Israel faces fourth election within two years

Jean Shaoul

Israel's Blue and White Party, the coalition partner of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, has voted with the opposition parties for an early election. Netanyahu’s “emergency unity” coalition, formed in May after Israel’s third inconclusive election within a year, has been almost paralysed for months, with its fractious cabinet rarely meeting.

An imminent fourth election within the space of two years testifies to the deep political crisis confronting Israel, amid the broader economic and healthcare crisis besetting world capitalism. Regardless of which bloc wins a majority, the next government will be a regime of escalating militarism abroad and social reaction and repression at home.

The aim of Blue and White leader Bennie Gantz, Israel’s deputy and alternate prime minister, is to put pressure on Netanyahu to agree a two-year budget for 2020, as agreed in the coalition agreement, before the December 23 deadline that would automatically trigger an election within three months. Three top finance ministry officials have resigned, citing their frustration over the party-political bickering, while in the absence of a budget Israel is using a pro-rated version of the 2019 budget.

Benjamin Netanyahu [Photo: Office of the Israeli Prime Minister]

According to opinion polls, only about 30 percent of Israelis believe Netanyahu has handled the pandemic effectively, with Israel recording more than 345,000 COVID-19 cases and nearly 3,000 deaths, mostly in the last three months. After lifting an early lockdown without adequate safety precautions and in defiance of recommendations by the country’s health experts, cases began to soar, leading to a second partial lockdown in September. Now, after an early lifting of those limited closures, the number of infections is again on the rise, prompting talk of a third lockdown.

The situation is worse in the occupied Palestinian Territories for which Israel is legally responsible. The West Bank has recorded nearly 100,000 COVID-19 cases and around 700 deaths, mostly in the last few months, and has run out of testing kits to screen patients. The Palestinian Authority has announced a week-long closure of all but essential services in four of the 11 provinces.

In the besieged Gaza enclave, the situation is catastrophic. Healthcare workers have run out of testing kits and the only laboratory able to analyse COVID-19 test samples stopped its work “due to a lack of equipment” amid a spike in cases in the last few weeks. The healthcare system is on the point of collapse as the number of confirmed cases reach 25,000 and 150 people have died, prompting the Hamas-led government to announce a lockdown, starting Friday, on weekends and to close schools, universities, kindergartens and mosques.

While the vote appears as a defeat for Netanyahu, who has been prime minister since 2009, it signifies the political demise of the opposition led by Gantz. His electoral coalition bloc, made up of former generals and politicians that had previously served under Netanyahu, had fought three elections on an “anyone but Bibi” [Netanyahu’s nickname] platform. Branded a “centre left” party, Blue and White and the other small parties in the bloc had no significant differences with Netanyahu on the economy, social conditions, the management of the pandemic or relations with the Palestinians. It is this that has allowed political life in Israel to be dominated by Netanyahu’s calculations and maneuvering as to how best to avoid criminal corruption charges that could send him to jail for 10 years.

No party advances any policies to deal with the poverty and social inequality that characterizes Israeli society, one of the most unequal among OECD countries. Some 15 percent of workers are unemployed, with the post-lockdown recovery slower than in May and the economy expected to contract by 6 percent in 2020, the first annual contraction in Israel’s history.

None opposes the brutality of the police towards Israel’s Palestinian or immigrant communities. Of the 13 people killed by the police last year, 11 were Palestinians and two were of Ethiopian descent. Despite 1,200 brutality complaints a year, just eight police officers were indicted in 2018, the last year for which data is available, and only a handful face disciplinary tribunals.

This is a pale reflection of the treatment meted out to the Palestinians in the West Bank, who face daily intimidation, provocation and violence from settlers and Israeli security forces. Last week, an Israeli soldier shot and killed a 13-year-old Palestinian boy, Ali Abu Aliya, who was protesting against a new settlement outpost near his village. Four other young people were wounded by rubber bullets.

The lack of any genuine opposition leaves Israel under the leadership of a criminally indicted politician openly mired in cronyism and corruption and notorious for his lavish lifestyle--courtesy of expensive presents from businessmen and his stock dealings.

Netanyahu is due to attend court daily in February to give evidence in his defence. Denying the charges, he has called his indictment a frame-up, accused the judicial system of mounting a coup against him at the behest of “leftists,” and made several attempts to neuter the judiciary and change the law to evade prosecution. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, a former close aide of Netanyahu, has faced threats if he doesn’t quit or drop charges against the prime minister. Emulating Donald Trump, his patron in the White House, Netanyahu has sought to incite his far-right supporters against demonstrators who have been mounting weekly protests calling for his resignation outside his official residence in Jerusalem, in Tel Aviz and around the country.

When Gantz took Blue and White into a coalition with Netanyahu, citing the need to address the pandemic, it split his electoral bloc and discredited his party. Netanyahu seized every opportunity to smear, humiliate and intimidate Gantz, bypassing him in all the major decisions of state, including the recent “normalization” agreements with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Sudan.

Despite predictions that Likud will lose seats in the next elections, along with defections to a new party opposed to Netanyahu’s continued premiership led by Gideon Sa’ar, Netanyahu is pinning his hopes on the increased support for his former close political ally, Naphtali Bennett’s right-wing Yamina Party, and the fracturing and demise of Gantz’s former allies to return him to power.

Yet another retired army chief of staff, Gadi Eisenkot, following the lead of seven of the last eight army chiefs including Gantz, is seeking to enter politics and form his own party. Eisenkot authored the Dahiyeh Doctrine, named after the southern suburb of Beirut that is Hezbollah’s political base. According to this doctrine, should Hezbollah attack Israel, it will retaliate forcefully against Dahiyeh. He was also the architect of Israel bombing campaign against Iranian targets in Syria.

The so-called peace camp has also embraced a former general. Yair Golan, a former deputy army chief of staff, has announced that he is to formally join Meretz, the political arm of Peace Now that was associated with the back-channel negotiations that preceded the 1993 Oslo Accords. The Accords were meant to inaugurate a new era of peace with Israel through the establishment of a Palestinian state. He entered parliament last year as a supporter of the Democratic Union of Ehud Barak, another former chief of staff and a short-lived prime minister, before joining the Meretz list in April.

Speaking to the daily Ha’aretz, Golan said that he would run for the Meretz leadership if the election is held in June. He criticised Meretz for “insisting on remaining a small, separate and purist party. It lacks a real desire for power, or to be part of the government.” He added, “Certain forces are trying to drag it into becoming a Jewish-Arab party. These forces need to be calmed and silenced, as I will do my utmost to do in the coming months.”

