Why Police is Casteist and Communal

S.R. Darapuri

Sometime back  a video of a police officer from Maharashtra, Bhagyashree Navtake had gone viral wherein she is seen bragging about how she files false cases against Dalits and Muslims and tortures them. It represents a crude but true picture of social prejudices in India’s police force.

It is a fact that after all our police men come from the society, hence the police organisation is the true replica of our society. It is well known that our society is divided on caste, religion, communal  and regional lines. Therefore, when the people from the society enter the police organisation they carry all their biases and prejudices with them. Rather they become stronger when such persons come to occupy positions of power. Their personal likes and dislikes; caste and communal prejudices influence their actions very strongly. These biases are often displayed in their behaviour and actions in situations where persons of other castes or communities are involved.

A situation of blatant caste discrimination came to my notice when I was posted as Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Gorakhpur in 1976. As ASP I was in charge of Reserve Police Lines. On one Tuesday which was a Parade Day, while taking round of Police Mess I found that some persons were taking food sitting on the cemented tables and benches whereas some were sitting on the ground. It struck me as odd. I called one Head Constable and enquired about this dining situation. He told me that those sitting on the benches are high caste men and those sitting on the ground are low caste men. I was wonder struck to see this blatant display of caste discrimination in the Police Lines. I decided to end this discriminatory practice. Hence on the next occasion when I noticed the same situation I asked the police men sitting on the ground to get up and sit on the benches. I had to repeat it once or twice and was able to discontinue this discriminatory practice of segregated dining. Incidentally during that very period I was asked by my boss to give a report on the observations made by Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes which in its report of 1974 had mentioned that there was a practice of segregated messing in Police Lines of eastern U.P. and Bihar. I told my boss that it was true and I had abolished this practice only recently. He told me that I should just mention that it is not there now. I don’t know about other districts of eastern U.P. but it was abolished by me in Gorakhpur district.

It came into news reported sometimes back that even today the practice of not only segregated dining but there are separate barracks for high and low caste men in Bihar Police. It is shocking that it continues even today whereas Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes had pointed out this discriminatory practice as back as 1974. Actually the police force on account of its composition is dominated by high caste men and such discriminatory practices continue unabated. It is only due to reservation policy that some persons belonging to low castes especially Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SCs and STs) have found a place in police force which has made the force more secular and representative, however, minorities are still very poorly represented. But still the caste, communal and gender biases are quite strong in police men.

As we know there have been very frequent complaints of communal bias against Provincial Armed Constabulary in U.P. I found it to be true when I was posted as Commandant of 34 Bn P.A.C. Varanasi in 1979. On noticing it I had to make lot of efforts to secularise my men. I always made it a point to sermonise them to be above caste and communal biases. I used to tell them that religion is your personal affair and you are only police men when you put on your uniform and are duty bound to act according to law. My constant briefing and debriefing had very salutary effect on them and I was able to secularise my men. It came very clear in 1991 during a communal riot situation in Varanasi. The occasion was the General election of 1991. One retired I.P.S. officer Shri Chand Dixit was contesting election from Varanasi city as a Vishav Hindu Parishad (VHP) candidate. As usual VHP engineered a communal riot to keep the Muslims away from voting. As a result curfew was imposed. News appeared in the papers that PAC men had resorted to looting and beating up in a Muslim locality. I immediately started making an enquiry. To my surprise I found that these were not PAC men but Border Security Force (BSF) men who had resorted to looting, destroying property and beating up of old men and women in the Muslim area. It shows that communal biases exist not only in PAC men but even among Central Para Military forces. No such complaint was received from the locality where men of my Battalion were posted.

I have experienced that the behaviour of lower ranks of police mainly depends on the behaviour and attitudes of the higher officers. If higher officers have caste and communal biases they are likely to accentuate the same among the men under them. I have personally seen many top ranking police officers openly displaying their caste and communal biases. What to talk of lower ranks even many I.P.S. officers do not show any change in their attitudes towards lower castes and other communities after such a rigorous training. Actually change of attitude of a person is the most difficult thing because it requires a lot of effort to relieve one of ingrained prejudices and biases. Communal biases are so often displayed in so called terror cases where there are lot of complaints of false implications of Muslims.

It is also my personal experience that role model of the higher officers plays a very important role in changing the attitudes and behaviour of lower ranks. As mentioned earlier, as Commandant of 34 Bn PAC I continuously briefed my men to be secular and free of caste and communal prejudices. My efforts gave a very good result during 1992 when Ram Mandir movement was in full swing. One day Bajrang Dal people had planned to have a demonstration. They were to collect in the premises of famous Hanuman Mandir of Varanasi city. The administration had planned to arrest them as soon as they came out of Mandir gate.  They had put PAC men to surround the agitators and put them in the buses. S.P. City and City Magistrate were on the spot. When the agitators came out of gate the officers on duty ordered the PAC men to surround them and put them in the buses. But to their utter shock PAC men did not move at all and the agitators started moving towards the city. Then more PAC men had to be rushed to the spot from the City Control Room. As soon as they arrived they surrounded the agitators and put them in the buses. Thus a possible disturbance in the city could be avoided due to the prompt action of these PAC men. Happily these PAC men belonged to my Battalion. The other PAC men who had refused to act belonged to another Battalion which was notorious for indiscipline. This prompt action by my men was appreciated by district administration and the recalcitrant PAC men were removed from the duty. The point which I am trying to make is that leadership in a uniform force makes a lot of difference.

As seen from the video of the Beed  I.P.S. officer Bhagyashree Navtake, it is obvious that if officers like her occupy a position of authority they are likely to act in a partial manner. A constant watch needs to be kept on such officers. They should not be put on such duties where they can display their prejudices. It is also necessary to change the composition of police force by recruiting more men from minorities in order to make it representative and secular. Training programmes for both officers and men should be organised to sensitise them about SC/ST, minorities and women issues.

Thousands of Australians stranded overseas by profiteering airlines

John Harris

Over 23,000 stranded overseas Australians have registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) that they are unable to return to Australia due to extortionate prices being charged for airline tickets and repeated months-long delays.

Amid the worsening global COVID-19 pandemic, the largest numbers of Australian citizens and residents are trying to leave India, the Philippines, South Africa and Vietnam. In effect, they are being denied their legal right of entry to Australia.

Airlines are prioritising passengers able to pay in excess of $10,000 for business-class and first-class tickets, with some planes reportedly carrying as few as four economy class passengers. Multiple reports have emerged of desperate travelers having their bookings cancelled at the last minute by airline companies.

In mid-July, the Australian “national cabinet” of federal, state and territory government leaders imposed a 4,000 per week limit on the number of inbound arrivals from overseas. This has resulted in caps of 30 passengers on incoming flights.

The caps were reportedly introduced to assist states and territories manage the number of overseas arrivals, who require two weeks of hotel quarantine. In addition to flight costs, returning travelers are required to pay for their own quarantine—$3,000 per adult for the two weeks.

