Lukashenko regime, Belarusian opposition seek to stifle mass strike movement

Clara Weiss

The president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has initiated a violent crackdown on the protests and strike movement that have shaken his regime since the presidential election of August 9.

On Tuesday, Lukashenko instructed the paramilitary forces of the interior ministry, the OMON, to “not allow any unrest” in Minsk and other cities. Lukashenko has also mobilized the army for “tactical exercises” on the country’s western borders, where many of the strikes are taking place. At the same time, the government is trying to starve striking workers into submission, refusing to pay them their meager wages and threatening strikers at state-owned companies with layoffs.

A stamp operator at the Minsk Tractor Factory told the Financial Times, “There’s no way Lukashenko will resign without the workers. They need to stop the workers from striking because if the industrial giants cease production, then he’ll have to go.”

A protest in Minsk on Sunday

Gruesome reports of torture of prisoners and their systematic rape by security forces have emerged in the Belarusian press and social media. Dozens of striking workers have been arrested, including the leaders of strike committees. At least three protesters have been killed since the beginning of the protests, and over 80 people are still unaccounted for.

However, the strikes, which are part of an international resurgence of the class struggle, have continued at many key factories. A website that tracks ongoing strikes suggests that they have, in fact, been growing. According to belzabastovka.org, there were at least 150 ongoing strikes and industrial protests on Friday, up from around 140 the day before. Strikes are taking place at major factories, mines, meatpacking plants, railways, theaters, hospitals and EMS stations.

The vast majority of strikes are taking place in the capital Minsk and in the city of the Grodno, which is close to the Belorussian-Polish border. Since August 18, miners of the Soligorsk Belarusalsk mines, which account for a fifth of worldwide Potash production, have also been on strike.

Many state-owned companies, which account for 70 percent of the country’s GDP, have been hit by the strike wave, including the state-owned auto company BelAZ. One presidential aide acknowledged this week that the strikes had already cost the economy $500 million. Belarus has a GDP of less than $60 billion.

The strike movement has provoked deep concerns among all sections of the ruling class in Belarus and Europe, leaving the imperialist powers scrambling over how to respond to the crisis in Belarus. While the EU and NATO seek to exploit the crisis to further their foreign policy interests, there is nothing the bourgeoisie of all countries fears more than an international spread of the strike movement.

The EU-backed opposition of Svetlana Tikhonovskaya has wavered between attempts to shut down the strikes, and negotiate with the Lukashenko regime, and phony gestures of support for the strikers.

As strikes were escalating earlier in the week, the opposition on Tuesday called for a “pause” of protests until the weekend. At the same time, with the backing of the EU, the new Coordination Council of the opposition has urged Lukashenko to initiate “immediate” negotiations with the opposition and create the basis for new elections. However, on Thursday, the Lukashenko regime initiated a criminal investigation into the council, accusing it of an “attempt to seize power” and harming the “national security” of the country.

On Friday, after several days in which protests and strikes have continued unabated, Tikhonovskaya issued a call to “continue and broaden” the strikes. The opposition’s Coordination Council also set up a “National Strike Committee” through which it seeks to gain control over the strike movement.

The publicly known members of the committee include two CEOs of IT companies, Yaroslav Likhachevsky and Alexander Podgorny, as well as Andrei Stirzhak who headed a campaign to fight against COVID-19 in Belarus, and Eduard Palchis, a bitterly nationalist and anti-Russian blogger who advocates a union of Belarus with Poland and Lithuania. None of them have anything to do with the interests of the working class, and the strike committee, like the opposition as a whole, has consciously excluded all social and economic demands from the movement.

Another “national strike committee” was formed by the so called “independent” trade unions. While the two organizations now exist in parallel, the “independent” unions which have emerged out of the restoration of capitalism likewise support the pro-EU opposition and seek to subordinate the working class to it.

Whatever the tactical differences and in-fighting between the opposition and the government, they share one common goal: to bring the strike movement to an end as quickly as possible. Workers must be warned very sharply of the political dead end and right-wing character of the opposition.

The opposition’s Coordination Council includes several figures who are directly associated with the destruction of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism, which created the basis for the emergence of the Lukashenko regime and the current social and economic catastrophe in the country.

Alexander Dabravolsky, one of the most prominent members of the opposition’s Coordination Council, was a leading member of the anti-Communist and nationalist opposition movement in the late Soviet period. He supported the Stalinist bureaucrat Stanislav Shuchkevich, who led the break-up of the USSR in 1991 and presided over the restoration of capitalism in Belarus until he was replaced by Lukashenko in 1994. He is now the head of the opposition party United Civic Party of Belarus.

Yuri Gubarevich, another member of the Council, is a leader of the Belarusian National Front party (BNF) which likewise pushed for the destruction of the USSR and the formation of an independent Belarusian nation-state, and the restoration of capitalism.

Other figures are no less right-wing and associated with policies that are opposed to the social and democratic rights of the working class: Pavel Latushko was a long-time functionary of the Lukashenko regime and is a Belarusian nationalist who advocates that the Belarusian Cyrillic alphabet be changed to the Latin alphabet.

Olga Kovalkova, the representative of Tikhanovskaya, is a co-leader of the Belorussian Christian Democracy party which opposes LGBTQ rights, and wants to end the official status of Russian as a state language in Belarus.

Through its right-wing policies, which serve to disorient and demobilize workers, the opposition is ultimately playing into the hands of the Lukashenko regime and its brutal crackdown on the working class.

The situation raises the urgent need for the working class to develop an independent political line and socialist leadership. The fight for democratic rights against the repression of the Lukashenko regime can only be successful if it is connected to the fight against social inequality and capitalism on an international level.

Such a program must above all be rooted in internationalism and an understanding of the counterrevolutionary role of Stalinism. Far from representing the continuity of the October revolution of 1917, the Stalinist bureaucracy was a counterrevolutionary force which waged war on Marxism and the program of international socialist revolution for decades. The only genuine socialist opposition to Stalinism came from Leon Trotsky, a co-leader of the October Revolution, and his Left Opposition, whose traditions are today represented by the International Committee of the Fourth International.