Public sector workers mount national strike across Italy

Will Morrow

Yesterday, a nationwide strike in Italy brought large portions of the public sector to a standstill. As hundreds continue to die every day from the coronavirus pandemic and the government’s policy of permitting the virus to spread, there is mass opposition in the working class to the lack of safe working conditions and the malignant levels of social inequality fueled by decades of austerity and exacerbated by the pandemic.

According to the trade unions, more than three million workers participated in the strike. The public sector union federations that called the strike cover public administration employees, civil servants, education and health care workers, though hospital employees remained on the job.

The strike was animated by mass opposition to the slashing of public funding over decades, particularly in the health sector. There are currently 350,000 public sector workers on casual contracts without job security, including 60,000 health workers. Even as it has cynically hailed nurses as “heroes” in the fight against the pandemic, the government of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has refused to provide funding for permanent job positions or wage increases.

A man wearing a mask walks in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Friday, March 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

The strike took place amid a series of protests and strike actions by workers internationally. In neighboring Spain, thousands of doctors and nurses protested in Madrid on November 29 against plans to slash health funding. In Portugal, a national strike of childcare, primary and secondary educators will take place this Friday. In Greece, hundreds of thousands of workers shut down the country’s public sector on November 26, to protest a law abolishing the eight-hour day.

In France, hundreds of thousands took part in protests across the country a week ago against police violence and to oppose the Macron government’s plans to criminalize the filming of police. And in Germany, there is growing opposition among teachers and students to the policy of keeping schools open to allow the virus to spread.

Under these conditions, the strike in Italy has received virtually no coverage in international media. The state-run France Info radio broadcaster produced a single article on the strike, the only one to appear in French. None of the major English-language or German news outlets produced an article on the strike.

In contrast, when groups of several hundred right-wing protesters held anti-lockdown demonstrations in Germany this year, they received immediate international coverage. In the political and media establishment in Europe there is intense concern at the eruption of working-class opposition to their policies that have permitted the virus to spread by rejecting a prolonged economic lockdown that would impact on corporate profits.

The death toll from the coronavirus in Italy is catastrophic, among the highest per capita in the world. Yesterday alone, 634 people died from the virus. There have been more than 500 deaths from the virus every day since November 20. On December 3, there were 993 deaths, eclipsing the record of 921 deaths set this spring, on March 27, when Italy was one of the first countries in the world to be overwhelmed. With Italy’s population of 60 million, the December 3 death toll would be equivalent to approximately 5,300 deaths in a single day in the United States. In total, more than 60,000 people have died since the beginning of the year.

Italy has the second-highest number of infections in Europe, after France, at 1.77 million cases. The total number of recorded cases stood at half a million on October 24 and has more than tripled in less than two months. Between 10,000 and 20,000 new cases are recorded each day.

This massive death toll was not inevitable. The Conte government was forced to enact lock-down measures in March, after wildcat strikes at auto and other industrial plants in Italy demanded the idling of non-essential production to allow workers to shelter at home. After lock-downs were ended, the Conte government, like its counterparts across Europe, reopened the economy, including non-essential production, bars, restaurants and schools, to ensure that the extraction of corporate profits could resume.

The Conte government has since rejected the re-imposition of a full lock-down demanded by medical professionals. On November 9, the president of the Italian Federation of Medical Guilds called for a complete lock-down to prevent the spread of the virus.

The same day, the head of the infectious disease department at Milan’s Sacco Hospital told RAI news that a lock-down was required, “otherwise the pandemic will end up doing damage that goes beyond the already very sad number of deaths.” Conte replied in an interview with La Stampa on November 11 that such a lock-down “shouldn’t be the first choice” because “the costs are too high.”

Instead, the government has maintained a nationwide curfew from 10pm to 5am. High schools, covering the final two years of secondary education, are closed across the country, but middle school and primary schools have been kept open everywhere except in “red zones,” where the virus is spreading the fastest. Currently, only the central Abruzzo region is marked as “red.” In “orange zones,” bars and restaurants are closed, but commercial and retail stores remain open. Lombardy, Piedmont, Calabria, Bolzano and Tuscany are all among the “orange” zones.

The trade unions have not called the latest strike as an act of opposition against the government and its coronavirus policies. On the contrary, the unions have supported the opening of schools, and opposed any action to demand a lock-down with full wages provided to workers.

It has called a series of one-day actions whose purpose is to let off steam among workers, while doing nothing to oppose the government’s policies. The unions called the latest strike action after a similar token four-hour national stoppage on November 25, which shut down transport, education and health services across the country, including bus services in Rome.

Pupils in Germany resist in-person classes and demand “consistent lockdown”

Gregor Link

As the World Socialist Web Site has reported, a European-wide mass movement for safe education is developing, especially among schoolchildren, in face of the murderous herd immunity policy of governments across the continent. In Bremen, for example, students have been organizing another “hybrid strike” for almost two weeks.

Students arrive at the 'Friedensburg Oberschule' school for the first day at school after the summer vacations during the new coronavirus outbreak in Berlin, Germany, Monday, Aug. 10, 2020. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

Final year students at the Kurt-Schumacher-Allee High School have halved their in-person attendance at classes on their own initiative and without the approval of the education authorities. As the Weser-Kurier reported on Sunday, one-half of the 240 students work on the material at home, while the other half attend classes at the school. A change-over then occurs after two days. “We have the feeling that schools are being kept open at almost all costs,” explained student spokesperson Fabienne Pastoor.

In an interview with the Bremen news website Butenunbinnen, student Leonie Müller reported overwhelming support from the teaching staff. “Most people cooperate and think it’s good. The school management is also on our side.” Principal Christian Sauter described the students’ intervention in the fight for safe education as “great.” According to Leonie, the students were concerned with saving lives. “We don’t just want to protect ourselves, but also other people, for example, our families at home or people we pass by on the street.”

In carrying out the strike against in-person tuition, students, teachers and school management drew from experiences in the early summer, when alternating digital teaching was ordered nationwide and considered by the government to be the first step towards the complete reopening of schools.

However, several months after the end of the summer vacations, the herd immunity policy of the federal and state governments has led to a situation in which the daily number of new infections in Germany is forty times higher and the pandemic is claiming around fifty times as many lives every day. In the meantime, almost 500 people die every day of COVID-19.

The school strike in Bremen is part of the growing wave of student resistance against the herd immunity policy of European governments. In recent months, large student movements for safe education have emerged in Greece, Poland and France, which have expanded to many hundreds of schools and, in several cases, have been crushed through brutal police violence. In Germany, there have been strikes and protests throughout the country in recent weeks, including in Bochum, Düsseldorf, Essen, Mönchengladbach, Bremerhaven, Worms and Kassel.

