As Boris Johnson’s partial lockdown begins: The working class must intervene to prevent COVID-19 catastrophe

Thomas Scripps

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been forced to impose a second one-month “lockdown” after his government was confirmed as a cabal of mass murderers.

For months, the working assumption in ruling circles has been that 85,000 more lives would be lost to COVID-19 this winter in a “reasonable worst-case scenario”. New projections leaked Saturday showed this appalling toll to be an underestimate. The UK confronts a surge of COVID-19 infections and deaths far worse than the initial wave suffered in the spring.

This catastrophe has been prepared by the policies of the Conservative government and its co-conspirators in the Labour Party and the trade unions. It falls to the working class to take control of society out of the hands of these criminals and prevent a terrible loss of life.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson holds a Covid-19 Press Conference on Saturday October 31 in 10 Downing Street. (Picture by Pippa Fowles / No 10 Downing Street)

While admitting to MPs on Monday that deaths this winter could be “twice as bad or more compared with the first wave”, Johnson made clear that the British ruling class has no intention of seriously suppressing the virus. His announcement last Saturday of a month of new national restrictions was coupled with a defence of the government’s record. Plumbing new depths of political cynicism, he explained away projections of multiple thousands of deaths a day and overflowing hospitals as proof of the need “to be humble in the face of nature.”

The pandemic is not a natural disaster. Johnson is covering for his repugnant actions in encouraging the spread of the virus, but he speaks for the whole capitalist social order. More than 1.2 million people are dead because human life is considered expendable in the ruthless pursuit of profit. This fact is so explosive that its consequences must be passed off as the work of irresistible natural forces—in the style of Thomas Malthus’s eighteenth-century assertion that hunger and disease are the inevitable fate of the “surplus” working class.

What is the real record of the past year? From the start, the Tories had no intention of combatting the virus. Their declared policy was one of “herd immunity”, allowing the virus to rip through the population with the pseudo-scientific justification that this would eventually confer immunity to the population—after the death of hundreds of thousands. This murderous plan was only altered by Johnson out of fear of a wave of strikes against unsafe conditions which began to spread across Britain and Europe, and of the threat that popular revulsion at his response to the pandemic might turn into mass political opposition.

Together with similar shutdowns across Europe, the forced imposition of the March 23 lockdown saved millions of lives. But from May to June, Johnson returned to his original strategy, prematurely ending the lockdown and actively encouraging behaviours which spread the virus.

Millions were ordered back on public transport and to work, with no test, track and trace system to speak of and zero health and safety inspections conducted. Johnson reopened the hospitality, entertainment, and leisure industries, with the instruction, “I think people need to go out and enjoy themselves.” Chancellor Rishi Sunak organised an “Eat Out to Help Out” subsidy scheme to encourage millions back into pubs and restaurants. Quarantines were scrapped to encourage holidays abroad, including to COVID hotspots France and Spain.

Schools and universities were fully reopened to millions of pupils, students and staff in September. Johnson and Education Secretary Gavin Williamson shot down any suggestion of online instruction.

A series of farcical restrictions were introduced—including “local lockdowns”, the “rule of six”, and a regional “Tier system” of regulations—whose main effect was to sow confusion and discredit the legitimacy of public health interventions.

The government’s overwhelming priority has been to keep open the economy to ensure a continued flow of profits to the super rich. Deaths, concentrated among older layers of the population considered as an unproductive drain on state finances, are considered an economic bonus.

Once again, it is only the fear of mass opposition which has forced Johnson to enact new measures. The Tories have created the conditions where the spread of the virus threatens mass deaths and a collapse of the National Health Service, raising the prospect of a popular backlash. That is why the government has said protests are no longer exempt from lockdown restrictions, whether COVID compliant or not.

The new lockdown is significantly more limited than the first. All those who cannot work from home—except hospitality, entertainment, leisure, and non-essential retail employees—will be expected to work on-site. Schools, colleges and universities will remain open. These exemptions, leaving millions of people exposed to the virus, will severely reduce the effectiveness of the lockdown. Scientists suggest that the month of restrictions might only reduce infections by as little as 10 percent. The virus will therefore continue to spread exponentially.

Even this limited intervention is opposed by a substantial section of the Tory Party and its allies in Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party—soon to be rechristened the anti-lockdown “Reform” party. Led by Sir Graham Brady, Chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, they are demanding an end to all pretences of controlling the virus.

Opposition to the government is growing, but it can only go forward by developing a new political programme and leadership.

The Labour Party and the trade unions stand exposed by this crisis as accomplices of the Johnson government. In the first days of the pandemic, the unions demobilised industrial struggles and workers’ protests for safe conditions, pledging to collaborate with Johnson “in the national interest.” They oversaw the unsafe reopening of workplaces and education settings, jettisoning all previously declared “tests” and “red lines”. With anger mounting among their memberships, they are now doing everything possible to prevent strike action by supporting the latest measures or at best politely asking for an extension to partially cover education settings.

Labour embraced the Tory government from the start of the crisis, with first Jeremy Corbyn and then Sir Keir Starmer pledging only “constructive opposition”—a euphemism for collusion. Starmer—infamous for his insistence that schools should reopen, “no ifs, no buts”—made a pathetic attempt to cover his criminal record last month by issuing a belated endorsement of a two-week “circuit breaker” lockdown. He did so based entirely on arguments for minimising the disruption to UK businesses by an uncontrolled explosion of the virus. Labour supports Johnson’s limited lockdown, including keeping schools open.

