UNHRC session pushes for implementation of US-backed human rights resolution on Sri Lanka

Vijith Samarasinghe

During the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) sessions this month, High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, UK envoy to the UN Simon Manley and the EU delegation insisted on the implementation of a human rights resolution on Sri Lanka previously adopted at its meeting in March.

Backed by the US, the resolution was presented by the Core Group on Sri Lanka, which includes the UK, Canada, Germany, North Macedonia, Malawi and Montenegro. It called for the devolution of power to the Tamil elite, protection of human rights, a “review” of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), accountability, respect of religious freedoms and protection of human rights defenders.

Sri Lankan governments have a grave record of human rights violations and attacks on democratic rights, which has intensified under President Gotabhaya Rajapakse. The real purpose of the resolution, however, is to pressure Sri Lanka to break from Beijing and fully align itself with Washington’s military-strategic build up in the Indo-Pacific against China.

In a speech on September 13, Bachelet said that “militarisation and the lack of accountability” in Sri Lanka continues to have a “corrosive effect on fundamental rights.” She referred to the recent declaration of a state of emergency in Sri Lanka, draft regulations on civil society groups, numerous examples of arbitrary arrests and detention, and ongoing government interference in judicial processes.

Her office, Bachelet continued, had developed an information and evidence repository with nearly 120,000 individual items on Sri Lanka and urged UNHRC member states to provide the necessary funds to fully implement the March resolution. It would “collect, consolidate, analyse and preserve information and evidence” for future accountability processes in Sri Lanka, to help victims and survivors and investigations by UNHRC judicial proceedings, she said.

It was the first time a UN body outlined specific measures for an international intervention into Sri Lanka. Manley and the EU delegation called on Sri Lanka to “cooperate fully with the High Commissioner.”

The UNHRC previously focused on crimes committed by Sri Lankan armed forces during the final months of Sri Lanka’s communal war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). This has now been expanded to include the anti-democratic measures implemented by the current Rajapakse government.

Tamil families fleeing war in January 2009 [Source: Wikimedia]

Since coming to power in November 2019, President Gotabhaya Rajapakse has militarised key parts of his administration by plugging in-service and retired senior military officers into key state posts. Repressive legislation, such as the PTA has been invoked to arbitrarily arrest and detain Muslim political leaders, activists, artists and writers.

So-called “de-radicalisation regulations” were also added to the PTA in March. The laws prescribe 300 Tamil and Muslim groups and individuals allegedly “linked to terrorism.” On August 30, Rajapakse declared a wartime-style state of emergency, under the guise of ensuring food security.

Government intrusions into the judicial process have become rampant, with legal proceeding against war crime perpetrators called off. This includes the indictment of former navy commander Wasantha Karannagoda for the “disappearances” of 11 young men during 2008–2009.

Concerns about the unrelenting erosion of democracy and basic rights in Sri Lanka, however, is not the driving force behind the “human rights” campaigns of the US and other Western powers. These powers all backed the bloody communal war which ended in May 2009 with the military defeat of the LTTE. The UN has estimated that over 40,000 civilians were killed during the final months of the conflict. Hundreds of young persons who surrendered to the army simply disappeared and several LTTE leaders were killed.

The human rights posturing of the US, UK and other imperialist powers, given their horrific war crimes record in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places over the last three decades alone, is completely bogus. Great power pressure on Sri Lanka is aimed at forcing Colombo to break with Beijing and for the Rajapakse regime to fully commit to Washington’s escalating war preparations against China.

In the last years of the war, President Mahinda Rajapakse, the current president’s brother, developed close economic ties with China in order to obtain financial assistance and military hardware. Washington, which at that time was developing its “pivot to Asia” to diplomatically isolate Beijing and encircle it militarily, was thoroughly hostile to Colombo’s relations with China. It sponsored several UNHRC war crimes resolutions to pressure Colombo to fully endorse the US geo-strategic agenda.

Finally, in 2015, Washington orchestrated a regime-change operation to oust President Mahinda Rajapakse and replace him with the pro-US Maithripala Sirisena. Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe shifted the country’s foreign policy in favour of Washington and closely integrated the military with US Indo-Pacific Command.

Since coming to power in November 2019, however, current President Rajapakse and his cash-strapped government has increasingly turned to Beijing for financial assistance. Battered by the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Sri Lankan economy confronts an unprecedented crisis.

Colombo’s inauguration of the Beijing-funded Colombo Port City (CPC)—built on reclaimed seafront land—has particularly angered the US, and its strategic ally India. China regards the CPC as a important component in its strategic Belt and Road Initiative to counter the US threats, defend its investments and protect its vital trade routes through the Indian Ocean.

Deep trepidation now grips Sri Lankan ruling circles over the UNHRC human rights resolution.

Addressing the current UNHRC session on September 14, Sri Lanka’s foreign minister G. L. Peiris desperately tried to convince attendees that Sri Lanka was well on the way to meet its human rights commitments. He claimed that the Office of Missing Persons (OMP) was smoothly functioning and the reconciliation process proceeding.

The OMP, a toothless body established by the previous government in 2018, is supposed to be collecting information about persons who went missing during the war. Nothing has come out of its so-called investigations. The reconciliation process is code for power-sharing arrangements with Tamil elite. The Sri Lankan ruling elite and its Sinhala-Buddhist constituency, is averse to any such devolution of powers.

Peiris also questioned the need for “external initiatives” on human rights investigations during his speech. The Rajapakse government, which depends on military support, opposes war crime investigations. Any such probe would rapidly implicate the president, who was defence secretary during the final stages of the war. In fact, every faction of the Sri Lankan ruling elite depends on the military’s support.

