UK’s most senior police officer Cressida Dick resigns

Thomas Scripps

Dame Cressida Dick, Britain’s most senior police officer, resigned Thursday, hours after telling journalists she had “absolutely no intention” of quitting. Dick became Metropolitan Police Commissioner in 2017.

Her decision was prompted by Labour Party Mayor of London Sadiq Khan telling her he was “not satisfied” with her plans to address “racism, sexism, homophobia, bullying, discrimination and misogyny in the police force”, after a recent scandal involving London officers joking about beating their wives, rape and killing black children.

Dick issued a statement saying “it is clear that the Mayor no longer has sufficient confidence in my leadership to continue. He has left me no choice but to step aside”.

Cressida Dick (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Khan has pulled the trigger following a build-up of discontent in the ruling class with the Commissioner’s performance. Dick was an utterly loyal and merciless servant of the British state, who in 2005 led the operation which assassinated an innocent man Jean Charles de Menezes in the aftermath of the July 21 London bombings. She instituted armed foot patrols, was a staunch defender of stop and search and the use of facial recognition systems and led mass arrests of Extinction Rebellion climate protestors.

She was also incompetent and a walking public relations disaster. There were very few crises confronted by the Met which she failed to inflame.

Her time in charge was epitomised following the murder of Sarah Everard last March by serving Met police officer Wayne Couzens, nicknamed “the rapist” by his colleagues. The Met responded by suggesting women stopped by plainclothes police officers should challenge them and consider “waving down a bus” if they didn’t feel safe.

A vigil held for Everard on Clapham Common was brutally broken up by a police mob, just an hour after Prince William’s wife Kate Middleton had laid flowers at the site in an attempt to ease tensions.

Three months later, Dick was personally censured for obstruction in a report into the 1987 murder of Daniel Morgan, which uncovered a cesspit of police corruption. The case was possibly connected with that of Stephen Lawrence, killed in a racist murder in 1993 effectively covered up by the Met. Dick closed the case in August 2020, with three of the killers still at large. In 2012, she had shut down the work of Clive Driscoll who had brought two of the murderers to justice.

Each incident has further eroded the tarnished reputation of the Metropolitan Police, a key pillar of the British state, earning Dick the enmity of most of the political establishment.

Nazir Afzal, a former chief prosecutor at the Crown Prosecution Service, is quoted in the i newspaper as saying Dick’s career was marked by a “catalogue of blunders.” The paper explains Afzal “has spent three decades trying to restore confidence in law and order after allegations of corruption involving several high-profile miscarriages of justice and in the aftermath of Stephen Lawrence’s murder. He argued last month that Dame Cressida was ‘undoing all that painstaking work’.”

The Daily Mail wrote, “By any reasonable measure, her tenure has been a catastrophic failure. She has overseen cover-ups, displayed incompetence and has entrenched public despair and distrust.”

Even the BBC reported, “The career of Cressida Dick has seen her weather a number of storms that would have sunk many others. Allegations relating to an unholy trinity of dishonesty, prejudice and incompetence dogged the Met for almost all of her tenure.”

Much of the commentary has pointed to Dick’s failure to tackle racism and misogyny in the police as the reason for her departure and asks whether her replacement can address “deep-seated cultural issues.” This is all so much blather. While they would doubtless prefer a less frequently embarrassing operation, few of these commentators are under any illusions about the type of people entrusted with the task of cracking down on protest and the consequences of poverty and social inequality.

The real concerns animating the clamour against the former commissioner were summed up by the Guardian ’s Marina Hyde. Also referring to the “partygate” scandal gripping Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s premiership, she wrote that there is something “increasingly dangerous about ordinary people thinking: ‘If I behaved like the prime minister or those police officers, I’d be sacked.’ Trust is the very hardest thing to get back, and trust in the police and in politicians is demonstrably nosediving.”

Hyde’s comment echoes Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s invocation of Margaret Thatcher against Johnson last week: “The first duty of Government is to uphold the law. If it tries to bob and weave and duck around that duty when its inconvenient, if government does that, then so will the governed.”

As the Socialist Equality Party explained, “Preventing opposition from developing among ‘the governed’ is the overriding political imperative of” both Labour and the Tories. The same applies to the Met.

