Smoking in the age of COVID: Some immunological considerations

Henry Hakamaki

Many have been wondering how smoking might affect the risk of suffering from COVID-19. It has been well established that smoking increases an individual’s risk of developing respiratory infections. Cigarette smoking, for example, increases the risk of developing influenza by a factor of five when compared to non-smokers.

This relationship is due to a variety of factors ranging from chronic bronchitis and inflammation of the lungs as a result of inhaling smoke to dysregulation of the immune system (in particular the innate immune system), and holds true for cigarette smoke, e-cigarettes, and largely for marijuana usage as well.

A recent survey has shown that individuals who use cigarettes, e-cigarettes, or both are at significantly higher risk to be diagnosed with COVID-19. This study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that cigarette smokers are 2.3 times more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than non-smokers, whereas individuals who use e-cigarettes only are five times more likely, and individuals who use both are seven times more likely. A meta-analysis has shown that cigarette smoking also significantly increases the risk of disease progression in individuals who develop COVID-19.

There are several immunological factors contributing to an increased likelihood of developing COVID-19 and increased severity of cases in smokers. The receptor responsible for allowing SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, to enter human cells is ACE2. The enzyme on the surface of human cells that primes the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 in order for it to fuse with ACE2 is TMPRSS2.

A new preprint has demonstrated that smoking upregulates the expression of both ACE2 and TMPRSS2 on the surface of cells. This increased expression would increase the number of binding domains and priming capability available to SARS-CoV-2, making it much easier for the virus to enter the cells.

Once in the cells, the virus essentially converts the infected cell into a virus-producing machine. Early in the infection, our innate immune cells will destroy any cells that they think are infected. This is an essential function for viral clearance, and primarily takes place before the immune system has specifically identified what the pathogen is.

Much of the damage associated with coronavirus infections is actually done by the immune system itself. Basically, what happens is that the innate immune cells overreact and begin releasing large amounts of proinflammatory cytokines and effector molecules, which causes massive inflammation and cell damage.

Smoking causes chronic inflammation in the lungs as well as upregulation of innate defense proteins, meaning that not only are the lung cells damaged before COVID-19 infection, but subsequent infection causes more severe innate immune cell overreaction than in non-smokers, thus leading to more lung damage and more severe disease.

Recently, it has also been found that e-cigarettes also increase these innate defense proteins and activation markers, particularly those of neutrophils which contribute significantly to lung damage in COVID infections, similar to that seen in cigarette smokers.

In addition, e-cigarettes have been found to alter mucin (the gel forming protein in lungs, the major constituent of mucous in the lungs) secretion and concentration in highly similar ways to traditional cigarettes. High levels of these mucins in the lungs of COVID patients have been linked to severe respiratory distress.

It is highly probable, though not confirmed experimentally, that having elevated levels of these mucins present in the lungs before COVID-19 infection, due to a history of tobacco or e-cigarette use, increases the risk for severe respiratory distress in an individual once they contract coronavirus.

Perhaps the most interesting case is marijuana. CBD, the non-psychotropic component of cannabis that is sought in medicinal uses, is a well-known immunomodulator, meaning that it alters the regulation of the immune system in some ways. No data is yet available on the effect of marijuana on the severity of COVID-19 infections, but it can be proposed that there would actually be differing effects depending on the disease stage.

CBD acts as an anti-inflammatory agent and an immunosuppressant, and therefore early on in the infection may actually prevent the innate immune cells from responding to and clearing the virus efficiently, leading to disease progression and increase in its duration.

However, in late stage infection, the innate immune cells themselves are causing much of the damage, and therefore the anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive effects may actually prevent cellular damage. CBD has been found to have these protective effects against damage done by immune cells overreacting to several respiratory viruses, and may play a similar role here.

While there is little data on the effect of marijuana usage on COVID-19 severity, a preprint has shown that marijuana usage correlates with an increased risk of developing a COVID infection. It is not known whether this increased risk is due to chronic, low-level bronchitis due to inhalation of marijuana smoke, the immunosuppressive effects of CBD, unknown effects on the ACE2 receptor and TMPRSS2 (as seen in tobacco and e-cigarette usage), or social factors associated with marijuana usage. Nonetheless, the findings are worth considering.

It is critical that individuals know the factors that put them at increased risk for contracting coronavirus, as well as for developing severe disease once infected. Based on the current data, tobacco and e-cigarette usage are both associated with increased risk of developing COVID-19 infection, and both are highly likely to contribute to progression to severe disease in infected individuals.

Less is known about the effects of marijuana usage. While marijuana use has been found to correlate with increased risk of developing COVID-19, for reasons currently unknown, no data is available on the effect of marijuana on the severity of disease, though it can be hypothesized that contradictory immunological effects would take place depending on the stage of the viral infection.

Amazon uses former government agents to spy on workers

Shuvu Batta

A recent Vice News report revealed Amazon’s longstanding surveillance operations, systematically targeting and monitoring the company’s own workers on private Facebook Groups, with particular emphasis on posts calling for workers to organize or strike. The investigation unveiled an intricate spying operation on Amazon’s Flex Drivers, independent contractors who make possible the company’s “last mile delivery.”

Amazon utilized the domain www.sharkandink.com as a space—with no obvious connection to the conglomerate—to compile the reports. A login page included in the files obtained says: “the information related to different posts reported out from various social forums are classified. DO NOT SHARE without proper authentication. Most of the Post/Comment screenshots within the site are from closed Facebook groups. It will have a detrimental effect if it falls within the reach of any of our Delivery partners. DO NOT SHARE without proper authentication.”

Amazon utilized a well-organized team, called the “Advocacy Operations Social Media Listening Team,” to monitor the posts of workers. Posts are monitored in real time through a Live tool and sorted into various categories such as “Media Coverage,” and are further subdivided to handle more specific topics such as “Strikes/Protests: DPs planning for any strike or protest against Amazon,” and “DP approached by researchers—DPs being approached by researchers for their project/thesis,” with “researchers” referring to journalists and “DPs” referring to Delivery Partners, another term for Flex drivers. Particularly significant posts are brought to the attention of Amazon’s leadership.

According to an investigation published by Open Markets this month, navigation software for Amazon delivery drivers, called the Rabbit or Dora, is used to recommend and monitor routes and track the worker’s productivity. The software only factors in 30 minutes for lunch and two separate 15-minute breaks during the day, and further demands that employees deliver 999 out of every 1,000 packages on time or face termination.

Within fulfillment centers, employing over 600,000 workers, Amazon workers face a similar regime of surveillance. Upon entering the warehouse workers have to dispose of all personal belongings except a water bottle and a clear plastic bag of cash. During the workday, Amazon watches over warehouse employees with a high-tech Panopticon of security cameras.