Politically, both the Lukashenko regime and the opposition feed off of the reactionary legacy of Stalinism. The Lukashenko regime has consciously promoted and evoked the traditions of Stalinism sine 1994. Meanwhile, the opposition champions a no less reactionary variant of Belarusian nationalism and anti-communism. By using the red and white national flag of Belarus as its banner, it consciously associates itself with the 1918 Belarusian National Rada (BNR) which was formed during the Civil War in order to prevent the establishment of a Soviet government and worked together with German imperialism against the Red Army.

There is enormous sympathy for the strikes and protests among workers across Europe and Russia. However, to unite the working class in a struggle against capitalism requires the building of a Trotskyist leadership and sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International. We urge our readers in Belarus and across Eastern Europe who agree with this perspective to contact us today.

Facebook censors anti-fascist and anarchist groups, falsely linking them with extreme-right violence

Kevin Reed

In a significant escalation of political censorship on its platform, Facebook published an update on Wednesday to its “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations” policy that labels left-wing and anarchist organizations as violent and falsely amalgamates them with fascist militia groups and right-wing extremists associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory.

In a Newsroom blog post entitled, “An Update to How We Address Movements and Organizations Tied to Violence,” Facebook says that it is taking action against “Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts tied to offline anarchist groups that support violent acts amidst protests, US-based militia organizations and QAnon.”

While Facebook says it already removes “content calling for or advocating violence” and bans “organizations and individuals that proclaim a violent mission,” the blog post says that “we have seen growing movements that, while not directly organizing violence, have celebrated violent acts, shown that they have weapons and suggest they will use them, or have individual followers with patterns of violent behavior.”

That the expanded Facebook definition of “dangerous” people and groups is aimed at stifling speech on the social media platform—with 2.7 billion monthly active users worldwide—is shown by the fact that its policy now includes “organizations and movements that have demonstrated significant risks to public safety but do not meet the rigorous criteria to be designated as a dangerous organization and banned from having any presence on our platform.”

Facebook then outlines the actions it will take to suppress content from those it deems “dangerous” and “violent” but do not fit the “rigorous” definition of either description. These measures may include removal of accounts from Facebook and Instagram, limiting recommendations, reduced ranking in News Feed, reduced visibility in Search, removal from Related Hashtags on Instagram and prohibition from advertising and fundraising.

As Facebook is listing off the many techniques it utilizes to ban, delete and suppress content—which it refers to in corporate-speak as “remove, reduce and inform”—it becomes clear that these methods are being perfected in the service of political censorship against oppositional, left-wing and socialist views that are increasing in popularity and pose a threat to the capitalist foundations of the social media giant. Facebook currently has a Wall Street value of $762 billion and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg has accumulated a personal wealth of $100 billion.

The Newsroom blog post goes on to say that Facebook has already removed “over 790 groups, 100 Pages and 1,500 ads tied to QAnon” and additionally “imposed restrictions on over 1,950 Groups and 440 Pages on Facebook and over 10,000 accounts on Instagram.” Lumping anarchists and left-wing groups in with the far right, Facebook says, “For militia organizations and those encouraging riots, including some who may identify as Antifa, we’ve initially removed over 980 groups, 520 Pages and 160 ads from Facebook. We’ve also restricted over 1,400 hashtags related to these groups and organizations on Instagram.”

Among the accounts of anti-fascist and left-wing activists that have been shut down in the present Facebook dragnet are the following:

• It’s Going Down: an anarchist news publishing platform that reports on social struggles and exposes the activities of white supremacist and neo-Nazi networks.

• CrimethInc.: a left-wing and anarchist publishing organization that identifies itself as an “international network of aspiring revolutionaries.”

• PNW Youth Liberation Front: a group that says it is “a decentralized network of autonomous youth collectives dedicated to direct action towards total liberation” and has been involved in the recent protests in Portland, Oregon.

There is no question that by including such groups in its list of “dangerous” and “violent” individuals and organizations, Facebook is supporting the drive by the US political establishment and the US Justice Department to equate opposition within the working class and among young people with the violence of alt-right, neo-Nazi and fascistic militia individuals and groups.

The recent history of ideologically motivated violence in the US exposes Facebook’s false identification of these groups with the extreme right. According to a report by Natasha Lennard in the Intercept, “It bears repeating, ad nauseam, that the far right has carried out 329 murders in the last three decades; none have been attributed to antifa. Between 2009 and 2018, white supremacist and far-right extremists were responsible for 73 percent of extremist murders in the U.S. And that’s not even to mention the state-sanctioned, racist killings carried out by the police.”

The effort to label the left as violent has also intensified over the past three months during the nationwide and global mass protests against police violence and repression that was sparked by the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on Memorial Day. Both the Democrats and Republicans along with the corporate media have slandered these demonstrations as “violent” and “riots” and, as Trump has stated numerous times, part of the “radical left” and “anarchist” takeover of American cities that must be put down with “law and order.”

In June, at the height of the George Floyd protests, Attorney General William Barr created a task force dedicated to counter “anti-government extremists” who engage in “indefensible acts of violence designed to undermine public order.” In his directive to all Justice Department law enforcement representatives, Barr wrote, “Among other lawless conduct, these extremists have violently attacked police officers and other government officials, destroyed public and private property, and threatened innocent people.”

Furthermore, Barr’s memo said that the “acts of violence” came from extremists “of all persuasions” including the extremer right-wing Boogaloo militia advocates who have engaged in murder and other criminal acts along with “those who identify as Antifa” on the left.

Meanwhile, Senator Ted Cruz (Republican, Texas) chaired a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on August 4 where he claimed, “Across the country, we’re seeing horrific violence, we’re seeing our country torn apart. Violent anarchists and Marxists are exploiting protests to transform them into riots and direct assaults on the lives and safety of their fellow Americans.”

This position is not unique to Barr, Trump and the Republican Party. On the fifth night of the George Floyd protests in cities across the US that have been devastated by decades of attacks on living standards and social programs, the future Democratic Party nominee for President in the 2020 elections, Joseph Biden, denounced protesters for “burning down communities” and carrying out “needless destruction.”

