The right to breathe: COVID-19 and the scarcity of medicinal oxygen for the developing world

Benjamin Mateus

The singularly most important treatment for patients with severe COVID-19 is medicinal oxygen. However, this life-saving treatment is not ubiquitous as it has tragically been shown. Recent reports that oxygen supplies were exhausted in Manaus, Brazil, and Egypt, while patients suffocated in their pulmonary fluid, shocked the world that a lack of oxygen so plentiful in the world could be in short supply.

Patients with severe or critical COVID-19 cannot get enough oxygen into their bloodstream by simply breathing in room air. They need a higher concentration of oxygen and support to get it into their lungs to survive. But these particular types of equipment and supplies are lacking in much of the developed world. The oxygen demand is so high in COVID-19 patients that even the United States, the wealthiest nation on the planet, took stock of the oxygen crisis that put Los Angeles hospitals in extremis in the first week of January when hospitals were overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases.

The first month of the new year was horrifically brutal. There were 18.75 million new cases of COVID-19 and over 400,000 further deaths worldwide. The most recent global tally stands at 103.3 million cases of COVID-19 and 2.23 million deaths.

Ventilator tubes attached to a COVID-19 patient at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in the Mission Hills section of Los Angeles, Nov. 19, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong]

While the ruling classes are impatiently demanding a return to economic normalcy, the more level-headed and impartial scientists are raising concerns that the variants’ spread will reignite a spring surge with grim consequences. Many low-income countries experiencing the pandemic first-hand for the first time lack the resources to make oxygen, let alone access to the global supply chains.

On Friday, Dr. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, a member of Biden’s coronavirus task force, spoke at a press conference with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. “Now we’re down to 150,000 cases, which surely feels better than 300,000 cases,” he said. “But this is our new baseline. And this is what we’ll jump off on with the next challenge. And these new variants, we’re seeing these mutated viruses are much more infectious and do actually produce much more serious illness. And I anticipate over the next six to 14 weeks, the darkest days of the pandemic are going to occur.”

During the initial onslaught, many patients with low blood oxygen levels were immediately placed on ventilators, leading to difficulties weaning them off the breathing device and extensive lung injury from the high pressures that had to be used. The move to delivering oxygen through helmets, masks and nasal tubes shifted the survival curves. Patients found to be stable are now being sent home from hospitals with portable oxygen canisters and asked to monitor their symptoms and oxygen levels with affordable pulse-oximeters.

The rate of hospitalized COVID-19 patients on ventilators has declined from a high of 18.6 percent in March to 1.5 percent in September. Additionally, the use of blood thinners and steroids have contributed significantly to survival. But, as witnessed over the winter surge, the health system’s lack of capacity, despite these measures, increased the fatality rate. In countries with direly limited health resources, a rapid rise in cases can be catastrophic.

Back in June 2020, the director-general of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had raised the alarm: “Many countries are now experiencing difficulties obtaining oxygen concentrators. Demand is currently outstripping supply.” Medicinal oxygen is made using oxygen concentrators, which extract and purify oxygen from the air. When the number of cases rose by 1 million a week, the demand for medicinal oxygen had climbed to 88,000 large cylinders per day (620,000 cubic meters of oxygen). Just a few companies own close to 80 percent of the market. Little headway has been made in the intervening months.

A report published last week in the Wall Street Journal notes, “As COVID-19 cases increase sharply in much of the world, a scarcity of oxygen is forcing hospitals to ration it for patients and is driving up the coronavirus pandemic’s death toll. The problem is especially acute in the developing world.”

In Europe and North America’s wealthy countries, liquid oxygen is brought in tankers and piped into the hospital’s internal oxygen system directly to patient beds. In June, when Spain was facing a catastrophic death toll, engineers were able to lay seven kilometers of piping delivering oxygen to 1,500 beds in a make-shift hospital. For much of the rest of the world, however, the right to breathe is tied to economic status. Oxygen remains expensive and difficult to obtain.

It has been estimated that approximately 20 percent of people infected with COVID-19 suffer from some level of respiratory distress necessitating oxygen therapy. And without that therapy, the situation can turn fatal. A Lancet Global Health report published last summer found that across health care systems in sub-Saharan countries, only 43.4 percent had both continuous power and oxygen available. More than 70 percent would experience more than two hours of power outage per week. As the report notes, critical patients on oxygen concentrators rely on an uninterrupted oxygen supply.

The South African variant of the virus has begun to drive infections in neighboring countries. John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Wall Street Journal, “[T]he second wave is here with a vengeance, and our systems are overwhelmed.” A concerning statistic recently reported was that the death rate across Africa due to COVID-19 had surpassed the global average. Many countries like Senegal and Zambia have seen recent daily cases double those experienced in their first wave. Yet, these nations have still not received the life-saving vaccines.

In Lagos, Nigeria, the number of people infected requiring oxygen surged fivefold by mid-January, increasing from 70 to 350 six-liter cylinders per day. Bloomberg reported that on January 17 there had been over 41,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19. A total of 227 patients had been admitted to treatment centers, and more than 9,000 were receiving care at home. President Muhammadu Buhari has approved $17 million in US dollars as emergency funding to construct 38 oxygen plants. According to Africa News, the oxygen demand has now doubled.

Though much has been said about Africa having dodged the bullet with the pandemic’s first wave, the evidence is mounting that the opposite is true. In countries like Zambia, testing of bodies at the main morgue in Lusaka found that 19 percent of the recently deceased over the summer had tested positive for the coronavirus, with a peak of 31 percent in July.

Tanzania’s John Magufuli declared god had eliminated COVID-19 from his country. With a country of 60 million, it had stopped updating its COVID-19 infection cases in April when the number had reached 509. Health care workers who have attempted to speak to the issue have been fired from their positions.

