Peru government shaken by vaccine scandal as COVID pandemic spirals

Bill Van Auken

With the COVID-19 pandemic once again spiraling out of control, Peru’s government has been thrown into crisis over reports that the country’s ex-president, sitting cabinet ministers and other top officials secretly secured for themselves early shots of the coronavirus vaccine, even as it was being denied to the country’s population.

Peru’s foreign minister, Esther Elizabeth Astete, resigned on Monday after it was revealed that she secretly received a dose of the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine last September. This followed last Friday’s resignation of Health Minister Pilar Mazzetti, who quit after the Peruvian Congress demanded that she account for the secret vaccination of former president Martín Vizcarra and his wife last October.

Foreign Minister Esther Astete (Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores)

Vizcarra, who is currently running for Congress, initially insisted that he had secretly taken part in the Peruvian trials of the Sinopharm vaccine, claiming it had been “an act of courage,” and that he had remained silent solely to avoid disrupting the “normal development of the trial.” Subsequently, however, Peru’s Cayetano Heredia University, which had conducted the trial, reported that neither Vizcarra nor his wife were among the 12,000 Peruvians who took part.

Charges have been raised that the acceptance of so-called “courtesy” Sinopharm vaccinations could constitute corruption in relation to the negotiation of the contract signed with the Chinese-based pharmaceutical.

The Peruvian daily La Republica reported that at least 50 officials in total received the shots, all of them from the ministries of Health and Foreign Relations.

On Sunday, Peru’s Health Ministry (MINSA) reported 212 new COVID-19 deaths and 8,093 new infections, approaching the record numbers reached in the first wave of the pandemic last year. With 43,703 COVID deaths reported by MINSA, Peru is tied with Mexico in terms of the largest number of fatalities per capita in Latin America. Figures released by the country’s National Information System of Deaths (Sinadef) show a sharp increase in non-violent deaths over previous years, indicating that the real toll from COVID-19 may be twice as high as the official numbers.

The spread of the virus has been further fueled by the arrival in Peru of the more contagious and deadly British strain as well as the Brazilian strain, which has made its way up the Amazon from the COVID-stricken city of Manaus.

Peru’s health care system is on the brink of collapse, with virtually every intensive care (ICU) bed occupied and patients dying for lack of oxygen, much of which has been bought up by the mining companies for use in production.

Last week, the government announced an extension of a partial lockdown imposed on large sections of the country that are worst affected by the virus until the end of this month, when it is expected it will be extended once again.

Miners on strike against conditions in the Santa Luisa de Huanzala mine.

The first 300,000 Sinopharm doses for mass vaccinations arrived only last week, with another 700,000 delivered over the weekend. The government said that the first to be vaccinated would be frontline health care workers. At least 105 nurses and some 300 doctors have died of COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic in Peru less than a year ago.

President Francisco Sagasti condemned the actions of his predecessor: “I feel indignant and furious, because this puts at risk the efforts of many Peruvians on the font line against COVID-19. I still cannot understand how some functionaries have not taken this situation into account.”

Sagasti was installed by the Peruvian parliament last November following mass protests over the congressional impeachment of Vizcarra on unsubstantiated charges of “moral incapacity,” and his brief replacement by the president of the Congress, Manuel Merino, at the head of an extreme right-wing cabinet. Popular demonstrations against what amounted to a congressional coup sharply intensified after police shot dead two youthful protesters.

Sagasti’s posture of indignation and fury is driven by fear that revelations over the illicit vaccinations of Vizcarra and other top government officials will trigger renewed popular upheavals within a population already outraged over the government’s catastrophic mishandling of the pandemic and chafing under rolling lockdowns that have left many without jobs or income, while seeming to do little to stop the spread of the virus.

While touted as a technocrat who would restore confidence in the corruption-ridden Peruvian state, Sagasti, 76, a veteran functionary of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, has seen his popularity plummet during his three months in office.

Beginning last December, his government was confronted with a rebellion by the country’s agricultural workers, who blocked major highways, threatening to cut off food supplies to Lima, the capital and largest city, to press their demand for a survivable wage. Sagasti responded by sending over 700 army troops and armored vehicles to break up the blockades, killing at least five and wounding many more.

Unrest has also risen among the country’s miners, who have suffered large numbers of COVID-19 infections and deaths in the crowded conditions of the mining camps. The Peruvian government exempted the multinational mining firms from lockdown restrictions to assure a continued flow of profits to both the national bourgeoisie and foreign capital. The continued operation of their facilities has helped spread the virus throughout the country as many of the miners return from the camps to their homes. There have been repeated walkouts in the mines over the lack of safety and health provisions.

And in the southeastern Andean city of Cusco, a strike has been called beginning today to protest against an increase in the cost of gas, along with the lack of jobs and income.

With elections set for April 11, none of the presidential candidates has registered more than 11 percent support in the polls. Every political party and state institution has been thoroughly discredited, not only by the catastrophic handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also by the government’s systemic corruption, with every living Peruvian ex-president implicated in the massive bribery and kickback scandal involving public works contracts awarded to the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht and its Peruvian partners, and half of the members of Congress facing corruption charges.

This holds true as well for Verónika Mendoza, a pseudo-left politician who is running for president. She gave her seal of approval to Sagasti last November, claiming that he would lead “a transitional government ... without coup-makers or corrupt people.”

The uncontrollable spread of the coronavirus, Peru’s deep economic crisis and the ever more naked exposure of vast social inequality are creating the conditions for a revolutionary explosion.

Business as usual as the US nears a half million deaths from COVID-19

Benjamin Mateus

Globally, the rate of infection from COVID-19 and the death rates associated with the infection are slowing from the devastating winter surge that saw new cases exceed 750,000 per day, with deaths during a single 24-hour period peaking at over 16,000.

