8 Jul 2021

The Billionaire Space Race

Eric London


This month, the world is watching with bated breath as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Virgin’s Richard Branson dash toward the finish line in the space race of the 21st century. Since the dawn of time, man has looked to the sky and wondered: Who will be the first billionaire in space? The wait is now over.

Jeff Bezos exploring the universe (Image composition credit: WSWS Media)

Never mind the fact that 250 million more people live in extreme poverty than in early 2020, according to the World Bank, or that 1.5 billion informal workers living on the margins of society lost most or all of their income last year. This week, in some unknown hospital located somewhere on this planet, the 4 millionth person died of the coronavirus.

The pandemic has shown that the capitalist class is hostile to harnessing scientific advancement to meet the needs of the human race here on Earth. What better time for two men to pour billions of dollars into plans to launch themselves into space (actually, sub-orbital flight) to impress shareholders and have a bit of fun?

A substantial layer of the financial aristocracy unironically agrees. The same Scrooges who hoard their wealth in offshore tax havens so they don’t have to chip in for social programs were desperate to outbid one another for a seat on an upcoming billionaire space flight. At a recent auction, one poor sucker paid $29.7 million for a ticket aboard Bezos’s Blue Origin flight.

The Wall Street Journal described a gripping, absolutely ripping moment at the auction house: “Bidding opened at $4.9 million and rose quickly to $10 million before four participants competed to ultimately raise the price to $28 million. A 6 percent buyer’s commission is added to the winning bid, taking the final cost to $29.7 million. Blue Origin said 7,600 bidders from 159 countries registered for the event.”

Team Bezos and Team Branson are engaged in petty sniping over who will be the “real” first billionaire out of the atmosphere. It isn’t exactly Kennedy and Khrushchev.

Branson brags that he will depart sooner, but Bezos claims that Branson is too chicken to travel as far out as he. A Bezos spokesman told the New York Times, “We wish [Branson] a great and safe flight, but they’re not flying above the Karman line and it’s a very different experience.” The Karman line is located 62 miles above Earth and is used by scientists to mark the line between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.

Amazon workers have many guesses as to why Bezos is so eager to make it into space. There are no taxes out there, surely, and since a day on the Moon is the equivalent of 27 here on Earth, that means a worker’s 14-hour shift would be the equivalent of 380 hours of labor, and try making that without a bathroom break! Or maybe Bezos figures if he sets up shop on the far side of the Moon no pesky reporters will be able to expose the sweat shop conditions that exist inside.

On the other hand, what is not for Bezos to like here on Earth? Democratic and Republican politicians line up to hand him billions in subsidies, and there are hundreds of administrative judges and doctors ready to help deny workers’ compensation claims.

Actually, Bezos himself explained what the venture is really about in a 2019 interview with CNBC:

We send things up into space, but they are all made on Earth. Eventually it will be much cheaper and simpler to make really complicated things, like microprocessors and everything, in space and then send those highly complex manufactured objects back down to Earth, so that we don’t have the big factories and pollution generating industries that make those things now on Earth. And Earth can be zoned residential.

In other words, Bezos’ actual desire is to build factories on the Moon and on Mars, where presumably all the workers will be forced to live, since nobody working at Amazon is going to have the time or the energy to make the commute back to Earth.

It seems that all Earthlings are happy about Bezos and Branson leaving the planet. Over 150,000 people signed a petition on change.org titled “To the proletariat: Do not allow Jeff Bezos to return to Earth.” The petitioners explain, “Billionaires should not exist ... on earth, or in space, but should they decide the latter, they should stay there.”

We at the World Socialist Web Site wish only that there was extra room in those space pods for Henry Kissinger.

The fantastic scientific gains of recent years, as expressed in such “giant leaps” as the 2012 Mars rover, only show the potential for harnessing the technological and intellectual capacities of mankind to meet human need. The rover, “Curiosity,” is still rolling across the surface of Mars, gathering data and samples that promise to open up new pathways to the understanding of our Solar System. It is an insult to humanity’s remarkable drive for scientific development that such advances are now used, under capitalism, to satisfy the megalomania of two individuals who pass on what they learn to the weapons manufacturers and intelligence agencies.

But there is something more than megalomania in Bezos’ and Branson’s strange desire to personally travel into space. In his 2016 novel Zero K, Don DeLillo captures something of the instability of an aristocratic layer that knows it is destroying the planet and sitting on a social powder keg.

The novel features an aging hedge fund manager who joins an elite group of billionaires and statesmen who cryogenically freeze themselves, clinging to the possibility of eternal life. One group member explains to the oligarchs that burying their frozen bodies deep down in the Earth will make them safe from revolution, war or climate disaster, and allow them to live until a time when they can rule again:

Your situation, those few of you on the verge of the journey toward rebirth. You are completely outside the narrative of what we refer to as history. You are about to become, each of you, a single life in touch only with yourself. That world, the one above, is being lost to the systems. To the transparent networks that slowly occlude the flow of all those aspects of nature and character that distinguish humans from elevator buttons and doorbells.

Like the French and Russian aristocracies swept away by the revolutions of 1789 and 1917, an entire social layer comprised of Bezoses and Bransons see itself as belonging to a class of people who are “out of this world.” Their interests are directly hostile to those of the broad masses of the world’s population, who comprise the working class, whom they exploit to acquire astronomical wealth. If Jeff Bezos makes it into space, it will only be on the backs of the Amazon workers he exploited and ground up to make profit.

