How Covid-19 is shifting free market tectonic plates

Muhammed Nafih Wafy

Covid-19 has brought free market juggernaut to a grinding halt; now if we are serious about changing the course of history, we can’t afford to lay waste to this pandemic

It’s nearly ten months since the Covid-19 first broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan, and now with many parts of the world in the midst of a second wave of what has turned out to be a deadly pandemic, it’s still a matter of conjecture how long it will take before the virus is fully contained and the normalcy is restored.

However, while attempting to find quick fixes to circumvent the current crisis, we tend to miss out on the larger picture, more disturbing questions the Coronavirus raises about the sustainability of our life, our species as well as our planet.

The uncertainty surrounding Covid-19 is as much about its origin as its end. Therefore, any serious attempt to eradicate the deadly virus cannot be complete without diagnosing the root cause of its very existence. Any solution that does not address the reason why the virus is here in the first place will become only a temporary patch-up.

Today we are pretty much clueless not only about when and how the pandemic is going to end but also of how and why it originated. Barring the ill-fated wet market in Wuhan to where we conveniently trace the origin of the pandemic, much of how and why the pandemic is here remains a mystery.

There are theories and speculations rife regarding the outbreak of the virus, especially its specific mutation that set off the current pandemic. But it seems we don’t much bother about the origin as much as we are obsessed with finding a vaccine to wipe the contagion off once and for all.

It seems our biggest priority is to clean the mess created by the pandemic and restore the normal order of life it sought to disrupt. Therefore, we cannot afford to philosophize amid a crisis about why it broke out and why it brought the ‘triumphant march’ of human civilization, aboard the neoliberal, capitalist chariot, to a standstill.

But this obsession with finding an immediate solution while turning a blind eye to the circumstances which brought the virus into being and contributed to its global spread, risks ignoring the true symptoms of the disease.

What we desperately seek is a vaccine to put the chariot back on track and resume the march, no matter what triggered the deadly contagion, what accelerated its rapid spread, what made the fight against it a debilitating task for the most disadvantaged of the world’s population, with its repercussions and economic impacts heavily skewed against them. We do not want to poke our nose to those disturbing questions. We do not bother if what triggered today’s contagion can cause it again tomorrow, as if we are rest assured that the free market will find its way out then.

Now, ten months into the reign of pandemic, we need to look at this terrible predicament for human civilization from a boarder, cosmic perspective, connecting it with a string of other man-made crises such as recurring epidemics, natural calamities, global warming, growing inequality etc. But, on the contrary, we are looking to take some shortcuts and quick fixes to get past the temporary hurdles blocking the victory march of free market capitalism. We consider the current pandemic as merely a traffic block that needs to be circumvented.

But we cannot afford to lay waste this pandemic. If the current crisis does not encourage us to do an introspection of the way our governments rule our citizens, our corporates exploit our resources, our technocrats manage our economies, our systems and ideologies treat the unprivileged who constitute a major chunk of world population, we are likely to head from a deadly pandemic to a series of similar crises that will make human life more miserable on the earth.

We can no longer ignore the writings on the wall which now the Coronavirus has made more visible to us. And we cannot gloss over the fact that the pandemic has shaken the very foundation of our neoliberal, free-market order as never before. What had a humble beginning as an infectious disease in a Chinese city swept the entire world at an alarming pace, bringing industries and businesses to a grinding halt, grounding airlines and marooning travelers. Economies the world over were found in tatters as governments who had touted stringent austerity measures were suddenly seen pumping trillions of dollars to cushion the blow of the pandemic.

Coronavirus has proven that an epidemic can render our great plans, grand strategies and glorified ideologies irrelevant overnight. Apart from the rising death rates, one of the most frightening aspects of the Covid-19 was that it caught the whole world unawares. No one could understand the magnitude and impact of the crisis the pandemic unleashed. While the world’s economically and technologically advanced countries were not prepared to face the enormous challenges posed by the deadly contagion, the movers and shakers of the world were left dumbfounded as their estimations of GDP growth and economic recovery were proven fatally wrong.

The planet-wide panic and paranoia the pandemic has triggered proves that the world hardly moves the way our free market policy makers planned and aspired. It shows we could not have ignored some saner voices which drowned in the free market cacophony. History has a way of correcting our mistakes and forcing us to take a path we are least accustomed to. Currently we are at a critical juncture in our civilization where we should pay heed to those saner voices and make a course correction. This is not the time to talk about the grandiosity of our past plans and ideologies that have already failed.

The uncertainty about the future always makes us prepare for it in advance. We plan and strategize to make sure that the future unfolds the way we want it. But when the future turns out the way it wants to turn out, we are forced to revise our strategies and redraft our plans. When we wade into the uncharted territories of the future, it behooves us to revise our plans and roll out new strategies. Now is the time we need new plans and dreams to help us navigate the choppy waters ahead. If we fail to pause and take our lessons from the pandemic, we will be missing an opportunity to mend the wayward course our civilization has taken.

Religion & Politics: US, Vatican clash over China-Vatican agreement

Abdus Sattar Ghazali 

The Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, has asserted the Vatican’s right to pursue an accord with Beijing on the appointment of bishops that has been strongly criticized by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Pompeo met Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Foreign Minister Archbishop Paul Gallagher on Thursday on a visit marked by Vatican irritation over Pompeo accusing the Holy See of putting its “moral authority” at risk if it renewed an agreement with China on the appointment of bishops.

In an article published in a conservative US Catholic publication, Pompeo has called Pope Francis’ pontificate a failure, sparked a minor diplomatic crisis. Vatican officials suggested Pompeo was trying to drag the Catholic Church into the US presidential election by denouncing its relations with China; an allegation Pompeo denied.

The Vatican wants to extend the China accord, which was signed in 2018 and envisages a process of dialogue in the selection of bishops. It hopes the agreement will help unite China’s Catholics, who have been split between those clandestinely following Rome – and those belonging to an official, state-sanctioned church set up by the Communist Party.

Parolin said the Vatican would renew the agreement when it expires this month, adding that Pompeo had expressed “understanding for the way the Holy See approaches these issues”.

Pompeo sought to downplay the differences in an interview with Fox News, but said he had urged the Holy See to take a stronger stance against Chinese restrictions on religious freedom.