In mid-January, Zimbabwe, a country with just over 14 million people, saw a surge in cases reaching a daily peak of over 1,000 new cases. The country’s hospitals were quickly running short of space and medicinal oxygen. People turned to social media looking to purchase oxygen cylinders. Private suppliers were selling overpriced oxygen concentrators at between $2,000 and $3,700 per unit, a price beyond the vast majority in Zimbabwe.

Latin American countries have also faced a scarcity of medicinal oxygen.

With 1.86 million cases and 158,000 deaths (a crude case fatality rate of 8.5 percent), Mexico continues to suffer a massive number of deaths, which may in part be due to a health system that is too overwhelmed to care for its population during the pandemic. The number of deaths is likely an undercount.

The price of oxygen has climbed fourfold in Mexico City, with 22 million people, where the pandemic has pummeled inhabitants. According to Reuters, 20 medical oxygen distributors they had consulted said they had no tanks in stock. People are waiting hours in line at the few stores that still have supplies on hand. Prices can run up to $160 to refill a 24-hour tank. Many who need oxygen will require such treatment for up to a week, in a country where the minimum daily wage of a worker is about $7.

In the populous city of Villa El Salvador, Peru, it has become an everyday routine for friends and families of people infected with severe COVID-19 to carry empty canisters of oxygen, searching for places that might sell it at a reasonable price. Most hospitals in Peru don’t have oxygen concentrators, leading to price gouging and black-market exchange. A young woman speaking to the Associated Press said, “It’s so sad to see that all people go through this. It is sad to see that not only I, but all people are waiting for oxygen for their family.”

French government rejects a new lockdown to stop coronavirus spread

Alex Lantier

On Friday evening, after a week of press reports suggesting French President Emmanuel Macron was likely to announce a lockdown, Macron sent Prime Minister Jean Castex to announce on television that there would be no lockdown. But health officials are adamant that the spread of the more contagious British variant is accelerating, and only a lockdown can stop a massive wave of deaths.

Like his counterparts across Europe, Macron is making the politically criminal choice to sacrifice masses of lives to increase the wealth of the super-rich. This weekend, the number of COVID-19 deaths officially recorded in Europe exceeded 700,000. Of these, more than 76,000 occurred in France. More than 100,000 people are dying every three weeks in Europe.

With blatant indifference to the loss of human life, Castex gave a 15-minute speech in which he concluded: “Our duty is to do everything possible to avoid a new lockdown, and the next few days will be decisive.” Castex declared that the question of a lockdown “is legitimately raised,” but that he dismissed it in view of “its very heavy impact on the French in all areas.”

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

He detailed additional measures that leave the government’s health strategy essentially unchanged, organized around a nationwide 6 p.m. curfew, the prohibition of entry from or leaving to outside the European Union, the obligation to conduct tests at national borders, the closure of large shopping centres of more than 20,000 square meters, and increased patrols by police to enforce the curfew.

With approximately 23,000 new cases and 500 new deaths of COVID-19 per day in France, even before the British variant had established itself as the dominant strain, these measures would not prevent a vast increase in contagion.

Even official government statements confirm that its policy will have no significant impact. “The curfew has an impact, but it is not enough in the face of the variants,” Health Minister Olivier Véran said at a press conference on January 28, two days before Castex’s speech. He admitted that transmission in schools and workplaces, which accounts for two-thirds of clusters, plays a huge role: “There is a contamination that is difficult to avoid, contamination in the family. There are contaminations linked to professional practice.”

Doctors have denounced the policy announced by Castex. “It is obvious that it will not help to restore the health situation,” said Djillali Annane, head of the intensive care unit of the Poincaré Hospital in Garches. “If we only count on this measure there and the partial closure of borders to re-control the epidemic with in 10 days, with the period of school vacations, it is a very risky and daring bet.”

Similarly, the professor of infectious disease, Anne-Claude Crémieux said: “The moment when the increase will be very rapid is approaching. Containment is therefore still very likely.” Noting the few countries “that have almost eliminated the virus” such as Vietnam, Taiwan and China, she added that this requires a decision “to eliminate the virus at the price of economic sacrifices.” However, she made it clear that in France and Europe, the political power had made the opposite choice, to let the virus spread.

To stop the virus, she added, the attacks on the health system, which have been carried out for decades, should be stopped: “First, a strict and long containment should be imposed, and then a very effective policy of isolation and tracing for sources of contamination should be put in place. But we would need an army of public health professionals in the field, which we no longer have, and it would take months and the means to rebuild it.”

It is obvious to growing numbers of workers and young people that the Macron government and the European Union, in their hostility to a serious fight against the virus, have no viable strategy to end the pandemic. While there are huge delays in the delivery of vaccines, whose effectiveness against the new strains is now unknown, containment is more essential than ever. But a policy of defending lives is incompatible with the capitalist system and the class interests of the financial aristocracy that Macron defends.

His arguments, that non-essential economic activity must continue at the cost of lives and continued contagion to assist small businesses, are nonsensical. The state has no real prospect of reopening most of the businesses—cafés, restaurants, sports halls, concert halls, etc.—that it has closed to avoid overwhelming intensive care units. It is maintaining non-essential work and face-to-face schooling, not to help the economy, but so that the profits continue to accumulate in the banks and for the largest companies.

Even if one took the morally and politically indefensible view that the only important variable is financial wealth, a strict health policy would collectively be more profitable than the collective immunity policy pursued by Macron and the EU. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of France (3.2 million cases, 76,000 deaths) has fallen by 8.3 percent and that of Germany (2.2 million cases, 58,000 deaths) by 5 percent in 2020. Taiwan’s (911 cases, 8 deaths) increased by 2.5 percent, China’s (89,522 cases, 4,636 deaths) by 2.3 percent.

Macron’s goal is not to save the economy, but to continue the transfer of wealth to the financial aristocracy, organized by the European Union/European Central Bank stimulus packages of more than €2 trillion. The only important issue, from the government’s point of view, is the impact this will have on corporate profit.