Sri Lankan ruling class concerns are also reflected in media coverage of the UNHRC session. An editorial in the Sunday Times entitled “Paying a heavy price in Geneva,” for example, slammed the government for “abysmally failing in Preventive Diplomacy.” Translated into plain English, the newspaper’s main concern is the Rajapakse government is not doing enough to appease Washington.

Prior to the UNHRC session, US diplomats in Colombo sought the support of the bourgeois Tamil parties, and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in particular. Its leaders held several talks with the US ambassador in July and August. The Tamil elites back the US geopolitical moves against China in the hope that Washington will force Colombo to grant them some increased power and privileges.

Notwithstanding his rabidly nationalist rhetoric, Rajapakse has been desperately scrambling to accommodate Washington’s pressure while maintaining his balancing act with Beijing. He has not ended Sri Lankan military ties with the Indo-Pacific Command and this week signed an agreement to sell 40 percent of the state-owned Kerawalapitiya West Coast Power Plant to the US-owned New Fortress Energy Company. The company has also obtained rights to develop a new offshore liquefied natural gas terminal that will supply Sri Lanka. Land has also reportedly been provided for US investments.

Rajapakse’s attempts to balance between Beijing and Washington will be shattered as US imperialism steps up war plans against China. The room for manoeuvre was further undermined last week with the AUKUS military agreement between the US, UK and Australia and directed against China. The deal includes the provision of nuclear submarines to Australia “to more efficiently patrol off the coast of China.”

Quad summit heightens threat of US-led war against China

Peter Symonds

The first face-to-face leaders’ summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or “Quad” took place in Washington yesterday, hosted by US President Biden with the prime ministers of Australia, Japan and India—Scott Morrison, Yoshihide Suga and Narendra Modi respectively.

President Joe Biden walks to the Quad summit with, from left, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, in the East Room of the White House, Friday, Sept. 24, 2021, in Washington [Credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci]

The summit, following the first online leaders’ meeting of the Quad in March, is part of an escalating US-led drive to confront, undermine and subordinate China, by military means if ultimately necessary, to the “international rules-based order” dominated by Washington.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisted that the Quad summit was not about “security”—that is, the military build-up against China—but was about “COVID, climate, emerging technology and infrastructure.” She emphasised to reporters that “the focus is not [on] a security meeting or security apparatus.”

To deny that the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue has anything to do with “security” obviously flies in the face of reality.

The Quad summit followed immediately the declaration by the US, Britain and Australia of a new AUKUS military pact, which includes the provision of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. That announcement has fueled further tensions with China and threatens to fracture US relations with France—an American ally that regards itself as a Pacific power—and more broadly with the European Union.

By announcing AUKUS just a week before the Quad meeting, the Biden administration put both Japan and India on the spot as to their commitment to the escalating US confrontation with China.

Suga, however, is standing down as Japanese prime minister amid public anger over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and was in no position to make categorical statements. Moreover, Tokyo is still hampered by widespread public opposition to abandoning the so-called pacifist clause in its constitution that bars it from waging war.

For its part, India’s reaction to the AUKUS announcement has been muted. While New Delhi has developed close strategic relations with Washington over the past decade, it was in the past a close partner with the former Soviet Union and is not a formal US ally. It is an observer member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, initiated by China and Russia to counter US influence in Central Asia.

Nevertheless, the Quad has all the hallmarks of a quadrilateral military alliance in the making—Australia and Japan are already formal US allies and host American military forces, while India, particularly under Modi, has been strengthening its strategic partnership with the US. India has signed agreements not only with the US but also Japan and Australia to provide military logistics support and all four militaries now participate in India’s annual Malabar naval war games with the US.

The initial comments of the Indian, Japanese and Australian prime ministers prior to the summit copied Biden’s catch-phrase of promoting “a free and open Indo-Pacific.” Even as all four governments make deep inroads into democratic rights, the leaders posture as defenders of “democracy.” While China was not mentioned by name, despite being routinely and hypocritically denounced by the US over “human rights,” it was clearly the target.

Morrison was the most explicit, declaring that “we are liberal democracies that believe in a world order that favours freedom.” He continued: “[W]e wish to be always free from coercion, where the sovereign rights of all nations are respected and where disputes are settled peacefully in accordance with international law.”

In fact, the US has been engaged in waging one predatory war after another in the Middle East and Central Asia over the past three decades in a bid to shore up its global dominance. Australian governments have backed Washington to the hilt and committed military forces to the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Despite its debacle in Afghanistan, the US is building alliances in preparation for what is potentially an even more disastrous conflict with nuclear-armed China, which Washington regards as the chief threat to its global hegemony. Biden, who was vice president when Obama launched the “pivot to Asia” in 2011 against China, has continued all the Trump administration’s anti-China policies.

Behind closed doors, the four leaders undoubtedly focused on countering China. All the topics listed for discussion contained an element of rivalry and confrontation with Beijing: whether it was the provision of COVID-19 vaccines to the region, a new fellowship for students from the four countries or the more overtly strategic issues of addressing cyber security, collaborating on “critical technologies” and securing supply chains.

China has reacted to the AUKUS announcement by condemning it as a return to “Cold War mentality.” The danger, however, is not that the world is returning to the decades of standoff between the US and the Soviet Union. Rather it is facing the threat of a military conflict between the largest and second largest economies, both nuclear armed.

An opinion article by Edward Luce in the Financial Times was headlined “A US-China clash is not unthinkable.” It reflected fears in sections of the ruling class in Britain and internationally of the danger of war. Luce pointed out that for all of Biden’s talk about diplomacy and working with China on common issues, “the strongest winds, however, are towards confrontation” amid a “hawkish domestic US consensus on China.”