“We had a constructive discussion,” Pompeo said after the meeting. “We have a shared objective. The Chinese Communist Party is behaving in ways that are reminiscent of what’s only happened in centuries past in terms of human rights violations. We’ve watched them oppress not only Muslim Uighurs but Christians, Catholics, Falun Gong, people of all faiths.

US President Donald Trump has taken an increasingly hard line on China ahead of the November 3 election. He is also associated with conservative Protestant and Catholic movements, many of which have been critical of Pope Francis.

Vatican signs historic deal with China

In September 2018, the Vatican and China signed a historic agreement on the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops. This was a breakthrough on an issue that for decades fueled tensions between the Holy See and Beijing and thwarted efforts toward diplomatic relations.

The details of the deal have never been made public, but it gave the Vatican a say in the appointment of Catholic bishops in China. Pope Francis also recognized eight bishops that had been appointed by Beijing without his approval.

The agreement was described by the Vatican as “the fruit of a gradual and reciprocal rapprochement”, following a long process of careful negotiation, and subject to periodic review. “It concerns the nomination of bishops, a question of great importance for the life of the church, and creates the conditions for greater collaboration,” the Vatican said.

In Beijing, the foreign ministry put out a statement saying: “China and the Vatican will continue to maintain communications and push forward the process of improving relations between the two sides.”

The Vatican said that, as part of the deal, the pope would recognize seven Chinese bishops who were appointed by Beijing without the Vatican’s approval, and were excommunicated as illegitimate. Sources told Reuters the accord gave the Vatican a say in the naming of bishops and granted the pope veto power over candidates. China’s Catholics are split between an underground church swearing loyalty to the Vatican, and the state-supervised Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA).

The explosion of Christianity in China has mainly been seen in Protestant evangelical churches. Catholicism is a relatively minor religion, with an estimated 10-12 million adherents, according to the Guardian.

The Vatican has been keen to re-create ties with Beijing ever since the Communist authorities broke off diplomatic relations in 1951. Pope Francis has vigorously pursued rapprochement with the rising superpower. The Guardian said adding:

He has sent gifts to the Chinese President Jinping Xi, his homilies have been translated into Chinese, and in 2017 the Vatican dispatched 40 artworks to Beijing in a cultural exchange which, according to a senior Chinese official, signaled the “strong commitment for the development of civil relations” between the two.

A sign of Francis’s eagerness to curry favor with the Chinese has been his refusal to meet the Dalai Lama, knowing such an encounter would anger Beijing.

COVID-19 in Germany: No protection for high-risk groups despite dramatic increase in infections

Joshua Seubert & Markus Salzmann

Since the September reopening of schools in all German states, the number of COVID-19 cases has increased rapidly. As in other European countries, the number of infections in Germany is reaching dramatic highs. Schoolchildren, teachers and educators are being exposed to mortal danger.

On Friday the number of new infections reached the highest level since April, with 2,500 new cases. Although the school year only began in the last weeks, according to the Bild newspaper around 50,000 students are currently in quarantine. “This number shows that we are still in the middle of the pandemic and it is again having a large impact on school operations,” Federal Education Minister Anja Karliczek (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) told the newspaper. The minister deliberately neglected to mention that she herself was a driving force behind the unsafe reopening of schools.

The President of the German Teachers’ Association, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, recently warned of a further increase in the number of infections in schools. “According to the German Teachers’ Association, the current high of 50,000 students will more than double in the next three months, and probably even quadruple,” said Meidinger, suggesting a nearly uncontrollable outbreak.

In light of this development, more medical professionals are warning that the number of deaths related to coronavirus infection will likewise significantly increase. “The number of deaths will continue to rise in the coming weeks,” President of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (Divi), Uwe Janssens, told the newspaper of the Funke media group.

For days, double-digit deaths have been reported in Germany. Since the victims were infected on average roughly five weeks earlier, an increase in deaths is expected with the same time lag.

But even in the face of these developments the federal government is holding its deadly course and presenting the opening of schools and companies as an unavoidable necessity. The reckless policy of the government is most clearly demonstrated in its handling of those at high risk of severe COVID-19 illness due to pre-existing medical conditions. Public pressure partially protected these high-risk groups at earlier stages of the pandemic through paid leave of absences, remote working, etc. Now, however, these individuals are being exposed to enormous risk with their return to work and the opening of schools and day-cares.

The teaching practices painstakingly developed by educators at schools, universities and day-cares during the lockdown have been thrown overboard in order to restart traditional operation. Jessica, 39, is a teacher from Berlin who is studying part-time. She began remote learning in mid-March and was able to take her first exam in July. But since receiving an exemption from classroom teaching, her studies have been discontinued because they are no longer “part-time.” Like Jessica, high-risk individuals nationwide have to choose between their livelihoods and health. They either stay at home and protect themselves and their families and face impoverishment or put themselves at enormous risk to finance their existence. “This is blackmail!” concluded Jessica.

Her case is not the exception. Nationwide, thousands of teachers who belong to high-risk groups have submitted applications for suspension of compulsory attendance, only a fraction of which have been approved. The broadcaster NDR reports that in the state of Schleswig-Holstein alone, 1,600 teachers claimed elevated risk of severe infection and were therefore unable to teach face-to-face. Only 30 of these applications were approved.

In the Berliner Zeitung, a teacher from Berlin reports struggling to protect his life and health in the face of the pandemic. Despite presenting a certificate from his family doctor strictly forbidding him from conducting face-to-face classes due to several heart operations and ventricular fibrillation, he was required to visit a state-commissioned occupational medicine facility.

“It was clear to me from the start that this doctor did not want to confirm my illness—I can only speculate why,” the vocational school teacher reported. The doctor put the teacher under pressure and initially refused to confirm the disease, even intimidating the teacher and threatening to break off the appointment. It was only when the teacher became so upset that the doctor recognized his high blood pressure and heard his heart murmurs that the teacher’s absence from school was approved.

One can suspect that teachers with previous illnesses are being pressured not to exempt themselves from classroom teaching. The percentage of educators not teaching in person—5.6 percent among vocational trainers and 3.1 percent in general education—is extremely low. Teachers’ associations and unions had previously presumed 15 percent.

The action committee founded by students and teachers in Dortmund uncovered similar cases. There, a teacher with a significant immune deficiency has to teach in person. This trend can be seen across Germany. The range of conditions defined as high-risk for serious COVID-19 disease, exempting one from classroom teaching, has been reduced significantly. Those over 60, suffering from high blood pressure or other mild to moderate illnesses usually must return to schools and day-cares.