Only a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism can sweep social parasites and exploiters like these from atop the commanding heights of the economy and harness the immense technological advances of humankind to serve the interests of billions of people.

Protests grow against the Tokyo Summer Olympics as COVID-19 cases surge

Emily Ochiai


With three weeks until the Olympics, new COVID-19 cases in Tokyo are on the rise, after the government ended the state of emergency on June 20. The following week saw a doubling of infections. On July 1, Tokyo had more than 670 new cases, at least 63 of which were the more infectious delta variant.

People walk by posters to promote the Olympic Games planned to start in the summer of 2021, in Tokyo, Wednesday, June 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

In response to the sharp increase in cases, Prime Minister Suga stated: “If the state of emergency is reissued, games without an audience may be a possibility.” The Tokyo Olympics Committee and the International Olympics Committee have shown no intention of cancelling or further postponing the Games, which are expected to bring more than 15,000 athletes and thousands of coaches, trainers and officials from all over the world.

Earlier this year, in an attempt to convince the population that the Olympics will be safe, Prime Minister Suga announced that Japan would finish vaccinating all elderly citizens by the end of July. As of now, however, only 12 percent of the adult population is fully vaccinated.

A poll in May showed that 83 percent of people in Japan do not want the Olympic Games to take place. There have been numerous protests against them.

On June 23, a demonstration was organised in front of Tochomae—the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Station—calling for the cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. Numerous signs were held up reading: “Use the [Olympic] funds for COVID” and “Olympics destroy lives. End them now” were held up. The demonstrators then marched throughout the Shinjuku district with more people joining. By 9 p.m. the gathering had swelled to more than 850.

On June 26, nurses and medical staff protested in Sapporo to demand the cancellation of the games. Placards included “Cancel the Olympics. We must do everything to fight COVID.” They told the media: “We have to cancel the Olympics Games and put all our efforts into medical care, so that we do not have a healthcare crisis.”

An online poll conducted, on June 29, revealed that the overwhelming majority of the nurses are opposed to the games, with 54 percent calling for postponement and 32 percent for cancellation. One person commented: If they force us to have the Olympics now, it would be completely chaotic. I cannot stand a worse healthcare crisis”.

The ruling class has responded by deploying police to intimidate and discourage people from voicing their opposition. In May, the home of an anti-Olympics protester was raided by police and her computer and smartphone taken away. Her lawyer told the media, “There is nothing illegal in the protest. It is likely that the aim of the police in raiding her house was to investigate the anti-Olympics movement and also to set an example—a scare tactic for others as a deterrent.”

A day after the Tochomae protest, 140 police raided a Kyoto University dorm and arrested a member of a pseudo-left group, Zengakuren, for using a false address when renewing his driver’s license in October 2020. Throughout the pandemic, Zengakuren has been prominent in opposing the Olympics and criticizing the administration.

A petition to cancel the Olympics games on Change.org now has over 445,000 signatures from all over the world. Its organizer, Kenji Utsunomiya, submitted the petition to the Tokyo governor on May 14, with more than 350,000 signatures at the time, and a letter requesting the cancellation of the Games. In June, it was revealed that the Tokyo governor had never reviewed or considered the request, despite having received it.

Another Change.org petition was initiated on July 1, stating: “We appeal for the cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics, where the danger is becoming more and more apparent!” In just over three days, the petition has had more than 44,500 signatures.

One person commented: “Now that the spread of variant strains is becoming more and more serious, if the Olympic Games are held forcibly, Japan could become a source of further explosive infections. If that happens, the lives of people, not only in Japan, but around the world will be endangered. Decide to cancel now!”

Another declared: “We strongly oppose the Olympics, which is an event that serves the interests and profit of the organizers and those closely related, and not for the majority of the people! Preventing COVID and stabilizing people’s lives must be a priority!”

It is clear that the interests of the capitalist elites and the working class are in direct contradiction internationally. The ruling class is willing to sacrifice millions of human lives to COVID-19, in pursuit of profit, while workers are demanding rational and scientific measures to stop the pandemic.

In Japan, the pandemic is creating a crisis in the health system, which has already been hard hit by funding cuts, resulting in the elimination of more than 20,000 public hospital beds between 2008 and 2018. Hundreds of people, infected with the virus, are waitlisted to be admitted to hospital, forced to quarantine at home with no adequate care.

Okinawa has experienced one of the sharpest increases in COVID cases, and the occupancy rate of hospital beds for COVID patients is 92 percent.

The social crisis has also dramatically worsened. It is estimated that more than 100,000 people have lost their jobs during the pandemic. Homelessness has increased to the highest level since the economic crisis associated with the collapse of the asset bubble in the early 1990s.

Last Friday, fearing protests, particularly by athletes, the International Olympics Committee announced new rules, supposedly allowing for athletes to express their views at venues. At the same time, however, all demonstrations on medals’ podiums, fields of play during competitions, and at the opening and closing ceremonies are strictly banned.

What the growing class struggle in the US reveals about the pseudo-left

Marcus Day


Both in the United States and in other countries, workers are engaging in an upsurge of strikes and militant struggles, seeking to reverse decades of worsening living standards and working conditions. As has often been the case, the development of the class struggle is shedding light on fundamental aspects of contemporary social and political life, putting to the test political programs and tendencies.