Luce warned that unlike the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union, “Cold war 2.0 offers a different spectre—escalating geopolitical rivalry between the world’s two largest powers with no clear exit ramp.”

Behind Washington’s escalating tensions with Beijing is the historic decline of US imperialism. Unlike the Soviet Union, China, by virtue of its sheer economic weight and requirements for raw materials, energy, parts and technologies, presents a challenge to continuing US global dominance. No longer able to rely on an unchallenged economic superiority, the US ruling class is determined to use all means, including its residual military might, to subordinate China to its interests.

Luce concluded his comment with a half-hearted appeal to Biden to reduce the risks by acknowledging “the possibility of a US-China collision—by accident or ignorance.” In reality, the Biden administration is actively preparing for such a conflict on all fronts—including the consolidation of military alliances and partnerships such as AUKUS and the Quad.

Corporate Cartels are Back

David Rosen

A century-plus ago, the U.S. economy was dominated by what were then known as “cartels,” “trusts” or “monopolies.”  According to one source, between 1897 and 1904 over 4,000 companies were consolidated down into 257 corporate firms. Among them were Standard Oil (40 refineries), AT&T (22 units), U.S. Steel (nine steel companies) and J. P. Morgan’s “holding” company, Northern Securities Company of railroad lines (from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest). These corporations ruled with vengeance, using predatory pricing, exclusivity deals and other anti-competitive practices to undercut smaller local businesses and gain market dominance.

Cartels or trusts are back and with an equal vengeance.  In 2017, Lina Khan, then at the Yale Law School and now chair of the Federal Trade Commission, published a critical essay, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” in the Yale Law Journal.  She provocatively stated: “Amazon is the titan of twenty-first century commerce.”  And added:

In addition to being a retailer, it is now a marketing platform, a delivery and logistics network, a payment service, a credit lender, an auction house, a major book publisher, a producer of television and films, a fashion designer, a hardware manufacturer, and a leading host of cloud server space.

She then raised a deeper concern, noting that “the current framework in antitrust — specifically its pegging competition to ‘consumer welfare,’ defined as short-term price effects — is unequipped to capture the architecture of market power in the modern economy.” Going further, she argued, “We cannot cognize the potential harms to competition posed by Amazon’s dominance if we measure competition primarily through price and output.”

Media attention has focused on growing public and political outrage in the U.S. and Europe over how “big tech” companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are using their control over multiple business lines to favor their own products and to suppress rivals.  At a Congressional anti-trust hearing, Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) insisted, “many digital markets are defined by monopoly or duopoly control.”  Pointing an accusatory finger, he argued: “Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have become gatekeepers to the online economy. They bury or buy rivals and abuse their monopoly power—conduct that is harmful to consumers, competition, innovation, and our democracy.”

***

The website Digital History reminds us that “during the late 19^th century, business competition was cutthroat. In 1907, there were 1,564 separate railroad companies in the United States, and two years later there were 446 companies manufacturing steel. … During the panic of the mid-1870s, 47,000 businesses went bankrupt.”  It then acknowledges, “In hard times, the competitive marketplace became a jungle and businessmen sought to find ways to overcome the rigors of competition.”  Between 1897 and 1901, more than 2,000 mergers took place in the United States. This horizontal integration reduced the number of competitive companies in an industry.

The increasingly cartel-dominated economy fueled the Gilded Age.  In response, the Progressives movement emerged, fostering what Teddy Roosevelt mockingly dubbed “muck-raker” journalist who investigated and publicized social and economic injustices.  They included Jacob Riis, Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell and Ida B. Wells. Progressives sought to elimination of government corruption, supported women’s suffrage, championed social welfare, racial justice, prison reform, civil liberties and prohibition. Many feared that concentrated, uncontrolled, corporate power threatened democratic government.  They argued that large corporations could impose monopolistic prices to cheat consumers and squash small, independent companies.  And these cartels could strongly influence both federal and state governments.

In 1887, Congress established the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to stop discriminatory and predatory pricing practices. There years later, it passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890) aimed to limit anticompetitive practices, such as those institutionalized in cartels and monopolistic corporations.

Looking back, Elizabeth Laughlin reminds us: “As monopolies and oligopolies became more staple of the American capitalist economy at the end of the nineteenth century, the industrial leaders who controlled these companies were simultaneously becoming more prevalent in society.”  The outcome of this development marked the Gilded Age: “Their mass wealth and influence created a shift toward plutocracy.”

Now, more than a century later, the issues of corporate cartels and the new plutocrats are finding new resonance.

***

Perdue University economist John Connor defines cartels as “voluntary associations of legally independent companies that manipulate market prices or industry output in order to increase their collective profits.” He distinguishes between “private” cartels (i.e., “not protected by national sovereignty or by treaties”) and “international” cartels (i.e., those that have participants from two or more nations”).  He adds, “private cartels operate secretly to avoid detection.”

The notion of the U.S. as an increasingly “cartel” dominated economy is gaining academic and public credence.  Looking at one sector, the telecommunications industry, the journalist David Cay Johnston, writing in a 2012 New York Times op-ed, linked the issue of cartels to the deepening telecom crisis.  He argued, “what we’ve witnessed instead is low-quality service and prices that are higher than a truly competitive market would bring.” He went on, noting, “after a brief fling with competition, ownership has reconcentrated into a stodgy duopoly of Bell Twins — AT&T and Verizon. Now, thanks to new government rules, each in effect has become the leader of its own cartel.”  He added, “because AT&T’s and Verizon’s own land-based services operate mostly in discrete geographic markets, each cartel rules its domain as a near monopoly.”