It was sheer farce when Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) declared that there should be special measures in the future to minimize the dangers for high-risk groups. “It is important that we continue to protect particularly high-risk groups and advance concepts to do so in everyday life,” said the CDU politician, at the same time speaking out against extended mask requirements.

These are the conditions under which students and teachers are returning to schools. The consequences are clearly devastating. Schools cannot be made safe under the present conditions.

Problems begin on the way to school. Most students and teachers travel by over-filled public transport. Subway cars intended for 30 to 40 people are often packed with well over 100. Students from different classes intermingle on the way to class and during the breaks. Classrooms measuring 30–40 square metres (300–400 square feet) cannot guarantee safe distancing for 25 to 30 students. Moreover, mask requirements have been abolished in most federal states. There is nothing stopping the spread of the virus.

Thus high-risk individuals are being exposed to mortal danger and the state governments refuse to lift a finger. North Rhine-Westphalia Education Minister Yvonne Gebauer of the liberal Free Democratic Party explained that special ventilation systems, recommended by leading virologists because they filter aerosols, are too expensive and therefore not an option. A ventilation system costs around €3,000.

Gebauer’s statement makes clear the value placed by the ruling class on saving human lives. While hundreds of billions of euros have been transferred to banks and large corporations through the Corona rescue packages, €100 per student is considered an exorbitant price.

Russia prepares health care cuts as COVID cases rise

Andrea Peters

As COVID-19 cases once again rise in Russia, the federal government is preparing to cut health care expenditures. On Wednesday, the Kremlin sent a proposed 2021-23 budget to the Russian parliament that will ax spending on the medical system by 162 billion rubles ($2 billion) by the end of the fiscal cycle. The news comes as daily new confirmed coronavirus infections have nearly doubled in comparison to August lows of below 5,000. On Friday, Russia added another 9,412 infections to its almost 1.2 million total. At least 21,000 people have died from the illness.

Starting next year, health care spending will fall to 1.13 trillion rubles ($14.5 billion), down about $2 billion from this year’s COVID-crisis high. By 2023, expenditures will drop somewhat further to 1.1 trillion rubles. In contrast, the state security services will have an annual budget of nearly 6 trillion rubles ($76 billion).

Bearing in mind that Russia’s medical facilities found themselves woefully lacking the necessary equipment, gear, and personnel when coronavirus initially hit in the spring, and that medical needs will only grow due to the pandemic, the proposed cuts are a brazen assault on the population’s life chances.

Health care personnel in particular are targeted in the new budget, with expenditures on “Development of human resources in health care” set to fall by 15 percent. Russia’s doctors, nurses, emergency medical technicians and other providers—whose salaries often amount to just a few hundred dollars a month—will see further wage cuts and increased workloads.

Many of these workers have never seen promised bonuses for their work on the front lines this past spring and summer. Thousands of medical providers labored under deplorable conditions to treat patients and stem the spread of the infection, with many contracting the disease themselves and hundreds dying.

The effect of the cuts in federal-level health care spending will be intensified by reduced expenditures at the regional level. In order to close its budget shortfall and sustain an increase in financing for the security services, Moscow plans to reduce the amount of money it transfers to provincial governments. Local bodies, which are already suffering major shortfalls because of the economic fallout of the pandemic, will in turn have to impose cuts of their own.

In St. Petersburg, Russia’s second largest metropolitan center, local-level health care spending is being axed, with salaries and medical supplies being the central targets. The city, which is facing $1.3 billion in lost revenues due to the COVID shutdown earlier this year, is pulling $1.2 million in funding from its leading institute for research and treatment of the coronavirus, the Botkin Infectious Disease Hospital.

These measures are being implemented as cases spike, with the reproduction rate of the infection now exceeding 1. By late September, just 6 percent of St. Petersburg’s hospital beds for COVID-19 patients were available, and medical centers have once again been scrambling to convert wards to handle the influx of “second-wave” patients.

While health care workers report that they are more prepared now than previously because of a greater supply of personal protective equipment (PPE), the city’s health care facilities have been crippled by years of massive cuts implemented as part of the “optimization” of Russia’s medical system, which has meant the shuttering of facilities. Between 2000 and 2015, the number of hospitals in the country decreased by well over 10,000. Over the last several years, there have been ongoing protests by medical workers against the so-called “reform” of the health care system.

The far-eastern island of Sakhalin, off Russia’s pacific coast, also just announced major cuts in government spending in medicine, welfare, education and energy. Authorities in the region, where the monthly median wage is about 57,000 rubles ($740), will ax 435 million rubles ($5.5 million) from health care alone.

The assault on the Russian working class’ living standards is not restricted to federal drawdowns in health care spending. In the new Kremlin budget, set-asides for families with children are also being cut, as are expenditures on household utilities and support for new mothers.

These measures are being implemented as millions of households struggle with wage cuts and job losses stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a recent study by the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, the size of Russia’s middle class has shrunk dramatically over the course of the year, with another 6.1 percent of working people entering the ranks of the poor.

The Russian ruling class knows that these conditions are setting the stage of major social conflicts. By the end of the new budgetary cycle, the financing and supply of the army, national guard and security forces of the interior ministry will account for 27 percent of all federal expenditures.

Health care workers stage strikes, protests in Chile and Argentina

Mauricio Saavedra

Hundreds of health workers took to the streets across Chile last Saturday to demand an improvement in working conditions and salaries as COVID-19 cases continued to surge dangerously in regional centres across the country. These actions are part of a number of struggles erupting across Latin America by health professionals opposing deadly working conditions created by cost-cutting measures that have been laid bare by the pandemic.

Argentine nurses in October 1 strike (Credit: Arton)

Senior nursing technicians in September initiated rolling demonstrations demanding professional recognition and salary increases. The first demonstration, at Plaza Dignidad in the Chilean capital, Santiago, on September 5, drew a few hundred workers and was followed by protests at various hospitals in the Central Valley communes of Coquimbo, Ovalle and Rancagua.

The ultra-right government of billionaire President Sebastian Piñera responded to the protests by unleashing paramilitary Carabinero police to violently repress the nursing technicians, including with the use of water cannon, tear gas and multiple arrests.