Under conditions in which the UK is helping to spearhead the US war-drive against Russia in Europe and heading into the worst collapse in living standards in recent memory amid an uncontrolled pandemic, the growing feeling in media and political circles was that Dick was not up to the job. The brief for her successor was most bluntly set out in the Daily Mail, whose editorial yesterday demanded, “Needed—a no-nonsense cop to arrest decline”.

Those tipped to replace her show what can be expected. The frontrunner, although considered out of favour in Downing Street, is Neil Basu, until recently the head of counter-terror policing. He came to public prominence in 2019 by threatening journalists who publish leaked information with criminal charges.

After UK ambassador to the US Sir Kim Darroch’s frank assessments of the Trump administration were published in the Mail on Sunday, Basu warned that Counter Terrorism Command would investigate alleged breaches of the Official Secrets Act, telling the leaker, “Turn yourself in at the earliest opportunity, explain yourself and face the consequences.”

He also threatened journalists, “The publication of leaked communications, knowing the damage they have caused or are likely to cause may also be a criminal matter.

“I would advise all owners, editors and publishers of social and mainstream media not to publish leaked government documents that may already be in their possession, or which may be offered to them, and to turn them over to the police or give them back to their rightful owner, Her Majesty’s Government.”

The Mail describes Basu as “well-liked within the force and by intelligence officials at MI5.”

Two other possible replacements, Matt Jukes and Mark Rowley, have also served as head of the counter-terrorism unit. Rowley is a frequent contributor to the Tory think-tank, the Policy Exchange. Another candidate, Martin Hewitt, is a former army lieutenant.

Simon Byrne, Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, is described by the Guardian as the “shock and awe candidate”. He caused controversy in 2019 for posting “a Christmas Day message” on Twitter with a photo of him standing next to machine-gun-wielding officers outside a heavily fortified police station in County Armagh, Northern Ireland.

The final decision on the appointment will be made by Home Secretary Priti Patel, who will be looking for someone to enforce her Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill criminalising protest and regime of savage deportations. The Mail reports sources saying she could “go abroad for candidates with the senior Tory known to have been scouring Australia for a no-nonsense police chief.”

As exemplified in the crisis facing the government and now the Met, facing a social explosion the capitalist state is making use of a series of scandals in its upper echelons to prepare for major confrontations with the working class.

Australian PM’s defeat on religious discrimination bill deepens political crisis

Mike Head

A humiliating loss in parliament this week on its centrepiece Religious Discrimination Bill has intensified the unravelling of the Liberal-National Coalition government, amid mounting popular hostility towards it over the COVID-19 disaster.

Scott Morrison speaking at the National Press Club in February [Source: Facebook/Scott Morrison]

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government was forced to stall the bill after five Liberal MPs voted for a contrary amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act in the early hours of Thursday morning, just before 5 a.m.

With only a handful of parliamentary sitting days left before a looming federal election, the Coalition was desperate to push the bill through quickly in order to meet a pledge to religious fundamentalist organisations.

After a national plebiscite vote for same-sex marriage rights in 2017, the government promised to enshrine in law rights for religious groups to continue to discriminate against and vilify people, including because of their sexual identity, on the basis of religious “statements of belief.”

This was to extend to key areas of civil society, including those that depend upon public funding, such as religious schools, in violation of core democratic rights, including the separation of church and state.

Having conducted a marathon all-night session to push the reactionary bill through the lower house—with the support of the opposition Labor Party—the government abruptly withdrew the legislation from the Senate within hours of its early morning defeat.

One of the main religious groups, the Australian Christian Lobby, demanded that the government halt the bill immediately after the Sex Discrimination Act amendment was passed with the support of the five Liberals, plus Labor, the Greens and some independents.

That amendment repealed section 38(3) of the Sex Discrimination Act, a provision inserted by the last Labor government in 2013 to allow church schools to discriminate against students on the grounds of their sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or relationship status or pregnancy, “in accordance with the doctrines, tenets, beliefs or teachings of a particular religion or creed.”

After the government’s defeat on the amendment, the Christian Lobby declared: “The bills were intended to help faith-based schools but they now do more harm than good.”

The government’s swift adherence to the Lobby’s instruction to drop the legislative package underscores the extent to which the Coalition rests on a religious fundamentalist base, which demands the right to discriminate on that basis, even in heavily government-subsidised church schools, in violation of basic democratic rights.