Workers’ productivity is timed by a scanner, and if they are not quick enough they risk termination. At the end of their workday, warehouse employees are screened to ensure that they have not stolen any items. Large television sets throughout the facilities often display former employees who were caught stealing and were subsequently terminated and/or arrested. This is to frighten and intimidate workers with proof of the efficacy of the constant surveillance.

Surveillance is used in conjunction with managers to prevent workers from organizing. According to Hibaq Mohamed, a stower in Minneapolis quote in a recent report: “Managers are always hovering around. They feel comfortable physically harassing people; that’s a regular thing...The workers who speak up, they feel threatened physically and mentally...When they want to know something, the management, they use that camera. When we’re organizing, when there was a slowdown of work before the pandemic in my area or my department, then we [workers] would come together and talk. But [the camera] is how they can come so quickly and spread workers out.”

Private groups on Facebook and social media in general have become a way for workers to break the isolation promoted by management and connect with fellow co-workers. A recent example of the power of social media is the case of Jana Jumpp, a former Amazon employee who has compiled intensive data sourced from workers across the United States, showing infections and deaths from COVID-19 hidden by the company.

Amazon, which owns 32 percent of the world’s online “cloud” infrastructure, is well aware of the power of online forms of communication and is ramping up its surveillance apparatus for the primary purpose of tracking workers—in great part by hiring corporate employees with spying expertise developed through state and military service.

The company recently advertised job postings for an “Intelligence Analyst” and “Sr. Intelligence Analyst,” and subsequently took them down after the candid description of the job responsibilities received significant attention.

These jobs fall under Amazon’s Global Security Operations (GSO) and Global Intelligence Program (GIP). The job listing read, “Analysts must be capable of engaging and informing L7+ ER Principals (attorney stakeholders) on sensitive topics that are highly confidential, including labor organizing threats against the company, establish and track funding and activities connected to corporate campaigns (internal and external) against Amazon, and provide sophisticated analysis on these topics.”

L7 means the seventh rung on Amazon’s corporate ladder. Jeff Bezos, CEO and world’s richest man, is L12. ER means employee relations. An “Intelligence Analyst” is essentially a spy for the company, informing those in leadership positions within the world’s largest corporation of anything that threatens their profits, primarily the organized resistance of workers. The demand for this type of high-level corporate goon has grown sharply since 2018, from 7 posts featuring the terms “GSO” or “GIP” in July of 2018 to 46 as of September 8, 2020, according to a report compiled by Thinknum.

In a more recent description of the position of Intelligence Analyst on LinkedIn, Amazon specifically writes: “Previous experience in Intelligence analysis and/or watch officer skill set in the intelligence community, the military, law enforcement, or a related global security role in the private sector” is a “preferred qualification”.

A search on LinkedIn of Amazon GSOC(Global Security Operation Center) employees yields results such as John A. Barrios, a senior manager of GSOC who formerly worked for the FBI for over 11 years, and Nathan Nguyen, a GSOC manager and former Intelligence analyst from the US Army. When the keyword “Amazon Intelligence” is entered, Joel Rodriguez, the Head of Amazon Intelligence in the Americas and a former Senior Intelligence Officer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and former Intelligence Analyst for the Department of Justice, is one of the results.

Keith Alexander

In addition to its mid-level staff, Amazon has integrated leading figures of the US military apparatus into its company leadership. General Keith Alexander, the former National Security Agency (NSA) chief, will be joining Amazon’s board of directors, the central body responsible for overseeing the operations of the global conglomerate, with almost 800,000 full time employees. Alexander led the NSA from August 2005 to May 2010. From 2010 to 2013 he was head of Cyber Command, which has as its mission, according to the Department of Defense, to “ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries.”

As whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed, the NSA, alongside the CIA, created a massive spying apparatus with the goal “to collect all the world’s digital communications, store them for ages and search through them at will.” The agencies created programs which could forcibly enter an individual’s electronic device and store their private information without consent, violating the constitutionally guaranteed “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Edward Snowden is now exiled in Russia for exposing this criminal conspiracy against democratic rights, and has been hounded by both US capitalist parties, the Democrats and Republicans.

Amazon is in the process of rapid expansion, with plans to invest tens of billions of dollars over the course of the year in order to greatly increase the company’s domination across myriad sectors of the economy. However, the growing militancy of Amazon workers, spurred by inadequate safety measures during the pandemic, threatens to derail their plans. Over the past several months, Amazon workers have engaged in localized spontaneous strikes around the US, together with strikes by thousands of workers in Europe. This has been alongside massive protests against police brutality around the world.

At present, a growing strike wave of teachers, students and workers opposed to “re-opening” the economy during the pandemic is emerging, which threatens to encourage broad layers of Amazon workers to take strike action.

Increasingly fearful of rank and file workers, and viewing them as the biggest threat to the company’s profits, Amazon is ramping up its spying operations, in line with its growing integration with the US military and intelligence apparatus. The news of General Alexander joining Amazon’s leadership was revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing two days ago. Amazon’s management, composed of leading members of the capitalist class and headed by the world’s richest man, intend to use the expertise cultivated by its former state and military staff against “domestic terrorism” as a weapon against rank and file workers, who are increasingly connected through online forms of communication. Amazon is not unique in using these methods. In 2015, Walmart hired an intelligence-gathering service from the military contractor Lockheed Martin to survive and weed out workers’ resistance.

Amazon workers must not be intimidated. The corporation’s surveillance crackdown is not a show of strength, but of weakness. It is terrified of the growing resistance of rank-and-file workers. In order to defend their lives and livelihood, teachers and autoworkers, with the support of the World Socialist Web Site, have formed rank and file committees, democratic organizations in the fullest sense of the term, as the beginning of a great struggle to unite all sections of the working class in a fight to ensure their safety and build a better world.

Trade unions confer with big business Liberals on how to revive Canadian capitalism

Roger Jordan

Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is claiming that it will outline an “ambitious” agenda to revive the economy, create jobs, support a “Green transition,” and address social inequality when Parliament reopens September 23.

This is a fraud. Whatever the hype and spin, the government’s real agenda is to enforce a reckless return to work amid the COVID-19 pandemic, boost corporate profitability and “competitiveness,” and advance Canadian imperialism’s predatory interests around the world through rearmament and the Canada-US military-strategic partnership.

The trade unions are playing a critical role in helping the Liberals promote their phony “progressive” narrative and in crafting their class-war policies. Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) President Hassan Yussuff and Unifor head Jerry Dias met respectively last week with Trudeau and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.

Yussuff followed up his meeting with the prime minister by publicly demanding that the unions’ New Democratic Party (NDP) allies continue to ensure the minority Liberal government has the votes needed to survive in office.