According to the Board of Airline Representatives of Australia (BARA), one airline informed it that more than 100 passengers had been stopped from boarding an aircraft, following the implementation of caps in early July.

Airlines have sought to justify the systematic bumping of economy class passengers by citing the costs of flying the aircraft.

However, Qantas, Australia’s main airline, has received $248 million from government aviation industry support schemes and $267 million through the government’s JobKeeper wage subsidy program, while slashing its workforce.

This is part of the overall anti-working class response to the pandemic by governments and the corporate elite. The message from the government and the airlines is clear: If you cannot afford to pay first class, you are on your own.

According to the Australian, international airlines have said it could take six months to return all the stranded passengers with the current arrival caps in place.

Sarah Ng, who is currently in Japan, told the Australian Financial Review (AFR) she has had nine flight cancellations since March. Franklin Moon and his partner Keegan Guidotti, also in Japan, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that they had spent thousands of dollars on several scheduled flights since April, only to have each one cancelled without any refund.

In June, a Qantas spokesman said that well over a million bookings had been moved, refunded or turned into credits for future use. But credits are of no value unless fights are available.

Frank Toner, in London and desperately trying to get back to his pregnant wife, was bumped from his flight. His wife Shahrzad reported that the airline had told her that the flight was cancelled, “but after pressing them, they admitted the flight is actually still going ahead but only for business and first-class passengers… We are now calling airline after airline to get a ticket, and they’re all willing to take our money until we ask them about the cap into Australia, then they admit they’re overbooked.”

Heather Cassidy, also in the UK, told the New Daily: “We booked with Qatar and they cancelled last week, so we rebooked, and it kept coming up rescheduled. They kept offering an upgrade all the time. They wanted $43,000! I was like: ‘Is this for my own plane?’ … Unless you have millions … you haven’t got a chance. If you’ve got the money, you’re alright. The rich get in.”

The ABC reported earlier this week that families in Britain are organising a special charter flight to bring their newborn babies home following months of trying to secure an airline ticket.

The AFR last week reported that government agencies are telling those stranded to draw from their superannuation, while others have been advised to procure funds through GoFundMe crowdfunding campaigns to pay for business class tickets.

Hundreds of people have lodged complaints about cancellations. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, in a display of callous indifference, responded: “I asked Australians to return home on March 17, 2020. At the time, DFAT expressly warned of the difficulties, noting that travel was becoming ‘more complex and difficult’.”

Laurence Muir-McMurtrie, a founder of the Aussie Expats Abandoned Abroad Facebook group, told the AFR that Morrison’s “return home” call did not “take into account the complexities of relocating an established life abroad that may include a family with children at school, property and possessions and more.”

In an attempt to offset anger, the government announced that “eligible” people could apply for one-off repayable loans. Individuals will be apply to borrow up to $2000 and families will be allowed to apply for loans worth up to $5000. Yet, those who already have paid for economy class tickets have been bumped from flights multiple times.

Not only has the Australian government offered little to nothing in the way of aid. The opposition Labor Party has maintained a virtual silence on the issue. And the governments of countries in which expatriates are stranded have denied any responsibility and provided no assistance.

The plight of overseas workers, students and tourists is not unique to Australians. Many people from every corner of the globe are known to be stranded in foreign countries, often similarly abandoned by their respective governments.

Jan Kuciak murder case: Slovakian court acquits alleged masterminds

Markus Salzmann

A Slovakian special court acquitted the alleged masterminds behind the murder of journalist Ján Kuciak last Thursday.

The court in Pezinok near Bratislava based the acquittal of millionaire Marián Kočner and co-defendant Alena Zsuzsová on a lack of evidence. It could not be proven that the defendants had ordered the murder, Judge Ruzena Sabová explained when announcing the verdict, despite a key witness having testified against the two and there being a lot of other evidence against them.

“If, despite all the evidence, reasonable and understandable doubts remain, then a defendant is found innocent and that is how the court proceeded here,” Judge Sabová said, justifying the verdict.

The 27-year-old Ján Kuciak, who had researched corruption, tax evasion and the connections of high-ranking Slovak politicians to the Italian Mafia on the news portal Aktuality.sk, was shot in cold blood by a contract killer in February 2018. His fiancée Martina Kušnírová, who happened to be in the house with him, was also murdered.

Commemoration of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kusnirová (Photo: Ladislav Luppa / CC-BY-SA 4.0)]

At the end of December 2019, the court had sentenced businessman Zoltan Andrusko to 15 years in prison. Andrusko had mediated the contract killing in return for payment. To obtain a lighter sentence, he agreed with the public prosecutor’s office to appear as a key witness. His testimony massively incriminated Kočner and his accomplice Zsuzsová in the trial, telling the court he had organised the crime for them and hired two men to carry it out.

On April 6, the court then sentenced former soldier Miroslav Marček, who fired the fatal shots, to 23 years in prison and on September 3, his cousin Tomas Szabo, a former policeman who drove the assassin to Kuciak’s house, to 25 years. Both confessed and admitted to having received €35,000 to €40,000, respectively, for the contract killing.

Kočner and Zsuzsová denied having commissioned the murder, although, in addition to the testimony of the key witness, they were severely incriminated by the record of their communications using the Threema messenger service.

Yet the trial itself was more than strange. The presiding judge, who considered the defendants’ guilt proven, was overruled by her two assistant judges, an extremely unusual occurrence according to the Slovakian press. Accordingly, presiding judge Sabová was the only one of the three who had completely studied the 25,000-page files. At the last minute on Monday, the public prosecutor’s office also tried to introduce further evidence, but the court did not allow this.

During the investigations, it had turned out that Kočner was deeply involved in the case. The murdered journalist had researched links between the Italian Mafia and Slovakian politicians and had also kept an eye on the dubious business dealings of Kočner and his numerous companies.

In the 1980s, Kočner had initially made a career as a pro-government journalist and had maintained excellent contacts not only with the Stalinist leadership of Czechoslovakia but also with right-wing dissidents. With these relationships, his unscrupulousness and enormous criminal energy, he subsequently became one of the most influential and wealthy figures in the country.

Former secret service agent Péter Tóth confessed in autumn 2018 to having shadowed Kuciak on behalf of Kočner. Kuciak himself had received a threatening phone call from Kočner six months before his assassination, threatening to “exterminate” him and his family. Although he made an official complaint about the threat, no further investigation was conducted.

During the trial, it became clear why: Kočner was closely networked with figures in politics, the police authorities and judiciary. He enjoyed close contacts with the then Social Democratic head of government, Robert Fico. He called a state secretary in the Ministry of Justice “my monkey” in online chats. His network covered large parts of the judicial system. In March, 13 judges were arrested for bribery. Among them were the former state secretary for justice, Monika Jankovska, and the deputy chairperson of the Supreme Court of Slovakia.

