Airbus collaborates with Spanish trade unions to demobilise fight against plant closure

Santiago Guillen

Workers at Airbus, the world's largest airliner manufacturer, are waging a struggle against the company’s decision to close one of its Spanish factories and to use a temporary redundancy scheme to axe 600 jobs nationwide.

The trade unions CCOO, close to the pseudo-left party Podemos, and UGT, close to the Socialist Party (PSOE), are intervening to demobilise workers and facilitate further attacks.

Striking workers on a picket line near the Puerto Real Airbus factory (credit: @naterismos)

In recent weeks, the company had informally conveyed to the trade unions and different government bodies its decision to close one of its plants in Puerto Real, located in the metropolitan area of the Andalusian city of Cádiz. The final decision to close the plant was ultimately not taken in a meeting last week between Airbus and the trade unions, but the closure is still on the table. The company stated that it had “not made any mention of the closure or non-closure of Puerto Real [factory]” and that “the factory is in a critical situation that requires dialogue with workers and national and local institutions.”

This manoeuvre was quickly seized on by the CCOO and UGT to call off the workers’ mobilisations that were planned, including a one-day strike that was to begin on April 23 at all Airbus factories in Spain.

Trying to sell this surrender to the company as a great success, CCOO leader at Airbus, Francisco San José, declared that it had been a “small victory of the union and social mobilization against the closure of this plant”. He was quick to add that “good conditions have been created to start a conversation [with Airbus], but always maintaining the premise of maintaining employment in the plants of the multinational company in Spain.”

For his part, CCOO leader at the factory, Juan Manuel Trujillo, declared "there will continue to be an opportunity for dialogue and negotiation under the axiom that no Airbus plant will be closed, nor will any job in the Airbus group in Spain be lost."

What these union bureaucrats did not disclose is that job losses are already being implemented. In October 2020, CCOO signed a redundancy scheme with management, agreeing to eliminate 1,220 jobs. Last year, 553 jobs were already lost in the defense division, and another 169 will be eliminated this year. In the commercial division, 900 more employees are expected to be laid off this year, while 3,226 are out of work in a furlough scheme that will last until May 31.

The trade unions are therefore already actively collaborating in the destruction of jobs. They have called off industrial action not because any victory has been achieved but, on the contrary, as part of a ploy with Airbus management to demobilize the workers.

This strategy enjoys the full collaboration of the pseudo-left Anticapitalistas, a party that was the chief founder of Podemos in 2014. Last year, amid growing opposition, it decided to leave the PSOE-Podemos government to better suppress workers’ struggles from the outside.

The mayor of Cádiz—near to where Airbus is planning the factory closure—and member of Anticapitalistas, José María González, considered it a success that "the Board of Directors has not announced the closure or sale of the plant.” This, he said, was due to the "key participation, both of the public administration as well as the different social agents [trade unions].” Andalusian lawmaker José Ignacio García, one of Anticapitalistas’ deputies in the regional Andalusian parliament after it broke with Podemos, said “We have achieved a small victory, but we have only bought some time.”

Anticapitalistas is intervening to promote illusions in the trade unions and the PSOE-Podemos government. Their real concern is to prevent a social outbreak from taking place in the social powder keg in the region of the Cádiz bay, which has already seen mass layoffs in recent years, including workers at Tabacalera, Delphi, Visteon, Gadir Sola and a long list of other factories and workplaces.

Growing social discontent was reflected in a large demonstration that took place on April 10, when hundreds of workers and thousands of people from Cádiz protested against the possible closure of the Airbus factory. The closure would mean unemployment for 500 Airbus workers and around 1,000 others who belong to the auxiliary industries that supply the company.

The General Confederation of Labour, CGT, is playing its usual role by making toothless criticism of the larger CCOO and UGT trade unions and making liberal use of radical phraseology and “militant” actions. After CCOO and UGT called off the demonstrations, the CGT called on workers to camp outside the Puerto Real Airbus factory.

Workers at this camp interviewed by La Voz de Cádiz said, “There is no success to celebrate… If they had said that Puerto Real is not going to be closed, of course we would celebrate it, but that’s not the case. Those of us who are camping here defend and think that we have to continue with the pressure. We have to keep fighting and fighting, following our calendar of mobilizations”.

Whether the person interviewed was a CGT delegate is not clear, but anger is mounting. According to the worker, "this opinion is not from CGT, we are many colleagues who agree that there is nothing to celebrate."

Aware of mounting anger, the trade unions once again called token actions. They called one-hour strikes on April 27 and 29 and protests outside Airbus factories across Spain on April 26, 28 and 30. These were solely designed to let off steam in the workforce while Airbus prepares new attacks.

The PSOE-Podemos government has not lifted a finger to support Airbus workers, despite the fact that the Spanish state owns 4 percent of the company's capital in Spain. On the contrary, it sent anti-riot police to repress the protests that have taken place in recent weeks.

Three Airbus workers in Puerto Real, members of the CGT union, were arrested on April 19 on charges of public disorder. At no time were they informed about the specific acts that had given rise to the arrest. Another group of 23 workers was prevented from moving to the Madrid city of Getafe where they intended to hold a protest rally during the inauguration of the new Airbus Campus, in which King Felipe VI was going to participate. The bus was intercepted by heavily armed police and forced to return to Puerto Real.

The CGT showed them the necessary paperwork for the trip under conditions of restricted mobility due to COVID-19 but, according to the CGT website, “Such permits have been of little use… the police had an express order not to let them pass, ignoring any legal details. It did not matter if they had the necessary papers to make the trip.”

The CGT accepted this major attack on democratic rights without any significant protest. It is not even clear what legal argument the police used to justify their actions. Had they claimed COVID-19 health restrictions, the CGT could have defended their legal right to demonstrate while respecting social distancing. If the police had persisted, it would have been a devastating exposure of the criminal “herd immunity” policy of the PSOE-Podemos government, prioritizing profits over human life. It would have shown how public health restrictions are used as a pretext to de facto ban workers protests even as the government forces millions of workers in non-essential industries to work and children to school, so far costing the lives of over 100,000 people and 3.4 million infections.

