A Comparison of Respect for the Sanctity of Mosques in France, the US, and China

Kim Petersen

France has seen a spate of attacks carried out by radicalized Muslims. The attacks and killings must be denounced. But more so must one denounce the terrorism and killings carried out by the French state against Muslims in its wars abroad. In a move that gives a strong inkling of French values, the French state has targeted 76 mosques for “unprecedented action” and potential closure.

France is a party to the western chorus that condemns the alleged internment of the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China. China has rebutted the western disinformation; for example, China provided real-site photos in Xinjiang to debunk satellite images as purported evidence of so-called internment camps.

Eljan Anayt, spokesperson of the Xinjiang regional government, said,

I want to emphasize that Xinjiang is an open region, and there is no need to learn about it through satellite images. We welcome all foreign friends with objective, unbiased stance to come to Xinjiang and to know a real Xinjiang.

The Qiao Collective, an all-volunteer group comprised of ethnic Chinese people living abroad, complied a must-read report on Xinjiang that warned of “politically motivated” western disinformation:

The effectiveness of Western propaganda lies in its ability to render unthinkable any critique or alternative—to monopolize the production of knowledge and truth itself. In this context, it is important to note that the U.S. and its allies are in the minority when it comes to its critiques of Chinese policy in Xinjiang. At two separate convenings of the UN Human Rights Council in 2019 and 2020, letters condemning Chinese conduct in Xinjiang were outvoted, 22-50 and 27-46. Many of those standing in support of Chinese policy in Xinjiang are Muslim-majority nations and/or nations that have waged campaigns against extremism on their own soil, including Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, and Nigeria. On the issue of Xinjiang, the clear break in consensus between the Global South and the U.S. bloc suggests that Western critiques of Xinjiang are primarily politically motivated.

France states that its crackdown on radicalized mosques is spurred by terrorist actions. The Qiao Collective notes that France had earlier begun its own “de-radicalization programs.”

➤ 2015 October – France begins operating “de-radicalization programs.” It would seem these programs have since garnered mostly criticism from the public, but mainstream Western discourse has not accused France of cultural genocide.

Earlier in 2020, French media alleged the destruction of mosques in Xinjiang by Chinese authorities. The New York Times ran a similar story claiming that “China Is Erasing Mosques and Precious Shrines in Xinjiang …” This is coming from the US that erased several Indigenous nations from it landmass at its establishment. This is coming from a country that is engaged in genocide against Muslims worldwide — calculated to be 34 million avoidable deaths in 20 countries post-9-11.

The below video depicts how US forces respect the sanctity of a mosque during its illegal war waged in Iraq, a war based on the fixing of intelligence and facts indicating that Iraq possessed weapons-of-mass-destruction (weapons that the US arrogates the right to possess to itself and some of its allies) around the policy. That war has been condemned as a genocide.

 

Regarding the situation surrounding mosques in China, CGTN corrected the western disinformation:

Western accusations of “forceful demolition of mosques,” “persecution of religious leaders,” and “restrictions of religious freedom” in Xinjiang are “ridiculous” and “groundless,” and the lies and slandering have deeply offended the feelings of Xinjiang people and tarnished the true picture of Xinjiang, Xinjiang Islamic Association said in a statement…

Xinhua, the largest media organization in China presented an affirmative and uplifting video on the respect for Islam by the Chinese government.

Another video report cites the greater number of mosques in China than in either the US or France, even when compared per capita; the modernization of mosques having been carried out; the effectiveness of a respectful de-radicalization program in Xinjiang; and the reluctance of western governments and western media to acknowledge terrorism having been carried out in China.

The Qiao Collective provides relevant background information that China has been a victim of several attacks by Muslim terrorists:

Although there were many attacks between 1990 and 2016 and not all of the information is yet available, some high-profile attacks are as follows:

➤ 2009 July 5 – The Urumqi Riots, 197 killed, 1700 wounded…

➤ 2013 October 28 – Tiananmen Attack, 5 killed, 40 wounded…

➤ 2014 March 1 – Kunming Train Station Attack, 31 killed, 141 wounded…

➤ 2014 May 22 – Urumqi Attack, 39 killed and 94 injured …

➤ 2014 July 30 – Assassination of Imam Jume Tahir at the Id Kah Mosque after morning prayers…

➤ 2016 September 6 – Kyrgyzstan’s state security service attributed the suicide bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Bishkek to the ETIM/TIP.

While terrorist actions have been carried out by Muslims, this points to a minority among Muslims. In no way does it diminish Islam as a religion compared to other religions because there is plenty of terrorism to be attributed to other confessions such as Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. Unless otherwise demonstrated by solid evidence, then the terroristic actions must be acknowledged as that of a minority in the religion. Any actions taken to remediate the violent factions must be undertaken in a respectful manner that does not tarnish the entirety of a group.

Finally, to stake out the moral high ground, the state must abstain from carrying out its own terrorism.

UK schools facing bankruptcy during pandemic

Margot Miller

Thousands of UK schools are threatened with bankruptcy, staff redundancies and larger class sizes as they are forced to stay open and cope with the COVID-19 pandemic without extra funding.

Despite educational settings being a major vector for the rising number of coronavirus infections—accounting for 45 percent of new cases—Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, backed by the trade unions and opposition Labour Party, insist that schools must remain open. This criminally reckless policy, underpinned by the “herd immunity” strategy, has contributed to a death toll of over 70,000.

Year seven pupils are directed to socially distance as they arrive for their first day at Kingsdale Foundation School in London, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

According to the National Association of Headteachers (NAHT), half the schools in the north west England town of Stockport anticipate going into deficit budgets this year, as they struggle with extra costs incurred by the pandemic. Many schools report their annual supply cover budget has been exhausted in just half a year due to staff absences, either from teachers contracting COVID-19 or quarantining at home after contact with positive cases at school.

General secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), Geoff Barton, told the Guardian, “Most of a school’s budget is spent on staffing, so the inevitable conclusion of having less money is that they have to cut staffing. This increases class sizes and reduces the capacity to deliver pastoral care and provide additional classroom support for pupils who benefit from that. Unless the government acts, one of the legacies of Covid will be yet another funding crisis in education.”