While police and federal agents were beating protesters and National Guard troops were being called up and mobilized against peaceful demonstrations, Biden blamed the public for the decay in the cities, saying, “Violence that guts and shutters businesses that serve the community” is not “the American response.” In late July, Biden reiterated his stance, calling for the prosecution of “arsonists and anarchists.”

These same sentiments have been expressed by Representative James Clyburn (Democrat, South Carolina) and Democratic Mayor of Chicago Lori Lightfoot who, according to the New York Times, after police assaulted protestors calling for an end to police violence, said, “To those who engaged in this criminal behavior, let’s be clear: We are coming for you.”

The purpose and results of the recent closed-door meetings between the Silicon Valley tech monopolies and the White House in the preparations for the US presidential election in November are becoming obvious. As reported by the WSWS, representatives of nine major tech firms—including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Reddit—met with US government law enforcement and national intelligence agencies on August 12 to discuss “election security” with little or no information reported to the public following the online gathering.

The endless references by Facebook and the others to those who identify as antifa as “violent” and “dangerous” are proof of the completely reactionary character of the entire amalgamation of left-wing and anarchist groups with far-right extremists who have actually committed acts of violence and killed people while proclaiming support for the Trump administration.

A Google search of antifa will only yield a Wikipedia entry for the name. There is no official website for an organization with this name in the US, Europe or anywhere else in the world. While there are clearly individuals who identify with the message of “anti-fascism,” the claim that an organization called “Antifa” is coordinating acts of extreme violence against the US government is entirely fabricated.

Instead, what the ruling establishment—of which the social media monopolies are a critical element—fears more than anything is that masses of workers and young people will break free from the two-party political system and begin to organize independently of the entire capitalist political setup on the basis of the fight for socialism. The ever expanding scope of political censorship on social media and on the internet more broadly is certain grow in the weeks leading up to the November 3 election and in its aftermath as the US ruling class seeks to suppress all signs of opposition.

European countries force children back to school amid resurgence of COVID-19

Alejandro López

The drive to reopen schools after the summer break continues unabated throughout Europe as the resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerates across the continent.

Nineteen European countries have crossed a key threshold of cumulative 14-day infection totals higher than 20 per 100,000 inhabitants, considered an early alarm level by many health experts, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Luxembourg and Spain have reported more than 100 new cases per 100,000 people, followed by Malta recording more than 80, Belgium more than 60, and France and the Netherlands more than 40. The UK has 20.7.

Spain continues to be the epicentre of the resurgence of the virus in Europe. There are more than 1,000 outbreaks of the virus currently active. Over 3,650 more infections the previous day were reported on Friday, while weekly deaths have also risen to 125 people. The death toll in Spain remains one of the highest in Europe, with at least 44,868 victims.

The Spanish ruling class did not use the time garnered by the lockdowns imposed in late March and April to prepare for the expected resurgence of the virus. Twelve-thousand tracers are lacking, hospitals are on the verge of collapse in parts of the country due to lack of medical staff, and nursing homes are registering a significant number of increases, after around 20,000 deaths among the elderly were attributed to COVID-19 between March and May. Even data collection has become an issue.

Day after day, the figures being supplied by the ministry are lower than those offered by the press offices of the country’s regions.

In Germany, the virus is now soaring. The country widely promoted as a model for containing the virus in Europe after implementing an early and aggressive test-and=trace policy reported 1,707 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, the highest single-day increase since April. The national number of infected has risen to 228,261 cases of the virus, with 9,253 related deaths, according to data compiled from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases.

France reported 4,771 new infections, with the daily tally going above 3,000 for the fourth time in the last five days. The health ministry said in a statement: “All the indicators keep going up and the transmission of the virus is getting stronger among all ages groups affected, young adults in particular.”

In Italy, the virus is once again rising rapidly. Last week, Rome registered 629 new cases in 24 hours, up from 500 on the previous two days. Such numbers had not been seen since May, when Italy was the epicentre of the virus in Europe. Yesterday, another 845 people tested positive.

Even though this spring clearly showed the deadly toll of the virus, European governments all agree that there should be no more lockdowns to halt its spread. Instead, they insist that schools must reopen everywhere—even though school reopenings have accelerated the spread of the virus in areas across North and South America—so workers can fully return to work and the extraction of profits can continue. If lives are lost, then so be it: COVID-19 is, as one American doctor put it, a “poor person’s virus.”

In an interview with Paris Match magazine, President Emmanuel Macron declared that French people will have to endure the virus: “We can’t shut the country down because the collateral damage of lock-down is considerable. Zero risk never exists in any society. We must respond to this anxiety without falling into the doctrine of zero risk.”

In Spain, Fernando Simón, director of the Centre for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies, stated: “We cannot have our children without studying. We cannot jeopardise the competitiveness of our children,” he declared. Feigning sympathy with working class children, Simon pointed out that an “effort” must be made to open schools because “it is very easy to propose online education for those who have the right resources,” because “a child who has his own room, computer and good Wi-Fi is not the same as a child who shares a room with several siblings, parents, who does not have a computer or Wi-Fi.”

Leading political authorities throughout Europe have made similar cynical statements. They hide the fact that for over a decade they have starved schools of resources, while providing endless cash for bank and corporate bailouts, and while showering billions more into military contractors and imperialist wars. The pandemic has been seized to provide billions more for bank bailouts, all of which are being recouped from the population at the cost of lives and health of the working class.

Throughout the continent, resistance is growing against this policy. However, the trade unions, the main agents of the back-to-work campaign in the workplaces, are intervening to suppress growing opposition.

In the UK, where the National Education Union supports the reopening of schools in September, teachers held street protests yesterday across the country with demands such as free personal protective equipment (PPE), weekly COVID tests for teachers, and the ability to close classrooms if local infection rates hit a chosen level. While unions’ statements all talk about reopening safely, they are doing all in their power not to fight to make schools any safer or fight against the Tory government’s blatantly unsafe reopening plans.

In Germany, anger is rising among educators after at least 41 schools in Berlin reported that students or teachers have become infected, less than a fortnight after schools reopened in Germany. The Education and Science (GEW) trade union is supporting school reopenings, however. The GEW has even spoken out against the compulsory wearing of masks in the classroom, urgently demanded by virologists.