The murder of the journalist and his fiancée casts a harsh light on the network of rich business figures, corrupt politicians and criminals that emerged after the introduction of capitalism and the dissolution of Czechoslovakia three decades ago. Following Kuciak’s murder, mass protests broke out across the country, forcing Prime Minister Fico and his Interior Minister Robert Kalinak to resign.

In 2019, the liberal politician Zuzana Čaputová surprisingly won the presidential election and in the spring, the newly founded party “Ordinary People” (Olano) of Igor Matovič won the parliamentary elections. Matovič became head of government. Both he and Čaputová had promised to fight the corruption in the country. In reality, one corrupt oligarchic clique simply replaced another.

The media tycoon Matovič formed a coalition with the neoliberal Freedom and Solidarity Party (SaS) around the entrepreneur Richard Sulik, in which he had started his political career, and with the extreme right-wing party “We are a family” (Sme rodina), which is a member of the extreme right-wing faction Identity and Democracy at European Union (EU) level.

According to opinion polls, approval of the government is currently falling dramatically. Since this February, Olano has lost seven points and currently stands at only 18 percent approval. In the coronavirus pandemic, it is revealing its criminal indifference to the general population.

Although the number of new infections on Saturday reached the highest level since the beginning of the pandemic, with 226 cases, the government insists ruthlessly on reopening schools and starting production without any safety restrictions. In particular, the auto industry insists there should be no further lockdown, as was the case at the beginning of the pandemic when some plants were shut.

The wealth of the country’s ruling elites is due in large part to the company serving as a low-wage platform for the global car companies. No other country in Europe builds as many cars per capita as Slovakia.

President Čaputová declared herself “shocked” by the verdict but emphasised that she naturally respected the court and pointed to the appeal process. She hoped that “justice will finally prevail before the Supreme Court.” Peter Pellegrini, who had led the government for two years after Fico’s resignation, explicitly declared his support for the ruling.

The silence from European capitals is also remarkable. While in the case of the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny EU politicians fell into anti-Russian hysteria, although there is no evidence whatsoever that Navalny was poisoned by the Russian state, in the Kuciak case there was at most quiet, restrained criticism of the Slovak government and judiciary.

Whether the murder of Kuciak and Kušnírová will go to the Supreme Court and how it will be decided is largely an open question. Wide sections of ruling circles within the EU and NATO member Slovakia want to prevent this at all costs. The Mafia network, to which Kočner belongs, has far-reaching tentacles. Some journalists are currently evaluating the so-called Kočner library. It contains 57 terabytes of data, including the millionaire’s chat transcripts and telephone data. Last month, this led to new findings in the money-laundering case surrounding the powerful Penta financial group, which maintains close contacts with a variety of big names in business and politics.

The Kuciak case once again makes clear that with the introduction of capitalism 30 years ago, a narrow stratum of society came to the top, shamelessly enriching itself by legal and illegal means at the expense of the population. The massive protests following Kuciak’s assassination will not have been the last.

US makes “significant adjustments” to its Taiwan policy

Ben McGrath

The United States is continuing to ramp up tensions in East Asia over Taiwan, inflaming a situation that could lead to armed conflict with Beijing. This is part of a bipartisan effort in Washington to surround and intimidate mainland China on the economic, diplomatic and military fronts, while deflecting growing domestic tensions outwards.

On August 31, David Stilwell, the US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, delivered a speech to the right-wing Heritage Foundation in which he stated that Washington would be making “significant” changes to its engagement with Taipei. His remarks were filled with effusive praise for Taiwan’s supposedly flourishing democracy and denunciations of Beijing for allegedly upending the status quo in the region.

Attempting to paint capitalist Beijing and its policies as the continuation of Marxism, Stilwell claimed these changes were necessary because “the Chinese Communist Party has targeted Taiwan with diplomatic isolation, bellicose military threats and actions, cyber hacks, economic pressure, ‘United Front’ interference activities—you name it.”

Stilwell drew attention to high-level trips by US officials to Taiwan, including that of US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in August, as well as a “Joint Declaration on 5G Security” between American Institute in Taiwan director Brent Christensen and Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu that Stilwell claimed would “[expand] cooperation on data protection, freedom, and human rights.”

Stilwell spent a significant portion of his speech discussing the declassification of two cables from Washington in 1982 that made “Six Assurances” to Taiwan as part of a more aggressive stance by President Reagan.

One cable, dated July 10, 1982, stated that the US: 1) would not set a date to end arm sales to Taiwan; 2) would not agree to prior consultation with Beijing regarding the military sales; 3) would not play a mediation role between Beijing and Taipei; 4) would not revise the Taiwan Relations Act; 5) would not agree to take a position on Taiwanese sovereignty; 6) and would not pressure Taipei to negotiate with Beijing.

In highlighting these cables, Stilwell claimed that Washington stands by the “One China” policy, before adding: “What we are doing, though, is making some important updates to our engagement with Taiwan to better reflect these policies and respond to changing circumstances. The adjustments are significant, but still well within the boundaries of our one-China policy .” (Emphasis added.)

Beijing responded on September 1 with Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying calling on Washington to adhere to the “One China” policy. She stated that it “is the political basis and fundamental precondition for the establishment and development of China—US diplomatic ties” and that the US should “stop lifting its substantial relationship with Taiwan and to cease any forms of official contact with Taiwan, so as not stray further down an erroneous path.”

Stilwell also claimed last Monday: “The US has long had a one-China policy. This is distinct from Beijing’s ‘One China Principle’ under which the Chinese Communist Party asserts sovereignty over Taiwan. The US takes no position on sovereignty over Taiwan.”

Contrary to Stilwell’s assertions, the declassification of the cables is meant to call the “One China” policy into question. In 1979 the US took the de facto position that Taiwan is a part of China when it ended formal relations with Taipei. The acceptance of this position has also governed cross-strait relations since the 1992 Consensus, under which both Beijing and Taipei accept that there is one China, but agree to disagree over which is the legitimate government.

The statements from senior US officials that Washington does not agree with Beijing’s interpretation of the “One China” policy and does not currently take a position on Taiwanese sovereignty have significant implications. They open the door to the declaration of a new US stance that would up-end the four decades old status quo and directly challenge Beijing over Taiwan. Such a decision would risk the outbreak of war. Beijing has made clear that any declaration of Taiwanese independence would be met with a military response.

Beijing’s position is not rooted in aggressive expansion to impose dictatorship on so-called peace-loving democracies as Washington and Taipei would have people believe. Defeated in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalists) fled to Taiwan to establish a separate military dictatorship, backed by the US. Taipei received global recognition and even occupied China’s seat on the United Nations Security Council.