Corbyn and the “Labour left” are just as guilty. Corbyn even admitted in an August interview to having been told of the government’s “herd immunity” plan ahead of time, while he was still leader of the Labour Party. Forewarned of this policy for mass death, he alerted nobody.

Since then he has never once opposed the reopening of the economy. He and his allies, John McDonnell, Dianne Abbott et al, are directing all their energies into getting Corbyn’s suspension from Labour reversed. They are appealing to rank-and-file members not to quit the party witch-hunting them as anti-Semites and colluding with Johnson.

A political break with these organisations is a life and death question for the working class. Wildcat strikes of students and teachers have already broken out in Greece, Poland and France against the unsafe reopening of schools. The same sentiment exists in the UK, but workers and youth must become conscious of the fight they are engaged in.

The tremendous challenges posed by the pandemic cannot be addressed without a frontal assault on the capitalist profit system and the monopolisation of social wealth by the super-rich. This is an international struggle against a global pandemic and a global economic order. It demands an international movement of the working class across all artificial national borders, acting through its own independent organisations.

This is the programme fought for by the Socialist Equality Party (UK) and its sister parties in the International Committee of the Fourth International.

On May 27, the SEP issued a statement calling for the formation of “rank-and-file safety committees in every factory, office, and workplace. These committees, democratically controlled by workers themselves, should formulate, implement, and oversee measures that are necessary to safeguard the health and lives of workers, their families, and the broader community.”

The statement explained, “the pandemic is inseparably linked to a struggle of workers against the ruling class—the corporate and financial oligarchy—and its dictatorship over economic and political life. It is, therefore, a fight against capitalism and for socialism, the restructuring of society based on social need, not private profit.”

After delayed and inadequate lockdown measures, COVID-19 second wave overwhelms France

Jacques Lidin

With the Macron administration’s latest coronavirus lockdown measures that are both inadequate and too late, epidemiologists now predict a second wave of the pandemic in France even larger than the first. But the Macron government is determined to maintain economic activity, with no regard for the safety of the population.

The disastrous and criminal impact of these policies can already be seen in the accelerating death toll in France. On Tuesday alone, 854 people died from the virus, the highest number since April, and up from 416 the day before.

A nurse holds a phone while a COVID-19 patient speaks with his family from the intensive care unit at the Joseph Imbert Hospital Center in Arles, southern France, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

In an October 28 speech announcing partial lockdown measures, Macron emphasized the European character of the second wave of the pandemic in order to minimize his government’s responsibility. “We are all, in Europe, surprised by the evolution of the virus,” he said. It is as though the continent’s population was bound to a fate independent of any of the actions taken by governments, which, according to Macron, have all been made on the basis of the best available information.

This is a clear lie, since a renewed upsurge of the pandemic was noted weeks ago by epidemiologists. But nothing has been done. If the upsurge is now taking place across the continent, it is because every European government has followed essentially the same policy of returning the population to work at all costs.

As the virus began to accelerate rapidly, Macron announced curfews in some regions on October 14. Not only did these measures fail to stem the spread of the virus, but it accelerated from a 38 percent increase from October 12 to 18 to an additional 52 percent the following week.

Revealing his contempt for the safety of workers and the social interests standing behind his policies, Macron criticized working from home as harmful to the functioning of business.

The government’s policies are dictated by its willingness to tolerate catastrophic levels of death. Speaking on October 28, Macron warned that without a new lockdown, “In a few months we will have to mourn at least another 400,000 deaths.” He added that “even if we could open many more beds, and despite our doubling of capacity, who would seriously want thousands of our compatriots to spend weeks in intensive care with the medical consequences that this entails?”

Yet that is precisely what Macron has done. The government has allowed cases to increase rapidly, only taking responsive measures when the hospital system and intensive care units were already on the verge of being overwhelmed. It is not humanitarian concerns that led him to announce these measures, but fear of a working-class upsurge bringing down his government.

“At this stage, we know that whatever we do, nearly 9,000 patients will be in intensive care by mid-November, almost all of France’s capacity,” Macron said. It is unclear what data Macron was basing this on, since the scenarios discussed by the scientific council and referred to in government defence counsel meetings are kept secret.

Since Macron’s speech, two possible scenarios developed by the Pasteur Institute for the evolution of the pandemic have been referred to in the media. The first foresees “only” 5,400 to 6,020 patients in intensive care on November 15, compared to 7,148 reached at the last peak on April 8. But this assumes that the confinement policies are as effective as those implemented in the spring.

If the current measures are now less effective, the Pasteur Institute predicts the number of patients in intubation to exceed 6,600 (between 6,300 and 7,050) by mid-November, with a peak between 8,200 and 9,100 several weeks later.

The recently announced lockdown measures are very limited. To keep the economy open, and ensure that corporate profits are not damaged, millions more workers are being kept on the job than during the first lockdown. Only businesses that accept customers in person, including in retail and hospitality, must close. Twelve million students are also continuing to attend school, not—as the government cynically asserts—because the well-being and education of the youth is a priority—but to ensure that workers who would otherwise be minding their children are not removed from the labour force.

Schools with overcrowded and poorly ventilated classrooms are particularly conducive to the spread of the virus. Studies show that children over the age of 10–11 are as contagious as adults. There is great uncertainty about the contagiousness of younger children, but even serious studies showing a high risk for young children have been ruled out by the government.

The available data on school contaminations are incredibly sparse. For example, the Public Health France website provides a list of clusters in schools and universities without breaking them down by age group or establishment. It would be simple with current technology to provide mappings of outbreaks in schools and other institutions. This essential information for fighting the epidemic is kept hidden.