All this is in keeping with the criminal role the unions have played throughout the pandemic—from their support for the massive bailout of the financial markets and the coming 20 percent cut in financial aid for those who have lost their jobs, to their insistence that educators, meatpackers and other workers forced to work in unsafe conditions amid the pandemic must not take “illegal” job action to protect their health and lives.

According to a CLC press release, at their meeting Yussuff urged Trudeau to support investment in “Green infrastructure,” broaden Employment Insurance eligibility, provide job training programs and increase funding for child care services.

Unifor President Jerry Dias’ principal concern in his meeting with Freeland was to secure government subsidies and tax concessions for the automakers who prior to the pandemic were making profits hand over fist. “Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna and others talk about having billions of dollars for a ‘Green transformation,’” said Dias. “Well if you’ve got it, and you want to play, there’s no bigger industry to start than the auto industry.”

Dias and Yussuff claim their consultations with government ministers are aimed at advancing the interests of “working people.” This is a sham. As their own remarks make clear, they want to ensure that corporate Canada secures enough public funds to remain “competitive” on the world market and can continue to attract investors by providing lavish payouts to their super-rich shareholders. Dias expressed this with his characteristic bluntness on the issue of the auto industry, noting that Canada has seen its global share of auto production slide rapidly since 1999. Stressing that investment in a “Green transition” could turn this around, he added, “The bottom line is the government is going to have to get serious. We’re looking at a transformation of the industry.”

This is the logical continuation of the unions’ corporatist partnership with big business and their alliance with the Liberal Party, the Canadian bourgeoisie’s traditional preferred party of government. Earlier this year, the CLC and Unifor were instrumental in creating the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), which placed laid-off workers on meagre rations of just $2,000 a month. Meanwhile, supported by the unions and New Democrats, the Liberal government, working in concert with the Bank of Canada and other state agencies, forked over a gargantuan $650 billion to the big banks and financial oligarchy with no strings attached.

Making clear that he wants this alliance to continue, Yussuff stressed in an interview with CBC that the NDP has an “obligation” to continue working with the minority Liberal government. This is pushing at an open door. The NDP pleaded for a coalition or other form of formal alliance with the Trudeau Liberal government both before and after the October 2019 election, and has repeatedly provided the votes to prop up the minority Liberal government during the pandemic. On the same CBC radio program where Yussuff urged the NDP to keep the Liberals in office, the NDP’s national director, Anne McGrath, said the Liberals would find in the NDP a “willing partner.”

Of course, Dias and Yussuff avoid mentioning the fact that the “Green transformation” of industry they so enthusiastically promote will, under capitalism, inevitably be carried out at the expense of the working class. The auto industry provides a stark example of this, since the assembling of electric vehicles involves far fewer and less complex components than traditional vehicles. Providing billions in government funds to the major automakers will thus allow them to accelerate plans that have been long in the making for the destruction of tens of thousands of auto jobs in the assembly and parts industries, and replace them with low-paid, temp and precariously employed workers.

The emergence of Dias and Yussuff as little more than corporate consultants for big business arises out of the unions’ reactionary pro-capitalist corporatism and Canadian nationalism. This is not confined to Canada. In Germany, the IG Metall trade union, which is the largest union by membership numbers in the world, is overseeing a similar “transformation” of the auto industry, which the union by its own admission expects to cost 300,000 jobs. At the steel company ThyssenKrupp, IG Metall works councillors are personally bullying older, higher-paid workers into taking early retirement to assist the company’s cost-cutting plans. In the airline industry, cabin crew and pilots unions at Lufthansa, Germany’s largest airline, organized demonstrations to support a government investment in the company that was tied to the destruction of 20,000 jobs and the slashing of wages and benefits for pilots.

Under conditions of a deepening global capitalist crisis, which is intensifying competition between the major powers for access to markets, raw materials and spheres of influence, exacerbating inter-imperialist antagonisms and raising the threat of war, the trade unions in every country are determined to prove their loyalty to the bourgeois state. In practice, this means collaborating in the enforcement of stepped up exploitation of the working class at home, and supporting the pursuit of imperialist economic and geostrategic interests abroad.

Unifor and the CLC made clear their readiness to follow this path in a series of joint statements and documents prepared with the government and business organizations during April and May. In one such statement, signed by Yussuff and Canadian Chamber of Commerce President Perrin Beatty on May 11, the CLC and corporate lobby group advanced the corporatist argument that the pandemic has “tied our well-being to one another like never before.” Going on to call for the setting up of a “national economic task force,” the pair continued, “We will enter recovery with substantial new public and private debt. The reversal of decades of economic globalization and international supply chains will create challenges for a trading nation like ours. We will need to revisit policies on health care infrastructure, strategic reserves of key supplies, and ensuring domestic production facilities for critical medical equipment. Canada requires a process to discuss these transformational changes and to avoid stakeholders going off in different directions.”

Making good on their pledge to prevent “stakeholders going off in different directions,” the unions have sabotaged all worker opposition to the ruling elite’s reckless back-to-work campaign. This can be seen most graphically with their smothering of all opposition to the dangerous reopening of schools, which is going ahead in spite of a spike in new COVID-19 infections.

A vital element in the unions’ effort to block the eruption of mass working class struggles is their fraudulent claim that the Liberals represent a “progressive” alternative to the pro-austerity Conservatives.

To be sure, the Conservatives and their new leader Erin O’Toole, speaking for the most rapacious sections of big business, have denounced the meagre aid the Liberals provided the jobless under the CERB as “too generous” and a “disincentive to work” and are demanding a timetable for a balanced budget. But the differences between the Liberals and Conservatives over economic policy are purely tactical. They revolve around how best to boost the fortunes of big business, while preventing the eruption of mass working class opposition and certain sectional conflicts within the ruling elite over energy policy. The latter include whether to prioritize the interests of Big Oil or the development of a major Canadian presence in the lucrative Green industries of the future.

As for foreign policy, both parties are committed to spending tens of billions of dollars on new fleets of warships and fighter jets and stand full-square with Washington in its reckless military-strategic offensives against Russia and China.

Big business strongly backed the Liberals’ management of the first stage of the pandemic, that is, its ability to keep the lid on the class struggle, by enlisting the unions support, while bailing out the financial markets and presiding over job losses that in percentage terms were even greater than the Great Depression. Now the various factions of the corporate elite are pressuring the government to ensure its economic recovery measures are best-tailored to their respective interests, while strengthening the overall global competitive and strategic position of Canadian capitalism.

As Goldy Haider, chief executive officer of the Business Council of Canada, put it recently, “The choice is not spending or austerity. The issue is how much should be spent. Are their limits?”