Equally, Labor’s support for the Religious Discrimination Bill, like its 2013 provision in the Sex Discrimination Act and its backing for government funding of church schools, demonstrates its own reliance on a clerical base. While professing the need to protect people from discrimination on the basis of sexuality or gender, Labor, like the Coalition, defends the right of religious bodies to discriminate, citing “statements of belief.”

As soon as the government dropped the bill, opposition leader Anthony Albanese committed any Labor government to enacting a similar one, which would maintain “the right of religious schools to preference people of their faith in the selection of staff.”

The chaos and extraordinary turmoil in parliament this week is part of a deeper political crisis, not just of the widely loathed Morrison government but the entire parliamentary establishment.

Thursday morning’s mutiny by five supposed “moderate” inner-city MPs defied Morrison’s Liberal Party room call on Tuesday for unity in the fractured party to avoid defeat at the federal election, which is due by May.

It also came on top of reports that Morrison was rebuffed inside his own cabinet on Monday when he proposed to pursue a horse-trading deal with the “moderates” and independents for them to drop their Sex Discrimination Act amendment in return for a government promise to put to parliament legislation establishing a cosmetic anti-corruption commission.

News that Morrison was “rolled” in cabinet, despite telling his ministers he was putting his leadership on the line in a bid to secure passage of the religious discrimination bill, was leaked to Australian contributing editor Peter van Onselen and splashed across that Murdoch newspaper’s front page on Thursday.

Van Onselen included a direct quote from inside the meeting, writing: ‘“This is going to cause more problems than it solves,’ one minister said in cabinet.” Another “cabinet minister” told van Onselen that Morrison looked “rattled” at being unable to carry the day in cabinet.

Clearly the leaks came from senior sources, indicating moves are being considered to replace Morrison. Over the past two weeks, similar top-level leaks have reported senior figures, including National Party leader Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and an unnamed cabinet minister, denouncing Morrison as a “liar,” “psycho” and “fraud.”

Corporate media commentators are reporting, on the basis of discussions with anonymous Liberal MPs, that they are considering dumping Morrison, amid fears of electoral defeat. “I would say that, after this week, that is not an option that can be discounted,” one Liberal told David Crowe, the chief political correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age.

The main contenders to replace Morrison are two equally right-wing figures—Defence Minister Peter Dutton and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Both have leapt to the fore in recent days, with Dutton in particular stoking an anti-China witch hunt, accusing China of backing the Labor Party, in line with the escalating US confrontation with China. Dutton narrowly lost to Morrison in Liberal party room balloting to replace Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister in 2018.

Such leaks and reports indicate questioning in ruling circles that the fracturing Coalition government is capable of suppressing mounting working-class unrest over the pandemic and soaring inflation, and delivering the further economic restructuring and attacks on workers’ real wages and conditions demanded by the financial markets.

Recent media polls have shown a collapse in public support for the government, largely because of the continuing COVID-19 catastrophe. There are thousands of infections in schools and rising deaths, especially in aged care facilities, as a direct result of the “live with the virus” policy to dismantle safety measures for the sake of corporate profit-making.

However, this “let it rip” offensive has been possible only with the bipartisan backing of Labor, which holds a majority in the “National Cabinet” of federal, state and territory government leaders that has presided over it. Federal Labor has provided Morrison’s government with “constructive” support throughout the pandemic, including on its massive handouts to big business, and the ratcheting up of the US-led conflict with Beijing.

The depth of the underlying political crisis is reflected in the fact that Labor’s poll ratings remain near the record lows of the 2019 federal election, when the already loathed Morrison government was able to cling to office despite losing votes. Labor’s support in the working class has collapsed after decades of enforcing, in partnership with the trade unions, the dictates of the corporate elite.

Since being installed as Labor leader after the 2019 debacle, Albanese has repeatedly pledged to work closely with the unions and business to impose a new wave of pro-market restructuring, deepening that imposed by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments and the unions from 1983 to 1996.

As the government’s disintegration has worsened, Labor and the unions have done everything they can to prevent the anger of ordinary people, including teachers and nurses, from erupting into strikes and a political movement of the working class.

This week’s events in parliament show that the interests of working people find no voice in the political establishment as a whole. All are committed to the global profits-before-lives agenda, and US-led war preparations, while resorting to appeals to religious bigotry or identity politics to divert the rising class tensions.