“At first we were seen as heroes and now we are treated as criminals. We have police everywhere. In reality, there is no longer any democracy in Chile,” Nelly Gallardo, a nurse technician told Ruptly news. “I think that we are practically in a dictatorship because of Mr. Piñera, because we do not have the right to freedom of expression, which is this. If we mobilize, immediately they are going to repress us with gases, with tear gas bombs.”

The state repression has not intimidated workers, but on the contrary, fueled militancy. A larger demonstration was held September 25.

Similarly, in neighboring Argentina, nurses held a national strike October 1 in response to a brutal police crackdown against an earlier protest organized outside the Buenos Aires legislature. Their key demands are adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) and legal recognition as professional staff. In particular, they want an end to substandard incomes that force many nurses to seek employment at more than one facility, which, due to the pandemic, has resulted in massive contagion among health professionals. Nurses want entry salaries to increase from a derisory monthly income of 39,000 pesos (US$512) to 80,000 pesos (US$1,050).

A nurse related on the Facebook page Enfermero/as de todo el mundo: “Buenos Aires nurses live under the poverty line and sustain the dignity of our families with double and triple employment, increasing the exposure and risk to our health and that of our families. Working conditions are deplorable, we are not given work clothes, changing rooms or adequate social distancing from highly communicable diseases.”

Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Argentina and Chile are among the 12 worst-hit nations. Health professionals in Latin America—a region which accounts for 600 million people and has reported 8.5 million COVID-19 cases and nearly 320,000 deaths—entered the fight against the global pandemic last March without protective equipment, adequate personnel, facilities or resources to deal with the avalanche of cases. In addition, they have been insufficiently remunerated and, as a consequence, have disproportionately contracted the disease. According to Amnesty International, of the 7,000 health professionals in the world who have died after contracting the virus, more than a third are from the Americas. In Argentina alone more than 140,000 health professionals have been infected and 140 have died from the novel coronavirus.

In Chile, reckless state inaction has resulted in 20,000 health professionals being infected and at least 27 deaths, although there is no official tally. Due to the ongoing outbreaks, hospitals are running at close to capacity and bordering on collapse, while health staff are close to the breaking point. Carlos Schulmeyer, from the National Federation of Health Workers at Melipilla Hospital, told news website Nodal: “Staff are absolutely worn out with 24-, 36- and even 48-hour shifts. This is because there weren’t enough professionals, as colleagues were falling ill.”

Only two months ago, the new Chilean Health Minister, Enrique Paris, introduced his five-stage “Step-by-Step” plan to reopen schools, remove quarantines and lockdowns and reignite economic activity. With much fanfare, the southern region of Magallanes was one of the first to reopen on July 19, at stage three. At that point, daily cases in the area did not surpass 10. But no sooner had it reopened than infection rates began to rise. By August 16, Magallanes was registering up to 70 daily cases. By September 20 it had jumped to more than 200 cases per day and is today experiencing the most COVID-19 incidences per capita in the country.

This has not stopped the government continuing its homicidal agenda of reopening the economy. While the Magallanes region described above has only 151,000 inhabitants, equivalent to 1 percent of the Chilean population, Minister Paris has also placed 192 communes—including in the densely populated Metropolitan Region of Santiago—in stage three of the “Step-by-Step” plan. Schools in select Santiago communes commenced face-to-face teaching this week in a push to browbeat the population back to work.

This will only fuel the combativeness of the working class, whose families have been burdened with the consequences of a capitalist-made crisis. All of the social tensions that came to the surface in October 2019 have only been exacerbated due to the reckless and criminal response of the government to the coronavirus pandemic. Health workers, supermarket employees and port workers have struck for safer working conditions, pay increases and against massive job losses. This radicalization is an expression of a deepening revolutionary crisis amid the ever-growing dangers of police-state dictatorship.

Its under these conditions that Chile’s parliamentary left, especially the Frente Amplio and the Stalinist Communist Party (PCCh), initiated legal action against President Piñera and his former Health Minister Jaime Mañalich. Mayor Daniel Jadue (PCCh) and Senator Alejandro Navarro (Progresita) filed a complaint in June, after it became known that the deeply unpopular Health Minister was providing one set of health figures to the WHO and another to the nation, forcing his resignation. Claudia Mix (Frente Amplio) presented parliamentary charges last month.

The essence of the complaint is that the government authorities improvised and mishandled the pandemic. They denied aid, delayed or refused protection or services; they denied services that resulted in negligent homicide. The court action has been backed by the entire parliamentary center left, the corporatist union apparatus and the pseudo-left parties that orbit them.

The ultra-right government is undoubtedly responsible for criminally negligent policies and brazen lies, and should be held accountable. The figures speak for themselves: since March 3, when Chile registered its first case, there has been, to date, a total of 463,000 infections and 17,075 confirmed and suspected deaths.

Not only did the government squander valuable time refusing to replenish the public health system with personnel, critical equipment and PPE, it played down the threat, rejecting calls from the health community to implement strict quarantines, close non-essential services and industries and conduct mass testing and contact tracing. It also stalled providing substantive financial aid to working families while it opened the state’s coffers to guarantee liquidity to the banks.

Mañalich, in particular, played a reprehensible role. Arguing that the virus would become benign, he promoted a dangerous “herd immunity” policy and claimed the country had achieved a “new normal,” to justify renewed economic activity, especially in the mining sector. He adopted a reckless “dynamic” quarantining policy, which meant letting the disease spread before reacting to the outbreak and only then placing a commune in or out of quarantine on seemingly arbitrary criteria.

Yet it would be folly to believe that the parliamentary “left” would have responded to the crisis any differently. The political line that divides “left” from “right” is purely tactical: they both defend the profit system and serve in its institutions.

Piñera took power in 2018 from Michelle Bachelet (PS) whose “center-left” coalition ruled for more than two decades since the return to civilian rule in 1990. During this entire period, the “left” kept intact the fascist-military junta’s handiwork—health care, education, pensions, social security all remained privatized or two-tiered. For services rendered, these “lefts” now sit on the boards of directors of the most powerful businesses and corporations and have been implicated in countless corruption cases. This includes the Stalinist PCCh and Frente Amplio, which dominate substantial interests in the union apparatus.