The situation is moving towards the most catastrophic scenario, with an overflow of the hospital system that will last longer than in the spring, with a very high mortality linked to COVID-19 and a significant excess mortality for other pathologies that cannot be properly managed for several weeks.

Macron can only carry out this criminal policy because he does not face any serious political opposition. All the establishment parties represent the interests of the capitalist class and have supported the return to work and the reopening of the school system. The trade union apparatuses have also supported the return to work, presenting themselves and acting as reliable partners and advisers to business and the state.

The pseudo-left parties such as the New Anti-capitalist Party did not organize any opposition to the economic reopening. They sought to confuse the issue by demanding only additional resources for the health and education system, to facilitate a reopening. But such measures, even assuming they were accepted by Macron, would not have solved the health situation.

Hospital fire in Brazil exposes criminal neglect of workers’ lives

Brunna Machado

An October 27 fire at a hospital in Brazil’s state of Rio de Janeiro resulted in the deaths of eight people, at least three of them COVID-19 patients. All had suffered some kind of complications after a rushed transfer to escape a blaze on the underground floor that spread dense smoke through several sections of the hospital.

Disoriented by the lack of any emergency plan, nurses, doctors and other workers were forced to improvise, even using a nearby tire store to temporarily relocate some of the patients. One of those who lost their lives was Núbia Rodrigues, 42. She was a radiologist and had been hospitalized a few days before, after having already passed through two other public health care units. She was carried out on a sheet by her colleagues and taken to another facility, but died on the way inside an ambulance. Of the 44 patients who were transferred on the day of the fire, 21 are still hospitalized.

Patients and workers outside of the Bonsucesso Hospital during fire. (Credit: Tânia Rêgo/Agência Brasil)

The fact that a fire occurred at the Federal Hospital of Bonsucesso (HFB), the largest hospital complex in the state of Rio’s public health network, is the criminal outcome of the precarious conditions plaguing the whole of Brazil’s public health care system.

At the beginning of the pandemic, this same hospital was considered as a possible center for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. The facility, which has on average 1,300 hospitalizations per month, was to be adapted with about 200 new beds for COVID-19 cases, but the plan was not realized due to a lack of equipment and health care professionals.

The then Minister of Health, Nelson Teich—one of the three who has held the position this year alone—made a visit to the hospital and found that the facility was underutilized due to a lack of basic supplies and respirators. At the time, the workers staged a protest demanding the purchase of PPE (personal protective equipment) and decent working conditions. After this visit, the hospital was discarded as a COVID-19 center and was forced to face increasingly precarious conditions.

Bonsucesso Hospital on fire. (Credit: Tânia Rêgo/Agência Brasil)

According to a survey by the Open Accounts Association, the hospital’s budget has been cut by almost 40 percent since 2010, from 218 million reais (about US$38 million) to 131 million reais (about US$23 million) per year. The deterioration of the hospital, therefore, was predictable. A survey conducted in 2019 pointed to serious flaws in the fire prevention system and “high risk of explosion” due to the overheating of two transformers.

The failure to act on this warning, as well as the rejection of the demands made by the workers, is part of a deliberate policy of capitalist governments on both the national and a state level. This is already the fourth hospital fire in Rio de Janeiro since September of last year. And although Rio’s cases are particularly serious because of the deaths, the same problems are present in all of Brazil’s states. Since the beginning of 2020, the Sprinkler Brazil Institute has counted 45 fires in public and private health facilities throughout the country, an increase of 96 percent compared to the same period last year. And it is estimated that the real number is higher, as quickly controlled fires are often not reported.

The precarious infrastructure of the public health care system, upon which 70 percent of the population depends, has an even more tragic effect due to the coronavirus pandemic. The “fight” against the pandemic was marked by the installation of provisional and precarious sites for the treatment of COVID-19 cases, which served to systematically divert public resources, while already existing hospitals remained virtually abandoned.

Under these conditions and under the herd immunity policy promoted by President Jair Bolsonaro and the ruling class as a whole, Brazil has already recorded more than 160,000 COVID-19 deaths and over 5.5 million cases. The rate of coronavirus transmission in Brazil has risen again, according to monitoring by Imperial College (United Kingdom). Its report, released last Monday shows that the index increased to 1.01 (in August, it had fallen for the first time to below 1).

Bonsucesso Hospital on fire. (Credit: Tânia Rêgo/Agência Brasil)

Even in view of the high number of cases and the increase in the transmission rate, the already insufficient hospital infrastructure is being dismantled. In the state of Para, some 300 workers were laid off last month after the closure of the Castanhal Regional Hospital. The workers responded with a protest on October 15, and again on October 28, after not even receiving their overdue salaries and severance pay.

In addition, most of the temporary beds in different states, including in the field hospitals that had been set up in soccer stadiums, have been deactivated, overloading other health facilities.

After the fire at the Bonsucesso Federal Hospital, the administration announced that the hospital would be completely closed and that all of its employees would be placed on vacation. The hospital workers responded with a protest, arguing that at least the wings not affected by the fire should continue to function. After that, the administration reversed itself, deciding to partially reopen the hospital.

Each of these cases demonstrates that the defense of basic health care and the fight against the deactivation of beds, the cutting off of resources and a state of deterioration in which Brazilian public hospitals are literally burning can only be guaranteed by the independent action of the working class. The mass infections and deaths in the COVID-19 pandemic have laid bare the preexisting condition of the complete incompatibility of capitalism with the essential social needs of the working class, including free quality health care.

Surge in coronavirus pandemic produces deadly situation in hospitals throughout Europe

Markus Salzmann

The massive increase in COVID-19 infections is pushing hospitals throughout Europe to their limits. In Germany, the number of intensive care patients grows daily. Doctors’ representatives and other experts are increasingly warning of the consequences of a shortage of nursing staff and intensive care beds.

