Governments spend trillions on weapons, claim there is no money for health care

Andre Damon

As governments around the world last year rejected measures to contain COVID-19 on the grounds that there was no money to pay for them, the world spent unprecedented sums on nuclear weapons, tanks and missiles.

The United States, which spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined, increased its military spending by 4.4 percent compared to the year before. The country outlaid some $778 billion on its military last year alone.

An F/A-18E Super Hornet lands on the flight deck of the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), as USS Nimitz (CVN 68) steams alongside in the South China Sea, Monday, July 6, 2020. (Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Samantha Jetzer/U.S. Navy via AP)

The data comes from an annual report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which has tracked global military spending going back over 30 years.

Total global military spending rose to nearly $2 trillion last year, up 2.6 percent from a year ago, after adjusting for inflation.

Amazingly, this growth took place even as world economic output shrank by 4.4 percent. As a result, military spending as a share of the global economy surged by the highest level in a decade.

The SIPRI noted that the massive surge in US military spending is attributed to the policy—now spanning three presidents—of massively building up its military and conventional forces in preparation for “great power conflicts” with Russia and China.

“The recent increases in US military spending can be primarily attributed to heavy investment in research and development, and several long-term projects such as modernizing the US nuclear arsenal and large-scale arms procurement,” said Alexandra Marksteiner, a researcher with SIPRI.

“This reflects growing concerns over perceived threats from strategic competitors such as China and Russia,” she added.

This trend is only continuing. Earlier this month, the Biden administration requested the largest military budget in US history, demanding $753 billion in annual military spending. The budget calls for additional spending on nuclear weapons, the upgrading of the country’s nuclear-capable ballistic submarine fleet and the development of a whole new range of long-range weapons targeting Russia and China.

After coming to office pledging to restrict nuclear weapons, the Obama administration initiated a multitrillion-dollar “nuclear modernization” program, which was only accelerated under Trump and now Biden. It involves developing a whole range of nuclear weapons and the delivery systems—from cruise missiles to ballistic missiles, to the high-tech bombers and submarines—that would launch them in the event of a world war.

However, the surge in spending has extended to all of the imperialist powers. “Nearly all members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) saw their military burden rise in 2020. As a result, 12 NATO members spent 2 percent or more of their GDP on their militaries, the Alliance’s guideline spending target, compared with 9 members in 2019.”

The report noted that France, whose President Emmanuel Macron declared the population must “learn to live with” COVID-19, “passed the 2 percent [military spending] threshold for the first time since 2009.” The country’s military spending surged by 2.9 percent in 2020.

In the UK, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson last November declared, “No more f***ing lockdowns, let the bodies pile high in their thousands!” military spending likewise rose by 2.9 percent, putting the country on the list of the top five biggest spenders.

Germany, which is rapidly rearming as it declares that it must once again become a “great power,” had its military spending expand by 5.2 percent, putting the figure 28 percent higher than in 2011.

After the United States left the Intermediate Range Nuclear forces treaty last year, the world has been locked in a global arms race, with Russia and China, the targets of the US-NATO military buildup. They responded by increasing their own military spending, albeit at a slower pace than the global average.

And India, which has shown itself totally unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic as thousands die in the streets without access to medical care, increased its military spending by two percent.

The fact that the same governments, who claimed there was “no money” to pay for lockdowns to save lives in the COVID-19 pandemic, found trillions to shell out to arms manufacturers makes clear what the real priorities of the capitalist system are.

US CEO pay soars during pandemic

Marcus Day

For the majority of the population, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a catastrophe on a scale not seen since the Second World War. With a death toll over 586,000 in the US alone, millions of families have lost loved ones, as parents, spouses, siblings, and even children fell ill and succumbed to the virus in a matter of days. Millions more have survived an infection only to face debilitating long-term consequences to their health.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings President & CEO Frank Del Rio, right, joins applause as he rings the New York Stock Exchange opening bell. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

For those employed in factories, warehouses and countless other workplaces which have remained open, the workday has become a gamble with death. For the millions of others who have been thrown into unemployment and deprived of adequate incomes, the threat of destitution, hunger and homelessness is ever-present.

But for a small section of society, the last year has produced a windfall.

Pay packages for CEOs at major US companies soared over the course of the pandemic, according to annual corporate filings released in recent weeks. And some executives received much bigger payouts than others, “earning” stratospheric compensation topping the until recently unprecedented amount of $100 million:

• Chad Richison, CEO of Paycom, a software company based in Oklahoma, took in over $211 million in salary and share options.
  
  
• Amir Dan Rubin, CEO of 1Life Healthcare, a chain of health clinics in San Francisco, was awarded over $199 million.
  
  
• John Legere, CEO of cell provider T-Mobile—which consummated a merger with rival Sprint last year—received over $137 million.

At companies listed on the S&P 500 index, which includes many of the largest US firms, median chief executive pay hit the relatively more “modest” amount of $13.3 million in 2020, nevertheless an all-time record and the 11th straight annual increase, according to ISS EGG, a shareholder advisory group.

Huge sums were handed over even to CEOs at corporations that suffered substantial losses due to the pandemic:

• James Murren, chairman and CEO MGM Resorts, the Las Vegas-based hotel and casino giant, received an exit compensation package of $32 million when he left last year, making him the 14th-highest paid executive in 2020, despite a loss of $1 billion by the company.
  
  
• Chris Nassetta, head of the Hilton hotel chain, was awarded $55.9 million, coming in at number five on the list of highest-paid executives. The company reported a loss of $720 million for the year.
  
  
• David Calhoun, president and CEO of aerospace manufacturing giant Boeing, received over $21 million in compensation, even though the company reported a colossal loss of $12 billion.

Companies such as Boeing, Hilton, Norwegian and Cruise Lines terminated or furloughed thousands or tens of thousands of workers, while requesting multi-billion-dollar government bailouts. Ultimately, Boeing was able to raise private funding, but only as a result of the Federal Reserve’s direct support for the corporate bond market and maintenance of ultra-low interest rates.

