The Greatest Threat to Britain Isn’t China or Russia, It’s Boris Johnson

Patrick Cockburn

The lifeblood of intelligence agencies is threat inflation: exaggerating the gravity of the dangers menacing the public, and calling for harsher laws to cope with them. MI5 director general Ken McCallum did his best to follow this tradition in his annual speech this week, in which he explained the security risks facing Britain.

He spoke of threats from states such as Russia, China and Iran; from far-right activists, Islamic terrorists, and the resurgence of violence in Northern Ireland. Alongside these were the more amorphous threats posed by encrypted messaging, online spying, and cyber attacks.

Many of these developments are less threatening than they look. Russia may engage in gangster-type assassinations, such as the poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury, but the very crudity of its attacks on its critics underlines the limitations of Russian capabilities. President Putin may relish the fact that his country is treated like a superpower – albeit a demonic one – but it has nothing like the power of the Soviet Union. The idea, for instance, that the Kremlin determined the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election was always a myth. Hillary Clinton’s dire campaign is sufficient explanation for Donald Trump’s election.

Demonising the enemy – exaggerating its strengths and its evil intentions – was central to the propaganda directed against the Soviet Union during the first cold war. Much the same kind of threat inflation is happening in the second cold war, except that this time the primary target is China, whose every action is portrayed as part of a bid for world domination. Shady authoritarian allies like Narendra Modi’s India are promoted as allies of the west in “the struggle for democratic values”.

The threat posed by al-Qaeda and Islamic State terrorism is likewise given too much importance. Savage though their attacks have been in western Europe, they were in practice vicious publicity stunts aimed at dominating the news agenda. Politically, this sort of “terrorism” only really succeeds if it can provoke an exaggerated response, as 9/11 did when the US went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq in retaliation.

Britain does indeed face increased dangers, but they have little to do with those on the MI5 list. The greatest threats in a post-Brexit Britain stem from the country being a weaker power than it was five years ago, but pretending to be a stronger one. The gap between pretension and reality is masked by slogans, and by concocted culture wars geared to divert public attention from failings and unfulfilled promises.

The success of “Little Englandism” in the referendum of 2016 and the general election in 2019 had predictable results, at home and abroad. Britain outside the EU is inevitably even more dependent on the US than before. Many will ask what is new about our reliance on Washington. Has it not been Britain’s default position since the Suez crisis in 1956, if not the fall of France in 1940?

But this time around, British dependence on the US is even greater, and comes with an extra twist. It is happening at a moment when America is moving to confront China, and to a lesser degree Russia, in a new cold war in which Britain will be a participant but will have very little influence. Theatrical antics – like sending a British destroyer through Russian-controlled waters off Crimea, and dispatching the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth to the South China Sea – are gestures designed to persuade public opinion at home that Britain once again has a global role.

Most of the negative consequences of leaving the EU have long been obvious. The move undermined the compromise between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland represented by the Good Friday [Belfast] Agreement of 1998. The MI5 chief McCallum, who knows Northern Ireland well, hints at this, saying that “many of the powerful aspirations of the Belfast Agreement remain unfulfilled” while insisting hopefully that “the holding of multiple identities – British, Irish, Northern Irish – is a living reality for many people, in a way it was not in my youth”.

But a Northern Ireland half-in, half-out of the EU has shifted the balance of power between the communities in the province in a way that is likely to lead to a return to political violence. We have already had a taste of this with the rioting in late March and early April, which was the most serious for years. What we have not yet seen is sectarian killings, but they could start at any moment. If they do, then peace in Northern Ireland will swiftly evaporate.

Yet the greatest risk to Britain is that it is ruled by a government that has promised far more than it can deliver. This weakness is still masked by the development of the anti-Covid vaccine and the success of the vaccination campaign, but these were achievements of scientists and the NHS. As Dominic Cummings has made clear, Boris Johnson did little but spread chaos.

The problem facing all nationalist populist leaders in the world is that they promise bread and circuses for everybody, but seldom deliver them. This is true of Trump in the US and Modi in India, and is also the case for Johnson in Britain. This was made blatantly clear yesterday when the prime minister made one of his rare public speeches – the first for 10 months – which was supposed to spell out his “levelling up” agenda, the centrepiece of his populist appeal to former Labour voters.

Except that it turns out that there is no such agenda, and his speech consisted of the usual shallow boosterism. Cummings summed it up venomously but accurately as a “crap speech (same he’s given pointlessly umpteen times) supporting crap slogan”. As with foreign policy, there is no social or economic strategy to rescue Britain’s deprived population, despite all those radical pledges.

But there is a political strategy for diverting attention away from the fact that a central plank in Johnson’s platform is missing. The plan is to talk up culture wars, exacerbate divisions, and pretend that critics are unpatriotic or treacherous. Since culture and race go together, this means none-too-subtle dog-whistle appeals to racism. “If we ‘whistle’ and the ‘dog’ reacts we can’t be shocked if it barks and bites,” said Sayeeda Warsi, a Conservative peer and former party chair.

Populist governments play the “culture card” more vigorously in times of trouble. The smallest incidents are exaggerated as threats to national identity. A piece of graffiti scrawled on a statue of Winston Churchill becomes a sign that British culture as a whole is under assault.

