Big Tech’s Global Reach

Deborah Brown

Billions of people around the world have come to rely on the services Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google provide to exercise their basic human rights. But for many people, both within and outside the U.S., the concentration of power in these companies has meant considerable harm.

It’s nearly impossible to avoid using one of these companies’ products when online. Facebook and Google in particular have become gateways for accessing and disseminating information. Each month, almost 3 billion people use Facebook or WhatsApp or Instagram (which it acquired in recent years). More than 90 percent of Facebook’s users are outside the United States. More than 90 percent  of the world uses Google Search, and Google’s Android software backs at least three of every four of the world’s smartphones.

That concentration of power exacerbates the harm that’s done when these companies fail to protect privacy or regulate content responsibly and in line with human rights.

The source of many of human rights concerns associated with Facebook and Google’s services is their surveillance-based business model. This model allowed email, social media, search, video, or other services to grow into huge, dominant networks because billions of users could sign up without paying any fees.

Instead, these platforms monetized our data, by turning it into ad revenue. Their algorithms are engineered to maximize “user engagement”— clicks, likes, and shares — which leads to more engagement with their products, generates more data, and leads to more advertising revenue. Studies have shown divisive and sensationalist content are more likely to drive engagement.

This is especially problematic because these companies have rushed to capture markets without fully understanding the societies and political environments in which they operate. Facebook targeted countries in the Global South with low internet penetration rates to promote a Facebook-centric version of the internet through an app called Free Basics as well as other initiatives. It entered into partnerships with telecom companies to provide free access to Facebook and a limited number of approved websites, along with its aggressive strategy of buying up competitors like WhatsApp and Instagram.

This strategy has had devastating consequences, especially when it was effective in dominating information ecosystems.

Myanmar is arguably the most infamous case, where Facebook was used by hardline ultranationalists to spread hate speech and promote ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims. In the Philippines, where Facebook usage more than tripled in the first five years after Free Basics was introduced and where nearly every internet user is on Facebook, election related misinformation has spread rampantly on the platform. While Free Basics quietly retreated from Myanmar, the fact that many people in Myanmar think Facebook is the internet has lasting implications for the receipt and dissemination of information, especially when the government uses it as a formal channel of communication with the public.

Free Basics, which was once available in over 60 countries, has faced extensive criticism over the years, including from a group of more than 60 human rights and digital rights organizations from around the world. The initiative has been characterized as unfairly benefiting Facebook by harvesting all of these users’ data for the company while providing them only with “poor internet for poor people.”  The phenomenon of U.S. companies targeting populations around the world to harvest and monetize data has come to be known as “digital colonialism.” The program has shut down in a number of countries, but not before people were hooked on Facebook and came to equate it with the internet.

Another worrisome trend is major tech companies coordinating to remove content that they define as “terrorist” or “extremist.” While it’s understandable that Facebook, Google, and other tech companies want to work together to counter such content, evidence suggests they are over-censoring — and in fact often removing anti-terrorism counterspeech, satire, and journalistic material, with grave implications for rights including free speech and accountability. Online documentation of attacks on civilians and other grave human rights abuses in Syria and Yemen, for example, is rapidly disappearing, often making this information inaccessible to researchers and criminal investigators and impeding efforts to serve justice on those responsible.

The companies have started to address some of these concerns by adding local language content moderators, carrying out human rights impact assessments, partnering with fact-checkers, and publishing transparency reports. These are important steps but have had uneven impact — partly because the resources invested aren’t commensurate with Facebook’s global user base, and local Facebook staff and partners may sometimes be perceived as partisan or having ties to  government. And most importantly, they don’t address the core issue of Facebook’s business model.

Addressing the monopolistic aspects of platforms isn’t a panacea for human rights problems, but it may make it easier to hold platforms accountable or create conditions for alternative models to emerge. A key step would be to enable data portability and interoperability, which would give people more control over their data and allow them to communicate between social media platforms, as they do between telephone networks and email providers. This could enable competition and empower users to have real choices in where they find information and how they connect with people online.