Shortly after midnight on Monday, nearly 600 Frito-Lay workers in Topeka, Kansas, walked out in the first strike at the facility since at least the early 1970s, when the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers union (BCTGM) initially established a presence at the plant. Last week, workers at the snack food giant overwhelmingly rejected a fourth contract proposal this year, defying the BCTGM’s efforts to pass a deal that failed to meet workers’ demands for substantial raises to make up for years in which pay has been virtually frozen.

The Frito-Lay strike is the latest in a recent series of rebellions against company-union concessionary agreements. At Volvo Trucks’ New River Valley plant in Virginia, roughly 2,900 workers are entering the second month of their strike after overwhelmingly voting down two contracts pushed by the United Auto Workers. The contracts would have significantly raised health care costs and throttled wage increases. At Warrior Met Coal in Alabama, striking miners rejected a United Mine Workers-backed contract in April by a stunning 1,006 to 45 vote, burning copies of the pro-company agreement outside the union hall.

And beyond the US, nickel miners employed at transnational firm Vale Inco’s northern Ontario operations are continuing their strike after overwhelmingly rejecting a United Steelworkers-backed contract which would have kept raises far below inflation.

In every struggle that is taking place, workers are fighting against appalling conditions of exploitation previously agreed to and enforced by the trade unions, which have spent the last 40 years integrating themselves more and more deeply into management and the capitalist state. As the recent wave of contract rejections shows, workers are now moving into increasingly open conflict with the present joint corporate-union efforts to maintain these conditions and deepen the attacks.

For any genuinely left-wing organization, let alone socialist or Marxist one, such a renewal in the fighting capacity of the working class—and its opposition to the agencies operating on behalf of the corporations—is to be not only welcomed, but aided and encouraged to the maximum degree, which has been the response of the World Socialist Web Site, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and its affiliated Socialist Equality Parties.

But this is the opposite of the reaction of a host of parties and publications that present themselves as left-wing or socialist.

Most striking has been the response—or lack of response—to the strike at Volvo Trucks by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and its most prominent media outlet, Jacobin magazine. To date, Jacobin has not published a single article on the struggle at Volvo, which has been ongoing since April, nor has the DSA issued any official statements.

The silence by the DSA and Jacobin on the Volvo strike has been mirrored to one degree or another throughout the entirety of what falsely presents itself as the “left” in the United States, from Socialist Alternative, which has also published zero articles on the strike, to Left Voice and Labor Notes, which have published only cursory reports.

In the little coverage that has appeared in these publications, there is no mention of the Volvo Workers Rank-and-File Committee, which has played a leading role in organizing opposition at the Virginia plant where workers are striking. The one notable exception to the media blackout on the VWRFC was an article that appeared in Counterpunch (“The Volvo Strike,” by Kenneth Surin), which did note that workers at the plant “have a deep distrust of their union, so much so that they formed the Volvo Workers Rank-and-File Committee to counter the UAW’s attempt to isolate striking workers.”

It is worth contrasting the overall reticence on the struggle at Volvo by organizations such as the DSA with the wall-to-wall coverage and support they gave to the unionization drive at Amazon’s facility in Bessemer, Alabama. The drive to bring in a union at Bessemer was a top-down, state-approved effort that received the official blessing of the Biden administration, the Democratic Party, and even sections of the Republican Party, along with substantial portions of the corporate media.

While Jacobin has published nothing on the Volvo strike, it produced close to 50 articles on the drive by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) to unionize Amazon. Socialist Alternative produced 15 articles, Left Voice 10, and Labor Notes eight.

Under conditions of a growing movement of the working class against the pro-corporate trade unions, the pseudo-left is moving to shore up the very same trade union apparatus, bitterly opposing any independent initiative and organization of the working class. The DSA has stated that its “highest national priority” is to ensure passage of the Protect the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act, a Democratic Party-sponsored bill aimed at bolstering support for the trade unions, in particular their ability to “organize” the growing sections of workers who are not unionized, such as gig workers at Uber, Lyft and Doordash.

The differing responses of the DSA and other pseudo-left groups to every state-backed effort to expand the unions—boundless enthusiasm—versus the rebellion against the UAW at Volvo—frosty silence—is itself an expression of the social basis and political orientation of such organizations, which do not represent the working class, but rather privileged sections of the upper-middle class.

The pseudo-left endlessly insists on the supremacy of the corporate police agencies falsely described as “unions” because of the role they play in disciplining workers and subordinating them to the Democratic Party, which these groups all either operate within or are oriented towards.

Not least among the reasons that the DSA has said nothing about the Volvo strike is the central role played by the WSWS and the Socialist Equality Party, which have assisted workers in forming the VWRFC and found a wide hearing among those opposed to the corporatist UAW. While the DSA routinely denounces the WSWS as “sectarian,” what they really fear is the growth of its influence among the working class and the possibility of a broad movement of workers towards socialism, which would threaten the considerable investment accounts of the upper-middle class layers which the DSA and Jacobin represent.

Their conception of a “labor movement” is one that is thoroughly integrated into the state and corporate management, with sections of the middle class functioning as arbiters. This means, under the present conditions, a “labor movement” that is dedicated above all to the suppression of the class struggle and the imposition of the demands of the ruling class.

An increasing number of members of the pseudo-left organizations have made their way into the union hierarchy and the wealth and privileges offered, with perhaps the most prominent recent example being Jesse Sharkey, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, formerly a long-time leading member of the defunct International Socialist Organization, and now the DSA.

The integration of the pseudo-left into the structure of the unions has coincided with the unions’ own transformation into auxiliaries of the corporations and the state, increasingly unable to conceal their subservience to corporate profits and contempt for workers’ interests.