The legal actions are being used to divert attention from the urgent necessity of health workers taking up an independent struggle to defend safety and lives, and to improve manifold labor conditions by turning to the working class and to a revolutionary perspective. Their allies are not the parliamentary left, nor the bureaucratic union apparatus, who represent one or another faction of the ruling class, but to fellow health care workers in Argentina, Brazil, the US and elsewhere who confront the same dangers. New organs of power need to be constructed where decisions are made by rank-and-file health workers linking arms with their brothers and sisters in an international campaign against these murderous policies. This is the perspective of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

Former coal boss Robert Murray, who fought coal-dust standards, files for black lung benefits

Samuel Davidson

Former mining company chief Robert Murray, who bitterly fought federal coal-dust regulations, has filed an application with the U.S. Department of Labor for black lung benefits, according to a report from West Virginia Public Broadcasting and Ohio Valley ReSource.

Miners operate a continuous miner machine [Source: Utah Geological Survey]

Murray, now 80-years-old, was the former head of Murray Energy, the largest privately owned undergrounding mining company in the United States. The company went bankrupt in 2019. It has since restructured under the name American Consolidated Natural Resources. The company operates mines in Alabama, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Utah.

According to the report, Murray says that he worked daily in coalmines for 17 years and went underground at least weekly until he was 75. He states that he is now on oxygen and “near death.”

“During my 63 years working in underground coal mines, I worked 16 years every day at the mining face underground and went underground every week until I was age 75,” Murray wrote in his claim.

Between 1995 and 2004, black lung killed 10,000 miners.

Long term exposure to coal dust causes black lung, or coal miners’ pneumoconiosis. The buildup of coal dust on the lung tissue progressively blocks the breathing pathways, scarring and hardening the lung tissue.

While Murray is now himself seeking black lung benefits, his company fought miners claiming the benefits. Miners who worked for the company faced an uphill battle to obtain compensation. They had to deal with a series of company doctors who would claim that the disability was not completely incapacitating and that the symptoms were caused by smoking or some other cause not related to coal mining.

Most miners receive no benefits for black lung. To receive benefits, a miner must have worked for 15 years in the mines and be 100 percent disabled. This places many miners in a Catch-22 situation when they begin to develop black lung. They are faced with a choice of either leaving mining, and giving up their source of income, or keep working until they are at death’s door.

The fund that pays benefits to coal miners afflicted with black lung is severely depleted and is expected to run out of money by the third quarter of 2022.

In October 2019, Murray Energy filed for bankruptcy. During the proceedings Murray energy stopped paying $6 million a month for the health care benefits for 11,600 retired coal miners. The company also sought court permission to stop paying benefits for another 2,200 miners who retired before 1994.

Scores of mining companies have filed for bankruptcy in the past decade. It is a tactic typically employed to get out of paying pensions, health care and other benefits to both active and retired miners. In addition, coal companies use the bankruptcy process to shield themselves from the financial consequences of the massive environmental damage they do.

In 2017, the year before the company filed for bankruptcy, Murray was paid nearly $14.1 million, according to court records.

Throughout his long mining career, Murray fought government environmental, safety and health regulations. He is a strong supporter of President Trump, donating more than $1 million to his 2016 campaign and again to his 2020 re-election effort along with supporting various pro-Trump organizations.

“I gave Mr. Trump what I called an action plan very early,” Murray told FRONTLINE, referring to a meeting he had with Trump near the start of his presidential term. “It’s about three-and-a-half pages and — of what he needed to do in his administration.”

At the top of the list was the rolling back of regulations from the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan and other regulations on the mining industry. The FRONTLINE report recounts that Murray was in the meeting with Trump and then-EPA Director Scott Pruitt when he took the first steps to roll back the Obama plan.

Trump and Pruitt went on to abolish dozens of federal regulations on coal mining and other environmental protections.

In 2014, Murray Energy filed and lost a federal lawsuit against government coal dust standards limiting the allowed level of exposure for miners working underground. Murray claimed that the regulations were overly burdensome and costly to the industry.

In reality, mining companies for the most part ignored the regulations knowing that Federal and State inspectors would look the other way or at worst impose token fines that amounted to little more than the cost of doing business.

Court records show that Murray also paid $1 million to an Ohio law firm known for its work in opposing wind and solar energy projects in Ohio.

After decades of a steady decline, black lung among miners began to rise again in the 1990s. Government health and safety officials have never bothered to find out why, but miners have told the World Socialist Web Site that the reason is the growth of long wall mining, which releases huge quantities of coal dust into the air.

Most disturbing is that new cases of black lung are affecting miners at a younger age, and it often comes with fibrosis, another lung disease caused by breathing in rock dust. Fibrosis is more aggressive and deadly than black lung.

Long wall mining cuts both coal and rock on the coalface, creating vast amounts of rock dust along with the coal dust. This problem has also gotten worse as coal companies continue operations in narrower and narrower coal seams to extract the most coal possible, but also running through much more rock.

The massive growth in black lung is also attributed to the role of the United Mine Workers in suppressing the struggle by coal miners against the companies and the government.

The previous decline in black lung cases was the result of massive struggle by coal miners in the post-WWII period through the early 70s for improved working conditions and safety.

Beginning in the 1980s, then-UMW President Richard Trumka, now head of the AFL-CIO, and current UMW President Cecil Roberts worked to isolate and destroy the powerful militancy of the miners.

The UMW’s pro-company policies lead to the defeat of miners at AT Massey, Pittston, Peabody, Consol, and Murray. The UMW no longer exists in Kentucky and is just a shell in West Virginia and Ohio, with fewer than 10,000 active miners.

The UMW bureaucracy, however, is doing fine; it functions primarily as the directors of the vast multi-billion pension and health funds that it administers.

Last year, Senate majority leader Republican Mitch McConnell, allowed the passage of a bill to funnel $750 million a year for ten years from funds set aside for the cleaning up of the environmental damage done by coal mining into the UMW health care fund.

Two charged in Massachusetts nursing home catastrophe that left 76 veterans dead from COVID-19

Alex Johnson

The Massachusetts state attorney general announced last month that two former leaders of a Holyoke veterans home are currently under indictment on charges of criminal neglect in relation to a coronavirus outbreak that led to 76 resident fatalities and more than a hundred positive COVID-19 cases. These deaths at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home facility and the indictments handed down exemplify the stark failure of the US health care system in containing the spread of the disease in nursing facilities across the nation.