Critics can be demonised as unpatriotic, but a surer way of silencing them is to deny them a voice, by putting pressure on independent commentary on the BBC or threatening to sell off Channel 4. The effectiveness of these methods in suppressing criticism and dominating public opinion should not be underestimated. Most of the nationalist populist regimes in the world have a disastrous record, but very few of them have lost power.

Dangerous Games in Syria

Slavisha Batko Milacic

Just a few months since Joe Biden’s election, US idea of terrorism has radically changed. With the media having spared no effort making people believe that the real terrorists are indeed the armed supporters of the Republicans, who are ready to take on the crowd of BLM “looters” and express their right to protest by demonstrating that rights at the Capitol. As for those responsible for the events of 9/11, for the deaths of thousands of innocent people, for the chaos in the Middle East and the flows of refugees … they are now simply rebels, and not just ordinary ones, but pro-Western too.

The media has once again proved its status as the “seventh force”! All of a sudden, the remnants of the seemingly defeated ISIS and the crushed al-Qaeda have changed their names. The radical Jabhat al-Nusra suddenly turned into an authoritarian, albeit quite suitable partner for Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, whose leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, sat for a February 2021 interview with the correspondent of the “independent” and popular TV program Frontline as a completely secular man clad in a suit and talking about Islamic values. True, independent journalism is on his knees in the US, and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which distributes Frontline materials, has close links to Joe Biden’s administration. The very same Democratic administration, which brands as Western’s enemy anyone, who does not share its policy.

Why did the “Democrats” need this? After all, everyone understands that a wolf in sheep’s clothing is still a wolf, and the experience of Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden seemed to have taught the “Deep State“ controlled intelligence services a long time ago that Islamic radicals are extremely unreliable allies. But the urge to control Middle East oil and prevent the region’s return to stability under Russian patronage clearly outweighs any risks, at least in the eyes of the “Deep state“ elite.

Donald Trump wanted to withdraw US troops at least from Northern Syria, leaving it in the care of Russians and Turks, but James Jeffrey, US Special Representative for Syria and Iraq, long in the service of the “Deep State,” lied to his president, downplaying the number of troops and giving a distorted picture of what was going on in the region. This eventually cost him his job, but Donald Trump did lose his battle with the system while still in office. Trump’s pragmatic approach dictated by a desire to cut costs on unnecessary wars, were simply sabotaged. So, Donald Trump quite logically decided against providing weapons and ammunition to numerous groups fighting in Syria. He even scaled down the CIA’s supply program. However, State Department officials, not directly subordinated to the then occupant of the White House, quickly found a way to help their unreliable allies. As a result, al-Qaeda-linked jihadist groups, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham included, received via the Pentagon even such sophisticated weapons as TOW anti-tank grenade launchers, which require special training by their users. And the leader of the most powerful country around could do nothing to rein in members of his own entourage, who badly needed an ongoing war in the Middle East.

Why do they need this war so badly? There are too many reasons for this: military contracts, money, oil, and the closely intertwined interests of the “Deep State“, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, as well as the desire to put pressure on NATO partners. Trump, who has never been associated with the military-industrial complex, challenged them and lost. They won, and shortly after Biden became president they openly announced the procurement of $350 million worth of arms and ammunition for the Middle East. On the Pentagon’s websites you will find everything you need to know about this transaction, which involved eight US companies, including Sierra Four Industries Corp., Blane International group INC, Culmen International LLC and others. Since none of these weapons happens to be made in the West and as all are Soviet-style, produced in Eastern Europe, it is perfectly clear that US army don’t  need them.

These weapons will go to the “rebels” to make sure that they continue wreaking havoc in the region. The eight US companies involved in these supplies have already enlisted the services of Serbian, Bulgarian and Romanian arms factories. And all the while, no one has shown the slightest desire to answer the question being asked by journalists about “where the weapon will go.” So, the war in the Middle East will rage on and it will be a long one. This is something that even Syrians, who have long lived in America, now talk about.

Most interestingly, this situation has incensed even members of America’ Syrian community, traditionally opposed to the ruling clan of the Assads. Maram Susli, also known in international journalist and blogger community as “Syrian Girl” just issued a new short movie about situation in Syria. In her new investigation “Syrian Girl” breaks down the recent rebranding of Al Qaeda. The young blogger shows the situation in Syria without embellishment and she even present several official documents proving the ambiguous connections of the Syrian terrorists:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yptCJluGhbg

Zuma’s trial sparks fears of renewed violence in South Africa

Jean Shaoul

The long-delayed trial of former African National Congress (ANC) President Jacob Zuma on charges of fraud, corruption and racketeering has resumed, with Zuma appearing by video link from prison.

The 79-year-old Zuma, a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle who for decades played a key role in the ANC, is serving a 15-month sentence for contempt of court. The Constitutional Court ordered his imprisonment for defying its order to appear at a separate inquiry into corruption during his presidency from 2009 until 2018, when President Cyril Ramaphosa’s faction in the ANC forced him to resign.

Jacob Zuma in 2017 (Credit: Kremlin.ru)

This trial relates to the $5 billion purchase of fighter jets, patrol boats and military gear from five European arms firms, brokered in 1999 when Zuma was President Thabo Mbeki’s deputy. The charges, that he accepted $34,000 annually from the French arms company Thales in return for protecting the company from an investigation into the deal, were reinstated after the ANC forced him out of office. The alleged bribe was part of a broader corrupt relationship between Zuma and one of the consortium members that won a major bid to provide combat suites for new navy frigates.