In a number of instances, companies carried out cuts with flimsy pretext of “shared sacrifice,” misleadingly declaring in Hilton’s case that Nassetta would forgo his salary for much of the year. However, for Nassetta and many others, awards of company shares now make up much more sizable portions of executive compensation than their base salary.

In fact, the gulf between executive pay and that of the average employee has expanded dramatically. At S&P 500 companies, median employee pay fell 17 percent, so that the CEO-to-employee pay ratio went from 182-to-1 to 227-to-1, according to the Financial Times.

For decades, the process of wealth accumulation at the top has been more and more separated from the productive process and instead drawn from stock market speculation and financial manipulation, a transformation proceeding under Republican and Democratic administrations alike. In fact, the Biden presidency has overseen the fastest rise of the S&P 500 of any administration in the last 75 years, going back to Eisenhower.

For workers, the seemingly endless stagnation or decline of wages and working conditions has produced a growing mood of opposition and the reemergence of strikes in recent weeks. In each case, workers’ demands for their essential needs—including the reversal of previous wage and benefit cuts, adequate staffing levels, and, in particular, the implementation of serious measures to address COVID-19—have been bitterly resisted by corporate executives who have themselves reaped multi-million-dollar paydays:

• At Tenet Healthcare-owned St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, roughly 700 nurses are in the second month of their strike, fighting for safe nurse-to-patient staffing ratios and an end to dangerous workloads. Tenet’s CEO, Ronald Rittenmeyer, raked in $16.7 million in 2020. Under Rittenmeyer, the company, a multibillion-dollar corporation, furloughed some 11,000 workers last year and pulled in almost $399 million in profit.
  
  
• At steel firm Allegheny Technologies Incorporated (ATI), 1,300 steelworkers in five states have been on strike against company demands for major concessions to jobs, health benefits, and pensions, although the United Steelworkers union has sought to avoid raising any concrete demands by conducting the walkout as an “unfair labor practices strike,” claiming ATI is not bargaining in “good faith.” ATI CEO Robert Wetherbee received compensation of $5.7 million in 2020, a 3 percent increase from the prior year.
  
  
• At Volvo Trucks’ New River Valley plant in southwestern Virginia, nearly 3,000 workers have been on strike since April 17. Martin Lundstedt, president and CEO Volvo AB, the Swedish-based parent company of Volvo Trucks North America, took in approximately $5.2 million (43,926,000 Swedish kronor) in 2020, while his deputy, Jan Gurander, received roughly $2.5 million.
  
  
• At Warrior Met Coal in Alabama, 1,100 miners have been on strike for over three weeks, demanding to reverse the $6-an-hour wage cut and benefit concessions negotiated by the United Mine Workers of America union in 2016. Warrior Met’s CEO, Walter J. Scheller, III, received over $4.3 million in pay in 2020, an 8 percent increase from the prior year.
  
  
• And at Columbia University in New York City, some 3,000 graduate student workers have been waging a struggle for decent pay, health care, and other benefits. Like many of his university administrator colleagues increasingly drawn from corporate America, Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, has a multi-million-dollar pay package of $4.5 million.

In discussions with workers, the World Socialist Web Site and Socialist Equality Party are frequently asked: How is it that management doesn’t recognize that we’re being exposed to COVID-19, that people are dying, that we need more to live? Why don’t they see that we need to shut down to deal with the virus? And why do the unions, which say they represent us, always side with management?

The answer is that the incomes and fortunes of the major corporate executives, and behind them the financiers and large investors, dictate their determination that workplaces remain open and that profits continue to be produced through the exploitation of the working class, both in the US and globally. Not only that, the material interests of the capitalist class require that this exploitation intensify, with new rounds of wage cuts, layoffs, and corporate restructuring being planned and implemented.

And the heads of the corporatist enterprises called “unions” themselves have become integral parts in enforcing these policies, junior executives in the systems of labor management, and are compensated as such. From American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten (annual pay, $564,236), to Stuart Applebaum of the RWDSU ($344,464), to Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry ($279,126), to the countless other union executives with bloated expense accounts and six-figure salaries, all have wealth and interests placing them in a social strata both separate from and hostile to workers. The integration of the unions into management has taken place internationally, with Bernd Osterloh, head of the joint works council at Volkswagen and leading member of the IG Metall trade union, recently announced to have accepted a management position at VW’s truck and bus subsidiary, with a projected income of around €1 million.

The interests of the corporate executives and financial aristocracy, defended loyally by their aides in the unions, have become a cancer on society. Their entire social order, capitalism, is the main obstacle to meeting any of the essential needs of the majority of the population and is preventing the measures necessary to end the pandemic, including an emergency shutdown of non-essential production and full compensation for workers and support for small businesses.

Reinfections of COVID-19 after natural infection or vaccination

Angelo Perera & Benjamin Mateus

On April 5, Bridge Michigan reported that 246 fully vaccinated people in Michigan were later infected with the coronavirus, including 11 hospitalized and three who died. A spokesperson from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) was quoted by Bridge Michigan a week later that the deaths have since undergone a more “detailed review,” and all three had histories of earlier infections before vaccination. Moreover, neither COVID-19 nor any “other acute respiratory infection” was identified on the trio’s death certificates.

A child receives a COVID-19 test (Credit: Envato)

Vaccinations have shown to be safe and highly effective at reducing hospitalization and death. Recently the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that out of 75 million people that had been fully vaccinated, there had been 5,800 reported infections, of which 396 required hospitalization, of which 74 died. While the deaths might appear to be literally one in a million, many of the 75 million continued to quarantine and social distance, and so were protected by other means than just the vaccine.

An alarming study published by the CDC last week was based on an investigation conducted by the Kentucky Department for Public Health on a COVID-19 outbreak at a skilled nursing facility attributed to an unvaccinated symptomatic health care worker.

It was reported that 75 of the 83 residents (90.4 percent) had already received both doses of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine, while only 61 (53 percent) of the 116 health care personnel had completed their immunization. The investigation found that 26 residents and 20 workers were diagnosed with a COVID-19 infection. Eighteen of the infected residents and four infected workers were beyond the 14-day window of their second dose.