Past experience has shown that while strict limits are always imposed on spending for health, education and social services, irrespective of which party is in power and irrespective of crying social needs, no restrictions exist on the amount of public funds to be lavished on the corporate elite and the military. In addition to the $650 billion transferred to big business and the financial oligarchy earlier this year, the Trudeau government has continued to implement its plan to increase military spending by over 70 percent by 2026 so as to modernize the armed forces in readiness for waging war to defend Canadian imperialist interests around the globe.

Meanwhile, critical social services have been starved of funding. A recent report by the Parliamentary Budget Office examining federal transfers to the provinces over the past decade found that the Tory Harper and Liberal Trudeau governments slashed a combined $14.5 billion from the equalization payments the provinces use to fund public services. This figure is in addition to the cutbacks in health transfers enforced by the Trudeau government, which followed Harper’s Tories in imposing a below-inflation annual increase of just 3 percent on these payments.

Budget Officer Yves Giroux, who has himself argued that the federal government must rapidly move toward reining in state expenditure, recently observed that due to the economic crisis federal equalization payments will fall even further in the wake of the pandemic, since they are tied to a three-year average of GDP (gross domestic product) growth. This will invariably mean further cuts to the country’s already dilapidated public services.

Russia holds regional elections amidst growing political crisis

Andrea Peters

Regional elections began Friday in Russia, with early voting starting across the country. Polls close on Sunday. Balloting is taking place in 83 regions. New governors will be chosen in 18 of these areas. Elsewhere, residents are casting votes for a variety of local representative bodies and in referendums.

The closely watched elections come as the government of President Vladimir Putin is beset by internal and external crises—mass anti-government protests in Belarus, which is the last Russian-allied state on the Russia’s western frontier, escalating tensions with Germany over the alleged poisoning of Alexei Navalny, ongoing anti-Kremlin demonstrations in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk, and the continuing spread of COVID-19.

Some of this weekend’s races are viewed as a barometer for the level of social discontent with the Kremlin, which worked in a number of regions to shore up its position by keeping opposition candidates off the ballot.

The strongest challenges to sitting governors backed by the Putin government are being mounted in of Irkutsk and Arkhangelsk, areas where there were relatively high levels of opposition to constitutional changes crafted by the Kremlin and recently passed through a nationwide popular referendum.

In the Siberian region of Irkutsk, which encompasses Lake Baikal, a Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) candidate is challenging an incumbent who was installed in office by Moscow after the previous KPRF governor, Sergey Levchenko, left in a “forced-voluntary” removal. Anger over the Kremlin’s intervention is intersecting with popular opposition to local leaders’ corruption, pollution and environmental damage in the resource-rich region. Last year, massive floods linked to climate change hit the area killing dozens and causing widespread evacuations.

In the far northern province of Arkhangelsk, similar issues have been emerging. The current governor, Igor Orlov, has earned the disgust of the population because of his role in working with Moscow to transform an area in the ecologically sensitive region into a massive trash dump for the country’s capital.

Lead challenger is Irina Chirkova, who is from the A Just Russia (SR) party, which is identified with mass protests that erupted in 2018 and 2019 over these issues. The SR is part of the “official” or “systemic” opposition in Russia, which means that it pretends at moments to oppose the Kremlin but works hand-in-glove with it on all major questions.

Arkhangelsk was also the site of nuclear accident in 2019. An explosion at an offshore military facility caused a massive radiation spike in the region, and terrified residents bought up all available supplies of iodine in local pharmacies.

In the neighboring Komi Republic, which shares the land impacted by the proposed landfill with Arkhangelsk, it is possible that the KPRF will win the largest number of seats in the regional parliament. KPRF regional head Oleg Mikhailov supports an emerging Komi independence movement, which is tapping into anger over the maltreatment of the region’s indigenous population and discontent over economic and social conditions in the area.

The regionalist sentiments cropping up in Komi point to bigger dangers facing Moscow—the prospect that Russia could break apart along geographical lines. As popular anger towards the central government grows over poverty and inequality, local elites seek to capitalize on their control over resource-rich areas, and foreign opponents of the Kremlin pursue a policy of break-up as a means to dominate the Eurasian landmass.

In Novosibirsk, an industrial region in southern Siberia, a slew of candidates are running for regional assembly and city council seats that have been held overwhelmingly by the ruling United Russia (UR) party and the KPRF, which is nominally an “opposition” party, but works closely with the Kremlin.

Sergei Boyko is leading an electoral coalition group called “Novosibirsk 2020,” which was set up by oppositionist Alexei Navalny. The group’s efforts are directed at putting into action so-called “smart voting,” a balloting scheme devised by Navalny to put pressure on United Russia and its political appendages. In Novosibirsk and throughout the country, Navalny’s supporters are telling people to “vote smart” by picking any candidate running against a Kremlin-backed incumbent, without any regard to the challenger’s policies and perspective.

Having identified in each of the 1,167 races happening across Russia whom people “should” vote for in order to “stop” Putin, they are throwing their support behind all and sundry, including the far right, the Stalinists, the nationalists and the pro-Western liberals.

In the southern Siberian city of Novosibirsk, where there is widespread discontent over the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, it is possible that the efforts of Novosibirsk 2020 or other challengers in the legislative races will make a significant dent in the number of seats held by the UR and KPRF. The aim of the “smart voting” practice is to completely disorient the popular opposition towards the Kremlin welling up within the population and to take advantage of rifts within the Russian ruling elite.

Navalny’s operations may also have some impact on the election in the Russian Republic of Tatarstan, where Rustam Minnikhanov is seeking another presidential term. On September 9, just two days before the start of balloting, Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) released details of its investigation into the Minnikhanov family’s real estate holdings.

The oppositionist himself has reportedly just emerged from the medically induced coma in which he was placed after falling severely ill while traveling back to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk. The government of Germany, where Navalny is now being treated, has alleged Kremlin involvement in Navalany’s supposed poisoning, which the Merkel administration claims was caused by the Soviet nerve agent Novichok. Tensions between Berlin and Moscow are skyrocketing, with the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would bring further Russian energy supplies to the German market, now being called into question.

Russia’s regional elections come as the Putin government confronts multiple crises. The alleged poisoning of Navalny has unleashed another wave of anti-Russian hysteria in the West, with heads of government and leading newspapers filled with denunciations of the Kremlin.

Moscow’s last remaining ally on its Western frontier, the Belarusian government of Aleksandr Lukashenko, continues to teeter on the brink. It is resorting to repression, violence, and arrests in an effort to stay in power. Lukashenko confronts a right-wing, pro-free-market opposition with close ties to the West, but also a mass movement from below of workers disgusted by the government’s policies.