As the Cold War developed and the United States waged bloody imperialist wars in Korea and Indochina, the threat of a US war launched from Taiwan against the Chinese mainland persisted. President Nixon made a major tactical shift in relations that culminated in his visit to Beijing in 1972, setting the stage for formal US-China relations and a quasi-alliance against the Soviet Union. As Beijing moved to restore capitalism, China became a cheap labour platform for US corporations. Now that China has developed into an economic competitor with Washington, the latter is intent on subordinating Beijing to its own interests, even at the risk of nuclear war.

To this end, Washington is deepening its relations with Taipei. The New York Times on August 17, citing unnamed officials in Washington, wrote: “Those officials, as well as Republican and Democratic lawmakers, aim to do as much as possible to show explicit US support for Taiwan. They want to send military signals to China and to make relations with Taiwan as close to nation-to-nation as possible, short of recognizing sovereignty.”

As such, Stilwell last Monday also announced that Washington and Taipei would establish a new annual bilateral economic platform. This occurred after Taiwan agreed to remove longstanding restrictions on the importation of American pork and beef. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s spokesman Xavier Chang stated: “We hope that the dialogue will be an opportunity to forge new areas of economic cooperation between the two countries and allow Taiwan to better integrate with other world economies and become a key power in global supply chain.”

The US has backed these changes with military threats. On August 30, Washington sent the USS Halsey, a guided-missile destroyer, through the Taiwan Strait, the second such trip for a US naval vessel in less than two weeks. There have so far been 11 transits through the Taiwan Strait this year, one shy of the annual record, according to the US Pacific Fleet.

South African health care workers strike as opposition to ANC government mounts

Stephan McCoy

Health care workers rallied in Pretoria and Capetown last week against poor working conditions and government corruption in the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE). They said that the lack of PPE was putting health care workers’ lives at risk.

Their fears are justified. According to official figures from last month, more than 27,300 health workers have tested positive and 230 have died from the disease. South Africa has recorded the highest number of COVID-19 cases in Africa at nearly 640,000 and nearly 15,000 deaths. Testing remains abysmally low with the result that the true scope of the pandemic’s spread is unknown, allowing the virus to spread unchecked.

In Pretoria, health care workers demonstrated outside the office of African National Congress (ANC) President Cyril Ramaphosa at the Union Buildings. They carried placards that read, “Thank you frontline workers” and “Remove corrupt officials.” It is part of a wave of protests and strikes by public service workers.

Cyril Ramaphosa [Credit: Tasnim News Agency]

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (NEHAWU), one of the largest public sector unions in the country, is threatening that its 240,000 public workers will strike on September 10 unless the government meets demands including greater protection from COVID-19, danger payments for workers on the frontline and a pay increase that should have been awarded in April. A strike would cause a major disruption to the country’s health care system under conditions where 2,000 new cases are being reported every day.

Workers at South Africa’s National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) had planned to strike nationally on August 28 over low pay, failure to implement previous agreements and the lack of PPE, but were prohibited by a Labour Court order designating them as essential workers. Health care workers at the NHLS are responsible for carrying out diagnostic tests for patients who use the public health sector, including those for COVID-19, HIV and tuberculosis.

According to the ruling, NEHAWU members would be breaking the law if they promoted or encouraged any strike action or other conduct in pursuit of their demands. The NHLS would then be able to call on the South African Police Service to force them back to work. The health care workers at the NHLS courageously went on strike, defying the court’s decision.

Workers told South Africa’s Daily News that the NHLS was not compliant with COVID-19 safety regulations, and that this exposed employees to the risk of contracting the virus. They said, “Safety measures are non-existent in certain facilities and we are left exposed to danger. We want the department to resolve this issue including the long outstanding salary increment. We don’t get paid risk allowance and bonuses. The salary increases were due on April 1 as per resolution 1 of 2018.”

NEHAWU called off the strike, despite spokesperson Khaya Xaba telling the media that the strike was the start of an “indefinite strike.” Workers say they still plan to join the national walkout set for September 10.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) has called for a general strike on October 7 in protest against corruption, the government’s failure to protect workers in the COVID-19 crisis and its plans to cut $10 billion from public sector wages over the next three years in the wake of pandemic. This year’s budget deficit is expected to be 16 percent of GDP, even as South Africa secured a $4.3 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.

The unions have been forced to call for a national walkout in the wake of the continuing crisis over the government’s response to the pandemic, increasing poverty, police brutality and the outcry over government corruption.

The pandemic is accelerating after the ANC government organised a return to work, calling off one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, and what was a relatively widescale regime of testing to stem the spread of the virus. The lockdown was enforced with extreme police brutality—on a per capita basis South Africa records more killings by the police than the US.

The government has now largely abandoned any efforts to stop the spread of the virus, moving the country to “Level 2” lockdown as it rushes to open the economy and embrace “herd immunity.”

Like all governments around the world, the South African government is forcing teachers and students back into classrooms to then drive parents back to work to produce profits for the transnational corporations and South African bourgeoisie, which will lead to the resurgence of the coronavirus. Schools reopened to children on July 6 after being closed for nearly four months, only to be ordered to close by Ramaphosa three weeks later—after the country saw a dramatic rise in cases to more than 10,000 a day. They reopened again for most grades on August 24.

The Department of Education has provided few if any resources for schools to reopen safely, only requiring that schools be kept at 50 percent capacity, with students alternating attendance, to allow for social distancing. This is set to further strain the already dreadful education system and will prove impossible to implement in provinces such as Gauteng, home to Pretoria and Johannesburg, where at least 1.5 million students are set to return to the classrooms.

The trade unions offered no resistance to the government’s plans, only expressing concern that the rushed and premature reopening would provoke opposition and resistance among parents, students and teachers. Their fear was this justifiable anger would prove impossible for them to contain.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the country’s social, economic and political situation. Ramaphosa became president in 2018, after four years as vice-president under President Jacob Zuma. This billionaire and former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) came to power citing corruption as a barrier to international capital investment. He was welcomed by the global financial oligarchy and the South African ruling elite as providing a much-needed facelift to South African capitalism, which had taken a beating under the rampant corruption presided over by Zuma. The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing Ramaphosa and his administration as corrupt and venal.

The latest allegations of corruption and graft involve state contracts worth $295 million for medical equipment, goods and services to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, and the inflated prices for PPP. The alleged beneficiaries include companies owned by the husband of Ramaphosa’s now-suspended spokeswoman, Khusela Diko. Her husband had received a $7.6 million contract to supply the health department of Gauteng province with medical equipment. Bandile Masuku, Gauteng’s provincial health minister, was forced to resign following allegations he was linked to the irregular procurement of health supplies. The sons of the thuggish Secretary General of the ANC, Ace Magashule, were also awarded inflated contracts.