Beginning in earnest with the defeat of the PATCO air traffic controllers strike nearly 40 years ago, which was deliberately isolated and broken by the AFL-CIO, the unions have worked to ensure a highly regimented and controlled labor force wherever they hold sway, with pay low enough to make US workers “competitive” on an international scale.

The trade unions have hemorrhaged members throughout this time, both through the destruction of large swaths of jobs in the auto, steel and other industries—which the unions suppressed resistance to—and through the increasing rejection of the unions by workers who have witnessed or suffered through their endless betrayals.

The inability of the RWDSU to get more than 13 percent of workers at the Amazon Bessemer plant to vote to bring it in is not an expression of a rightward movement of workers. It is, rather, another expression of the same moods that led to massive repudiations of union-backed contracts at Volvo and Frito-Lay.

The union executives and officials have nonetheless grown rich in the process. Objectively speaking, they have made their way into a different social class than workers, drawing salaries in the low- to mid-hundreds of thousands, placing them in the top 5 or even 1 percent of income earners. They have shifted a growing share of their assets and wealth into the stock market, making them, like their confreres in the pseudo-left, increasingly hostile towards and terrified of any movement of workers that could overturn the low-wage regime on which US corporate profits and inflated share values are based.

The union apparatuses in the US, which for much of their history have been dominated by a ferocious anti-communism and support for capitalism, have shifted even further to the right politically, in line with the change in their material interests, constituting now a hothouse for the most reactionary nationalism, corporatism and even fascistic politics.

UK High Court grants US government right to appeal on Assange extradition

Laura Tiernan


Stella Moris, the partner of imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, spoke outside Britain’s High Court yesterday warning he is “still at risk of extradition” after a judge decided the US government can appeal an earlier court ruling that blocked his extradition on health grounds.

The judge also ruled that Assange must remain in prison until the appeal is heard, effectively extending his incarceration for at least many more months.

Stella Moris speaking outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London (Credit: Twitter/@DEAcampaign)

The ruling underscores the Biden administration’s determination to ensure Assange’s removal to the US. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, based on excerpts of the judge’s ruling supplied by the UK Crown Prosecution Service, the US government offered “assurances” that Assange would not be imprisoned in oppressive conditions and could be permitted to serve any sentence in Australia.

Such assurances are meaningless. Once Assange is in US custody, those pledges will be cast aside. The Wall Street Journal reported: “The US said it reserved the right to impose special measures on Mr. Assange, or hold him in a Supermax jail, if ‘he were to do something subsequent to the offering of these assurances’ that meets the test for applying them.”

Assange has been denied bail and remains detained in London’s Belmarsh Prison despite a January decision by District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser denying his extradition to the US. Assange faces trumped-up charges under the Espionage Act over his exposure of war crimes, illegal mass surveillance and torture by the US and its allies. He has been held captive in the UK for a decade.

Baraitser ruled January 4 that Assange’s extradition to a US federal prison would be “oppressive” because of his compromised mental health and risk of suicide. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) under President Donald Trump immediately appealed Baraitser’s decision. Two days later, Trump mounted a fascist coup attempt in Washington D.C. The Democrats under Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris have seamlessly continued US imperialism’s political vendetta against Assange.

The WikiLeaks publisher is being held in violation of his First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of the press and in breach of international human rights law.

Britain’s High Court has reportedly granted a right of appeal to the US on three grounds. The court will decide whether Baraitser applied the Extradition Act correctly; whether sufficient advance notice was given of the court’s decision, and whether “assurances” by the US over mitigating the risk of suicide were properly considered.

A date for the appeal hearing has not been announced, but it will likely take place after the courts’ summer recess. This leaves Assange imprisoned at Belmarsh indefinitely in conditions long condemned by doctors and human rights lawyers as “psychological torture.”

In a letter sent yesterday to Biden and US Attorney General Merrick Garland by Doctors for Assange, 250 doctors from 35 countries demanded the dropping of all charges against the WikiLeaks publisher. They denounced his ongoing imprisonment due to the US appeal as “amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in the UK.”

They noted: “Today, the UK High Court granted the US limited permission to appeal the earlier UK ruling against the U.S. extradition request. Crucially, the High Court did not permit the US to appeal findings based on Assange’s medical and psychological status, and affirmed the previous judge’s findings regarding his clinical condition… Meanwhile, Mr. Assange continues to suffer serious, life threatening effects of the psychological torture he has been subjected to for more than a decade.”

Moris, a human rights lawyer and mother of Assange’s two young children, warned yesterday that the High Court’s decision meant her partner “is still at risk of extradition where he faces a 175-year prison sentence and where according to the magistrate he is almost certain to lose his life.”

Her remarks exposed the lawlessness of US efforts to punish Assange, “The case is itself falling apart. The lead witness of the US Department of Justice [Sigurdur Thordarson] now admits that he lied in exchange for immunity from US prosecutors. The lawyers of Julian were spied on, their officers were broken into, even our six-month-old baby was targeted while he was in the embassy.”

Moris explained: “This case is the most vicious attack on global press freedom in history. The US government is accusing a foreign journalist, a foreign publisher who is outside the United States, for publishing true information that incriminated the US military of committing war crimes.

“Julian is a freedom fighter. He fights for freedom from torture, freedom from illegal wars, freedom from surveillance and manipulation. That is what the US government is criminalising. There’s no way to stand up for the First Amendment and defend democracy at the same time that you are prosecuting and imprisoning Julian Assange.”

