Australian national cabinet exploits pandemic for economic restructuring

Mike Head

Despite continuing COVID-19 deaths, especially in Australia’s chronically-underfunded aged care facilities, yesterday’s meeting of the bipartisan ruling “national cabinet” focused on further reopening the economy for the benefit of corporate profit.

The federal, state and territory government leaders paid lip service to the aged care catastrophe, which had claimed 302 lives by today, and to the hundreds of infections daily in the state of Victoria.

However, the cabinet’s priority was clearly to exploit worsening unemployment and financial distress facing working people to ram through the further restructuring economic and workplace relations.

The meeting’s media statement, issued by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, decreed the need for a “coordinated focus from all levels of government on three key areas”—all of them designed to boost corporate profits.

These consisted of extending the JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme for employers, pouring billions of dollars more into business-related infrastructure projects and “greater ease of doing business through lower and efficient taxes and less regulation.”

Another prong announced in the business “recovery” program was the resumption of the Seasonal Worker Programme and Pacific Labour Scheme, which enable agricultural employers to exploit workers from nine impoverished Pacific Island countries and East Timor as cheap crop-picking labour. These highly vulnerable workers will be offered temporary 12-month visas, exempt from a general ban on international arrivals.

Yesterday’s meeting further demonstrated the unified front being maintained by Morrison and his Labor Party counterparts in their de facto coalition government in the face of rising discontent over the toll of death, disease and job destruction being inflicted on working people.

Citing unnamed sources, the Australian Financial Review reported a “fiery” discussion inside the meeting on the demands of big business for the removal of state border controls, as part of the “reopening” drive. But at the post-meeting media conference, Morrison emphasised the level of agreement between the leaders. He again went out of his way to praise Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews, whose government has presided over the worst resurgence of the pandemic so far.

All the leaders duly agreed to take steps toward lifting or relaxing border controls to meet the needs of big business, starting with agricultural exemptions and a narrowing of restrictions on people residing in COVID-19 “hotspots.”

The meeting committed to expanding the stimulus packages that have already handed billions of dollars to the corporate elite. According to the media statement, the federal packages now total more than $314 billion, with another $48 billion provided by the states and territories.

During the meeting, the states and territories were called upon to contribute another $40 billion over two years in “purposeful” expenditure designed to “achieve the maximum economic dividend.” Over coming months and years, these colossal sums will be clawed back through deep cuts to essential social spending, including on health, aged care and pubic education.

The real “purpose” of these packages was underscored by the revelation, in today’s Australian Financial Review, that some of the country’s largest companies received hundreds of millions of dollars from the JobKeeper wage subsidies, while axing thousands of jobs and fattening their profits.

At the top of the list was Qantas, the former government-owned airline. It obtained $267 million from JobKeeper by June 30, despite standing down 20,000 workers and yesterday announcing the dismissal of another 4,000 of them.

So far, companies listed on the stock exchange have reported receiving at least $625 million in JobKeeper payments. In some instances, companies reported profit booms based almost entirely on these subsidies.

The newspaper reported: “Profit growth across Domino’s Pizza, Southern Cross Austereo, K&S Corporation, Adairs, ARB, Ingenia, and Korvest has averaged 70 percent and yet they have reported a combined $57.5 million in JobKeeper payments.”

Morrison defended these bonanzas as the intended outcome of the JobKeeper scheme, “for the benefit of those workers.” In reality, as the figures confirm, the lion’s share of the benefit goes to employers, not the workers trying to survive on wage subsidies of just $750 a week, only to find that many of their jobs will disappear.

Another expression of the national cabinet’s indifference toward working class lives was Morrison’s defence of Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck at the post-meeting media conference.

Colbeck had been unable to even tell a Senate committee that morning how many people had died in the federally-funded aged care homes and how many infected residents remained. Yet Morrison declared that Colbeck was doing a good job, supposedly in preventing “far worse” from occurring.

The 302 deaths of aged care residents represent more than 60 percent of the national death toll. Most of the deaths have occurred in recent weeks in Victoria—a direct product of the rush to lift safety lockdowns, compounded by years of government under-funding, privatisation and casualisation of the poorly-paid staff.

Horror stories of elderly people being left to die, some even denied meals and basic care, have resulted from the refusal of the federal and state governments to arrange alternative workforces to replace the thousands of aged care workers who have become infected or had to quarantine, or who quit for fear of infection.

During his Senate testimony, Colbeck confirmed he had received a report in April on one of the first deadly outbreaks, at Dorothy Henderson Lodge in Sydney, which noted that almost all care staff had been furloughed. On April 12, he had issued a press release falsely claiming that the government had “plans in place” for such “worst-case scenarios.”

In a damage control operation, yesterday’s cabinet meeting announced a token “Aged Care Emergency Response Plan.” This consists of just $171 million in spending over coming years, making a total of $1 billion announced since April—a pittance compared to the business handouts.

Most of the new funds are allocated to “increase nation-wide workforce surge support for aged care providers.” This includes already promised “workforce retention payments” to try to convince workers to return to the infected facilities, which have nearly 1,700 active cases linked to them.

Morrison’s praise of Colbeck was a graphic example of the “return to work” offensive being mounted by the national cabinet as a whole. It was in line with Morrison’s claim that Australia was better off “than anywhere else in the world” because “we have this optimistic way of looking to let’s keep this place open.”

The insatiable corporate greed behind this “optimistic” push to fully “open” the economy was voiced by Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce. He called for the lifting of travel restrictions to restore the airline’s profits, even as he unveiled more job cuts and restructuring.

Equally revealing was Tourism Accommodation Australia chairman Martin Ferguson, a former Australian Council of Trade Unions president and Labor Party cabinet minister. He told parliament’s COVID-19 committee it was crucial to get people moving around the country right now to revive the tourism industry.

Justice Department accuses Yale of discriminating against Asian American and white students

Trévon Austin

The Department of Justice (DOJ) issued Yale University a Notice of Violation last week, alleging discrimination against Asian American and white students. According to a letter from Eric Dreiband, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Yale is guilty of violating federal civil rights law in its undergraduate admissions with respect to the two racial groups.