Ukrainian President Zelensky deepens alliance with far right

Jason Melanovski

Amidst the ongoing military confrontation with Russia, reports have emerged proving that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is seeking to appoint the far-right Serhiy Sternenko as head of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) in Odessa, in an attempt to further his alliance with neo-Nazi forces.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky [Credit: en.kremlin.ru]

As the former head of the neo-Nazi Right Sector in Odessa, Sternenko was directly implicated in the 2014 Trade Unions House massacre of 46 people. He is a convicted criminal and currently under investigation for murder.

Andriy Bohdan, the former head of Zelensky’s administration, confirmed the president’s offer in a Facebook post in response to questions by a reporter with the online news site Strana. When asked if the rumors were true that Zelensky had offered the position to Sternenko, Bohdan replied, “I think he did it right when they were quickly forming a list of government deputies. An acute personnel shortage as they say.”

While Sternenko had previously claimed that he met personally with Zelensky and was offered the position in 2019, ties between the two had never been officially confirmed by anyone close to the president.

Confirmation of the offer demonstrates that the administration of Zelensky, who came to power in 2019 due to widespread disillusionment and disgust with his right-wing nationalist predecessor Petro Poroshenko, has in fact continued and increased the conspicuous alliance of Ukraine’s oligarchy with neo-Nazi thugs.

As a far-right political operative, Sternenko has a bloody political and criminal history including drug charges, kidnapping and murder.

In February of this year, he was found guilty and sentenced to seven years and three months in prison for the 2015 kidnapping and robbery of Serhiy Shcherbych, an Odessa district councilor and member of the pro-Russian Rodina Party.

Following the verdict, protests broke out across the country led by Ukrainian far-right nationalist forces calling for Sternenko’s release. The protests resulted in the trashing of Zelensky’s presidential offices, with 27 police officers injured in the process.

Serhiy Sternenko in June 2020 in a court in Kyiv (credit: RBC Ukraine via Wikipedia / CC-BY-SA 4.0)

Sternenko has likewise been supported by Ukraine’s most prominent right-wing politicians, former President Petro Poroshenko and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who both criticized Sternenko’s sentencing.

In addition to kidnapping charges, Sternenko is under investigation for the killing of Ivan Kuznetsov. Kuznetsov was killed in 2018 after another man confronted the infamous Sternenko and his girlfriend in the streets of Odessa. According to reports, after a fight broke out Sternenko chased down a fleeing Kuznetsov for over 100 meters and eventually stabbed him to death.

Sternenko first came to political prominence as a right-wing supporter of the US-backed coup in 2014 that ousted the elected pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. The coup heavily relied on neo-fascist forces such as Sternenko, his Right Sector and the Azov Battalion.

Later, as leader of the Right Sector in Odessa, Sternenko was directly implicated in the massacre of 46 people who were horrifically burned to death by right-wing thugs on May 2, 2014, after being forced to take shelter in Odessa’s Trade Unions House.

Since the Odessa Trade Unions House fire, Sternenko’s Right Sector thugs have interrupted a number of memorial events by family members to the victims. None of them have ever been held accountable for the massacre.

Despicably, in the Western press Sternenko is often depicted as a “pro-democracy” and “anti-corruption” activist who has been unfairly prosecuted.

Sternenko previously wore typical neo-Nazi military garb, but now is often seen dressed in a suit with glasses. He even earned himself a law degree in an effort to appear more respectable, garner support from Western imperialism and hide his neo-Nazi ties.

Recently, the rabidly anti-Russian Washington D.C.-based Atlantic Council think tank attempted to whitewash the bloody nature of Sternenko and Ukraine’s far right which the think tank itself supports.

Turning the truth on its head regarding the events of the Odessa massacre in 2014, the Atlantic Council wrote, “Sternenko has been in the public eye for a number of years and has frequently attracted controversy. He initially rose to prominence as head of the Odessa branch of Ukrainian far-right nationalist group Right Sector, and was actively involved in efforts to prevent a Kremlin-led takeover of the Black Sea port city in spring 2014 during the initial phase of Russia’s ongoing hybrid war against Ukraine.”

In March, thanks to the support he received from the US-backed section of the Ukrainian ruling class, Sternenko was released from jail on house arrest. Several Ukrainian parliamentary members had offered to pay Sternenko’s bail, including members from Zelensky’s own Servant of the People party.

Sternenko had been taken into custody after his sentencing in February and is now out on a pending appeal. His case is following a pattern in the Ukrainian judicial system where far-right thugs are rarely convicted or, even when convicted, can later skip out of jail and prison on appeal.

Sternenko’s release conspicuously coincided with the ramping up of hostilities with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and tensions with Moscow as well as Zelensky’s crackdown on the pro-Russian opposition in Ukraine.

In February Zelensky undemocratically banned the popular pro-Russian television stations ZIK, NewsOne, and 112 Ukraine, ostensibly to combat Russian “disinformation.”

The channels are affiliated with pro-Russian opposition leader and oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, who favors a negotiated peace settlement with Moscow and the Donbass separatists. This past week, Zelensky moved even further, banning the stations from YouTube in Ukraine.

By banning the channels, Zelensky has furthered his dangerous confrontation with Moscow over Crimea and the separatist-controlled Donbass region. He has also taken out media outlets which often expose the comfortable relationship between the pro-NATO section of the Ukrainian oligarchy and right-wing anti-Russian fascists like Sternenko.