The Kremlin is, above all, terrified that the working-class discontent finding expression in events in Belarus will erupt in Russia, where workers share similar economic and political grievances and overwhelmingly speak the same language. Recent events in Russia’s far east, where the Kremlin’s removal of an elected governor provoked mass protests in Khabarovsk, have made clear that the era of global social protest is also hitting Russia.

At the same time, coronavirus cases have topped 1 million and are once again the uptick. Moscow, like all other countries, is openly pursuing a death policy. Alexander Myasanikov, the head of the country’s coronavirus information service, told the press on Friday, “ You should be glad that the number [of cases] is growing, because the more asymptomatic and mild forms, the faster we will achieve herd population immunity.”

Ordinary people, however, see the matter differently. In Volgograd, parents are objecting to the re-opening of schools, using the media to vent their opposition to forcing children into the classrooms. “I have only one question,” said one parent to a local news outlet, “Why was it necessary to open schools and kindergartens now, when there is a sharp increase in the number of infected people in the region?”

Thousands sleeping rough after the burning down of Moria refugee camp on Lesbos

John Vassilopoulos

What little remained of the Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesbos/Lesvos was destroyed after secondary fires broke out on Wednesday evening. A terrible blaze destroyed most of the site on Tuesday. According to the local news site stonisi.gr, two fires broke out almost simultaneously Wednesday at around 7:30 p.m.

The first fire was in an olive grove next to the camp where tents and nylon shacks salvaged from the day before had been stacked, while the second was in the northern section of the camp where fuel storage units were located. There were hundreds of refugees and migrants, mainly families, in both locations who had been made homeless by the previous fire. Underscoring the possibility of arson, a smaller fire on Thursday afternoon at the camp site destroyed the few tents that remained.

Migrants sleep on the road near the Moria refugee camp on the northeastern island of Lesbos, Greece, September 10, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris]

Prevented by the police from making their way to the port city of Mytilene, thousands have been forced to sleep rough on roadside verges and on hillsides with no access to food and water for three consecutive nights. Shocking footage and pictures show refugees of all ages sleeping rough surrounded by their meagre possessions. Some were able to find shelter in a church while one group slept in a cemetery where they reportedly had access to water.

Aid organisations have been prevented from distributing tents and other emergency supplies by blockades mounted by what are described as “local residents,” more likely fascists, without the police intervening.

The Greek New Democracy government is using the disaster to demonise and dehumanise Moria’s former inmates. In a press conference Thursday, government spokesman Stelios Petsas blamed the initial fire on refugees protesting being isolated after 35 tested positive for COVID-19. “[S]ome people do not respect the country that is hosting them, and they strive to prove they are not looking for a passport to a better life,” he declared

Sections of the media have chimed in to portray a humanitarian disaster as a question of “law and order” and “national security.” Without any evidence a report in the right-wing daily Kathimerini Friday cited officers involved with the investigation into the fire, jointly run by police, national intelligence and counter-terrorism forces, that they are “honing in on a group of 30 young Afghan men ... who travelled to Greece without their families and had been linked to instances of drug dealing and extortion at the camp.”

New Democracy’s deputy leader and Minister for Development and Investment, Adonis Georgiadis, told Skai TV, “I don’t feel at all duty bound whenever they burn down their houses to build new ones for them.” He added, “I am very sad to see them like this. However, we must take into account the fact that these people set fire to the camp themselves.”

Using the word “houses” is a lie and an insult. Frequently described as “hell on earth” the camp was described last year as “the recreation of a concentration camp on European soil” by Jean Ziegler, a member of the committee of experts advising the UN Human Rights Council. Massively overcrowded, the camp detained 13,000 inmates in shacks and tents when it only had capacity for 2,800.

Under these conditions the government sought to turn Moria into a de facto death camp following the rise in cases of COVID-19 by imposing a blanket quarantine on the inmates, allowing the virus to tear through the camp.

In a statement last week, Doctors without Borders slammed the plan as “ill-considered and potentially very damaging.” “We cannot see the justification of the enforced mass quarantine,” said Caroline Willemen, the organisation’s COVID-19 field coordinator on Lesbos, adding “what’s worse, we know these measures will worsen our patients’ already deteriorating mental health.

“Right now in Moria, there are elderly people with underlying health conditions, pregnant women, as well as children who are afraid and are being exposed to more trauma as a result of this policy. The government should be protecting these people, but instead by keeping them hemmed in with COVID-19 in the camp, they are exposing them.”

Plans to temporarily house the homeless refugees were set into motion, with helicopters transporting tents to state-owned land behind the shooting range near the village of Panagiouda on the east coast of Lesbos. This is part of the government’s longer-term plan to establish closed detention centres on the island. In the Thursday press conference, Petsas declared a four-month national emergency on Lesbos, stating that those who started the fire “did so because they considered that if they torch Moria, they will indiscriminately leave the island. We tell them they did not understand. They will not leave because of the fire.”

Testimonies from aid workers on the ground stated that the only reason there were no deaths from the fire was because the camp was not closed. “Can you imagine if the fire had started in a couple of months when they had fenced it in with razor wire as they were planning to do?” said Philippa Kempson of the Hope Project to the Guardian. “You would have had 12,000 people trapped in an inferno.”

Former inmates staged a protest in front of police roadblocks Friday against the creation of a second camp. “Singing and banging plastic bottles, they march up and down a stretch of coastal road, calling for the right to leave Lesbos,” reported Bethany Bell, BBC News correspondent on Lesbos.

To enforce its plans in the face of mounting opposition the government has sent additional police units to the island, which reportedly arrived on Friday by air. Contingents of riot police vans, patrol cruisers and water cannon vehicles also arrived by sea at the port of Mytilene.

Commenting on the developments in Moria, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson tried to absolve the EU from any responsibility. Stating that “Migrant camps on Greek soil are primarily the responsibility of the Greek government,” she noted “the failure [of] the previous commission to actually reach a common European migration and asylum policy.”

There is no evidence that the present Commission has plans to deviate from the anti-refugee policy of the entire EU, with Greece acting as a gatekeeper. The commission has only agreed to fund the transport of 400 unaccompanied children onto the mainland. Germany has committed to take a thousand additional refugees and the Netherlands a minuscule 50.

The hellhole that was Moria was created under the direct instigation of the EU, which struck a filthy deal with Turkey in 2016, allowing for the internment of any refugees on Greek soil, or more properly its islands, before being deported back to Turkey.

Plans to set up closed camps on Moria are also in line with EU policy. Following a visit to Lesbos on Friday, European Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas announced that the Moria camp would be replaced by “a modern facility.”