What is required is a break from the Labor and the union straitjacket, and a turn to a socialist perspective, aimed at reorganising society to meet social need and guarantee basic democratic rights, not satisfy the profit requirements of a super-rich corporate elite.

Modi blames losses from COVID-19 lockdown on Indian opposition parties

Wasantha Rupasinghe

In a futile attempt to wash responsibility for millions of COVID-19 deaths from his hands, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday in parliament blamed opposition parties for spreading COVID-19 to rural areas.

Indian Prime Minister Modi of the BJP (Source: Wikipedia)

Modi attacked the Congress party in particular for committing a “Paap” (sin) by “instigat[ing] migrants to defy Covid lockdown.” He blamed Congress for giving “free train tickets to migrant workers to leave Mumbai,” after the national coronavirus lockdown announced by Modi on March 24, 2020. Mumbai, India’s financial capital, is located in the state of Maharashtra, ruled by fascistic Shiv Sena-led alliance in which the Congress is a partner.

Modi also attacked the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which rules the National Capital Territory of Delhi, for having “provided them [migrants] with buses” to leave Delhi. “As a result,” Modi said, “Covid spread rapidly in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand.”

While COVID-19 clearly spread to rural India when migrant workers from the cities returned to their villages, Modi’s statements are drenched in hypocrisy. In response to mass public concern and anger at the pandemic in March 2020, Modi suddenly announced a month-long, countrywide lockdown. He announced it, however, with only four hours notice, with the same complete contempt for the well-being of India’s workers and rural toilers that led him to keep workers at work during the Delta variant wave last year that claimed millions of lives.

In March 2020, however, the entire Indian ruling elite led by Modi abandoned workers to their fate as they made dangerous trips home. Neither Modi’s Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP), nor Congress nor the AAP provided social support—wage support during the lockdown, or distributing food and medical supplies—that would have allowed workers to remain safely in the cities.

The BJP, Congress, the AAP and India’s other bourgeois parties bear political responsibility for the criminal policies that were implemented and the mass death that followed.

Maharashtra and then Delhi became epicentres of India’s COVID-19 pandemic. Delhi saw horrible scenes of makeshift funeral pyres on road sides as cemeteries ran out of space; panic searches for hospital beds, ventilators and patients struggling with running out of medical oxygen last year. With 143,155 or 28 percent of India’s highly undercounted official COVID-19 deaths, Maharashtra has suffered the most recorded COVID-19 deaths of any Indian state.

Modi is not attacking Congress and the AAP, which has links to India’s Stalinist parties, because they criminally abandoned hundreds of millions migrants to their own fate. Indeed, Modi’s central government itself bears the principal responsibility for washing its hands of the fate of India’s workers and rural masses.

Modi's ill-prepared lockdown triggered a massive humanitarian crisis, plunging hundreds of millions of migrant workers into misery. Facing joblessness and with no proper food, medicine and shelters coming from the government, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers had no other option but to flee back to their villages, thousands of kilometres away. Thousands had to walk on foot and hundreds died of hunger or were run over by passing trains as they slept.

Ultimately, authorities stopped migrant workers from leaving urban areas and dragged them into makeshift shelters without proper medical attention, food or water. They largely had to depend on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), other voluntary groups and individuals for food and medical support.

This indifference of Modi and the Indian ruling class for the poor was further exposed when the government admitted that it did not have any data on how many migrant workers lost their jobs or their lives during the lockdown, or how many died in the pandemic. The Ministry of Labour and Employment in September 2020 informed the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament, that “no such data is maintained.” So much for their posturing about concern for working people!

By cynically denouncing the lockdown’s effects, and blaming them exclusively on his political rivals, Modi is trying to justify the policy of mass infection that his government and other capitalist governments internationally are now pursuing. Modi acts with utter contempt for the death toll, which, according to independent research, is at least eight times higher than the official death toll of 507,208 in India.

Questioned on February 7 in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament, government officials said they had no information on the number of dead bodies floating in the Ganges river during the peak of the COVID-19 wave in May last year. Masses of corpses of COVID-19 victims were dumped in the river, by the relatives of the deceased who could not afford funerals. Likewise, last July, the Health Ministry informed the parliament that it had no data on COVID-19 deaths due to medical oxygen shortages, which claimed countless lives last year.

Today, hundreds die of COVID-19 every single day in India. On February 9, India reported 1,217 COVID-19 deaths in 24 hours, and the seven-day average of deaths stood at 1,044.