On April 5, 2018, the DOJ notified Yale that it was opening a Title VI investigation into alleged discrimination in undergraduate admissions in response to complaints from applicants. Since then, the Justice Department has undertaken a lengthy review of documentation related to Yale’s undergraduate admissions process and interviewed admissions officials.

Dreiband argued that the extensive investigation revealed that Asian American and white applicants only have “one-tenth to one-fourth of the likelihood of admission as African American applicants with comparable academic credentials” at Yale.

Yale University campus [Credit: Pixabay]

Additionally, every year from 2000 to 2017, the rates of Asian American applicants offered admission were below their ratio in the undergraduate applicant pool. The rates of admission offers for white applicants were also similarly disproportionate in a majority of years. Yale admitted African American and Hispanic applicants at rates higher than their representation in the applicant pool throughout this time.

Other analyses show Yale is also purposefully racially balancing its freshman class, with the representation of racial groups remaining relatively stable for the last decade. Dreiband demanded Yale remedy its admission policy by August 27 or face a civil lawsuit.

The Trump Administration’s action comes approximately a month before similar arguments are set to be heard before the Supreme Court in a case challenging Harvard University’s racially biased admission practices. The timing is no accident and aims to influence the direction of the debate.

Initially filed in 2014, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard Corporation revolves around many of the same accusations recently directed against Yale. The plaintiffs, represented by right-wing legal activist Edward Blum, accused Harvard of running an admission process that amounted to an illegal quota system, with incoming freshman classes showing similar racial composition over the years, and allegations that Harvard favored black and Hispanic students at the expense of others.

Indeed, Harvard was engaged in a remarkably rigid balancing act. For several decades, the school maintained an ethnic composition in which admitted students were 40-50 percent white, 17–20 percent Asian American, 7–10 percent Hispanic, 7–10 percent African American, 10 percent resident alien and less than 10 percent American Indian, mixed or unknown ethnicity. Between 1994 and 2008, African American and Hispanic enrollment only deviated by 0.3 percent and 0.4 percent respectively.

The trial relating to Harvard heavily featured testimony of longtime Harvard Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William Fitzsimmons, who was questioned about the university’s preferential treatment of wealthy applicants. Fitzsimmons would regularly meet with Development Office employees at the university, demonstrating the donation-driven admissions policy Fitzsimmons said was “important for the long-term strength” of Harvard. One can expect similar policies are in place at other elite universities.

The investigation into Harvard’s activities expose certain truths about the relationship between higher education, wealth and politics in America. In certain respects, the institutions operate as financial institutions first and educational facilities second. With its $36.4 billion endowment, Harvard could afford free tuition and board to over 600,000 students for a year.

There are a number of interrelated processes at play here. On one hand, the cases involving Harvard and Yale illuminate the reactionary and antidemocratic nature of affirmative action, which seeks to pit minority youth against white youth for a limited number of positions. This conflict becomes particularly acute at those institutions, like Harvard, Yale, and other elite American universities, where a degree is treated as virtual admission ticket to the upper class.

At these elite colleges, “legacy” admission preferences offered to the children of alumni exacerbate the conflict for positions by reducing the number of admissions for non-legacy students of all races. At Harvard, about 30 percent of legacy applicants are offered admission, which is roughly five times the rate at which all other applications are accepted. Unsurprisingly, children of Harvard alumni are more likely to be wealthy and less likely to be minorities.

But these institutions also reserve positions for the affluent minority children as well. The racial quotas in place are the result of a policy adamantly pushed by the Democratic Party and minority sections of the upper-middle class. Understanding that elite schools act less as institutions of higher education than gatekeepers to high positions in bourgeois society, these layers squabble for access. They feel that privileged minorities should have the same right to extract wealth from the populace as those already entrenched in the upper echelons of society.

The Trump administration’s decision to intervene in this conflict is for its own ultra-reactionary purposes. This is a president who declared COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” and an administration which regards foreign students from China as a mass of Beijing spies. This makes them an unlikely ally for Asian American students denied admission to Ivy League schools. Here the fascistic right makes use of the Democrats’ obsession with race for their own reactionary—and brazenly racist—purposes.

Studies show that the best method for increasing minority enrollment—and meeting the purported educational goal of racial diversity—is the elimination of “legacy” admission preferences offered to children of alumni.

A number of universities, including Texas A&M University, the University of Georgia, and the entire University of California system (which includes Berkeley and Cal-Tech), greatly increased their student bodies’ ethnic diversity by ending both legacy preferences as well as racial preferences.

Wayne State University administration announces pay freezes and layoffs

Valery Tsekov

Wayne State University (WSU) President Roy Wilson published a statement on the school’s website in early August announcing pay freezes and layoffs to its staff in the coming year. The statement spelled out several possible “solutions” to WSU’s budgetary crisis being considered by the university’s board of directors.

All of the scenarios place the burden of the budget cuts squarely on workers and students. The measures include pay freezes, layoffs, and furloughs to lecturers and other staff members, as well as budget reductions to the university’s various academic departments, and a reduction in the retirement contributions which are provided by the university to its tenured staff. These measures constitute an austerity attack on education professionals and on the quality of education provided to the attendees at the university. This comes on top years of tuition hikes for students over the past decade.

WSU is an inner-city college campus whose residents and attendees are mostly young people of a working-class background, many of them commuting to their classes from home.

Wayne State University Old Main building

Several of the austerity measures announced in Wilson’s statement on August 4 had been under consideration since before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the United States. In other words, the WSU administration is using the crisis to push through long sought after “cost-cutting” attacks on workers and students.

This is most starkly expressed in the situation facing lecturers. In February, 38 percent of lecturers at WSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences received “notices of non-renewal.” At the time, the notices stipulated that while not all of these lecturers would be definitively laid off, all of them would not be teaching this coming semester. The notices also indicated that their salaries, if they got called back to work before the end of the fiscal year, would see a proportionate or partial reduction from whatever it was in their contract at the time. In the meantime, the board of directors would give “more consideration” to the question of who should be laid off and who should stay.