The impact of the pandemic throughout Europe, North America and South America was a direct byproduct of malign neglect that allowed schools and economies to open after the summer lulls. As the capitalist ruling classes clamor to reopen the economy, the rapidly emerging variants pose an existential threat as criminal government policies expose the population to repeated infections.

In this Jan. 9, 2021 file photo, transporters Miguel Lopez, right, Noe Meza prepare to move a body of a COVID-19 victim to a morgue at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in the Mission Hills section of Los Angeles. California has edged past New York in the grim statistic of the number of deaths due to COVID-19, according Johns Hopkins University data reported Thursday, Feb. 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

The death toll in the United States has been nothing short of horrifying. This week the number of dead will hit a half million, a number exceeding all American deaths, civilian and military, from World War II. Such a horrific statistic should be appraised soberly and carefully. The criminal policy allowing unrestricted expansion of the pandemic has had a particularly destructive impact on working class.

Particularly remarkable is the acceleration of the death toll beginning with the surges after the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. As recorded by NBC News, the first 100,000 US deaths required 99 days (February 29–May 17); the second 100,000 deaths required 115 days, to September 19; the third 100,000 deaths took 86 days, until December 14; the fourth 100,000 deaths took only 36 days until January 19; and the fifth 100,000 deaths will require somewhere between 28 and 31 days, depending on when this week that terrible milestone is reached.

More Americans have died of coronavirus since the US presidential election, less than three months ago, than in the eight months that preceded it. By next week, more than 100,000 Americans will have died of coronavirus under the Biden administration.

As the British medical journal, The Lancet, explained, “The global COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate effect on the USA, with more than 26 million diagnosed cases and over 450,000 deaths as of early February 2021, about 40 percent of which could have been averted had the US death rate mirrored the weighted average of the other G7 nations.” This is not praise for the other G7 nations who have pursued profit interests over the safety of their populations. The United States has just been more egregious in this regard.

The Lancet continued, “Many of the cases and deaths were avoidable. Instead of galvanizing the US populace to fight the pandemic, President Trump publicly dismissed its threat (despite privately acknowledging it), discouraged action as infection spread, and eschewed international cooperation.”

Rather taking a proper accounting of the efforts of the Biden administration to begin a rapid opening of K-12 schools, the bourgeois press has employed the impeachment debacle as a distraction and diversion, while at the same time concealing the real significance of the January 6 fascist coup attempt.

The media has gone on to praise Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the Chicago teachers union’s betrayal of the rank-and-file and have raised a hue and cry over why schools aren’t opening immediately. Over the weekend, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky’s primary focus, using the Sunday press shows, was to provide the financial oligarchs assurance that neither the new variants nor the high community transmission would deter the Biden administration from carrying out the agenda of big business.

When questioned by host Margaret Brennan of “Face the Nation” on CBS about holding in-person classes while the B.1.1.7 variant was spreading, Dr. Walensky assured her that, “the amount of disease in school is very much related to the amount of disease that’s in the community. There’s very limited transmission between students, between students and staff.” When such infections occurred, she blamed improper mask wearing and lack of personal responsibility. There was no discussion of the looming half-million dead.

It is of no consequence to Dr. Walensky that 99 percent of all counties in the US are in the red zone, meaning that transmission rates remain still too high under CDC guidelines for children to return to school without massive protective efforts which virtually no school district has the resources to implement.

Walensky also went on to discount the detection of 1,173 cases of the UK variant across 40 states. Now, there are 17 cases of the South African variant across eight states, as well as three cases of the Brazilian variant. And to add another dimension to the crisis, the New York Times reported on Sunday that a team of researchers have found “seven growing lineages of the novel coronavirus, spotted across the country. All of them have evolved a mutation in the same genetic letter.”

The Q677P mutation in the virus’s spike protein was first detected in the US on October 23. By January 19, these new lineages now make up 28 and 11 percent of all the SARS-CoV-2 genomes sequenced from Louisiana and New Mexico, respectively. These cases have been predominately found in the south central and southwest of the United States. As of early February, GISAID data has shown there have been close to 500 viral sequences of this variant in the US.

Though it remains to be determined if these new variants are more contagious, the scientists studying these new mutations are concerned because they are located in a gene that determines how well the virus can bind to a human cell and enter it. More concerning is that these mutations are following a convergent evolutionary pathway that provides them a survival benefit. In a setting of high community transmission, they are facing evolutionary pressures to adapt.

In countries like Brazil, South Africa and the United Kingdom, where such variants became dominant, the outcome was a rapid surge in cases that led to health systems becoming inundated and death tolls soaring. What perplexed politicians and state officials was that the usual measures taken during the spring didn’t work with these new variants. A concerted effort and hard lockdown were required. The Netherlands and Norway, which faced their own fight with the UK variant, quickly adopted these strict measures and turned their pandemic curves. In the United States, the Biden administration is counting on the vaccine to avoid such choices.

However, according to the Washington Post vaccination tracker, only 38.7 million people have received one or both doses of the vaccines. Though vaccinations have sped up to around 1.66 million per day on a seven-day average, supplies of the vaccines cannot keep up with demand. California has used up more than 72 percent of its doses and is experiencing shortages in some areas. For instance, Dodger Stadium had to shut down vaccinations after exhausting its supply, having only received 16,000 doses last week.

Not surprisingly, there is little stomach in the media to discuss any future lockdowns. If 100,000 deaths were shocking, 500,000 deaths and more leave them numb and callous. So ingrained has become the policy of herd immunity within the ruling class that a strategy to eradicate the virus is no longer conceivable as a point of discussion.

Yet principled epidemiologists like Dr. Deepti Gurdasani, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, have been on the front line warning Prime Minister Boris Johnson that the drive to open schools prematurely will squander the gains over the last several weeks. She is fighting for a COVID strategy she calls “zero COVID.”