The Robert Koch Institute reported 1,700 coronavirus patients in Germany’s intensive care units on Friday morning. By Saturday, the figure had risen to 1,830 and by Monday to 2,243. The number of cases subject to intensive care treatment has almost tripled in the past two weeks.

Intensive care bed (Photo: Calleamanecer / Wikimedia)

Despite these figures, the federal and state governments have not imposed a necessary lockdown, but only highly inconsistent restrictions on contact. Schools and daycare centres remain open so that work can continue in the factories and other workplaces.

The German Hospital Federation expects the number of intensive care patients to reach a new peak soon. The head of the organization, Gerald Gass, assumes the previous peak of April will be exceeded in two to three weeks and can no longer be prevented. “Anyone who is admitted to hospital in three weeks is already infected today,” Gass told the Bild newspaper.

Due to the extreme shortage of intensive care specialists, Gass announced that nursing staff from non-intensive medical areas would be deployed in intensive care units, which was “not optimal.” This is highly dangerous for patients. The fact that it is nevertheless being considered shows how desperate the situation is. Due to the complex equipment and procedures in intensive care, the use of untrained personnel poses considerable risks. At the same time, training and instruction can hardly be provided adequately due to the stressful situation in the clinics.

“There is not much leeway left in some federal states. Berlin has only 14 percent free intensive care beds, Bremen 17 percent,” warned Uwe Janssens, president of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine (DIVI). This was also since most clinics are still carrying out their “routine programme.” For many clinics, the urgently needed conversion of capacities to coronavirus cases means financial ruin. While in the spring there was a flat-rate payment to hospitals for keeping a certain number of beds free for coronavirus cases, this no longer exists.

At the same time, the care of other acutely ill patients is also at risk. According to a report by broadcaster NDR, a second intensive care unit has now been opened at the University Hospital in Essen. Ninety patients with COVID-19 are being treated there, 27 of whom are receiving intensive medical care.

The director of the Eye Clinic, Nikolaos Bechrakis, reports that he and his team operate on 400 people every year, many with serious tumours, where every day counts to prevent the threat of blindness. “In the first wave, we already had to lose 25 to 30 percent of our capacity. I am afraid that when the second wave comes it will be more severe,” said Bechrakis.

Saarland’s State Premier Tobias Hans (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) admitted the severity of the crisis this week. “The situation is frightening and alarming: soon many of the 1,900 hospitals in Germany may collapse,” he said. Wards and emergency rooms may have to be closed due to missing or sick staff. “Triage and Italian conditions threaten if we don’t take countermeasures now.”

It is becoming more and more obvious that claims that the lessons from the situation in spring had been learned and that care in German hospitals was stable, which Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) repeats like a mantra, are nothing more than deliberate misinformation intended to lull the population into a false sense of security.

The federal and state governments have done nothing to prevent the impending collapse in health care. Although experts have been calling for it for a long time, there is not even a proper record of how many nursing staff with intensive care training are available in Germany. Also, as the number of infections increases, a growing number of doctors and nurses are becoming ill. There is no uniform testing strategy to effectively protect employees in hospitals, nursing homes and similar institutions.

Instead, the precarious situation is at the expense of doctors and nursing staff, who are already working at the limits of their ability to cope with stress. Lower Saxony has again increased the maximum working hours for employees in clinics and nursing homes to up to 60 hours per week and up to 12 hours a day. The other federal states will follow suit. The measure had already been decided at the beginning of the pandemic. Now it will remain in place until May next year.

“For months, the country has been asleep rather than preparing medical facilities for the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic,” Nadya Klarmann, president of the Chamber of Nursing Care, noted. “Now it is up to the employees in the systemically important professions to again save the situation at the risk to their own health.”

The situation is alarming throughout Europe. The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned against overloading the health care system. “Many countries in the northern hemisphere are currently seeing a worrying increase in cases and hospital admissions,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said recently in Geneva.

In Austria, the situation is worsening day by day. The government has stated that with 6,000 new infections per day, there is a risk of overloading intensive care beds in hospitals. In extreme cases, doctors would then also have to decide who would be treated and who would not, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (Austrian Peoples Party, ÖVP) noted.

On November 4, a record 6,901 new infections were reported in the Alpine republic. The measures in force since Tuesday, such as a curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., are unlikely to prevent an increase in cases and deaths. Despite the seriousness of the situation, businesses, daycare centres and the majority of schools—all drivers of the pandemic—remain open.

In Belgium, the health care system is already collapsing. A growing number of clinics can no longer deliver intensive care. According to the trade unions, dozens of doctors and nurses are on duty despite being infected with coronavirus. They receive no protection or support from the government or the trade unions.

“We have to choose between a bad or a very bad solution,” said Philippe Devos from the Federation of Medical Unions. The very bad solution was not to treat patients at all, broadcaster Deutsche Welle quoted the union official.

In terms of population, Belgium is the European country with the most new infections. By November 2, 1,074 out of 100,000 inhabitants had been infected with the virus within the previous seven days.

Switzerland also has an extremely high seven-day incidence, with 588 infections per 100,000 inhabitants. On Monday alone, almost 22,000 new infections were registered in the country with almost 9 million inhabitants. According to media reports, the government in Bern estimates that all intensive care units will be occupied by the middle of the month. In some cantons, such as Geneva and Valais, the treatment limit has already been reached. In Valais, 2,530 out of 100,000 inhabitants have been infected in the last 14 days, in Geneva 2,373 out of 100,000.