The resumption of Zuma’s trial has sparked fears of a resumption of the violence that followed his imprisonment on July 7. The protests by Zuma’s supporters that started on July 9 in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal escalated into a wider movement against the ANC government. The ANC has turned South Africa into the most unequal society in the world since its ascent to power in 1994, while enriching a tiny black layer, including both Zuma and Ramaphosa. As poverty escalated, the ANC turned to the tried and tested policies of divide and rule, inciting against migrant workers and exploiting divisions based on tribes.

Members of the South African Police Services on patrol outside the High Court in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, Monday July 19, 2021, where the corruption trial of former South African President Jacob Zuma resumed. The trial continued more than a week after Zuma's imprisonment for contempt of court in a separate case set off rioting. (AP Photo/Shiraaz Mohamed)

Millions are angered over the ANC’s mismanagement of the pandemic and vaccine rollout and an escalating economic crisis that has left many without jobs, income or financial support with nearly 20 percent experiencing weekly hunger. Official figures that disguise chronic underemployment show that more than half of the country’s young people, who form 50 percent of the population, are unemployed, forcing them to hawk on the streets where they face police violence. The number of people killed at the hands of the police (629) in 2019/20 was more than double that of the US on a per capita basis.

At least 212 people died during the riots that saw the destruction, damage and looting of 200 shopping malls, the plundering of dozens of food factories and warehouses and damage to hundreds of lorries and cars. The downtown areas of Durban and Pietermaritzburg, the two main cities in KwaZulu-Natal province, look like war zones. Scores of telecommunication towers have been put out of action and port facilities damaged, while attacks on chemical plants have led to dangerous and polluting spills. Damage across the country has been put at $826 billion, although the full scale of the devastation is far from clear.

The violence has reportedly affected healthcare clinics and the faltering vaccine rollout programme, with medical supplies and medications looted, even as South Africa’s third wave of Covid infections rips through the country. Armed “community groups” are barricading suburbs in some parts of the country against outsiders, raising fears of vigilantism and racial, tribal and communal fighting.

Last week, even as Ramaphosa was forced to acknowledge the atrocious social conditions that had animated the riots, he requested 25,000 troops for the three months to help the police suppress the protests and arrest looters. He made clear that that the army would act to enforce “the rule of law” and protect big business and the South African bourgeoisie from the enraged masses. At least 10,000 soldiers have now been deployed and armoured vehicles are patrolling the streets.

Since then, Ramaphosa has attacked the forces behind the protests, which he called “economic sabotage.” Speaking on television Friday evening, he declared this was an “attempted insurrection” and “an attack on our democracy.” Authorities had identified “a good number” of those who planned and coordinated the violence, although he did not say who was behind what some pro-government commentators have called an “attempted coup.”

Certainly, the scale and nature of the damage suggests that some of it was planned and organized. It included the burning of more than 30 lorries on the main roads between the commercial capital Johannesburg and the port city of Durban that blocked key supply lines, attacks on water-treatment facilities, the disabling of mobile-phone towers, the burning of a pharmaceutical factory, the busing in of impoverished people to loot food stores and the theft of 1.5 million rounds of ammunition from a storage depot. According to Daily Maverick’s associate editor Ferial Haffajee, this was orchestrated by a dozen of Zuma’s close associates in the ANC and intelligence services that he had built up during his years in office, with the aim of undermining the Ramaphosa government and securing a pardon and the dismissal of his trial.

The factional infighting within the ANC has brought it to point of civil war. It testifies to the internal decay and bankruptcy not just of the ANC but the entire South African bourgeoisie that has used the ANC to maintain its economic grip on the country.

By the late 1980s, globalisation of production had become widespread, rendering nationalist and autarkic regimes, including South Africa’s apartheid regime, obsolete. As the militancy of the South African working class in the townships against the apartheid system escalated, sparking fears that this would end capitalist rule in the country, the white bourgeoisie released Nelson Mandela from prison, made its peace with the ANC, ended apartheid and sanctioned majority rule that brought the ANC to power in 1994.

The choice of the ANC as the mechanism to rescue South African capitalism rested on its perspective and programme, based upon the Stalinist South African Communist Party’s two-stage theory, which proclaimed the formal end of apartheid as a democratic revolution and a necessary stage before any struggle for socialism. The ANC would maintain capitalist property relations and develop alliances with the capitalist class, posing no threat to the economic system.

It sought to develop a black capitalist class that would take its place alongside the white capitalists through “Black Economic Empowerment,” while suppressing the revolutionary strivings of the black working class, as expressed graphically by the career of Ramaphosa. The former head of South Africa’s largest trade union, the National Union of Mineworkers, was elected ANC general secretary in 1991 and soon became a multi-millionaire. Twenty years later, as a shareholder in the Lonmin mines in Marikana, in 2012, Ramaphosa called on the authorities to take action against striking miners, thereby sanctioning the killing 34 and wounding 78 others by the security forces.

Like its counterparts in the Middle East and Africa, the ANC was unable to provide any solutions to the social and economic problems confronting the working class and peasantry. Its only answer to the sharpening social tensions is repression, arrests and the lethal crushing of protests and strikes.