Her strategy would require a lockdown of 2 to 3 months to reach a target level of under 10 per 100,000 infections per day before easing restrictions. In the interim, investment in fixing the test, trace and isolate programs need urgent attention and to be placed in federal hands. Additionally, vaccine distributions could be enhanced per vaccine protocols—two-dose regimens for targeted population, improvement in infrastructure investment and safety in schools. This strategy would also remove any uncertainty around the evolution of new variants and possible impact on vaccine efficacy.

The course the ruling class is pursuing will only bring more death and suffering for the working class, who have paid dearly for the incompetence demonstrated by capitalist governments. The ruling class and their political servants have no clear exit strategy. They have no idea what the herd immunity threshold is or if it is achievable. Repeat surges and shutdowns have been the characteristic and unscientific reaction to the pandemic. Because profits will always be a primary objective, there is no hoping that they can come to their senses. Only the working class can turn the tide of social misery and prevent further loss of life.

White House condemns WHO findings after scientists debunk ‘Wuhan Lab’ conspiracy theory

Andre Damon

The Biden White house has expressed “deep concerns” over the findings of an international team from the World Health Organization after WHO scientists debunked false claims by the US government that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory.

Former Vice President of the United States Joe Biden speaking with supporters at a town hall hosted by the Iowa Asian and Latino Coalition at Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 33 in Des Moines, Iowa. (Wikimedia Commons/Gage Skidmore)

On January 15, the US State Department published a “fact sheet” on “Activity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology” that demanded that the World Health Organization investigate the

false and discredited conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was released from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The State Department wrote that a “laboratory accident could resemble a natural outbreak.”

The document put into writing the lie by former secretary of state Mike Pompeo that “there is enormous evidence that that’s where this began,” when asked if COVID-19 “originated in that Wuhan lab.”

The lie peddled by Pompeo, together with Trump co-conspirators Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, was initially popularized by the far-right expatriate Chinese Epoch Times associated with the Falun Gong movement.

But after the conspiracy theory’s open embrace by the Trump administration, it was then laundered through the establishment media, becoming part of the US government’s official political line.

On February 5, the Democratic-aligned Washington Post published an editorial embracing the position of the Trump State Department that “a laboratory accident or leak” represents a “plausible” explanation for the pandemic.

But these bipartisan efforts to falsely claim COVID-19 was released from a Chinese lab – with the subtext that it is a biological weapon and a military attack on the United States – were dealt a shattering blow by investigators from the World Health Organization.

On February 9, WHO researchers returning from an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 demolished the “Wuhan lab” conspiracy theory, saying that the World Health Organization would conduct no further research into it.

Professor Liang Wannian from Tsinghua University, speaking at the WHO panel, made clear that the theory that the “virus was engineered by humans” has “already been refuted by the whole scientific community around the world.”

As to the claim that the virus escaped from a laboratory by accident, Liang added, “in all the laboratories in Wuhan, there is no existing virus of SARS-CoV-2. If there is no existence of this virus, there will be no way that this virus would be linked.”

Peter Ben Embarek, a WHO food safety expert, added that “nowhere previously was this particular virus researched or identified or known.”

These statements prompted a condemnation from the Biden administration, which declared, “We have deep concerns about the way in which the early findings of the COVID-19 investigation were communicated and questions about the process used to reach them.”

Pointing to the Biden administration’s reversal of Trump’s defunding of the World Health Organization, the White House demanded political subservience in exchange for funding. The statement threatened, “re-engaging the WHO also means holding it to the highest standards,” demanding that its findings be “free from intervention or alteration by the Chinese government.”

China was the center of the first large-scale outbreak of COVID-19, a completely new disease that had never been observed anywhere else in the world. Despite this, only 4,636 people have died of COVID-19 in China, or about as many people as died in the United States on a single day – July 12, 2020.

Despite reports of initially seeking to downplay the extent of the disease, the Chinese government rapidly alerted the international scientific community. It publicly shared the genetic sequence of the disease on January 12, and allowed a WHO team to travel freely and observe the outbreak, resulting in the February 16-24 report that guided scientists and doctors around the world in their fight against the disease.

The report made clear that China was able to tame the pandemic by mobilizing a vast array of social resources to treat the infected, track all contacts, and prevent community transmission through targeted lockdowns.

The governments of the United States and Europe rejected these measures because they were viewed as being too economically costly, allowing the pandemic to spread largely unchecked and never building up any systematic network of disease tracking and contact tracing, leading to the deaths of half a million people in the United States alone.

Despite the WHO scientists’ rejection of the “Wuhan lab” conspiracy theory and their praise for their Chinese collaborators, the US media has twisted their words to claim that China was engaged in a cover-up.

On February 12, the New York Times ran an article declaring, “On W.H.O. Trip, China Refused to Hand Over Important Data.”

The article stated, “Chinese scientists refused to share raw data that might bring the world closer to understanding the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, independent investigators for the W.H.O. said on Friday.”

British zoologist Peter Daszak, who was in the WHO delegation, excoriated the report on Twitter. “This was NOT my experience on @WHO mission. As lead of animal/environment working group I found trust & openness w/ my China counterparts. We DID get access to critical new data throughout. We DID increase our understanding of likely spillover pathways.”

Thea K. Fischer, another member of the team, added, “This was NOT my experience either on the Epi-side. We DID build up a good relationship in the Chinese/Int Epi-team! Allowing for heated arguments reflects a deep level of engagement in the room. Our quotes are intendedly twisted casting shadows over important scientific work.”

Daszak added, “It's disappointing to spend time w/ journalists explaining key findings of our exhausting month-long work in China, to see our colleagues selectively misquoted to fit a narrative that was prescribed before the work began. Shame on you @nytimes!”