Congress also needs to adopt a strong federal data protection law that meaningfully regulates the collection, analysis, and sharing of personal data by companies with security and intelligence agencies, advertisers that engage in discriminatory profiling, or others who may violate rights. It should also consider requiring human rights impact assessments that assess all aspects of companies’ operations, including their underlying business model, and require human rights due diligence for their operations globally, and especially before entering new jurisdictions.

The rest of the world is not waiting for the U.S. to regulate big tech. But lawmakers here should carefully consider how their steps to regulate big tech — or not — will impact billions of people around the world. These companies have vast reach, and their human rights impact is global. A response to their dominance should be too.

The U.S., China, and the New Cold Warriors

Dean Baker

On the days when he is not celebrating his friendship and trade deals with China’s president Xi Jinping, Donald Trump has sought to hype China as the United States’ major enemy in the world. This has meant not only absurd allegations about the pandemic (top Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro has claimed that China deliberately sent infected people to the U.S. to spread the virus and damage the U.S. economy), but also sanctions, tariffs, and hints of military confrontations. While much of this silliness will go away if Donald Trump is defeated, the idea that the United States is involved in an intense global rivalry with China has gained serious credence among elite types. This is both wrong and dangerous.

First, just to clear the deck of some obvious points, China is not a democracy and it does not respect human rights. Critics of the government face serious risks of persecution and imprisonment. It has engaged in large-scale abuses against minority populations in Tibet and the Uygur population in Xinjang. It also is reversing commitments it made to respect the autonomy of Hong Kong.

Saying that we should not be engaging in a Cold War with China does not imply approval of these actions. It is simply a recognition of two facts.

First, many of the people who are most vigorous in touting abuses in China seem just fine with serious abuses in U.S. allies. Saudi Arabia, a close U.S. ally, tolerates no open dissent and has an explicit policy of treating women as second-class citizens. It recently had a U.S. resident suffocated and torn to pieces in its Turkish embassy. The U.S. government gave open support to a coup in Bolivia and raised no objection to the repression that followed, most of which was directed against its indigenous population.

There is no shortage of places around the world where the United States has tolerated or even actively supported human rights abuses. It is simply not plausible that Donald Trump or most other politicians are genuinely concerned about human rights when they make complaints against China. They are pursuing an agenda of hostility against China for other reasons.

The other point is that it is not clear how those who push this agenda hope that their hostile actions will improve the human rights situation in China. If we assume, for the moment, that the human rights critics don’t intend to go to war to overthrow China’s current government, and then install a regime that will respect human rights, we should ask how we think a stance of growing hostility to China will improve the prospects for the people who we hope to help?

China is not some small country that is dependent on the economic and political support of the United States. It has almost 1.4 billion people. It also has an economy that is larger than ours. As a result of its extraordinary growth over the last four decades, its economy is almost one third larger than the U.S. economy.

While we can impose tariffs, investment bans, and other measures, the impact on China’s economy will be limited. In fact, the Trump tariffs have had relatively little impact on China to date, as almost all of their cost has been borne by people in the United States. (The link shows that the prices that China gets for the goods it sells to the United States have barely changed over the last year. If China was paying for tariff, the price of the goods they sell would fall by almost the amount of the tariff.)

It is worth noting that it is possible that we could have done more to influence China’s political system back in 2000, when we made the decision to admit the country into the WTO. At that time, China’s economy was a bit more than one-third the size of the U.S. economy. However, back then the political leadership in the United States, including President Bill Clinton and most leading Republicans in Congress, was adamantly opposed to demanding any conditions on human or labor rights in exchange for China’s admission to the WTO.

Ironically, many of these same people are now pushing the line about needing to take a stand against China. Oh well, no one expects politicians or leading intellectual figures to be consistent.

The New Cold Warriors

There are many different groups that we are likely to see pushing the New Cold War against China. At the top of the list are the people who stand most directly to benefit from an arms race: the people who sell arms. The military contractors, their lobbyists, and the intellectuals they support in think tanks and universities can be expected to push the need to have ever greater levels of military spending to protect against China.