Moris described the crippling legal costs borne by Assange as he continues his fight for freedom. “Many people don’t know this, but the US government is allowed to appeal and have its costs paid by the UK taxpayer. Julian on the other hand has to fund his defence himself. Even though he won in January and the US government has decided to appeal that decision, Julian has to pay for his legal costs… every aspect of this case is profoundly unjust. Julian is being punished for doing his job as a journalist.”

Earlier yesterday, Moris visited Assange at Belmarsh Prison, accompanied by their eldest son who is four. “Julian is very unwell,” Moris reported afterwards. “Belmarsh prison is a horrible, horrible, place. Just yesterday, another prisoner was found dead in his cell. The suicide rate is three times higher than in other UK prisons. It’s a daily struggle.”

She continued: “He won his case in January. Why is he even in prison? Why is he even being prosecuted? There is no legal case against him. All there is is an indictment based on lies. They recruited a convicted embezzler, a convicted sex criminal [Thordarson] against minors, a man who was diagnosed with sociopathy and that man has now admitted that he lied and that those lies are in the US indictment that is keeping Julian in prison.

“Lies are keeping Julian in prison. And now the abuses are just so monumental, and they just accumulate and at some point, sanity has to kick in. They are criminalising journalism. Just look at the indictment, the criminalising of receiving and communicating true information to the public, that no one denies was in the public interest, that evidence war crimes, that evidence torture, that evidenced illegal rendition.”

Asked for Assange’s reaction to the decision to grant an appeal, Moris replied, “I was able to speak to Julian about the decision. It’s mixed, because on the one hand it’s been six months and we haven’t heard any news, so it’s like an endless Purgatory. But at the same time, it doesn’t end here, and so we have to prepare. We don’t know how long this will go on for, and how long he’ll be imprisoned for in that terrible place.”

The US suggestion that it would consent to Assange being transferred to Australia to serve any jail sentence indicates that the WikiLeaks founder continues to face a multi-state conspiracy by the imperialist powers led by the US, Britain and Australia. These “assurances” are ominous. They are designed to provide the British courts the pretext to extradite Assange despite his medical condition.

No faith can be placed in the sadistic promises and conspiracies of US imperialism and its political accomplices. Assange’s freedom cannot be won via moral appeals to the state. The fight to free Assange must be taken into the working class and fused with its worldwide struggles against the pandemic, austerity, social inequality, and the ever-growing threat of war produced by capitalism.

Pandemic surges in South Korea as government pushes to end social distancing

Ben McGrath


The number of daily new COVID-19 cases is rising again in South Korea, reaching their highest levels in months, including 1,275 infections on July 7. The number of new cases in Seoul the previous day reached 583, the most in the city since the pandemic began. The numbers continue to climb as the more dangerous and contagious delta variant begins to take hold.

However, central and local governments are pushing to remove even the limited measures in place to control the virus. Since the end of January, new cases of COVID-19 in South Korea have ranged between 300 and 700 per day, but plans remain to relax social distancing measures. On June 24, when the government announced it would proceed, despite an uptick in cases, the seven-day national average for new infections stood at 489. As of July 6, the number had shot up to 768. In total, more than 2,000 people have died from the virus.

People wearing face masks as a precaution against the coronavirus walk through a tunnel in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, May 24, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Lee Jin-man]

The central government enacted a new 4-tier social distancing scheme on July 1, which ends most of the measures throughout the country, with the exception of the Seoul metropolitan area, where approximately 80 percent of the new infections have been discovered. This region, which includes the capital city, Gyeonggi Province, and Incheon, is densely populated and home to approximately half of South Korea’s 51 million residents.

The “Level 1” restrictions in place for the rest of the country are basically non-existent. The new rules lift curfews on businesses, such as restaurants and bars, so long as they maintain the inadequate 1 meter of space between customers, and allow an unlimited number of people to gather. While provincial and city governments have stated they will maintain a cap of eight people on groups in public, they also plan to remove this restriction by July 14.

Given the surge in cases in the Seoul area, the government postponed the relaxation of social distancing until July 7, and has extended restrictions again for another week. This means public gatherings of five or more people are banned and most businesses must close by 10pm.

The government has also lifted an outdoor mask mandate for those who have been vaccinated, despite the possibility that they can still pass on the virus. This decision was reversed in the Seoul area, but the constant vacillation between what measures are in force or not, has caused confusion among the population.

Even these limited restrictions have been entirely inadequate in bringing down the number of daily cases. Furthermore, the Moon Jae-in administration is essentially sending the message that the pandemic is largely over, and people can disregard safety measures. This has been done specifically to benefit big business, regardless of the consequences for working people.

In daily life, people are expressing concern over the lack of protection. A 35-year-old office worker told the Korea Times, “Fears are growing over the highly transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus, especially in the Seoul metropolitan area, but many workers are still on packed subways and buses, in order to get to work. I don't think the situation will improve this way.”

In fact, workers throughout South Korea have been kept on the job throughout the pandemic, in large measure thanks to the unions, including the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), which has refused to address workplace safety outside of token protests. Early in the pandemic, the KCTU made clear it would not take action against the government. In recent weeks, it has also moved quickly to shut down strikes, over conditions in industries such as package delivery, construction, and manufacturing.