In France, despite the biggest weekly spike in confirmed coronavirus cases since the height of its national outbreak in March, Macron insisted: “The return to school will happen in the coming days.” Despite the latest health protocol, adopted by Macron at the end of July relaxing social distancing, compulsory masks for teachers and mixing of students, the teachers union SNUipp-FSU’s main demand is to delay the start of the new school year by a few days.

SNUipp-FSU Secretary General Guislaine David said: “We are asking to postpone the start of the school year. … Ideally, we would need the week of the 31st to be able to prepare for a peaceful return the following week.”

In Spain, teachers have been called on strike in the Madrid region at the start of the new term over the lack of any protocol for the reopening of schools in the region. While the sentiment is widespread throughout Spain, unions are calling for a strike only against the right-wing Popular-Party (PP) regional government. This allows the ruling parties, the Socialist Party (PSOE) and the “left populist” Podemos party, to get off free in regions they control.

The unions agree with the back-to-school policy. The CCOO general secretary for education, Isabel Galvín, explicitly stated: “We mobilise because we want to go back to school and remain. We don’t want to be confined the week we start. We are working hard so that all sectors return to their activity and we have to commit ourselves so that there are face-to-face classes. Children need to go back to school for their education and emotional stability.”

It is critical for workers and youth across Europe to set up their own action committees, independent of the trade unions, to prepare strike action against the reopenings of schools and the predictable rise in deaths they will provoke.

Coronavirus testing remains at reduced levels in the US

Bryan Dyne

Coronavirus testing in the United States has remained at reduced levels even as schools reopen and cases continue to climb. The average number of tests on a given day is currently 14 percent lower than its high on July 29, despite the total number of known cases rising 26 percent—1.2 million infections—over that same period.

It is estimated that, to fully map the spread of the pandemic, one of the critical pieces of information to actually contain the disease, the US would need to perform 6–10 million tests per day. It currently does about 700,000.

Nurse Debbi Hinderliter (left) collects a sample from a woman at a coronavirus testing site near the nation's busiest pedestrian border crossing, August 13, 2020, in San Diego [Credit: AP Photo/Gregory Bull]

Just over seven months have now passed since the first case of COVID-19 was identified in the US. At the time, there were 580 known cases worldwide, most of them confined to Wuhan, China, and 41 confirmed deaths. In the interim, more than 23 million people have been infected and 801,000 human lives have been lost. The lion’s share, nearly 5.8 million cases and more than 179,000 dead, have occurred in the US.

The start of the decline in testing came in the weeks after US President Donald Trump declared, “With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!” While top US health officials sought to downplay Trump’s comments, there has been no explanation for the decline in testing since the end of July. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and head of the Trump administration’s testing strategy, instead claimed last week that the amount of testing is “appropriate” for the spread of the virus in the country.

Giroir and those who support the Trump administration’s position are largely basing themselves on the overall decline in the positivity rate—the number of tests returned that confirm a case of the coronavirus compared to the total number of tests performed. This was at about 9 percent in July and has fallen to just above 6 percent now.

What Giroir papers over, however, is that 6 percent is still too high to claim that the virus is contained. The World Health Organization has issued guidance stating that the positivity rate should remain below 5 percent for 14 days as one of the major criteria for stopping the spread of the disease. Moreover, the state-by-state breakdown of the positivity rate reveals that the national average is being weighed down by multiple states in the northeast that were able to suppress the virus early on.

New York, once the world epicenter of the virus, now has a positivity rate of 0.8 percent, indicating that the majority of cases are being detected, allowing for adequate contact tracing and quarantine measures to hunt down the virus and stop its spread. Similar scenarios exist in other states including Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

In contrast, Mississippi has a positivity rate of nearly 20 percent, indicating that the pandemic is currently spreading in that state well beyond the ability of local health authorities to track. Every day, there are several hundred recorded cases in the state, and there have been an average of more than 20 deaths per day since July 26.

The situation is similar in Nevada, which has a coronavirus positive test rate of 17.2 percent, and has suffered more than 700 new cases a day since July 3 and more than 10 deaths a day since July 22. This is particularly concerning since the state is home to the popular Las Vegas casinos and resorts which have been reopened for business and are being visited by tourists from all across the country.

All told, 12 states, mostly in the south and west, currently have a positivity rate higher than 10 percent, and a further 21 states stand at 5 percent or higher, indicating that the pandemic is spreading largely out of control in the majority of the country.

Even if the positivity rate was decreasing uniformly across the nation, it would still not yet be a time to celebrate. Nearly 50,000 new cases and more than 1,000 new deaths are recorded each day. Three states—California, Texas and Florida—all currently count more than 500,000 total infections since March. Twenty-eight states report more than 500 cases each day, and 24 report at least 10 daily deaths.

While the Trump administration has raised the cost of mass testing as an impediment, it was reported yesterday by the Wall Street Journal that there are billions of dollars that have already been allocated that could be used for this purpose. In April, $25 billion was allocated for COVID-19 testing, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, of which at most 15 percent has been used. This suggests that testing across the country, especially where it is needed most, could vastly increase without incurring further expenses.

One of the other issues in testing is that the chemical reagents needed to perform the more common type of tests in the country are in short supply. There has never been a coordinated national plan to combat the virus, and as such local, state and federal agencies and governments are in constant competition to acquire the necessary tools to determine whether a given sample from a patient is positive or negative.

Compounding the problem, the current free tests can often take a week or more to be processed. While there are more expensive and quicker tests, they can cost in the range of $100 and are not generally covered by health insurance companies. As a result, workers are faced with two choices: pay a large out-of-pocket expense to get results quickly or wait and possibly be spreading a deadly disease unknowingly for days.

There may, however, be some relief regarding the dismal US testing situation. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency authorization for a new, inexpensive and quick saliva test developed by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health. The tools and chemicals needed to perform the test are much more readily available, cost about $5 per test, and return results in about three hours. The method is largely considered very scalable. It remains to be seen if such a technique will actually be deployed in practice.