The Journal du dimanche, which devoted its issue yesterday to Macron’s announcement, noted: “One last argument weighed heavily” on the government decision: “the economic bill, estimated by the finance ministry at €25 billion for a month and a half of lockdown. ‘We have to find another option,’ pleaded Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire to Macron.”

The president of the French employers’ association (MEDEF), Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, confirmed that the pleas of Le Maire were pushed by MEDEF itself. “We have constantly exchanged with Bruno Le Maire and his teams. We are all aware that a simple solution to the health crisis does not exist. But businessmen would be indignant at the return of a solution identical to that of March,” i.e., a lockdown that would stop in-person schooling and non-essential production in order to stop the transmission of the virus.

The MEDEF has received support in this matter from the trade union apparatuses and middle-class pseudo-left parties, such as the New Anti-Capitalist Party, which support the economic bailout plans and call for the reopening of universities and the economy as a whole.

However, the €25 billion that would be needed to finance a lockdown represents less than the profits that Bernard Arnault was able to add to his wealth in 2020 alone. His wealth has grown from $73 billion to more than €100 billion ($121 billion) thanks to the government bailouts, financed at the expense of the working population.

Nervous opening expected for Wall Street

Nick Beams

The key questions that will be uppermost when Wall Street opens today are whether the speculative frenzy in GameStop and other companies, whose shares have been shorted by hedge funds, will continue, and whether the downturn in the broader market, evidenced by significant falls at the end of last week, will deepen.

The two phenomena are interconnected. There are fears the surge in shorted stocks, which has resulted in a 1600 percent rise in GameStop shares since the start of the year, coupled with rises in others, such as AMC, up by 300 percent, is a sign that the Wall Street bubble may be about to collapse.

As the Financial Times noted: “The frenzied trading of the past week has fuelled concerns that a speculative bubble … could trigger a sharp market pullback.”

A GameStop storefront [Wikimedia Commons]

The reason is that the GameStop frenzy is only the most egregious expression of the speculative bubble that is Wall Street as a whole.

The surge in GameStop and other targeted companies represents the complete divorce of the market value of their shares from the underlying economic reality. GameStop, a retailer of video games, had seen its revenues halved in the last 10 years and then experienced a 31 percent fall in sales in the first nine months of last year. But its market value as a result of the speculation makes it a $25 billion company.

What could be called the “GameStop strategy” involves buying up the shares of companies that have been “shorted” by major hedge funds. Shorting is a process in which a hedge fund borrows the shares of a company, sells them in anticipation they will fall—a result which can result from the shorting action itself—and then buys the shares at the lower price, returns them to the original holder, making a profit on the deal.

But if the share price rises, as has happened with the targeting by retail investors of shorted stocks using a Reddit platform, the hedge fund has to buy the shares at a higher price, thereby making a loss.

The extent of the losses by the hedge fund Melvin Capital, a significant shorting player, as a result of last week’s GameStop surge, is now being revealed.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Melvin, which had previously been regarded as successful, started the year with about $12.5 billion on hand, but lost 53 percent in January. It now has capital of around $8 billion, which includes $2.75 billion of emergency funds injected into it by two other funds, Citadel and Point72 Asset Management.

The extent of the losses at Melvin, together with the possibility that other hedge funds could also lose large amounts, has sparked the concern of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Wall Street regulator.

In a statement issued on Friday, the SEC said it was closely monitoring and evaluating the extreme volatility of a number of the stocks.

The statement began with an assurance that the “core market infrastructure” had proven “resilient” under the impact of the “extraordinary” weight of last week’s trading volumes, but then added:

“Nevertheless, extreme stock price volatility has the potential to expose investors to rapid and severe losses and undermine market confidence.”

The concern of the SEC is not the fate of the hundreds of thousands of small retail investors and individual stock market players who have been caught up in the frenzy. It fears that if there are further major losses by hedge funds, defaults on debts and a major sell-off, this could set off a crisis.

No doubt the SEC has in mind the experience of 1998, when the bankruptcy of the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management, threatened the entire market, prompting a rescue operation by the New York Federal Reserve.

The speculation in GameStop and other shorted stocks is not only the result of the activity of retail investors.

Long-time hedge fund operator and noted short seller Jim Chanos told the Financial Times that the events of the past 10 days were “surreal,” unlike anything he had witnessed in his 40 years in finance.

He poured cold water on the claim, widely circulated on Reddit and on other platforms, that the speculation hitting hedge funds was “sticking it to the suits,” noting that besides some retail investors “a bunch of hedge funds have made a lot of money.”

On Thursday, an angry social media storm arose over the decision by the sharebroker Robinhood, the main firm through which the retail surge has taken place, to suspend purchases of GameStop shares and other shorted stocks with the claim that this was the result of intervention by major hedge funds to protect their positions.

While it cannot be ruled out that Robinhood was leant on, the real reason for the suspension in trading appears to be that the brokerage firm could not finance the increased volume of deals. Share trades pass through a clearing-house before they are finalised, in a process that can take as long as two days.

Clearing-houses require that brokerages post collateral for their trades in case there is a default. Because of the increased volume of its deals, Robinhood was forced to obtain a cash infusion of more than $1 billion. Lenders included JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

In a series of interviews explaining the suspension, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said it was “not negotiable” for the firm to “comply with our financial requirements and our clearing house deposits.”

The Depository Trust and Clearing House Corp has not provided details of how much money individual firms are required to supply to cover their trades, but on Friday it was revealed that the total capital it required to be placed under its jurisdiction had increased from $26 billion to $33.5 billion.

In a statement, the DTCC said that the frenzied trading in stocks, such as GameStop and the movie chain AMC, “generated substantial risk exposure at firms that clear these trades ... particularly if the clearing member or its clients are predominantly on one side of the market.”

Under normal circumstances the activities of the DTCC pass unnoticed, in the background. But in times of great turbulence, calls for increased money to be placed with it as collateral can have a major impact. In reporting on this development, the Financial Times noted that, during the market crisis in mid-March, one US bank was required to find $9.6 billion in the course of an hour to finance derivative trades.