Schools have also been kept open, contributing to the spread of the virus. Currently, students attend classes on a rotational basis, with some students studying in person and others online. This is clearly insufficient for keeping students and teachers safe. Demonstrating the danger, as of Tuesday, 23 elementary students at a school in Incheon have tested positive for COVID-19. Similar outbreaks have occurred in recent weeks at other schools and private after-school academies, infecting students, teachers and their families.

The central government, however, is still pushing ahead with plans to re-open schools to full in-person learning in late August, during the second half of the school year. Parents have raised concerns with these plans. One mother of a middle school student wrote in an online forum, “Students have yet to be vaccinated, as they come almost last in the list [of those eligible to receive vaccines], and younger ones are not on the list at all. I don’t understand why the government is planning to let all students attend in-person classes in this situation.”

The government’s action on behalf of the capitalist class conflicts with the advice of medical professionals. Son Yeong-rae, a senior health official, warned recently that the delta variant was “rapidly increasing,” now accounting for 7 percent of new cases, compared to less than 1 percent two months ago. Health experts are urging the government to adopt stricter anti-virus measures, not ease them.

In an interview with the Korea Herald published on June 27, Dr. Paik Soon-young, professor emeritus at the Catholic University of Korea, College of Medicine, warned of the growing danger.

He said that the public messaging had to pivot from ‘all is normal’ and ‘enjoy this summer’ to ‘don’t let your guard down until more of us are vaccinated.’ He continued, “Unless the right interventions are undertaken, Korea is too under-vaccinated to withstand the inevitable new variant… The more we don’t know, the more careful we want to be. But we seem to be doing the opposite.”

While South Korea’s vaccination program began in February, little more than 30 percent of the population has received a single dose, and only around 10 percent is fully vaccinated. Most of those who have received the vaccine are over 60 years of age, leaving workers, who must work, and young people going to school vulnerable.

Indonesia engulfed in “India-type” second wave

Robert Campion


In Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, a humanitarian disaster is unfolding similar to what occurred in India in late May. While it is being fueled by the more virulent Delta strain, the surge in cases is taking place primarily because of the government’s lack of preventative measures—in line with the demands of big business.

Official daily deaths on Wednesday—following a string of broken records in the weeks prior—crossed the 1,000 mark for the first time with 1,040 deaths, up from 728 a day earlier. This is seven times what was recorded less than a month ago.

Workers take a break during a busy day at Rorotan Cemetery, which is reserved for those who died of COVID-19, in Jakarta, Indonesia, Thursday, July 1, 2021 (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)

Total daily cases also hit a new record of 34,379, up from 31,189 on Tuesday. The total number of COVID-19 cases is now 2,379,397 and the death toll is 62,908. Owing to the lack of testing and a 1-in-5 positivity rate, health experts are almost certain that the real daily tallies are of orders of magnitude higher.

Only 6 percent of the population of 270 million is fully vaccinated, a rate similar to other oppressed countries which are in dire need of vaccines. According to the World Health Organisation, many health workers—including 6,000 in Aceh and 5,000 in Papua—have not even had their first dose.

With the country utterly exposed, there is a great danger that the current strain could mutate, threatening to upend vaccination efforts not just for Indonesia but internationally.

Epidemiologists have been scathing in their assessment of the government, which has deliberately fostered a climate of what some have called “herd stupidity,” whether through downplaying the risks associated with the pandemic, refusing to institute lockdowns, inconsistent health advice and the promotion of quack remedies.

Last May, hundreds of thousands travelled across the country for the Muslim Ramadan celebrations. The government made half-hearted restrictions on participations in the Eid celebrations, while allowing free rein for people to visit tourist attractions.

The absence of compensation for workers has also hampered lockdown efforts, as workers are forced to choose between working and starvation. Of the roughly 120 million working in Indonesia, 70 million earn their livelihoods in the “informal” sector living a hand-to-mouth existence. As a result, many are driven by desperation to defy lockdown measures.

In the city of Semarang, authorities have reportedly fired water hoses at shops that refused to close. Jakarta governor, Anies Baswedan, ordered dozens of offices to be sealed on Tuesday after some employers ignored work-from-home orders.

Epidemiologist Dicky Budiman, who has worked many years to prepare Indonesia’s health system, predicts a shocking 300,000 to 500,000 cases a day by August, citing the failure of the government to impose preventative measures early enough.

Restrictions on movement were instituted just last Saturday for the hardest hit islands of Java and Bali, but stopped short of full lockdowns as they were only imposed in designated “emergency zones.” As of yesterday, the measures were expanded to cover areas on all islands, mostly on Sumatra.

The restrictions are set to continue until July 20 and include the closure of shopping malls, houses of worship and leisure centres including parks. Non-essential sectors designated as those that are not energy, health or security, have been given 75 percent work-from-home requirements. Financial sectors are working at 50 percent capacity.

The impact of the Delta variant has been hardest on the island of Java, where over 150 million Indonesians reside in an area approximately half the size of New Zealand.

Hospitals have been inundated with the sick. Almost all have occupancy rates at full capacity, including the major intensive care wards at Cengkareng Hospital in the west of Jakarta, Bekasi City Hospital in West Java and all hospitals in Surabaya, the second biggest city.

More than a dozen facilities in Surabaya reportedly turned away patients because they could not handle the influx. “We’re overwhelmed,” said a hospital spokeswoman in an interview with SBS. “Many of our health workers have collapsed from exhaustion and some are also infected. We trying to get volunteers to help out.”