The working class must draw the lessons. It is not enough to take to the streets as repeated mass protests in Africa, including Sudan, Algeria and Nigeria, and in the Middle East during the 2011 Arab Spring, have demonstrated. Workers must be guided by their own political perspective and programme, rejecting all divisions on the basis of ethnicity, race or colour. It means breaking with the capitalist politics of the ANC and adopting a socialist and international programme in the closest unity with their class brothers and sisters in the African continent and in the imperialist centres, to take power, overthrow capitalism and carry out the socialist reorganization of society.

Spiralling COVID infections in UK schools: A warning to the world

Liz Smith

The UK education system is on the verge of collapse as schools break up for the summer term this week. Across the country, in every region, hundreds of thousands of school children and staff have been forced to isolate due to either having made close contact with someone with COVID or testing positive for virus themselves, as the Conservative government’s “let it rip” pandemic policy takes effect.

Almost 840,000 children (11.2 percent) in England’s state schools were not in class on July 8 because of COVID, according to the latest official figures. This was the highest level since March and a 31 percent increase on the week prior. Of those off school, 39,000 pupils had tested positive and 35,000 had a suspected infection. A further 630,000 were absent for other reasons.

The situation will have worsened dramatically since then. The vast majority of infections are the highly transmissible and more deadly Delta variant, which is overwhelmingly dominant in Britain. Hundreds of schools have been forced to close for the summer early, due to the lack of staff or multiple cases of the virus across several class and year group “bubbles”. About 18,000 children were at home because their schools were closed on July 8 and many thousands of parents, alarmed at the rapid rise of infections, have voted with their feet and kept children at home.

On what has been dubbed "Freedom Day", marking the end of coronavirus restrictions in England, people walk over London Bridge a popular walking route for commuters from London Bridge train and tube stations in London, towards the City of London, during the morning rush hour, Monday, July 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

This dire situation was worsening even before the July 19 lifting of all containment measures by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government in its cynically named “Freedom Day”. The current surge among children will massively contribute to the wave of COVID-19 in the general population in the coming weeks.

Johnson said bluntly earlier this month that the UK “must reconcile [itself] to more deaths” and that infections could rise to 50,000 a day. That total has already been reached. Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who has now tested positive for the virus, also demanded the population “learn to live with the existence of Covid” and admitted that daily case totals could reach 100,000 before the end of summer. Professor Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist and modeller for the government, warned at the weekend there is “the potential for the UK to have a very large number of cases, 150,000 to 200,000 a day.”

The Guardian estimated that there could be two million cases in the remaining six weeks of summer, but this was based on a conservative estimate of an average 35,000 cases a day until July 19 and 60,000 from then until August 16. Hospitalisations from COVID are now at over 4,000, a rise of 26 percent in one week.

The schools most impacted by the surge are in the north of England, where pupils in secondary schools are three times more likely to miss classes as their peers in London. A massive 37 percent of sessions were missed in the week to July 9, with 27 percent missed due to COVID isolation and quarantine. But absences are rising in every region.

Gateshead, in the northwest, has seen its coronavirus infection rate rocket to 1,823 cases in the seven days to July 9, a rate of 902.2 cases per 100,000 people, up from 237.1 per 100,000 the previous week.

Parents take children to a primary school in Bournemouth, UK following the reopening of schools nationally. March, 2021 (credit: WSWS media)

Sarah Muckle, director for Public Health in Bradford, West Yorkshire, revealed last week that the average age of people testing positive is 28 and that there had been 126 recent outbreaks of the virus in schools and educational settings.

With the ending of restrictions July 19 and little or no guidance from the Department of Education, school leaders are deciding policy on the fly, creating more tensions among parents who have to isolate with their children. Teachers and support staff are concerned that they will spend the first weeks of the summer break isolating and caring for loved ones, in a situation where cases and hospital admissions are rising, including for children. The latest statistics show that eight percent of COVID hospital admissions are children and one in every 1000 child COVID cases results in hospitalisation. A quarter of those hospitalised experience Long COVID symptoms for an average of eight and a half months.

Sammie McFarland, from support and advocacy group Long Covid Kids UK, said, “We are sleep walking into a Long Covid Apocalypse where children are being swept aside as acceptable debris in the economic recovery.”

This is herd immunity in practice. Boris Johnson’s government pioneered this genocidal policy which has been embraced by all governments. The warning by the scientists in The Lancet of “herd immunity by mass infection” which will “place 48% of the population (children included) who are not yet fully vaccinated, including the clinically vulnerable and the immunosuppressed, at unacceptable risk” is being played out throughout the school sector.

This risk is more than acceptable to the government. One model presented to its Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) in February suggested that continuing COVID-19 transmission until summer 2022 could contribute to more than 35 percent of overall “herd immunity”. Insufficient levels of vaccination in the UK would mean that “herd immunity is not reached without a large resurgence of transmission,” the paper speculated, with the bulk of infections to spread among young people.

The education unions are guilty of allowing this tragedy to unfold. They fully supported the reopening of schools last September, opposed any mobilisation of the widespread opposition to the government’s ending the requirement to wear face masks in schools in May, when the Delta variant was already spreading like wildfire, and otherwise subordinated all health and safety concerns of staff to the government’s agenda of profits over lives.

The National Education Union (NEU) stated this month that Education Secretary Gavin Williamson’s polices of scrapping bubbles and replacing isolation with regular lateral flow testing in schools would lead to an explosion of the virus, but then only asked rhetorically, “Are there any thresholds on case numbers, or hospitalisation or deaths that mean the DfE would do something different in schools in September?”