Cutting through the hype on social media that the surge is some kind of rebellion or even a “revolution” against the titans of Wall Street and a movement to “democratize finance,” the essential reason can only be found in the most fundamental feature of the entire financial system.

This is the divorce between the market value of shares and other financial assets, and the underlying real economy. This process, which began 40 years ago, was accelerated first by government bailouts and the provision of ultra-cheap money by the Fed, after the 2008 crisis, and was given a further boost when the government and the Fed injected trillions of dollars into the financial system as a result of the market crisis in mid-March last year.

Since then, amid the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression and the loss of millions of jobs, Wall Street is up more than 66 percent, with stocks such as Tesla, which returns only a relatively small profit, escalating by 900 percent. The escalation of the stocks of companies that are either in bankruptcy or on the road to it, was first seen immediately after the Fed’s March intervention, when the stocks of the car hire firm Hertz spiked 900 percent after it had filed for bankruptcy.

In an editorial last week entitled, “The Reddit Wolves of Wall Street” the Wall Street Journal referred to the present situation as one of “high financial drama.” It then offered a reassurance to its readers and to itself that: “This may be a new example of the power of social media, but it isn’t a crisis of capitalism or the stock market.”

The editorial went on to point to the underlying driving force of this speculation.

“The government body that should come in for more introspection is the Federal Reserve. The central bank may be feeding the asset frenzy as it holds interest rates near zero and crushes the long bond yield curve so it doesn’t send accurate price signals. As investors search for yield they move into commodities, real estate, junk bonds, foreign currencies – and stocks.”

But that analysis only raises another question, which the WSJ does not care to probe. Why does the Fed not end this policy which, as the editorial implicitly acknowledges, can only lead to a disaster?

The short answer is that it is incapable of doing so. It is locked into the escalation of financial assets by the injection of ever-greater amounts of money, because to end it would bring about a collapse of the financial house of cards with devastating economic and financial consequences.

That, by any definition, signifies a crisis of capitalism. The fact that the WSJ raises this prospect, only to immediately rule it out, is a sure sign that it smells the odour of death wafting up from the open grave of the system it so strenuously defends.

But the ending of the capitalist profit system, no matter how deep its crisis, will not come about automatically. Rather, its death agony will result in social destruction and the eruption of the class struggle, for which the ruling class is making its preparation through the cultivation and development of fascist forms of rule, as revealed by the events in Washington of January 6.

The capitalist system is caught in the coils of an ever-tightening crisis. But it can only be overturned, and a higher form of socio-economic organisation developed, through the conscious political struggle by the working class to take power in its own hands—a struggle for which the crisis on Wall Street must provide further impetus.

Amazon offers to aid US government’s botched vaccination effort

Nick Barrickman

Amazon officials made it plain last week that they wished to take part in the White House’s efforts to administer the coronavirus vaccine to the United States’ population. Dave Clark, Amazon CEO of global operations, addressed newly inaugurated President Joseph Biden last Wednesday, declaring in a letter his company was “prepared to leverage our operations, information technology, and communications capabilities and expertise to assist your administration’s vaccination efforts.”

On Sunday, Amazon’s Seattle headquarters held a day-long vaccination clinic, administering 2,000 shots. The company did another such clinic yesterday at the same location. The corporation has offered to expand its 650 warehouse self-testing sites into full scale vaccination clinics, capable of servicing over 50,000 individuals a day.

Amazon has nearly doubled in market capitalization and in its workforce over the past several years. During the pandemic, the web commerce giant has added over 400,000 new workers, reaching a total employee count of over 1.2 million. Throughout the pandemic, Amazon and other online technology companies have benefited handsomely from the onrush of demand from consumers seeking to avoid shopping for necessities at brick-and-mortar stores. According to Yahoo! Finance, stocks for the web retailer have shot up over 85 percent in the past year.

Jeff Bezos in 2019 (Image Credit: AP Photo/John Locher, File)

According to Politico, an anonymous administration official stated that the Biden White House was eying the prospect of “public, private and non-profit sectors working together to provide the solutions we need at the scale that we need them.” Nancy Foster, vice president of quality and patient safety at the American Hospital Association, stated in the same article that “[w]e welcome announcements like this from Amazon that will help get more shots into arms across the country,” and its “expertise in managing significant logistical challenges.”

Amazon and other corporate behemoths have responded to the United States government’s disastrous efforts to deliver vaccines. The Biden administration is making plans to purchase over 300 million doses of the various vaccines which have recently come on line. According to CNBC, only half of the country’s nearly 49 million vaccine doses have been successfully administered since their initial approval by the Food and Drug Administration in mid-December.

In statements earlier this week, Biden declared that delivery of the vaccine “is going to be a logistical challenge that exceeds anything we’ve ever tried in this country,” adding that the country would achieve “herd immunity” by summer.

In addition to Amazon, other major retailers have also made offers to the Biden administration to assist in the vaccination program. Walmart, whose online retail sales have more than doubled during the pandemic, announced late last month that it was offering to have its “qualified, trained pharmacists and pharmacy staff to partner with community organizations to provide vaccination services at third party locations like churches, stadiums and youth centers.” Starbucks and others have also weighed in, seeking opportunities to partner with the US government in the vaccination program.

In addition to aiding the US government’s drive to return workers to job sites so that profits can once again begin flowing, Amazon and others are undoubtedly seeking to boost their brand and gain access to the lucrative healthcare and pharmaceutical markets. The deluge of offers from massive tech and retail businesses follows the efforts of logistics giants such as the United Parcel Service and FedEx, who have already been tapped by the Trump administration to help in the distribution of the vaccine countrywide.

The announcement also comes after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ love letter to then-president-elect Biden in November, after the latter had begun forming a transition team packed with corporate representatives, including some from Amazon itself. Amazon’s stock has increased by 11 percent since November.