The Guardian reported that one secondary school in the north west incurred extra COVID-19 related expenses to the tune of £339,000. A term’s supply of hand sanitisers cost the unnamed school more than £10,000, bacterial anti-sprays accounted for £3,381, and £4,000 was spent on disposable paper towels.

In theory, schools could apply for government reimbursement to cover some extra costs, but only up to July 2020. The school’s headteacher told the Guardian, “I have put in a claim to the Department for Education, but as yet have received diddly squat.”

The head of Wales High School in Kiveton, South Yorkshire, Giuseppe Di’Iasio, worked over the summer holidays providing covered areas outside so the school’s year-groups would have room to separate into their “bubbles” for social distancing.

“We spent our reserves to fund the building work, which has used up in advance all the capital fund money we will get over the next three years, so other improvements will be put on hold,” Di’Iasio told the Guardian .

“It cost £6,000 to re-design the school and put in one-way systems and distancing, and we had to spend £19,000 on catering facilities so we could serve lunch at seven different venues. We had to spend £2,000 on webcams for staff at home to facilitate remote learning, toilet refurbishment cost £3,500, and hygiene costs have been £13,000. We’re looking at spending at least a third of a million pounds out of our £10m budget, but as 80% of our spending is on staff costs, it is actually a sixth of the £2m other spend.”

Julia Maunder, the head of another school, Thomas Keble in Eastcombe, told the newspaper, “When I say I need £14,000 to pay for marquees to keep children dry, I should not be made to feel I'm being unreasonable.”

The school has triple the national average number of children with special educational needs, which it supports from its budget. This led to a “notice to improve” last year by the Education and Skills Funding Agency. The school only avoided bankruptcy through loans from the agency, voluntary contributions from parents, and staff cuts. The school is again teetering on a budget deficit.

The situation was as grim at Stockport’s Mellor Primary school. Headteacher Jim Nicholson reported spending £9,500 on supply teachers since the autumn term began. The cost of building adaptations to permit separate class “bubbles” amounted to £1,386. Extra cleaning and hygiene materials totaled £2,738 for a half term, £484 spent on IT for remote learning, and £2,000 on school equipment so children are not sharing.

In addition, the school, which has 225 pupils on roll, did not receive £29,000 allocated for after-school care and outreach work.

“Then there are the hidden costs, such as our metered water bill. On average, children are washing their hands five times more times a day, which will have a significant impact on our bill—which was £3,047 last year,” he said. Heating bills will also soar as schools have to be well ventilated during the winter to try and mitigate against high viral load.

The pandemic has accelerated the funding crisis in education, which has suffered decades of cutbacks, especially since the 2008 global financial crisis. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ “2019 annual report on education spending in England,” spending per pupil in England fell in real terms by eight percent between 2009–10 and 2019–20.

A survey by the government school inspectorate Ofsted in 2018-19 found financial pressures were the biggest concern of half the headteachers questioned, and for 80 percent it is one of their three biggest concerns.

Ofsted reported, “Forty-two per cent of primary school headteachers and 48 percent of secondary school headteachers who responded to our survey predicted that their school would be in debt by the end of the 2019–20 budget year.”

Like the other education unions, including the National Education Union (NEU), Unite and the GMB, the headteachers’ unions have not lifted a finger to mobilise their members in effective action to adequately resource education either in the past or now.

Educators continue to work in unsafe workplaces with the unions doing nothing to protect them. At least 148 education staff have tragically succumbed to the virus.

The unions have put up no fight to ensure a fully resourced safe learning environment during the pandemic, which must include school closures for all but the children of essential workers. A recent article in scientific journal Nature, cited several international studies proving that closing schools saves lives.

Last week, the Department for Education announced a “short-term Covid workforce fund” to subsidise supply cover costs for schools and colleges. But to apply, schools must already be in a crisis situation and have 20 percent of staff absent “short-term” or 10 percent “long-term”. It stipulates that “Schools will first need to use any existing financial reserves, as we would typically expect when facing unforeseen costs.”

According to Schools Week “Officials have not said how much will be available in total” in the fund. Welcoming what amounts to a few crumbs thrown by the government, National Association of Head Teachers general secretary Paul Whiteman said, “We would like to see the government go further, and our continuing discussions with them will focus on this in the coming weeks.”

The government, Labour opposition and unions feign concern that children, especially from poorer and disadvantaged families, are losing out, not just in terms of their education but their social development during the pandemic. This is undoubtedly true—but their concern is totally disingenuous.

Labour supported the government’s Coronavirus Act, which handed billions to the corporations, along with quantitative easing policies that funneled hundreds of billions into the stock market. Over £17 billion in lucrative PPE contracts were handed over to the private sector, including cronies of the ruling Conservatives, while hundreds of thousands of workers and young people face joblessness and impoverishment. None of this has been fought by the unions, which have operated as part of a de facto government of national unity with Labour and the Tories.

New report condemns Greek government’s “inhuman” treatment of refugees

George Gallanis

“Appalling,” “inhuman,” and “degrading” are some of the words published in a report by the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), describing the conditions refugees live in on Greece’s islands.

Approximately 50,000 refugees live in Greece, 38,000 of whom are on the mainland and 11,000 are on the Greek islands of Lesbos, Leros, Chios, Kos, and Samos. More than half are women and children.

Arrested refugees in the Fylakio detention center in Evros, Greece. (Wikimedia Commons)

The report, published last month, summarizes the CPT’s findings from its visit to Greece from March 13 to 17. The CPT informed the Greek government of its intent to visit and inspect refugee detention centers less than 48 hours before its visit. It should be noted that CPT’s visit and its findings describe conditions before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and before the devastating fire at the Moria refugee camp on Lesbos island. Since then, life for refugees on Greece’s islands has deteriorated significantly.

The previous pseudo-left ruling party, Syriza, paved the way for today’s assault on migrants with attacks by riot police, evacuations and the creation of festering holding camps. In 2015, the European Union (EU), Turkey and the Syriza government struck a dirty deal to establish Greece as the EU’s prison camp for refugees at its southern border.