The pattern set in the UK is repeated in one country after another. Educators, pupils and their parents are forced into unsafe school environments by governments hellbent on reopening the economy whatever the cost. Safety measures are abandoned to reinforce the claim that everything is getting “back to normal.” Infections, hospitalisations and deaths rise inexorably. The education trade unions collaborate fully in this crime.

Gorillas’ delivery riders protest in Berlin for better working conditions

Markus Salzmann

Riders for the food delivery service Gorillas protested last week against miserable working conditions and wages.

The protest started at the warehouse in Berlin’s Tempelhof district. Around noon, the riders decided to stop work and travel from there in a bicycle protest to the next warehouse in nearby Neukölln. There, they sought to draw fellow workers into the strike and demonstration.

Bicycle protest by striking Gorillas workers

Gorillas workers were joined by supporters of the protest. There is strong support for the industrial action among workers. Several participants interviewed by the World Socialist Web Site pointed out the precarious conditions under which this section of the labour force works.

Riders criticised the lack of adequate gear which, despite the ongoing protests, has not been purchased by management on the grounds that it costs too much. Fernando, one of the riders, noted that they have not even been given proper rainwear. He also said that orders were often far too heavy for their backpacks and bicycles.

Striking Gorillas rider Fernando in conversation with Christoph Vandreier, Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei lead candidate in the federal elections

One of the organisers made clear that the protest was against the “poor working conditions” at Gorillas. She said that a list of demands had been handed to management weeks ago and “practically none of the demands have been met to date.” The list of 19 demands includes equal pay for equal work, overtime pay and better work equipment, including ventilation systems in all warehouses and bicycles more suited for deliveries. A key demand is the immediate payment of outstanding wages. Workers say they were underpaid at the end of last month.

When asked if workers from other delivery services should also join the protest, she said, “Every worker faces more or less the same problems.” This was confirmed by a participant in the demonstration who is employed by the delivery service Lieferando. He too complained about poor pay. He said a colleague had been dismissed because he had demanded that protective measures against coronavirus infections be implemented. The problems were “very similar” to those of the Gorillas riders. In his company there are long probationary periods and everything is deliberately kept non-transparent.

Gorillas workers vote on the strike

The hire and fire policy at Gorillas is no exception among delivery services. A few weeks ago, the dismissal of a rider at Gorillas led to a spontaneous protest. Two warehouses were blockaded. The Lieferando worker had come to support his colleagues and fight to extend the protests to all delivery companies.

Oguz, who works as a researcher at Berlin’s Technical University, also joined the protest to show his solidarity with the riders. He had spoken to delivery workers and they also confirmed that they do not receive their wages on time. “These people have no reserves when they have to pay their rent,” Oguz noted.

The Gorillas workers face a ruthless management. While CEO Kagan Sümer has always feigned understanding for the riders and senior leaders of the company have repeatedly stated that improvements will be made, it became clear on Saturday that these are nothing more than empty words. The billion-dollar start-up is prepared for a direct confrontation with the workers.

When the bicycle protest was supposed to move to the warehouse on Urbanstraße in the early afternoon, management intervened. The warehouse manager of the Tempelhof site refused to give the riders keys for their bikes in order to prevent them from participating in the protest. The police then also supported management and declared that the demonstration was not part of the strike and that company property could therefore not be used. This meant many participants were forced to get to Neukölln on foot or by public transport.

When the protesters arrived at Urbanstraße, the warehouse had already been closed and, according to the Gorillas app, orders were currently not possible in this neighbourhood. A city manager of the company prohibited workers at the Neukölln warehouse from participating in the strike and denied access to the warehouse to the protesters who had arrived to talk to their colleagues.

In a provocative statement, management said there was no basis for calling a strike because it was “not a works council.” The management brazenly claimed that there had been no spontaneous work stoppages and declared, “The short-term closure of individual warehouses was arranged by the company to protect our employees from hostility by a few.”

In Neukölln, the riders decided together not to undertake another bicycle demonstration, but to go in small groups to the warehouse in Muskauer Straße in Kreuzberg to call for a strike there. Here too, management had already stopped operations by then to prevent the strike from spreading. When riders then went to the Gürtelstraße warehouse in Friedrichshain, workers there also joined the strike and this warehouse also had to be closed in the early evening.

The workers at Gorillas and other delivery services are confronted with not just economic, but also political issues. In the statement, “Stop the slave labour! Build rank-and-file committees!” which was widely distributed at the demonstration, the Socialist Equality Party (SGP) states: “Such a struggle against the appalling working conditions in logistics and other industries raises fundamental political questions. Just as the enrichment of shareholders is based on the exploitation of the working class, this exploitation can only be ended by the expropriation of the big banks and corporations by the international working class.”

That such a perspective could find broad support among workers is viewed with concern by the establishment politicians. Cansel Kiziltepe, Social Democratic Party (SPD) member of parliament, was present in Tempelhof. She told the Tagesspiegel that she wanted to support the Gorillas workers in their demand for co-determination and labour protection. Kiziltepe was also the one who invited Federal Labour Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) for next Tuesday, saying he wished to meet with riders to “talk about their work situation.”

In conversation with participants of the protest, Christoph Vandreier, the SGP’s lead candidate in the federal elections, made it clear that workers should have no illusions in the establishment parties. “It is precisely the SPD, the Greens, the Left Party and the trade unions who are responsible for the social misery and precarious working conditions. The Hartz laws [imposing welfare cuts and curtailing labour protections] are just one example.”