Susan Crawford, a Harvard Law School professor, given credence to Johnston’s assessment of the telecom industry. In Fiber, The Coming Tech Revolution (Yale University Press, 2019), she observes: “A handful of private companies dominate last-mile data delivery in American cities. They choose the richest, densest areas to serve with expensive second-class services – not with malign intention, but with a detrimental effect on the country.”

Following merger after merger over the last two decades, the four corporations that make up the telecom cartel came to not only control wireline and wireless services but internet and streaming services as well and are moving to acquire media/content businesses and theme parks. Collectively, the total 2020 revenues of the four telecom conglomerates totaled nearly $430 billion. The individual telecom’s 2020 revenues are: AT&T ($181.2 billion), Comcast ($108.9 billion), Charter Communications ($45.8 billion) and Verizon ($131.9 billion). Their total “market value” is nearly $1 trillion.

***

Going unobserved, what’s happened in the telecom sector is reshaping other corporate sectors.  An insightful, if ominous, 2016 study by The Economist lays out the profound corporate realignment then underway. “Since 2008 American firms have engaged in one of the largest rounds of mergers in their country’s history, worth $10 trillion,” it reported. “Unlike earlier acquisitions aimed at building global empires, these mergers were largely aimed at consolidating in America, allowing the merged companies to increase their market shares and cut their costs.”

The magazine further clarified its findings, reporting that it “divided the economy into 900-odd sectors covered by America’s five-yearly economic census. Two-thirds of them became more concentrated between 1997 and 2012.”  Going further, it noted, “the weighted average share of the top four firms in each sector has risen from 26% to 32%.”

In March 2021, U.S. News released a study that updates The Economists’ findings.  It reports:

The four biggest airlines control about 65% of U.S. passenger traffic, five giant healthcare insurers control an estimated 45% of the market, pharmaceuticals are dominated by three major companies, the top four banks control about 44% of the market, the so-called Big Five book publishers control some 80% of the U.S. book market, and Google alone accounts for about 90% of web searches worldwide.

Four companies are estimated to control 80% of U.S. meat-packing; the top four brewers and importers control about 76% of the U.S. beer market.

These revelations came during Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s (D-MN), chair of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on competition policy, held hearings in March to overhaul U.S. antitrust law.

The scale and scope of the corporate consolidation is suggested by following brief snapshots of various industrial sectors:

Airlines

Four firms — American, United, Southwest and Delta — control 80 percent of U.S. passenger traffic.

Hospitals & Health Care

The Economist reports that “the health-care industry, where a cohort of pharmaceutical and medical-equipment firms make aggregate returns on capital of 20-50%. The industry is riddled with special interests and is governed by patent rules that allow firms temporary monopolies on innovative new drugs and inventions. Much of health-care purchasing in America is ultimately controlled by insurance firms. Four of the largest, Anthem, Cigna, Aetna and Humana, are planning to merge into two larger firms.”

A 2014 Harvard study finds that “the top three hospitals and  systems account for 77 percent of all hospital admissions.”  Unfortunately, it does not identify the three hospitals.

Retail

Walmart controlled 9.5 percent share of all 2020 retail sales, up from the 8.9 percent level it posted in 2019; it controlled 50 percent or more of grocery sales in 43 metropolitan areas and 160 smaller markets as of 2018; in 38 of these regions, Walmart’s share of the grocery market is 70 percent or more.

Amazon controlled 9.2 percent share of all 2020 retail sales, up from the 6.8 percent retail stake it held in 2019; however, it controlled 51.2 percent of total U.S. digital retail sales in 2020, up from 48 percent in 2019.

Food

As For The People warns, “Six agricultural giants is set to threaten the safety of food and agriculture in America.”  These companies are Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (ADM), Bayer, John Deere, CNH Industrial and Syngenta. However, it notes, “the merger of Dow with DuPont, Monsanto with Bayer AG, and Syngenta with ChemChina, will result in the control of more than 61 percent of commercial seed sales and 80 percent of the U.S. corn seed market

Eggs & Milk

Two firms — Dean Foods and the Dairy Farmers of America — control as much as 80-90 percent of the milk supply chain in some states and wield substantial influence across the entire industry.

Eyeglasses

One sector of retail sales rarely examined is eyeglasses. For The People reports that more than 200 million Americans are affected by visions loss. It reveals that Luxottica owns and manufactures eyewear and sunglass brands under such as Oakley, Ray-Ban, Persol and other designer brands. In addition, it owns most of major distribution chains like LensCrafters, Pearle Vision, Sears and Target Optical as well as the vision insurance company EyeMed Vision Care. Essilor acquired Luxottica for $24 billion in 2017.

Glass

Corning controls 60 percent of all the glass used in LCD screens; Owens Illinois holds a near monopoly over market for glass bottles in the U.S.; and Rexam, a British company, dominants the international supply of bottle caps and pharmaceutical bottles.

Any number of other sectors can be analyzed to reveal the same tendency toward consolidation.

***

Much attention has been on the top-tier “big tech” companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft.  However, as suggested, other sectors of the U.S. economy are increasingly consolidating.

The proposed federal legislation now being considered would set up a mechanism by which a giant conglomerate could be broken up if it didn’t comply.  In addition, it could significantly limit the ability of any of the big tech companies to complete large mergers and would mandate them to make it easier for users to leave their platforms with their personal data intact.  The current Congressional debate and proposed legislation needs to be extended to all sectors of the economy in which consolidation is occurring.