Nevertheless, the Indian government and media once again are parroting the lie that the situation is returning to “normal.” On February 9, India registered 71,365 new cases putting the overall infection count at 42.41 million. Superficially, this shows a significant reduction of daily infections compared to a week ago, when India registered 161,386 daily cases.

The fall in cases corresponds, however, to a fall in testing over the same period, to 1.57 million tests from 1.74 million on February 2. The government hides this to hide the true state of affairs.

Based on these manipulated numbers, the government is pressing ahead with abandoning even limited COVID-19 restrictions and reopening schools. The BJP state government of Assam will withdraw all COVID-19 restrictions from February 15, BJP Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said Monday, citing a “sharp decline” in new cases over the past two weeks. There will be no night curfew, and shopping malls and cinema halls can function at full capacity, he said, adding that weddings could be held so long as guests are double vaccinated.

The same is occurring in Haryana on February 10; on February 7, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Delhi reopened schools for higher class and Bihar for all students.

Abandoning all restrictions as the highly infectious Omicron variant spreads continues Modi’s criminal herd immunity policy of letting the virus rip through the population unchecked. This will result in a massive spike of infections and deaths in coming days.

In recent days, Modi has also repeatedly boasted of “higher” vaccination rates in India to imply that his government has resolved the pandemic. In reality, India has fully vaccinated only 52.43 percent of its population, leaving hundreds of millions totally unprotected from the virus.

Only 2 percent of the fully vaccinated population has received a recommended booster shot. Nevertheless, Modi drastically cut the budget for pan-India vaccinations from 350 billion rupees (US$4.6 billion) in 2021–22 to 50 billion rupees ($669 million) in 2022–23. The Health Ministry’s budget fell 7 percent in real terms. Moreover, the share of health spending in the total Indian budget fell from 2.35 percent last year to 2.26 percent.

This makes clear that the ruling elite protects not the well-being of the Indian people, but the profit interests of a handful of the super-rich.

CIA has been secretly collecting information on US citizens for decades

Kevin Reed

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been running a secret program collecting information on US citizens for decades. The program was not known about by the US courts or Congress, the two branches of government responsible for oversight of the surveillance activity of the agency.

This April 13, 2016, file photo shows the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. [Credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File]

On Wednesday, a partially declassified letter from Democratic Party Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico to CIA Director William Burns dated April 13, 2021, was released, showing that the secret surveillance program has been operated by the CIA under the authority of an executive order originally issued in 1981 during the Reagan Administration.

The letter from the two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee states that the CIA program has been conducted in defiance of Congressional efforts that have been “expressed over many years and through multiple pieces of legislation, to limit and, in some cases, prohibit the warrantless collection of Americans’ records, as well as the public’s intense interest in and support for these legislative efforts.”

Furthermore, the Senators say, the CIA’s secret bulk collection program has been operated “entirely outside the statutory framework that Congress, and the public believe govern this collection, and without any of the judicial, congressional or even executive branch oversight that comes with FISA collection,” and the nature of this operation “has been kept from the public and from Congress.”

FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. FISA was passed following revelations of the CIA’s abuse of power and the targeting of US citizens for spying by the agency during the Watergate investigation of the Nixon administration. The law established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and a secretive procedure by which law enforcement and intelligence agencies obtain approval for warrantless surveillance of alleged foreign spies within the US. Warrantless surveillance of US citizens is unconstitutional.

While the specific nature of the data being gathered and what the CIA has been doing with this information were redacted from their letter, the senators state that what the American public “deserves to know are the nature of the CIA’s relationship with its sources and the legal framework for the collection; the kind of records collected [passage redacted] the amount of Americans’ records maintained; and the rules governing the use, storage, dissemination and queries (including U.S. person queries) of the records.”

The senator’s letter explains that “the nature and full extent of the CIA’s collection was withheld even from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence” until the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board’s (PCLOB) “Executive Order 12333 Central Intelligence Agency Deep Dive II” was issued in March 2021. Wyden and Heinrich then call on CIA Director Burns to declassify the “Deep Dive II” report as well as “the PCLOB’s two other EO 12333 reports.” The senators do not indicate what these two other reports are about.