Greece’s ruling conservative New Democracy (ND), is building upon these anti-refugee policies. Under ND, refugees have been shot and killed by Greek police, beaten by fascists and illegally turned away, also known as “push backs”, when crossing into Greece and seeking asylum. As with the recent attacks on refugees in France by police, the onslaught against refugees and migrants is a policy of the entire European ruling class.

Adding to previous countless eye-witness accounts, video footage, and other investigations, the report only confirms the ongoing brutalisation of Greece’s refugees. Focusing on certain facilities in the Evros region, Greece’s most north-eastern tip, and on the island of Samos, the report describes refugees being held in detention units made of “large barred cells crammed with beds, with poor lighting and ventilation, dilapidated and broken toilets and washrooms, insufficient personal hygiene products and cleaning materials, inadequate food and no access to outdoor daily exercise”. These appalling conditions were made worse by overcrowding in several centers.

In one instance, upon visiting two Greek police holding cells on the island of Samos, the CPT delegation “found 93 migrants (58 men, 15 women—three of whom were pregnant—and, 20 children, 10 of whom were under five years old), crammed into the two cells.”

The detained men, women, children “slept on blankets or on cardboard placed on the cell floor. The cell reeked from “unpartitioned in-cell toilets” that were “blocked and emitted a foul stench.” No one was given access to a “shower for more than two weeks and no soap was given to them to wash their hands after going to the toilet.” The female detainees were “given wet wipes, but they were not provided with any other hygiene products; many women recounted the embarrassing and unsanitary situation with which they had had to cope during their detention.”

The new temporary refugee camp is seen from above on the northeastern island of Lesbos, Greece, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2020. (AP Photo/Panagiotis Balaskas)

The report cites examples of extraconstitutional and rushed court sentences in which refugees appear in court without a lawyer within 24 hours of their apprehension by Greek police, are sentenced to 3-4 years in prison and given fines in the thousands of euros that same day.

In one example, two Turkish men had entered Greece at 6am and were then brought to a police station at 9:40 am that morning. In that afternoon, they appeared in court without lawyers, and claimed they did not understand the proceedings due to the language difference. At the end of the hearing, both were sentenced to four years of imprisonment and fined 10,000 euros.

Additionally, the CPT’s delegation found overwhelming evidence of Greek police performing pushbacks at the Evros River border in northeastern Greece. A recent report by the New York Times found the EU border patrol group, Frontex, to be complicit in helping cover up Greece’s role in performing illegal pushbacks.

The CPT’s damning exposure of the plight of Greece’s refugees is one documenting a humanitarian crisis. But the crisis has only gotten worse since the CPT’s visit some nine months ago.

On Lesbos sat the Moria camp, described by BBC as the “worst refugee camp on Earth.” With a capacity of less than 3,000 people, at one point it held 20,000 refugees in and around the site. In September, it burst into flames, in still unexplained events, and was laid to waste.

Previously housed in Moria, some 8,000 men, women and children now live in a temporary camp, once a former shooting range near the sea. Lack of infrastructure has meant the sprawling facility is wholly dependent on water tanks. With winter only weeks away, refugees will have little protection from the cold.

A new detention center will not be built until next summer. George Koumoutsakos, ND’s alternate minister for migration and asylum policy, told the Guardian. “A new camp has to be built from scratch and agreement has yet to be reached over its location. It’s impossible to get a new state-of-the art facility ready before next summer.”

Refugees are plagued by another factor: the Covid-19 pandemic, which is briefly mentioned by the CPT report, due to its visit preceding the massive spread of the virus. Adding in the devastating impact of the pandemic on society makes worse the already grueling conditions.

The report notes, “The CPT acknowledges that the COVID-19 pandemic has created additional challenges to ensure that all facilities in which migrants are detained adhere to strict standards of hygiene and cleanliness, and that persons in need of health care are provided with rapid access to such.”

The island's cramped detention centers create the perfect breeding grounds for the virus to spread uncontrollably. According to the International Rescue Committee, 35 refugees have tested positive on Lesbos. On Samos, over 100 refugees tested positive last month.

Migrants and refugees stand next to burning house containers at the Moria refugee camp, on the northeastern Aegean island of Lesbos, Greece, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2019 [InTime News via AP]

The Greek government has used the pandemic to implement draconian lockdown measures. Vice News reports refugees camps were repeatedly placed on lockdowns, even after the rest of the country opened up, which severely limited access to resources and healthcare. This shows that the measures have nothing to do with fighting the pandemic but are rather means to imprison refugees and deprive them of basic resources.

The Moria camp was locked down for nearly six months before a single confirmed coronavirus case was confirmed. The first person in Moria tested positive on September 2, which moved the camp under a stricter quarantine. The camp erupted into flames a few days later.

Andrea Contenta, Regional Advocacy Representative for Doctors Without Borders, told VICE News, “We warn against using quarantine as a blanket measure. It should only be implemented when people’s basic rights can at the same time be protected. This can be seen in access to economic and social rights. The restrictions are impacting access to services, to lawyers or other essential services because people are basically unable to enter the cities.”

The brutal conditions and treatment of refugees by the Greek government, the lack of healthcare, sanitary living areas, create the deadly possibility of the COVID-19 ripping through refugee camps on Greece islands.

As the virus spreads across Greece, the healthcare system is close to collapsing under the weight of the spread of the virus. On Thursday, another 100 people were announced as the latest COVID-19 fatalities bringing the total to 2,706. Total infections stand at 111,537 with almost 1,900 reported yesterday. In November, nearly twice as many people have died from the virus than in the entire span of the beginning of the pandemic until October.

Wife of UK chancellor richer than the Queen: Rishi Sunak and the rule of the oligarchy

Jean Shaoul

The Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak failed to declare his and his wife’s wealth and any potential conflicts of interest on becoming a Minister of the Crown last year. He is in breach of all the rules supposedly designed to prevent conflicts of interest.

It was no secret in ruling circles that Sunak is the wealthiest man in the House of Commons, having become a multi-millionaire after working for just a few years for some of the big names in the City of London. That his wife, Akshata Murty, is the daughter of one of India’s richest businessmen, Narayana Murthy, co-founder of giant technology corporation Infosys, is also well known. But the scale of her personal wealth is staggering.