Railway workers strike in São Paulo amidst wave of transportation struggles

Brunna Machado

A strike by São Paulo railway workers last Thursday, July 15, shut down an important section of public transport in Brazil’s largest city over the demand for higher wages. More than 40 stations and four railway lines of São Paulo’s Company of Metropolitan Trains (CPTM), which carry about one million riders daily, were affected by the strike.

The action of the CPTM railway workers takes place amid a wave of strikes by transport workers in Brazil and a general growth of struggles by the working class against the lowering of living standards and the unsafe conditions in workplaces during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The strike was launched after the CPTM presented a contract proposal that, once again, offers a zero percent increase in wages. Railway workers are entering their third year without a readjustment of their salaries, accumulating a wage deflation of more than 10 percent, which was the official inflation rate for this period. In addition, the company, which is managed by the São Paulo state government, has not paid workers what they are owed from a profit sharing plan.

Military Police fire tear gas grenades at Francisco Morato station during rail strike (Credit: Diário da CPTM)

In an attempt to discredit the strike, CPTM president Pedro Moro attacked the demand for higher wages, insinuating that railway workers are “privileged.”

“CPTM’s average salary is much higher than the average salary in Brazil. The benefits that CPTM provides to its employees are also above what is even in the CLT [labor laws] and, therefore, we request again that everyone return to work so that we can maintain the operation, not to harm the population,” said Moro in an interview on Band News radio.

In a press statement, the CPTM president said that the average salary at the company is 6,500 reais a month (US$ 1,244). But this number represents a false “average,” a product of lumping the pay of the top salaried positions—a privileged upper middle-class minority—with that of regular workers, who constitute the majority of the labor force and whose “average salary” is 2,800 a month (US$ 536). And the “benefits” mentioned by Moro are, in fact, threatened by the company’s current contract proposal.

In addition to lowering wages, the CPTM has pursued a criminal policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A CPTM railway worker interviewed by the World Socialist Web Site stated:

“The employees in the ‘risk group’ [those of advanced age or suffering from comorbidities] working in the stations were only removed after a court decision. [The CPTM] reversed that decision in mid-November 2020 and made these employees return to work, even though they weren’t even vaccinated.

“We had a huge number of deaths among workers. It is not known for sure how many, since the company did not offer the data even with a union request. But there was a period when we received as many as four death notices in a single day. Until they started not sending death notices anymore.

“The feeling of all the employees was of fear and impotence, since not even a tribute could be paid to the colleagues who had passed away, and not even death notes were sent. The feeling is that the worker is just a number and that his life is worthless to the management.

“Despite all the sacrifice that the railway workers have made and are making during this pandemic, the company, subservient to the state governor [João Doria, of the right-wing Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB)], is intransigent... This morning the CPTM president ratified the ‘proposal’ of a zero readjustment.”

Last week’s strike was the first at CPTM since 2015. Over that period, railway workers have faced a significant deterioration in working conditions, with a reduction in the number of jobs and the loss of rights and benefits acquired by previous generations. This process was facilitated by the trade unions, which stifled workers’ dissatisfaction while a process of privatization of the company advanced.

“Since the inauguration of Governor João Doria and the change of the company’s presidency, today under the management of Pedro Moro, the intention to privatize the company is noticeable,” the CPTM worker said. “In 2018, workers noticed the need for hiring more professionals, which didn’t occur, making clear what was to come.

“In the privatization process of rail lines 8 and 9 there was no struggle by the unions against the flagrant threat to workers’ jobs. Most of the employees were against the privatization and were willing to fight against it, even by exercising their right to strike, an agenda that was never raised by any of the unions.”

The CPTM worker denounced the unions’ efforts to keep railway workers isolated from other sections of the working class and blocking any initiative of struggle during the pandemic.

“There is a gigantic distance between the unions and the workers. Some of the employees already wanted to strike when the company managed to reverse the court decision and put the lives of employees with comorbidities at risk. The unions were previously called by metro workers to participate in a joint strike, but they declined.”

The unions are also working to isolate the workers within the CPTM itself. Four different unions claim to represent the workers at the company, each one claiming their rule over a set of rail lines. Last week’s strike was called by three of the unions—all of them linked to the UGT federation (General Union of Workers)—while the fourth union—linked to the Worker’s Party (PT)-controlled CUT—called a strike for July 20.

While the UGT strike was decided in poorly publicized assemblies, with almost no railway workers participating, the CUT strike was approved through lists left at the stations. This form of voting raises mistrust among workers and can prevent them from joining, because of exposure to possible retaliation by the bosses.

The bureaucratic control of the unions over the strike also prevented railway workers from appealing to the working population that depends on the public transport system and suffers from the same attacks on living standards and unsafe conditions under the pandemic.

During the strike, spontaneous demonstrations of solidarity broke out, like at the Grajaú station, in the southern end of the city, where residents joined the railway workers by blocking avenues in protest against the high transport fares.

But there were also confrontations involving desperate people trying to get to their jobs, which have been widely exploited by the bourgeois press with the intention of turning the population against the strike. In the Francisco Morato station, located on the outskirts of São Paulo, passengers tried to force the gates open and were brutally repressed by the Military Police who attacked them with stun grenades and rubber bullets. A woman was shot in the face and lost sight in one eye.