The exposures threatened to provoke an all-out factional fight within the ANC, with former President Zuma accusing Ramaphosa of threatening to destroy the ANC. Tony Yengeni, a senior party member close to Zuma’s faction, called for Ramaphosa to step down accusing him of having received bribes to secure his post. The top leadership of the ANC’s National Executive Committee summoned Ramaphosa to the integrity committee over allegations that he had received nearly $25 million in campaign funds from business interests and industrialists during his campaign for the presidency.

Fearing an eruption in the working class, the ANC leadership closed ranks and came down on Ramaphosa’s side, denouncing the allegations from the Zuma faction as “choreographed.” Prosecution charges have now been brought against several companies and the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) is investigating 658 contracts related to COVID-19 procurement.

Heathrow airport ground staff given ultimatum: Accept pay cuts or face redundancy

Margot Miller

Frontline staff at Britain’s Heathrow Airport have been told they face the stark choice of either accepting pay cuts of between 15 and 20 percent or suffering job losses. Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, these savage ultimatums have become the new normal in industrial relations.

On September 2, Heathrow issued formal section 188 notices, which means that after a 45-day consultation period the company can fire and rehire its workforce on company terms. This will affect half the airport’s ground staff of 4,700, including engineers and security workers. Demands also include the end of the workers’ final salary pension scheme.

Heathrow Airport Holdings Ltd is owned by shareholders including Spanish multinational Ferrovial, Qatar Holdings, the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, the UK Universities Superannuation Scheme and Alinda Capital. The company says it will “guarantee a job” for whomever wishes to remain. Staff, however, could lose up to £10,000 a year. How far Heathrow is prepared to go in cutting pay is indicated by a comment in the Independent, which report of management’s plans, “No one’s salary will fall below the London Living Wage, it said.” The London Living Wage is set at just £10.75.

British Airways planes at London Heathrow Airport (Photo: Ken Iwelumo/Wikipedia)

Heathrow is London’s busiest airport, but with the advent of the coronavirus pandemic travel and tourism ground almost to a standstill.

A spokesperson for Heathrow stated, “COVID-19 has decimated the aviation industry, which has led to an unprecedented drop in passenger numbers at Heathrow, costing the airport over £1bn since the start of March. Provisional traffic figures for August show passenger numbers remain 82 percent down on last year and we must urgently adapt to this new reality.”

In March, one runway and two terminals were closed, and most flights were grounded. Most workers were retained at that point under the government’s job furlough scheme, which ends in November. In June, the company launched a voluntary redundancy scheme, after slashing managerial roles by a third.

Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost across the travel and tourism industries in the recent period. This trend began before the pandemic, which has acted to accelerate efforts to cut costs in an increasingly competitive global market.

The threat to jobs and pay cuts at Heathrow follows the recent announcement at Gatwick, London’s other main airport, of its intention to make a quarter of its workforce redundant. This amounts to 600 ground staff posts after a reduction in passenger numbers for August of 80 percent.

Gatwick, which is owned by VINCI Airports and Global Infrastructure Partners, announced 200 job losses in March and took out a £300 million bank loan, but later said it needed to reduce costs further. Chief Executive Stewart Wingate blamed the cuts on the “devastating impact” of the coronavirus on the airline and travel industries. At the moment, with 80 percent of the Gatwick staff on the government furlough scheme, only the north terminal is in operation.

In every case, the role of the trade unions is to push through redundancies and facilitate concessions, so long as they receive a place at the negotiating table.

Heathrow had been in negotiations with the Unite union for four months before the latest announcement. Unite official Wayne King said the airport’s plans would “further undermine confidence in the industry… Our members have worked tirelessly throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.” Appealing to Heathrow management to continue “already difficult negotiations” he added, “To conduct industrial relations via the media in such a brutish manner is designed to create fear and panic in a group of key workers.”

The central pre-occupation of the union bureaucracy is not the interests of workers but to defend the interests of the aviation industry, the auto industry, the aerospace industry, etc. King added: “At a time when Unite is working hard to persuade the government to follow the lead of other European nations and provide specific financial support to the aviation sector to ensure that the industry and workers can survive the pandemic and thrive in the future …”

Unite regional manager, Jamie Major, said of the Gatwick job losses, “This is a bitter blow for the workers and once again highlights the chronic failure of the government to support the aviation sector, despite promises way back in March that it would do so.”

Offering to help facilitate the attacks, he continued, “Unite will be entering into formal negotiations with Gatwick Airport to ensure that redundancies are minimised and that all redundancy procedures are fair and fully transparent.”

Last month, the British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA) foisted a sell-out on pilots at British Airways (BA). The union recommended its members accept a deal in which 270 of BA’s 4,300 pilots would lose their jobs. The pay of the remaining workforce will be slashed immediately by 20 percent and fall to an 8 percent cut in two years and only return to where it is now at some undefined future point.

BA has also issued an ultimatum to cabin crew and ground staff to either accept redundancy, or a wage cut and inferior terms and conditions. According to Unite, some workers could face cuts in pay of up to 43 percent.

Unite General Secretary Len McCluskey pleaded with BA chief executive Alex Cruz to work with Unite to ensure the continued profitability for the company. In mid-August, Cruz hailed the announced “significant progress” in talks with the unions. This is as more than 6,500 staff have already lost their jobs, including 4,500 cabin crew based at Heathrow and Gatwick, as the company seeks 12,000 redundancies.

Like other airlines internationally, BA, with the backing of the unions, is using the pandemic to justify long-planned cuts in jobs, pay and conditions, to gain the edge against international competitors.

Just weeks before, BALPA reached an agreement with Ryanair involving a 20 percent pay cut beginning in July. The sell-out deal means pilots have to work to more flexible rota and leave arrangements, to the detriment of their well-being. Again, pay cuts are supposed to be gradually restored over four years. BALPA sold the pay cuts on the basis of saving 260 pilot jobs. However, 70 of these posts are still under threat if Ryanair closes its bases at Leeds/Bradford, Prestwick, Bournemouth and Southend as proposed.

In addition to slashing their workers’ jobs and pay, the airlines are agitating for a reckless opening-up of international travel to facilitate their return to profit-making.

The air transport industry has not seen the recovery in passenger traffic it hoped for since lockdown ended, aggravated by the government’s imposition of 14-day quarantine measures for travellers returning from virus “hotspots.” This has deterred potential holidaymakers from making bookings, leading to flights being cancelled during the peak summer holiday season.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Heathrow Airport Chief Executive John Holland-Kaye urged the government to introduce swab testing for coronavirus of incoming passengers as an alternative to quarantining. An enthusiastic backer of the criminally irresponsible back to work drive, Holland-Kaye warns that UK business is in danger of falling behind its rivals.

“This [swab testing at airports] is starting to get their [Germany and France’s] economies moving again and, in fact, both Frankfurt and Charles de Gaulle airports carried more passengers over the last few months than Heathrow,” he said.