The CDC report mentioned that the genetic sequencing of the virus identified it as an R.1 lineage variant, characterized by the E484K and other mutations within the spike protein. Though this variant has not been classified as a variant of concern or interest, it possesses several mutations known to make it more transmissible and immune evading.

The report attempts to downplay concerns raised by the infection of fully vaccinated individuals arguing that the attack rate was four times higher among unvaccinated individuals. Those who were vaccinated were much less symptomatic and required fewer hospitalizations. However, one fully vaccinated resident did die. The infection rate among vaccinated residents was 24 percent. Among the health care workers, it was 6.6 percent. These findings raise serious and critical questions about the safety of a reopening campaign relying largely on vaccines to assure the public they are safe from catching and spreading the infection.

Though vaccinations have demonstrated their ability to reduce the chance of hospitalizations and death, vaccination alone is wholly inadequate to stop the pandemic. The quantitative assessment of viral transmission among vaccinated people is woefully lacking, and suppositions like those made by the CDC are premature and ill-conceived, motivated by pressures to reopen all aspects of commerce. There is also the issue that a significant number of the US population has yet to receive a vaccine dose.

Dr. Nick Gilpin, medical director of infection prevention and epidemiology at Beaumont Health in Michigan, recently referred to the crisis plaguing his state as “a runaway train.” The slow rollout has meant that Michigan has vaccinated less than a third of its population and, without a massively expanded rollout, many more will suffer and die needlessly or suffer the consequences of its acute and chronic health complications, which are considerable. As evidenced by recent disturbing reports of younger people and children becoming infected and hospitalized, no one should assume they are impervious.

The politics of variants of concern and the COVID-19 vaccines

In January, a second wave of the virus devastated the Brazilian city of Manaus, capital of Amazonas state, with reinfections with a more virulent strain P.1 likely playing a part. A study led by Nuno Faria, a virologist at Imperial College London, titled “Genomics and epidemiology of a novel SARS-CoV-2 lineage in Manaus, Brazil” published in March, found that within seven weeks, starting from early November, the fraction of samples classified as P.1 increased from zero to 87 percent. By February, P.1 had taken over completely. Dr. Faria and his colleagues conducted an experiment that estimated that in 100 people infected with non-P.1 lineage in Manaus last year, somewhere between 25 and 61 could have been reinfected if they were exposed to P.1 in Manaus.

A recent study of 149 people in Israel who became infected after vaccination with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine (BNT162b2) found that the South African variant (B.1.351) was eight times more likely to cause breakthrough infections on infections that occurred at least a week after the second jab. The authors suggested that while this pointed to an increased breakthrough of B.1.351 occurring mainly in a limited time window post-vaccination, that further research with larger sample size is required to validate this hypothesis. This study suggests that B.1.351 has the ability to evade the vaccine.

William A. Haseltine, a world-renowned infectious disease expert, referring to the study by Dr. Nuno R. Faria of Sao Paulo’s Institute of Tropical Medicine, wrote to Forbes in March: “Natural infections do not seem to protect against reinfection, yet vaccines remain to be seen. While Faria found that antibodies derived from the CoronaVac vaccine [COVID-19 vaccine made by the Chinese company Sinovac Biotech] in Brazil were less effective at stopping the P.1 variant, little data is yet available on reinfections after vaccine administration. We know that antibodies fade over time, and data suggest that you lose tremendous antibody potency six to eight months after natural infections. It is possible that vaccine protection wanes six months to a year after administration, but that data will not be available for many months.”

A strategy of relying solely on vaccines is dangerous. As effective as the vaccines may have shown to be, it does not guarantee that the vaccines will continue to be effective on all possible variants. The SARS-CoV-2 has shown to evolve under pressures of mass community transmission into more virulent strains. That the coronaviruses from different regions of the globe have found common strategies to evade and become more transmissible speaks to the dangers raised by these measures to allow the world to “live with it.”

The danger of mutations

Viruses independently acquire these mutations, which then gives them an advantage in disease spread, which scientists refer to as “convergent evolution.” Stephen Goldstein, an evolutionary virologist who studies coronaviruses at the University of Utah, was quoted in Wired magazine that “These different lineages are essentially arriving at the same solution for how to interact more efficiently with the human receptor, ACE2.” ACE2 is a protein molecule that sits on the outside of some human cells. The “spike” of the coronavirus latches onto ACE2, enters the cell, and starts replicating. All the mutations of concern have evolved at the virus’ receptor binding domain, a region of its RNA that carries the blueprint for the spike protein.

The currently known mutations of concern to the receptor-binding domain include:

• N501Y, a mutation in the South Africa, U.K, and Brazil variants, replaces the coronavirus’s 501st amino acid, asparagine, with tyrosine. Studies in cells and animal models suggest that the change makes it easier for SARS-CoV-2 to grab onto ACE2.
  
  
• The Brazilian and the South African variant also have a second and third mutation in common: K417T and E484K. E484K (also referred to as “eek”) changes an amino acid that was negatively charged to one that’s positively charged. This causes the negatively charged ACE2 to snap with the tip of the spike, known as the receptor-binding domain (RBD). It is known to assist with evading the infected host’s immune system.
  
  
• The B.1.617 variant identified in India carries a double mutation. One named L452R is also present in the dominant strain current in California. The other is called E484Q, which is like the E484K mutation.

In early March, Brian O’Roak, a geneticist at Oregon Health and Science University, reported a new variant that surfaced in Oregon with the E484K mutation. The B.1.526 variant, which incorporates E484K, remains the most prevalent variant in New York City, comprising, as of April 13, about 45 percent of cases sequenced from the fourth week of March.