In face of these pressures and the divisions they promoted, the unions managed to end the strike at the end of the day, only with a promise of payment from the profit sharing plan, but nothing in relation to a wage increase.

The CPTM strike, as well as recent strikes in the subway and bus transport systems in Brazilian capitals, which directly affect the commutes of large sectors of workers, have demonstrated the necessity and the potential for a conscious and unified action by the working class.

Federal judge rules DACA unconstitutional, blocks new applications

Trévon Austin

On Friday, a federal judge in Texas ruled the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA)—which protects those who qualify from deportation and provides work authorization—to be unlawful, halting the ability of the Biden administration to accept new applicants and throwing the lives of hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants into uncertainty.

In a 77-page opinion, District Judge Andrew Hanen determined DACA was unlawful because it violates the Administrative Procedure Act, a law which governs federal rulemaking, by circumventing the normal “notice and comment” process in adopting new rules.

The lawsuit was spearheaded by Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton—along with attorneys general in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginia—who argued the federal program placed an undue burden on states and amounted to executive overreach.

Protesters in San Francisco, September 5, 2017 (Wikimedia Commons)

In his ruling, Hanen cited the 2020 Supreme Court decision in DHS v. Regents of the University of California, stating the majority determined federal courts have the authority to review the DACA program and its implementation. However, Hanen also borrowed from the dissenting opinion authored by the conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Alito and Gorsuch, that stated DACA was an “unlawful program.”

“Justice Thomas noted that the majority's failure to address DACA’s creation was ‘an effort to avoid a politically controversially but legally correct decision’ that would result in future ‘battles to be fought in this Court,’” Hanen wrote. “While the controversial issue may ultimately return to the Supreme Court, the battle Justice Thomas predicted currently resides here and it is not one this Court can avoid.”

Hanen’s ruling will not immediately affect the more than 615,000 people, commonly known as Dreamers, who are currently protected under DACA. However, it does mean that the Department of Homeland Security can no longer approve new DACA applications or grant applicants the protections DACA provides. Furthermore, Dreamers again find themselves in a state of legal limbo and uncertainty for their futures.

Explaining his decision to not immediately terminate the program, Hanen cited the large volume of people benefiting from the program.

“Hundreds of thousands of individual DACA recipients, along with their employers, states, and loved ones, have come to rely on the DACA program,” Hanen wrote in a separate ruling Friday night. “Given those interests, it is not equitable for a government program that has engendered such a significant reliance to terminate suddenly.”

In the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision, the court found that the Trump administration’s attempt to end DACA in 2017 failed to consider the interests of the more than 600,000 people affected by the change and was an “arbitrary and capricious” violation of the APA. But the court’s decision still left an opportunity for future attacks against the program.

The Trump Administration subsequently stopped accepting new DACA applications and sought to impose other limits on the program, but a federal judge in New York struck down those measures.

New applications surged after it was reinstated in December. The volume of applications has overwhelmed the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which reported a backlog of some 81,000 first-time applications pending as of the end of June. All these hopeful applicants, however, are now in limbo following Hanen’s decision and pending appeals.

DACA, established in 2012, protects undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children from deportation, in addition to allowing them to legally work in the US. Currently, the program’s protections are renewable and valid for two years at a time. However, in the near decade since it was established, DACA remains one of the few paths to citizenship and employment for immigrants. According to the Migration Policy Institute, as of 2020 there are more than 1.3 million people in the US who are potentially eligible for DACA.

In a statement released Saturday, President Joe Biden stated he will appeal Hanen’s decision and claimed the Department of Homeland Security “plans to issue a proposed rule concerning DACA in the near future.” Additionally, Biden called on Congress to enact a “permanent solution” for Dreamers.

“I have repeatedly called on Congress to pass the American Dream and Promise Act, and I now renew that call with the greatest urgency,” Biden said. “It is my fervent hope that through reconciliation or other means, Congress will finally provide security to all Dreamers, who have lived too long in fear.”

However, previous bills attempting to do so have failed to pass the Senate filibuster, despite the overwhelming popularity of providing a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers. According to a Pew Research Center poll from June 2020, 74 percent of US adults support “granting permanent legal status to immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally when they were children.”

Still, the DREAM Act failed in 2010 despite passing the House and winning majority support in the Senate, because of the filibuster. In 2018, the filibuster defeated four possible DACA fixes, although three of the four also won at least 50 votes.

Most recently, the American Dream and Promise Act passed in the House in two different sessions — first in 2019 and more recently in March this year — but has not come to a vote in the Senate. Despite Democratic control of both the House and the Senate, it is unlikely the legislation would survive the filibuster. At any rate, if signed into law, the bill would only provide “conditional permanent resident status” for several categories of immigrants, including Dreamers and Temporary Protected Status beneficiaries, putting them on a long path to citizenship.

Due to the back-and-forth between the courts and the Trump administration, DACA recipients have come of age in a long period of uncertainty. Although many of them have lived and worked their entire adult lives in the US, they still face the possibility of deportation.

Immigration rights groups quickly pointed out this tumultuous reality.

In a statement Friday, the Home Is Here Coalition described Hanen’s decision as “cruel and malicious.”

“This decision is a reminder that DACA has never been enough to protect immigrant communities who continue to be at risk of deportation,” the group said.