The interests of airline workers are diametrically opposed to those of the airline owners and chief executives, whose only interest in running these companies is the extraction of profit—whatever the costs to their employees. Unite, Balpa and the rest of the trade unions have proved again and again that they stand on the side of the employers.

Workers must break from these rotten organisations and form independent rank-and-file committees, in alliance with airline workers internationally, to fight back against the onslaught on their livelihoods and safety.

COVID-19 outbreaks spread within a week of England and Wales schools reopening

Tony Robson

It has taken less than a week for the Johnson government’s criminal reopening of schools in England and Wales to place the lives of educators, children, and the wider community in danger.

There is virtually no part of the UK that has been left unscathed, with teachers and pupils testing positive in both primary and secondary school settings. On Monday, the Department of Education confirmed at least 60 outbreaks.

Schools in Scotland returned three weeks earlier, leading to outbreaks that were a warning of what was to come that went unheeded. According to the campaign group Boycott Return To Unsafe Schools (BRTUS) reported outbreaks at schools across the UK (England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland) stood at 173 for the period from August 12, 2020 to September 7, 2020. BRTUS started to compile a database during the national lockdown when schools were open only to the children of key workers and then covering the period from June 1 when schools were partially reopened. The cases of school-related COVID-19 outbreaks even with limited numbers present and where social distancing applied went largely unreported officially and by the media.

The growing list of affected schools includes Castle Rock secondary school in Coalville, Leicestershire, visited by Prime Minister Boris Johnson on August 26. Johnson was filmed sitting relaxed on the floor of the school gym next to children to instil the idea that schools were “COVID secure.” After one staff member tested positive, six tutor groups and two PE classes were instructed on Monday to stay at home and await further guidance.

Last week, with re-openings commencing in England and Wales, the propaganda offensive went into overdrive to overcome widely expressed scepticism that measures were in place to protect children and staff. Their mistrust was also founded on the Johnson government’s long record of criminality, which has resulted in the UK having a higher per capita death rate than the US and the worst excess death rate in Europe. Among the preventable deaths have been tens of thousands of the most vulnerable in care homes across the UK.

The defence of the indefensible school re-openings also involved a sordid campaign of emotional blackmail choreographed by the TV media to inundate the public with the images of children naturally relieved and happy to be ending a long period of isolation. This was cynically used to delegitimise opposition to unsafe school re-openings on the grounds that such sentiments were antithetical to the well-being and educational needs of children.

Even as new outbreaks emerge, the guidance of Public Health England and its counterpart in Wales regarding schools with cases of COVID-19 has been to oppose any systematic containment measures—in line with broader government policy.

The number of schools that have been closed due to outbreaks are in the minority. The 60 reported outbreaks in England and Wales include the Samuel Ward Academy in Haverhill, in Suffolk, where five teachers had tested positive for the virus, and two secondary schools. This included Trinity Church of England in Lewisham, South London, which had delayed its re-opening until September 7 after a teacher tested positive.

However, in Sheffield, South Yorkshire—the fourth largest city in England—none of the five schools where outbreaks have been identified have closed. Rather, children and staff of the respective year “bubbles” to which the individual who has tested positive belongs have been sent home to isolate for 14 days. This is the case at Hillsborough Primary School and Chaucer Secondary School in the Parsons Cross area of the city, which are run by Tapton Academy Trust. Abbeyfield Primary in Pitsmoor has reported a child testing positive with only pupils and staff in that year group sent home to self-isolate.

The two other schools affected in the city are King Edward VII, with a child in Year 8 and one in Year 11 testing positive, and a fee-paying private school, Birkdale, in which a sixth form student tested positive. Only the year groups concerned have gone into self-isolation. This leaves thousands of school children and education staff in settings which are anything but “COVID secure.”

According to the Guardian, an estimated 200 students and 21 staff in Liverpool are self-isolating after five schools in the city reported positive cases. The same holds true for other areas in the north and the Midlands, including Middlesbrough, Bradford, Leeds, Lancashire, Manchester, and Nottingham, as well as Leicester.

The concept of “year bubbles”—officially of up to 240 pupils—cannot prevent transmission. It is a policy premised on the acceptance that schools do not have adequate facilities to ensure social distancing and designed to prevent the closure of schools when the inevitable occurs and a staff member or pupil is infected. It is a policy not of containment but controlled spread—of herd immunity.

The term “government safety guidelines” should by now be viewed as an oxymoron. A prime minister who has likened the government’s local lockdowns in response to the upsurge of a deadly virus to the arcade game “Whack-a-Mole” does not deserve to be taken seriously, other than as a threat to public health. He oozes contempt for the working class, which has been disproportionately affected by the pandemic both in terms of illness and death.

The profit and death calculus of capitalism means that no extra funding is to be provided that would enable containment measures or disrupt the production of profits. Parents are to be forced back to work in unsafe environments and schools are to function as glorified child-minding services in which the spread of the virus is not prevented, but only “managed.” It is noteworthy that the return to school coincided with a second government propaganda offensive calling workers back to their offices.

The response of the education unions to the crisis that teachers, school staff, parents and their children have been plunged into has underlined their refusal to wage any kind of opposition.

Kevin Courtney, the supposedly “left” joint secretary of the National Education Union, has couched his comments since the reopening purely within the framework of managing the “disruption” caused—not stopping the spread of the virus and the threat to life. It was on this basis that he made a lame appeal for additional funds.

“This should include employing more teachers and looking for additional space to seek to minimise disruption as well as ensuring IT access for children and young people who need it when they have to be at home,” he said.

At no point are the government or the interests of the wealthy elite it serves to be challenged by the unions, even when they produce a homicidal policy. The unions have no independent standpoint based upon the interests of the working class.

This underscores the importance of the Education Rank and File Safety Committee launched by the Socialist Equality Party last Saturday in an online forum to open up a new path of struggle.

The Committee’s appeal states: “The catastrophic impact of the pandemic is fundamentally a social and political issue, not simply a medical one. The technology and medical expertise exist to contain the virus, but under capitalism everything is subordinated to the profit interests of the corporate and financial elite. The demands advanced by the SEP are not based on what the corporations and the politicians claim is affordable, but what is necessary to protect the lives and well-being of children, teachers and educators, and the entire working class.”

Saudi regime declares Khashoggi assassination case “closed forever” after sham verdict

Bill Van Auken

In the consummation of a judicial travesty, a Saudi court Monday announced the commutation of five death sentences previously handed down in connection with grisly October 2, 2018 assassination of dissident journalist and former regime insider Jamal Khashoggi at Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul. Instead, the five who were sentence to die were given 20-year prison sentences, while three others were sentenced to between seven and ten years.

The Saudi prosecutor’s office issued a statement saying that the announcement of the sentences “closes the case forever.”

This is despite the fact that no one who ordered and directed the assassination—including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the oil kingdom’s de facto ruler—has been held accountable. The entire trial was held in secret, with both the press and the public barred, and now not even the names of those sentenced have been made public.