The government of the richest European country, whose pharmaceutical industry has an annual turnover of €80 billion, quickly lifted the initial protective measures in the spring, took hardly any precautionary measures and is now sacrificing the lives of countless people. More than 2,400 people have now died of COVID-19 in Switzerland, with 80 each day last Friday and Monday alone.

The situation in Eastern Europe has been extremely tense for weeks. COVID patients from the Czech Republic have already had to be brought to Germany for treatment. The Ministry of Health in Prague has ordered the postponement of all elective surgery.

In the Czech Republic, there were 782 infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the last seven days. According to the doctors’ medical association, more than 13,000 employees in the health care sector have become infected with coronavirus. If they did not continue to work when they showed no symptoms, providing treatment would no longer be possible. In the meantime, the government has imposed a night-time curfew. But that will hardly be enough to avert the complete collapse of hospitals.

In Poland, hospitals are completely overwhelmed by the rapidly increasing number of COVID-19 patients. The hospital in the border town of Slubice, which has been reconfigured for coronavirus patients, recently reported four deaths from the disease within 24 hours, according to broadcaster rbb. On HTS local television, managing director Lukasz Kaczmarek spoke about the catastrophic situation. “There is a lack of cleaning agents, body-care products such as cream and shower gel. That is bad. Also, our hospital has an infrastructure from the 1960s. We have to cope with this situation.” There was also a lack of disinfectants, food and garbage bags.

The situation in France and Britain is similar.

Breonna Taylor’s mother demands an independent investigation into police killing after exposure of grand jury whitewash

Steve Filips

Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, the African American emergency medical technician who was killed by police during a surprise raid on her home, is demanding an independent prosecutor and a new grand jury to investigate her daughter’s death at the hands of three members of the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) on March 13 just after 12:30 a.m.

A third juror came forward on Friday, corroborating with the first two jurors who went public last month with criticism of the presentation of the grand jury’s decision not to bring any charges in Taylor’s death made in September by Kentucky’s attorney general Daniel Cameron, who is African American and a rising star in the Republican Party.

People gather in Jefferson Square awaiting word on charges against police officers, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

The office of Kevin Glogower, the attorney representing the three jurors, explained in a statement, “After much reflection, Anonymous Grand Juror #3 has joined Anonymous Grand Jurors #1 and #2 in promoting truth and transparency regarding the Breonna Taylor case. Anonymous Grand Juror #3 firmly supports the fact that no additional charges were allowed at the conclusion of their service.” The grand jurors are remaining anonymous for fear for their own security.

This past week, Palmer wrote the Kentucky Prosecutors Advisory Council stating, “At minimum, my daughter deserves, as do all aggrieved victims, a competent and capable prosecution team which is committed to properly investigating the case, evaluating the law from an unbiased lens, presenting the evidence and allowing the grand jurors to perform the functions guaranteed to them under the law.”

Cameron insisted that the “grand jury agreed” with the story that the police put forward when they broke in and began their rapid fire shooting spree killing Breonna Taylor.

“While there are six possible homicide charges under Kentucky law,” Cameron stated at his press conference announcing the charging decision in September, “these charges are not applicable to the facts before us because our investigation showed, and the Grand Jury agreed, that Mattingly and Cosgrove (police) were justified” in firing their guns.

Cameron in fact did not present the possibility of six homicide charges against police to the grand jury, spurring the three jurors to set the record straight.

Kenneth Walker III, Breonna’s boyfriend, maintains that there was knocking at the door, but no verbal warning from police was heard, he further stated that he fired a warning shot at what he believed were unidentified intruders.

Detective Brett Hankinson, since terminated from the LMPD, who fired shots from an outdoor patio into the apartment, was the only one charged with three counts of wanton endangerment in the first degree for recklessly firing 10 bullets, with some of them entering into an occupied neighboring apartment.

Protests over Taylor’s murder in Louisville were amplified after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May triggered protests in cities across the US and internationally. The Democratic Party has consistently worked to suppress the protests, which are of a multiracial and multiethnic character, by promoting racial identity politics.

The working class, regardless of an individual worker’s race or ethnicity, is the target of police violence. While African Americans are disproportionately victims of the police killing, police violence is ultimately a class issue, finding its source in the capitalist system and the historic levels of social inequality it has produced.

A report last week by the Manual RedEye, a student newspaper in Louisville, exposed the fact that during the administration of Democratic Governor Steve Beshear the Kentucky State Police had been trained with a slideshow which favorably quoted German dictator Adolf Hitler and Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

The slideshow was part of a course which urged officers to be “warriors” and “ruthless killer[s].” This reactionary, racist, and fascist ideology and culture is endemic to police departments across the US and internationally.

The police are special bodies of armed men tasked with protecting the property interests of the rich. Changing the racial composition of police forces and prosecutors, presented as a solution by the Democratic Party, along with implementing racial sensitivity training, body cameras and other reforms has done nothing to slow the pace of murder and brutality meted out by the police.

According to the latest tally by killedbypolice.net, at least 818 people have been shot and killed by the police this year, on track to match the approximately 1,000 victims in each of the last five years.

Australian billionaires celebrate skyrocketing wealth while pandemic forces workers into poverty

Max Boddy

While workers face Great Depression-style unemployment and poverty, the wealth of Australia’s elite has soared. The Australian Financial Review (AFR) annual rich list for 2020 has revealed that 200 individuals and families increased their combined fortunes by more than $82 billion during the past year, to a total of $424 billion.