Both indictments represent the first criminal case in the country brought against caretakers involved in nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, the two individuals, Bennett Walsh and Dr. David Clinton, are facing felony charges and if convicted could face several years or even decades in prison. “We allege that the actions of these defendants during the COVID-19 outbreak at the facility put veterans at higher risk of infection and death and warrant criminal charges,” Healey said at a press conference.

Just a day after the investigative report into the deaths was released, Clinton resigned from his post as chief medical officer of the facility, while Walsh had been placed on administrative leave on March 30 and was later fired after the state sent in an emergency response team to oversee the conditions within the resident home.

Soldiers’ Home experienced a staggering spike in COVID-19 infections and deaths during the month of April when the pandemic was raging out of control throughout the Northeast US. By April 22, Soldiers’ Home had reported 56 deaths caused by the novel coronavirus and 92 residents testing positive. At least 81 confirmed infections among hospital staff had been reported by mid-April, making it the most extraordinary outbreak of any veteran’s facility in the country.

Even before cases began piling up throughout the course of the month, the state-run facility had been placed under investigation in early April when the attorney general’s office said it had received a notice of “serious issues with COVID-19 infection control procedures.” While mass casualties rose at alarming rates, numerous nurses pointed to the unpreparedness and blatant disregard for safety precautions by hospital administrators as the cause of the spread of disease. Nurses revealed to the media that they were given little to no personal protective equipment and nothing was done to address dangerous staffing shortages.

As the WSWS noted on the reckless and criminal neglect that prevailed among the hospital administration in the month of April, we wrote: “All evidence points to an attempt by management to hide the outbreak from local authorities, who were only alerted by staff themselves after finding no remediation with their superiors.” Walsh had been the superintendent of the facility at the time and Dr. Clinton was its medical advisor.

Members of the Holyoke Board of Health became aware of the outbreak and deaths when a worker made contact on March 27 with Brenda Rodrigues, president of the local branch of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Rodrigues described the staff member as “basically in tears” as she related how there had been 11 deaths and that management was acting with reckless indifference.

However, an examination of the timeline of the deadly outbreak in Holyoke shows that it was only when public exposure of the situation by local officials forced their hand that the state offered to investigate the deaths at the Soldiers’ Home. While Walsh and Clinton are clearly implicated in the horrific situation that transpired, they were in general compliance with state oversight of nursing homes.

The indictment levied against the two former officials included charges specifically relating to hospital staff who “wantonly or recklessly” permitted or caused bodily injury and abuse, neglect or mistreatment of an older or disabled person. State investigators paid particular attention to a series of events in late March. Staff members were instructed to combine two dementia wards containing residents that had been infected with the virus with healthy residents. The attorney general’s office said this action increased “the exposure of asymptomatic veterans to the virus.”

Facility administrators decided to consolidate the units because of severe staffing shortages. Healy alleged that Walsh and Clinton were responsible for combining 42 veterans into a single unit that usually accommodates 25 beds. Residents believed to be asymptomatic were placed with nine beds in a single dining room, with only a few feet separating them from each other, according to the office. One employee told investigators that the decision to merge the wards was “the most insane thing I ever saw in my entire life.” Six or seven veterans were also placed in a room meant to only hold four people.

Despite such close proximity of residents, the administrators refused to implement effective quarantine and isolation measures. Residents in the consolidated unit were allegedly allowed to speak to one another, regardless of their COVID-19 status. This reckless decision, concluded the attorney general’s office, demonstrated unsafe infection control procedures and placed dozens of asymptomatic veterans at “an increased risk” of contracting the COVID-19 virus.

The true extent of the disastrous state of the facility’s COVID-19 policies was revealed in a scathing 174-page report released at the end of an Independent Investigation conducted at the direction of Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican. One quoted employee at the facility described the procedures staff had to perform in the most harrowing terms, comparing the resident home to a “concentration camp” where staff members were instructed with moving “unknowing veterans off to die.”

The attorney general’s report outlining the indictment is the second of four investigations into the failures of the facility. This summer, an investigation by a federal prosecutor found that the facility’s leadership team made substantial errors in responding to the outbreak. Healy has confirmed that her office is actively investigating several other facilities that have experienced extraordinary levels of coronavirus-related deaths. Over 6,000 probable or confirmed deaths have been reported in long-term care facilities in Massachusetts. This is approximately two-thirds of the state’s total reported death count.

Holyoke Soldiers’ is far from an exceptional case but is one of the more grotesque examples of the malign neglect that has characterized the attitude of the government and ruling class toward the lives of the most vulnerable sections of the population. Throughout the pandemic, nursing homes have suffered immensely, housing populations have been proven to be high-risk for the coronavirus. In the United States, an estimated 40 percent of coronavirus cases have been linked to them. At least 77,000 residents and workers have died from the virus in nursing homes and long-term care facilities for adults, more than 35 percent of total deaths nationwide.

Similar patterns of reckless negligence have occurred in several veteran’s homes across the country. At Menlo Park Veterans Memorial Home, a nursing facility in Edison, New Jersey, officials failed to attribute nearly 40 percent of its likely COVID-19 deaths to the virus, according to the New Jersey Department of Health. The department found that 39 residents likely died from the virus in addition to the 62 deaths officially counted.

A New Jersey DHS spokeswoman told media earlier this week that another state-run veteran home in Paramus, New Jersey also had more COVID-19 deaths than the total attributed to the virus. According to New Jersey’s veteran’s agency records, nearly 100 people died at the Menlo facility in April alone, which is about as many as the facility typically loses in a year.

Johnson’s UK government forwards legislation flouting the rule of law

Robert Stevens

The European Union (EU) launched legal action against Boris Johnson’s Conservative government Thursday, after it pushed through an Internal Market Bill that breaks the Withdrawal Agreement negotiated with Brussels governing post-Brexit trade relations.

After the Tories published the legislation last month, the EU gave Johnson three weeks to withdraw the legislation and threatened to take his government to court if not. The European Commission said, “Violating the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement [from the EU] would break international law, undermine trust and put at risk the ongoing future relationship negotiations.”

Parliament passed the third reading of the Bill Tuesday, with a majority of 84 votes. The Bill went forward to the House of Lords. MPs voted by 340 votes to 256, with a party rebellion failing to materialise. No Tory MPs voted against the Bill, with only around 20 abstaining after Johnson informed them that he would seek MPs approval if he wanted to change the Brexit departure deal.