One of the banned channels, 112 Ukraine, has reported previously on the recruitment and promotion of figures such as Sternenko by the SBU following the anti-Moscow coup in 2014. According to a June 2020 report from 112 Ukraine, Sternenko’s ties to the SBU date back to 2014 and that for some time while in Odessa as head of the Right Sector Sternenko basically worked as a paid employee of the SBU.

For the Ukrainian government, which recently announced a strategy to “retake” Crimea and continues to engage in a potentially catastrophic confrontation with Moscow with the military support from the US, figures such as Sternenko are indispensable for carrying out their dirty work both in the war zone, and when it comes to suppressing popular opposition.

Ukraine’s right-wing Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov, who is closely affiliated with neo-Nazi forces such as the Azov Battalion, recently called for the neo-fascists, whom he called “patriots,” to ready themselves to protect the “motherland” from Russia. These statements, like Zelensky’s increasingly open ties with the country’s far right, are further proof that the Ukrainian ruling class is counting on such elements to serve as the spearhead in a potential war with Russia.

More reports surface of child deaths from COVID-19 in the US as students remain in classrooms

Alex Johnson

Multiple reports have emerged over the past week about the deaths of children in the United States caused by COVID-19, providing further evidence that kids are vulnerable to fatal outcomes from the virus which has already killed more than 580,000 people in America alone.

A teacher reaches her hand out to Pedro Garcia, 4, as he arrives for the first day of school at the Mosaic Pre-K Center in Queens, Monday, Sept. 21, 2020 in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, over 3.71 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic last year. Deaths among children are rising against the backdrop of the deadly reopening of public schools and the spread of more contagious variants of the virus.

One of the recent children to succumb to the disease was a first grader, 6-year-old Week Day from Marshall, Minnesota, who passed away on Sunday. She reportedly contracted the virus without having any underlying health conditions. The Minnesota Department of Health identified Day as a student at Park Side Elementary. Day’s death has coincided with a worrisome increase in cases and hospitalizations of children from the virus in the state.

A letter was sent out to parents at the school alerting them of the child’s passing as a result of complications from coronavirus. One parent, Cecilia Albarez told local news outlet KVOA that she was “immediately heartbroken for the parents and the family,” sharing her sympathy as a parent of a young daughter herself. She also questioned the push to reopen schools and the abandonment of distance learning. “Education is, of course, important, but their lives are more important,” Alvarez said. “You don’t get them back; you don’t get a do-over.”

Alex Hernandez, a 14-year-old boy from Milwaukee, Wisconsin died of COVID-19 complications in early April. His was the first reported pediatric death caused by the virus in the state. Hernandez had first tested positive for the virus last November. Officials indicated that the boy’s infection remained active before he tested positive again on March 27. He passed away on April 1.

A third child, an unidentified 11-year-old boy who traveled to Hawaii earlier this week died on Tuesday from COVID-19. His parents had been fully vaccinated and tested for the virus before arriving in the state on vacation but vaccines have yet to be approved for use in children.

The child’s death came as a shock, as health officials say he started experiencing COVID-19 symptoms within hours after landing in the islands before being rushed to the hospital. The boy is only the 479th reported fatality in Hawaii and the first coronavirus-related death of a person in that age range in the state.

While the precise circumstances surrounding the deaths of younger children are often not made public due to privacy concerns, each tragedy should be seen within the context of the ruling elites’ homicidal “herd immunity” approach to the pandemic nationwide—which has resulted in more than 33 million infections—and the advent of new and even more deadly variants that are proving to pose a far greater danger to younger people. Outbreaks of the variants are being driven principally by the reckless reopening of in-person learning, which is placing millions of children and educators’ lives at risk.

The community where Day lived, Marshall, had reopened classrooms since the beginning of the semester under the “hybrid” model, which allowed all K-4 students to attend schools onsite for four days per week, with just one day of distance learning. According to Marshall School District officials, Park Side Elementary has seen 22 students and staff go into quarantine since the semester started. Dr. Brooke Moore, a pediatric pulmonologist for Children’s Minnesota Hospital, told KVOA that while most children who get COVID-19 will be asymptomatic, around 10 percent of cases in children are severe.

In comments to the media following the death of Day, Superintendent Jeremy Williams declared the district would merely continue following Minnesota Department of Health guidelines and no changes would be implemented for the school’s hybrid and in-person reopening policies. He noted the district’s supposed ongoing efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and simply told parents that they should watch their children for symptoms and get them tested.

This stance has been the policy for the greater portion of school districts, large and small, for most of the pandemic’s duration, ultimately placing responsibility on parents for students being infected, and not the irrational drive to reopen schools.

This nationwide campaign has been intensified since the beginning of the spring semester, as media commentators and school administrators have repeated ad nauseam the unconcerned and unscientific talking points of politicians from the corporate-controlled Democratic and Republican parties, claiming that deaths among children from COVID-19 are rare and should therefore not deter officials from filling classrooms.

Superintendent Williams expressed this view in his perfunctory message to parents after Day’s death. Before admitting that the danger of children dying from the virus was “scary and concerning for many,” he said the district would merely enlist “crisis team members ... to support all those in need,” instead of calling for the shutdown of schools and a wholesale return to distance learning until the virus is suppressed. These comments reflect President Joe Biden’s marching orders aimed at opening the majority of K-8 schools by the first 100 days of his administration.

Democratic Minnesota governor Tim Walz said in a statement that it was “simply heartbreaking to hear that COVID-19 has taken the life of someone so young,” and that “there is no grief more profound than the loss of family.” Such comments amount to very little coming from the same governor who told the media in February, “It’s time to get our students back in school” and patted himself on the back by saying, “We’re on our way to ending the pandemic. We’re beating this thing.”

Biden and the Democrats have sought to couch their murderous plans in the most benevolent terms, with the president claiming that reopenings would coincide with providing “help” and “giving students extra support.” This policy has meant the continued sacrifice of children, educators and staff members’ health and lives to the profit-interests of the super-rich and the capitalist system. To the ruling class and their flunkies in both capitalist parties, more students need to be pushed back into unsafe schools to ensure that parents can go back into unsafe factories and workplaces and continue pumping out wealth for big business and the financial elite.