Oxygen tanks have dried up in some areas, prompting the government to urge national suppliers to divert 90 percent of their production to medical needs. On Tuesday, Jakarta reported that 10,000 oxygen concentrators were to be shipped from nearby Singapore. The government is also asking China for assistance.

Daily burials in the capital are up 10-fold since May, with 392 burials on Saturday, overwhelming the cemetery workers involved.

Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan stated in a video conference: “According to our data, the Delta variant made up 90 percent of new transmissions in Jakarta.”

He added that authorities were preparing for much higher daily cases. “The number of daily cases can still increase to 40,000 or more. We are taking actions to cope with all possible scenarios in terms of medical supplies, oxygen and hospital capacity.”

In other islands, officials have cited “significant increases” in daily infections and active cases. The occupancy rates for hospital beds treating COVID-19 patients in Lampung, Riau Islands, West Sumatra, East Kalimantan and West Papua provinces have all exceeded 60 percent.

The virus is also spreading among young people. Around 250,000 children have been infected according to official data, or 12.6 percent of all cases. Of the 676 children who have died, about 50 percent were under 5 years old.

There are also long-term health problems associated with the virus, with much still unknown. Doctors have said that six to eight months after recovering from the virus, children may become weaker, experience shortness of breath, hair loss, muscle pain, and have difficulty concentrating at school.

Facing widespread anger over the government’s handling of the disease, President Joko Widodo announced an expedited vaccination program on Twitter. “Our target this month is 34 million doses, August 43.7 million, September 53 million, October 84 million, November 80.9 million, and December 71.7 million.

“With hard work, this target is not difficult as long as there is a vaccine,” he said. However, the country has so far received only 119 million shots of Sinovac, Sinopharm and AstraZeneca. More vaccines are being promised from the US, Japan and Australia.

As in other countries, the requirements of dealing with the pandemic are being deliberately ignored by the government to safeguard “the economy,” which means protecting big business and its profits. Empty promises that prosperity is “just around the corner” are a desperate and cynical ploy to deflect mounting public anger.

7 Jul 2021

Afghanistan: the Darkening Glass

John Clamp


There is an air of inevitability, and trepidation, and déja vu, gripping Afghanistan. The Taliban are back, and they are closing their fingers around Ashraf Ghani’s government like a fist, squeezing.

Casualties are not yet on the scale of the civil war. The Taliban are biding their time, encircling cities, waiting for the Americans to depart. Many local garrisons have surrendered anyway, while elsewhere, tribal elders have negotiated bloodless transfers of power.

When Ghani and his government, riddled with corruption and edging rapidly towards irrelevance, look down, they see only paint. They’re in a corner from which no amount of U.S. ‘support’ (bombs) can extricate them. Their collaboration with foreign powers has marked them with a black spot, too, that no soap can wash off.

Yet in strict terms, the Taliban were created from the same geopolitical rib: Ghani’s government and the Taliban are both cotton sugar confections spun by foreign powers. The U.S.A., Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, and India are all up to their necks in this multiplayer iteration of the Great Game. The Talibs are not so much the ‘scholars’ their name implies; they’re more of an armed faction. They reconstituted themselves to fight the invaders, and they have an ideology that because of its Islamic flavour makes them generally comprehensible. The failure of statecraft in Afghanistan by Ghani has fueled their revivification.

Meanwhile, enthusiasm for the Talib ‘scholars’ is rather thin on the ground, worldwide. China is not a big fan, ill-disposed as it is to anything with the word ‘Islamic’ in it (the Taliban intend to set up the ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’, a political entity with the same name as the one they established in 1996). Russia isn’t mad keen on them either. The Western powers loathe the Taliban, but they saw they could never win the conflict and simply had to cut their losses. The Taliban have attended the talks just enough to keep the ball rolling as they position themselves in-country, and have been regularly accused of bad faith in Doha. They used their special UN travel permissions not to fly back to the UAE but to visit Moscow.

In Afghanistan itself, many remember the excesses of Taliban 1.0, and scratch militias are popping up to fight them off. The Taliban are widely reviled for their adolescent neuroses over women and music, and their propensity for ultraviolence, so what does their de facto control of the countryside say about the standing of the central government? A trillion dollars and more has utterly failed to provide Afghan citizens with a sense of security.

None of it bodes well, unfortunately. Once the Yanks go home, Taliban forces will make their final push on urban centres, at which point the body count will rise once again. Will America ‘do a Vietnam’ and deal decades of spiteful passive aggression, having been whupped yet again in a war of invasion? The ingredients are there for a long-run tragedy to befall the Afghans yet again. We all hope not.

Africa faces a third more deadly COVID-19 surge as vaccination drive stalls

Jean Shaoul


Africa is facing an unprecedented increase in the number of COVID-19 infections, with new cases increasing for six weeks running and rising by an average of 25 percent week-on-week, to almost 202,000 in the week ending 28 June.

Health officials have warned that a new wave like the one that ripped through India in April and May could be looming.

Africa has officially registered more than 4.8 million cases and 130,000 deaths, representing 2.9 percent of global cases and 3.7 percent of deaths. But this is a gross underestimate under conditions where there are few facilities for testing those who exhibit symptoms, a lack of standardised reporting procedures for registering deaths and many countries do not collect mortality data.