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak (centre) with Frances O'Grady, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (left) and (right) Dame Carolyn Julie Fairbairn, Director General of the CBI, London, September 24, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Frank Augstein]

Sunak’s declaration of his financial and business interests in the official register of ministers’ interests, one of the scantiest on record, was contradicted by a Guardian investigation based on publicly available information. It revealed that Murty’s shares in Infosys—part of a family stakeholding worth £1.7 billion--are worth £430 million, from which she receives millions every year in dividend payments. This makes her one of the richest women in Britain and wealthier than the Queen, whom the Sunday Times ’ Rich List reports as having a net worth of £350 million.

Murty’s Infosys shares form only part of her wealth. Sunak also failed to declare his wife’s 5 percent stake in International Market Management (IMM). IMM channels investments via a “letterbox” company in Mauritius—a tax haven—into two Indian subsidiaries that operate restaurants in India, reducing its tax obligations. According to the Guardian, the use of such letterbox companies in Mauritius has cost India between $10-15 billion over the past 20 years in capital gains tax, dividend tax, interest tax and loyalty payments.

Neither did Sunak declare that his wife holds direct shareholdings and directorships in several UK companies, including two that benefited from his furlough scheme. Instead, he simply declared his wife’s ownership of a small UK-based venture capital investment company, Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd. He and his wife set up the company as a vehicle for investing her wealth in start-up businesses. Sunak then transferred all his shares to Murty before he entered parliament in 2015.

Sunak also concealed his own wealth, simply declaring he had put his own wealth into a “blind trust” that supposedly ensures he has no knowledge or control over its investment decisions, thereby avoiding disclosure. Spotlight on Corruption, an anti-corruption NGO, has exposed such devices as a fraud, noting that the ostensible safeguards can be circumvented and that such trusts “function as a tool to encourage the public perception that steps have been taken to manage conflicts of interests without requiring politicians to divest of their financial interests.”

Sunak only declared his ownership of property worth slightly more than £100,000, a sum that would barely buy a rundown tenement in Britain today. However, he and his wife own a £7 million five-bedroom home in Kensington, a £1.5 million 12-bedroom Georgian mansion set in a 12 acre estate in his constituency in the Yorkshire Dales, and property in the US.

Of issue is not just Mr. and Mrs. Sunak’s obscene personal wealth, but that he occupies, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself, the most important position in UK politics in determining public policy choices to favour others such as himself who are part of the super-rich—at the expense of the vast majority.

On the most immediate and personal level, since 2015 Infosys, which employs 10,000 people in the UK, has won government contracts worth £22 million. It has worked for the Home Office, signing a framework agreement that means it can be awarded multi-million pound contracts without competition.

Significantly, Sunak himself precipitated events leading up to the exposure of his fraudulent declaration, when he refused to disclose whether he will profit from the huge increase in the share price of the COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer Moderna, which has announced successful trials of its vaccine. Moderna was one of the biggest investments held by the Theleme Partners hedge fund he co-founded before entering parliament. As a partner in the fund, he would own a stake in the management company and have money invested in its fund.

Johnson’s government was fully aware of all of this. Yet the then head of propriety and ethics, Helen MacNamara, signed off Sunak’s registration of financial interests, even though Murty’s holdings in the family business was common knowledge. His fabulous wealth and specialist knowledge of how to protect it, both for himself and others, all but guarantees his continued elevation within government. Sunak, who became chancellor at the age of 39 within five years of entering parliament, is a man with no groundswell of popular support, or political experience. But he has been tipped as a future prime minister to replace the beleaguered Johnson.

Sunak is the living embodiment of government in the service of the financial oligarchy. He became Chancellor of the Exchequer in February as the pandemic was causing stock markets around the world to plummet. He joined a government that became the first in the world to publicly admit to pursuing a policy of “herd immunity”—allowing the virus to spread throughout the population with virtually no obstacles in its path. This murderous and fascistic policy was consciously pursued so as not to jeopardize the profits of Britain’s banks and corporations. It is the grotesque expression of rule of, by and for the oligarchy.

Sunak used his first budget on March 11 to spearhead this policy, engineering a huge transfer of social wealth to the banks and major corporations that included £330 billion loan guarantees for business—a sum equal to 15 percent of GDP--£12 billion support for business, reduced business rates or no liability at all for the 2020-21 tax year and a pledge to cover businesses’ cost of providing statutory sick pay for up to 14 days for workers in firms with fewer than 250 employees, as well as £895 billion in quantitative easing (QE), subventions that far exceed those passed after the 2008 global financial crash.

Last week, this odious financial parasite announced an austerity offensive targeting working people to meet the cost of Britain’s economic collapse, with the words, “Our economic emergency has only just begun.”

The cost of the pandemic had already reached £280 billion, he declared, without explaining that the lion’s share of these costs were the result of his subventions to business announced in March. With the economy expected to be between 3 percent and 6 percent smaller by 2025, government debt would reach nearly 100 percent of GDP by 2025 thanks to such handouts to the banks and corporations.

The Chancellor Rishi Sunak works on his Spending Review speech with members of his team in his offices in 11 Downing Street (credit: HM Treasury FlickR)

He also neglected to say that the wealth of just the 1,000 richest people in Britain would almost cover the government’s debt.

Such is the degraded state of British political life today that there have been no calls for him to resign by the Labour opposition, in line with leader Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge of only “constructive opposition.” All that was demanded by the backbench Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi was that parliament’s toothless committee on standards in public life look into whether Sunak’s lack of disclosure breached the Ministerial Code and might “further erode public trust in politicians and bring parliament into disrepute.”

Trust in parliament could hardly be lower. Millions of workers view the Johnson government as a bunch of political criminals. The pandemic has confirmed that working people have no political vehicle to express their opposition to its gangster-like policies. With the Labour Party functioning as the government’s partner in crime and bodyguard, parliament has ceased to function in any genuinely democratic sense.