With the three weeks up, EC President Ursula von der Leyen announced Thursday that Brussels had sent a “letter of formal notice” to Johnson to begin the process of “infringement proceedings”. Action had been taken as “This draft bill is by its very nature a breach of the obligation of good faith laid down in the Withdrawal Agreement. Moreover, if adopted as is, it will be in full contradiction to the protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland.”

Under the agreement’s terms, Britain remains in a transition period and is subject to many of the same rules applied by Brussels until the end of 2020. London has been given until the end of October by the EU to respond to the legal action.

Johnson also met with almost no opposition Wednesday, as Parliament renewed the draconian Coronavirus Act. The Act enables the government to use extraordinary powers to restrict or prohibit events and gatherings in England and Wales during the pandemic in any place, vehicle, train, vessel or aircraft, any movable structure and any offshore installation and, where necessary, to close premises. It provides a temporary power to close educational establishments or childcare providers, extended to cover Scotland and Northern Ireland, where there is no equivalent legislation.

The Act grants police forces the powers to arrest and isolate anyone suspecting of being able to spread COVID-19.

Utilising the rapid spread of the pandemic in Britain due to the Johnson government’s declared herd immunity policy, the 321 page Act was passed within four days of being introduced before parliament on March 19. The legislation was enacted without any vote, as the Labour Party, then led by its nominally “left leader” Jeremy Corbyn, allowed its passage.

The forwarding of the two Bills without obstruction this week, which breach international law and threaten democratic rights at home, follows the pushing ahead last week of legislation representing an explicit repudiation of the Rule of Law. The Overseas Operations Bill protects British Armed Forces personnel who have committed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan from prosecution and those committing atrocities in future. The Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS) Bill allows confidential informants working for MI5 and the police to break the law. As it stands, the Bill does not explicitly rule out any crimes being committed, even torture and murder.

Parliament has become an arena for enshrining naked criminality within the highest echelons of the state. And there is no constituency in ruling circles for opposing this.

The limited conflict that arose over the Withdrawal Agreement reflected divisions within the ruling elite over the orientation of British imperialism’s foreign and trade policy. Johnson’s move to abandon the Northern Ireland protocol threatens economic relations between Britain and Ireland post-Brexit and by extension with the EU, which is still Britain’s biggest market. The five surviving prime ministers—Sir John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May warned that, according to Brown, breaking the EU treaty would see Britain plunged into “battle with Europe for years ahead.”

On the Coronavirus Act, Johnson’s opponents within the Tory Party endlessly cited their great concerns over the loss of freedoms for everyone that had taken place—even under the extremely limited national restrictions put in place by Johnson last week. But behind these cynical paeans to individual liberty, their barely disguised aim was to ensure that under no conditions would another national lockdown or any measure impinging on the profit drive of big business be enacted.

Leading the Tories threatening to oppose the Act’s renewal were some of the parties’ most frothing right-wing elements. In an interview last week with The Post, Sir Graham Brady laid out the motives of his rebels, which at that point numbered around 80. As early as April, “Many of us have been making the case for sensible, cautious opening [of the economy]… Certainly it was pretty obvious back then that you could allow open air markets to operate, and garden centres, all things that could have reduced the economic damage…

“Some sectors like aviation and the events sector have been completely put out of business by the restrictions.”

Brady commended the Swedish government’s refusal to impose a lockdown—which has made it the Nordic country with the highest infections and death toll, particularly among the elderly—claiming that as infections were lower now than at the height of the pandemic, people are no longer “dismissing the Swedish evidence”.

Asked, “If there was a vote on a full second national lockdown tomorrow, what would happen?” Brady responded, “I would vote against a full national lockdown… I think there would be a very significant number of Conservative members of parliament who would vote against a full national lockdown.”

Brady’s opposition evaporated after Johnson promised that he would allow MPs a vote on any further coronavirus measures to be applied nationally.

A hated government whose policies have led to tens of thousands of deaths in the pandemic and pauperised millions more can only pursue its criminal agenda because it is kept in office by the Labour Party and the trade unions.

The Tories passed the Coronavirus Act by a majority of 306 votes after Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer instructed his MP’s to abstain to allow it to remain on the statute books. Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds commented, “Here in the UK, we have seen over 42,000 deaths, lives altered in ways unimaginable a year ago, and our economy facing one of the worst recessions on record.” Handing Johnson a free pass he declared, “We accept the challenge that presents, which is why we have recognised that, in a pandemic, any government needs extraordinary powers available… we will not block its passage.”

Only six Labour MPs (out of 201) voted against the draconian powers but Corbyn and his main allies John McDonnell and Diane Abbott were not among them as they lined up to abstain. Starmer reassured Johnson that in any future vote, he would have Labour’s backing in allowing its renewal.

This was just days after Starmer sacked three MPs from Corbyn’s Socialist Campaign Group from their frontbench roles after they voted against the Overseas Operations Bill, instead of abstaining. Neither Corbyn nor McDonnell uttered a murmur in protest.

At Labour’s annual conference this week, Starmer declared that he was offering “A New Leadership”. As Labour’s every move has demonstrated, this new leadership is one in which Labour operates a part of a de facto government of national unity.

EU summit backs herd immunity policy and sanctions against Belarus

Johannes Stern & Alex Lantier

The European Council of European Union (EU) heads of state met in Brussels for two days, Thursday and Friday, to discuss the bloc’s foreign and economic policy.

From left, Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Lithuania's President Gitanas Nauseda, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Estonia's Prime Minister Juri Ratas and Latvia's Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins participate in a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels, Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. (Aris Oikonomou, Pool via AP)

The meeting came amid an unprecedented international political crisis. After the premature ending of lockdown policies this spring, the COVID-19 pandemic is again infecting hundreds of thousands weekly in Europe. In the US, President Donald Trump has vowed to disregard the November presidential elections and try to maintain himself in power in an illegal post-election coup. Meanwhile, the August elections in Belarus remain disputed, and war broke out this week between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus, threatening military escalation in this explosive region.

The summit confirmed that the EU is no alternative to the disintegration of American democracy. While maintaining a deafening silence on the US election crisis, the EU heads of state signaled they would continue their murderous herd immunity policies and advanced an aggressive foreign policy targeting Turkey, Russia and China.