Over 700 detained after Turkish invasion of Iraq targets PKK

Ulaş Ateşçi

Yesterday, the Turkish Interior Ministry announced that 718 people, including officials and members of the legal Kurdish nationalist Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), have been detained as part of “terror operations” carried out in 40 different cities across the country.

As part of an already advanced drive towards dictatorship that is eliminating basic democratic rights and constitutional guarantees, this state crackdown launched by President Recep Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government is a massive witch-hunt aimed at suppressing any kind of opposition. It is unprecedented in its scope since the NATO-backed attempted military coup in 2016.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister of Turkey (Paul Morigi Photography/Flickr)

These police operations came immediately after Defense Minister Hulusi Akar’s announcement Sunday that 13 Turkish nationals, including soldiers and police officers, were killed by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the mountainous Gara or Gare region of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) during a recently launched Turkish military invasion. They had reportedly been held as prisoners by the PKK since 2015.

After this announcement, a feverish government and media campaign was unleashed, blaming the HDP for deaths. Meanwhile, the HDP had announced on Saturday that at least 143 of its members had been detained over the past two days.

According to Defense Minister Akar, “It has been established that one of our innocent and unarmed citizens was shot in the shoulder, and the remaining 12 were shot in the head. They were killed in a cave where the Turkish forces arrived to carry out a search.”

He also said that the operation, conducted in a 75 kilometers-wide and 25 kilometers-deep area in Iraq, had been successfully concluded. “With the operation, all the elements that had been settled in this area and were preparing to attack our borders, security forces and people have almost been eliminated,” he said. Three Turkish soldiers and 48 PKK militia members lost their lives in the military clash, according to Akar.

The Defense Ministry had announced last Wednesday that it had launched a new military invasion dubbed Operation Eagle Claw 2 into northern Iraq targeting PKK forces on the ground, claiming that there was a growing threat against Turkey from a PKK presence in the area. Dozens of warplanes and drones were used in the military operation, along with ground forces deployed to the area by helicopter.

The ministry announced on Friday that the operation was conducted “in coordination with friends and allies,” likely referring to the KRG and the central Iraqi government. Top Turkish military officials, including Akar and Chief of the General Staff Yaşar Güler, have recently conducted several discussions with their counterparts in Erbil and Baghdad. Ankara had launched two other military invasions into the area to drive out PKK forces last July, involving Turkish air and ground forces.

On the other hand, the PKK claimed in a statement cited by the ANF News that the 13 Turkish nationals were killed by Turkish air strikes that hit a camp where prisoners were held in Gara, stating that, “The bombardment, which lasted for three days, and the fierce battles inside and outside the camp resulted in the death of some of the MIT [Turkish intelligence] members, soldiers and policemen we had captured.”

Both HDP and the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputies have raised their long-standing efforts to release these prisoners, and accused the Erdoğan government of rejecting these initiatives.

HDP deputy Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu tweeted on Sunday: “The relatives of the soldiers held hostage by the PKK applied to me 2.5 years ago… I could have done anything for peace and life, but the state officials had never thought of something like that, they did not take a step.”

Another HDP deputy, Hüda Kaya, also asserted that, “The Republic of Turkey bombed the hostage camp and they stopped when they understood that they had died. Those who said ‘Yes’ to war motions are now lamenting.” That was a reference to the CHP, the HDP’s electoral ally, which has always supported motions in favor of cross-border military operations in the Parliament. After these statements were posted on social media, the Prosecutor’s Office in Ankara launched an investigation against these deputies on charges of “propagandizing for a terrorist organization.”

Murat Bakan, a CHP deputy, has also revealed that he had submitted six parliamentary questions for years; all but one of them remained unanswered. He asked the government, “Why did you not do anything for years, give an accounting for that … I have been struggling for years for them to return to their homeland, their homes and reunite with their families.”

However, top Turkish officials have seized on the deaths of the 13 Turkish nationals as an opportunity to wage a further attack on democratic rights, and divert outward the growing social opposition within the population to the government’s homicidal response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu clearly accused the HDP and all those questioning who was to blame for the deaths of “trying to acquit” the PKK, writing that, “If we could not catch Murat Karayılan [a PKK leader] and cut him into a thousand pieces, this Nation and our Martyrs should spit in our faces.”

With this statement, which could only come from a fascistic government, a minister has openly rejected the right of due process for a potential defendant, and called instead for his brutal extrajudicial murder.

Erdoğan’s political ally and the leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Devlet Bahçeli, has also stated that, “Nothing will be the same as before after this. Everyone should pick their side. Either treason or guidance. Either damnation or the people.”

These statements and subsequent police operations must be taken as a stark warning to the working class and those who defend democratic rights. As part of the drive towards authoritarianism by ruling classes globally, the Turkish government has a very clear agenda against the coming struggles of workers amid the deepening economic and social crises that have been accelerated by the pandemic. Only a few weeks ago, there were mass student protests against an anti-democratic move by the government, gaining wide support within the population.

However, the Erdoğan government and its far-right ally are also concerned over a growing challenge by a potential electoral alliance including not only the CHP and HDP, but also the far-right Good Party, and two AKP split-offs, the Future Party of former AKP Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA) of former AKP Economy Minister Ali Babacan. Several recent polls indicate that such an alliance could defeat the AKP-MHP alliance if elections were held today.

This attempt to cobble together a pro-imperialist opposition alliance underscores that both the HDP and CHP are right-wing bourgeois parties, unwilling and incapable of defending democratic rights. Their potential alliance is based only on the interests of the Turkish and Kurdish bourgeoisie, and oriented to the NATO imperialist powers.