The consequences of these policies are being borne out all across the country, where cities and entire states are witnessing an alarming spike in COVID-19 infections among children and young adults as a result of novel strains of COVID-19. In Michigan, which has gone full speed ahead with its reopening drive, there has been a record-breaking spike in child hospitalizations in recent weeks. Last week, Michigan’s Health & Hospital Association released data showing children hospitalized with severe COVID-19 symptoms across the state had increased to 70, twice as many as were hospitalized during the second wave of the pandemic in November.

Public health officials across the country are increasingly turning their attention to developments in Michigan, citing the growing predominance of the B.1.1.7 variant as the source behind the latest wave. Health scientists are highlighting the situation in Michigan as a precursor for what could manifest in the majority of the United States once the new variant makes deep inroads in communities throughout the country.

In an interview with WebMD in early April, Minnesota state epidemiologist Ruth Lynfield pointed to the rapidly rising infection rate in the state and mentioned how the B.1.1.7 variant has a higher attack rate among children than earlier versions of the virus, causing a far higher likelihood for infection when exposed. Lynfield said health officials are vigorously tracking cases that are emerging primarily through non-essential workplaces and spaces, such as youth sports leagues, classrooms and day care centers. “We certainly get the sense that youth are what we might refer to as the leading edge of the spread of variants,” she said.

In Massachusetts, the largest number of new COVID-19 infections since the start of April have been among children and teenagers. The state also has the fifth highest number of B.1.1.7 cases in the US, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cases have been especially severe for youth with underlying medical conditions. But even among healthier children, the virus has been known to trigger a far more serious post viral syndrome called MIS-C, which has led to more hospitalizations for small children in many parts of the country.

While children only represent a fraction of deaths from COVID-19 infections, statistics recently have confirmed that children now comprise a larger percentage of people getting infected than earlier in the pandemic. An American Academy of Pediatrics report showed that children accounted for one in five cases detected nationwide during the second week of April. In Michigan, for example, rates of child infections are now higher than at any point in the pandemic. As late as April 17, children aged 10-19 were averaging more than 1,150 cases per day during the previous week, the state’s highest rate of new cases. For children younger than 10, the average was 400 new cases per day.

In contrast to the complacency shown by public officials toward the relatively low rate of fatality among children from the virus, the number of child deaths have reached tragic levels. According to the Covid Project, which tracks child deaths from COVID-19 using government reports and news accounts, there were 582 child deaths as of late March. This makes the disease one of the top 10 causes of death for children in the US. It’s also worth noting that this number was recorded before the explosion of infections from the new B.1.1.7 variant that was seen in April.

Scientists have also recently noted that while children may have a lower risk of developing severe COVID-19 than adults, many children have already become “long haulers” of the disease and are experiencing symptoms months after they first contracted the virus. In the United States, very limited data has been collected to gauge how common this phenomenon is among school children under 18, mostly due to intransigence on the part of public officials that no information be released that counters the unsafe reopening drive.

But in other places, such as the United Kingdom, recent data has shown that 10 to 15 percent of children younger than 16 infected with COVID-19 still had at least one symptom five weeks later. A research study from the Department of Woman and Child Health at Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli in Rome, Italy also came to similar conclusions after analyzing a cohort of 129 children diagnosed with COVID-19 between March and November 2020. Of these, more than half (52.7 percent) reported experiencing at least one symptom of COVID-19 approximately four months after the initial diagnosis.

Workers Party pursues herd immunity policy as Brazil tops 400,000 COVID deaths

Eduardo Parati

As Brazil tops 400,000 recorded COVID-19 deaths, “opposition” state governors of the Workers Party (PT) and the Maoist Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) are implementing policies in tandem with fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro’s reopening of the economy and defense of mass infection.

Residents place roses on mattresses symbolizing COVID-19 victims, during a protest against the Government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

While the media and state governments are promoting the slightly lower Intensive Care Unit (ICU) occupation rates resulting from partial closures by state governments, the reality is that the rate of infection across Brazil has risen to unprecedented levels for more than a month. During the height of the Manaus surge in January the rolling average peaked at 55,626 cases; it reached 77,129 in March and has yet to fall below the levels of January.

The result is one of the highest coronavirus daily death counts in the world, with more than 2,000 people dying every single day for the past 40 days.

The number of COVID-19 deaths registered in April is the highest since the pandemic started. The death toll reached 200,000 ten months after the first case was registered in the country. However, 76 days later the number reached 300,000 and it only took 36 days for the country to top 400,000 deaths.

Last week, the Finance Ministry announced that the funds solicited by the Health Ministry for the vaccine effort and for the purchase of intubation kits—which include sedatives and muscle relaxants needed for intubation—would be released in smaller installments, citing the “possibility of the acute crisis winding down with the advances in vaccination.”

This effective denial of resources cut the purchase of intubation kits in half, so that stockpiling would now be enough to hold on for 90 days, while the initial estimate was 180. The Finance Ministry announcement came two days after Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga postponed from May to September the end date for the vaccination of the first-priority group, which corresponds to only 37 per cent of the population.

While the government and the mainstream media publicly focus on preparations for the national mass production and new purchases of vaccines, most of which will only become available several months from now, the Health Ministry revealed its real concerns in letters sent to the Finance Ministry .

The documents stated that the situation is severe and that there is “uncertainty” about the demand of hospital units and medical supplies, making a reference to the beginning of April, when ICUs in 24 states were at 80 per cent capacity, while 11 had rates above 95 per cent, which “characterizes a very severe situation.”