England’s Chief Medical Officer admits to deliberate mass infection of millions of children

Robert Stevens & Thomas Scripps

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government sent 10 million children back to school this term in the certain knowledge they would be infected with COVID-19. This monumental crime was openly admitted by the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England Chris Whitty and his deputy Jonathan Van-Tam on Wednesday.

Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer of England speaking at Parliament’s Education Select Committee on Wednesday (credit: screenshot from Parliament TV)

Their comments were made giving evidence to parliament’s education select committee on the inclusion of children aged 12-15 in the government’s COVID-19 vaccination programme.

Whitty estimated that “roughly half” of all schoolchildren this age in England have already been infected. He added, “virtually any child unvaccinated is likely to get an infection at some point between 12 and 15.”

Answering a question on the (miniscule) risks of vaccination, he responded, “You’re not comparing a child being vaccinated against nothing happening, you’re comparing a child being vaccinated against a near-certainty that child will get COVID.”

Van-Tam confirmed, “we are not looking at a theoretical risk of children 12-17 becoming infected. I think it is really quite inevitable that they will be so at some point.”

Mass infection of children will have incalculable consequences. Close to 90 children in the UK have already been killed by COVID-19 and an estimated 38,000 aged 2-16 are currently living with Long COVID, according to the Office for National Statistics. Whitty admitted, “we don’t know the long-term effects of catching COVID in children.”

Whitty and Van-Tam made their comments in support of the Tory government’s decision to vaccinate 12-15-year-olds, against anti-scientific opposition from the ultra-reactionary wing of the Conservative Party. But this necessary decision has been made only after children have already returned to the classrooms, and it will be longer still before vaccinations in this age group actually begin.

The government, with the support of the Labour Party and the education trade unions, rushed children back to school to facilitate the reopening of the economy, in the interests of the corporations and the super-rich. So vital was this policy to the ruling class that Johnson did not even wait for the cover of a vaccination rollout to enforce it, sending overwhelmingly unvaccinated children into crowded settings five days a week.

The move to vaccination is driven by the same cold economic calculation, out of fear that the unchecked spread of COVID-19 will cause a breakdown in the school system, undermining the reopening of the economy and the return of parents to work. Whitty argued, “You would have fewer days lost as a result of being vaccinated compared to allowing people to be infected.” He spoke of “damage that could be done” only “in terms of disruption.”

Children of secondary school age already have the highest rate of COVID infections, followed by primary school children, and the numbers are increasing rapidly. Infection rates among five to 14-year-olds increased 80 percent week-on-week to September 19, to a record 811 per 100,000. Infection rates for the five to nine age group stood at 382 per 100,000.

A snapshot of the social crime now unfolding was provided by the Department for Education (DfE)’s school attendance figures the day before Whitty and Van-Tam’s appearance.

On September 16, only two weeks after state schools in England formally reopened, and less than two weeks after most did so in practice, over 100,000 children were absent with a confirmed or suspected infection. This dwarfed the previous record set in mid-July of 82,000. Some 59,000 had a confirmed COVID-19 infection and another 45,000 were absent with suspected cases. One in every 100 secondary school pupils is ill with the disease. The DfE figures found that staff are being infected at a high rate with one in every 100 teachers in state schools off work with Covid last week.

There is also clear evidence that children are spreading the virus to older generations. The Financial Times noted Wednesday, “The steep jump in Covid-19 infections among children has been followed by an uptick in cases affecting people aged 30 to 49—their parents’ generation—which now stand at 286 per 100,000, having grown 7 per cent in the past four days.” This is despite their estimated levels of social mixing remaining steady.

Responding to Whitty and Van-Tam’s comments, Lisa Diaz, a parent and member of the SafeEdforAll (Safe Education for All) group, told the World Socialist Web Site, “How can you say that ‘it is really quite inevitable’ children will get COVID-19, and it’s ‘a near-certainty’ a child will catch it, without it causing huge concern, without saying ‘now we have to do this and take these actions to prevent it?’

“Even in the US, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, has said that no child should just be left to catch COVID. Now 88 children have died in the UK from this, and there is the risk of Long COVID which we know one in seven of those infected will get.

“So this is horrific. Especially when it is not inevitable that children will be infected. It is only inevitable when they are being forced into schools. People are being gas-lighted, told that children aren’t a risk and everything is under control. Those who fight for eradication, for Zero COVID, are treated as if we are the outliers, as if we are out of step with reality. The opposite is the case.

“We are now in a worse situation than we were one year ago. Infections are 26 times greater. Britain is basically like Bolsonaro’s Brazil—no eradication, no mitigation, they are just letting it rip.”

Mass infection of children has always been the government’s plan. In June, the Byline Times website revealed that the UK’s Cabinet Office asked the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) to model “herd immunity” through a “resurgence” of infection in young people. A document authored by SAGE in February noted that “many younger age groups have not yet been vaccinated or infected” before concluding in bold, “herd immunity is not reached without a large resurgence of transmission”.

At this stage, the government was still speaking in terms of “herd immunity”, through the murderous policy of mass infection, bringing an eventual end to transmission. It now pursues the same policy while admitting the extremely infectious Delta variant and waning immunity renders herd immunity impossible. Johnson’s winter autumn/winter strategy is based on the acceptance that COVID-19 is “endemic” and will remain so.

Whitty confirmed this approach on Wednesday, saying, “because immunity wanes, we’re not going to see a situation where this just sort of stops at a certain point.” Highlighting the fraud of the Johnson government’s focus on vaccination to the exclusion of all public health measures, Whitty added, “I don’t think we should assume that either having had an infection or having been vaccinated provides full long-term protection.” This leaves the door wide open to the development of even more infectious, dangerous and/or vaccine-resistant variants.