The Turkish government’s cross-border military operations and police crackdown against the Kurdish nationalist parties inside the country are also bound up with conflicts between Ankara and its NATO imperialist allies, in particular Washington, over the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean. Ankara regularly denounces the US-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria as a terrorist group, indistinguishable from the PKK. It views any enclave in Syria controlled by the YPG as a threat to Turkey’s territorial integrity. In furtherance of this policy, it has carried out many military invasions into Syria targeting the YPG over past five years.

After the US State Department issued a statement hinting suspicions over the deaths of the 13 Turkish nationals, a conflict erupted between Ankara and Washington. Washington stated, “If reports of the death of Turkish civilians at the hands of the PKK, a designated terrorist organization, are confirmed, we condemn this action in the strongest possible terms.”

President Erdoğan responded with an angry attack on the US, despite Ankara’s recent attempts to improve strained ties with Washington after the election of Joe Biden as president. He said yesterday, “Now there is a statement made by the United States. It’s a joke. Were you not supposed to stand against the PKK, the YPG? You clearly support them and stand behind them.”

He added that “If we are together with you in NATO, if we are to continue our unity, then you will act sincerely towards us. Then, you will stand with us, not with the terrorists.”

The Turkish Foreign Ministry summoned the US ambassador to Turkey, David M. Satterfield, to deliver Ankara’s criticism of the US statement “in the strongest terms possible.”

There was a phone call between Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and his American counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for the first time since Biden’s inauguration. Blinken tweeted afterwards that he spoke with Çavuşoğlu about the “longstanding importance of the U.S.-Turkish bilateral relationship. I look forward to continued cooperation in Syria, counterterrorism, and de-escalation efforts in the Eastern Mediterranean.”

Turkish presidential spokesman İbrahim Kalın recently emphasized Ankara’s willingness to improve relations with Washington, but also spelled out three major points of conflict: “The S-400 issue [the air defense system bought from Russia] and the implementation of CAATSA sanctions in connection with it and removing Turkey from the F-35 program. Secondly, the support the US has given to the PYD/YPG since the Obama era. Third, the FETO structure [US-based preacher Fethullah Gülen blamed by Ankara for the 2016 coup attempt] still continues its activities against Turkey freely in the US.”

However, in addition to these ongoing conflicts, the US position under the Biden administration on Kurdish forces and the “keep the oil” policy in Syria introduced by former President Trump seems not to have changed as Ankara demands. The Syrian state news agency SANA reported on Sunday that “US occupation forces brought in a convoy of vehicles carrying logistic support and weapons to their base in the al-Omar oil field in Deir Ezzor eastern countryside in a step to boost their occupation in the area,” an area controlled jointly by the US military and YPG forces.

As a clear signal of Ankara’s intention to revive the regime change war in Syria launched nearly ten years ago, Kalın also said in the same interview that, “We cannot agree on the PYD in Syria, but let me say that we have much common ground [with the US] regarding the future of the Assad regime.”

Behind the warehouse lockout in Australia: Coles and the corporate restructuring offensive

Mike Head

Australian supermarket and retail chain, the Coles Group, last week “indefinitely” extended the three-month lockout of workers at its Smeaton Grange warehouse in southwestern Sydney. This is part of an attempt by Coles, one of the country’s largest companies and employers, to satisfy the dictates of the global financial markets, which are demanding higher investment returns and share prices.

The most immediate objective of the extension of the lockout is to starve workers into accepting a sell-out deal, pushed by the United Workers Union (UWU), that would result in the closure of the facility and the destruction of most, if not all, of the 350 jobs there. In a critical stand, the Smeaton Grange workers voted on February 2 to reject the company-UWU agreement.

Coles Supermarkets headquarters in Hawthorn East, Victoria, viewed from Tooronga Road bridge. (Wikimedia Commons)

It is increasingly clear that the lockout is a spearhead of a broader corporate and government offensive to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic to accelerate the decades-long assault on the jobs and conditions of the working class.

In a company video last week, Matt Swindells, the Coles Group’s chief operations officer, praised the UWU for seeking to impose Coles’ demands, castigated workers for their repeated rejection of the sell-out and denounced “extremist” and “anti-union” socialists, i.e., the Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site, for upsetting the company-UWU operation.

Swindells declared: “The only people who have an alternative plan are the extreme socialists who have infiltrated this dispute. They’ve got their voices in the ears of people, and they’re suggesting this wider agenda of taking on big business and the banks.” He warned that the “anti-union” socialists were seeking to extend the dispute to other Coles warehouses, which are also scheduled for closure and replacement by automated facilities.

Swindells not only revealed the collaboration of the UWU with the company. He identified the real forces driving the confrontation: “big business and the banks.” In fact, the Coles Group itself represents big business and the banks. It epitomises the financial elite’s grip over the entire Australian and global capitalist economy.

For the Coles Group to be fronting the broader corporate assault on workers is no accident.

In the first place, with a current market capitalisation of $24 billion, the Coles Group is the 18th largest company listed on the leading Australian share index, the ASX200. It was de-merged and sold off in 2018 by what was then the country’s biggest retail conglomerate, Wesfarmers, which remains the 10th biggest company listed on the ASX200.

Secondly, Wesfarmers divested itself of Coles Group because, as it informed the sharemarket, it was no longer satisfied with the rates of growth and profits it could derive from the group. Wesfarmers cut Coles loose, meaning that the Coles management had to embark on a drastic cost-cutting and restructuring operation in order to survive.

Initially, Wesfarmers retained a 15 percent share in Coles but has since sold down its holding to 4.9 percent. The other two large shareholders are now BlackRock (5.48 percent) and the Vanguard Group (4.08 percent). These are two of the three most massive US investment funds, often referred to as “shadow banks,” which control $15 trillion in global assets between them.

These ruthless operators only invest on the basis of extracting the highest rates of return, through the continual ratcheting up of the exploitation of workers’ labour power.