Last week, more than 300 students took part in a strike in Frankfurt am Main called by the city’s student council. They carried signs saying, “more education—more co-determination—more health.” The Hesse student initiative unverantwortlich.org, which collects and publishes photo statements from students, has also called for a digital protest action for next Friday.

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) and Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) are fighting to establish independent rank-and-file committees to expand and network the protests and prepare a European-wide general strike to close schools and non-essential businesses. Only through a conscious internationalist and socialist perspective that places the lives and health of workers above the capitalist drive for profits can the greatest humanitarian catastrophe on the continent since World War II be ended and mass death stopped.

On Tuesday, representatives of the IYSSE spoke with Meret Göhring, who attends the 13th grade of a high school in Bremen and has been a member of the student council for three years. She spoke about the school strike there, the government’s “profits before life” policy, and the question of political perspective.

“Our class is extremely dissatisfied and frustrated,” she says, “They put us in a quandary and force us to choose between our graduation and the lives of our relatives. But we have been waiting since September for iPads promised to us by the education authority. The more we are approaching our final exams, the more we panic. It is becoming clear that half-solutions no longer work. What we would like to see is a consistent lockdown for two to three weeks until the infection cases are down again. A big step must now be taken.”

According to Meret, the federal and state governments are pursuing interests which are fundamentally different than those of schoolchildren and their families. “It is quite clear what the politicians are motivated by at the moment—and that is not the well-being of the population, but to keep the economy and businesses running. They have set the priorities on profit. That is the crux of the matter, but politics is beating about the bush and justifying things by playing down the pandemic.”

Responding to the massive armament spending of the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) amid the pandemic, Meret added, “When you see the things that money is being put into, at a certain point, you can only feel like a fool as a pupil.” More and more young people were being forced to draw far-reaching political conclusions from this, Meret said.

“I believe that my social environment and my generation are currently becoming highly politicized—because of the experiences we are all going through. We have people in class who have lost their jobs. Others have lost their entire existence, and still others are working in nursing care. It’s quite something for a young generation when you go through such experiences. The idea that privileged people can get through the pandemic without it having any impact on their lives is absolutely incredible for me.”

Meret has been working in a nursing home since September. “In the last few weeks, conditions have deteriorated dramatically,” she says. “When I was at work last week, five of the fourteen residents in my hallway were transferred to the coronavirus ward. If nursing staff become infected at work, they cannot go into quarantine because that would have a direct impact on the operation and therefore on people’s lives. Some of my colleagues therefore simply collapse in the corridors. It is hard to watch how the people are affected and how my colleagues suffer from this and how the care staff shortage, which has been known about for decades, makes the situation even worse.”

The situation in hospitals is dramatic. As broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported on Sunday, there are currently 40 percent more COVID-19 patients in intensive care units than in the spring. Gerald Gass, President of the German Hospital Federation (DKG), told the press: “In individual states like Saxony, the number of intensive care patients is five times as high as in April. Clinics there are reaching their capacity or have already exceeded it.” The “personnel bottlenecks” were particularly devastating, he said, due to the well-known lack of qualified nurses, which is already leading to a further increase in the number of planned operations that have to be postponed. Almost one in five intensive care beds in Germany is now occupied by a COVID-19 patient.

“Hospitals are not equipped for major natural disasters,” Berlin nurse Nina Böhmer said in a viral social media post. “That the intensive care units are full and overloaded” was “nothing new,” Böhmer says. “You can thank the Chancellor and her coalition of CDU/CSU (Christian Democrats) and SPD (Social Democrats) for this development, but also all 16 state governments, in which all the democratic parties are involved.”

That schools carrying out in-person teaching—where 30 children interact in close quarters in each classroom—play a decisive role in the spread of the virus has been repeatedly emphasized by serious epidemiologists and medical experts. Last week, for example, Professor Alexander Kekulé, Director of the Institute for Medical Microbiology at Halle University Hospital, spoke to the press about “serious outbreaks” in secondary schools. Young students, Kekulé continued, were “very strong drivers of the pandemic.”

The arrogant treatment by the ruling class of both the medical facts and the fate of millions of students became clear on Tuesday in an interview conducted by Berlin radio station Radyo Metropol FM with Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU). The Chancellor advised students, who spend hours in overcrowded classrooms with temperatures below zero and the windows open, to “bring something warmer to wear,” clap their hands and regularly do “little knee bending exercises.” Merkel rejected the widespread installation of air filters in classrooms, arguing that this could lead to “simply rolling the air around” instead of refreshing it.

The ruling class of Germany and Europe is fully aware of the catastrophe that their policies have brought about. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently stated in a speech to the European Parliament that COVID-19 was currently “the number one cause of death” in the countries of Europe. According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), by Tuesday, there had been almost 14.2 million cases in Europe, including more than 352,000 deaths.

Australian law rushed through to veto agreements with China

Mike Head

Backed by the Labor Party, the Liberal-National Coalition government passed a bill through parliament on Tuesday to give itself sweeping powers to prohibit any agreement or cancel any existing agreement signed by a state, territory or local government, or a public university, with China.

This unprecedented legislation was rushed through in what media commentators called “breakneck speed”—less than four months after Prime Minister Scott Morrison first announced it. This marks another escalation in the Australian ruling elite’s alignment behind the US confrontation with Beijing, despite China being Australian capitalism’s largest export market.

The passage of the bill came just six months after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly threatened to “simply disconnect” Australia from Washington’s telecommunications, military and intelligence networks if any Australian government made an agreement with China deemed to endanger US “national security.”

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison toasts President Donald Trump at the White House in September, 2019 [Credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon]

In all the coverage of the legislation, no media outlet has recalled Pompeo’s warning, because that would make the connection too explicit in the eyes of the Australian population, where anti-war sentiment is strong. Yet Pompeo was blunt in his May 21 interview on the Murdoch media’s Sky News channel.

Pompeo was asked about a vague memorandum agreed by the Victorian state Labor government in 2018 to negotiate a “co-operation road map” for infrastructure projects under the umbrella of China’s global Belt and Road Initiative. He declared: “Every citizen of Australia should know that every one of those Belt and Road projects needs to be looked at incredibly closely.”

Pompeo reiterated: “We will not take any risks to our telecommunications infrastructure, any risk to the national security elements of what we need to do with our Five Eyes partners.” This was a reference to the top-level US-led global surveillance network that includes the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

Pompeo’s bullying was a pointed reminder that the Australian ruling class remains heavily dependent on the US for military and intelligence protection, as well as for foreign investment. That is the real source of “foreign interference” in Australia.