Dr. William Haseltine reported in Forbes on April 13 on yet another variant discovered in Oregon, which he dubbed B.1.1.7-O, which adds to the UK variant both the E484K and N501Y mutations: “The combination of these two mutations in the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein is the principal cause of vaccine resistance of the Brazilian isolate B.1.1.28.1 and the South African variant B.1.351. Together these two mutations are associated with an increased transmission and vaccine resistance.” Dr. Haseltine concluded his article with a warning that without effective public health mitigation measures, the evolution of the virus could become a severe threat to vaccine effectiveness.

The American ruling class has pushed the mismanaged and entirely inadequate nationalist program of vaccination as a sufficient response to a pandemic that is causing 60,000 new infections and 700 deaths every day, as computed by a seven-day moving average.

The US has done a poor job in genome sequencing, an absolute prerequisite to get a sense of how widespread the variants are. GSAID Initiative, a global genome sequencing database project, notes that only 1.04 percent of samples are being sequenced in the United States to date, which ranks 43rd in the world. Scientists at Illumina—a lab that conducts genome sequencing for the US—estimate that 5 percent of new coronavirus cases would need sequencing to detect a new variant before it grows to more than 1 percent of total cases.

In February, scientists predicted that the $200 million infusion by the Biden administration would be sufficient to ramp up the nation’s sequencing capacity from 7,000 to 25,000 samples per week, putting the US on track to capture about 5 percent of new coronavirus cases. This estimate was predicated upon the downward trend of new COVID cases seen in the winter, which now has somewhat reversed under the administration’s disastrous policies. Under such conditions, while the American Rescue Act that became law on March 11 provides for $1.75 billion for genomic surveillance, the US is still woefully behind in its gene sequencing initiative.

The ruling elites are pushing to exit the pandemic and return to normalcy using mass vaccination in the United States alone, and perhaps a few other advanced industrialized countries, as a strategy to put their plans into action. However, the pandemic remains far from over as a significant portion of the globe’s population has neither been infected nor received a vaccine. Little is known or clarified on the nature of the pressures the vaccine will impose on mutations nor how reinfections in the vaccinated population will promote the continued transmission of the disease. Vaccinated individuals will function as new vectors and weapons to promote the “policy of herd immunity” and ensure the virus becomes endemic throughout the world.

More deaths of people waiting for essential disability services in Australia

Max Boddy

Australians with a disability continue to die while waiting for urgent support services from the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). The deaths further expose the fraud of the claims, particularly by the Labor Party and the trade unions, that the NDIS represents a progressive social reform.

Legislated in 2012 by the last Labor government and nationally rolled out in July 2016 by the current Liberal-National Coalition government, the fundamental premise of the scheme is the removal of governmental responsibility for the provision of care for people with a disability.

Previous state-run services and institutions, while always poorly-funded and inadequate, have been largely dismantled and all services outsourced to corporate and non-government organisations that tender for government contracts.

The latest victim is 23-year-old Liam Danher from Cairns in northern Queensland. Last July, Danher’s mother and father began to worry that he was having dangerous night-time seizures. A request was made to the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), which oversees the provision of the NDIS, for the purchase of a $2,500 mat that could detect seizures and sound an alarm.

The family could not afford the mat themselves and had to rely on government funding for the equipment. For more than six months they waited, but received nothing. On February 5, Danher died in his sleep. He suffered a seizure overnight, causing him to suffocate face down on his bed.

A week after his passing, the Danher family received an email from his support coordinator telling them an “urgent” quote was being obtained for the mat. Liam’s mother, Tracy Danher, told the Australian: “It was just so distressing to receive that email, we had been waiting every day for that mat to be delivered.

“It would have saved Liam’s life, no question, alerted us within seconds if he was having a seizure and we could have put him into the recovery position like we’d always done, and he’d be fine.”

Danher’s death occurred nearly 18 months after a report was released whitewashing the government’s responsibility for the deaths of more than 1,200 people with a disability between July 2016 and September 2019. They all died while waiting for NDIS support. The toll equals roughly one death a day.

Danher’s death was similar to that of 32-year-old Tasmanian man, Tim Rubenach, who died of pneumonia in May 2018. He had severe epilepsy, suffered from bleeding stomach ulcers and had been approved by the NDIS for a tilt bed he urgently required. It was delayed for months, only arriving on the day he was to be buried.

It is also a little more than a year since the horrific death of 54-year-old Ann Marie Smith, who died in April 2020 in South Australia (SA). Smith, who had cerebral palsy, died from septic shock, multi-organ failure, severe pressure sores and malnutrition after being confined to a cane chair for more than a year. She had funding from the NDIS for six hours of care a day. Her carers are currently under investigation for manslaughter, but the root causes of such tragedies are systemic.

Smith’s death triggered the establishment of a “Safeguarding Task Force” to investigate gaps in disability care in SA. Its final report, handed down last July, absolved the state and federal governments of direct responsibility, yet revealed significant gaps in the oversight of care for people with a disability.

The report noted that the NDIA had no system of external checks for the health of people on the scheme, and no adequate safeguards to vet the quality of services. Moreover, the SA state government lacked adequate “mechanisms for people to access regular health checks, the ASU [Adult Safeguarding Unit] or community visitors and advocacy.”

In a rare, revealing characterisation of the NDIS, the report concluded: “In a nutshell, the NDIS is an insurance-based arrangement whereby the NDIS is responsible for funding and broad system parameters but does not take responsibility when things go wrong for the individual. The risk and the responsibility is deemed to lie with the individual participant.”

As the WSWS warned in 2013, the removal of government services would mean that care would be “left up to the market, with corporate entities vying for a share of the lump sum awarded to those eligible for disability ‘insurance.’ The inevitable outcome will be a race by businesses in the ‘disabled market’ to maximise their profits by cutting costs at the expense of services.”

In addition, thousands of people are potentially locked out of the scheme, with the number of participants capped at 475,000 nationally and strict edibility criteria imposed, particularly for those with severe mental health issues or psychosocial disabilities.

One Sydney man, David Harris, was kicked off the scheme after failing to turn up to his mandatory annual review. He suffered from acute schizophrenia and diabetes. Last July, two months after being cut off from the NDIS, he was found dead in his house by his sister, Leanne Longfellow. “No one thought to check,” she told the media. “My brother was very isolated and alone.”