Despite, or in many cases because of, the COVID-19 pandemic, the total wealth in the hands of this tiny proportion of the population jumped by more than in the previous year, before the coronavirus crisis emerged. The $82 billion rise, or 24 percent, far surpassed the $59 billion, or 21 percent, increase on the 2019 list.

There is an air of triumphalism in the coverage of this result. In a video introducing the Rich List, editor Michael Bailey said the “big trend, amazingly, was that the total wealth pot actually went up” when “everyone assumed it was going to be going down because of coronavirus.”

Australia now has 104 billionaires, up from 91 the year before, and the cut off for being added to the list rose to $540 million, up from $472 million in 2019. At the top of the list are two “ore-ligarchs,” iron ore magnates Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest. Each more than doubled their worth, to a combined wealth of over $52 billion, mainly on the back of growing ore sales to China.

The top three positions on the AFR rich list [Screenshot: https://www.afr.com/rich-list]

By contrast, millions of workers have been pushed into poverty and destitution. A Foodbank report in October revealed that food relief requests have risen by 47 percent, on average, since the pandemic began. Some 43 percent of food insecure people were going a whole day without food, compared to 30 percent last year.

Glorifying the obscene wealth accumulated by those on the Rich List, the AFR magazine included numerous photos and descriptions of the billionaires’ luxury mansions and other property holdings.

One example is Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-chief executive of tech company Atlassian, who rose to fifth on the list this year with a personal fortune of $16.93 billion. His primary residence is the $100 million Fairwater estate on Sydney Harbour’s Point Piper beachfront, “the only nine-figure house sale in Australia.”

Cannon-Brookes has reportedly spent almost $250 million on property over the past decade. His holdings include a $24.5 million purchase in Newport on Sydney’s northern beaches and the $18.5 million former residence of Germany’s consul-general in Sydney’s Woollahra, as well as his $15 million New South Wales Southern Highlands farm, Widgee Waa. His most recent purchase was an empty block of land on Sydney’s northern beaches, bought for $1.425 million after one day on the market.

Much of the wealth at the top still rests on the financial parasitism and speculation that has seen property prices surge over the past decade, forcing millions of households to take out massive loans just to buy a house. The property tycoons, with combined fortunes of $81.56 billion, dominate the list.

An AFR article trumpeted that “four of the 10 richest Australians made their wealth in the property industry and retain billionaire status even amid the uncertain economy and global health crisis” and “almost a quarter of the richest 200 built their empires in the property sector.”

However, the largest increase in wealth was extracted by the “ore-ligarchs.” This was due in part to mines remaining open throughout the pandemic. The super-profits made by the mining magnates allowed them to develop and roll out mass testing of their employees—a service never provided to the rest of the population.

Chris Ellison, a West Australian mining businessman, joined the billionaires club this year. His company developed equipment that has the capacity to test up to 10,000 people a day and deliver results in three hours.

This meant that when Brazil was devastated by the spread of COVID-19, which caused the shutting down of some mining operations, Australian exporters were able to step in and rack up billions in profits.

The collective wealth of the 12 individuals on the Rich List whose wealth is in some way derived from mining in Western Australia hit $79.8 billion, swollen by a massive $43.8 billion in 18 months.

Another sector boomed thanks to the pandemic. Afterpay, a pay later technology company, boosted its profits because millions of people sought delayed payment options as they faced the prospect of unemployment and poverty. Its founders, Anthony Eisen and Nick Molnar, rose from the bottom of last year’s rich list to numbers 50 and 51, worth $1.86 billion each.

Yet the Rich List insisted that such individuals, whose wealth and lifestyle is unimaginable to the majority of people, have also struggled during the pandemic.

“The burdens of the COVID-19 lockdown across Australia didn’t discriminate between the super-rich, the poor and those in between,” the AFR claimed, while conceding that the super-rich were better off “financially to weather the crisis.”

In reality, Australia’s federal, state and territory governments, Liberal-National Coalition and Labor alike, have played a large part in boosting corporate profits during the pandemic. First, assisted by the trade unions, they have kept most large industries open, including mining, manufacturing, construction and warehousing operations.

Second, they handed out unprecedented subsidies, incentives and cheap loans totalling some $400 billion, with the lion’s share going to big business.

As a result, the decades-long accumulation of obscene wealth at one end of society, acquired through the creation of poverty, devastation and misery at the other end, is accelerating.

The Rich List was launched in 1984, the first full year of the trade union-backed Labor government of Bob Hawke, which began a vast redistribution of wealth towards the top. Then the 200 richest people had a combined wealth of $6.4 billion. There has been a 66-fold increase in wealth for the top 200 in 36 years.

The pandemic is rapidly widening the social gulf. According to modelling conducted at the Australian National University, another three quarters of a million people have already been thrown into poverty by September’s cuts to JobKeeper wage subsidies and JobSeeker welfare payments. About 4 million people, or 16 percent of the population, are now living in poverty.

Chinese government blocks Jack Ma’s major IPO

Nick Beams

The world of global finance capital has been delivered something of a shock by the sudden and unexpected decision of Chinese government regulators to block the initial public offering (IPO) of the financial firm Ant, a spinoff from the Alibaba firm controlled by one of the country’s richest oligarchs, Jack Ma.

The Ant IPO, which was to have been launched today, was aimed at raising around $37 billion. As such, it was set to be the largest such launch in history, beating the previous record set by the IPO of the Saudi Arabian oil giant Aramco last year which raised $29.4 billion.

Ant Group logo. (Original graphic)

The floating of the company, set up six years ago as the means Alibaba used to handle digital payments, was halted on Tuesday when the Shanghai Stock Exchange, which together with Hong Kong was to organise launch, said it would not go ahead.