Like the 2018 “foreign interference” laws, the Trump administration regards the Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Act as a vital test of Canberra’s commitment to the US-led conflict with China and as a model for similar measures internationally. Any incoming Biden administration would only further ramp up the drive, begun under Obama, to reassert US hegemony over the Asia-Pacific against China’s rising economic influence.

China is not named in the new Act, yet the focus is obvious. Throughout the political establishment and the corporate media the first target has been identified: The Victorian Belt and Road “memorandum of understanding” (MoU).

This MoU is not the only target, however. Government members of parliament have accused universities of developing dubious links with Chinese universities, institutions and companies, including the opening of Confucius Institutes.

A 99-year lease of the civilian port in the strategic northern city of Darwin, granted to a Chinese company by the Northern Territory government in 2013, is also in the firing line. In 2015, US President Barack Obama personally reproached then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for not consulting with Washington about the lease.

Under the new legislation, sister-city relationships, tourism and trade cooperation, as well as science and education deals, will all be subject to onerous registration and review procedures, but not those by corporations or private universities.

While protecting business deals, this process will create a witch hunting, anti-China atmosphere. At the same time, all arrangements with US institutions, such as the University of Sydney’s US Studies Centre, will escape scrutiny.

The new law will formally give the foreign minister, currently Marise Payne, an arbitrary discretion to veto a “negotiation or arrangement” that is “likely to adversely affect Australia’s foreign relations” or “likely to be inconsistent with Australia’s foreign policy.” No reasons have to be given for such bans and they will be shielded from review by the courts.

Payne has wasted no time implementing the bill, with the Australian reporting yesterday that she “will move within weeks to assess if major state government and university deals with overseas powers including China should be cancelled.”

The newspaper said the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) would begin to assess foreign agreements well before the three-month and six-month deadlines that state governments and universities respectively have to register their deals with DFAT.

During Tuesday’s perfunctory Senate debate, the Labor Party’s shadow foreign affairs minister Penny Wong complained that the government was rushing the bill and blocking all Labor’s amendments, which she said were seeking to improve it. She nervously urged the government to use its new powers “wisely, “calmly” and “strategically.”

Whatever anxiety exists about the fallout from the intensifying belligerence toward China, there was never any doubt that Labor would back the bill. Opposition leader Anthony Albanese declared his party was “very supportive of” the legislation as soon as Morrison announced it in August. Labor is no less bound to the US military alliance than the Coalition and played a key role in launching the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” against China.

The bill’s passage was accompanied by a further rash of government and media allegations against China. Backed by Labor and the media, Morrison denounced China and demanded an official apology after a mid-ranking Chinese official made a social media post condemning Australia’s war crimes in Afghanistan.

Without providing any evidence, Trade Minister Simon Birmingham then accused Beijing of undermining the “letter and spirit” of the China-Australia free-trade agreement and its obligations under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules because of recent Chinese restrictions on some Australian exports, usually on health or anti-dumping grounds.

Birmingham escalated the conflict by saying the government had raised China’s treatment of Australian barley, wine, meat, lobsters, logs, coal and cotton at a November 25 WTO meeting, and was now “considering all dispute settlement options.”

In recent weeks, Chinese authorities have apparently stalled Australian imports worth an estimated $6 billion a year. Most recently, timber imports have been banned because of detected “live forest pests” and two lamb and sheep meat exporters had their licenses to export to China suspended after they reported COVID-19 outbreaks.

Ironically, there is speculation that in some instances, Australian exporters are suffering as a by-product of the trade war launched by the US against China. In January, as a result, China committed to increase its purchases of US agricultural goods by more than $14 billion to almost $50 billion in 2020.

Australian-based businesses this year have still exported more goods to China than in any year except 2019, led by iron ore and LNG. Official figures released by China on Monday revealed Australia’s exports to China in the first 11 months of the year were $142 billion ($US105.3 billion), down 4 percent on the corresponding period last year.

Anxious to protect these revenues, some corporate leaders have voiced concerns about the deteriorating relations with China. Australia China Business Council national president David Olsson told the Australian Financial Review that the government should appoint a special envoy to visit China to try to repair the relationship.

Nonetheless, efforts to maintain profitable relations with China are increasingly under fire from Washington. Irrespective of whether Trump or Biden is president, the next US administration will take to a new threatening level the Obama administration’s military and strategic “pivot to Asia” to prevent China from undermining the regional and global hegemony established by the US in World War II, and heightening the danger of a disastrous war.

Germany’s Christian Democrats close ranks with the far-right Alternative for Germany

Peter Schwarz

Nine months before the next federal election, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is cozying up to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). This is the issue at the heart of the government crisis in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

Merkel at the Chancellor's Office on Monday evening (AP photo/Markus Schreiber, pool).

The crisis is not limited to a few right-wing troublemakers in a relatively insignificant CDU state association, which represents only three percent of delegates at CDU federal conferences. Rather, the leadership of the federal party has indicated its readiness as well to openly cooperate with the AfD.

Neither the current CDU party chairperson Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, nor Secretary General Paul Ziemiak have criticised the CDU parliamentary faction in Saxony-Anhalt, which insists on its right to ally itself with the AfD against the state coalition government of which the CDU is a part. Friedrich Merz, one of the three candidates for the post of CDU party chairman and chancellor candidate, has gone so far as to publicly back the state CDU.

The SPD and the Greens also share direct responsibility for the rehabilitation of the AfD, which is hated by broad sections of the population and has been weakened by internal conflicts in recent months. After the 2016 state elections, the SPD and Greens formed a so-called Kenya coalition with the CDU (based on the party colours of all 3 parties) and presented it as a “bulwark against the right,” i.e. against the AfD, which emerged from the state election in second place with 24.3 percent of the vote.

Now it is clear that far from being a “bulwark against the right” the Kenya coalition is just the opposite; it is in fact a bulwark for the right. The coalition has shielded the AfD from criticism from the left and de facto implemented its political program: arming the police, deporting refugees and decimating social gains in a state that is top of the list in Germany in terms of poverty and unemployment. Now those in the CDU who sympathise with the AfD, and who never made a secret of their standpoint, feel strong enough to take the offensive.

The crisis in Saxony-Anhalt was ignited by a minor issue, the increase of the monthly broadcasting fee by 86 cents to 18.36 euros. The increase is part of the federal media treaty, which requires that all German states agree to the increase in order for it to come into force at the beginning of January.