Australian inquiry says serious errors led to Ruby Princess COVID-19 debacle

Martin Scott

The final report of an inquiry into the Ruby Princess cruise ship fiasco was released late last week. The inquiry, commissioned by New South Wales (NSW) Liberal Premier Gladys Berejiklian, and headed by Bret Walker, SC detailed numerous “serious and material errors” in the conduct of NSW Health officials, but issued only a handful of recommendations.

On March 19, the Ruby Princess was allowed to dock in Sydney after a round-trip voyage to New Zealand that was cut short following an announcement by the Australian federal government of a ban on cruise ship arrivals.

According to the report, 663 of the 1,682 Australian passengers subsequently tested positive for COVID-19, and 20 have died. A further 8 passengers died after returning to the US.

Accurate statistics are not available for the remaining passengers, as many, especially in the UK, were not eligible for testing after returning home although they were symptomatic. A total of 2,647 disembarked, meaning that there were almost a thousand passengers who were not from Australia, and potentially returned to their country of origin carrying the virus.

The Ruby Princess (Credit: Wikipedia)

The final days of the journey were marked by a rapid increase in the number of passengers and crew presenting to the ship’s medical centre with respiratory symptoms.

Up to the afternoon of 16 March, 53 people had become ill, most with acute respiratory infections (ARI) or influenza-like illnesses (ILI), and 10 had recorded temperatures of above 38ºC. By the morning of March 18, this had doubled, with 110 people unwell, and 17 febrile. By 7:21p.m. that evening, 128 people were sick, and 24 were showing signs of fever.

While it was not possible to process COVID-19 tests on board, the ship’s medical centre was equipped with rapid influenza tests. Of 48 patients tested on board for the flu, half were negative, meaning it was probable that the coronavirus was the cause of their symptoms.

Samples were taken from patients suspected to have COVID-19, to be processed upon the ship’s arrival, although this was limited by the fact that Dr Ilse von Watzdorf, head of the ship’s medical centre had only been able to source 27 swabs prior to the ship’s departure from Sydney on March 8.

By the time the ship arrived in Sydney, von Watzdorf had ordered 120 passengers and crew to isolate in their cabins due to the possibility that they were infected with COVID-19.

Ambulance transportation was ordered for two passengers who had complicating conditions in addition to COVID-19, they were displaying acute respiratory symptoms and paramedics were advised to wear full personal protective equipment.

Both patients subsequently tested positive for COVID-19 and one, Lesley Bacon, died of the disease a few days later.

Despite evidence of mounting illness on board, the Ruby Princess was assessed as “low-risk” by NSW Health, meaning the ship’s 2,647 passengers were allowed to walk off the vessel into Australia’s most populous city without COVID-19 testing or screening.

This “low-risk” classification was made by an “Expert Panel” of four public health physicians, including the state’s Chief Human Biosecurity Officer, Dr Sean Tobin.

In fact, the four doctors merely approved a risk assessment prepared by NSW Health non-medical epidemiologist Kelly-Anne Ressler. Only one was sent the ship’s Acute Respiratory Disease (ARD) log, and he said he did not read it closely.

None of the experts, or Ressler, took into consideration a change made on March 10 to Communicable Diseases Network Australia’s guidelines stating that anyone with fever and/or acute respiratory infection should be considered suspect cases of COVID-19 if they had recently traveled anywhere overseas.

Aside from pointing out the failure of NSW Health to properly follow its own procedures, Walker criticised the design of the measures.

Walker doubted whether the three categories, low-, medium-, and high-risk, were of much use, given that the nature of the virus meant that all passengers should have been held until tests were run, unless there was “effectively no risk.”

By March 18, it was clear that the virus could be transmitted by those who had felt no symptoms. As such, “preventing the promiscuous mingling of contacts of cases in the community was vital.”

Because COVID-19 tests could not be processed at sea, any suspected cases should have been treated as positive until proven otherwise by land-side testing. By March 18, everyone on a cruise ship was considered to be a close contact of any case on board, so all passengers should have been treated as possibly infected.

The decision to grant pratique (allowing a ship to dock and discharge passengers) falls to the federal Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (DAWE). Although a DAWE officer did board the Ruby Princess for a routine inspection on March 19, she did not administer a Traveller with Illness Checklist as required by the department’s work instructions. Instead, the NSW Health assessment was taken at face value and pratique was granted.

The departing passengers were supplied with a fact sheet that advised them that they were required to self-isolate for 14 days, but were permitted to travel interstate prior to this if they did not live in NSW. The fact sheet made no mention of international travel. This advice contravened a Public Health Order issued by NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard on March 16 prohibiting returned travellers from leaving the state.

Following the release of the report, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian issued a tepid public apology, emphasising that the public health catastrophe was the result of “mistakes by individuals at a particular time.” The upshot of this is that no-one will be held responsible, and none of NSW Health’s processes will be changed.

Berejiklian made a particular point of apologising to the “62 people who got the virus in [a] secondary or tertiary way,” referring to a figure provided to the inquiry by the federal government. This number, which includes workers at the Overseas Passengers Terminal, at least one of whom became critically ill, vastly understates the impact of the Ruby Princess outbreak on the Australian community.

In Tasmania alone, at least 138 infections and 10 deaths resulted from an outbreak at the North West Regional Hospital, which began with two patients who had travelled on the Ruby Princess.

While Walker’s comment that “there are no ‘systemic’ failures to address” was seized upon by Berejiklian in her unrepentant apology, it is difficult to comprehend how the litany of errors described in the report could be interpreted as anything else.

Following the terms of reference of the inquiry, Walker did not investigate the treatment of the Ruby Princess’s 1,148 crew, who were forced to remain isolated on board the ship, moored first in Sydney then at Port Kembla, for more than a month. Although the disease continued to spread, most of the crew were not tested for COVID-19 until late April.

The inquiry did not find any significant fault with the conduct of Dr von Watzdorf, noting that, as the senior of only two doctors on the ship, she was working long hours and was under considerable pressure in the latter stages of the cruise.