The potential exists for the massive logistical and technical capacity expertise of the retail giant to be used for rapidly distributing vaccines and other public health necessities. However, there are doubts that such gestures will produce significant results. Aside from Amazon proposing that it transform its on-location testing sites into vaccination centers, retailers have offered few details about plans to assist the United States government.

Despite Amazon’s efforts to present itself as a caring corporation, driven solely by concerns for public safety, its owners have raked in enormous profits during the last year, primarily at the expense of working people. After months of refusing to report the level of infections at its warehouses, the company admitted in October that nearly 20,000 of its workers had contracted COVID-19, an undoubted understatement.

Similar “offers” for help were made last spring by the auto industry, when the automakers were straining to beat back a rebellion of autoworkers which had shut down the industry for two months. The diversion of a tiny portion of the auto industry’s manufacturing capacity to build a small number of ventilators and face shields, far below what was necessary to ramp up capacity in the nation’s network to treat the seriously ill, was part of a PR push to get workers back into the plant and producing highly profitable pickup trucks and SUVs.

Many Amazon workers suspect that the company’s offer to help with vaccine distributions is part of a similar ploy, a leader of the Amazon BWI2 Rank-and-File Safety Committee said in a public meeting hosted by the World Socialist Web Site this weekend.

As with the US government’s pitiful response to the first wave last spring, which saw a criminal lack of everything from personal protective equipment (PPE) to breathing devices, the current vaccine rollout has all the markings of a similar botched effort. “[I]t is clear the United States has not learned from its fractured pandemic response and risks repeating some of the same errors,” said the Washington Post in a lengthy article describing the current vaccine rollout last month.

In a comment to Politico, Alex Harman of Public Citizen stated the job of vaccination delivery “is a governmental function… It might require partnerships here and there, it might entail commandeering of private resources occasionally, but the actual doing of logistics, and figuring out logistics, that’s what government is for.”

What Amazon and other retailers’ gestures amount to is an admittance of American capitalism’s inability to respond to any social crisis in a scientifically rational manner. Rather, the ruling class has seized on the pandemic in order to accelerate parasitic financial practices which have led to mass infection and death.

Macron dictates “Charter of principles” to the French Islamic Council

Jacques Valentin & Alex Lantier

Last month, the French Council of Islam ( Conseil français du culte musulman —CFCM) adopted the “Charter of Principles” of Islam imposed by the French government. The charter commits Muslim religious officials to respect the principles dictated by the French government, which since the end of 2019 has presented Muslims as being driven by “separatism.”

While hypocritically claiming to defend religious rights, the government’s measure aims to transform Muslims into de facto second-class citizens. Though the legal position of religions is supposed to be governed by the 1905 secularism law, the Macron government has sought to impose on Muslims a humiliating pledge of loyalty to the state. Nothing comparable is being asked of other religions.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin revealed the content of the anti-Muslim campaign with his declaration to Le Figaro last December that, “up until now, the government has been interested in radicalization and terrorism. Now, we will also attack the terrain of terrorism, where can be found those people who create the intellectual and cultural space to secede and impose their values.”

French President Emmanuel Macron [Sebastien Nogier, Pool via AP]

Thus, the police will target people who have not been guilty of any criminal act. They will be able to target thoughts and statements on the basis of their claims that they supposedly might encourage “separatism.” The so-called “breeding ground” is so vaguely defined that it includes places of worship, Muslim religious and cultural associations, and their defenders. To be a “separatist” in the end means to have thoughts or habits that the police disapprove of.

By instituting thought-crime as a pseudo-legal category and a presumption of guilt aimed primarily at Muslims, the state is threatening the democratic rights of the entire population. In this situation, the defence of Muslims is an essential task of the working class. Opposing attempts to divide the workers along religious and ethnic lines is essential for the working class to unite in struggle.

What does the “Charter of Principles” dictate?

The charter is pervaded by a grotesque fraud, which presents the capitalist state as a defender of the principle of equality against Muslims, even as it attempts to take away their freedom of expression. The police dictate the opinions of Muslims and forbid them to express themselves politically.

The Charter states: “From a religious and ethical point of view, Muslims, whether nationals or foreign residents, are bound to France by a pact. This compels them to respect national cohesion, public order and the laws of the Republic.” This duty to the state outweighs their own beliefs: “No religious conviction can be invoked to evade the obligations of citizens.”

What does it mean for Macron to demand that Muslims respect “national cohesion?” In France as throughout Europe, the government is imposing austerity that is exacerbating social inequality, and a policy of herd immunity against the coronavirus that has been denounced by scientists. More than 600,000 people have already died across the continent as a result. The “yellow vest” movement and numerous strikes throughout France and Europe have testified to the explosive anger in the working class provoked by these policies.

Since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, which removed the major obstacle to the use of military force by the NATO powers, France has regularly invaded Muslim-majority countries among its former colonies. The wars in Côte d’Ivoire, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Mali have provoked opposition and mistrust among workers. This is particularly the case among Muslim workers.

The “Charter of Principles” prohibits them from any political discussion in places of worship, stating: “We refuse to allow places of worship to be used to disseminate political discourse or to import conflicts occurring elsewhere in the world. Our mosques and places of worship are reserved for prayer and the transmission of values. They are not erected for the dissemination of nationalist speeches defending foreign regimes and supporting foreign policies hostile to France, our country, and our French compatriots.”

The new law does not cover terrorist acts, which were already punishable by law before Macron dictated the charter. It prohibits political discussions that would be critical of the foreign or domestic policies of the French state.

The continuous government inroads into the private lives of Muslims, including the ban on veil or facial coverings in schools and all public places since 2004 and 2010, has created a hysterical Islamophobic atmosphere. Reactionary incidents, such as the expulsion of Muslim high school girls for wearing overly long skirts, and the beating of husbands of veiled women by police, have contributed to a sense among Muslim workers that state-sanctioned racism is aimed at them.

The “Charter of Principles” therefore prohibits any mention of state racism. Islamophobic acts, it asserts, “are the work of an extremist minority that should not be confused with either the state or the French people. Consequently, denunciations of alleged State racism, like all posturing about victimhood, are defamation.”