As the WSWS stated at the time, “Wayne State University has been subject to ongoing funding crises, which the board of directors has sought to fill through tuition hikes, greater utilization of adjunct faculty, and other regressive measures.”

Wilson’s announcement on August 4 claims that these measures will be implemented temporarily for the fiscal year 2021. However, no suggestion was made that staff members who will be laid off would ever be reinstated at some point in the future whenever the COVID-19 pandemic would presumably be under control.

A specific figure on how many people will be laid off has yet to be given. Wilson’s announcement simply states that “both our preferred budget solution and our contingency budget solution include layoffs, though at very different levels. Ultimately, the degree to which we will need to implement layoffs will be determined by our ability to lower compensation of all employees through pay freezes and furloughs.”

The operational definition of “furloughs” in Wilson’s announcement is “a percentage reduction in work hours and a corresponding reduction in salary.” The details of this plan will be settled in the near future through the “bargaining process,” a reference to negotiations that have yet to be finalized between WSU’s board of directors and various unions representing the university’s staff and lecturers.

The targeted budget reductions for the college campus was considered, analyzed, and developed by the university’s Budget Planning Council and the Finance Subcommittee. Both of these bodies consist of designees appointed by Wilson himself, other executives of WSU, union bureaucrats, and so-called “university stakeholders” according to the university’s website, who no doubt include wealthy donors. The class interests which pertain to the members of these bodies who make important decisions affecting workers and students are irreconcilably hostile to the needs of the working class community in metropolitan Detroit.

The preferred budget solution which these bourgeois overlords of the university have in mind includes a salary freeze for all employees including tenured professors, a reduction in the administrative division of the budget by 7 percent, and a reduction in college campus expenditures by 5 percent.

The school’s deans and members of the cabinet have also agreed to take a 5 percent reduction in their salaries, a mostly meaningless gesture made in an attempt to feign solidarity with workers who will be affected by the implementation of this budget solution. Wilson specifically will accept a reduction in his salary of 10 percent, which amounts to $50,000, leaving him with a still overblown salary of $450,000, allowing him to continue a luxurious upper-middle-class lifestyle that he already enjoys.

Members of the board of directors of universities generally receive six-figure incomes from their position within the campus hierarchy and have other sources of income which they collect casually, such as the dividends on their stock portfolios. Investors in the US stock market, in particular, have been receiving enormous windfalls during the coronavirus pandemic, which were ensured earlier this spring through the federal government’s injection of trillions of dollars into the stock market with the passage of the grossly misnamed CARES Act.

The real attitude of the ruling elite towards college educators was on display at WSU in late February of this year, when dozens of protesters held a demonstration on campus in support of the lecturers who had received the notices that their contracts would be allowed to expire this year. The demonstrators at that rally gathered outside of the Faculty/Administration Building to present a petition to Wilson, signed by 800 staff members from WSU and other universities, demanding the reinstatement of the targeted lecturers. Wilson refused to accept the petition in person and ordered campus police to prevent the demonstrators from entering his office.

Universities across the country are carrying out similar austerity measures, laying off faculty members and cutting the pay of their employees as they prepare to reopen under the deadly conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The American Council on Education has predicted that colleges and universities nationwide will experience a $23 billion decline in revenue during the upcoming fiscal year, which will have a devastating impact on their budgets.

The University of Wisconsin stands to see a potential collapse in its revenue of $100 million dollars, which will surely lead to a steep drop in its $650 million budget. Missouri Western University announced earlier this summer that it is laying off 25 percent. The University of Hawaii is preparing for a decline in its operational budget for the upcoming year of up to $181 million. Their current budget is $1 billion. Kalbert Young, the official in charge of developing the school’s budget solutions, told the university’s board of regents in a meeting, “There will be prolonged, possibly perpetual changes to how this university is run.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the vast social crisis facing the working class, which is rooted in class antagonisms that are inherent to the global capitalist mode of production. Part of this social crisis involves the placing of high-quality and higher education increasingly out of reach for the working class, burdening students with loans that might take their entire life to pay off, and attacking the living standards of educators and education workers.

All of this demonstrates the urgent need for the independent mobilization of the working class to defend its right to a high-quality education, ensure the social well-being of educators and education workers, and demand the full funding of institutions of higher learning. These objective social needs need to be secured alongside the safety of students and college staff from the deadly illness caused by the novel coronavirus.

Spanish unions agree to shut down Barcelona Nissan plants

Alice Summers

With unbounded cynicism, Spanish unions have signed off on a deal closing Nissan’s three Barcelona factories, directly cutting over 2,500 jobs. A further 20,000 jobs would be lost among subcontractors and supply-chain workers that depend on the auto-plants.

After around 100 days of strike action by Nissan workers, the Barcelona factory committee—run by the Podemos-linked Workers Commissions (CC.OO), pro-PSOE (Socialist Party) General Union of Labour (UGT) and the Union of Workers’ Syndicates (USO) unions—came to an agreement with the Japanese transnational on August 5. The plants are to close by December 31, 2021.

The unions universally proclaimed the deal a victory for Nissan workers. Raúl Montoya of the USO declared it a “great agreement” and a “success,” claiming that it saves thousands of jobs. Miguel Ruíz, spokesperson for the Barcelona factory committee, from the Catalan section of the same union, said it enables workers to avoid “traumatic job losses.”

Nissan Barcelona factory [Credit: Nissan Motors]

UGT automobile secretary Jordi Camona called it a “good agreement that, for the moment, clears up uncertainty around the future of these jobs.” The CCOO released a statement claiming the deal is a “balanced agreement that, despite all the difficulties, meets the aspirations of the staff.”

It does nothing of the sort. The deal merely adds a further year to the ticking time-bomb of mass firings, postponing approximately 25,000 job losses one year, to the end of 2021.