The Labor Party claims the NDIS has been “mismanaged” by the current Coalition government. At its recently concluded two-day “Special Platform Conference,” speakers asserted that “only Labor” could deliver an NDIS that “Australians desperately need.”

Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard announcing the NDIS in 2011 (Screenshot: ABC News)

This is a sham. The NDIS was always designed to further privatise the disability and health industry. The Greens-backed Gillard Labor government received full bipartisan support from the Coalition when the scheme was unveiled in 2012. The NDIS was based on recommendations by the Productivity Commission, a pro-business think tank that specialises in the slashing of government social spending.

Another federal Labor government would only deepen the outsourcing of health services. Labor’s national conference overwhelmingly rejected a commitment to not privatise or outsource public health departments, institutions or services, and a proposal that opposed Labor governments subcontracting public health services unless employees were guaranteed equal or better pay.

Bangladeshi police gun down six construction workers

Wimal Perera

Bangladeshi police shot dead six construction workers at the coal-fired SS Power Plant project at Banshkhali in Chittagong (Chattogram,), the country’s second largest city. The police shooting occurred on April 17 when about 2,000 workers were demonstrating for regular payment of wages and against harsh working conditions.

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina (Source: Wikipedia)

Four workers died on the spot and dozens of injured protesters were taken to Chittagong Medical College Hospital. One worker died later that day and another on April 21. According to media reports, about 20 workers suffered gunshot injuries. However, the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development reported on April 20 that over 50 workers were injured in the police assault.

The indiscriminate character of the violence is revealed in a police statement which declared that police officers fired “332 rounds of ammunition—202 rounds of rubber bullets, 68 rounds of lead-ball bullets from shotguns, 62 rounds of bullets from Chinese rifles.”

The protest, which began in the morning of April 17, was over nine basic demands. These included a two-hour cut in duty time during Ramadan, a five-hour reduction in duty time every Friday, which is already a Bangladeshi national holiday, salary increases, the timely payment of wages and full disbursement other outstanding benefits. The workers were also demanding an end to harsh working and living conditions.

One construction worker, Md Rafique, told the Daily Star on April 21 that almost every worker confronted substandard and overcrowded accommodation, along with unhygienic water supplies and toilets.

A Daily Star journalist who visited the construction project after the police attack noted the terrible conditions: “Accommodation was unhealthy and crammed, and the toilets used by workers so unhygienic that it would be hard to expect anyone to use them. The drain adjacent to their accommodation was seen overflowing with human waste and emitting a rancid smell.”

The S. Alam Group, a Bangladeshi construction conglomerate, is building the $US2.4 billion power plant for China’s Shandong Teijun Electric Power Engineering. The project employs about 3,500 Bangladeshis and 853 Chinese workers. Most of the local workers are hired through various subcontracting companies.

The killings further highlight the government’s authoritarian response to rising militancy by workers. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has given police a free hand to the police to suppress workers struggles and her political opponents.

An editorial in Daily Star stated: “Firearms in the hands of police are more common these days than batons or truncheons. And the police are regrettably becoming too ready to shoot in these situations.” Five years ago, in April 2016, the police shot dead four villagers protesting the forcible acquisition of their lands for the project.

As outrage erupted over the murderous attack on the construction workers, police began concocting stories about the protest.

Questioned by a Daily Star journalist, Chittagong District’s Superintendent of Police falsely claimed that protesters, “tried to attack the Chinese workers on the project. They even assaulted their fellow workers and police personnel and set several project properties on fire.” A police case statement has even claimed that the workers “opened fire at the police.”

Contrary to these fabricated claims, one investigating police officer has admitted that no police officer was shot during the clash and or any Chinese worker harmed.

Two bogus cases have been filed against the construction workers—one by the Banshkhali police and the other by the chief coordinator of the project. The first case claims that between 2,000 and 2,500 unidentified people attacked the police. The other case alleges that 22 named individuals and up 1,050 unidentified people vandalised and looted the plant.

Labour hire companies have reported that the police assault was so severe that workers were resigning because they fear being arrested. Belal Hossain, an electrician who suffered bullet wounds to his right leg, told the New Age that he would never work there again.

The Chittagong District Administration has formed a four-member committee and the police established a three-member committee, to “investigate” the incident. These committees will be used to cover up what happened and protect those responsible for the murderous police assault.

Confronted with rising outrage over the brutal attack, the trade unions and opposition political parties, including the Stalinist-controlled organisations, have organised protests to dissipate the anger.

On April 17, the Socialist Students Front demonstrated at the Dhaka University over the attack. Two days later, the Bangladesh Trade Union Centre, controlled by Stalinist Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB), rallied outside the National Press Club in Dhaka demanding the arrest of police responsible for the killings and adequate compensation for affected families.

Garment sector unions, such as Sramik Karmachari Oikya Parishad and Garments Sramik Odhikar Parishad, which collaborate with garment factory owners, held separate protests last Wednesday to demand a judicial inquiry.

The Left Democratic Alliance, a coalition of eight so-called left parties, including the CPB, rallied in Jashore on Sunday. Alliance coordinator Rashid Firoz demanded the government establish a judicial inquiry committee.

Ain O Salish Kendra, a leading human rights organisation, has called on the government to take legal action against those involved in the shootings and the withdrawal of the frameup cases against the construction workers.

Notwithstanding these protests, the Bangladeshi unions and the Stalinist parties have adapted themselves to Hasina’s increasingly authoritarian methods and suppressed workers’ struggles for their rights. The Stalinist Workers Party is currently a partner in Hasina’s Awami League-led regime.

The Hasina government is confronting a wave of protests by workers across a range of sectors, including the jute and garment industries, in response to low wages and rising COVID-19 infections.

Last July, Bangladeshi courts jailed two jute mill union activists amid rising demonstrations by workers following the closure of all 25 state-owned jute plants and the retrenchment of 50,000 workers.