Meanwhile, the delays in vaccine imports are compromising the distribution of shots. On Wednesday, a report in Estado de São Paulo concluded that cities in at least eight states will not be able to give the second shots in time. There are currently no studies on the effectiveness of taking a single jab, which means that the lives of hundreds of thousands may be at risk. More than 100,000 people will receive their second shots after the 28-day optimal period for the CoronaVac vaccine. In the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, 223,000 are at risk of losing their window for the second shot after a delay in the arrival of vaccines.

As the vaccination campaign suffers repeated delays, the federal and state governments’ policy of reopening the economy throughout the country means forcing the vast majority of the population to go back into their workplaces and risk getting infected. This murderous campaign is being waged by all sections of the political establishment, including the self-proclaimed “left” state governments.

The delays in the national and local vaccination rollouts haven’t stopped the states from reopening their economies. Last week, Governor Flávio Dino of the PCdoB announced the rolling out of vaccinations for teachers in the state of Maranhão as part of his effort to promote the return to schools in the region, which will inevitably result in a surge of COVID-19 cases among students. On April 9, during the biggest surge in the country yet, Dino announced the reopening of churches with 25 per cent capacity, following a decision by the Bolsonaro-appointed Federal Supreme Court Judge Nunes Marques.

On April 11, Governor Camilo Santana of the PT announced the reopening of the economy in the state of Ceará based on false claims about a “decline” in the state’s deaths and hospitalizations, which meant a stabilization of the numbers at more than 800 deaths per week.

The deadly threat posed by this policy is seen in a report on Thursday that 99.45 per cent of Ceará’s territory, or 184 out of 185 cities in the state, are under an “extremely high risk” of COVID-19 transmission, the highest levels reported in Ceará since January.

The PT governor’s murderous policy was starkly exposed by the explosion of an oxygen cylinder fulfillment plant in Ceará last Saturday, in which six workers were injured, with three being taken to the hospital. A video showed nearby houses with broken windows and people injured. White Martins, the owner company, reported 150 houses damaged.

Although the immediate causes for the explosion are not clear, the criminal response of the self-proclaimed “left” politicians, aligned with Bolsonaro’s drive to let people get sick and die to guarantee profits, has resulted in a surge in demand for oxygen cylinders.

In March, Anvisa, Brazil’s health regulatory agency, announced that, thanks to the loosening of rules and protocols, some companies managed to increase oxygen production and cylinder fulfillment by 200 per cent. Data published by the agency shows that the sale of oxygen cylinders spiked by 47 percent in March, even before the worst period of the pandemic.

White Martins stated during the same month that six states, including Ceará, had been “presenting excessive oxygen consumption” and announced that its plants were starting 24-hours-a-day production. That was before the April surge in deaths throughout the country. One day after the explosion, the company announced that it was transporting oxygen cylinders to Ceará to serve hospitals in the capital and other cities.

The Workers Party and the Communist Party are carrying out these policies while declaring that the defense against Bolsonaro’s preparations for a dictatorship in Brazil is to be found within the same military that imposed a regime of mass repression between 1964 and 1985. Bolsonaro’s herd immunity campaign has been accompanied by repeated calls for using the military to force a reopening of the economy, which would imply the establishment of an openly authoritarian regime.

During a visit to the PT-governed state of Bahia on Monday, just days before the beginning of a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) to investigate the state and federal governments’ handling of the pandemic, the president declared that “we must not allow some pseudo-governors who want to impose a dictatorship using the virus to subdue” the population. He added that “it wasn’t the federal government who made you stay at home or closed stores, which destroyed millions of jobs.”

Amid critical levels of social inequality, widespread reports of hunger and the spread of strikes and protests by app delivery workers, oil workers, metalworkers and transport workers, these so-called “left” parties are focusing all of their efforts on preventing workers’ opposition from getting out of their control.

In the state of Pernambuco, governed by a PSB (Brazilian Socialist Party)/PCdoB coalition, teachers who had led a courageous strike against the reopening of schools in September, have again entered into struggle, striking for two weeks. The response of the PT-controlled Sintepe (Pernambuco’s Education Workers Union) is to raise the demand, repeated throughout the country, for “the vaccination of all education workers,” while leaving kids to transmit and die from the coronavirus once in-person classes begin.

The bogus campaign by the union is exposed by its own actions. Back in September, the president of the union, Fernando Melo, declared that workers’ dissatisfaction was caused by the “way in which the announcement of the return was made,” not by the lives claimed by the virus. The maneuvers of the union eventually led to the defeat of the strike.

The Sintepe is affiliated to the PT-controlled CUT, which has invited right-wing figures like São Paulo Governor João Doria and Arthur Lira, who was elected chairman of the lower house of Congress with support from Bolsonaro, to participate in this year’s May Day Rally.

A year into the pandemic, all sections of the political establishment are exposed for their criminal indifference to widespread suffering and are actively implementing the herd immunity policy. At the same time, workers are entering into struggle to defend themselves against the policies that are killing their loved ones and destroying their living standards.

The French army’s coup plots and the global onslaught on democratic rights

Alex Lantier

This year the day of international working class solidarity comes amid a deepening threat of far-right dictatorship. In the week before May Day, a political crisis has mounted in France over a letter by 23 retired or reservist generals in the neofascist magazine Current Values advocating a coup. Even as the defense ministry threatens to prosecute officers supporting the letter, growing numbers of officers are signing it—now over 7,000.

These statements must be taken as a warning to workers not only in France but internationally. Less than five months have passed since January 6, when then-US President Donald Trump sent thousands of his neofascist supporters to storm the Capitol in Washington D.C. to halt the certification of his loss in the presidential elections. This was clearly not a historical accident attributable to Trump’s personal recklessness, nor did the coup’s failure end the threat of fascistic rule.

As working class anger mounts at the horrific death toll of “herd immunity” policies and the enrichment of the wealthy during the pandemic, powerful factions of the ruling class in every country are contemplating military-authoritarian rule.