Every infection of a child is an act of violence carried out by the ruling class. Pfizer reported in March that a study of 2,260 children aged 12-15 found its vaccine was 100 percent effective in preventing COVID-19. Had schools been closed as part of a programme of workplace closures, rigorous testing and tracing, strict safety measures in essential industries and vaccination, tens of thousands of Long COVID cases, thousands of hospitalisations, and scores of deaths among children could have been prevented.

Precisely this policy is necessary to avert the next tidal wave of infections and suffering already underway. The biggest obstacle to its implementation is not scientific knowledge or technical skill but the treachery of the trade unions and the Labour Party, complicit at every stage of the reopening of schools and the economy. The National Education Union, the largest education union in Europe, responded to the DfE figures with a call for the education minister to report more details of COVID infections to help the union and the government “do everything we can collectively to ensure that as many young people as possible continue to learn on site”.

Germany’s federal election and the intensification of class struggle

Ulrich Rippert

The run up to Germany’s federal election this coming Sunday has been characterised by an unprecedented wave of strikes, protests and demonstrations.

Striking hospital workers in Berlin (WSWS media)

German rail workers have been on strike on three occasions since August, paralysing freight and passenger traffic for days. Then, last week, the train drivers’ union (GDL) abruptly ended the nationwide strike, although the strikers’ militancy had increased and the rail management had made only minimal concessions.

The union accepted a drastic reduction in real wages. The agreed increase of 1.8 percent on average over a period of 32 months fails to even compensate for half of the current rate of inflation, which is rapidly approaching 4 percent. The GDL also agreed to the introduction of a two-tier system in the company pension scheme. The previous paid supplementary pension will only apply to so-called existing employees from next year.

This week, the German public service union Verdi is seeking to end the indefinite strike by staff at the two major hospital concerns in Berlin, Charité and Vivantes. At Vivantes, where the issue at stake is the alignment of the extremely low wages paid to subsidiary workers with the general contract for the public service (TvöD), Verdi ended its strike action last Saturday and resumed negotiations.

After top-level talks over the weekend, Verdi said on Tuesday it welcomed “the fact that the Vivantes management had made a move” and presented a new offer. This will now be examined, announced Verdi negotiator Meike Jäger, who is also deputy chair of the Vivantes supervisory board. She added: “We continue to hope to quickly arrive at solutions that will allow the strike to be scaled down.”

Verdi is strangling the strike in Berlin because the union is alarmed at the growing mobilisation of nursing staff, which is spreading like wildfire. The industrial action at the two state-owned hospital corporations is seen by many other workers as a signal to finally take action against the intolerable working conditions prevailing in the health sector. These conditions are the consequence of years of cutbacks, privatisation measures and the orientation to profit making, and have significantly worsened in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the same time that Verdi is desperately seeking to end the strike in the health sector, it has been forced to call a nationwide short term “warning” strike at IKEA. The Swedish furniture company employs over 18,000 workers in Germany. Average company wage levels are very low and staff have struggled in recent months with additional workloads due to digitalisation and growing online trade.

The situation is even more acute in the engineering and electrical industry. Last week, IG Metall agreed to cut 2,600 jobs at Siemens Energy. There were protest rallies and demonstrations at all of the affected sites, where Siemens workers made clear their readiness to fight. But IG Metall and its associated works councils have never had the intention of waging a serious struggle to defend the jobs.

This is the situation everywhere. Half a million jobs are down to be axed in the German auto industry alone. The ruling class is using the pandemic to reverse all of the working class’s social gains. Under conditions where workers are losing their incomes, livelihood or even their lives, the ruling elite is using the pandemic for a new round of enrichment.

Last week in Saarlouis, more than 3,000 Ford workers demonstrated together with their families against job cuts. The factory, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year with great pomp, is on the brink of collapse. Of the factory’s more than 7,000 employees, over 2,000 have already been laid off by management in close cooperation with the local works council and IG Metall.

Many people in the region, where the mining and steel industries were shut down many years ago, are angry and deeply concerned. Ford is the largest employer in the region, and thousands of jobs in the auto supply industry and other sectors of the economy are also in danger. Some 14,000 signatures in defence of the plant have been collected in recent months. But Ford management continues to keep its closure plans secret, while IG Metall refuses to lead a joint struggle of all auto workers at all plants to defend jobs.

The same situation prevails at the companies Daimler, Audi, Bosch, BMW and Volkswagen. Daimler announced last autumn that it would double its worldwide job cuts from 15,000 to 30,000. In the summer, workers at auto parts manufacturer Continental fought against the threat of job cuts with a series of protests after management increased its plans for job cuts to 30,000, with 13,000 to go in Germany.

Resistance is developing worldwide. Of particular significance was the industrial action at the American Volvo Trucks in Dublin, Virginia, the fourth largest truck manufacturer in the world. Three thousand workers went on strike for five weeks this summer to oppose a contract deal that significantly worsened their working conditions and wages. On three separate occasions they voted down by a large majority a contract agreed by IG Metall’s American sister organisation, the UAW.

In Belgium, Volvo Cars workers also opposed an agreement between the company and the union to extend the working week. In June, workers at the British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline went on strike for 11 days to oppose the dismissal of temporary workers and cuts to social benefits.

In Turkey, thousands of electricity workers took spontaneous strike action to protest worsened working conditions agreed by the Tes-Is union. In Canada, miners at Vale in Sudbury, Ontario, went on strike for two months after rejecting a union-backed contract which down-scaled workers.