In February, hundreds of household waste collection workers from the Dhaka North City Corporation, demonstrated in defence of threatened jobs. On April 17, about 500 rickshaw pullers marched in Barishal city to demand food rations, a $US59 monthly cash payment and free treatment for coronavirus victims.

Bangladesh is currently in lockdown—from April 14 to April 28—in response to rising coronavirus infections. The country now has more 730,000 cases and 10,600 deaths.

The Bangladeshi government’s response to the pandemic resulted in 14.7 percent or 24.5 million of the country’s “vulnerable non-poor people” slipping into poverty, according to a recent survey by the Power and Participation Research Centre and the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development.

Last week Prime Minister Hasina responded by announcing that her government would only provide $1.24 million in financial assistance for 3.6 million of the poorest families hit by the pandemic.

Ethiopia: Violence Instability and the Need for Law and Order

Graham Peebles

An unresolved war in the north of the country; ethnic based violence some are describing as genocide in the West; random explosions of aggression in various regions: Ethiopia is trembling.

With around 117 million people, Ethiopia has the second largest population in Africa, made up of 80 or so tribal groups, all with their own cultures, language or dialect. Three big ones dominate: The Oromo (35% of population), Amhara (27%) and Tigrayan (6%). Historic disputes over land and power exist between these powerful groups; grievances which are being aggravated by pernicious elements attempting to destabilize the country.

On November 5th 2020 an armed conflict erupted in the Tigray region, between the federal government and the armed wing of the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF). It had been brewing for some time and both sides were prepared, itching for a fight. The Ethiopian government invited Eritrean troops to the party and then denied they were fighting side by side against a common enemy — the TPLF, widely hated in Eritrea and by many Ethiopians.

Tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced (Ethiopia has around two million IDP’s) by the fighting, combatants on both sides killed, civilians (nobody knows how many) massacred and injured. Women and girls raped and tortured, reportedly by Eritrean military — thugs, committing vile acts, destroying lives, and all with impunity.

The government has claimed victory, but sporadic fighting continues and the TPLF leadership has escaped capture. They are believed to be reorganizing and recruiting young men to join what is morphing into an insurgency force. Intransigence prevails, with neither side willing to back down; the government is refusing to enter into negotiations, something that in the long-term, and given the high level of popular support for the TPLF in the region (they were elected as the regional government in banned elections in October 2020), may well be needed.

A UN investigation into atrocities in Tigray and elsewhere in the country is urgently required, but to date this has been rejected by the Ethiopian government who, it seems, want to appear to be in control; access to the region, which was shut off by the government during the conflict, remains limited.

Tigray does not exist in isolation, Ethiopia is one state. Violence legitimizes and breeds violence and in an atmosphere of uncertainty, where law and order is weak it can quickly spread. Attacks are being committed mainly in the west of the country, but in other areas as well, against the Amhara people, by ‘rebels’; code for the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) — a breakaway armed wing of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), founded in the 1970s to fight for the self-determination of ethnic Oromo.

The ethnically based killings, destruction of property, rapes and displacement of persons, constitute what some Ethiopians claim is genocide. This is reinforced by Genocide Watch, who have issued a Genocide warning “for Ethiopia due to the government’s inaction to stop ethnically motivated violence between Oromo, Amhara, Tigrayan and Gedeo peoples.”

The situation throughout the country is unstable and complex; ethnic identities are strong and long-standing differences between groups are easily enflamed by malicious forces, inside and outside Ethiopia. There is speculation that Egypt (angry with Ethiopia over the construction and control of the Renaissance Dam) is supporting the OLA with arms, and that the ‘rebel’ group is working with the TPLF, with the aim of destabilizing the country ahead of general elections in June. Elections postponed from 2020 that the incumbent party (the newly formed Prosperity Party) under the leadership of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, are expected to win.

Defeating the men of hate and violence

For generations Ethiopia has been governed by intolerant repressive dictatorships that have ignored human rights and ruled through fear. The current government came to power in 2018 on the back of years of widespread protests against the TPLF, it has opened up the country and aspires to be democratic. Prime-Minister Abiy is the first Oromia PM, and the cabinet (50/50 male and female) is populated largely by other people from Oromo.

The TPLF ruled from 1991 to 2018. Dismantling 27 years of corrupt governance, purging all areas of government, national and local, the police and armed forces, of TPLF personnel, or TPLF-influenced/sympathetic personnel; changing habitual methods and attitudes, will not be eradicated in a few years. Such far reaching change takes time. Some Ethiopians claim that little or not enough has changed in the last two years, and blame the government, or elements within the government apparatus for the current unstable situation.

A cornerstone of the TPLF’s rule was ethnic federalism; a seemingly liberal policy, that promised to respect different cultures and honor aspirations for autonomy, but a divisive tool in the hands of the TPLF, employed to agitate conflict between ethnic groups, divide and rule being the objective. The aftermath of their abhorrent reign, is community carnage, pent-up anger, corruption and distrust.

Like all such regimes, they ruled through fear and division and were widely despised in the country and among the Ethiopian diaspora, but to there utter shame, western nations, including Ethiopia’s primary donors (and therefore the countries with the greatest influence) the US, Britain and the European Union, supported them. Consecutive western leaders, most notably Tony Blair and Barak Obama, not only failed to call out the regime’s atrocities, but were complicit, hailing corrupt elections as fair, legitimizing the results of one stolen election after another. And now, when Ethiopia is being assailed by criminal gangs, domestic terrorists masquerading as ‘freedom fighters’, and many believe, foreign interference, they stand by and do nothing.

With the odd exception, the mainstream media is also largely silent; uninterested it appears, in the deaths, rapes, and abuse of Ethiopians – men women and children whose lives were riddled with difficulties even before the current violence exploded. And now, as a result of a number of factors, including the fighting, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) state that, “Ethiopia is second only to Yemen for the total number of people in need in 2021 (IRC estimate at least 21million). As the year progresses, vulnerable communities will increasingly struggle to access necessary food and resources.”