The pseudo-left party Syriza has sought to make political capital out of the disaster. In a statement released on Wednesday, it said, “Before the election ND was pledging to close Moria. The only thing it accomplished was to take over a facility with 5,600 people and exceed 20,000 before the programme of decongestion began. Without putting pressure for a collective European initiative, [Prime Minister Kyriakos] Mitsotakis has rendered Greece into a warehouse of souls.”

This turns reality on its head. It was under Syriza that the EU-Turkey deal was signed, turning the pseudo-left party into a willing jailor of refugees. ND builds its policy on the foundations laid by Syriza.

UK government’s “Operation Moonshot”—a trojan horse for herd immunity policy

Thomas Scripps

Boris Johnson’s government has announced plans for weekly COVID-19 tests for everyone in the UK, 10 million tests a day, in a programme branded “Operation Moonshot.”

The prime minister claimed that testing capacity would be increased from 300,000 a day now to 500,000 in October and reach the 10 million figure—with the help of “simple, quick and scalable” tests which provide a result in 20–90 minutes.

The plans were met even by Conservative Party insiders with ridicule, described variously as “not feasible” and “crazy.” A leaked briefing memo sent to the Scottish government, published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ), said the programme, if ever implemented, would cost more than £100 billion. This is around three-quarters of the annual budget for the National Health Service (NHS). But so far only an additional £16 billion has been directed toward the entire NHS and other public services in the six months since the pandemic was declared by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Figures in the hundreds of billions have exclusively been reserved for the financial support of major corporations during the pandemic.

The BMJ article revealing “Operation Moonshot”

The government also admits that the technology required for rapid testing is not currently available. A WHO diagnostics expert told the Independent that the plan was “dependent on different technologies to what are being used now [in the UK]. It’s a massive gamble.” Moreover, the new techniques under consideration were often “untested” or came from companies “without much experience of medical testing at scale.”

Dr David Strain, chairman of the British Medical Association (BMA)’s medical academic staff committee, said the mass-testing strategy is “fundamentally flawed” and “based on technology that does not, as yet, exist.”

However, the announcement of the programme was motivated purely by the most reactionary political considerations, rather than any genuine desire to combat the pandemic. A draft document leaked to the BMJ is titled, “UK mass testing narrative.” Johnson summed up this narrative Wednesday night: “Up to now we have used testing primarily to identify people who are positive—so we can isolate them from the community. But in the near future we want to start using testing to identify people who don’t have coronavirus and are not infectious, so we can allow them to behave in a more normal way…”

The government want to shift from a formal policy of controlling the virus to one of encouraging as much intermingling as possible. Johnson told the press Wednesday, “That level of testing would allow people to lead more normal lives, without the need for social distancing. Theatres and sports venues could test all audience members on the day and let in those with a negative result, all those who are not infectious. Workplaces could be opened up to all those who test negative that morning and allow them to behave in a way that was normal before COVID.”

The overriding objective of the programme, or rather the promise of the programme, is to provide a cover for the reopening of the economy. The leaked documents explain, “This is described by the prime minister as our only hope for avoiding a second national lockdown before a vaccine, something the country cannot afford.”

What this means is the virus will continue to spread unchecked. “Operation Moonshot” is a trojan horse for the policy of herd immunity.

The government’s own Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) published a consensus document on mass testing August 27 warning that “any mass testing programme” would have little impact on the reproduction rate (R value) of the virus without, “superb organisation and logistics with rapid, highly sensitive tests,” and could “only lead to decreased transmission if individuals with a positive test rapidly undertake effective isolation.” Any testing programme authored by Johnson would do none of this.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the British Medical Association, warned that “the notion of opening up society based on negative tests of those without symptoms needs to be approached with caution—both because of the high rate of ‘false negatives’ and the potential to miss those who are incubating the virus.”

Andrew Lee, a Reader in Global Public Health at the University of Sheffield, warns that in this case the “affected individuals who may be infectious are falsely reassured. They will continue with their lives, potentially relax their infection control behaviours, and infect others.”

The Royal Statistical Society sent an open letter to the Times this week which noted, “Present tests miss about a fifth of those with the disease.”

A shift to this new system will also derail an already failing contact tracing system. Independent SAGE member Martin McKee wrote in the BMJ that the Moonshot project “will distract from fixing the problems with the existing system, especially as public health staff are struggling with the abolition of Public Health England.” Last week, only 69.2 percent of close contacts of people who tested positive with coronavirus were reached through the government’s Test and Trace system—the lowest percentage since the programme began. There are worries that a significant percentage of people who are asked to isolate do not do so because they simply cannot afford to. Roughly 25 percent of infected people do not or are not able to provide a list of contacts.

The government’s latest update also notes, “since the start of July, the median time taken to receive a test result has seen an overall increase.” In the week August 13 to August 19, “Home testing kits saw the biggest increase in the median time [taken to receive results] during this period from 58 hours to 71 hours… Regional test sites increased from 23 hours to 27 hours and mobile testing units increased from 21 hours to 25 hours.”

The leaked documents indicate that the government’s plans are a massive windfall for the private sector, with “communities, institutions and employers” allowed to carry out tests. “Private sector/ business-led testing,” it adds, “plays a key enabling role.” “Letters of comfort” have already been sent to GSK, AstraZeneca, Serco and G4S. Retailers Boots and Sainsbury’s are also named, and Deloitte is reportedly being given a contract for more than half the work.

This is being rolled out under conditions where the seven-day rolling average of daily infections has already close to trebled in the last month to 2,532 and the R value has officially climbed to between 1 and 1.2 for the UK as a whole. Two weeks after schools officially reopened, over 540 have been affected by infections—50 of them with multiple cases. The government’s own “reasonable worst-case scenario” predicts 85,000 deaths over the winter. Other estimates are far higher.

The Tory party can only preside over such a criminal endeavour thanks to the “constructive opposition,” i.e., collusion, of the Labour Party and the trade unions with Johnson’s “back to work” and “school reopenings” agenda.

As the terrible consequences of this partnership unfold, the working class will come into struggle against both main parties of the capitalist class. That movement will be confronted with the full force of the state, including the police and the armed forces, already being prepared under the auspices of an updated “Operation Yellowhammer.”

For the working class to succeed in this struggle, a socialist leadership must be built in every workplace, school and neighbourhood. We urge workers and youth who agree with this perspective to contact the Socialist Equality Party today.

UK Tories use Extinction Rebellion protests to argue for savage political repression

Richard Tyler

Last Saturday, some 100 Extinction Rebellion (XR) protesters blockaded the presses of several of Britain’s main daily papers.

The bamboo barricades they erected outside printing plants in Broxbourne, Liverpool and Glasgow prevented the delivery of millions of copies of the Sun, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and Times.