The CDU faction in the Magdeburg state parliament insisted on rejecting the increase, which other federal states—including those governed by the CDU—had already agreed to. The Saxony-Anhalt CDU justified its rejection of the increase by citing a clause in the coalition agreement that advocated the “stability of contributions.” But this was an obvious pretext, since similar formulations can be found in the coalition agreements of other states, which approved the media treaty on the grounds that this was the first fee increase since 2009 and therefore merely an adjustment for inflation.

The Magdeburg CDU faction was well aware it could only prevent the increase with the support of the AfD, which also rejects the increase, while the SPD and the Greens support it. The increase in the broadcasting fee was therefore clearly a pretext to justify cooperation with the AfD.

The premier of Saxony-Anhalt Reiner Haseloff (CDU) tried to maintain the coalition with various manoeuvres and delaying tactics. Finally, last Friday, Holger Stahlknecht, the state Interior Minister and CDU chairman, made a stand against Haseloff. In an interview with the Magdeburger Volksstimme, Stahlknecht declared that the party’s rejection of the fee was “not negotiable”: “The CDU will not give up its position. The CDU state executive agreed this unanimously on Monday evening. The party stands by the faction without any ifs and buts. We are lining up together.”

In the interview, Stahlknecht also made clear that he was not concerned about the financial burden of the broadcasting fee, which is levied on every household and is especially hard for low-income earners. Instead, he attacked the orientation of the public media, which he accused of “moralising on behalf of an intellectual minority” and of too much political correctness. As Interior Minister during the refugee crisis, he had seen citizens expressing concern “whether integration would succeed,” and “who were then brandmarked as right-wing.” In fact, this is the type of language associated with the AfD.

Asked by the Magdeburger Volkstimme what would happen if the coalition collapsed next week, Stahlknecht insisted: “Once again, we are sticking to our position. The ball is now in the court of the SPD and Greens.” Should they leave the government, Stahlknecht said, “this would result in a CDU minority government.” Such a minority government would rely on the AfD not only regarding the broadcasting fee, but also on other issues. The AfD immediately declared its willingness to cooperate.

Prime Minister Haseloff reacted to the interview by dismissing Stahlknecht, who has been head of the Interior Ministry since 2011. Stahlknecht then announced his resignation as state party chairman on Tuesday.

For some considerable time, there was no reaction from the CDU headquarters in Berlin. Eventually both CDU party chairwoman Kramp-Karrenbauer and secretary general Ziemiak reacted by placing responsibility on the SPD and the Greens, which now had to “be aware of their political responsibility in the state.” The candidate for party chair, Merz openly expressed his solidarity with Stahlknecht, declaring that the planned increase in contributions could be viewed critically, and that it was “completely unimportant what the AfD thought about the matter.”

Stahlknecht’s resignation did not resolve the crisis. Both the parliamentary group and the state party continue to reject the fee increase and Stahlknecht enjoys considerable sympathy within the party. His interview remains on the social media channel of the state CDU, and on Facebook he was hailed by hundreds of supporters as a “straightforward” and “steadfast” “politician with backbone.”

Unable to change the position of his own party, Prime Minister Haseloff finally decided to cancel the vote on the fee increase in the state parliament, meaning that the federal media treaty, which requires unanimity of all the states, will not come into force in January. While the CDU and the AfD have not formally joined forces to vote it down, the AfD got what it wanted.

The orientation of the Saxony-Anhalt CDU towards the AfD is not new. Members of the party’s parliamentary faction have repeatedly spoken out publicly in favour of cooperation with the right-wing extremist party, which in Saxony-Anhalt is led by representatives of the neo-Nazi “Wing.”

In the summer of 2019, deputy CDU faction leaders Ulrich Thomas and Lars-Jörn Zimmer wrote a “memorandum” calling for a coalition with the AfD. Voters for the CDU and AfD pursued similar goals, the memo argued and then lamented in the typical manner of the AfD “uncontrolled migration” and an “increase in brutal criminality.” It then continued: “It must be possible again to reconcile the social with the national”—an unmistakable allusion to National Socialism, as Hitler’s party was officially called.

At the beginning of this year, the CDU nominated Robert Möritz, a well-known neo-Nazi, who has never concealed his views and who was also on the board of the CDU district association of Anhalt-Bitterfeld, as candidate in a local election. When his far-right past came to light, he was defended not only by Sven Schulze, secretary general of the state CDU, but also by Interior Minister Stahlknecht.

Stahlknecht has repeatedly attracted attention with his right-wing inclinations. One year ago, he wanted to appoint the chairman of the police union Rainer Wendt as state secretary. Wendt is a key figure for the extreme right. As Minister of the Interior, Stahlknecht was also responsible for the fact that the synagogue in Halle was completely unprotected when the neo-fascist terrorist Stephan Balliet attempted to storm the building on the holiday of Yom Kippur 2019. Only a strong wooden door prevented a massacre. Stahlknecht later complained to police officers that they could not be deployed elsewhere because of the need to protect Jewish facilities—a comment which Jewish organisations protested vehemently.

This has not prevented the SPD from working closely with the CDU and Stahlknecht for nine and a half years—and the Greens for four and a half—while claiming in public that their coalition represented a “bulwark against the right.” The Left Party would no doubt also have joined the coalition if asked.

The events in Magdeburg show that the election of FDP politician Thomas Kemmerich as Thuringian premier with the votes of the AfD, CDU and the neo-liberal Free Democratic Party in February this year was no accident. When Kemmerich was finally forced to resign following a storm of public outrage and Bodo Ramelow from the Left Party returned to the post of premier, he too reached out his hand to the AfD by using his vote to enable the party to fill the position of vice-president of the state parliament.

The rise of the AfD, which has met with massive popular opposition, is largely due to the support it has received from other parties. The continuation of the federal grand coalition after the 2017 election served above all to elevate the AfD to the country’s main opposition party. Since then, although its fascist character is becoming increasingly obvious, the AfD has been feted by the other established parties and entrusted with the leadership of important committees. At the same time, the ultra-right terrorist networks which operate in and around the AfD and reach deep inside the country’s security forces, can rely on support from the judiciary and secret services.

The right-wing extremists are needed to enforce policies of social reaction, rearmament and militarism to suppress growing working class resistance. When it comes to refugee policy and rearmament at home and abroad, the German government has long since adopted the AfD’s program. Thousands have died from COVID-19 due to the federal and state governments’ refusal to impose a lockdown. The profits of the big corporations are regarded by them to be more important than the lives and health of the population. This policy can ultimately only be implemented by force.