According to a report in the New York Times, an anonymous intelligence official said the Senate Intelligence Committee did in fact know about the bulk data collection program of the CIA. However, the Times reported that the official said, “The Deep Dive II report instead focused on repository and analysis tools for storing and querying that data after its collection—systems the committee may not previously have been told about.”

The PCLOB was created by Congress in 2004 at the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission for the stated purpose of establishing “an enhanced system of checks and balances to protect the precious liberties that are vital to our way of life.” However, the oversight board did nothing for ten years. The PCLOB issued its first report in January 2014, only after the previous year’s revelations by former intelligence analyst and whistleblower Edward Snowden about the global warrantless electronic surveillance activities of the NSA.

In response to the Snowden revelations, the US government claimed it was “scaling back” the NSA surveillance program with the modifications to the USA Freedom Act, signed into law by Barack Obama on June 2, 2015. While the corporate media and political establishment claimed that the NSA spying operations had been ended, the truth is that revisions were made to the FISA requirements while the bulk collection of electronic communications was left intact.

Meanwhile, as the latest revelations make clear, the querying, sifting through and analyzing of the 2015 authorized mass dragnet of data—including that of US citizens—has been carried out by the CIA under the authority of Executive Order 12333 without interruption all along.

Executive Order 12333 was signed by Ronald Reagan on December 4, 1981. It dramatically expanded the authority of the government to gather information “essential to the national security of the United States.” The 16-page executive order, which was modified and updated in 2004 and 2008 by the administration of George W. Bush, contains specific details about CIA information “collection techniques.”

The timeframe of four decades is significant in that it corresponds to the turn by the ruling elite to open class war policies driven by the decline of the US as an economic and industrial power. Beginning with the Reagan administration, the attacks on the living standards of the working class were accompanied by a resumption of militarism abroad and a growing assault on democratic rights at home. It is no accident that Executive Order 12333 was passed just four months after Reagan fired the PATCO air traffic controllers who went on strike on August 5, 1981.

The attack on democratic right was significantly deepened during the second Bush administration with the passage of the USA Patriot Act following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which were used as a pretext to launch the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.

Of course, electronic information of individuals—including smartphone voice calls, email messages, text messages, social media activity and locations data among them—have grown exponentially over the past twenty years. And so have the tools and methods of surveillance used by the US government to spy on everyone.

Sri Lankan nurses defy court ban and remain on indefinite strike with other health workers

K. Ratnayake

On Thursday evening, Colombo district courts issued an enjoining order against Government Nursing Officers’ Association (GNOA) President Saman Rathnapriya, directing him to immediately “suspend” the union’s involvement in ongoing indefinite strike action by tens of thousands of health workers. The judiciary will issue its final decision on the order on February 24 and has told Rathnapriya to appear in court on that day.

The GNOA, which has about 20,000 members, is one of 18 unions involved in the Federation of Health Professionals’ national strike that began on Monday. Over 65,000 health workers, including nurses, paramedic services, public health inspectors, medical laboratory technologists and pharmacists, are on strike.

Northern Province health workers strike in Jaffna on December 30, 2021 [WSWS Media]

The Federation of Health Professionals (FHP) was compelled to call the action amid the growing opposition of its members over low wages and deteriorating conditions. The strikers are demanding rectification of salary anomalies, higher transport and on-call duty allowances—from 3,000 rupees ($US15) to 10,000 rupees—increased overtime rates and improved promotion procedures.

Although the courts have singled out the nurses, the strike ban is aimed at breaking the industrial action of all health employees. Health workers, however, are defying the court order, making clear their determination to win their long outstanding demands.

Yesterday thousands of health workers demonstrated in the Anuradhapura, Hambantota and Nuwara Eliya districts. Similar numbers protested on Thursday in the Kurunegala, Matara, Badulla, Vavuniya and Ampara districts.

The request for a strike suspension order was made by the Sri Lankan Attorney General (AG). State lawyers appearing for the AG told the courts that “patient care has been gravely affected by the strike.”

The AG’s intervention would not have occurred without a directive from the highest levels of the government. It followed President Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s condemnation of the strike at a public rally of his Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) in Anuradhapura on Wednesday.

Rajapakse declared that public servants were resorting to strikes under “the influence of various political forces,” adding: “Public officials have a responsibility to serve the people and the country.”

Rajapakse’s concerns about “the people” are bogus. His government have ended public health measures to suppress COVID-19 and are attempting to condition the population to mass infections and deaths. It is determined to impose the burden of crisis worsened by the COVID-19 global pandemic on workers and the poor.