In order to support vulnerable communities and deal with the dire humanitarian and social issues facing the country, there must first of all be peace and stability.

The safety of civilians is the first requirement of any government, and in this major respect the ruling party under PM Abiy Ahmed, has completely failed. Enforcement of the law must be a priority, police and security forces need to be strengthened, deployed to areas where communities are at risk; corruption weeded out of all areas of public life. And every effort made, by politicians, religious leaders and the media, to unify the country. Talk of unity is easy, commonplace, but without justice, tolerance and understanding, it is a hollow word that means nothing.

Ethiopia is a diverse whole, ethnic differences and culture divergence enrich the country and should be respected and celebrated. For generations people from different ethnic groups have lived side by side; marrying, praying and working together. Community harmony is being poisoned by power hungry men intent on sewing unrest and wreaking chaos. These divisive forces, wherever they may be (and some will be found hiding within government bodies), must be rooted out of the country, and those responsible for the horrendous killings, rapes and destruction hunted down and arrested, tried in a court of law.

To move this wonderful country, which has suffered so much, out of the suppressive violent shadow of the past is no easy task; time is needed, solidarity and patient perseverance. But within Ethiopia there is a powerful movement towards justice and freedom, a movement that despite the best efforts of the men of hate and violence cannot and will not be stopped.

Ethnic Engineering: Denmark’s Ghetto Policy

Binoy Kampmark

The very word is chilling, but has become normalised political currency in Denmark.  Since 2010, the Danish government has resorted to generating “ghetto lists” marking out areas as socially problematic for the state.  In 2018, the country’s parliament passed “ghetto” laws to further regulate the lives of individuals inhabiting various city areas focusing on their racial and ethnic origins.  The legislation constitutes the spear tip of the “One Denmark without Parallel Societies – No Ghettos in 2030” initiative; its target: “non-Western” residents who overbalance the social ledger by concentrating in various city environs.

The “ghetto package”, comprising over 20 different statutes, grants the government power to designate various neighbourhoods as “ghettos” or “tough ghettos”.  That nasty formulation is intended to have consequences for urban planning, taking into account the percentage of immigrants and descendants present in that area of “non-Western background”.  One Danish media outlet, assiduously avoiding the creepier elements of the policy, saw it as the “greatest social experiment of the century.”

Bureaucrats consider the following: the number of residents (greater than 1,000); a cap of 50% of “non-Westerners”; and whether the neighbourhood meets any two of four criteria, namely employment, education, income and criminality.  Doing so enables the authorities to evict residents, demolish buildings and alter the character of the neighbourhood, a form of cleansing that has shuddering historical resonances.  Central to this is an effort to reduce the stock of “common family housing” – 40% in tough ghettos by 2030 – supposedly available to all based on principles of affordability, democracy and egalitarianism.

The problematic designation of people of “non-Western background” is also a bit of brutal public policy.  It is a discriminatory measure that has concerned the UN Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights (CESCR) and the Council of Europe’s Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (ACFC).  In its concluding observations on the sixth periodic report of Denmark from 2019, the CESCR urged the country’s adoption of “a rights-based approach to its efforts to address residential segregation and enhance social cohesion.”  This would involve the scrapping of such terms as “ghetto” and “non-Western” and the repeal of provisions with direct or indirect discriminatory effects “on refugees, migrants and residents of the ‘ghettos’.”

The use of “descendants” also suggests the importance of bloodline that would have seemed entirely logical to the Nazi drafters of the Nuremberg Laws.  The German laws, announced in 1935, made no reference to the criteria of religion in defining a “Jew”, merely the importance of having three or four Jewish grandparents.  Doing so roped those whose grandparents had converted to Christianity and the secular. First came the sentiments; then came the laws.

This irredeemable state of affairs has solid, disturbing implications, though both the CESCR and ACFC tend to be almost mild mannered in pointing it out: You did not belong and you cannot belong.  It is less an integrating measure than an excluding one.  Denmark’s “Ghetto Package”, as the ACFC puts it, “sends a message that may have a counter-effect on their feeling of belonging and forming an integral part of Danish society.”  It also urged that Denmark “reconsider the concepts of ‘immigrants and descendants of immigrants of Western origin’ and ‘immigrants and descendants of immigrants of non-Western origin’.”

For its part, the Ministry of Interior and Housing finds the package all above board, a mere matter of statistical bookkeeping.  Using “non-Western” as a marker adopted to distinguish the EU states, the UK, Andorra, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Norway, San Marino, Switzerland, the Vatican State, Canada, United States, Australia and New Zealand.  “All other countries,” the Ministry curtly observed in a statement, “are non-Western countries.”

Last year, Mjølnerparken, a housing project in Copenhagen’s Nørrebro area, became the subject of intense interest in the application of the Ghetto laws.  With 98 percent of the 2,500 residents being immigrants or the children of immigrants, a good number hailing from the Middle East and Africa, the “tough ghetto” designation was a formality.  Apartment sales were promised, effectively threatening the eviction of the tenants.

These actions were proposed despite ongoing legal proceedings against the Ministry of Interior and Housing by affected residents.  Declaratory relief is being sought, with the applicants arguing that the measures breach the rights to equality, respect for home, property and the freedom to choose their own residence.

Three rapporteurs from the United Nations also warned that the sale should not go ahead as litigation was taking place.  “It does not matter whether they own or rent all residents should have a degree of security of tenure, which guarantees legal protection against forced eviction, harassment and other threats.”

Such policies tend to consume the reason for their implementation.  Disadvantage and stigmatisation are enforced, not lessened.  Former lawmaker Özlem Cekic suggests as much.  “It is not only created to hit the Muslim groups and immigrant groups but the working class as well.  A lot of people in the ‘ghettoes’, they don’t have economic stability.”