Walker offered no criticism of cruise ship operator Carnival’s handling of the voyage, or its decision to go ahead with the trip in the first place. Following the devastating outbreaks on board the Diamond Princess and Grand Princess, the company was certainly conscious of the risks posed by continuing to operate cruises during the pandemic.

Carnival’s decision to continue running cruises until they were legally prevented from doing so, was entirely motivated by the company’s profit interests, and demonstrated a complete disregard for the health of its passengers and crew.

The fundamental issue—the subordination of public health by all state and federal governments to the dictates of the corporate elite—was passed over in silence by the inquiry.

Australian government prepares expanded emergency and military call-out laws

Mike Head

With the backing of the Labor Party opposition, the Liberal-National government is pushing ahead with planned legislation to hand federal governments unprecedented powers to declare emergencies and call out the military, with or without any state government agreement.

The government aims to push the changes to the Defence Act through federal parliament before the end of the year. Some provisions will be unveiled within weeks, while others will come after the scheduled October 28 report of a royal commission into disaster arrangements. That inquiry was instructed to focus on the alleged need for such powers.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison first declared the government’s intent in late January during the bushfire disaster. He used a National Press Club speech to call for national emergency powers, effectively establishing the conditions for rule by decree, enforced by the Australian Defence Force, in times of a self-proclaimed emergency.

Australian soldiers recently conducting urban training before a deployment to Afghanistan. Credit: Australian Army (Twitter)

As in the United States, the proposed measures would overturn the constitutional division of federal-state powers, in order to enable prime ministers to dispatch troops to deal with alleged emergencies without the permission of a state or territory government.

In June, amid mass protests against police violence, US President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy the military throughout the country, regardless of opposition by state governors. Sections of the military resisted this attempted coup, fearing it was not adequately prepared and would create a social explosion. Trump then dispatched federal border agents to several cities, including Portland, Oregon, where they beat demonstrators and snatched protesters into unmarked vehicles.

The Morrison government’s plans would create the framework for similar moves toward authoritarian forms of rule amid mounting economic crisis, worsening social inequality and growing political discontent.

Once again, as it did during the bushfire calamity, the political establishment is exploiting a catastrophe—this time the COVID-19 pandemic—for which its own policies are directly responsible, to introduce police-state powers.

At the height of the deadly bushfires, the government’s unprecedented January 4 deployment of 3,000 military reservists, warships and planes highlighted the lack of civilian resources, while seeking to accustom the population to the sight of troops and military hardware on home soil.

Morrison boasted of making the first-ever compulsory domestic call-out of reservists and military intervention without any state government request, saying he had been “very conscious of testing the limits of constitutionally defined roles.”

Morrison’s subsequent call for national emergency powers had nothing to do with providing the urgently-needed fire-fighting resources or policies to deal with such climate change-driven disasters.

Likewise, today there is no proposal to allocate the billions of dollars necessary for adequate epidemic protection, health care and aged care, despite the horrendous breakdowns in these chronically-underfunded and over-stretched services. Instead, military spending has been boosted—to $575 billion over a decade—to create a force to suppress domestic unrest as well as to prepare for war.

The proposed legislation has yet to be published. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, it would hand the prime minister the power to declare a national emergency or disaster.

Since 2000, under the cover of the “war on terrorism,” legislation has been introduced already, and twice expanded, with bipartisan support to give federal governments increased powers to mobilise the military to deal with undefined “domestic violence.” These call-out laws give military commanders the power to order the use of deadly force.

Under the reported changes, the Defence Act would be further amended so the military could be called out to “national emergencies and disasters.” This would not be restricted to covering events such as bushfires, floods and pandemics. In his January speech, Morrison vaguely referred to emergency declarations “where the life and property of Australians have been assessed to be under threat.”

During the bushfires and coronavirus crises, the government has relied on the states to request military assistance under “Defence Assistance to the Civil Community” arrangements, but without federal laws laying out the powers and roles of troops.

Under the planned legislation, the prime minister, defence minister and attorney-general could call out the troops if they agreed with each other that a state or territory was unable to protect the Commonwealth or itself against the supposed threat.

The legislation would by-pass the state and territory governments where the trio decreed that “Commonwealth interests” were endangered. It would also give military personnel greater powers and legal protections in interrogating or detaining people, issuing orders and searching property.

Already, the Morrison government has seized upon the COVID-19 pandemic to launch an extensive internal military intervention. So far, about 3,500 military personnel have been mobilised for “Operation COVID-19 Assist,” about half of them at the request of the state Labor government in Victoria, currently the worst-infected state.

In scenes never before witnessed in peacetime, soldiers are patrolling streets, door-knocking houses, manning border control checkpoints, airports and hotel quarantines, and conducting contact tracing. In the Victorian capital of Melbourne, they are helping police enforce an 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew.

Enormous emergency powers already exist in the hands of the federal and state governments. Since the pandemic first erupted in March, these powers have enabled the formation of a de facto coalition regime running the country by emergency decrees. This “National Cabinet” has no constitutional or statutory basis and is not accountable to any parliament, most of which have not sat fully for months.

The existing emergency laws include the federal Biosecurity Act, which gives federal governments the power to declare “biosecurity” or “human biosecurity” emergencies. Cabinet ministers can then issue “any direction to any person” and “determine any requirement,” despite “any provision of any other Australian law.” People who disobey orders can be imprisoned for up to five years. Ministerial directives cannot be disallowed by parliament.

The states have activated similar sweeping “emergency” laws. In Victoria, the Labor government has further declared a “state of disaster,” allowing it to suspend any act of parliament and issue directions that prevail over any legislation or law. These powers can be utilised to suppress popular unrest and outlaw strikes.

Greater emergency powers would allow governments to impose virtual martial law, with sweeping authority to tear up basic democratic rights by suspending all existing laws.

Beneath this lurch toward dictatorial measures lies a protracted political crisis, now intensified by the disastrous profit-driven response of every government, Liberal-National and Labor alike, to the pandemic. Their rush to lift safety restrictions, in order to “reopen the economy” has triggered a second COVID-19 wave of infections and deaths. Decades of deteriorating social conditions, a widening gulf between the wealthy elite and the working class, and the devastation of full-time jobs and working conditions had already generated deepening public hostility.