Anti-Chinese campaign casts doubt over vaccinations as second COVID-19 wave batters Brazil

Miguel Andrade

Brazil is seeing a rapid surge in COVID-19 infections and deaths following the complete abandonment by federal and local governments of any restraint on economic activity. Even with summer approaching, the back-to-work drive has brought the average daily death toll to 600, a two-month high. Daily new infections stand at 40,000, and six Brazilian states are close to a health care system collapse, with more than 80 percent of COVID-19-dedicated ICUs occupied, and hospital beds filled with patients being treated for diseases that had been neglected and aggravated during eight months of the pandemic.

Bolsonaro's March 18 press conference with his ministers. (Credit: Planalto)

At the same time, plans for mass vaccinations over the next year are being systematically undermined by the conflict that is gripping the Brazilian ruling class and drawing lines between the government of fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro and the Congressional opposition led by the Workers Party (PT) over Brazil’s attitude towards the US-led imperialist offensive against China.

Since his presidential campaign in 2018, Bolsonaro has sought to exploit the impact of Chinese industrial imports and investments in Brazil to make a nationalist appeal epitomized by the slogan “China is not buying from Brazil, it is buying Brazil.” This chauvinist campaign has served as a cover for his plans to shift Brazilian foreign policy towards a total alignment with Washington.

At the beginning of 2020, with barely a year in office, Bolsonaro solidarized himself with the reactionary anti-Chinese campaign of US President Donald Trump, who blamed the Chinese government for the pandemic and promoted fraudulent claims originating in far-right circles that the pandemic was part of a deliberate Chinese plan to undermine the US.

Bolsonaro is now working to impede the use by federal and local authorities of the Chinese-developed CoronaVac vaccine which has just ended phase-three clinical trials conducted in Brazil by one of the country’s leading vaccine research facilities, the São Paulo-based Butantan Institute. The Butantan Institute is part of the São Paulo state Health Department and is one of the two main infectious diseases centers in the country, together with the federal Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), based in Rio de Janeiro. The institute produces 75 percent of the vaccines used by the Health Ministry in annual vaccination campaigns.

As Brazil emerged as an epicenter of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, Butantan partnered with the Beijing-based Sinovac Life Science biotechnology company to conduct clinical trials in Brazil and secure the rights and an initial capacity to produce 100 million doses of the CoronaVac vaccine a year.

Phase-two trials of the vaccine in Brazil have produced promising results, with 97 percent of participants developing antibodies. Emergency use of the vaccine for health care and other essential workers has already been carried out in China, with hundreds of thousands vaccinated. Chile, Turkey and Indonesia are also conducting trials of the vaccine.

The CoronaVac vaccine has also already proved to be safe, although those results are hardly surprising, given the traditional approach taken by Sinovac. CoronaVac uses a physically degraded—or “inactivated”—form of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the same approach used worldwide for influenza vaccines and, most famously, for the landmark Salk vaccine for polio.

This approach contrasts with the recent messenger RNA vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer, and is also usually less effective, demanding a wider coverage of the population to guarantee a halt in the spread of the virus. Typical influenza vaccines using the same technique are usually around 60 percent effective. At the same time, however, this type of vaccine has the advantage of requiring only normal refrigeration, as opposed to the expensive super cooling demanded by the new messenger RNA vaccines.

CoronaVac has nonetheless been vilified by Bolsonaro, solely because of its Chinese origin, with the president casting a shadow over the whole scientific community in China, as well as those involved in the Brazilian trials.

On October 21, after his Health Minister, Gen. Eduardo Pazuello, told the 27 Brazilian governors that the ministry would prepare the National Health System to use the CoronaVac vaccine, Bolsonaro told the media that his government “would buy no Chinese vaccine.” In his characteristically ignorant fashion, he stated that he didn’t “believe a Chinese vaccine inspires trust, due to its origin.” He added that “China is already discredited within the population because, as many said, the virus came from there.” On the same day, he wrote on Facebook in capital letters that Brazilians “wouldn’t be anybody’s guinea pigs,” and that the lack of “scientific evidence” would be an obstacle to investing in the vaccine.

Reservations about “scientific evidence” are ludicrous coming from Bolsonaro, who has defended every quack cure for the COVID-19 pandemic put forward by the most backward forces—most prominently hydroxychloroquine—while denying the need for basic preventive measures such as the use of masks and social distancing. The attitude toward the CoronaVac vaccine also contrasts with federal funding for the vaccine being developed by the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca together with Oxford University scientists, which was tested in Brazil and is to be produced by Rio de Janeiro’s Fiocruz at a rate of 160 million doses a year, initially.

Complete clinical data on the AstraZeneca vaccine was published just yesterday in the authoritative Lancet medical journal. It is the first time any of the authorities and companies responsible for the development of the most advanced vaccines internationally—including Pfizer, Moderna, Sinovac and the Gamaleya Institute in Russia, producing the Sputnik V—have done so. AstraZeneca’s effort has been questioned, however, over apparent mishandling of the tests, most significantly its obtaining higher efficacy with a smaller dose, and the lack of elderly patients in its trials.

Amid its anti-Chinese campaign, Bolsonaro reacted with joy on November 10 over the death of one of the participants in the CoronaVac trials four days earlier, which led the federal drug and health agency, Anvisa, to suddenly order a halt to the Butantan trials.

It was immediately revealed that the death was a suicide. The Butantan Institute went public claiming it had informed Anvisa four days earlier that the death had nothing to do with the vaccine. Responding with a claim that it had problems with its computers and had not seen Butantan’s report, Anvisa allowed the tests to be resumed. While the real reason for Anvisa’s halting the trials is still unclear, and its explanation is still viewed with skepticism in Brazil, it gave Bolsonaro another opportunity to rail against the “Chinese vaccine” and go on social media to declare, without any substantiation: “death, disability, anomaly. That is the vaccine [São Paulo Governor João] Doria wants all of São Paulo’s population to take. The president has always said vaccination shouldn’t be mandatory. One more win for Jair.”

This declaration, and Anvisa’s unexplained move to halt the trials, has raised concerns that Bolsonaro will interfere in the agency’s evaluation of CoronaVac. On Monday, São Paulo’s Governor Doria announced that his administration intends to start vaccinations with CoronaVac on January 25 of health care workers, the elderly and the indigenous population—a total of 9 million out of the state’s 44 million inhabitants.

On Tuesday, the Health Minister announced at a hastily convened meeting with Brazil’s governors that the government would buy Pfizer vaccines and had already secured 300 million doses guaranteed from various sources for 2021, without presenting any coherent vaccination timetable.