This development of the class struggle has implications for the election campaign in Germany. All of the country’s parliamentary parties are responding to growing resistance from workers by closing ranks and forming a common front. They all supported the so-called Corona bailouts last year, which handed out hundreds of billions to corporations and the super-rich. Now they are all in favour of squeezing those billions back out of the working class through social cuts, austerity measures, debt brakes, etc. At the same time, the military budget is being further increased.

A key role in this all-party front against the working class is played by the trade unions. They are trying to prove to the corporations and the government that they are best placed and have the best plans for defending big business interests in the global struggle for market share and profits. They want to convince executives that profits and share prices will rise faster if they work closely with the unions.

In doing so, they are using their extensive apparatus of functionaries, including works councils and shop stewards, to suppress any serious struggle to defend jobs, wages and social standards. This strategy includes phoney protests that only serve to spread frustration, and local based campaigns that divide and pit workers against one other. The unions, however, are less and less able to control and suppress the growing resistance in factories.

Ukraine on the verge of the fourth wave of the pandemic

Jason Melanovski

Last week, Ukraine’s daily coronavirus-related deaths topped 100 for the first time since June, according to the country’s health ministry. New infections likewise increased to over 6,000 for the first time since May 15 as the virus resurges in the impoverished Eastern European country of approximately 41 million. By comparison, in September 2020, the country reported just over 3,000 new cases, testifying to the fact that the global pandemic is far from concluded.

Patients with COVID-19 in a hospital in Lviv, western Ukraine, Tuesday, March 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

COVID-19 hospitalization rates similarly jumped 51 percent in just one week. The highly infectious Delta variant now accounts for over 70 percent of all new cases, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Over 58,000 have already died in Ukraine as a result of the pandemic, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, but the real number is undoubtedly higher. In the western L'viv region, reports have surfaced that people have been forced to bury COVID-19 victims in makeshift graves outside of their homes due to a lack of cemetery spaces.

While the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky has spent the entire summer attempting to receive the backing of Western imperialism for its provocative anti-Russia offensive to “ retake Crimea ,” its pandemic policies are preparing the grounds for an even more catastrophic spread of the virus and further mass death.

This Monday, the government announced that it would extend a state of emergency until the end of the year and issued a “yellow” warning for the entire country, which does little more than limit mass events and mandates mask-wearing.

The resurgence of the virus was entirely predictable as the Ukrainian government had earlier lifted the most lockdown restrictions in June with just 1.6 million vaccinated individuals. To date, just over ten percent of the country are vaccinated. The unvaccinated have accounted for over 98 percent of hospitalizations in the past three months, according to Deputy Minister of Health Igor Kuzin.

Throughout the summer the country enforced what it called an “adaptive lockdown” which allowed regional authorities to tighten or ease restrictions depending on the situation locally. In reality, such measures were totally inadequate and weakly enforced and permitted the Delta variant to enter the country unchecked.

Faced with a deteriorating situation, Prime Minister Denis Shmygal announced in early September that the government would be meeting to consider a return to stricter lockdown restrictions.

“The epidemiological situation in Ukraine is predicted to deteriorate ... we see a tendency towards an increase in hospitalizations of patients with COVID-19, but the situation is not critical,” said Health Minister Viktor Lyashko. This statement flies in the face of reality: the country is heading into fall when respiratory infections typically rise and 4.2 million students are being herded back into school.

Shmygal also made clear that the government will attempt to use the already globally-failed strategy of vaccinating itself out of the pandemic.

Last week, the government announced it would be introducing vaccine “passports” that “will allow businesses such as cinemas, gyms, theatres and swimming pools to operate without social distancing requirements if all visitors and at least 80 per cent of staff at the venues are at least partially vaccinated.”

As the WSWS has reported, vaccinations alone will not stop the spread of COVID-19 and could potentially lead to even more dangerous and infectious variants of the virus.

To make matters worse, in a reflection of the widespread distrust and disillusionment with the government and the country’s medical infrastructure, a recent poll suggested that 56 percent of adult Ukrainians have no intention of receiving any COVID-19 vaccine.

Moreover, in comparison to wealthier Western countries, Ukraine has struggled to obtain vaccines and as of August had the largest share of the unvaccinated in all of Europe. The imperialist backers of the Kiev government have refused to provide it with any meaningful assistance in the effort to vaccinate the population.

Nevertheless, in a sign of its fealty to United States imperialism, the country has refused to use the more readily available Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine. The vaccine’s effectiveness was confirmed by data published in Nature magazine in July.

The country’s ruling class has made clear it is aware of the deadly consequences of its policies. Speaking with the Agence France Presse, former deputy health minister and founder of the Centre for Public Health Analysis Pavlo Kovtonyuk, ominously declared that, “This wave will mostly likely be the deadliest.”

Kovtonyuk also admitted that the country’s underfunded and dilapidated hospitals were incapable of dealing with a fourth wave. “No matter how we prepare our hospitals, they will be overcrowded,” Kovtonyuk admitted.

Medical workers throughout the pandemic in Ukraine have worked in desperate conditions with outdated and missing supplies. Exacerbating the situation, throughout the pandemic Ukrainian medical workers have often gone months without pay.

During the summer, a number of medical workers went on strike, demanding unpaid wages and COVID-19 hazard pay. While the country continues to see thousands of new cases a day, the National Health Service has illogically continued to cut hospital staff and wages.

In August, doctors and nurses in the eastern of city of Kupyansk went on strike despite intimidation and threats of layoffs from hospital administration. Earlier in the month, 150 medical workers in the city of Valkov went on strike and blocked a major highway over unpaid wages.

Similar strikes took place throughout the summer in Kiev, L’viv, Suma and Slovyansk and will likely spread as the fourth wave overcrowds hospitals and places medical workers in even more dangerous working conditions.