The decision came after four Chinese regulatory agencies summoned Ma to a meeting on Monday. Following the meeting, Ant issued a statement that Ma and regulators had exchanged views regarding the “health and stability of the financial sector” and that the company was committed to implementing regulations.

But it was not enough to halt the suspension of the IPO. In its statement, the Shanghai Exchange said Ma had been called in for “supervisory interviews” and there had been “other major issues,” including changes in “the financial technology regulatory environment.”

Those changes, it said, “may cause your company to fail to meet the issuance and listing disclosure requirements. Our exchange has decided to postpone the listing of your company.”

The decision to block the IPO was clearly taken at the highest levels of the Chinese government.

As Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy and economics at Cornell University and an expert on China, told the Wall Street Journal: “The fact that [Chinese regulators] waited so close to the listing to pull it is very striking. This sort of thing doesn’t happen without everybody in the top echelon of the political realm coming on board.”

The underwriters for the IPO included Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and China International Capital Corp. Investors, including China’s national pension fund and US firms such as BlackRock and Fidelity Investments, were in line to reap what the Wall Street Journal described as “windfalls” from Ant’s market debut.

Wall Street banks, including Citigroup, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley were set to share in at least $300 million in fees as a result of the IPO—a payout described by the director of a Hong Kong-based financial recruitment firm, cited by the Financial Times, as “humungous.”

There appear to be two interconnected issues involved in decision to block the IPO at this stage—one financial and the other political.

The financial issue centres on the operations of Ant and the influence it has on the Chinese financial system which have been of concern for Chinese regulators for some time. It has organised a vast amount of consumer transactions. It also sells insurance and mutual funds to millions of people. Significantly, Ant has designated itself as a technology company and not a financial firm in order to try to avoid the regulations to which banks are subject.

In a comment published by the official Chinese newsagency Xinhua on Monday, the head of the consumer protection bureau at China’s central bank, Guo Wuping, criticised “fintech companies [for] abusing their hegemonic position” and rather than “taking from the people their data to benefit the people, [they use] it to further some company interests.”

Guo said fintech companies charged higher fees for their lending products than the credit cards issued by banks and they often lured people into overspending so that “some people in low income groups and young people fall deep into debt traps.”

An unnamed senior executive at a major international bank in Hong Kong told the Financial Times that the move was a signal that Beijing “wants to put Ant on a leash before the monster becomes uncontrollable.”

The political conflict came into public view at a financial conference held in Shanghai on October 24. The keynote speaker was China’s vice-president Wang Qishan. Wang is close to China’s president Xi Jinping, and functioned as the head of the president’s so-called anti-corruption drive from 2012 to 2017—the means used by Xi to consolidate his power.

Making his first public appearance in almost a year, Wang told the conference there had to be an emphasis on financial stability. “There should be a fine balance between encouraging financial innovation, invigorating the market, and building regulatory capacity,” he said. “Safety always comes first.”

In his address to the conference Ma directly took issue with Chinese regulators in comments that challenged the positions advanced by the vice-president.

The Chinese leadership has been attempting to present itself as the upholders of the international and financial order as it seeks to win global support to counter the economic warfare being waged against it by the United States.

Ma directly took issue with one of the central foundations of the international banking order—the Basel accords under which banks are required to maintain sufficient liquid assets to cover financial risks.

“The Basel accords are like an old people’s club,” Ma told the conference. “We can’t use yesterday’s methods to regulate the future. There’s no systemic financial risk in China because there’s no financial system in China. The risks are a lack of systems.”

He attacked the major Chinese state-owned banks for having a “pawnshop” mentality, meaning they demanded collateral for loans. Ant’s business model is based on doing away with such constraints.

Ma told the conference “many of the world’s problems” flowed from “only talking about risk control, not talking about development, not thinking about young people’s or developing countries’ opportunities.”

As Martin Chorzempa, a research fellow at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, commented to the Wall Street Journal, Ma’s remarks “looked like a direct contradiction to the lines being proposed by one of the most powerful people of China. This looks like a huge violation of the norms of relations between the government and the private companies.”

Ma was speaking in support of his own immediate interests as he sought to increase the power of his financial conglomerate. But he would not have done so without the belief that his views had support in key sections of the Chinese economic and financial oligarchy which has come into conflict with at least some of the constraints imposed by the Communist party leadership.

No doubt that was the conclusion drawn in ruling circles in Beijing. As the Financial Times noted: “The dramatic turn of events is a reminder to Chinese businesses and their investors that they still answer to the Communist party—no matter their pedigree.”

Sri Lankan government rejects total lockdown amid surging COVID-19 infections

Pradeep Ramanayake

Confronted with rising anger among workers, who forced the closure of an infected factory, Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapakse on Sunday announced an extension of a lockdown in selected areas and “home quarantine” for suspected cases. At the same time, he tried to blame ordinary people for the resurging COVID-19 pandemic in the country.

Last week, the MAS Holdings-owned Bodyline garment factory, which employs about 6,000 workers, was compelled to close down. One member of a 200-strong team tested positive. When 145 team members were tested, another 34 were found to be infected. Workers’ opposition forced the factory to shut.

MAS is a giant company, with factories in 15 countries employing around 99,000 workers, producing apparel for international brands such as Victoria’s Secret, Marks & Spencer and Calvin Klein.

Nurses protesting in Kandy last July

Rajapakse made his announcement in a discussion with the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 at his office. The media ran reports painting those measures as the government intensifying “the battle against rapid spread of COVID-19.” In reality, the decisions are aimed at continuing corporate operations, particularly factory production for exports, forcing workers to stay on the job.