A state-based vaccination campaign is unprecedented in Brazil, and many Bolsonaro-allied governors left the meeting accusing Doria, Bolsonaro’s former key political ally and now national political rival, of opportunism for attempting to bypass the Health Ministry and negotiate with governors and even mayors in promoting CoronaVac. Flávio Dino, the Communist party governor of the state of Maranhão, has already petitioned the Supreme Court to allow the importing of vaccines without Anvisa’s approval, based on emergency legislation passed by Congress in March allowing the emergency use in Brazil of drugs approved by any of Anvisa’s counterparts in China, the European Union, the United Kingdom or the United States.

Far from solving the crisis, if successful, Dino’s petition will only aggravate the desperate search for a vaccine in Brazil, with governors already warning of the chaotic potential of a state-based vaccination campaign provoking a run on states where vaccinations are taking place.

Health experts are also warning that the country is not prepared to vaccinate the whole population in the next year due to the lack of protective equipment for the 110,000 workers manning the 38,000 vaccination stations of the National Health System, and even of syringes, not to mention super-cooled freezers, along with potential additional shortages caused by massive vaccinations next year.

Thai protest leaders charged under draconian lèse majesté law

Robert Campion

Charges were brought against 15 pro-democracy activists on Tuesday for challenging the Thai monarchy in recent mass protests. The conflict between the largely student-based demonstrations, which have involved tens of thousands in Bangkok, and the military junta has reached an impasse in recent weeks and there are signs that the government is preparing a crackdown.

Ex-general Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha gave the go-ahead to police last month to resume enforcement of the draconian lèse-majesté law, which has not been used for over two years. Section 112 of the Thai Criminal Code deems it an offence to defame or threaten the King—currently Maha Vajiralongkorn—or his close family and carries prison terms of up to 15 years.

Students raise three-fingers, symbol of resistance salute, during an August rally in Bangkok, Thailand [Credit: AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit]

“It will be necessary for the government and the concerned security agencies to enhance our measures by enforcing all the pertaining laws against protesters who violate the law or infringe on the rights and freedoms of other citizens.” Prayut declared.

Four protest leaders reported to a police station of their own accord in Northaburi, north of Bangkok, where around 100 supporters gathered, chanted “cancel 112” and protested the summons to reporters.

Parit “Penguin” Chiwarak, a student activist, stated that, “if the institution shows signs that they will listen to the people, it will show to the public that they are open-minded. But if the institution responds by using article 112 to silence the people, it will show the public and the international community that the institution is afraid of truth.”

Indicating that the protest movement was showing no signs of slowing, Panusaya “Rung” Sithijirawattanakul told the press: “I have to say this will not affect our movement. We will continue our activities in order to achieve the three demands we make.”

Alongside them were Panupong “Mike Rayong” Jadnok, also charged with lèse-majesté, and Shinawat Chankrajang who was only charged with violating the emergency decree. The government’s state of emergency has been used to break up student demonstrations supposedly in the interest of public health and combating COVID-19.

All four protest leaders were permitted to leave after being charged. Another eleven participants in the pro-democracy movement were charged for defaming the monarchy in different locations.

These included Jatupat Boonpattarasaksa and Somyot Pruksakasemsuk. Both have already spent time in prison in the past for breaking the lèse-majesté law. Jatupat spent 2.5 years for the crime of sharing a BBC article about Thailand’s king on Facebook. Somyot, who is editor in chief of a magazine, served 7 years beginning in 2011 for articles deemed insulting to monarchy.

In a Facebook post Monday, 55-year-old Somyot stated that the lèse-majesté law should not be used as a weapon against the new generation.

Arnon Nampa, one of the defendants and a human rights lawyer, stated in a Facebook post: “We’re heading toward more conflict. The Thai establishment has used lèse-majesté law as its weapons.”

The resumption of section 112, which has been used 90 times since the 2014 coup, indicates the sensitivity of the Thai ruling class to any challenge to the monarchy, the linchpin of the bourgeois state apparatus. Since 1932 and the ending of absolute monarchy, twelve coups have ensued in Thailand each time with the blessing of the king to cement a new dictatorship.

The latest military-backed government has systematically undermined rights to assembly and free speech, limited access to information critical of the government, and operates with unlimited powers granted to the cabinet.

Thailand’s student protests have been ongoing for months, fuelled by levels of extreme inequality exacerbated by the government’s response to the pandemic. The three main demands—the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut, constitutional reforms and greater constitutional oversight on the monarchy—have not in any way been met.

Prayuth, who ousted the democratically-elected government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in a military coup six years ago, has adamantly refused to step down and has defeated all constitutional reform using the appointive senate.

The conflict in Thailand is being watched closely by its long-term treaty ally, the US. Last week, a draft resolution was put forward by the Democratic Party to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressing full support to the anti-government protests.

The draft resolution, urging the Thai government “to protect and uphold democracy,” was promoted by nine US senators including Thai American war veteran Tammy Duckworth, who is slated as a possible defense secretary under a Biden administration.

US Senator Bob Menendez, a ranking member of the committee, led a group of seven senate colleagues in endorsing the bill last Thursday.

“Thailand’s reformers are not seeking a revolution,” Menendez stated approvingly. “They are simply yearning for democratic changes to their country’s political system, for freedom of speech and assembly, and for Thailand to be a part of the community of democratic nations.”

The moves by the Democratic Party are not guided by concerns for democracy, but are driven by the interests of US imperialism. A Biden administration would intensify the US economic and strategic confrontation with China throughout the Indo-Pacific that began under the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” and escalated by Trump.

Like other governments in the region, the Prayuth regime has attempted to balance between longstanding strategic and military ties with Washington and its economic relations with China. The Thai military itself has been increasingly dependent on arms and training from China, including the purchase of large items such as submarines.

The rather cautious bill promoted by Democrat senators indicates that a Biden administration could use the issue of “human rights” in Thailand to pressure its government to realign its foreign policy more closely to Washington.

The anti-government protests are ongoing. According to a Twitter post by the United Front of Thammasat and Demonstration, a protest will take place today in Bangkok in opposition to the lèse-majesté law.

Canadian authorities covering up workplace COVID-19 outbreaks to justify keeping economy and schools open

Janet Browning

Canada’s Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland claimed in her fiscal update speech last week that the ruling class has learned how to “keep most of our economy … operating safely, even while the virus is still circulating in our communities.”

This is a lie. COVID-19 is running rampant in workplaces and schools. The ruling elite and their political hirelings are concealing this fact because they are adamant that nothing be allowed to get in the way of raking in profits amid a raging pandemic.