A communiqué on the first day’s talks published at midnight Friday focused on foreign policy and “a cooperative and mutually beneficial relationship with Turkey.” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan both supported the Azeri offensive to take the Nagorno-Karabakh area from Armenia and aggressively pressed his claims on oil and gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean against Greece. While Greece and Turkey nearly went to war this summer, the Armenian-Azeri war also poses the danger of a clash between the two powers’ main respective regional backers, Russia and Turkey.

The EU declared its “full solidarity with Greece and Cyprus” in the Mediterranean dispute, and that it “welcomes” recent attempts to negotiate a delimitation of Greek and Turkish maritime claims. It opted for a carrot-and stick approach. The EU announced it would “launch a positive political EU-Turkey agenda with a specific emphasis on the modernization of the Customs Union and trade facilitation, people-to-people contacts, high-level dialogues and continued cooperation on migration issues” in line with the EU’s anti-immigrant policy.

This reactionary “agenda” of offering Turkish firms more access to EU markets while ordering Ankara to block Middle Eastern refugees from traveling to Europe, however, depends on Turkish compliance with EU policy on the eastern Mediterranean and the Caucasus. The EU demanded in exchange “substantial negotiations” between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Turkish abandonment of “unilateral actions” in the Mediterranean. Turkey has opened talks with Greece on that issue, and with Russia in an apparent attempt to broker a peace deal in the Caucasus.

In exchange for threatening Turkey with sanctions, the EU obtained an agreement by Cyprus to drop its objections to imposing sanctions on Belarus. The EU has backed opposition politicians who claimed President Aleksandr Lukashenko stole the elections, and it now has imposed sanctions on 40 Lukashenko regime officials. Incoherently, it did not impose sanctions on Lukashenko himself, however, as it tries to keep its options open for political operations inside the former Soviet Union.

In the dubious and as yet unresolved matter of the apparent poisoning of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, the EU called it “a serious breach of international law.” They demanded that Russian authorities ensure “an impartial international investigation and to bring those responsible to justice.”

While pursuing sanctions against Lukashenko for allegedly stealing the Belarusian elections, the EU said nothing about Trump’s threats to steal the US elections. Remarkably, its communiqué made no mention either of the United States or of the major EU powers’ NATO military alliance with the United States. It is more or less apparent that this reflects growing US-EU tensions, concern that a political breakdown in Washington could trigger further wars internationally and unspoken fear of an explosive reaction among workers both in America and Europe to Trump’s planned coup.

With Washington mounting a military build-up in the Pacific and imposing trade tariffs to halt China’s economic rise, the EU also demanded investment deals to ensure EU access to profits in China and criticized China’s “human rights situation.” However, the difference in tone from that of US policy towards China was unmistakable. The EU asked China to “assume greater responsibility in dealing with global challenges” and for “coherent efforts” to intensify EU-China diplomatic ties. It scheduled a March 2021 meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The EU, as usual, couched its military and financial ambitions in rhetoric on “multilateralism” and developing “strategic autonomy” from Washington, echoing French President Emmanuel Macron’s remarks last month to the UN.

“The world cannot just be about China-US rivalry,” Macron said, but “there will be no miracle cure to the disintegration of the contemporary order.” He added that “all the fault lines from before the pandemic—the great powers’ clash for hegemony, the undermining or manipulation of multilateralism, the trampling of international law—have only accelerated and gone deeper.”

Calling for more EU cooperation and strategic autonomy, such as in the joint French-German neo-colonial occupation of Mali, Macron said: “Multilateralism is not just an act of faith, it is an operational necessity. … The European Union, often predicted to be divided and impotent, has thanks to this crisis made a historic step towards unity, sovereignty and solidarity.”

The EU is however a reactionary bloc led by the major European powers, asserting their imperialist interests overseas and financing their profits and overseas wars at workers’ expense. In particular, as in the United States, the European ruling class consciously pursues a policy of herd immunity on COVID-19. Following the premature lifting of lockdowns imposed earlier this year, the drive by EU governments to reopen schools and workplaces has already paved the way for a resurgence of the virus threatening the lives of millions.

In Europe there are now 2,384,762 active cases with numbers exploding across the continent. Yesterday France reported 12,148 infections and 136 deaths. The situation is similarly catastrophic in Spain with 3,722 infections and 113 deaths and Britain (6,968/66). Also the numbers in Eastern Europe are exploding with daily record infections and deaths in Poland (2,292/27), Czech Republic (1,762/21)), Romania (2,343/53), Ukraine (4,633/68) and Russia (9,412/186). In Germany 2,832 were counted yesterday—one of the highest rates since April.

The EU summit once again underscored that there will be no serious coordinated efforts taken to contain the disease. On the contrary: In her press statement at the end of the summit President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen made clear that the deadly back-to-work campaign is a key component of the EU’s strategy to position itself as an industrial and foreign policy power pursuing its imperialist interests against its international rivals.

“With regards to industry”, she explained, “the priority is to join forces in key strategic areas and ensure our industry can compete on a global scale. As you know, we presented our new Industry Strategy in March, to ensure industry can lead the twin green and digital transition.”

“Europe clearly needs to ‘up its game,’” von der Leyen stressed, effectively laying out a trade war strategy to outdo competitors. “We are working at full speed on legislative proposals on foreign subsidies from third countries. We know that these foreign subsidies from third countries can significantly distort the functioning of our Single Market, and disadvantage EU market operators.”

The WSWS has characterized the pandemic as a “trigger event,” which accelerated the already far advanced social, economic, and geopolitical crises of world capitalism.

In her remarks von der Leyen left no doubt that the EU’s industrial and foreign policy offensive will be accompanied by a new round of austerity measures only intensifying the social devastation and impoverishment of workers across the continent. “First of all, we are carrying out a comprehensive review on how to adapt EU competition rules. We need to make them fit for purpose in a globalized and digital world”, she insisted.

What this means is clear: the trillions of euros handed over to the banks and big corporations must be squeezed out of the working class again.

The pandemic has also intensified the preparations of the imperialist powers for war. The Trump administration has not only accused China of being responsible for the pandemic, but the US ruling class is making ever more aggressive preparations for military conflict with Russia and China. The European powers led by Germany and France are also exploiting the crisis to press ahead with their great power plans—against Russia and China, but also against the United States.