As part of the deal, unions agreed to force workers back to work at the Barcelona plant from the end of August, ending three months of strike action.

Workers will be encouraged to take “voluntary” redundancies or early retirement, with the factory committee lauding the supposed concessions they had won for workers opting to do so.

Those taking early retirement will be offered payouts on a sliding scale. Older workers aged over 55—who would find it difficult to obtain other employment—will be offered a pre-retirement plan of 90 percent of their salary up to the age of 63, with workers between 50 and 54 years offered 75 to 85 percent of their salary, according to their age. Workers born after 1970, who do not qualify for the early retirement plan, will be offered 60 days of pay for each year that they worked at Nissan if they choose “voluntary” redundancy.

The unions have hung their sell-out deal on the promise of a “reindustrialisation” plan, which would be a “tripartite parity” commission between the unions, Nissan and local and national government. Its nominal aim is to encourage other companies to take over the three auto plants in Barcelona and continue production. Nissan has apparently pledged to include a clause in any takeover contract with a new company “guaranteeing priority recruitment” to their former employees.

This worthless fraud will not save the livelihoods of thousands of workers. There is no guarantee that the factories will remain open under different ownership; they are to close on December 31, 2021, takeover or no.

The unions have effectively washed their hands of workers, with Nissan employees given little choice but to quietly consent to their dismissal. The unions’ negotiation framework has been predicated on the supposed inevitability of the factory closures and on sugaring the bitter pill of job losses that they are forcing workers to swallow.

Moreover, the approximately 20,000 workers not directly employed by Nissan—but outsourced, involved in the company’s supply chain or otherwise dependent on the Barcelona factory—get nothing out of the unions’ negotiations. About a dozen other companies work within the Nissan factory, contracting approximately 1,500 workers, with a further 70 companies and thousands of other workers indirectly involved in supplying and operating the plants.

Protests have already broken out among subcontracted workers, who are threatening to prevent the reopening of the Barcelona plant with an indefinite strike. Around 500 workers at Acciona Facility Services, which runs logistics in the Nissan factory, have threatened industrial action against job losses and their exclusion from negotiations. This came after Acciona informed unions it will bring forward the cancellation of its contract with Nissan, due to end in March 2021, to cut redundancy costs. Acciona has filed a redundancy notice for its 580 employees at the Barcelona facility.

Around 300 subcontracted workers also filed a lawsuit claiming that their employment status is an “illegal transfer of workers,” and that they should be considered full employees of Nissan, receiving the same rights and conditions. Employees at maintenance company Segula and canteen facilities company Tecnove also took part in the legal action.

Josep Pérez of law firm Collectiu Ronda, which filed suit on behalf of subcontracted workers, said: “If they work for Nissan, if they manufacture their vehicles and are subject to the company’s rules and whims, they should be recognised for what they are: Nissan workers. … To normalise the existence of second-class workers, who can be deprived of their rights on the whim of big companies with multi-billion dollar profits, is to attack the working rights of all.”

The betrayal of the Nissan workers exposes middle class pseudo-left forces like the Morenoite Corriente Revolucionaria de Trabajadores (CRT, Workers’ Revolutionary Current) and its website Izquierda Diario, which seek to bolster the unions and demoralize the workers.

While making muted tactical criticisms of the UGT, CCOO and USO and the sell-out deal, they made clear their opposition to an independent perspective for the working class. Seeking to channel workers’ opposition behind a supposedly radical “syndicalist left,” the CRT chided the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) for failing to “openly break with the route map marked out by the majority unions.”

“If the CGT wants to present a different choice to that of the UGT and CCOO,” the CRT advised, “taking on their policies and being a part of this deal of shame will leave it in a very bad position to represent an alternative direction in future conflicts.”

The CGT is not “alternative leadership” for the working class. Its function is to divert workers who are disenchanted with the bigger unions with militant rhetoric. It is no less a creature of the state than its pro-PSOE and pro-Podemos competitors.

In bolstering the CGT, the Morenoites seek to sow illusions in the trade unions, concealing their universal transformation over the past four decades, amid the globalisation of production, into a corporatist arm of the state. The energies of these pseudo-left forces are focused on upholding the domination of Podemos and the union bureaucracy and blocking the development of socialist consciousness in the working class.

While promoting the unions, the CRT calls for the “nationalisation” of the Barcelona plants. If such a demand were to be taken up by the capitalist Podemos-PSOE government, it would not usher in a new golden age for workers, but would be accompanied by calls for further cutbacks to make the factory “viable”. After the 2008 crash, the US government plunged billions of dollars into the auto companies, only to slash wages for new hires by half.

The struggle against job cuts can only be carried forward by breaking with the bankrupt national framework of the trade unions and building an international movement in the working class. The nationalisation of plants under workers control requires unifying struggles in Spain with those of workers in Europe and worldwide against the transnational corporations, which shift production from one country to another to maximise profits. This entails building rank-and-file committees of action, independent of the trade unions, as part of a fight for socialism.

Nearly 300 workers infected in COVID-19 outbreak at Northampton sandwich factory

Paul Bond

In the latest outbreak associated with food processing, nearly 300 workers at the Greencore sandwich factory in Northampton, England tested positive for COVID-19 last week. Over a week after the outbreak, management were finally forced to close the plant for 14 days, yesterday afternoon.

Northampton, already on a coronavirus watchlist, has the highest rate of new cases in England and could be subjected to a local lockdown. Yet, although a lockdown was being discussed for the entire town with a population of over 215,000, management, the local authorities and the trade unions did everything possible to keep the factory operational—endangering the lives and safety of the more than 2,000 people employed there and the local population.

Nearly 14 percent of the factory’s total workforce of 2,100 have now tested positive. This has contributed to Northampton having the highest rate of new infections in England: nearly 117 in every 100,000 residents, compared to an average in England of 12 in every 100,000. This spike centres on the Moulton area, around the Greencore factory.