The Presidents Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a coalition of university presidents and chancellors, also called on Congress to “enact a roadmap to citizenship” for Dreamers “through all available mechanisms—including budget reconciliation,” a process that would require a simple majority instead of the 60 required to override a filibuster.

The organization was also joined by the American Business Immigration Coalition in issuing a letter signed by more than 400 university presidents, CEOs and civic leaders urging Congress to take action on the Dreamers’ behalf.

“This relief is particularly critical for the 98,000 Dreamers who graduate from high school every year and the 427,000 undocumented students enrolled in institutions of higher education,” the letter states.

“These students are working diligently to advance themselves, including pursuing careers in health, STEM, and teaching, notwithstanding the uncertainty they live with regarding whether they will be able to complete their education, invest in beginning careers, businesses, and families, and ultimately become citizens.”

Kroger closes stores, while United Food and Commercial Workers kept workers on the job during pandemic

Cordell Gascoigne

Over the course of the past year, while more than 35 million Americans have contracted coronavirus and 625,000 have died, corporate share values have risen to their highest levels in history. One company which has done particularly well is grocery chain Kroger. According to its website, its total sales were $132.5 billion in 2020, up from $122.3 billion in 2019. Excluding fuel and dispositions, total sales grew 14.2 percent.

This money has not been funneled into higher wages or better safety precautions for Kroger workers but has been funneled back into the pockets of Kroger’s shareholders. Last year, Kroger returned $1.9 billion to shareholders, repurchased $1.32 billion of shares in 2020 under its board authorizations, and increased the dividend by 13 percent, from $0.64 to $0.72 per year. 2020 was the fourteenth consecutive year of dividend increases, resulting in a payout of $534 million.

At the same time, Kroger Chief Executive Officer (CEO) William Rodney McMullen received a compensation package of more than $20.6 million, a $6.4 million raise—an increase by more than 45 percent—from the previous the year. According to WallMine.com, McMullen’s estimated net worth is a minimum of $152 million. This includes over 182,880 units of Kroger Company stock—valued at over $130,677,724.

Kroger store sign (Wikimedia Commons)

As McMullen’s pockets deepen, the typical worker found holes in theirs. Over the course of 2020, worker pay dropped by 8.1 percent, driven by the massive hiring of tens of thousands of new workers on starting pay.

This spring, Kroger said it would raise “average worker pay” to $16 per hour, up from $15.50 currently. How the company calculates “average pay” is unclear, and starting pay is significantly less than $15.50 in most areas. According to Payscale.com, the average wage at Kroger is $11.72, not $15.50.

Kroger workers responded on social media to the announcement with a mixture of skepticism and indignation. “No one, not even full time people in my store are making $16 an hour,” one worker said on a Kroger subreddit. Said another: “Are we including Rodney’s at 8k per hour? Are we including per hours of salaried management? At 50 hours or 80 hours per week? ... the term is insanely vague, and ... the average wage isn’t what the people who work for this company ultimately want to hear has increased. Kroger is playing PR instead of serving its employees who serve it.”

Earlier this year, Kroger retaliated against a Los Angeles ordinance requiring a temporary wage hike of $5 per hour in hazard pay for grocery store workers by closing three stores and eliminating 250 jobs, claiming that the stores were “underperforming.”

One worker told the Guardian, “If this store was underachieving, it was underachieving prior to the pandemic. It should have been closed then. Why are they waiting until now to close it? It’s retaliation. Because none of these executives at Kroger, did they give us their yearly bonus so we could get $5 an hour? No, they’re sitting in their nice houses in the hills or wherever they live, and telling us we don’t deserve an extra $5 an hour.”

In Arkansas, Kroger is closing three more stores in the cities of Morrilton, DeWitt, and England. Morrilton and DeWitt both closed July 17, 2021, and the England store is scheduled to close July 31, 2021. Kroger operates 28 stores in Arkansas, employing approximately 3900 employees.

“Every year, we evaluate our stores and their success in the communities they serve,” said Victor Smith, President of Kroger’s Delta Division. Smith continues, highlighting the importance of profit over life, “Closing a store is a difficult decision that we take very seriously. This store’s low financial returns made it impossible to continue to operate while still upholding our low-price commitment to our customers. Even through a pandemic, our DeWitt[,] Morrilton and England, Arkansas stores did not perform well and for that reason, we made the decision to close.”

“We’re grateful for the service and dedication of the associates at our Arkansas stores,” added Smith. “Today’s announcement is no reflection on our DeWitt, England or Morrilton Kroger Teams. We appreciate their contributions and we are working with them to identify positions in other Kroger store locations. Helping our associates through this transition is a top priority.”

Throughout the pandemic, the role of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union has been to keep Kroger and other grocery and food processing workers on the job as much as possible. It did nothing to protect Evan Seyfried, a Cincinnati-area Kroger dairy manager who was driven to suicide from months of harassment by a right-wing store manager. In the meatpacking industry, it has actively collaborated with management in encouraging maximum attendance in the plants, while helping to conceal the real extent of the spread of the virus from the public.

The UFCW, in fact, has profited handsomely from the pandemic stock market boom. According to its latest filings with the US Department of Labor, the UFCW’s net assets increased last year from $392 to $431 million. This was driven mainly by a $66 million increase in the value of its investments—that is, stocks and bonds. This massive sum was used to fund approximately $38 million in salaries to staff and officers in its national headquarters alone.

By comparison, the UFCW distributed a paltry $866 thousand in strike pay.