Kremlin girds itself for a Biden presidency, while still refusing to acknowledge his electoral victory

Andrea Peters

Speaking to a press outlet on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reported that the Kremlin is “carefully following what is happening on the other side of the Atlantic,” but continued to refrain from acknowledging Joe Biden as president-elect of the United States.

“It is premature to assess the consequences of the elections in the US for international relations before the announcement of official results,” stated Lavrov, adding that Russia “is prepared for any development of events.”

Should Biden assume the presidency, the foreign minister indicated that the Kremlin expects a return to Obama-era policies. Anticipating the possible coming to power of a rabidly anti-Russian White House in January, Lavrov insisted that collaboration with any American government be based on “honesty, mutual respect, and non-interference in internal affairs.”

The Kremlin in Moscow (Photo: A.Savin/Wikipedia)

Despite endless efforts by the Democratic Party and leading American press outlets to portray Trump as “soft” on Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin is aware of the immense threat to Russia’s geopolitical and economic interests posed by a successful Trump coup. As was made clear by the recent US and Israeli-orchestrated assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, the crazed policies of the Trump administration are no less likely than those of a future Biden administration to draw Russia into a disastrous war.

The same day that Lavrov issued his comments, NATO representatives meeting virtually identified Russia as the alliance’s major security threat, insisting that Moscow’s growing influence in Belarus and Nagorno-Karabakh and alleged deployment of “new missiles from the Far North to Syria to Libya” required new efforts “to contain Russia.”

While the Trump administration implemented numerous aggressive measures against the Kremlin—scrapping major nuclear treaties, extending anti-Russian sanctions and funneling hundreds of millions of dollars towards Ukraine’s military—the government being prepared by president-elect Biden is packed with anti-Russian fanatics who have been braying for war with Moscow and centrally involved in efforts to destabilize the country through the installation of pro-Western regimes across the post-Soviet sphere. The sense in Moscow is that however much hopes for an easing of tensions with the US were dashed by the realities of Trump’s four years in office, the situation is likely to become even worse under Biden.

Antony Blinken, Biden’s proposed secretary of state, avidly backed the US-orchestrated anti-Russian regime change operation in Ukraine in 2014. He advocated the use of harsh sanctions to punish the Russian population as a whole over the Russian annexation of the Black Sea peninsula Crimea. In comments made throughout the summer and fall of 2020, Blinken has promised that a Biden administration will aggressively “impose costs” and “deter” Russia through the expansion of NATO and stepped-up measures intended to wreck the Russian economy.

Jake Sullivan, who is slated to be Biden’s national security adviser and was a key figure in the Obama administration, played a central role in the Democratic Party’s effort to tar Trump with allegations of collusion with Russia as part of the Democrats’ impeachment drive. Avril Haines, who will take the post of Director of National Intelligence, was also deeply involved in claims of Russia’s supposed meddling in the 2016 elections. Jen Psaki, Biden’s pick as White House communications secretary, was the spin doctor who sought to cover up the implications of the revelations made in 2014 by US Ambassador Victoria Nuland that the US had poured $5 billion into “promoting democracy” in Ukraine.

In response to the news of the Biden appointments, Yuri Rogulev, director of the Foundation for the Study of the USA at Moscow State University, pointed in particular to the political resumes of Sullivan and Psaki and noted, “Nothing good looms for our country.” In a popular reflection of this mood, a survey by the news outlet Russia Matters found that just 10 percent of Russians anticipate that the country’s relationship with the US will improve under a Biden presidency and 30 percent think it will deteriorate.

Speaking on Wednesday at a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), an alliance of post-Soviet states, Putin warned against “outside interference: financial injections, informational support, political support and so forth” in the affairs of CSTO member states. His remarks were directed in particular at the situation Belarus. Currently, the Kremlin is pressuring Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko to leave office in an effort to prevent months of mass popular protests against Lukashenko from turning into a pressure point in the hands of imperialist powers allying themselves with so-called “democratic forces” in Belarus.

It is increasingly clear that this is precisely what is being prepared. The same day that Putin issued his warning about interference in the CSTO, the European Commission (EC)—the executive branch of the European Union—released a statement outlining its expectation that a Biden administration will defend the “territorial integrity and energy security” of Ukraine and “step up support for a peaceful democratic transfer of power” in Belarus. The EC appealed for Biden to hold a “summit on democracy.”

The Russian Air Force said Tuesday that so far this year it has detected 1,300 foreign spy planes operating near Russian territory. The same day the military made this announcement, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Rybakov expressed objections over US moves to deploy low-yield nuclear weapons to countries near Russia’s borders, which he described as a clear sign of “the return of the concept of limited nuclear war.”

The course which the conflict between the United States and Russia takes is also highly dependent on US policy towards China, which for both American political parties is emerging the primary target, as well as US relations with Europe.

Fyodor Lukyanov, one of Russia’s top foreign policy analysts and an adviser to the Kremlin, noted recently, “The rapid deterioration of the US-China relationship will define the whole atmosphere in the middle and long term … for Russia, it’s a big difference whether we face full-scale bipolar conflict between the United States and China which will require all other countries to take sides.”

He added, “Of course, in the Russian case, for now, there is no reason at all to expect Russia to lean toward the United States. But at the same time there is a growing and deepening debate in Russia about the relationship with China, which is very important.”

Tensions between the United States and various European countries with regards to Russia are also evident. At the center of the present situation is the construction of Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline connecting Russian suppliers to Germany via the Baltic Sea. After delays brought on by US sanctions, it was just announced early this week that the companies involved in Nord Stream 2—Gazprom and a number of European partners—had secured full financing for the project and even chosen the ship that would finish laying the pipeline.

Spanish generals call for mass murder in fascistic leaked WhatsApp chats

Alejandro López

On Wednesday, the news site Infolibre published a series of messages on a private WhatsApp chat group of top retired Spanish air force officers discussing the political situation. The report became a trending topic on Twitter. It shows retired generals and colonels proclaiming their loyalty to fascism and their hatred of the left, boasting of links to active-duty officers, and calling for a coup to murder tens of millions of people.