A member of the Canadian Armed Forces working at a Quebec nursing home. (Canadian Dept. of Defence)

The reckless back-to-work campaign spearheaded by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government and provincial governments of all political stripes, and supported by the corporatist trade unions, has led to a surge in workplace COVID-19 infections and deaths, especially among low income, highly-exploited industrial and logistics workers.

Those working in manual labour jobs without the option of working from home are catching COVID-19 while at work at alarming rates. In Quebec, workplaces now account for 40 percent of all infections, and these figures, which come from the government’s Institut national de santé publique, do not include infections at schools, hospitals and long-term care facilities.

In mid-October, the provincial government agency in charge of occupational health and safety ordered a COVID-19 “inspection blitz,” but the public health institute’s data show that this has utterly failed to arrest the growth in workplace infections. For 11 consecutive weeks, ending only last week when there was a small decline, the number of workplace outbreaks rose to a new high.

Ontario’s Peel Region, which neighbours Metro Toronto and includes the largely working-class cities of Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon, is one of Canada’s largest warehouse and distribution hubs. Businesses in the region employ many immigrants and members of multigenerational households. Peel Region has the highest cumulative rate of COVID-19 cases in Ontario, at a staggering 1,200 cases per 100,000 people. As of December 1, there had been 116 total workplace outbreaks, more than the number that have occurred in long-term care homes and schools combined.

Peel Region’s Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Lawrence Loh, acknowledged that the surge in workplace infections is linked to the fact that many workers are so poorly paid they have no choice but to go to work, even when they display COVID-19 symptoms. “In protecting workers, we know that the absence of worker protections and paid sick leave does result in outbreaks because, people will show up because they’re choosing between their livelihood and their lives,” he remarked.

According to data analysis of the first week of November by the Toronto-based non-profit ICES, the northeast corner of Brampton had a 19 percent COVID-19 test positivity rate, a rate double that in the United States. Peel as a whole is recording a 9.8 percent test positivity rate, the highest in the Greater Toronto Area, while northwestern Toronto, Scarborough, and the southern York Region are also reporting sky-high rates.

Underscoring that the surge in on-the-job infections is the direct product of the provincial government’s criminal drive to reopen the economy at all costs, more than 25 percent of all cases linked to workplace outbreaks in Peel have been reported in the past two months. Manufacturing and industrial facilities account for 34 percent of workplace outbreaks, while retail and food processing make up 14 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

The workplace outbreaks have led to rapid household and community spread. In September, the region experienced its largest workplace outbreak, when 61 workers tested positive at a business in Mississauga. Despite the major threat posed to the community, public health officials refused to identify the employer or explain how the virus spread. The outbreak led to at least 49 additional infections among family members and close contacts.

Information released by Peel Public Health points to the utter contempt shown towards workers by employers and governments, many of whom have done little to nothing to implement even the most basic workplace protections and safeguards. The agency noted that a lack of physical distancing in lunch rooms and other common areas, improper mask use, carpooling with other employees and the failure to conduct on-site screening to prevent symptomatic workers from entering a facility are the leading causes of infection in workplaces.

Even Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, a former leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, felt compelled to comment on the disgraceful treatment of workers. “If there’s even a single case in a school or in a long-term care facility, they tell the public,” Brown said. “But in Mississauga we had a factory with more than 60 cases and we still didn’t release the name because of Public Health Ontario guidelines.”

Brown added, “We’re seeing transmission in industrial settings and essential workplaces, and there were a number of outbreaks in food processing and transportation and logistics. … While many people are sitting in the comfort of their homes and going to grocery stores, it’s an Amazon worker, a trucker in Brampton, or someone in a food processing plant that made sure they had their food.”

Brown has remained a lone voice in the wilderness within the political establishment. Federal and provincial agencies, as his comments highlight, are intentionally downplaying and outright suppressing news of workplace outbreaks, leaving the public in the dark about where the virus is spreading.

An Ontario Health Coalition report on outbreaks in non-health care workplaces released on October 20 documented a 68 percent increase in workplace outbreaks across the province during the previous three weeks. “This increase is disconcerting as we have yet to see any kind of coherent plan or regulations from the Ford Government and the few directives and regulations released have been arbitrary, lacking in detailed instructions for workplace safety procedures and implemented in an ad hoc manner,” wrote the authors. “Workplace outbreaks are poorly reported and are not broken down by industry in a way that is transparent. Since the approach to managing the pandemic is to keep everything possible open, rather than shutting down, it is more vital than ever that the public understands where and how COVID-19 is spreading. Currently this is not happening. Shielding business names with outbreaks is not serving the public interest.”

Workers infected on the job who have sought redress by filing compensation claims with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) are routinely seeing their claims denied. A Canadian Press report in mid-November noted that Ontario’s WSIB has tossed out over 1,400 workers’ claims related to COVID-19, including hundreds from health care workers and other frontline occupations.

Similarly, the Ontario Ministry of Labour has issued only 37 COVID-19-related stop work orders, which are used when there is an immediate risk of worker injury. The reluctance to issue such orders is undoubtedly because it requires the business to halt operations until the risk is addressed.

The criminal indifference of the capitalist politicians and their state institutions for the lives of workers and their families is shared by the union bureaucrats. The unions bear responsibility for the dangerous conditions in workplaces across Canada, because they have collaborated with the Trudeau Liberals and provincial governments to reopen the economy and schools. As early as April, union bureaucrats held closed-door meetings with government officials and business lobby groups, following which they described getting everyone back to work quickly as “a challenge that we must meet.”

Whenever worker opposition to this homicidal course breaks out, the unions intervene to suppress it and divert demands for prioritizing worker safety into the straitjacket of the provincial labour relations system—the same system that is dismissing workers’ compensation claims and refusing to hold employers accountable for putting workers’ lives at risk. Two of the most egregious examples of this were the unions’ bitter hostility to job action by Alberta meat packing workers at Cargill’s High River plant following a massive outbreak that ultimately killed four people, and by teachers across Canada opposed to the reckless reopening of schools.

To stop the ruling elite’s criminal policy of mass infections and death, workers must take the defence of workplace safety and their very lives into their own hands. What is necessary is the shutdown of schools and all nonessential production with full compensation for all workers affected until the pandemic is brought under control, and the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars in health care and social services to ensure everyone receives the care and support they require. The resources exist for such a program, but they must be expropriated from the financial oligarchy, which has enriched itself massively over recent months at the expense of the working class. To conduct this struggle, workers must establish rank-and-file safety committees independent of the corporatist unions in every workplace, and take up a political fight against the capitalist profit system with the aim of placing human needs ahead of private profit.