The Coles Group

Besides operating one of the country’s two largest supermarket chains, the Coles Group owns Coles Online, Coles Express petrol stations, liquor store networks, hotels and a financial services operation, which includes insurance and credit cards, and jointly owns the FlyBuys business. The group boasts of nearly 120,000 employees. It is Australian capitalism’s third largest private employer, behind Wesfarmers and its main rival retail giant, Woolworths.

The Coles Group board of directors personifies the wealthy elite, with its interlocking financial interests. The chairman, James Graham, was a director of Wesfarmers, and chairman of Rabobank Australia Limited, responsible for the Dutch financial giant’s operations in Australia and New Zealand.

Steven Cain, the Coles Group managing director and CEO, was previously CEO of the South African-owned Metcash supermarket and convenience store business and earlier the Grocery Trading Director of the Walmart-owned Asda Stores in Britain during what the Coles Group’s website describes as Asda’s profit “turnaround.”

For his services in 2019–20, according to the Coles Group annual report, Cain was paid just under $7 million in cash and share allotments, mostly tied to his performance in generating profits and driving up the share price. That remuneration is approximately 140 times an average warehouse worker’s wage of $50,000 a year.

David Cheesewright, another director, also has a Walmart connection. Until 2018, he was president and CEO of Walmart International, “which comprises Walmart’s operations outside the United States, including more than 6,200 stores and over a million associates in 27 countries.”

Two other members of the Coles Group board, Paul O’Malley and Wendy Stops, are directors of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the country’s largest bank. O’Malley was previously CEO of BlueScope Steel, a BHP spin-off, and before that CEO of TXU Energy, a subsidiary of TXU Corp based in Dallas, Texas.

As chief operations manager, Matthew Swindells is not a board member but part of the “executive leadership team,” in charge of operations across the whole group. He earlier was CEO of Tasman Meats, a private equity-owned meat retailer. His remuneration package in 2019–20 totaled $2.35 million, or about 47 times a warehouse worker’s pay.

In the words of the Coles Group website, Swindells supervises “end-to-end management of Store Operations, Supply Chain and Procurement as well as leading the business on the automation strategy with Witron and Ocado.” Witron is a subsidiary of WITRON Logistik + Informatik GmbH, a German-based manufacturer of automated distribution centres, and Ocado is a British-based firm specialising in robotic warehouses.

Such technology opens up tremendous possibilities for reducing back-breaking work in warehouses, planning logistics more exactly and boosting productivity. Under socialism, that is public ownership and democratic workers’ control, these developments would be used to improve the wages and conditions of all workers while cutting working hours. But under capitalism, this technology means the destruction of workers’ jobs and conditions for the sake of private profit.

Coles’ “transformation plans”

CEO Cain reported to the Coles Group annual general meeting on November 5, just two weeks before the company imposed its lockout, that the company’s “vision” aimed to “grow long-term shareholder value” and its “strategy” is “all about changing at pace, efficiency and innovating for the future.” He reported with pride that shareholder return had been lifted to a staggering 32 percent.

An annual net profit of $978 million was recorded in 2019-20, drawn from revenue of $37.7 billion, but that is regarded as only the beginning of what the company must produce to satisfy the likes of the huge investment funds BlackRock and Vanguard.

Cain said the management had accelerated its “transformation plans” as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic erupted. Coles had established “pop-up distribution centres” within “a matter of days” last March. These were part of a “Smarter Selling Strategy” to reduce costs by $1 billion.

Clearly, however, the highly-casualised “pop-ups” were also in preparation for confronting the workers at Smeaton Grange and elsewhere who resisted the elimination of their livelihoods. With the full knowledge of the UWU, months before the lockout, the company created the capacity to impose lengthy shutdowns of any warehouse where workers threatened to take industrial action.

This “strategy” was no doubt discussed with Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government at the highest level. In chairman Graham’s report to the Coles Group annual general meeting, he emphasised that the company was working closely with the government via the COVID-19 Supermarket Taskforce “initiated” by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton.

Graham further noted that management had made “considerable progress on our two step out technology commitments,” with “automated distribution facilities” in Sydney and Brisbane and “two highly automated customer fulfilment centres in Melbourne and Sydney.”

Coles, which began as a cheap variety store in 1914, has long been a feature of Australia’s ruling establishment. During the 1980s, amid the economic restructuring conducted under the Labor Party government of Bob Hawke, it acquired liquor store networks, low-cost fashion chains and the department store chain, Myer, forming Coles Myer. Hawke opened the Coles Myer corporate headquarters in Melbourne in 1987.

Two decades later, faced by the decline of department stores, Coles sold Myer in 2006 and was in turn acquired by Wesfarmers in 2007. By 2018, however, Wesfarmers regarded the Coles Group as a drag on its investment returns and offloaded it.

This reality confirms that the struggle of the locked-out Coles workers does mean “taking on big business and the banks.” As the SEP explained in its January 27 statement calling for a rejection of the UWU sell-out at Smeaton Grange: “The struggle is not just against one company management, but the entire profit system.”

Oregon and other US states prioritize vaccinating educators in order to boost profits

David Fitzgerald

The state of Oregon and at least 28 other states have placed teachers in Phase 1 of the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine as part of the effort to resume in-person learning as quickly as possible. This policy is being promoted by the teachers unions as the CDC released its latest guidelines on school reopenings last Friday, encouraging districts to open schools “at any level of community transmission.”

Frozen vials of the COVID-19 vaccine (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Oregon’s Democratic Governor Kate Brown, with the support of the Oregon Education Association, has spearheaded the policy of vaccinating teachers before the most vulnerable sections of the population, announcing their plan on January 15. Teachers began to receive first doses on January 23. Most day care, preschool and K-12 school employees have been eligible to receive the vaccine since January 25.