Many of the chats came from the telephone of retired Major General Francisco Beca, the lead signatory of a letter by 39 high-ranking Spanish air force officers to the European Parliament and to King Felipe VI, demanding action against the elected Podemos-Socialist Party (PSOE) government. These messages confirm the warning made by the WSWS: this letter was part of discussion of a fascist coup at the highest levels of the officer corps.

Fascist Spanish General Fransisco Franco (1892 – 1975) (Photo: Anefo/Wikipedia)

Beca refers to Myths of the Civil War, Pío Moa’s book defending General Francisco Franco’s 1936 fascist coup that began the Spanish Civil War and established the 1939-1978 Franco dictatorship: “As a good fascist, I have read it, and if what it says is true (I believe it is) there is no choice but to start shooting 26 million sons of b*tches.” Beca repeatedly calls for mass murder to “extirpate the cancer,” writing in another chat: “I think what I’m missing is to shoot 26 million people!!!!!!!!”

Franco’s 1936 coup, Beca writes in another message, led to “a few years of progress, though a few people had it rough. Spain is full of uncontrollable people and the only thing to do is to make people cultured, which is impossible with the left. It is sad, but this is the Spanish reality.”

Under the dictatorship that Franco established after his victory in the civil war, millions passed through concentration camps, mass censorship was imposed, education and health care were limited to the wealthy, and protests and strikes were savagely suppressed. Torture and murder were routine in Francoite Spain’s police stations. Referring to the Franco regime in one message, Beca said: “All that is left to do (unfortunately) is for history to repeat itself.”

Beca’s fascist and genocidal leanings were shared by other retired officers on the chat. Speaking of supporters and voters of the PSOE, Podemos and their allies, one retired captain in the chat, José Molina, wrote: “I want all of them and all their descendants to die. That’s what I want. Is that a lot to ask for?,” to which Beca replied: “But Curro [his nickname for Molina], for them to die they have to be shot and 26 million bullets are required !!!!!!!!!!”

These messages recall Franco’s infamous interview with U.S. journalist Jay Allen in 1936, during the Civil War, when he insisted that he would stop at nothing in his war to crush the Republic and repeated revolutionary uprisings of the Spanish working class. Allen said, “You’ll have to kill half of Spain.” Franco replied: “I said, I will pay any price.”

The stench of fascism has spread widely through the officer corps. In one message, retired colonel González Espinar boasted that he has discussed his coup-plotting widely among air force officers: “I already said it in a speech to the JEMAs [Chiefs of the Air Force Staff] Lombo, Gallarza, etc. ... and in more than one hundred dinners at the EA [Air Force] .... ‘GIVE ME AN ORDER!!’ [...] And that is what we would say to the King.”

Infolibre also published a long, obscenity-laden dialogue between González Espinar and retired colonels Ángel Díaz Rivera, calling for a coup to repress Catalan nationalist parties. When Díaz Rivera said “someone will have to start doing something (legal or illegal) against these sons of b*tches,” González Espinar replied: “It’s a pity I’m not active to divert a hot flight from Bárdenas [military airfield] to the home of these sons of b*tches.”

These chats are a warning to the Spanish and international working class. They expose the fraud of official Spanish propaganda on the 1978 Transition from fascist to parliamentary rule. Not only was the 1977 full amnesty for the crimes of fascism, agreed between the Franco regime, the PSOE, and the Stalinist Spanish Communist Party (PCE), supposed to guarantee lasting democracy under Spanish capitalism. Spain’s full integration into NATO and the European Union, it was said, would “professionalize” the Spanish army.

In reality, the Spanish officer corps’ close ties to the US and other European armed forces encouraged its well-known fascist tendencies. The officers in this WhatsApp group were born and started their careers under Francoism, but they served under the parliamentary regime and worked closely with US and other European armed forces. The Infolibre report thus sheds light on the degraded atmosphere prevailing in the military command across North America and Europe.

As these WhatsApp chats were being written, the NATO powers were pursuing both a military build-up against nuclear-armed Russia and China, and a “herd immunity” policy on COVID-19 that has seen over 600,000 deaths in NATO countries. Broad sections of the ruling class have totally lost their heads. Their reckless, murderous policies clearly reflect their view that tens of millions of working people should be exterminated.

The only way forward against the pandemic and the threat of war and fascism is to mobilize the working class independently of the established liberal, social-democratic and middle class “left populist” parties and their trade union allies.

On Wednesday, PSOE Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Podemos Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias initially maintained a deafening silence on the leaked WhatsApp messages. Previously, PSOE Defense Minister Margarita Robles had claimed that officers writing in to declare their loyalty to the king was “legitimate.” On Wednesday, it was left to PSOE lawmaker Odón Elorza to impotently ask deputies of the far-right Vox party in Congress whether he, his family or other PSOE lawmakers are “among those 26 million people to be shot.”

Vox lawmakers responded by defending the fascist officers. Macarena Olona replied that she did not know whether Elorza was on any lists, as the WhatsApp messages are not from Vox. However, she then claimed that the fascist officers are fighting for the “unity” of Spain, and brazenly declared: “Of course they are our people.”

In fact, Vox party leader Santiago Abascal sent the fascist WhatsApp group a voice message. In a friendly tone, Abascal says: “Good afternoon, I am Santi Abascal and they tell me it is mandatory to greet this group. A hug to all and long live Spain!” It is unclear who told Abascal this WhatsApp group was important, or why he wanted to “greet” their coup plotting.

Yesterday, Iglesias finally broke his silence to issue a criminally complacent statement dismissing the threat altogether. He told RTVE that the officers’ statements are “scandalous” because they put the king in an “inconvenient position. However, he insisted, “What these retired gentlemen are saying poses no threat. … If some Francoite gentlemen think giving the head of state a Francoite tinge does him a favor, they do not understand that it makes more Spaniards feel like Republicans.”

Podemos and its various political satellites are far more afraid of opposition to “herd immunity,” austerity and war developing on their left, in the working class, than they are of a fascist coup. They are deliberately and consciously covering up the danger of a turn to military dictatorship.

ILO survey reveals COVID-19 impact on Bangladeshi women garment workers

Wimal Perera

A recent report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) entitled “Gendered impacts of COVID-19 on the garment sector” points to the toll of the pandemic on female workers in the Bangladeshi garment industry.