The ire of XR was directed at right-wing and pro-government titles, which had “failed to tell the truth about the climate crisis,” the organisation proclaimed on its website. The presses of the supposedly liberal media, such as the Guardian and Independent, were spared interruption.

Climate change protesters extracted and arrested in Trafalgar Square, London, October 10, 2019 [Credit: AP Photo/Alastair Grant]

The press plant blockades are part of XR’s “September Rebellion,” and have so far included demonstrations outside parliament, Buckingham Palace, Tate Britain, the Treasury, and the Home Office.

The disruption to traffic in the capital met with much complaint throughout the mainstream media. However, it was the blockading of the printing presses of Rupert Murdoch’s Sun and Times, together with the Tory house organ, the Telegraph, and 4th Viscount Rothermere’s Daily Mail that led to the most ferocious response.

“The Telegraph will not be silenced,” the paper thundered, describing the protest as a “blatant attempt to shut down free speech.”

The protesters were “trying to destroy our greatest democratic principle: freedom of speech,” railed the Sun on Sunday’s editorial.

In its Sunday edition, the Times, voice of the British establishment for over two centuries, reported that those “involved in similar demonstrations in the future will be treated as a ‘saboteur of democracy’, under plans being drawn up the government.” Its leader column looked forward to Home Secretary Priti Patel pushing police forces “to take a more robust line” on the group’s disruptive actions.

These right-wing rags loudly protested at the momentary interruption to their ability to spew out their daily lies and distortions. However, their editorial pages have demonstrably not issued a word in defence of jailed WikiLeaks publisher and journalist Julian Assange, who has actually exposed attacks on democratic and human rights by governments around the world—divulging crimes that have led to the deaths of tens of thousands in wars supported by the very papers now proclaiming their allegiance to democracy.

The Labour Party was swift to join in the chorus of condemnation. Shadow Culture Secretary Jo Stevens said, “A free press is vital for our democracy. People have the right to read the newspapers they want. Stopping them from being distributed and printers from doing their jobs is wrong.”

Former home secretary, now Lord Blunkett, said, “Peaceful protest using distancing is acceptable, anarchy is not.”

After Jeremy Corbyn’s former shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, had meekly defended the protests as “legal,” in the tradition of the “suffragettes,” Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer came under pressure for his silence. He dutifully called the demonstrations “wrong”: “The free press is the cornerstone of democracy and we must do all we can to protect it.”

Murdoch, Rothermere et al demanded the government implement sweeping measures cracking down on protest and abrogating fundamental democratic rights, such as the right to demonstrate.

Taking to the pages of the Daily Mail, Home Secretary Priti Patel duly obliged. The protesters were “committing criminal acts” and should be in no doubt they would “face the full force of the law. You will be punished for your actions.” The newspaper reported last Saturday, “A Home Office source said: ‘Priti was furious. She told the police to ‘get stuck in’ to stop a second night of disruption.”

Subsequently, 80 protestors were arrested and charged with causing a public nuisance and aggravated trespass for their involvement in the blockades. More than 650 arrests have been made by the Metropolitan Police for breaches to the Public Order Act. Using new powers under the COVID-19 regulations, over £200,000 in fines were issued for exceeding the 30-people limit in a gathering.

In a move underscoring the shift to authoritarian forms of rule, the Metropolitan Police pre-emptively arrested on August 26—ahead of all this month’s protests—XR co-founder Roger Hallam and four other activists who are members of the Beyond Politics group. Hallam founded the group in June after quitting XR. The five were charged with conspiracy to cause criminal damage at planned protests and are being detained in custody for four weeks, until after all planned protests are concluded.

Patel announced further measures to strengthen the repressive state apparatus. “In addition to providing the most generous funding settlement in a decade and recruiting an additional 20,000 officers, I am committed to ensuring that the police have powers required to tackle the disruption caused by groups such as Extinction Rebellion and I will be looking at every opportunity available, including primary legislation, to ensure that there is a full suite of tools available to tackle this behaviour,” she wrote.

“Whitehall sources” soon revealed what this means. According to the Telegraph, Prime Minister Boris Johnson had asked officials to take a “fresh look” at the legal status of Extinction Rebellion, and see how it might be classified as an “organised crime group,” putting it on the same footing as the Mafia. Using the powers of the 2015 Serious Crime Act to apply such a designation could expose XR activists to up to five years in jail.

Ministers were also considering “new powers making it easier for police to stop demonstrators entering particular areas, bolstering protections for parts of the UK’s critical national infrastructure, and explicitly outlawing disruption to ‘tenets of democracy’, such as MPs voting in Parliament, judges attending court and the printing and distribution of the free press,” the Telegraph reported.

Taken alongside plans for a raft of legislation to outlaw “critical workers”—such as those involved in public transport—from taking strike action, the Tory government is preparing to obliterate long-standing democratic rights affecting millions.

Pointing to the broader target of this offensive, every attempt was made to depict the protests as being motivated by left-wing and socialist sentiments. The Telegraph wrote of “fears the group had been infiltrated by far-Left groups that want to pursue a more overtly militant socialist agenda.” The newspaper drew a comparison with protests following the murder of George Floyd in the US, which they claimed without any foundation whatsoever had also been “hijacked by neo-Marxists.” The limited reformist demands of XR, according to the Telegraph, are “window dressing for their true purpose: a revolutionary, extremist movement set on overthrowing our society.”

Extinction Rebellion is a middle class protest group, whose actions are not directed at fundamentally changing the present social order. Indeed, the blockade action was not inspired by any thought of bringing about a societal change that would see the press barons deprived of their possessions. The same purveyors of falsehoods, who are playing a vital role in the government’s homicidal back-to-work drive, hiding the real dangers millions confront from COVID-19, can be won to the cause of environmentalism, according to XR. “The news industry has a key role to play in the transformation we need to face up to the intersecting crises. We desperately need them to stop spreading hatred and lies, and instead take a real lead to help us hold our government to account,” XR wrote on its website.

Extinction Rebellion’s September 1 tweet stating, “Just to be clear we are not a socialist movement”

XR’s “Principles and Values” deliberately make no criticism of capitalism. Faced with the press accusations of being a front for Marxism and revolution, XR issued a tweet refuting any links to socialism. “Just to be clear we are not a socialist movement… A banner saying ‘socialism or extinction’ does not represent us.”

While initially directed against groups such as Extinction Rebellion, the real target of state repression and the move towards authoritarianism is the working class. The sight of tens of thousands engaged in multi-ethnic, multi-racial protests opposing police violence has spooked ruling elites everywhere. Now this is joined by the prospect of strikes and mass protests provoked by the rampaging of the coronavirus pandemic and the destruction of jobs and living standards.