Support for both major ruling parties has fallen to record lows, as has trust in the political system, yet the ruling class now faces the greatest economic breakdown since the Great Depression of the 1930s and is increasingly discredited by its damning record on the COVID-19 pandemic. Acutely aware and fearful that rising social and political discontent is likely to erupt, the ruling class is drawing up repressive measures.

German authorities cover up COVID-19 infections in Hamburg schools

Gregor Link

Due to the reopening of schools, countless people in Germany have already become infected with the deadly coronavirus within a few days.

Events in Hamburg show how recklessly the authorities are putting the lives of teachers, pupils and parents at risk and covering up the true extent of the pandemic. The state government reopened schools on August 6. Since then, at least 59 students and teachers have tested positive, the Hamburger Abendblatt reported on Tuesday.

According to the article, the school board reports that there are currently 44 active cases in at least 35 schools in Hamburg, with at least 41 schools affected. Of the 59 cases, 55 are students, and only in four cases have teachers or other school employees been proven to be infected, the newspaper said.

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 World Socialist Web Site spoke with Angelika, a teacher whose name we changed at her request. “I am very cautious because you could expect to face repression if you talk about this in public,” she said. Angelika works at one of the affected schools in the Hamburg district of Eidelstedt.

“At our school, a girl tested positive and was taken out of school by the health department for this reason. There is said to have been no Category 1 contact—i.e., 15 minutes face-to-face—because she was supposed to have been sitting alone at a table with a mask in the classroom. For this reason, classes continued as normal—this was a decision of the health department.”

Although in Hamburg, as in almost all other federal states, there is neither a social distancing rule nor a mask requirement for lessons, the Eimsbüttel District Office justified the decision by stating that the affected pupil had “no close contact” with her fellow pupils in the full classroom.

“In Hamburg, there are now many schools with coronavirus incidents,” Angelika reported. According to media reports, at least 11 new coronavirus cases were reported in Hamburg last weekend alone—at 11 different schools. However, Angelika is certain that the cases are “covered up by the school and health authorities and not made public. … There are more than the schools named in the articles. Our case was not made public at first, and I know of two others that were not in the press either.”

“I talked to my neighbour, whose grandson goes to another school,” she continued, “There was also an incident there and a colleague had to stay at home for several days because her daughter was sitting next to a person who tested positive in the schoolyard.”

On Friday, the Abendblatt reported four cases at four different schools in Hamburg, which had become known the day before. There had been no “further measures,” in particular, “no quarantine measures or further testing had been ordered by the health authorities,” the newspaper said. The cases have “so far remained without consequences.” This applies in particular to cases in which, as in Angelika’s school, infected pupils had taken part in lessons and had not been detected at first.

Due to earlier infections, 15 more school classes are currently in quarantine in Hamburg. In total, around 40 cases of infection are now officially registered every day in Hamburg—many of them in refugee accommodation, where residents often live together in inhumane conditions in a very confined space. Apart from the local newspaper Abendblatt, no other major newspaper has reported the ominous developments in the German megacity.

“So far, one hardly reads about infections in Hamburg schools. But when you hear from colleagues that it is affecting considerably more schools, you wonder why this is not being made public, as in our case! And above all: Why is the school environment not tested in a confirmed case?”

The answer to these questions can only be that a deliberate policy is being pursued. Children are sent to school without protection, the lie is spread that this is not contagious, and if they do become infected, the cases are systematically covered up. Not even the most basic quarantine measures are taken, and the authorities are instructed to test as little as possible. At the same time, students and parents themselves are blamed for the developing disaster.

The latter was the purpose of the appearance of Hamburg’s Mayor Peter Tschentscher (Social Democratic Party, SPD) in the ARD broadcast “Hard but Fair” on Monday. To distract from the dangerous policy of reopening schools without compulsory masks and distancing rules, he blamed the “phenomenon of holiday returnees,” “private parties” and the population’s “lack of discipline” for the “problems we have in Hamburg.” In the same breath he declared, “Wildly testing doesn’t help.”

[coment]PHOTO: Tschentscher, together with Chancellor Merkel at a press conference on opening policy, on 17 June (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, Pool)[/comment]

The same ignorance and indifference of the ruling class was expressed by Tschentscher’s spokesman for the school authorities, Peter Albrecht, when he told the Hamburger Abendblatt on Monday that the infection figures at Hamburg schools were “altogether of little concern.” He confirmed to the newspaper, “In the case of new infections, only those affected are in quarantine.”

“The handling of cases seems to be similar everywhere,” Angelika concluded. “Today, we received a letter from the authorities telling us how to proceed. It is very clear from this letter that the schools have little decision-making power in the case of confirmed or suspected cases. It is completely up to the health authorities—and they will also have their instructions on how (late) they can react!”

Two weeks ago, Hamburg’s Senator (state minister) for Education, Ties Rabe, announced that 30,000 medical masks and 30,000 transparent visors would be made available to schools. “It was only on the fourth day after school started that every teacher received a single FFP-2 disposable mask!” Angelika reported. “The school office and janitor received nothing! We will have to get down on our knees in gratitude!”

The ruling class is determined to keep schools open despite the rapidly increasing number of infections, against the resistance of pupils, parents and teachers.

In an interview with the daily Die Welt before the summer holidays, Senator Rabe repeated the lie that the risk of infection in children under 10 is much lower than originally assumed. Therefore, according to Rabe, “if there is a possible increase in infections, the school must not be automatically closed first, but other measures must then be considered. It must then be, schools [close] last.”

This policy is now being put into practice. “School closures are to be prevented by all means possible,” Angelika said, summarizing the attitude of the Hamburg state government. “We teachers in Hamburg feel like guinea pigs. We are one of the first federal states to have reopened schools. That is perhaps one reason why the numbers are being kept down. “Things have to go well, otherwise it will be more difficult for the other states to start a total opening up...”

Schools must remain open so that parents are fully available to the labour market again and profits are once again bubbling. Although they do not say this openly, the federal and state governments are pursuing a policy of “herd immunity,” which deliberately accepts mass infections and fatalities in the interests of the capitalist economy.