Presumably the eight who are being sent to prison were members of the 15-member death squad sent to Istanbul to murder Khashoggi, though there is no way to know if even this is true. This squad included Saudi intelligence operatives and military officers, bin Salman’s chief bodyguard and a forensics specialist who came equipped with a bone saw.

The commutation of the death sentences came after Khashoggi’s sons said in May that they had “pardoned” his killers, a statement apparently secured through a combination of the monarchy’s threats and bribes.

Turkish bugs planted in the consulate recorded Khashoggi’s horrific last moments after he entered the consulate for the purpose of obtaining divorce papers so he could marry his Turkish fiancée. This included his being physically subdued, injected with a drug and then suffocated. The tapes, provided to the CIA as well as UN human rights investigators, included the Saudi forensic expert telling his cohorts, “I often play music when I’m cutting cadavers. Sometimes I have a coffee and a cigar at hand.” He added, “It is the first time in my life that I’ve had to cut pieces on the ground—even if you are a butcher and want to cut, he hangs the animal up to do it.”

None of this stopped the sham court in Riyadh from ruling that Khashoggi’s killing was not premeditated.

Exonerated at the outset of the trial were two Saudi officials who are known to have played leading roles in the murder operation. Saud al-Qahtani, formerly bin Salman’s most influential adviser, was identified as the ringleader in Khashoggi’s killing by the CIA, which established that he had exchanged 11 text messages with the Crown Prince immediately before and after the murder. Turkish intelligence, meanwhile, reported that al-Qahtani made a Skype call to the Istanbul consulate in which he insulted Khashoggi and ordered the death squad to “bring me the head of the dog.” The Saudi prosecutor said al-Qahtani “was not charged because of lack of evidence against him.”

Also cleared was Ahmed al-Assiri, a former deputy head of intelligence, who was initially charged with giving the order to dispatch the squad to Istanbul. The prosecutor found that this “was not proved.”

The principal culprit who was never brought into the dock was Prince bin Salman himself. The CIA issued a finding that concluded with “medium to high confidence” that the prince, who rules Saudi Arabia with an iron fist, had ordered the killing.

Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings who investigated the Khashoggi case, also issued an investigative report in June 2019 that found “credible evidence” that the prince and other senior Saudi officials were responsible for the killing. She tweeted on Monday that the verdicts “carry no legal or moral legitimacy,” and that the trial was “neither fair, nor just, or transparent.” She added that “the responsibility of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has not even been addressed.”

Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, denounced the Saudi court’s ruling Monday as a “complete mockery of justice.” The prosecutor’s closing of the case “forever,” she added, left the essential facts of Khashoggi’s murder hidden. “Who planned it, where is the body?” she asked. “These are the most important questions that remain totally unanswered.”

Turkey also condemned the verdict, with a spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan saying that the final verdict “fell short of meeting the expectations of Turkey and the international community.”

Ankara is holding a separate trial and has indicted 20 Saudi citizens on murder charges, though none of them are in Turkish custody.

While the US government issued no immediate reaction to the new verdicts, when the initial verdicts, including the five death sentences, were handed down in December, a State Department official called them “an important step in holding those responsible for the terrible crime accountable.”

The muted or non-existent response of Washington and other Western capitals, as well as of the major media, to the travesty in Saudi Arabia stands in stark contrast to their frenzied reaction to the non-fatal poisoning last month of the right-wing Russian politician Alexei Navalny. While in the first case there is ample evidence that the Saudi regime and its chief, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, were directly responsible for the brazen murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi, who was at the time working as a columnist for the Washington Post, no sanctions whatsoever have been imposed on the monarchical regime. In the case of Navalny, who was not killed, Western politicians and media immediately declared, without presenting a shred of evidence, that President Vladimir Putin ordered the poisoning and are demanding sanctions against and confrontation with Russia.

The source of this discrepancy is clear. Saudi Arabia has served as a lynchpin of reaction and US imperialist domination in the Arab world, under both Democratic and Republican administrations alike, for three-quarters of a century. It is now an ally of both the US and Israel in an anti-Iranian axis that is pushing the region toward a catastrophic new war. It is also the number one market for US arms exports, with Trump using his first trip abroad as president to fly to the kingdom and sign a weapons deal touted as worth $110 billion.

Washington turns a blind eye not only to the Saudi regime’s responsibility for the Khashoggi assassination, but to even more grotesque crimes, including the mass beheading of the regime’s opponents, including children. Meanwhile, both the Obama and Trump administrations have provided indispensable support for Riyadh’s near-genocidal war against Yemen, which has directly claimed over 100,000 lives, while bringing fully half of the country’s 28 million people to the brink of starvation.

Nonetheless, the assassination of Khashoggi, who only fled Saudi Arabia after Prince Mohammed bin Salman began a purge in 2017 of prominent businessmen and even members of the royal family, had an undeniable political significance. The World Socialist Web Site stated in the immediate aftermath of his killing and dismemberment that it was: “emblematic of a sinister shift in world politics, in which such heinous crimes are becoming more and more common and accepted. It recalls the conditions that existed in the darkest days of the 1930s, when fascist and Stalinist death squads hunted down and murdered socialists and other opponents of Hitler and Stalin throughout Europe.”

The acceptance of this crime has only deepened with the passage of two years. Riyadh has been chosen to host the G20 summit in November, when every major capitalist leader in the world will clasp the bloody hand and accept the hospitality of the royal assassin Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. All of them are prepared to carry out such crimes, and worse, against the working class and socialist opponents of the capitalist system.

Wealth of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos surpasses $200 billion

Tom Carter

On August 26, the wealth of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, crossed over $200 billion ($200,000,000,000).

The net worth of this individual human being is now roughly equivalent to the annual gross domestic product of the entire nation of Greece ($218 billion), which in turn represents the collective labor of millions of workers over an entire year. For comparison, the Ukraine has a GDP of $131 billion, Hungary has a GDP of $157 billion, and Sri Lanka has a GDP of $89 billion.

The personal wealth of Bezos is also higher than the entire government budgets of Austria ($201.9 billion, according to 2017 figures), Turkey ($190.4 billion), Argentina ($161 billion), Israel ($102 billion), and Poland ($102 billion).

The scale of Bezos’s wealth is not even the most startling fact—what is most striking is the speed with which he has accumulated it. Since the start of the year, in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Bezos has increased his wealth by about $87 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. By comparison, this is on the scale of the entire national budgets of Iran ($86 billion), Iraq ($76 billion), New Zealand ($72 billion), and Egypt ($63 billion).