Convenience food manufacturer Greencore’s factory produces sandwiches for high-end retailer Marks & Spencer. Founded in 1991, the firm is a major supplier to British and Irish supermarkets, and the largest sandwich manufacturer in the world.

Standard National Health Service testing initially revealed 79 workers at the Northampton plant with coronavirus. Following these results, Greencore launched its own private testing, turning up a further 213 positive results. The company confirmed that “a number of colleagues have tested positive … and are now self-isolating.”

Workers were left in desperate straits. According to the Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU), the “majority” of Greencore’s self-isolating workers, who are paid weekly, are only receiving Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) during their absence. They are being paid just £95.85 per week for the 10 days of self-isolation.

Some workers with a full-time job have been forced to turn to foodbanks and others have been evicted after struggling to pay rent. This has led to concerns that workers may not self-isolate when symptomatic because they cannot afford to live on this reduced income.

When the pandemic began, some Greencore employees sought advice on shielding vulnerable family members. They were told they could use their company sick pay for this, leaving concerns about what would happen if they used it up and then became ill themselves.

The company, which saw share prices fall in the days after the outbreak, said that sick pay on offer ranges from full pay to SSP, “depending on the type of contract.” In practice, factory floor workers are on contracts offering only SSP. The union has noted that they are thus “treated differently to the managers enjoying full company sick pay.” Criticism properly belongs with the unions that negotiated those contracts in the first place.

Greencore said that “in recognition of the financial impact” on those eligible only for SSP, it had decided to give all weekly-paid workers an additional attendance payment of £400. This is only their agreed end-of-year bonus paid early, so workers will not even have that usual cushion in December.

The situation confirms that the government’s ad hoc testing system is not fit for purpose. More than two-thirds of the Greencore cases were identified by Greencore’s private testing. The company then used the result as an argument against closure!

At the beginning of the pandemic, Greencore did not even notify workers or instigate wider testing when a manager tested positive. By contrast, Greencore sacked two employees for travelling to work together when one was suffering from COVID-19.

Despite the mass outbreak of cases, the local Conservative council gave the plant the green light to continue operations. Lucy Wightman, director of public health at Northamptonshire County Council, declared that the Food Standards Agency and Public Health England “are assured there is no risk to any of the produce” made at the factory. She claimed, “It is evident that Greencore has highly effective measures in place and they continue to work extremely hard to exceed the requirements needed to be COVID-19 secure within the workplace.”

The main concern of Jonathan Nunn, leader of the Conservative council, was to avoid any lockdown. He expressed concern simply with “the impact [the outbreak has] had on our [coronavirus] statistics.”

The company said it is “liaising closely with PHE [Public Health England] East Midlands, Northamptonshire County Council and Northampton Borough Council, who are all fully supportive of the controls that we have on site.”

Greencore insisted its factories have “wide-ranging social distancing measures, stringent hygiene procedures and regular temperature checking in place.”

The criteria for judging the effectiveness of health measures clearly have nothing to do with their actual effectiveness. Wightman pointed to the “high number of cases over the last four weeks” across the town but laid the onus on workers to “‘act now’ to follow additional measures.”

Wightman said it is “about how people behave outside of Greencore, not at work.”

This position was supported by the BFAWU. The union’s regional officer, George Attwall, said the problem “boils back down to education”—of the workers. He blamed workers’ activities outside the factory, with “lots of members car-sharing, lots of members … living in the same household with the whole family working in the factory.”

These are the realities of workers’ lives, with Greencore one of the biggest employers locally. Suggesting that workers are somehow responsible for these conditions reveals everything about the unions as mouthpieces for the corporations.

The union pro-company agenda was clear earlier this month when Greencore began reopening sites closed during the lockdown and extending production at Northampton. With workers furloughed, Greencore began by recruiting agency workers to meet demand. Instead of opposing reopening under unsafe conditions, the union said the firm should “bring back our members first before any agency come on site.”

BFAWU opposed any fight to close the plant until it was safe to return even though one of its own convenors, Nicolae Macari, was one of those who tested positive. He works at Greencore alongside his wife, his mother and father, his brother and his sister-in-law. All six have tested positive and are in self-isolation together.

The level of backing they have received from BFAWU and other unions was acknowledged by Greencore, who said they are “in constant contact with unions at every stage of this process” and are “committed to working with them in close partnership during this hugely challenging time for our people.”

Food processing factories continue to be a focus for outbreaks. An outbreak of at least 43 cases this week in Coupar Angus, Perthshire, Scotland saw soldiers mobilised to test all 900 employees of the 2 Sisters chicken factory there. In June, the 2 Sisters chicken factory in Llangefni on Anglesey was forced to close after at least 216 were infected—nearly half the workforce.

Scottish National Party First Minister Nicola Sturgeon did not rule out a local lockdown in Coupar Angus but stressed that this would be a last resort. In its drive to reopen schools, the Scottish government has demonstrated that it shares the same concern for restoring the generation of profit as its counterpart in Westminster.

The Greencore outbreak, as with the others at food processing plants across the UK demonstrates that the fight against coronavirus is not primarily a medical question but a political one. It demands that workers oppose the homicidal back to work agenda of the ruling class and their partners in the trade unions. Workers must build independent rank-and-file committees, linking the fight for workplace safety with the transformation of society on a socialist basis.

Johnson government extends ban on evictions as UK faces “avalanche” of homelessness

Laura Tiernan

A ban on housing evictions introduced at the start of the coronavirus lockdown in March will be extended for another month, the Johnson government announced yesterday.

The delay follows an outpouring of public opposition to eviction proceedings that were due to begin on Monday, with 290,000 renters at immediate risk of homelessness.

The government’s latest retreat—following a two-month extension of the moratorium in June—postpones by only a matter of weeks evictions on a scale unseen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

As soon as the ban is lifted, anyone in rent arrears for eight weeks or more can be automatically evicted. Tenants can also be hit with Section 21 “no fault” evictions. Housing charities and tenants’ unions announced yesterday they would go ahead with planned protests, including today’s National Day of Action and protests on Monday by the London Renters Union.