The letter, addressed to President Emmanuel Macron, claimed that “mortal dangers” face the French nation. It called for immediate, unspecified changes in state policy to avert “an explosion and the intervention of our active-duty comrades-in-arms in a perilous mission … on the national soil.” Also, it asserted that “the deaths, for which you will be responsible, will be counted in the thousands.”

Emmanuel Macron and French Armies Chief Staff General Francois Lecointre, left, stand in the command car as they review troops before the start of the Bastille Day military parade, Tuesday, July 14, 2020 in Paris [Credit: AP Photo/Christophe Ena, Pool]

The retired and reservist generals couched their threats in the Islamophobic rhetoric of Macron’s “anti-separatist” law targeting political Islam. Amid the debacle of France’s eight-year war in Mali and mounting anger at police violence in immigrant suburbs, they denounced “Islamism and the suburban hordes” for driving “the separation of numerous portions of the country” from state authority. They demanded that the government fight the threat of “race war” caused by “racialism, indigenous nationalism and anti-colonial theories.”

The ruling class fears not race war but class struggle. In the weeks before the letter appeared, as the COVID-19 death toll hit 1 million in Europe and 100,000 in France, Macron pledged to end social distancing, even as coronavirus variants were spreading. He bucked public expectation of a strict lockdown to halt the contagion and desperate, angry calls from medical staff for a scientific policy to halt the slaughter. He provocatively said no health statistic could change his decision to reopen schools.

On April 17, one of the leading far-right politicians behind the coup threat, far-right politician Philippe de Villiers issued a fascistic appeal in Current Values titled, “I call for an insurrection.” He demagogically blamed “Big Pharma, Big Data, Big Finance, the Bill Gates Foundation and the Davos Forum” for the pandemic.

Just four days later, on April 21, the generals’ letter appeared. Its timing was not fortuitous. It came 60 years after the Algiers putsch of April 21, 1961—which de Villiers’ father Jacques, a leader of the far-right Secret Armed Organization (OAS), supported during the Algerian war. This failed putsch, led by generals linked to wealthy French colonialists in Algeria and to General Francisco Franco’s fascist regime in Spain, aimed to topple General Charles de Gaulle as he prepared to grant Algeria independence in 1962.

Philippe de Villiers’ brother, General Pierre de Villiers, came out in 2019, after retiring as army chief of staff, to demand firmer repression of “yellow vests” protesting social inequality. After over 10,000 “yellow vests” had been arrested and 4,400 wounded by police, he called for more “firmness” against strikers. “A gulf has emerged between those who lead and those who obey. This gulf is profound. … We must restore order; things cannot continue this way.”

Amid the pandemic last year he warned of a global revolutionary crisis. “Today, beyond the security crisis, there is the pandemic, all of this against a backdrop of economic, social and political crisis with a lack of confidence in leaders,” he said. “I fear this pent-up anger will explode at once,” he warned, adding, “We must think the unthinkable. … The rule of law is obviously a good thing, but at some point, we also must develop a strategic plan.”

The “strategic plan” is clearly a military dictatorship. Against this, workers’ best allies are their class brothers and sisters worldwide. The pandemic is a trigger event in world history, vastly intensifying international class conflict driven by 30 years of imperialist war and social austerity following the Stalinist restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union in 1991. A global pandemic can only be halted by a globally coordinated health policy mobilizing world industry and science.

Similarly, the threat of far-right rule can only be opposed by the coordinated international action of the working class, independently of the pro-capitalist parties and union bureaucracies.

Democratic forms of rule, incompatible with the levels of social inequality and death produced by capitalism, are collapsing worldwide. Trump’s historically unprecedented coup—which nearly succeeded, as the Pentagon for hours refused to send troops to the Capitol—is only the starkest example, at the heart of world imperialism, of an international process. In Germany, multiple neo-Nazi networks in the army are compiling kill lists, after neo-Nazis murdered conservative politician Walter Lübcke in 2019 for his statements on migrants.

As neofascist presidential candidate Marine Le Pen appeals to the far-right generals for support in the 2022 elections, Macron is no alternative to far-right forces. Indeed, the generals’ letter is framed as advice to Macron, who is himself setting up a police state. Over the last week, he has maintained a deafening silence on the generals’ letter.

Since his election in 2017, the “president of the rich” has courted the police and army. As his polls collapsed as “yellow vest” protests began in 2018, Macron took the unprecedented step of hailing France’s Nazi-collaborationist dictator Philippe Pétain as a “great soldier.” His “anti-separatist” law—overseen by Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, an ex-member of the far-right Action française —aims to pose as tougher on Islam than Le Pen. This only strengthens fascistic forces in the officer corps, which Macron is cultivating as a base for “herd immunity” policies.

The Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT) union and its ally, 2017 presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is asking Macron to prosecute putschist officers, are aligning themselves with the Macron regime. Having backed the European pandemic bailouts of the banks and big business, which enriched Europe’s billionaires by €1 trillion, they are complicit in “herd immunity.”

Perhaps the clearest indication of their reactionary role is the record of their Spanish ally, Podemos General Secretary and ex-Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias. He helped implement “herd immunity” policies and called on workers to ignore coup threats last year from Spanish generals close to the neo-Francoite Vox party.

Wall Street margin debt surges to record high

Nick Beams

Wall Street’s S&P 500 index reached a new record high on Thursday on the back of the decision by the Fed the previous day that its continuous boosting of financial markets, through the injection of more than $1.4 trillion a year in asset purchases, would continue for a “long time.”

Trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange [Credit: AP Photo/Richard Drew]

The commitment came despite indications of increased US economic growth and rising inflation which, in times past, would have set the stage for a tightening of monetary policy. But such is a fear that even the hint of a move in that direction will spark a collapse of the speculative financial boom that Fed chair Jerome Powell took every opportunity at his press conference to rule it out.