The “Charter” adds that Islamic officials are to remind followers “that certain allegedly Muslim cultural practices do not fall under Islam.” This vague and incoherent statement requires the CFCM to defend government policies, such as the law against banning headscarves in schools.

This reveals the reactionary and discriminatory content of the “charter.” The French state is creating for Muslims a status as a special minority for whom any collective criticism of the state is prohibited. Indeed, treating Muslims’ reference to state racism as “defamation” is tantamount to criminalizing the discussion of French political and religious life that is informed by French and European history.

French imperialism has a long and bloody tradition of more-or-less overt state racism. Between the conquest of Algeria in the 1830s and the end of World War II, it imposed a discriminatory Indigenous Code on Muslims in the colonies. The abolition of this Code in 1946 came only after a workers’ uprising against the Vichy collaborationist regime, which had pursued a policy of deporting Jews to death camps in Europe.

In the present context, these facts are not merely academic historical references. Neo-fascist partisans of “French Algeria,” who are also apologists for Nazi collaborationism, play a major role in contemporary politics. Their defenders, like far-right pundit Eric Zemmour, who was convicted of inciting racial hatred, have extensive connections in the media and business.

The attempt to cast a pall of silence on the history of the 20th century takes place in a definite international context. The pandemic has not only triggered the most severe economic crisis since the 1930s. It has discredited the ruling class. The financial aristocracy, exposed by its policy of “herd immunity,” and terrified of working-class opposition, is turning toward far-right dictatorship.

Trump’s attempted coup, led by neo-Nazi forces in Washington on January 6, revealed the fascist rot eating away at the heart of world imperialism. The aftershocks of this political earthquake are only beginning to spread across Europe, where, long before Trump’s coup attempt, neo-fascist parties were already being encouraged by broad sections of the ruling elite.

It is impossible to evaluate the Muslim charter outside this international context. In Germany, the extreme right is again in parliament, and far-right professors protected by the ruling Grand Coalition declare that Hitler was “not vicious.” In Spain, officers who boast they are fascists have reacted to strikes by Spanish workers by declaring that “26 million” people should be shot.

[subheading]Fascistic policies under the guise of defending the Republic[/subheading]

The peculiarity of the fascistic attack on democratic rights in France is that it is carried out in the name of the defence of the Republic.

The “Charter of Principles” was adopted in the context of the bill against Islamist “separatism,” renamed the “Bill Confirming Respect for the Principles of the Republic.” The law has been discussed in committee in the National Assembly since Monday, January 18. Since the end of last year, the entire political establishment has been united behind the slogan for a struggle against “Islamist separatism.”

It united in a multiparty senatorial commission of inquiry, led by the right-wing Republicans (LR), entitled: “Islamist Radicalization: Facing and Fighting Together.” The commission was composed of representatives of all political groups in the Senate, including the Stalinist French Communist Party.

The pandemic and the political crisis linked to the reopening campaign accelerated this offensive. Dozens of mosques and Muslim educational institutions were closed and the humanitarian association Barakacity and the Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France (CCIF), a human rights association, were dissolved. These established associations operated within a completely legal framework.

Under the cover of protecting the Republic, Macron is seeking to overturn the 1905 secularism law. The law was passed under the influence of the socialist movement following the Dreyfus Affair—the defeat of the anti-Semitic forces in the Army and the Church that sought to frame and imprison the Jewish captain Alfred Dreyfus. By targeting the 1905 law, Macron is threatening the legal framework of freedom of expression and the relations between the church and state that have held in France for more than a century, outside of the period of the occupation during World War II.

Macron compelled the CFCM to draft major documents within a few weeks, with content largely dictated by the authorities. He wants a binding and accelerated timetable to create the National Council of Imams, which is to “certify” officials who will be compelled to commit to the charter.

To find a point of comparison, several media pundits referred to the beginning of the 19th century, and the creation by Napoleon I of an official representation of French Judaism, after the French Revolution of 1789.

Under the Empire, from 1806 to 1808, Napoleon reorganized Judaism in the wake of the Emancipation Act of September 27, 1791 in the Constituent Assembly, which granted Jews access to French citizenship. Napoleon I’s reforms led to the creation of the Central Jewish Consistory of France to organize and legalize Jewish worship.

In reality, there can be no comparison between the action of Napoleon’s work and that of Macron. Despite his authoritarianism and his prejudices against the Jews, Napoleon allowed the organization of the religion and the integration of the Jewish populations. In this, he pursued the trajectory, spurred on by the Revolution, of destroying the vestiges of feudalism.

In contrast, one cannot but recognize the malicious intent of the measures prepared by Macron, aimed at legitimizing the persecution of Muslims.

The precedents of Macron’s action are not in the 1789 French Revolution, but its opponents. Before welcoming the neo-fascist vote on the night of his election, Macron had already criticized the execution of Louis XVI in 1793 and declared that France lacked a king. His government tried to have the works of the leader of the Action Française, the anti-Semitic monarchist and Nazi collaborationist Charles Maurras, re-released, and he called Pétain a “great soldier” as he unleashed riot police on the “yellow vests.”

It is no coincidence that in 2019 the government supported the media campaign against J’Accuse, Roman Polanski’s film about the Dreyfus Affair. The film opposes the influence of the anti-Dreyfusards, of Maurassian racism, and of Maurras, who called the French defeat, Pétain’s coming to power, and the Nazi collaboration in 1940 “divine surprise.”

The anti-Muslim campaign of the French state goes hand in hand with the policy of “herd immunity,” imperialist war, and a violent assault on the working class and its social rights, including to strike and protest.

The “anti-separatist” law is being accompanied by the “global security law,” which would prohibit publication of videos of the police. As revealed by the beating by the police in Paris of a music producer, Georges Zecler, in his studio, this would allow the police to attack anyone and claim that they were acting in self-defence. The United Nations has warned that the law contravenes human rights. It aims to consolidate a fascistic police state against the working class.