The wealth that Bezos has appropriated in eight months—$87 billion—exceeds the total combined annual national budgets of Libya (roughly $22.3 billion), Armenia ($2.9 billion), North Korea ($3.3 billion), Afghanistan ($6.6 billion), Georgia ($4.8 billion), El Salvador ($6.8 billion), Honduras ($5.1 billion), Turkmenistan ($4.7 billion), Zimbabwe ($4.8 billion), Nicaragua ($4.1 billion), Uganda ($5.3 billion), and Cambodia ($4.7 billion), and Jordan ($11.8 billion).

With wealth on this scale, Bezos has taken a large bite out of the total resources available to human civilization on Planet Earth. He is not just a country unto himself—he is many countries. The sum of $202 billion is the equivalent of the combined national budgets of 118 entire countries. This is a personal fortune unprecedented in modern history.

The comedian John Oliver once described the wealth accumulated by Bezos as a “computer glitch in capitalism.” In one sense, this quip captures the irrationality associated with the incomprehensible number of zeros that have been added to his account, as if by some sort of programming error at the bank. But it is not the case that the Bezos’s wealth is developing outside or in opposition to the foreseeable operation of capitalism in the current epoch. On the contrary, his obscene levels of wealth are a particularly concentrated expression of those processes.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the world’s 500 richest people have accumulated an additional $809 billion so far this year, increasing their total wealth by around 14 percent. This includes Silicon Valley mogul Elon Musk, whose worth topped $100 billion on Friday. By comparison, the entire military budget of Russia, which is so often accused of “meddling” and “interfering” with US interests, is around $50 billion.

“The enormous growth of industry and the remarkably rapid concentration of production in ever-larger enterprises are one of the most characteristic features of capitalism,” Lenin wrote in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), at a time when the revenues of the giant conglomerates were measured in the mere millions of dollars. Amazon’s total market capitalization is now $1.703 trillion.

Analyzing the latest statistics on the emergence and concentration of monopolies in 1916, Lenin wrote that “a very important feature of capitalism in its highest stage of development is so-called combination of production, that is to say, the grouping in a single enterprise of different branches of industry, which either represent the consecutive stages in the processing of raw materials (for example, the smelting of iron ore into pig-iron, the conversion of pig-iron into steel, and then, perhaps, the manufacture of steel goods)—or are auxiliary to one another (for example, the utilisation of scrap, or of by-products, the manufacture of packing materials, etc.).”

Amazon is an expression of this process of “combination” on a scale unimaginable in Lenin’s time. “Amazon has been obsessed with vertical integration since its inception,” wrote Enrique Dans, professor at the IE Business School in Madrid, in a blog post. “After establishing very high levels of operational efficiency in its warehouses, Amazon then offered companies the chance to store their products there, as well as using the company’s picking and packing services. Finally, Amazon began…developing its own fleets of vans and personnel. Offering its own logistics services is simply another logical step in Amazon’s vertical integration process.” As of December 2019, Amazon Logistics was already set to surpass delivery volume of FedEx and UPS by 2022.

In addition to Amazon Logistics, the Bezos-Amazon conglomerate, via numerous subsidiaries, has already extended its tentacles into maritime shipping, comic books, the Washington Post, voice-recognizing appliances, fitness watches, cloud storage, health care, banking, communications satellites, home automation, video games, and grocery stores.

Amazon has also been integrating itself into the state apparatus, accepting a $600 million contract from the Central Intelligence Agency, a $10 billion contract from the Department of Defense, and supplying facial recognition software (Amazon Rekognition) to police.

This process of monopolization and “combination” has placed Amazon in a position to leverage huge gains from the overall devastation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. The huge increase in Bezos’s wealth during the pandemic is bound up with the surge in the value of Amazon stock, of which he owns around 54 million shares. At the end of July, in particular, Amazon’s stock skyrocketed after the company reported second quarter results showing soaring cash flow, sales, and income.

During the second quarter of 2020—representing April, May, and June—Amazon reported an increase of net sales of 40 percent, to $88.9 billion in the second quarter, compared with $63.4 billion in second quarter 2019.

The company’s operating income swelled to $5.8 billion, compared with operating income of $3.1 billion over the same period in 2019, and net income increased to $5.2 billion ($10.30 per share), compared with net income of $2.6 billion ($5.22 per share) the same period in 2019.

This is the same period—April, May, and June 2020— that corresponded to a historic catastrophe in the United States and around the world, as work ground to a halt amid the pandemic, hundreds of thousands became ill and tens of thousands lost their lives. Meanwhile, tens of millions lost their jobs, and countless small enterprises were bankrupted. As a primary means of safely obtaining essential goods during the pandemic as they sheltered in their homes, tens of millions of people turned to Amazon.

While many workplaces closed their doors during the pandemic, Amazon insisted on operating at full speed without regard for the pandemic. When it came to personal protective and safety equipment, Bezos told Amazon workers they would have to “wait our turn.” When tens of thousands of workers refused to show up to the warehouses and risk infection, Amazon announced it would simply hire 175,000 more workers (upon which Bezos congratulated himself as a “job creator”).

As of June 22, as the close of the immensely profitably second quarter approached, former Amazon worker Jana Jumpp had counted 1,573 reported COVID-19 cases among Amazon workers. However, since Amazon refused to disclose the actual number of infections, she told the World Socialist Web Site: “I think this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

It is now clearer than ever why Amazon kept workers at their stations during the pandemic without adequate safety measures, even while workers became seriously ill and lost their lives, and even as workers’ anger exploded in protests and walkouts.

Amazon’s CEO, and all of the Wall Street elites whose fingers were in the pie, made a lot of money. Moreover, amid the smoking ruins of the world economy, Amazon now surveys the scene and sees boundless opportunities for further profit. Opportunities loom in every direction. Bloated with cash, it is poised to conquer new territory, crushing weakened and smaller competitors under its weight.

This state of affairs is not lost on Wall Street, as investors swarm to buy Amazon stock, driving the price (and Bezos’s own personal wealth) higher and higher. The dizzying rise in the stock price took it from just over $3,000 a share by the end of July up to $3,400 by the end of August.

This is not some kind of aberration within an otherwise healthy capitalist system; it is capitalism itself, in its final period of decline. Or as Lenin put it: “Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations—all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism.”

The Democratic Party—one of the twin parties of the financial oligarchy that promotes militarism and war—is not a vehicle for opposition to capitalism or its particular expression in Amazon and Bezos. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, to cite just one example, raised significant sums for his campaign at a fundraiser in Seattle in November of last year co-hosted by Amazon general counsel David Zapolsky. Tickets ranged between $1,000 and $2,800 per person.

The piling up of obscene fortunes by the world’s top 500 billionaires in the midst of a global pandemic is a prelude to the social revolution of the proletariat around the world, who will not tolerate indefinitely the homicidal and incompetent policies of the financial oligarchy. Workers in every workplace, school, and industry must form squads and battalions of the rank-and-file, including at Amazon itself, to resist deadly working conditions, fight for collective workers’ control, and carry forward the struggle against capitalism and for socialism.