In this Thursday June 17, 2021 file photo medical staff wearing protective equipment attend to patients affected by COVID-19, on the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Machakos County Level-5 hospital in Machakos, Kenya. Driven by the delta variant, a new wave of COVID-19 is sweeping across the African continent where new cases, hospital admissions, and deaths are increasing. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga/File)

South Africa, the continent’s most industrialised nation and the worst affected country, has reported around 60,000 deaths. But its excess mortality figures indicate that another 100,000 people, if not more, have died directly or indirectly because of the pandemic. Extrapolated across the continent, this would mean that the real death toll is approaching 500,000.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the 60 percent more transmissible and more deadly Delta variant could mean Africa's third wave is far more serious. At least 21 countries have so far experienced a third wave of infections, with 10 of those experiencing a more severe wave than before. The worst affected are Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Namibia, Zambia, Rwanda, South Africa, Ethiopia and Kenya.

The Delta variant has been reported in 16 African countries so far, with three of the five countries reporting the highest number of new cases confirming the presence of the variant. In DR Congo and Uganda, 66 percent of the cases of severe illness in people under 45 years of age have been attributed to the Delta variant.

According to the Africa Centres for Disease Control (CDC), 21 African countries are reporting death rates above the global average of 2.2 percent. A study published in The Lancet suggests that the higher death rate is the result of limited healthcare resources. For example, researchers examining the records of patients hospitalised across 10 African countries, found that nearly half of those who needed intensive care died, compared with the global average of less than a third.

This third wave takes place amid dire warnings about the shortage of hospital beds, ventilators, oxygen supplies and healthcare professionals needed to treat critically ill patients, the lack of testing facilities and a vaccination drive that has yet to start.

Speaking on Thursday, Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional director for Africa, warned that the third wave hitting the continent was “like nothing we've seen before.” She said, “The Delta variant of concern is the most contagious we've seen.”

She made a vain appeal to the rich countries to share their vaccines, which are in short supply. The global vaccine shortage has been exacerbated by the World Trade Organization’s refusal, due to the ferocious opposition of the US, UK, Germany, France, and Sweden on behalf of Big Pharma, to lift patent restrictions on vaccine production—even as millions of the world’s poor succumb to the disease. This would reduce the price, enabling manufacturing at multiple sites in Africa and elsewhere.

Africa imports 99 percent of the vaccines it uses (and 70 percent of all pharmaceutical products), despite having actual and potential manufacturing capacity in Egypt, Senegal, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. It is largely reliant on two sources: Covax, which is supplying the AstraZeneca vaccine, and the African Union’s deal with Johnson & Johnson, which has agreed to provide 220 million doses.

The crisis in India has also impacted the vaccine rollout because most of the vaccines supplied so far to Africa via Covax have been AstraZeneca shots manufactured there. India suspended its exports of the vaccine in March to cope with domestic demand, leading John Nkengasong, the director of the Africa CDC, to warn that the situation in India could affect Africa’s vaccine rollout “for the weeks and perhaps months to come.”

Further exacerbating the vaccine famine is the “vaccine apartheid”, whereby the rich countries bought up not only most of the available doses but far more than they needed, sabotaging any possibility of a rational or equitable distribution of the shots. According to Barclays analysts, the world’s richest nations have secured enough deliveries of approved vaccines to cover their populations four and a half times over while the poorest have only been able to secure enough for 10 percent of their populations.

The US and the European imperialist powers have responded with promises of vaccines that amount to a drop in the ocean. The US Biden administration has pledged 80 million doses, and the European Union 100 million, and even these will be distributed in line with their own perceived geopolitical interests. The UK has responded by slashing its aid budget, as well as its funding for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) projects, affecting not just overseas expenditure but scientific research, including programmes at Oxford University that are identifying and tracking new variants of the coronavirus.

The figures are stark. Just over 1 percent of Africa’s 1.2 billion population have been fully vaccinated, compared to 11 percent of people globally, and over 46 percent in the United Kingdom and the United States. According to Nkengasong, Africa had aimed to have 800 million doses, largely through an African Union initiative, by December this year, but has so far only received 65 million. Many African countries are running out of their supplies from the Covax scheme that has shipped less than 90 million doses worldwide.

Should the vaccination rollout fail in Africa, new and more dangerous variants could emerge. The lack of money is making matters worse. The charity Care has estimated that for every $1 spent on purchasing vaccines, another $5 is needed for their distribution and use. Covax says it needs about another $3 billion to implement its plans for buying and delivering vaccines this year. While the World Bank pledged $12 billion for vaccines and their rollouts in developing countries, as of July 1, it had approved projects worth only $4.4 billion, of which $1.7 billion were in Africa.

Compounding the healthcare crisis are the terrible economic conditions that most African countries face. According to World Bank estimates, the global economy shrank by 4.3 percent in 2020, wiping out trillions of dollars, with the poorest countries the worst affected. Africa’s tourism sector, for example, that contributed 8.5 percent to the continent’s GDP, is unlikely to recover for years. A recent report by Oxfam International estimates that it could take more than a decade for the world’s poorest to recover from the economic fallout of the pandemic, while the Pew Research Center estimates that of the 131 million people pushed into poverty across the world, 40 million were in Sub-Saharan Africa, adding to the 494 million already living in poverty before the pandemic.

The response of capitalist governments the world over has been to reject the need for a global vaccination campaign. Their criminal indifference to the plight of the world’s poorest—the very people most at risk to the virus—expresses the entire capitalist social order that subordinates human needs to the enrichment of the financial oligarchy and the predatory interests of imperialism. That is why the fight to contain the pandemic is inseparable from the fight to put an end to the capitalist social order and replace it with socialism.