Basil Rajapakse, the president’s younger brother, who heads the PTF, said on Monday: “The majority opinion was to impose a nationwide curfew.” He added that health authorities wanted to “stop everything at least for 10 days.” However, the lockdown “was limited to the Western Province.”

Since one coronavirus infected worker was found accidentally on October 4 at a Brandix Fashion Wear factory at Minuwangoda, the number of cases nationally has rapidly increased, to over 12,000 with 24 deaths, as of Wednesday. These numbers understate the toll because the government is not conducting systematic testing.

The president extended a lockdown of the Western Province until November 9. Major commercial, industrial and administrative institutions are located in this province. In the North-Western Province some areas in the Kurunegala district have been isolated also.

However, these restrictions do not affect big business or state institutions. Last week, President Rajapakse told the cabinet that economic activities would continue without hindrance, despite the pandemic. The Colombo government and the ruling class are following similar, criminal pro-business policies as their counterparts in other countries.

After the country felt the impact of the global coronavirus earlier this year, Rajapakse declared that the government had uniquely handled the pandemic and was able to control it, unlike other countries. Over recent weeks this lie has been exposed as the pandemic began to spread.

During the last nine months the government has taken no measures to overhaul the health system, which has been increasingly run down during the past four decades under successive governments.

Last week, the head of the National Operation Centre for Prevention of COVID-19 Outbreak, Army Commander Shavendra Silva, said the first contacts of infected patients would undergo home quarantine but would not be sent to designated quarantine centres. That is because there is inadequate space and funds. Yesterday, it was reported that nearly 64,000 persons are already in “home quarantine.”

The government is not recommending systematic polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for people in home quarantine. Tests should only be conducted on the 10th day of quarantine, the president has ordered.

Rajapakse cynically emphasised “the importance of conducting continuous and regular random tests.” Yet the government has just 25 PCR test machines, which can process about 8,000 samples daily, state health spokesman doctor Jayaruwan Bandara said. One machine was broken for days and only repaired this week.

An editorial in the pro-government Island newspaper indicated the run-down condition of the public health sector. It warned that limited intensive care units could be overwhelmed soon. “The country has only 641 hospitals with 84,728 beds (3.9 beds per 1,000 persons),” it stated, “and most of them were overflowing with patients even before the COVID-19 outbreak. They usually have patients lying under beds and in corridors.”

There are only 91 medical officers and 212 nurses per 100,000 persons. The editorial added: “These numbers are not sufficient. Frontline health workers are burnt out, and some of them have even contracted COVID-19.”

Already, about 100 health workers, including doctors, nurses and other hospital employees, have been infected.

An incident recently reported in the Kaduwela area, near Colombo, demonstrated the impact of the government’s policies on the lives of the affected people. A man who tested positive for the virus had to stay at home for four days. When he called the relevant authorities, he was told there was “no room in hospitals.” He spent all four days outside his house, fearing that his wife and children would become infected.

The government last week decided to use a low-cost Rapid Antibody Test (RAT), which is not widely endorsed by epidemiologists. Sri Lankan medical expert Ravi Rannan Eliya told the Daily Mirror: “RAT tests are not as accurate as PCR, since a majority of those who tested positive are asymptomatic in Sri Lanka.”

Rajapakse is blaming ordinary people in order to cover up the responsibility of the government and the ruling class. At the meeting last Sunday he said: “This is not a virus dropped by the government. It is a worldwide health issue. People have a great responsibility. Obviously this situation has arisen because the people have given up that responsibility.”

Rajapakse’s priority is propping up the corporate elite, not funding the health sector. The government has released to big business, via the Central Bank, funds totalling 178 billion rupees, but for 2021 the government has allocated only 159 billion rupees ($US873 million) for health expenditure.

At the same time, the government has set aside 500 billion rupees for the military and internal security agencies. The Rajapakse regime is preparing to suppress working class unrest.

The government is keeping the economy open for the benefit of the business elite, particularly for export production. Export Development Board chairman Prabhash Subasinghe last week said exporters should capitalise on the European Union’s recently extended Generalised Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP) tax concessions.

Sri Lankan exporters have a “natural hedge because of the GSP,” while “creating a cost advantage to the European importers,” Subasinghe said.

The EU is the biggest market for Sri Lankan exports, while the US is the largest importer of Sri Lankan textiles. Giant supply chains are reaping huge profits from apparel and other imports from sweatshops in Sri Lanka, as well as those in Bangladesh, Vietnam and other impoverished countries.

Foreign investors, some in partnership with local big business, are running factories in Board of Investment (BOI) approved operations, including in free trade zones (FTZ), amid the deadly pandemic, with the Rajapakse regime’s blessing.

Some 1,615 factories outside the FTZs employ 580,000 workers, while 133,000 workers are employed inside FTZs. According to the BOI figures, however, only 28,670 PCR tests have been conducted among these more than 700,000 workers. Even with such low numbers of tests, more than 1,500 workers have tested COVID-19 positive.

According to BOI director general Sanjaya Mohottala: “All the factories in general are strictly adhering to health and safety guidelines. The BOI is strongly upholding the relevant regulations.”

The reality is the opposite. When the government announced the reopening of these factories at the end of April, the employers adopted minimum safety measures, only to abandon them within a few weeks.

It is on record that the Brandix Fashion Ware management did not allow workers at its Minuwangoda plant to seek medical treatment, even when hundreds of them showed symptoms of infection during September. When the company was compelled to carry out the testing of all workers in early October, more than 1,000 employees were found to be infected.

The only concern of the Rajapakse government and big business is the extraction of profit from workers’ labour power, not human lives.