The extent of the speculative mania, which goes way beyond anything seen in the past, is indicated by broad financial trends and specific events.

One of the most significant broad indicators is the escalation of margin lending in which investors borrow money from brokers to finance share purchases and trade in financial markets. The collateral for the loan is the financial asset purchased, with the broker able to demand more cash from the investor—a margin call—if its market value falls.

The perils of margin trading were revealed last month with the collapse of the previously little-known family investment firm Archegos Capital as a result of such a call. It had amassed some $50 billion in loans from some of the world’s major banks, most notably Credit Suisse, and its demise left the banks with a total loss of $10 billion.

But despite this warning sign, the escalation of margin debt is continuing. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a supposed Wall Street watchdog operating under the supervision of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has reported that margin debt at the end of March was a record $822 billion.

This compares with the figure of $479 billion at the same time last year and more than double the peak of $400 billion in 2007 on the eve of the financial crisis of 2008.

Placing these numbers in context, the Financial Times reported calculations by the London-based fund ABP Invest showing that in the 2000 dotcom and 2007 credit booms US margin debt reached a level equivalent to around 3 percent of gross domestic production. It is now equivalent to nearly 4 percent.

But even the figures provided by FINRA are a major underestimation of the total debt involved because, through the use of financial derivatives, banks are able to further finance highly leveraged trading as was revealed in the collapse of Archegos.

The cheap money provided by the Fed is enabling the orgy of speculation which has seen the transfer of trillions of dollars into the hands of the world’s richest individuals, while millions of people in the US and around the world confront a return to conditions not seen since the days of the 1930s Great Depression.

There was a revealing exchange which took place during the CBS program “60 Minutes” earlier this month when Fed chair Jerome Powell was questioned on the escalation of margin debt.

The interviewer, Scott Pelley, noted there had been a 49 percent increase in margin debt so far this year and asked: “At what point does the Federal Reserve start to rein in this speculative bidding up of stock prices based on borrowed money?”

Powell replied: “That sounds like margin debt. I don’t know that statistic. I really can’t react to that statistic.”

The assertion by the Fed chief that he is completely ignorant of the level of margin debt, given its significance for the stability of the financial system, simply beggars belief.

Powell chose to answer in the way he did because of fear that any comment on the issue—and even the vaguest hint that margin debt was reaching dangerous levels and might need to be reined in—would set off turbulence on Wall Street, so dependent has it become on the flow of ultra-cheap money from the central bank.

Another broad indicator is the increase in the money raised by special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs). The firms, sometimes described as blank cheque companies, raise money and obtain a stock market listing with the aim of taking over another company which wants to go public and join the share market boom without having to through the often-complex procedure of making an initial public offering.

In the first three months of this year SPACs raised almost $88 billion, more than for the whole of 2020.

There are numerous individual phenomena which express the extent of the speculation. Chief among these is bitcoin, which earlier this month rose to a high of $64,000 before pulling back somewhat.

The rise and rise of Tesla shares is in the same category. The company is also tied in with the bitcoin speculation. On Thursday it announced its net income for the March quarter was $438 million, a record. The company revealed it had sold $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin which contributed $101 million to the bottom line.

As a producer of electric vehicles, Tesla also picked up $518 million in selling regulatory credits to other companies to help them meet emissions mandates. As the Wall Street Journal put in a headline “Tesla makes more money trading bitcoin than selling cars.”

The complete divorce of the share market value of the company from underlying real value—a characteristic feature of the stock market boom as a whole—is indicated by the fact that Tesla’s market value of $700 billion is more than five times the combined value of Ford and General Motors. Sales of the former in the US in the first quarter alone were more than double Tesla’s global sales for a year.

Possibly the most egregious expression of the market mania is the case of Hometown International which owns a small deli in Paulsboro, New Jersey. The deli had sales of just $21,772 in 2019 and only $13,976 in 2020 when it was closed for six months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But recently its share market valuation topped $100 million. As one hedge fund manager commented “the pastrami must be amazing.”

The rise and rise of Hometown’s market value is indicative of a broader process. Shares and other assets, including major industrial commodities such as lumber and copper, are being purchased purely on the basis that other buyers will come in at an even higher price.

While commentators, barely able to see beyond the end of their nose and no doubt dazzled by the rise of their own portfolios, have been hailing the market rise as a resurgence of the US economy out of the pandemic, it is an expression of its deeply diseased character.

It should be recalled that the origins of the present maniacal phase of the stock market boom lie in the massive intervention by the Fed beginning in March 2020 when markets collapsed and the $21 trillion market for US Treasury bonds, the basis of the global financial system, froze.

The Fed’s intervention, amounting to trillions of dollars and supporting all financial markets, including the purchase of stocks for the first time, was an extension and qualitative development of the policies it has pursued ever since the stock market crash of October 1987 when it initiated the program of supplying ever cheaper money to the markets in response to a crisis.

The history of these interventions shows that whatever their effect in short-term stabilisation they prepare the conditions for the resurgence of the underlying crisis in even more virulent form.

All the conditions are now developing for another crisis, going far beyond the scale of the crash of 2008, in which the working class will be directly confronted with the necessary task of taking political power in its own hands in order to begin the reconstruction of the US and global economy on socialist foundations.

Madrid elections marked by mounting fascist death threats

Alejandro López

Campaigning for the May 4 regional elections in Madrid has descended into a political debacle. The month since snap regional elections were called by the ruling Popular Party (PP) has seen eight death threats on politicians, a court intervention to defend far-right Vox party’s Nazi-inspired propaganda, fascist rallies in working class areas, and trumped up accusations of mail ballot fraud. Candidates also traded accusations of provoking mass COVID-19 deaths.

The election climate testifies to the advanced breakdown of democratic forms of rule in Spain and internationally. This is the product of an immense growth of social inequality and the policy of prioritising profits over lives during the COVID-19 pandemic—the “herd immunity” policy—for which the entire capitalist political establishment is responsible.