Published in early November, it draws from “Better Work,” an earlier collaboration between the ILO and the International Finance Corporation on the conditions of garment employees in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Kenya, Lesotho and Vietnam.

Bangladeshi garment workers block a road demanding their unpaid wages during a protest in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday, April 16, 2020. (AP Photo/Al-emrun Garjon)

While the stated aim of “Better Work” is to “improve working conditions in the garment industry and make the sector more competitive,” its real concern is that rising job and wage uncertainties accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic will produce social explosions in these countries.

In 2019, the garment industry employed an estimated 65 million workers in the Asia-Pacific, accounting for 75 percent of all garment workers worldwide. Over four million of these workers are employed in Bangladesh, with women accounting for roughly 80 percent of the workforce.

The ILO’s November report warns that garment workers in lower- and middle-income countries confront a “high risk” of job losses and decreased working hours because of the pandemic. “These job losses,” it continues, “are likely to disproportionally impact women.” The positions that are destroyed “may well never return.”

COVID-19 continues to rage unchecked through Bangladesh, with the government insisting that workers and the rest of the population accept this as the new normal. According to yesterday’s statistics, almost 470,000 have been infected and the death toll has climbed to 6,713.

In Bangladesh, tens of thousands of garment workers were retrenched following the government’s limited and ill-prepared lock down. Many of these workers, the report states, “are still owed wages for completed work” and are “unable to access basic necessities such as food, rent money or medical expenses for their households… Without adequate social protection measures and safety nets in place, loss of wages means that millions of workers and their families are facing poverty and hunger.”

The report notes women workers “are more likely to be directly and indirectly discriminated against” when they are retrenched because they take maternity and pregnancy leave or have to take time off for other medical conditions and family responsibilities. Garment industry employers are also less likely to rehire female workers close to or over the age of 35, opting to hire younger women.

The report states that some factory owners have used the pandemic to inflict “economic harm” on workers using “unacceptable practices, such as withholding information about actual pay and hours and not paying correctly for overtime.”

When the Bangladeshi government “reopened” the economy in late April, the report continues, factory owners did not implement serious measures to prevent workers being infected by COVID-19. In fact, physical distancing—whether on company-provided or public transportation, at workplaces or overcrowded factory-provided accommodation—could not be observed.

The pandemic has also produced rising rates of depression and mental stress amongst all workers and the young. “Unemployment has harmful health effects on both women and men workers, with men more susceptible to some forms of immediate ill-health,” the report states.

The study references previous pandemics, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and H1N1 (swine flu), which produced high levels of depression and a greater risk of suicide amongst unemployed men. A webinar held in late October by the Citizen’s Platform revealed that two-thirds of young people surveyed said they were depressed about their future income prospects and were undergoing mental stress.

Referring to social indices from previous economic recessions, the ILO study observes that long-term unemployment amongst women garment workers has a serious impact on the well-being of their families.

It states, the “loss of women workers’ incomes in lower-income households has a greater longer-term impact when compared to men because women tend to invest more of their income in their children’s health services, education and nutrition.”

In a lame and utopian appeal to the Bangladeshi ruling elite, the ILO study calls for “effective amelioratory actions” to prevent a return to the “pre-existing inequalities.” It also advocates a continuation of what it claims were “previous important gains regarding poverty reduction and gender equality in the garment sector.”

These appeals will fall on deaf ears. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her government are focussed on protecting big business and the wealthy. The Hasina government responded to the pandemic with 21 stimulus packages—a total of $US14.14 billion, according to the Financial Express—with only a pittance going to workers and the poor.

The Hasina government claims that its development programmes are on track to officially elevate the country’s status from the current least developed country to a so-called “developing country” in 2024. This label has no real meaning for the millions of poverty stricken Bangladeshi workers.

While Bangladesh’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate has averaged about eight percent in the past five years, it is expected to drop to 4.4 percent in 2020. The World Bank, however, predicts that it will fall to just 1.6 percent this year.

None of this growth has reduced the vast gap between the rich and poor, with the lion’s share of any increase in the national income going to the wealthy. In 2015, the richest 5 percent of the population were 121 times richer than the poorest 5 percent. The impact of COVID-19 will only deepen this social gulf.

The terrible plight facing tens of thousands Bangladeshi garment employees was revealed in a recent comment by a young worker to the CNBC network.

Prior to the pandemic outbreak in March this year, 22-year-old Mousumi had a new job at a garment factory and was making about 10,000 taka ($118) a month. She lost her job after the lockdown and joined a new factory in August. She now earns just 8,500 taka per month, far less than what she was paid at the previous plant.

Trudeau names top military officer to lead Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout

Laurent Lafrance

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced last week that Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin has been named to lead the large-scale distribution of COVID-19 vaccines in Canada. Fortin is the current chief of staff of the Canadian Joint Operations Command (CJOC), a unified command centre for army, air force, and navy operations that directs most Canadian Armed Forces’ missions in Canada and around the world.

Fortin’s new assignment attests to the growing role the military is playing in public life. It is part of the ongoing efforts of the trade union and New Democratic Party-supported Trudeau Liberal government to give the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) a “humane” façade, and this for two reasons: to cultivate a base of support for the CAF’s role in advancing Canadian imperialist interests around the world through aggression and war, and to legitimize the military’s increasing deployment at home to meet domestic “emergencies.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

At the same time, the fact that public health authorities and social services are deemed incapable of leading a mass vaccination campaign is a damning indictment of the austerity policies all the political parties have pursued over the past three decades. Despite warnings of the threat posed by pandemics for well over a decade, nothing was done by the ruling class to prepare health and social services to counter it.

Fortin has occupied a series of leadership positions in the course of his nearly 30-year military career as a loyal defender of Canadian imperialism’s predatory interests around the globe. He was commander of the NATO training mission in Iraq in 2018–2019, and was the chief of staff of the CAF’s Task Force Kandahar and Joint Task Force Afghanistan between 2009 and 2010. Fortin also led a platoon of the United Nations Protection Force in 1993–1994 during the Bosnian war that saw the partition of the former Yugoslavia along ethnic and religious lines.