Many educators have opposed this policy, requesting that the vaccines instead be given to those at higher risk of contracting or succumbing to the virus, including essential workers, the elderly, and those with chronic illnesses. At a controversial press conference on January 15, Brown responded to these criticisms by doubling down on the position that schools need to be reopened “as quickly as possible.”

By denying the vaccine to elderly age groups in order to prioritize teachers, the state is allowing dozens if not hundreds more people to become infected and die from COVID-19. According to Oregon Public Broadcasting, “People over the age of 65 make up about 16 percent of the U.S. population, but 80 percent of all COVID-19 deaths. 91 percent of all deaths in Oregon have been in those 60 and older, despite making up just a quarter of the state’s population.”

Governor Brown could not offer a scientifically justified response to criticisms from the press, instead asserting that students suffer most when schools are shut down. She blamed the mental health crisis among young people on remote learning rather than on the real underlying cause: the homicidal policies of the state. Further, she ignored the mental health consequences of young people bringing the virus home to their families, which will far outweigh the consequences of remote learning.

The unstated but overriding concern is the desire to reopen the economy as quickly as possible, which requires schools to effectively serve as childcare so parents can go back to work. Brown constantly stressed that she is working directly with the Biden administration, whose top economic advisor Brian Deese recently stated, “We need to get the schools open so that parents, and particularly women… can get back to work.”

State officials admit that it could take months for every education worker to receive two doses, even if elderly age groups’ eligibility is pushed back. The director of the Oregon State Health Authority promised to vaccinate educators over a two week period, but the Oregonian recently reported, “It could take up to four weeks to provide only a first shot to early learning and K-12 employees.” Further, this schedule “assumes virtually no vaccinations for seniors 80 and older who will soon qualify.” As of Monday, state residents aged 75 and over are eligible to start vaccination, but the 70-plus group must wait until February 22 and 65-plus until March 1.

Events in Oregon are taking place as part of a national campaign to rush the reopening of schools, which is now overseen by the Biden administration. Last week, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) rammed through a deadly betrayal of its membership to reopen Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the third largest school district in the US.

During the negotiations in Chicago, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky intervened publicly and insisted that “vaccinations of teachers is not a prerequisite for safely reopening schools.” Within days, the CTU caved on their initial demand that teachers should only return to schools when vaccinated, settling for having 1,500 out of roughly 25,000 CTU members vaccinated each week and having teachers return before receiving both doses of vaccine.

The entire premise that schools can reopen safely as the pandemic rages out of control—regardless of whether or not educators are vaccinated—is false and unscientific. Numerous studies have demonstrated that implementing these policies will lead to an explosion of cases and deaths.

Even if teachers are successfully vaccinated in Phase 1 of distribution, children are a significant factor in the spread of COVID-19. The European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has openly acknowledged that children are susceptible to the virus and do transmit the disease. Antoine Flahault, director of the University of Geneva’s Institute of Global Health, admitted that children and young adults are infected just as often as adults. A study conducted in southern India came to the same conclusion. British prime minister Boris Johnson has been forced to admit that “the problem is schools may nonetheless act as vectors for transmission, causing the virus to spread between households.”

The rush to reopen schools, led by the corporate media, the entire political establishment and the teachers unions, is unfolding as COVID-19 cases continue to surge through the population, with a 7-day average of 99,565 cases as of February 12. Up to 20,400 deaths are expected to be reported from February 8 to March 6, amounting to a total of 540,000 deaths in the US alone.

Further, the B.1.1.7 variant first discovered in the UK is forecast to become the dominant lineage in the US by late March. This variant is more infectious and lethal than the wild type of the virus, and the capacity for the vaccines presently available to mitigate the most severe symptoms of this new variant is still an open question. There are reports that the B.1.1.7 variant could be 30 to 70 percent deadlier than the wild type of the virus.

The B1351 variant first discovered in South Africa carries two mutations that have shocked the medical community. One mutation, called N501Y, make the virus far easier to spread. Another mutation, E484K, allows the virus to avoid the immune system more effectively. It has also been shown that certain coronavirus vaccines are worse at preventing infection from this coronavirus variant.

Medical scientists are still unsure of what effect the vaccine will have on the spread of the virus, given the new variants. It is probable that those who have been vaccinated will still be capable of spreading the virus to others, even after receiving both doses of the vaccine. Stanley H. Weiss, M.D., an epidemiologist and professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and the Department of Biostatistics & Epidemiology at the Rutgers School of Public Health, has stated that the risk of transmissibility after vaccination is “greatly diminished, but not eliminated.”

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is a living organism that will continue to evolve as it is allowed to rip through the population. Dr. Katherine O’Brien, director for Immunizations, Vaccines and Biologicals at the World Health Organization (WHO), stated that vaccinations are not sufficient for making schools or communities safe, noting, “risk of variants relative to the vaccines is ever greater when the transmission is very high in the communities. Not only because of variants that have occurred, but because of the possibility of additional variants emerging under the pressure of vaccines.”

O’Brien asserted, “We have to emphasize the importance of really crushing transmission now while we are rolling out these new vaccines.” The drive to reopen schools directly contradicts the advice of the WHO, regardless of whether or not teachers are vaccinated.

The closure of schools has been crucial in limiting the transmission of the virus and preventing death. A JAMA study published last July 29 found a 62 percent decline in infections per week when a state closed its schools statewide. The mortality rate dropped 58 percent per week when schools were closed.

The policy of “social murder” is being exacerbated by providing the vaccine to teachers before the most vulnerable individuals in society, under conditions where teachers and students could safely stay home and learn sufficiently with well-funded remote learning programs. The elderly and those who are immunocompromised or have preexisting conditions will receive the vaccine only after teachers are providing in-person instruction.