The Ministry has reacted to the protests with proposals that ostensibly reform the legal package.  The word “ghetto”, for instance, will be removed and the share of people of non-Western background in social housing will be reduced to 30% within 10 years.  Those moved out of the areas will be relocated to other parts of the country.  According to Nanna Margrethe Kusaa of the Danish Institute for Human Rights, “the ethnicity criteria has a more sharpened focus on it than before.”  Officials have merely refined the prejudice in one of Europe’s most troubling instances of ethnic engineering.  To this, Cekic has an ominous warning: “How can you expect [immigrants] to be loyal to a country that doesn’t accept them as they are?”

Asylum seekers removed from UK without proper legal representation

Simon Whelan

The British government is engaged in a protracted and brutal effort to de-legitimise and demonise asylum seekers.

A newly announced two-tier asylum system essentially outlaws claiming asylum in the UK. Another grotesque part of their campaign entails sending asylum seekers back to where they were being persecuted without even bothering to hear their case.

LBC Radio revealed that asylum seekers are being removed from Britain without their cases being legally considered. The radio station is not the first place one would expect to find sympathetic treatment of asylum seekers. Pro-Brexit anti-immigrant demagogue Nigel Farage was until recently a star turn on their broadcasting roster. But its evidence of systematic law breaking by a government denying the legal rights to some of the most desperate and vulnerable people on the planet was not picked up by any other news media source.

A UK Border Force vessel brings a group of people thought to be migrants into the port city of Dover, England, from small boats, Saturday Aug. 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Figures seen under Freedom of Information law by LBC show that over half of the people removed by the Home Office on specially arranged charter flights over the summer of 2020 did not have a lawyer on record. More than half of the people being removed were not afforded access to adequate legal representation or had no legal representation whatsoever. Of the 71 people removed in August and September, 37 did not have a lawyer on record.

During the summer of 2020, in anticipation of Britain’s departure of the UK from the European Union (EU), the Home Office began to accelerate deportations and removals. LBC was at pains to distinguish between deportations (which frequently include convicted criminals) and “administrative” removals, which include migrants and asylum seekers. The figures seen by LBC refer to the latter category. These removal flights continued apace until the UK left the EU in December.

The distinction made by LBC between “respectable” migrants and asylum seekers removed by fiat and those deported because of a criminal record is a false one. These deportees are frequently one and the same, with evidence of legal representation having also been denied to those accused of crimes while in the UK.

Journalist and lawyer Monir Ahmadi, a refugee himself from Afghanistan, told LBC, "I have friends whose cases were rejected but they didn't have any chance to speak to a lawyer. If you don't have a lawyer, you don't know how to present your case. Asylum seekers don't know what arguments they can provide to support their case. They may have their documents and evidence, but they don't know how to present it."

In response, the Home Office issued a statement ignoring their breach of human rights, insisting, "We only return those who have no right to be in the UK. All claimants have the opportunity to be legally represented during the consideration of their asylum claim and the Legal Aid Agency ensures legal aid funding is provided to those who need it. The current system is broken. Our New Immigration Plan will address abuse of the system and help stop the waste of significant judicial resources.”

The government sought to legitimise its brutal policy of removal by announcing last month that their own research suggested eight out of 10 last-minute attempts to avoid removal are rejected. In fact, their figures reveal that 25 percent of last-minute reprieves, even in the jaundiced eye of the government, are legitimate. The Detention Duty Advice Scheme, by which the Legal Aid Agency provides legal assistance to immigration detainees, is currently facing a potential legal challenge from a number of NGOs, including Detention Action.

Organisations advocating on behalf of asylum seekers told LBC they have seen multiple instances of legitimate asylum seekers or trafficking victims failing to have their cases taken on. They argue there is evidence that some law firms involved in the scheme have taken on only a very small number of the cases they've been assigned.

Speaking on behalf of Detention Action, director Bella Sankey said, "The system is in disarray, it's not fit for purpose. People don't have lawyers available to them. The legal advice that is being given at times is wrong. We've raised these concerns consistently with the Legal Aid Agency and more recently with government, and we're now in the process of initiating litigation over this."

The brutality of the Home Office’s forced-removal programme was illustrated just days after the LBC exposure, when Home Secretary Priti Patel was found to have acted unlawfully in attempting to remove a failed asylum seeker before he could testify at an inquest into the death of another asylum seeker at a detention centre.

The Financial Times reported how the Home Office wanted to send Ahmed Lawa on a flight to Nigeria on September 17, 2019. This was just five days after the death of Oscar Okurime, a friend living in the next room at Harmondsworth immigration detention centre.

Lawal knew his removal from the UK would prevent him giving evidence at the inquest into Okurime’s death. After hearing Lawal’s evidence, a coroner’s jury found Okurime’s death (from a brain haemorrhage) to be “unnatural”, brought about partially by “multiple failures” of management to follow healthcare procedures at the detention centre.

Judge Lane ruled that Patel acted unlawfully by trying to put Lawal on the flight without taking “reasonable steps” to secure his evidence towards the inquest into Okurime’s death. The judge ruled a Home Office policy document, “Death in Immigration Detention,” unlawful because under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which covers the right to life, it risks breaching detainees’ rights. In addition, Lane said the Home Office had breached the law by failing to provide adequate instructions for caseworkers to handle the case of a witness to a death in custody.

In his judgment, Judge Lane explained how Lawal testified at the inquest that he heard screaming and shouting and efforts to push the alarm bell from Okurime’s room around 11pm the night before he was found dead. Okurime was only discovered dead the following morning, by which time rigor mortis had set in. Previously a judge issued a last-minute injunction on the day of Lawal’s planned removal to prevent him being returned to Nigeria. The coroner in the case later said Lawal would not have been able to give evidence adequately online via video link.

Jamie Bell, of Duncan Lewis Solicitors, the immigration lawyer who represented Lawal, told the FT, “This case demonstrates the cavalier attitude of the home secretary when enforcing removals”.

Bell continued “Despite a tragic death within her detention centre, the home secretary did not hesitate to maintain her plan to remove potential witnesses by charter flight, ignoring anyone who wished to come forward to give evidence.” Bell said the case demonstrated the “vital importance” of judicial review and access to appropriate legal advice in immigration detention.