Some have already talked about spending China’s economy into the ground, as we ostensibly did in the first Cold War with the Soviet Union. There is a simple problem with this plan, apart from its enormous potential human and environmental costs. While the Soviet economy was roughly half the size of the U.S. economy at the peak of its power, the Chinese economy will be close to twice the size of the U.S. economy by the end of the decade. Spending China into the ground might be a rather difficult task.

There are also the Henry Kissinger wannabes. These are the people who want the United States to be the world’s big superpower so that they can play grand chess games with other countries around the world. Many of the people deciding U.S. foreign policy fit this bill.

But beyond those who directly benefit from a hostile rivalry with China, there are also many less obvious economic interests who will be cheering on the battle. At the top of this list are the people who benefit from stronger protections for “our” intellectual property that China is ostensibly trying to steal.

It is important to step back from the standard reporting on this issue to understand what is going on here. Unlike property in land or buildings, intellectual property is not inherently exclusive. While two people can’t sit in the same spot at the same time, an infinite number of people can listen to the same song, see the same movie, and use the same software at the same time. The ability to exclude people is created by the government as a way to allow creative workers and innovators to profit from their work.

While patent and copyright monopolies are one way to finance innovation and creative work, they are not the only way, and there are good reasons for thinking they are not the best way. I have written extensively on alternative mechanisms (see Rigged chapter 5 [it’s free] and here). Patent and copyright monopolies create enormous distortions in the market, they are equivalent to tariffs of many thousand percent. They are a recipe for dishonesty and corruption, such as drug companies lying about the addictiveness of the new generation of opioids.

Patents and copyrights also lead to an enormous amount of upward redistribution. People like Bill Gates can get incredibly rich from the patents and copyrights that the government gives them on software. We will spend over $500 billion this year on prescription drugs that would almost certainly cost us less than $100 billion. The difference of $400 billion is more than five times the annual food stamp budget.

When economists and other policy types say that technology is causing inequality, they actually mean that government-granted patent and copyrights are causing inequality. The people who are getting rich off various new technologies are doing so because the government designed the system so that they will get rich. We could design it differently. A different design can mean much less money going to the beneficiaries of patent and copyright monopolies and much more going to the rest of us.

As China economy surges past the U.S. economy, with many of its key sectors equal to, or even superior to, their U.S. counterparts, it would be a great time to redesign mechanisms for innovation. We can design systems that are based on open research and sharing of results rather than secreting off innovations to ensure that a small clique has large benefits. This would be a huge benefit to the vast majority of people in the United States, China, and the rest of the world. But the beneficiaries of the current system don’t want to see their incomes threatened. They prefer to have the rest of us fight for them, under the illusion that “our” intellectual property is at stake.

The development of a coronavirus vaccine provides a great example of the problem. If we approached the issue with the idea of helping people, both in the United States and the rest of the world, we would be making all findings fully public as quickly as possible. We would have any successful vaccines available to all as generics, as soon as they are developed. This means that any manufacturer anywhere in the world could produce as much as their facilities will allow, without paying a penny to the innovators. This would allow for the development of a vaccine as quickly as possible and for its quick distribution throughout the world. (It would still be necessary to have some assistance for the poorest countries, for whom the cost of even a generic vaccine would be a substantial burden.)

Of course, we do have to pay the innovators for their work and that is exactly what we are doing. Except we are both doing it upfront, with direct payments, and then doing it again at the back end with patent monopolies. Moderna will walk away with close to a billion government dollars in upfront payments for its efforts, even if it never produces a usable vaccine. It stands to make even more by taking advantage of its patent monopoly on the vaccine. Several of its top executives have already made tens of millions of dollars selling stock that has become hugely more valuable as a result of taxpayers’ largesse.

While the U.S. government pursued the profit-maximizing path for Moderna, it looks like it is coming at the expense of the health, and possibly lives, of hundreds of thousands of people in the United States. At the moment, it seems that China is ahead of the United States in the development process. This could mean that we will have access to a vaccine perhaps a month or two later, or even more, because we chose the path of competitive patent monopoly rather than cooperation.