More than 120,000 tenants in rent debt have already been issued an eviction notice, and a further 170,000 have been threatened with eviction, according to housing charity Shelter. Debt charity StepChange reports 590,000 tenants are in rent debt, for an average of £1,076 per household.

On Thursday, health professionals from bodies including the Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of General Practitioners, and the Faculty of Public Health, wrote to Robert Jenrick, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government warning of “a catastrophic wave of evictions and homelessness as we head towards autumn and winter.”

They explained that mass evictions risked fuelling a new wave of the virus: “People forced into overcrowded temporary or emergency accommodation by eviction are at greatly increased risk of being unable to isolate if needed, face greater challenges in following social distancing guidelines and may lack adequate access to basic hygiene measures shown to reduce infection rates.

“As public health organisations, we are deeply concerned that failure to prevent an evictions and homelessness crisis could significantly contribute to an increase of COVID-19 infections.”

Opposition has exploded in online petitions and social media. A London Renters Union petition, “Protect renters during the coronavirus”, has gathered nearly 105,000 signatures. It calls for the suspension of rent payments during the pandemic, a ban on evictions, and for the UK’s estimated 216,000 empty homes to be used for those in need. Comments from signatories include:

• “I’m a self-employed contractor who rents privately. My industry has collapsed with all work evaporated with no horizon. We need to rent suspended in order to survive.” (Patrick T.)

• “I am a private rental tenant. It’s hard enough to pay extortionate rent in normal circumstances. I’m terrified it could lead to my family losing our home.” (Carly P.)

• “International Students are in critical problem. They don’t have enough money to pay rent and buy groceries. So government should do something.” (Akash R.)

• “Because I’m currently choosing between health and paying my rent, I can’t self-isolate as guided because I’ll fall behind on my rent.” (Samuel M.)

• “I am freelance and completely out of work, therefore unable to pay my rent.” (Kylie H.)

• “It is time to help those on lower incomes!” (Tanvir R.)

The pandemic is accelerating a social crisis long in the making, further exposing the unbridgeable divide between the working class and the super-rich. On June 30, SCMP magazine reported that London’s luxury property market had shown “relative immunity to the coronavirus.” Under the heading, “Forget Covid-19 and Brexit: London remains a magnet for the super-rich as the luxury property market booms,” Peta Tomlinson reported that “prime central London” was “enjoying its best start to a year since 2017.”

This included £3.5 billion spent by the Qatari royal family on “transforming” a 13-acre site in Belgravia and £200 million-plus by Hong Kong billionaire Cheung Chung Kiu for a 45-room mansion in Knightsbridge, overlooking Hyde Park. Lockdown restrictions have posed no barrier, with many Ultra-High-Net-Worth individuals snapping up properties after a cursory inspection via Zoom.

In January, Shelter published survey results showing half of England’s 8.5 million renters were experiencing stress or anxiety due to sky-high rents, poor living conditions, and the threat of eviction. More than 2 million renters had been made physically ill as a result.

The pandemic has pushed millions more into extreme housing stress. A YouGov poll published July 30 showed that 450,000 parents in private rented accommodation fear they and their children will be made homeless because of the financial impact. It found 49,000 parents had sought help from food banks since the start of the pandemic, 429,000 had cut back on food to pay the rent, and 550,000 had taken on debt to cover rent payments. Government figures show that 73 percent of private renting families have no savings at all.

Responding to reports that the government will extend the evictions ban to September 20, Ghazal Haqani, an organiser with the London Renters Union, said, “This U-turn has been forced through by people power. But until there’s a permanent evictions ban and rent debt is forgiven, the government will just be kicking the can down the road.

“We’ve had a series of short-term extensions, and that’s caused enormous misery and stress for renters like me. Because so many of us are in arrears, we have been constantly worried for months that we are about to become totally defenceless against landlords who want to kick us out of our homes. It looks like that could happen all over again in September.

“Rents have been sky high for decades, the pandemic has cut our incomes and this recession has only just begun. Of course we’re in arrears, and of course we’re not going to be able to pay off our rent debt for a very long time.”

Shelter Chief Executive Polly Neate responded yesterday, “A bullet may have been dodged with this extension, but as soon as Parliament returns, it must give judges extra powers to stop renters being evicted because of ‘Covid-arrears’.” But no faith can be placed by workers and young people in the government or opposition parties to protect renters from eviction.

On Friday, Labour MPs David Lammy, Thangam Debbonaire, and Karl Turner wrote to Jenrick over the eviction crisis. Their letter made clear that Labour has no genuine opposition to the Johnson government’s pro-market agenda. It contained no demand for an indefinite ban on evictions, no call for a suspension of rent for unemployed and furloughed workers, focussing instead on how ending the ban on evictions “risks unleashing a tsunami of cases which could overwhelm English County Courts.”

During a Radio Times interview Thursday, former Shadow Chancellor and key Corbyn ally John McDonnell praised party leader Sir Keir Starmer’s “constructive” response to the coronavirus pandemic, “He’s approached the government in a constructive way—and we’ve got to get through this crisis together.”

McDonnell’s open embrace of Starmer exposes the political collapse of the entire Corbyn project, with McDonnell stating, “Keir has made it clear he’s a socialist” and “we’re on the same page.”

The Socialist Equality Party calls for an indefinite ban on all evictions and a complete freeze on rent and mortgage payments during the coronavirus pandemic. Vacant housing, including the property of absentee landlords must be seized and placed under public ownership to house the homeless. The banks and corporations must be placed under social ownership and the obscene profits of the super-rich seized to build high-quality low-cost housing for all.

Seven protest leaders in Thailand arrested by police

Owen Howell

Thai police have responded to a mass demonstration in Bangkok last Sunday with a series of arrests. The rally was part of the eruption of student-led protests across Thailand over the past month. Seven prominent members of the student movement organising the protests, Free Youth, were arrested this week on charges including sedition and inciting public unrest.