Colombo is desperate to suppress the industrial action by health employees, fearing it will encourage other sections of the working class to fight the government’s social attacks. Last year strikes and struggles erupted across the island involving health, education, government administration, railway, electricity, ports, petroleum and plantations workers. Yesterday around 26,000 university non-academic workers held a national one-day protest to demand a salary increase.

Protest by striking non-academic workers at Jaffna University on February 10, 2022 [WSWS Media]

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) condemns the government’s attack on the health workers’ right to strike and other industrial action. We urge the entire working class to oppose the government’s repressive legal moves and mobilise to defend all health employees. At stake is the basic democratic right of all workers to defend their living and social conditions.

The pro-government Public Services Nurses Union (PSNU), and the All Ceylon Health Services Union (ACHSU), which is controlled by opposition Janatha Vimukthi Peramunak, are scabbing on the strike. This has strengthened the government’s hand and opened the way for its repressive measures. Many PSNU and ACHSU members, however, have begun to join the industrial action in recent days and condemned their unions’ strike-breaking.

Last year, the FHP held 10 limited strikes over the current demands. These struggles were shut down and betrayed by the union body, following empty promises by President Rajapakse and his health minister.

While health workers remain on strike, the FHP are marking time waiting to abandon the strike after the court order. Yesterday morning the GNOA Facebook rhetorically declared: “Despite bringing not one enjoining order but 10 of such, the more than 65,000 officers in this coalition will continue this struggle.”

Yesterday evening, Rathnapriya told the media that the union’s executive committee would “convene a meeting immediately after receiving the enjoining order and discuss the future course of action.” FHP President Ravi Kumudesh said, “We are not aware of an issuance of any orders. In case there are any, we will seek legal advice regarding such.”

The FHP has no intention of turning to other sections of the working class to defend the democratic rights of their members and taking up a political struggle against the government’s latest assault. Tied to the nation state, all the unions fear that a mobilisation of workers would produce a direct confrontation with the government and the capitalist class.

This week, the FHP President Kumudesh publicly appealed to Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella to make a “promise” on union’s demands and enabling the union alliance to call off the strike.

Significantly, not a single union in Sri Lanka condemned the attack on health workers or has come to their defence. Strengthened by this silence, the government stepped up its attack.

Yesterday Health Minister Rambukwella denounced the strikers, declaring that “unionists are in the habit of dismissing well-founded reasons and discussions for a sharply constructed and manipulative political agenda.”

Minister for Ports and Shipping Affairs Rohitha Abeywardhana attacked the striking health workers in parliament, declaring: “There should be laws curbing strikes in sectors related to essential services. People are dying without medicine.” He urged Justice Minister Ali Sabry to introduce anti-strike laws. Last month Sabry called on President Rajapakse to ban strikes in key institutions.

The media is backing the government threats, churning out vicious propaganda against strikers with stories about a man and a child who died because they were unable to get medical attention and photographs of suffering patients.

A hysterical editorial in Divaina, a Sinhala-daily, cited ruling party MP, Tissa Kuttiarachchi who said strikers should be attacked with clubs. “This country is facing a multiple crisis… We oppose strikes which are sabotaging the essential services of the public… Health workers are digging graves of people. If the people get provoked health workers would be thrown into same the graves,” the newspaper declared.

Workers must condemn the filthy propaganda of these media outlets who fully support the Rajapakse government’s “let it rip” coronavirus policies, putting profit before human lives, undermining public health measures, reopening the economy, and normalising pandemic deaths.

The court ban on health workers’ industrial action indicates that Rajapakse regime is moving into direct confrontation with the entire working class. Facing a desperate economic crisis, the government, like its counterparts around the world, it is cannot tolerate any action by the working class.

Once again, it sharply poses the necessity for the independent mobilisation of political and industrial strength of the working class to defeat the Rajapakse government and its big business policies.

Mars-Wrigley announces closure of its West Side Chicago factory

Brian Green

Mars-Wrigley has announced the closing of its long-established west side Chicago chocolate factory. Over the next two years, production will be ramped down until the plant closes its doors. Built and operated since 1928, the factory has earned praise from architects for its Spanish design style and has been noted by historians for its role in Chicago's industrialization.

