharp decline.

“We are going to see a level of bankruptcy activity that nobody in business has seen in their lifetime,” said James Hammond, chief executive of New Generation Research in remarks to the Washington Post.

“The longer we go into this crisis, the longer people that have been temporarily laid off may not get called back,” AnnElizabeth Konkel of the job search website indeed.com told CNBC. “Businesses can only ride out this crisis for so long.”

Despite the horrifying unemployment numbers, or perhaps because of them, the stock market trended upward Thursday following record highs reached by both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq on Tuesday. The markets, buoyed by the prospect of continuing government cash infusions, are unconcerned about the economic and social devastation impacting the working class and small-business owners.

This follows reports that annual average CEO pay of the top 350 companies in the US rose to an incredible $21.3 million in 2019 and is expected to rise again this year. The ratio of CEO pay to average earnings of workers stands at 320 to 1, according to one study. That compares to a 69-1 ratio in 1989. Between 1978 and 2019, average CEO pay has risen a massive 1,167 percent compared to an average 337 percent rise for others in the top 0.1 percent income group. By comparison, average wages for a full-time worker rose 13.7 percent during the same period, and that is perhaps an overestimate.

Since CEO pay is increasingly tied to the rise of the stock market, companies have a direct incentive to carry out stock buybacks and other socially regressive policies that contribute nothing to the real economy.

The pandemic has increased social inequality to new levels as lower-wage service industry workers and small businesses have been devastated while giant firms such as Amazon, Apple and Facebook have seen record sales and stock prices.

Social media sites are full of posts from workers unable to pay rent or buy food and medicine. A worker from Kentucky posted on Twitter: “So yes, me and my family will be on the street. In 4 days rent is due and I have $34.16 in my account. Back in May a local nonprofit helped house me and my family in a hotel. They paid half my rent until unemployment kicked in. Took weeks to get. They still owe me two weeks back pay. I have been in the wait queue for over 2 months...” Such stories are endless.

Meanwhile, this week the United Nations issued an appeal to countries around the world to halt evictions during the pandemic. “Losing your home during this pandemic could mean losing your life,” Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to housing, warned. These words will certainly fall on deaf ears.

The dire conditions facing millions of unemployed workers in the midst of a still uncontrolled pandemic stand in sharp contrast to the cliché-ridden and banal speeches by delegates and nominees alike at the Democratic National Convention this week. The only basis for the progressive resolution to this massive crisis is through the independent mobilization of the working class on a socialist program. We urge workers and young people to join and support the campaign of the Socialist Equality Party candidates Joseph Kishore for president and Norissa Santa Cruz for vice president.