Students raise three-fingers, symbol of resistance salute, during a rally in Bangkok, Thailand [Credit: AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit]

Six of the leaders were specifically targeted for their participation in a Bangkok student rally on July 18, which sparked the recent wave of anti-government protests. Since then, rallies have proceeded on an almost daily basis.

While originally confined to major universities, the movement has since gained wider support among students and workers around the country, as demonstrated in the Sunday protest, Thailand’s largest since the 2014 military coup.

The three main demands of the protest leaders are to dissolve parliament, end the state persecution of political opponents, and rewrite the current constitution, which was drafted by the military junta.

Arrest warrants were issued during the Sunday rally for 15 leaders of Free Youth. According to the Thai Enquirer, a coordinated police operation was conducted throughout Wednesday night. The six people arrested over the July 18 protest were Baramee Chairat, Suwanna Tanlek, Korakot Saengyangpant, Natthawut Somboonsap, Tossaporn Sinsomboon, and Thanee Sasom.

The protest at the Democracy Monument in Bangkok, 16 August [Credit: @TaraAbhasakun, Twitter]

Police also apprehended rappers Thanayuth Na Ayutthaya and Dechathon Bamrungmuang, leader of the highly popular and notorious hip-hop group Rap Against Dictatorship, for their performances at the protest.

The seventh protest leader targeted was Anon Nampa, a human rights lawyer and leading figure in the Thai protests. Anon was arrested, for the second time this month, over a speech on August 3 calling for reform of the monarchy. In Thailand, anyone who “defames, insults or threatens” the royal family can be prosecuted for violating the draconian law of lèse majesté, and faces up to 15 years in jail.

Ever since Anon’s speech, student protests have openly criticised the political role of King Maha Vajiralongkorn, whose power over the constitution, the armed forces, and the palace fortune has grown considerably since he was installed in 2016.

The lèse majesté law has been used to silence political opposition as many as 90 times since the 2014 military coup. However, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha, former head of the military junta, has reportedly received instructions from the King not to use the law, for now. Anon was charged instead with sedition, which carries a maximum prison sentence of seven years.

Anon joined the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights organisation after 2006, when the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was overthrown in a military coup. He became known as a lawyer for the Red Shirts (a grouping of Shinawatra supporters who staged protests in 2010) and lèse majesté offenders. He has previously been charged in 13 cases for involvement in anti-junta protests.

Protesters at Ratchadamnoen Avenue in Bangkok [Credit: @ChingCh14270983, Twitter]

State repression of the protests has been ratcheted up since criticism of the monarchy emerged as a focal point of the movement.

Earlier this month, two other student leaders—both known critics of the monarchy—faced arrest for sedition: Panupong Jadnok, a member of student group Eastern Youth for Democracy, based in Rayong Province; and Parit Chirawak, co-founder and former president of the Student Union of Thailand.

At a rally in Phitsanulok Province on August 9, six youth leaders were abducted by men claiming to be Border Patrol policemen, in an attempt to derail the protest. Prachatai reported that so far five planned protests have been blocked by intervention from authorities.

Six further arrest warrants were also issued on Wednesday for students who led the August 10 Thammasat University protest, in which specific demands to reform the monarchy were first outlined.

In spite of these efforts, the protest movement continues to grow. This week saw whole classrooms in at least eight high schools across Bangkok wear white ribbons and raise three-fingered salutes during the national anthem, in a sign of solidarity with the protests. On Wednesday, hundreds of high school students gathered outside the Ministry of Education building, calling for greater freedom in schools as well as reiterating the movement’s three demands.

Yesterday a major student rally took place in the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima, at which Panupong Jadnok spoke about the reform of the monarchy to loud cheers of support from crowds of high school students. The North-Eastern Student Assembly Network will be holding a protest today in Khong Kaen at 5:00 p.m. and Free Youth is advertising a demonstration tomorrow at Bangkok’s Kasetsart University, which will likely draw a large gathering of students from across the city.

Student rally at a high school in Yala Province on Tuesday [Credit: @Bricks_Dmocrazy, Twitter]

Several of the arrested leaders, now released on bail, have indicated on social media that they will continue to be involved in rallies. As police sought to detain them, they stood in the Criminal Court with a number of MPs from the Move Forward Party and opposition Pheu Thai Party as guarantors.

Senators appointed by the junta have expressed suspicions that Free Youth is a front for opposition political groups, as with the Shinawatra-backed Red Shirts. In particular, they are investigating the funding for the large protests, which have included concerts, extensive lighting, and giant LED screens.

On its Facebook page, Free Youth has rejected these claims, saying: “Our funds come from the masses, who support us only because this is a movement of young people, by young people, and for young people.”

Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, leader of now-defunct Future Forward Party, has said he played no role in funding the protests, which first began in February when the party, which attracted support from young people, was dissolved by the Constitutional Court.

Royal Thai Army Commander-in-Chief Apirat Kongsompong is attempting to incite popular hatred against the protesters, saying last week: “The coronavirus can be cured, but the disease of chung-chart [‘nation-hating’] cannot be cured.” Apirat’s use of this term, used by past military regimes to rally far-right nationalist forces against internal opposition, is significant.

The media, subject to intense pressure from the Prayuth government, has mostly refrained from reporting protesters’ demands regarding the monarchy at all. Education Minister Nataphol Teepsuwan warned after last Sunday’s rally that there was a limit to how far students should go.

This week’s crackdown on the movement’s leadership expresses fears in the ruling class that the protests could broaden and intersect with widespread discontent in the working population amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Social inequality in Thailand, which greatly increased under the junta’s rule, is set to skyrocket due to the pandemic’s impact and the likelihood of a major economic contraction this year. A Credit Suisse report last year named the country the most unequal in the world, with the richest 1 percent of the population owning 66.9 percent of the nation’s wealth.

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 oppositionist Alexei Navalny flown to German hospital after doctors dispute poisoning claims

Andrea Peters

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny remains in a coma in a hospital in Omsk, a city in southwestern Siberia, after falling extremely ill while traveling from Tomsk to Moscow on board an airliner. According to doctors, their “working diagnosis” is that Navalny’s is suffering from a metabolic disorder possibly caused by a sharp drop in his sugar levels.