It unfolds amid a major political crisis in neighbouring France, where a letter signed by over 20 retired generals, and since signed by over 7,000 military personnel and backed by the far-right National Rally party, has threatened a coup. It also takes place barely four months after several thousand right-wing extremists organised by US President Donald Trump and sections of the Republican Party stormed the Capitol in Washington D.C. to try to nullify the US elections.

The incumbent conservative Madrid president Isabel Diaz Ayuso speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Madrid, Spain, April 26, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Bernat Armangue]

On Wednesday, a death threat letter with ammunition was sent to former Socialist Party (PSOE) Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who has been out of politics for over a decade. It was the latest incident after similar death threats with bullets were sent to regional election candidates, including Podemos candidate Pablo Iglesias and PP incumbent Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Other letters have gone to Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, general director of the Civil Guard María Gámez, and Industry and Tourism Minister Reyes Maroto.

One of the chief targets is Iglesias, who has been hounded by far-right forces for over a year, coinciding with a rising fear in ruling circles of workers’ opposition, expressed in strikes and calls for lockdowns, to the “herd immunity” policies on the COVID-19 pandemic. The letter warned, “Your wife, your parents and you are sentenced to capital punishment, your time is running out.” It came with four CETME bullets, a rifle used by the Spanish Army, Navy, Civil Guard and National Police.

The hatred of Iglesias in sections of the security forces sympathetic to Vox emerged Thursday, when La Marea revealed a Facebook page, “Primavera Española del CENEPE” (Spanish Spring of CENEPE), with 15,000 members, most linked to the security forces, attacking Iglesias. He is attacked as “son of the great b*tch, scum, trash rat ... I’m not saying what I would do with you because I’m buckled up;” “And he will always be the parasite friend of terrorists” or “Whoever sows winds gathers storms.”

Vox has unleashed violent propaganda against migrant children, directly inspired from the Nazis. Its billboards in Madrid show a dark-skinned youth, under the name MENA—a pejorative acronym for unaccompanied foreign minors—and “your grandma” spelled on the board. It states falsely that young migrants receive €4,700 while pensioners receive €426 monthly.

The aim of this disgusting campaign is to scapegoat children fleeing imperialist war, poverty and oppression—269 are under care in the Madrid region—for social crises produced by capitalism. On Friday, the courts refused to admit a complaint that the billboards constitute hate speech, arguing it constitutes freedom of expression.

Vox has met with strong opposition in working class neighbourhoods, where it has organised small provocative rallies, protected by anti-riot police sent in by the PSOE-Podemos government. Anti-Vox protesters have faced crackdowns, arrests and, according to one report, torture in police custody.

The orgy of threats, fascistic propaganda and police violence unfolding in Madrid constitute a serious warning to the working class. Through attacks on pseudo-left politicians such as Iglesias, far-right forces are aiming at the growing anger in the working class against the deadly “herd immunity” policies in Spain and internationally.

Significantly, polls show that the incumbent PP may be reelected next week, and Vox may enter into the regional government. The latest polls show that the PP would be first with around 41 percent of the votes, followed by PSOE (21 percent), Más Madrid (16 percent), Vox (9–10 percent) and Podemos (7 precent). The PP has already promised to include Vox in a coalition government. This is in a region where PP-Vox policies have led to mass deaths. Madrid is the Spanish region with the most infections and deaths from COVID-19, around 24,000.

Internal documents showed that Madrid regional officials issued protocols with criteria to exclude nursing home residents from being transferred to hospitals at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has led to the deaths of thousands.

The PSOE and Podemos could not capitalise on PP-Vox crimes, having implemented the same policy at the national level, leaving over 100,000 dead and 3.5 million infected with COVID-19. This is why the pandemic was widely discussed at the start of the campaign but then quickly shelved as candidates realised that accusing each other of social murder was a zero-sum game. All of them had supported the same criminal policy.

There is deep, historically rooted opposition to fascistic forces and “herd immunity” policies in the European working class. However, the working class cannot entrust the struggle against this to the same parties, including the PSOE and Podemos that implemented this policy. Whatever “anti-fascist” rhetoric they cynically employed during the campaign, it is clear that the PSOE-Podemos government cannot and will not oppose a far-right authoritarian regime. On the contrary, it relies on far-right forces to implement its “herd immunity policy.”

Indeed, a key reason the far right feel emboldened is that PSOE-Podemos adopted the political agenda set by Vox. They worked hand in hand with the regional Madrid PP government backed by Vox to implement the EU’s “herd immunity” policy.

Last autumn, the central government threatened to deploy 7,500 soldiers against protests targeting the “restricted mobility” order imposed in the working class districts of Madrid amid the resurgence of COVID-19. The order, worked out between the Madrid regional and Spanish national governments, required workers and youth to continue reporting to work and school. It imposed lockdowns only in working class areas.

The current, fourth wave, which has now unnecessarily claimed 5,000 lives, has been completely absent from the electoral debate. Instead, all candidates have agreed to Vox’s demand to end social distancing. The PSOE-Podemos government has spent days repeating that it will not extend the state of alarm, the legal mechanism to implement social distancing. Health Minister Carolina Darias repeated Vox’ mantra that “we can’t live forever with the state of alarm.”

Vox has ended its electoral campaign with a pledge to commit to six demands of the ultra-Catholic, fascistic Hazte Oir association if it enters a PP-led regional government—including lifting all travel restrictions aiming at stopping the spread of the coronavirus.

Fascistic forces pose a very real threat, and significant sections of workers and youth—including among Podemos, More Madrid and PSOE voters—hate everything Vox stands for. However, the Madrid elections show that the working class can only fight them based on its own party and programme. It is impossible to oppose fascistic forces based on the reactionary record of the PSOE, Podemos or their allies in the union bureaucracies.