French universities reopen for in-person learning amid COVID-19 pandemic

Samuel Tissot

As of the beginning of this week, French universities have fully reopened for in-person learning without basic protections against COVID-19 for students and staff. The only restriction in place is the mandatory wearing face masks, which are ineffective against the dominant Delta variant.

Main buildings of the universities Panthéon-Sorbonne and Panthéon-Assas, former Faculty of Law and Economics of the University of Paris (Sorbonne). Place du Panthéon, Paris.

The staggered reopening of universities has unfolded over the past few weeks. Many students entering university education for the first time took part in orientation activities with no restrictions. Sports clubs, drinking events, and other activities involving large group gatherings have resumed as if the pandemic did not exist. In a direct parallel of last year’s deadly reopening, students are daily confronted with overcrowded lecture halls and packed cafeterias.

Huge numbers of students and the wider population remain unprotected in France. Contrary to the myth promoted by the bourgeois media and Macron government, students and young people also die from COVID-19. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 91 people between the ages of 20 and 29 have died from COVID-19, including 10 since the beginning of August.

Many students also remain unvaccinated. One in four people in France between the ages of 18 and 39 are not fully vaccinated, according to figures published by l’Assurance Malady on September 12. Proof of vaccination is not currently required to enter universities. Furthermore, increasingly vaccine-resistant variants will proliferate as long as the virus is not eradicated.

As was the case last year, the entire reopening of universities has been subordinated to the Macron government’s de facto herd immunity policy. Although cases have been dropped since their August peak, on September 21 there were 7,851 cases and 201 deaths. Despite efforts in the media to promote the notion that life is “back to normal,” in just the last seven days, at least 497 people have died from COVID in France. Under these conditions, the World Health Organization predicts 236,000 further deaths across Europe before December 1.

On Wednesday, Professor Arnaud Fontanet, a member of the Scientific Council, told Le Parisien, “We observed the same lull at the end of September 2020, before a cold snap that triggered the second wave in France and neighboring countries,” adding that he “expects the epidemic to start up again in the autumn.” In 2020, following a summer of comparatively low cases, in the six months following the September reopening of universities and schools French deaths rose from 30,000 to 95,000.

Despite these projections, just like last year, no plans have been made for online classes. On top of mass death, a winter surge of the virus could leave students facing another year of financial uncertainty and educational disruption.

With no quality online alternative to in-person lectures, sick students are incentivized to avoid testing in order to participate in classes.

Students in France, 21 percent of whom live below the poverty line according to the Institute of National Statistics and Economic studies, will also have to pay €49 for a PCR test without a doctor’s prescription or €25 for inadequate antigen tests, further disincentivizing those with COVID-19 symptoms from testing. This has created a situation throughout universities where students with multiple COVID-19 symptoms are in crowded classrooms, exposing their peers.

In June 2020, fascistic ex-US president Donald Trump was ridiculed for stating “if we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases.” Now this very conception drives the Macron government’s health policy, which seeks to undermine support for further lockdowns and social distancing policies by suppressing the true extent of the pandemic.

Despite the increasing number of breakthrough infections, vaccinated students will not be required to isolate after exposure to the virus. Should they choose to isolate, they risk missing lectures and losing grades due to the lack of access to in-person courses online. As vaccine efficacy wanes against new variants, and large numbers of people remain unvaccinated, the Macron government is once again pursuing a deadly and anti-scientific policy of immunity by infection.

In response to this deadly policy, students must turn towards building a movement in the working class fighting for a scientific policy of eradication. Contrary to the myth promoted by governments across Europe and the media, the prevention of mass death and high-quality education are not alternatives. In fact, it is only through a policy of eradication that both goals can be achieved.

Following the shift of courses online in late October last year, French students spent almost an entire university year online. Along with their counterparts across Europe, they endured more than a year of mass death, lost family members, and faced poorly-organized online education.

This contrasts to the situation in New Zealand and China, where an eradication policy resulted in just three months of online classes in universities before summer 2020. Until August 2021, when an importation of the Delta variant from abroad led to a new lockdown, New Zealand continued in-person instruction for over a year. New Zealand has recorded 27 deaths, while China, despite having a population of over 1.45 billion and being the first country hit by the virus, has recorded 4,636 deaths. This compares to the official toll of at least 116,000 deaths in France.

One of the major reasons that Macron has been able to reopen universities without more resistance from students and workers has been the role-played by pseudo-left forces such as the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste and student unions in disorienting students. Forming a campaign around the tragic suicides of two students in January of this year, they demanded Macron reopened universities immediately, giving the president a welcome justification to promote a policy of allowing the virus to spread unchecked.

Ultimately supporting Macron’s demand that France “live with the virus” in order to protect corporate profits, these groups cynically argued that universities must be opened to safeguard students’ mental health. The failure to control COVID-19, however, condemns students and youth to the further loss of loved ones and friends, more isolation, continually-disrupted education, and, in many cases, to death. A scientific policy to eradicate the virus with strong social and financial support for all students is the only remedy to the current mental health crisis.

High quality education is a social right. In the context of a deadly pandemic, however, this first and foremost means that the virus must be properly suppressed. Under the current conditions of mass community transmission universities cannot be made safe. They must be closed until the virus is under control, at which point they can be reopened with the correct precautions. If the correct health measures are taken, then this period of isolation would not exceed two or three months.

During this necessary period of lockdown students, as well as all members of society, must be provided with high-quality housing, financial support, computers and a high-speed internet connection. Similarly, exams and other forms of evaluation that are crucial to students’ futures must be suspended until this necessary lockdown has finished.