Germany’s Left Party hails the SPD’s chancellor candidate, pledges support for militarism and war

Johannes Stern

The nomination of Germany’s Finance Minister Olaf Scholz as the Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) candidate for the post as the country’s next chancellor has been greeted with great enthusiasm by the leadership of the Left Party.

Shortly after last Tuesday’s nomination of Scholz, Left Party leader Katja Kipping gave an interview to German radio’s Deutschlandfunk (Dlf) in which she pleaded for cooperation with Scholz following the next federal election due in October 2021. “I hope it’s more than just playing around with ideas,” she said, referring to a possible SPD-Left Party-Green (red-red-green) coalition government. It was now up to the SPD to convince “potential voters” with its lead candidate.

Dietmar Bartsch (Foto: Die Linke / flickr)

At the beginning of the week, Left Party parliamentary faction leader Dietmar Bartsch weighed in with his own contribution. In another detailed interview with the Dlf, he emphasised that Scholz was virtually the only alternative as the SPD’s candidate for chancellor. He could say “from the point of view of the Left Party, but also if I put myself in the SPD’s shoes, who else could one have nominated?” The nomination of Scholz was “a politically strategic decision,” because he has “the chance” to “win votes from the Union [conservative Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union] and the Greens.”

Thirty years after its Stalinist predecessor organisations, the SED (Socialist Unity Party) and the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism), backed the restoration of capitalism in East Germany, the Left Party is now preparing to take up a role in government at a federal level to implement an extreme right-wing programme. As the country’s incumbent finance minister, Scholz personifies the anti-working class and militaristic agenda of the ruling grand coalition like no other figure. Under his aegis, Germany’s military budget has been massively increased and, in the form of the so-called c oronavirus emergency packages, hundreds of billions of euros have been transferred into the accounts of the super-rich, large companies and banks.

Bartsch’s statements leave no doubt that a possible red-red-green federal government led by Scholz would continue and intensify this reactionary course.

In response to the Dlf’s remark that Scholz, as SPD general secretary under former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, was “a man who supported the Agenda politics,” Bartsch replied: “Well, the fact that Olaf Scholz has a past I am very critical of is undisputed but, to be honest, I have always opposed the idea that it was first necessary to come to terms with everything, even in my own party.” He had already formulated this position at party congresses as follows: “It’s absurd to think that so long as the SPD has not paid back the war credits it agreed in 1914, we refuse to enter into any negotiations.”

Bartsch’s remarks leave no room for error. When the SPD betrayed its Marxist program in 1914 and agreed to war credits, it helped to initiate at the time the greatest slaughter in world history, in World War I, with tens of millions left dead. When Bartsch describes a “coming to terms” with this crime as “just absurd,” referring to Scholz’s role in drafting the Agenda policies and Hartz IV laws of the Schröder government, he is giving a clear signal to the ruling class. The Left Party is ready, if necessary, to climb over bodies to enforce the interests of German capitalism and imperialism faced with growing social and political opposition from workers and youth.

In response to the Dlf’s question whether “the Left Party has the internal strength” to “withstand the pressure when it comes to making decisions” as a governing party, Bartsch replied. “I can answer with a resounding yes.” He always wanted “practice to be the criterion for truth, and look at how things are governed successfully in [the state of] Thuringia.” One must “look at the data, not what we would like.” In Berlin and Bremen, where the Left Party also governs in coalitions with the SPD and the Greens, “a calm, sensible policy is being implemented with the Left Party.”

The meaning is clear. Wherever the Left Party participates in government at a state level with the parties responsible for Hartz IV and militarism, it carries out attacks on social rights, strengthens the police and secret service apparatuses, which are permeated by far-right terrorist structures and brutally deports migrant workers and their families. In Thuringia, where a Left Party member governs as premier, the Left Party has openly sided with the fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD). In early March, for example, state premier Left Party leader Bodo Ramelow used his vote to ensure an AfD member took over the prestigious office of vice president of the state parliament.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the Left Party has moved even further to the right. At the end of March, it voted in the Bundestag for the “Coronavirus emergency packages” launched by Scholz and the Grand Coalition. Since then, the party has been at the forefront of loosening up the lock-down policy to force workers back to work and once again fill the coffers of government and big business. In those states where the Left Party shares power, it has been a forceful advocate of the deadly “back-to-work” policy and is pressing for the reopening of schools.

The party reacts to the growing opposition from workers and youth with open hostility. When spontaneous mass demonstrations broke out in Germany in early June following the assassination of George Floyd in the US, the red-red-green senate in Berlin sanctioned brutal police violence against peaceful demonstrators. Even then, Bartsch stood fully behind the police and declared that they deserved “not less, but more social recognition and more personnel, especially on the ground.”

In his interview with Deutschlandfunk, he now also dropped any former mild criticisms of German foreign policy and assured the ruling class of his party’s full support for the return of German militarism.

With regard to NATO’s war policy, he declares: “To be honest, the Left Party will never dissolve NATO. This is an unparalleled overestimation, it’s just absurd to always give this example. Nobody seriously believes—not even in the Left Party—that we would say as a prerequisite for entering government we must dissolve NATO, otherwise we won’t talk. It’s completely absurd.”

With regard to the foreign missions currently being carried out by the German army (Bundeswehr), he could “also point out that we have already voted differently on mandates.” For example, Bartsch himself “voted yes to the destruction of Assad’s chemical weapons, as did other colleagues from a certain [i.e., his] parliamentary group.”

He then makes clear that German militarism will continue in undiminished fashion under a “left” federal government. “Anyone with a head on his shoulders knows that when the Left assumes government responsibility we will not get in our planes on the same day to bring our boys back. That’s absurd.”

Bartsch’s remarks lead to one conclusion only. The Left Party embraces Scholz not despite, but rather because of his reactionary policies. Like the other established parties of war and Hartz IV social misery, the SPD and the Greens, the Left Party is a right-wing bourgeois party representing the interests of the capitalist state and the country’s wealthy upper-middle classes. Workers and youth who want to fight social cuts, militarism and war must adopt a socialist perspective, and build the Socialist Equality Party as the only alternative to the grand coalition.