If our infection rate remains at 40,000 a day and our death rate at 1,000 a day, a two-month delay means almost a quarter million additional infection and more than 60,000 additional deaths. That’s a high price to pay for furthering the patent system. (People die in poor countries all the time because of patent monopolies, but it is unusual to see this sort of toll in the United States.)

If we had gone the alternative route, we would have had to try to enlist China’s government in a commitment to open-source research. We would also want other wealthy countries, like France and Germany, to share in the cost. Obviously, there would be issues that would be fought over in negotiations, but it is hard to believe that the U.S. government could not push through some sort of deal.

After all, this would benefit everyone. Also, in the face of the pandemic, no deal has to be perfect. We just need to establish some general principles. If the U.S. spent $200 million too much or too little, who cares? We almost certainly gave more money than that to well-connected companies in the pandemic bailouts.

It is also worth briefly ridiculing the idea that the U.S. lacks power in this sort of negotiation. We get other countries to go along with Donald Trump’s temper tantrums all the time, like his sanctions against Iran after he pulled out of the nuclear pact. Surely, we could get buy in from other countries on something that will actually benefit them.

This discussion of the development of a coronavirus vaccine is a bit of digression, but it should make the point that the people of the United States do not in general have an interest in pressing China or anyone else to respect the patent and copyright monopolies of U.S. corporations. We have an interest in negotiating the sharing of research costs and this may be done in a way that is far less costly to our economy and far less generous to the top one percent, or ten percent, than is currently the case.

Other Issues in Trade

If we recognize that the yelping over China not respecting patent and copyright monopolies is largely the concern of the wealthy, and not the typical person, there are still other trade issues that should be on the table. China has deliberately kept down the value of its currency, in order to makes its goods and services more competitive internationally. It also directly subsidizes many industries to further their advantage.

This was a huge issue before the Great Recession, it is less so today. The reason it was a huge issue before the Great Recession is that back then, manufacturing provided a large number of good-paying jobs to people with less education. This is less of an issue today, because many of these jobs have been lost to imports, largely from China.

We lost more than 3.5 million manufacturing jobs, more than 20 percent of the total, between December of 1999 and December of 2007, the start of the Great Recession. We lost another 2 million in the Great Recession. While roughly half of these Great Recession losses had come back before the pandemic hit, the jobs that came back paid much less than the jobs we lost. In 1999, the average hourly wage of a production worker in manufacturing was about 2 percent higher than for the private sector as whole, by 2019 it was about 6.0 percent lower.

Higher benefits for manufacturing workers likely mean that total compensation is still higher but the gap in pay is not large. A new hire in an auto parts factory may be doing no better than a new hire in an Amazon fulfillment center.

This is largely attributable to the loss of union jobs in manufacturing. Even as we have added more than 1 million manufacturing jobs since 2010, the number of union members in the industry has fallen by almost 120,000, more than 8 percent. As a result, the jobs that we have been adding, for the most part, have not been good jobs.

The reason for this digression is to make the point that it does not matter as much as it used to that China is effectively subsidizing its exports. We no longer have many good-paying jobs at risk. We still should be pressing China not to prop up the dollar against its currency, and not to provide subsidies to favored industries, but the stakes for U.S. workers are far less than they were fifteen or twenty years ago.

The U.S. -China Confrontation: A Battle for Elites, not Ordinary People

To sum up, most of us have little at stake in the big battle of the super-powers, except that it is taking place. It would be great if the human rights situation in China improved, but there is little reason to believe that many of the politicians complaining about abuses really care, or have any serious plan to bring them to an end.

The vast majority of workers have no stake in the battle to protect U.S. patents and copyrights. In fact, these policies are major factors in the increase in inequality over the last four decades. We certainly have an interest in agreements under which China, the U.S., and other countries share in the cost of open-source research, but our politicians and the interest groups they represent are not looking at all in this direction.

Finally, the labor market would be better off if China did not subsidize its exports with an under-valued currency and other mechanisms, but this matters much less today than it did two decades ago. Most of the good-paying jobs in manufacturing have been lost and there is little reason to believe they will come back in the absence of major structural changes, most importantly, higher unionization rates.

The U.S.-China confrontation is a game for the elites. The rest of us would be best-served by sitting this one out.

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.