Alexei Navalny [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

Aleksandr Murakovsky, the head doctor of the hospital’s emergency department, told the press on Thursday that neither oxybutyrates nor barbiturates were found in the body. Speaking just prior, specialists at Omsk’s BMSP-1 medical clinic and the Burdenko Institute of Neurosurgery declared they did not find poison, contradicting the charge that there was an attempt to take Navalny’s life through exposure to a lethal substance. Chemical traces from plastics that are commonly found on people’s clothes were uncovered by Russian laboratories that examined his personal belongings.

Omsk doctors had declared that Navalny’s condition was too unstable for him to be transported out of Russia. However, they have since reversed their decision. Navalny will be transferred on Saturday to the Charité hospital in Berlin on a plane dispatched by Germany to Omsk the day before, along with medical personnel.

Supporters of Navalny reject the diagnosis as a cover-up by the Kremlin, of which the oppositionist has been a vocal critic. Kira Yarmish, Navalny’s press secretary who was traveling with him when he collapsed mid-flight, insists he was poisoned while drinking tea just prior to getting on board. Anastasia Vasilyeva, head of the Doctors Alliance trade union—an outfit set up by Navalny with the intention of drawing Russian medical workers angry over the deplorable state of the country’s health systems behind his right-wing organization—has pointed out that a metabolic disorder is not a diagnosis of an illness, but a condition brought on by some other major cause.

The New York Times and the Washington Post have already carried several articles insinuating—despite the absence of clear evidence so far that Navalny was even poisoned—that Russian president Vladimir Putin is responsible, and the Kremlin opponent is another victim in a long string of assassinations allegedly carried out by Moscow.

In making these claims, they are motivated solely by the ferocious US anti-Russia campaign, of which the two newspapers are the leading media proponents. They have not the slightest concern for Navalny himself. It should be noted, for instance, that both newspapers have long stopped shedding a single tear over the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist and critic of the Saudi government Jamal Khashoggi, whose assassination and dismemberment by Saudi operatives were recorded by Turkish intelligence.

On Thursday, White House National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien described the claims that Navalny was poisoned as “very concerning.” He added, “If the Russians were behind this ... it’s something that we’re going to factor into how we deal with the Russians going forward.” The Trump administration has since said that it is following the situation but has issued no official statement.

The European Union has yet to weigh in on the Omsk doctors’ diagnosis or the underlying causes of Navalny’s illness, limiting its intervention to appeals for the oppositionist to be sent to Germany.

Whether Navalny became ill due to natural causes or was poisoned, and if so, who might be responsible, may never be known. Certainly, there are many people in Russia, the United States, Europe, and other countries who might wish to dispense with the Kremlin oppositionist for any number of reasons.

His fate, both in the near and short term, is entirely bound up with the Washington’s aims to dominate Eurasia and the desperate efforts of the Russian ruling class to survive the consequences. The so-called Russian “opposition” movement, in which Navalny plays a central role, is a plaything within the swirling agendas of the different political forces operating in this context.

An alleged attempt on Navalny’s life that is pinned to the Kremlin works to the benefit of those layers within the American state who seek to demonize the Putin government in order to justify war with Russia. The response of the Times and the Post make it clear that there is already an effort afoot to use his illness in this manner. Navalny himself has close ties to Washington.

Navalny’s corruption exposés have targeted powerful individuals within the Russian state and big business. He has his supporters within the elite and the government itself, but is viewed by some as a threat, particularly within the context of the series of domestic and foreign crises currently confronting the Putin government.

The spread of COVID-19 has brought to the fore the deplorable state of Russia’s healthcare system, fueling popular anger. There is an eruption of anti-government sentiment in Russia’s Far East, after the Kremlin used allegations of criminal conduct to remove a popular governor. And the Lukashenko government in Belarus, Moscow’s last remaining ally on its western frontier, may soon be overthrown as part of “pro-democracy” movement that has drawn behind it key sections of the working class.

Notwithstanding his free-market politics and anti-immigration chauvinism, Navalny has positioned himself as a champion of Russia’s exploited medical workers and protesters in both Khabarovsk and Minsk. He is seeking to gain from the current crisis, as the Kremlin flails.

The possible downfall of the Lukashenko government, driven to a significant degree by a mass strike wave that has witnessed thousands of workers on the streets, poses dangers for the Putin government. It is terrified of the prospect that the Russian working class, which has close linguistic, cultural, economic, and political ties with the Belarusian working class, and many of the same grievances, will be moved into action by events just over the border.

It is also concerned that the Belarusian opposition, with which Moscow has maintained close relations, could come fully under the domination of the West. On Thursday, Belarusian oppositionist Valery Tsepkalo called for Western Europe to recognize Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Lukashenko’s challenger in the country’s contested presidential elections, as the rightful winner.

The aim he said is to create a Venezuela-like situation, in which she, like Juan Gaidó in Venezuela, would form a competing government so that it would “become clear to the government bureaucrats and security services to whom they need to swear loyalty—to whose side they need to move.”

In making this remark, Tsepkalo revealed perhaps more than he intended, as Gaidó is a tool of Washington and lacks any base of support within the Venezuelan masses. The Belarusian opposition is attempting to identify with the mass strike movement in Belarus, using its promises of “free and fair elections” to draw workers’ attention away from its right-wing, free-market politics.

After initially withholding clear promises of support for Lukashenko, on Friday the Russian government signaled that it was perhaps taking a firmer position on Belarus, indicating that if asked by Minsk it would “do everything possible to help in the regulation of the situation in Belarus.” The Kremlin stopped short, however, of indicating that it was prepared to fully back the besieged government. With regards to criminal charges unveiled against Belarus protesters, the Kremlin stated it would “in no way or in any way interfere in or make any appraisal of the reasons for the criminal investigations in Belarus.”