As the vice president of logistics and operations for the newly created “National Operations Centre,” Fortin is leading a team of about 30 CAF personnel that have been quietly working for months on the vaccine campaign. The National Operation Centre was created as a “hub” within the Public Health Agency of Canada and will play a key role in major public health decisions.

The nomination of Fortin came only days after Ontario Premier Doug Ford picked former CAF head and leading Afghan War proponent Gen. Rick Hillier to lead that province’s vaccine campaign. Ford justified his decision on the grounds that to immunize the population, “We need military precision. We need the discipline that only a general can bring to this task.”

The Trudeau government has said the CAF will lead the planning and logistics for the vaccine distribution, including the cold storage requirements for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Other tasks the CAF will be asked to perform include “data-sharing,” implementing “risk-mitigation tools,” and conducting “a series of exercises” ahead of the vaccination rollout.

The federal and provincial governments’ reliance on the military during the pandemic is an indictment of all the establishment parties of the ruling class, from the Liberals and Conservatives to the NDP, Parti Quebecois and Legault’s Coalition Avenir Quebec, which have imposed decades of brutal social spending cuts, ravaging public services. Since coming to power in 2015, the Trudeau Liberals have picked up where the Harper Conservatives left off by imposing real-term reductions in the transfers made to the provinces to pay for health care. This criminal neglect has created conditions in which many of Canada’s long-term care facilities have become killing fields during the pandemic. Last spring, provincial governments in Ontario and Quebec were forced to call in the military to deal with horrific conditions that were described by one observer as akin to a “concentration camp.”

Even if one accepts the self-serving claims of Trudeau and Ford that only the military is capable of conducting such a large-scale operation, this begs the question as to why its resources cannot be placed at the disposal of civilian-led public health agencies at the federal and provincial levels, where many of Canada’s leading experts on infectious diseases and vaccinations work.

The answer is that the ruling elite is not concerned primarily with saving lives and containing the pandemic, but at advancing the interests of Canadian imperialism. They hope that by granting the military such a prominent role in what Trudeau has dubbed the “greatest mobilization effort Canada has seen since the Second World War,” they can boost popular acceptance of the armed forces and thus legitimize Canada’s rearmament and war plans under conditions of accelerating geopolitical tensions.

In its 2017 national defence policy document, the Trudeau government announced a 70 percent increase in military spending over the next 10 years so as to boost the CAF’s capabilities to uphold the US-led world order, including by playing an increasingly significant role in Washington’s military-strategic encirclement of nuclear-armed China and Russia.

Well aware that the pandemic is acting as an accelerant of inequalities and class tensions, the ruling class is also determined to expand the presence of the military in daily life so as to suppress working class opposition. At the beginning of the pandemic, the CAF committed 24,000 regular and reserve troops to its pandemic response mission, known as Operation Laser. Back in March, Chief of Defence Staff Jonathan Vance declared these soldiers were “on a war footing” and had to be ready for a potential “worst-case scenario,” which a CBC report described as widespread civil unrest. Retired Lieutenant-General Alain Parent added at the time that the soldiers would not simply provide medical support, but would assist in “surveillance, security and augmenting law and order.”

These were not idle threats. The military, with government support, immediately seized on the pandemic to implement long-planned surveillance projects.

A small unit associated with the troops deployed to the most hard-hit Ontario nursing homes, the Precision Intelligence Team (PIT), was secretly tasked with collecting intelligence on oppositional sentiment among the population on the dubious claim it would help the work in nursing homes. Through “data-mining” of social media posts, the team gathered information on posts critical of the Ford government’s failure to protect the elderly and turned it over to the government.

Then in August, the Ottawa Citizen revealed that in April, the CJOC developed and began implementing an “information operations” plan aimed at “shaping” public opinion and “exploiting information,” so as to deter civil unrest. This plan was explicitly based on the methods the CAF developed during its decade-long role in the US-led neo-colonial, counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan. Although that particular project was shut down by top military commanders, a series of similar propaganda and spying operations are either ongoing or in planning.

Despite all the bluster about the “greatest mobilization since the Second World War,” the reality is that the Canadian military will be overseeing a vaccine rollout that is fully subordinated to the giant pharmaceutical companies’ drive for a profit bonanza and thus totally inadequate.

Due to the fact that production and distribution of critical life-saving vaccines remain in private hands, the Public Health Agency has had to warn that at most 3 million Canadians (less than 10 percent of the population) will receive the COVID-19 vaccine in the first three months of the rollout. This number is not even likely to cover all “high priority groups,” which have been designated as seniors in long-term care homes, people at risk of severe illness and death, first responders, health care workers, and some Indigenous communities. The Trudeau government has also had to acknowledge that vaccination in Canada will lag behind that in the US, the UK and Germany, and even poorer countries like Mexico, which is producing its own vaccine.

The COVID-19 vaccines are a tremendous scientific achievement that must be made freely available to every human being, but the capitalist profit system makes this an impossibility. To do so requires seizing the ill-gotten fortunes of the super-rich and transforming giant private enterprises, including the pharmaceutical and logistics giants like Pfizer and Amazon, into publicly owned and democratically controlled utilities. Production facilities around the world must be requisitioned to produce enough doses of clinically approved vaccines to ensure swift access for working people in every country.

In the meantime, nonessential production must be shut down with full compensation for all workers so they do not have to choose between risking their lives and being left destitute. To fight for such a program, which the ruling elite rejects out of hand because it would cut into their bank balances and share portfolios, the working class must intervene independently into the health and social crisis with its own socialist and internationalist program to contain the pandemic and save lives.

Absent such a struggle, the capitalist class will exploit the vaccines to advance their own selfish class interests. For the Trudeau government, the propaganda campaign claiming that all resources are being mobilized to vaccinate the population as soon as possible is a vital component of its drive to keep the economy and schools open as new infections reach record highs. The goal of this homicidal strategy is to make workers pay for the hundreds of billions of dollars the Liberal government, with the full support of all the opposition parties, has funneled into the financial markets, the banks and corporate coffers, since the pandemic began, so as to guarantee the wealth and profits of the rich and super-rich.