A political struggle is required for the working class. The history of the 20th century and the fascist genocide of the Jews in Europe are a permanent warning of the horrible price the working class pays if it allows forces of the extreme right to incite racial and religious hatreds and divisions. It is necessary to unify the working class internationally, independently of the trade union apparatuses, in a struggle against the policy of “herd immunity” and the fascist drift of the ruling class, and for the transfer of power to the working class on a socialist perspective.

Nearly 40,000 Australians still stranded overseas because of government indifference

John Harris

A year after the COVID-19 crisis commenced, almost 40,000 Australian citizens are still registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) seeking assistance to return home from overseas.

They have experienced extortionate airline ticket prices, endless delays and cancellations. Many face personal destitution and impoverishment, with the heightened risk of infection in countries severely affected by the pandemic. Among them, 4,800 have been classified as vulnerable.

For purely financial reasons—the refusal of Australian federal, state and territory governments to provide adequate quarantine facilities—these citizens are being denied their basic legal, constitutional and democratic right to enter and live in the country. They are also being offered little financial assistance.

Perth Airport in Western Australia [Wikimedia Commons]

Government caps limiting the number of returning passengers have resulted in airlines routinely favouring first class and business class tickets over economy passengers. A first-class air ticket from London to Sydney can be priced as high as $36,895 and a business-class flight from Paris to Melbourne $25,352. However, even these enormous prices do not guarantee a seat on a flight. Many people whose flights are cancelled have to wait 30 days for a refund so they can book a new ticket.

This situation has been exacerbated by the announcement on January 8, that the governments leaders, meeting as the bipartisan “national cabinet,” had further reduced the number of international arrivals. New South Wales (NSW), Queensland and Western Australia halved their numbers of arrivals until at least February 15. The number of people allowed to enter the country dropped from 6,700 a week to just 4,200.

There is no lack of air transport capacity. According to a Senate COVID-19 inquiry, the number of empty airline seats coming into the country stood at 30,000 per week last November.

The governments cited the threat of the new highly contagious UK and South African variants of COVID-19 and fear that their quarantine systems would not cope with the levels of infectiousness. The UK strain, which is up to 70 percent more transmissible and possibly more lethal, was detected earlier this month in Australia, after a cleaner working in a quarantine hotel in Queensland’s capital, Brisbane, tested positive.

The decision to cut the caps was based on budgetary calculations, not the health and wellbeing of travelers. Upgrading the capacity of the quarantine system and providing the facilities free of charge would allow citizens to return from overseas. At present the governments charge $3,000 per person for quarantining, further impeding the ability of ordinary people to return.

By contrast, in order to stage a highly profitable corporate event, the Victorian state Labor government has flown charter flights—with more than 1,200 international tennis players, their support staff and media crews—into Melbourne to participate in the Australian Open tennis tournament, scheduled to start on February 8.

Most of the tennis and broadcasting contingents arriving in Australia are from countries suffering large outbreaks of COVID-19, including the US and UK. Underlining the disregard for public health, nine passengers tested positive and 72 had to go into stricter quarantine after being identified as close contacts.

Some of those stuck overseas pointed to the double standard involved in helping the tennis event go ahead. Kym Bramley, who has been stranded in Mexico since March, told the New Daily: “They say ‘we don’t have enough spots’ but they seem to be able to create them for celebrities, cricket teams [and] tennis players… They are allowing tennis players from the same countries we can’t get home from.” She added, “for us,” it costs “$10,000 for a flight home—if you’re lucky.”

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews nakedly referred to the lucrative corporate and business interests at stake. He said other countries would lay claim to the billion-dollar tennis event if Melbourne failed to host it.

In a desperate attempt to quell the resulting public outrage, the federal Liberal-National Coalition government announced 20 charter flights to allow some stranded people back. That would only assist a fraction of those stranded.

Those returning on these repatriation flights are likely to be quarantined at the Howard Springs facility near Darwin in the Northern Territory and were expected to be charged commercial rates of up to $15,000 for their seat because of the high demand for the very few spots.

Meanwhile, the federal government has set aside the totally inadequate amount of $17 million to help those suffering financial hardship.

The hypocrisy of the 20-flight announcement is striking. The managing director of Melbourne-based travel company Gaura Travel, Abhishek Sonthalia, told the New Daily last week, he had sent multiple requests to the Department of Home Affairs since June asking if empty charter flights returning from India could be used to transport Australians stranded overseas.

“We have innumerable times applied for permission to do the same [for Australians, as for Indians] but have always been denied,” Sonthalia said. He added that the company could easily “convert our charters so that people can travel both ways.” He said there had been 35 charter flights back to India so far.

Prominent human rights barrister, Geoffrey Robertson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “7.30” television program “no one should be arbitrarily deprived of their right to enter their own country,” a right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), of the 440,000 citizens whom the federal government claims have returned to Australia during the pandemic, it has assisted only 38,800. Moreover, Australian Border Force’s figures of 280,560 returned travelers are significantly lower, throwing doubt over the government’s claims.

In contrast to the red-carpet treatment afforded to the professional tennis players and other tournament participants, those stranded abroad have had very different experiences. In one story, Justin Peck from Melbourne has been stranded in Thailand for 10 months. Peck told the SMH he had multiple flights cancelled. He was living off the small earnings of his girlfriend in Thailand and was running out of savings and superannuation funds.

Danushka Silva from Melbourne told the SMH he had been trying to get home from Britain before his and his partner’s visas and work contracts expired at the end of December. Silva said he was not surprised to see the harsh treatment of Australians abroad, saying it reflected the government’s approach toward asylum seekers. Both Silva and his partner had to register for emergency extensions to their visas with the British government after being bumped from their planned flight. They rebooked on a flight in February, but Silva said he feared they would be bumped also from that flight.