As with all fundamental social and economic problems facing humanity, the terrible consequences of climate change cannot be averted by appeals to the capitalist class and their state apparatus. Capitalism rests on the exploitation of the working class to provide profits for those who own and control the means of production, including the press barons. Only by wresting that control away from the tiny layer of the super-rich and their political representatives and placing it under the democratic control of the majority, can the moves towards authoritarianism, like the destruction of the environment, be prevented.

Brexit crisis intensifies after Johnson government tears up agreement with Brussels

Robert Stevens

Britain and the European Union (EU) failed to reach any agreement in emergency talks Thursday, as Boris Johnson’s Conservative government pressed ahead with plans to rewrite and effectively nullify the Brexit treaty reached with Brussels less than a year ago.

On Wednesday, the Tories published their “Internal Market Bill,” which the government states will “protect jobs and trade” in the UK at the conclusion of this year’s transition towards leaving the EU. The legislation, to be put before parliament next week, will “enable the UK government to provide financial assistance to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland with new powers to spend taxpayers’ money previously administered by the EU.”

Deliberately ramping up divisions with the EU, it negates clauses in the “Northern Ireland protocol” enshrined in the Withdrawal Agreement Bill parliament passed last December following Johnson’s victory in the General Election. This was only agreed after three years of tortured negotiations that resulted in the fall of Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, seeking to prevent hard trade border on the island of Ireland. A compromise was reached by keeping Northern Ireland close to the EU customs union at the same time as being in the UK’s customs territory.

Johnson’s new bill would grant government ministers powers to intervene on matters relating to export declarations on goods shipped from Northern Ireland to Great Britain and to negate the application of EU state-aid rules in Northern Ireland.

Johnson’s actions are in breach of international law and this is explicitly recognised in the text of the legislation. It boasts that the powers in the bill “have effect notwithstanding any relevant international or domestic law with which they may be incompatible or inconsistent.” Therefore “Regulations … [of the bill] are not to be regarded as unlawful on the grounds of any incompatibility or inconsistency with relevant international or domestic law.”

The flagrant breach of the treaty led to the resignation of Jonathan Jones, the head of the government’s legal department, Tuesday. On Wednesday, ahead of the talks with the EU, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis, when asked in Parliament about the legality of changing a binding international treaty, replied “Yes, this does break international law in a specific and limited way.”

Tensions escalated further as the talks began, after the EU warned that if Johnson persisted with the legislation it might take the UK to court.

Two sets of talks Thursday failed to reach a consensus. Cabinet Office Minister and arch Brexiteer Michael Gove held emergency talks with European Commission’s Maroš Šefčovič, while David Frost, the UK’s chief negotiator, met his EU counterpart Michel Barnier.

Gove stated that Sefcovic “requested that the UK withdraw its Internal Market legislation. I explained… that we could not and would not do that and instead I stressed the vital importance of reaching agreement through the joint committee on these important questions.”

The EU has given the UK three weeks to withdraw the legislation. The European Commission responded in its statement, “Violating the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement would break international law, undermine trust and put at risk the ongoing future relationship negotiations.”

The Tory government claims the measures are required to protect the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which ended three decades of civil conflict in Northern Ireland. The EU did not “accept the argument” that the UK Internal Market Bill was needed to protect the Good Friday Agreement. “In fact, it is of the view that it does the opposite,” the EC statement stressed.

Sefcovic, said the EC “reminded the UK government that the withdrawal agreement contains a number of mechanisms and legal remedies to address violations of the legal obligations contained in the text—which the European Union will not be shy in using.”

The talks between Frost and Barnier on trade—after seven previous rounds that have gone nowhere—ended with officials on both sides saying that next to no progress had been made.

Pressure is mounting to secure an agreement, with pro-Remain forces within Britain’s political establishment and even some Tories who support Brexit warning of the danger of Johnson’s “brinksmanship.”

Three former prime ministers, Tories Sir John Major and Theresa May and Labour’s Gordon Brown, issued warnings on the danger of the UK being unable to strike future deals and being ostracised as a nation that refuses to abide by international treaties. Brown declared Friday that to break the treaty would be a “a huge act of self-harm” and would see Britain plunged into “battle with Europe for years ahead.”

The Financial Times editorialised Wednesday in a piece headlined, “The UK’s reputation for rule of law is in jeopardy,” that “Tories who have voiced private concern may have to side with the opposition [in Parliament] to strike out the key passage in the legislation.”

Such statements hailing the UK’s supposed adherence to the rule of international law excise from history the filthy record of British imperialism, including the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. But they attest to the enormous concerns in ruling circles over the mounting tensions being exacerbated by Brexit that threaten Britain’s global position.

Johnson has a majority of 80 and a staunchly pro-Brexit base of MPs, and his position is not imperiled by a threatened rebellion over the legislation among his backbenchers next week. It is understood that only up to 30 backbench Tories may be ready to vote against the government. An amendment to the Bill has been tabled by Tory former minister Sir Bob Neill, backed by May’s former deputy prime minister Damian Green. It aims to put a brake on provisions overriding the withdrawal agreement by requiring a separate Commons vote to approve the date on which they would take effect.

However, given the mounting crisis developing over Brexit under conditions where his government is widely despised due to its overseeing the preventable deaths of tens of thousands during the COVID-19 pandemic, Johnson made a plea Friday evening for Tory MPs to back him.

If a no-deal Brexit is the outcome, this will inflame social and political tensions within Britain, as food and medicine shortages would follow as well as manufacturing production being hit.

But were the Johnson government to cobble together a compromise deal with the EU, this would not bring an end to the crisis wracking the British and European bourgeoise.

The central issue for the working class is that Brexit epitomises the malignant growth of inter-imperialist antagonisms that are plunging the world into a brutal trade war and exacerbating the threat of military conflict.

The different factions of the ruling elite disagree violently over whether Britain is best placed within this global conflict outside the EU trade bloc and acting as a centre for global speculation and a deregulated cheap labour platform, in a diplomatic and military alliance with the US, or to maintain an alliance that accounts for over 40 percent of UK trade.

These divisions will persist. But in or out of the EU, and with or without a trade deal between the UK and EU, the working class faces a ferocious attack on its jobs, wages and living standards. As the Socialist Equality Party has explained, the Brexit and pro-EU wings of the Tory party are insistent that whatever their disagreements, nothing can stand in the way of completing the “Thatcher Revolution” through an intensified onslaught against the working class: one that will be waged based on the dire social and economic conditions already created by the pandemic.

Workers have no dog in the fight among the warring factions of the British ruling elite or with the capitalist politicians of the EU. What is posed is the necessity for the working class to intervene on its own independent programme, based on the perspective of the United Socialist States of Europe.