A struggle must be waged by educators and workers across the US against the unions, state and local governments of both parties, and the Biden administration, all of whom seek to implement a homicidal policy. The drive to reopen schools is due to the need under capitalism to extract surplus value from the working class. The financial oligarchy will take any measure to boost their profits and is ready to sacrifice the population on a global scale to maintain this course.

France’s anti-Muslim “security” law: A frontal assault on democratic rights

Alex Lantier

The “anti-separatist” law now set to pass in the French National Assembly effects a drastic, authoritarian shift in France’s political regime. Its 51 articles tear apart democratic rights established for over a century.

Coming just weeks after Donald Trump’s attempted coup in Washington, the frontal assault on democratic rights in France must be taken as a warning by workers internationally. Confronting growing popular opposition to capitalism and anger among workers and youth to a murderous health policy that has led to two million deaths from COVID-19, the financial aristocracy is moving towards dictatorship.

A police officer looks at demonstrators during a protest against a proposed security law in Paris, Saturday, Jan.16, 2021. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

The government of French President Emmanuel Macron presents its law as a weapon to eradicate “separatist” support for Islamism and terrorism and to compel loyalty to the state and to its right-wing bans on Muslim headscarves. Rewriting—in fact, tearing apart—the 1905 secularism law that established the separation of church and state, the “anti-separatist law” grants the state vast control over the organization and funding of religious institutions and arbitrary powers to close houses of worship. Across France, nine mosques have already been closed, and 76 are threatened with closure.

Using this threat, he has already imposed on the French Muslim Council a humiliating new charter, compelling Muslims to obey “national cohesion” and “public order.” This effectively establishes Muslims as a separate category of citizens subject to a loyalty oath. It is impossible not to recall that in the 20th century, fascist regimes incited anti-Semitic hatreds to divide the working class and impose murderous policies.

It would be wrong, moreover, to view this law as an attack on the rights solely of Muslims or other believers. Article 8 imposes the fascistic principle that associations—that is, organizations such as charities, community groups and political parties, created under the terms of a 1901 law—are collectively responsible for the actions of each of their individual members.

This paves the way for arbitrary bans on cultural and political organizations. Police could cite any infraction committed by a member of an association to declare the entire association to be criminal, ban it and potentially prosecute its members. It is an attack on the entire working class.

As is the case throughout Europe and internationally, the ruling class is cultivating outright fascist forces. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, 38, who oversaw the drafting of the law, makes no secret of his fascistic sympathies. Asked whether the law could be used to ban parties, Darmanin replied that he would not prosecute the far-right Action française (AF) party, even though it seeks to overthrow the Republic and replace it with an absolute monarchy, as before the 1789 French Revolution. AF members later confirmed Darmanin was active in their party in 2008, later joining The Republicans and then Macron’s party.

The 1901 and 1905 laws now targeted by Macron were established in a struggle against the Action française—the most ruthless intellectual proponents of political anti-Semitism, monarchism and ultimately of anti-communism and fascism in France.

The Action française was founded in 1898 to keep Jewish officer Captain Alfred Dreyfus in jail after his wrongful 1894 conviction on false espionage charges by the Army, backed by the Church. The socialist movement, led by Jean Jaurès, played the leading role in the struggle that established Dreyfus’s innocence. The Action française’s devastating defeat in the Dreyfus Affair prepared the passage of the 1901 and 1905 laws, guaranteeing freedom of association and freedom of religion.

During World War II, the Action française was the political base of the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime. Action française leader Charles Maurras hailed the coming to power of collaborationist dictator Philippe Pétain in 1940 as a “divine surprise.” After the war, when Pétain and Maurras were convicted of treason, Maurras bitterly remarked that it was “the revenge of Dreyfus.”

With the “anti-separatist” law, the Macron administration is fashioning the revenge of Maurras. It has repudiated its pretenses during the 2017 elections—that Macron was a “democratic” alternative to neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen.

In 2018, amid mass “yellow vest” protests against social inequality, Macron hailed Pétain as a “great soldier.” Now, rejecting mass public sentiment and calls from the medical community for a shelter-at-home order on COVID-19, it pursues a far-right line. Last week, in a prime-time TV debate, Darmanin attacked Le Pen from the right as “soft” on Islam, telling her to take “vitamins.”

The turn toward authoritarianism is bound up with the homicidal policy of the ruling class in response to the coronavirus pandemic. As the WSWS has explained, the COVID-19 pandemic is a trigger event in world history. To implement its homicidal policy, the ruling class internationally is cultivating fascistic forces and turning to authoritarian forms of rule.

Across Europe, similar processes are underway. In Spain, the army reacted to strikes last year that forced the adoption of a lockdown policy by plotting coups and rehabilitating 1936 fascist coup leader and dictator Francisco Franco. In Italy, banker Mario Draghi is forming a “herd immunity” government, including both the far-right Lega and the ex-Stalinist Democratic Party. And the German bourgeoisie is escalating its calls for rearmament and campaigns to rehabilitate the Nazis.

The force that historically was mobilized against fascism, and that today must be mobilized again, is the international working class, fighting on a socialist program. Overcoming fascistic attacks on fundamental democratic rights, driven by the profit interests of the banks, requires building a movement to transfer power to the working class. Such a struggle cannot be left in the hands of the union bureaucracies and their reactionary political allies.

In France the pseudo-left parties of the affluent middle class, who tacitly supported Macron in 2017, have backed Macron’s “herd immunity” policy and the “anti-separatist” law. The Stalinist French Communist Party and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France (LFI) party, which initially called the law “useless and dangerous” and a “mess of amalgams” against Muslims, are now voting on the law’s articles in parliament. Tied to Macron and financed by European Union pandemic bailouts, they are moving sharply to the right.