Amy Webster, and her fiancé who are also stuck in Britain, had their January 21 flight cancelled with Qatar airlines. She told the newspaper: “We feel abandoned. It feels like we aren’t wealthy or rich enough to get home, which I don’t think should be a factor in trying to get back to your own country.”

Trump fires team of defense lawyers in run-up to Senate trial

Patrick Martin

Former President Donald Trump announced Saturday that he had fired the five lawyers who had agreed to be his defense team in the upcoming Senate trial for inciting an insurrection on January 6. Late Sunday, Trump’s office in Florida announced that two new lawyers, David Schoen and Bruce L. Castor Jr., had agreed to take the case.

The abrupt change in the legal team was reportedly driven by Trump’s demand that his lawyers defend his actions on January 6 by claiming that the 2020 presidential election was stolen by the Democrats. The first legal team balked and pressed for Trump to confine his defense to arguments that the Senate trial of an ex-president, now a private citizen, would be unconstitutional.

According to the New York Times, “Mr. Trump had pushed for his defense team to focus on his baseless claim that the election was stolen from him, one person familiar with the situation said. A person close to Mr. Trump disputed that that was the case but acknowledged that there were differences in opinion about the defense strategy.”

Donald J. Trump [Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian]

CNN reported, “Trump wanted the attorneys to argue there was mass election fraud and it was stolen from him rather than focus on proposed arguments about constitutionality.”

It is not clear whether the divisions within the Trump camp on legal tactics have been resolved, or whether the new legal team has agreed to put forward Trump’s lies about a stolen election as part of the Senate trial.

The statement announcing their appointment referred only to the constitutional claim and made no reference to the 2020 election. “Schoen has already been working with the 45th President and other advisors to prepare for the upcoming trial, and both Schoen and Castor agree that this impeachment is unconstitutional—a fact 45 Senators voted in agreement with last week,” the press release says.

The two new lawyers are both well established litigators with close political ties to the Republican Party. Schoen has represented civil rights groups and victims of police violence, among his many clients, but recently represented Trump crony Roger Stone in his criminal trial for perjury. It is likely that Stone put Schoen in contact with Trump. Schoen is a board member of the Zionist Organization of America, one of the most right-wing pro-Israel lobbies.

The other lead attorney, Castor, was district attorney of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, for eight years (2000–2008), and has been active in state Republican Party politics for two decades. He is best known for a case he declined to prosecute, the sexual abuse and rape charges against comedian and actor Bill Cosby. The controversy over this decision contributed to Castor’s defeat in a 2015 election in which he sought to return to office as district attorney.

Four of the five lawyers who parted ways with Trump on Saturday were from South Carolina: Butch Bowers, Deborah Barbier, Greg Harris and Johnny Gasser. The fifth, Josh Howard, was from North Carolina.

The team from the Carolinas was assembled under the auspices of Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, after the attorneys who represented Trump in his first impeachment trial apparently declined to take his second one. These included then-White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, his deputies Patrick Philben and Eric Herschmann, and Jay Sekulow, a longtime legal activist for Christian fundamentalist groups.

Trump’s switching of legal teams on the eve of the Senate trial is clearly a sign of crisis. The new lawyers must prepare a rebuttal brief against the charges brought in the House impeachment and submit it by Tuesday morning, one week before the scheduled beginning of the Senate trial on February 9.

While the press announcement claims that 45 Senate Republicans have embraced the view that it is unconstitutional for the Senate to try an ex-president, that is technically not accurate. Senator Rand Paul brought a constitutional point of order on that issue, and Senate Democrats moved to table it. The 45 Republicans voted against tabling, not directly to uphold the substance of Paul’s motion. At least two of the 45 claim they are still open to convicting Trump, although that would still leave the number of votes for conviction at 57, 10 fewer than required.

Nevertheless, the overwhelming vote of Senate Republicans to quash the Senate trial is a clear demonstration of support for Trump and makes an acquittal in next week’s impeachment trial all but certain.

There are well established precedents for trying Trump after he leaves office. The US Senate has done so in the past, for cabinet officials and judges if not presidents. The most famous case of impeachment, well known to the Founding Fathers at the time they wrote the Constitution, was against Warren Hastings, British governor-general in India, who was impeached two years after leaving office and acquitted seven years later.

Trump’s demand that his defense should argue that the 2020 election was stolen is extraordinary, since it means embracing the claim that was the driving force of the insurrection of January 6, for which Trump was impeached. But Trump is not playing by the rules set by the US Constitution or conventional politics. Even before the election, his orientation was to inciting his supporters against the political system as a whole and building a fascist movement centered on his role as an authoritarian leader.

He knows that he has the support of the bulk of the Republican Party, which has become an incubator for fascist politics and the integration of far-right forces into the political establishment. And he knows that he has nothing to fear from the Biden White House or the Democratic Party, both of which continue to plead for “unity” and “bipartisanship” despite the GOP’s uniting behind the architect of the attempted seizure and likely murder of Democratic lawmakers and overturn of the results of the 2020 election.

Just as significant as Trump’s firing of his attorneys is his demonstrative support for Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the fascist from Georgia, who has been widely condemned for social media postings calling for the assassination of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the execution of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

In addition to advocating for the fascist QAnon conspiracy theory, Greene has claimed that the massacres at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida were staged, and that the 2019 massacre at a New Zealand mosque was a “false flag” operation rather than a fascist atrocity motivated by anti-Muslim bigotry. She is also a 9/11 “truther,” claiming that no airliner crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and that the US government and military covered up an alleged missile strike for incomprehensible reasons.

Several House Democrats are putting forward a resolution to expel Greene, which under parliamentary rules must be voted on this week. In advance of that vote, which requires a two-thirds majority to pass, or a lesser action like censure, which requires only a majority, Greene tweeted that she had a telephone conversation with Trump in which the former president backed her to the hilt.

Greene posted on Saturday: “I’m so grateful for his support and more importantly the people of this country are absolutely 100 percent loyal to him because he is 100 percent loyal to the people and America First.”