Mars, Inc. candy factory in Chicago, IL (Credit: Glassdoor)

Mars-Wrigley has said that it will donate the factory “for the use of the community.” However, it said nothing of the fate of the 280 factory workers that the company will be laying off and forcing into financial peril.

As reported in the Chicago Tribune, a Mars-Wrigley spokesperson said only that workers are “encouraged to explore the opportunities to apply for open roles across our network, specifically in the Chicago area.” In other words, workers are left to fend for themselves to bid on open positions in the company, look for employment elsewhere, or face unemployment.

The factory’s closure is a further step in the restructuring of the company’s US operations as it winds up operations in Chicago. In 2017, Mars-Wrigley moved its US headquarters out of Chicago to New Jersey, a decision made following Mars’ $23 billion acquisition of Wrigley in 2008.

While the company has not explained the decision to close the factory, it is not for lack of profits. Mars-Wrigley reported net sales of $20 billion worldwide in 2020 and controlled an estimated 27.2 percent of the two hundred-billion-dollar confectionery market, according to Statista.

However, the process seems likely to continue. The Chicago Tribune reported that an email sent out by a Mars-Wrigley spokesperson earlier this week noted that workers were “informed yesterday of the decision to move the majority of operations to other facilities in the U.S. over the next two years.”

The loss of the factory and its jobs will severely impact the Chicago West Side Austin neighborhood. However, it cannot be seen separate from the deindustrialization of vast areas of the US, including Chicago, which were once booming centers of industry.

Known for its meat processing and steel plants, Chicago was once also considered the Candy Capitol of the World. In Chicago, like Detroit, Gary, Indiana, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, historic centers of manufacturing were devastated starting in the late 1970s and the process accelerated into the 1980s and 90s. Wall Street's offensive through austerity measures against the working class has been overseen by successive Democratic city administrations in Chicago, who, except perhaps for their gender and ethnicity, have differed little from each other, all sharing a deep hostility to the interests of workers.

As in many working class West and South Side Chicago communities, Austin has experienced the economic effects of deindustrialization as seen in demographic data compiled by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning from the 2020 Census and 2015–2019 American Community Survey five-year estimates. The population of this area fell by 17.8 percent, from 117,527 residents in 2000 to 96,557 in 2020. The median household income declined even more drastically, falling from $51,534 in 2000 to just $33,515 in 2019, with 39 percent of households earning less than $25,000 a year.

Chicago politicians are looking to offset manufacturers leaving the city by offering tax incentives and private upscale development contracts that are publicly funded to entice corporations and businesses to stay or return to the city. Some claim that replacing manufacturing with these jobs has produced economic growth over the past several years.

However, these corporate handouts have not benefited the working class neighborhoods blighted by deindustrialization. Rather, they have further accentuated the stark class divide between the city’s working class neighborhoods and the booming Lakeshore and Gold Coast areas downtown, home to corporate services like law, finance, real estate, tourism, public relations, and advertising that now fill downtown high-rises towers. At the same time, working class neighborhoods on the south and west sides of the city are desolate, often lacking basic accommodations like grocery stores. In contrast to Austin, the median income in the downtown Loop area increased from $99,704 in 2000 to $108,676 in 2019.

The closure of the Mars-Wrigley Chicago factory is another blow to the working class that will further exacerbate the social ills attendant on declining living standards. It is another reminder that there are two Chicagos: one of the capitalist class and the wealthy upper middle class, and the other of the struggling working class, increasingly being deprived of even the most minimal means of subsistence.

US accelerates troop deployments as Biden threatens “world war” with Russia

Alex Lantier & Johannes Stern

As Washington and its NATO allies work to militarily surround Russia, US officials yesterday declared that a US-Russia war is imminent.

US soldiers line up during the visit of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the Mihail Kogalniceanu airbase, near the Black Sea port city of Constanta, eastern Romania, Friday, Feb. 11, 2022 [Credit: AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru]

Yesterday, Washington announced the deployment of 3,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division to bases in Poland, which borders Ukraine. Britain and Germany will send hundreds of soldiers to strengthen NATO battlegroups in Estonia and Lithuania. This comes after NATO countries have for weeks delivered Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and Turkish TB2 Bayraktar drones to the Ukrainian regime in Kiev.

The narrative NATO is peddling—that it is acting to defend Ukraine from Russia—is a pack of lies. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly declared that Russia’s military posture is not consistent with plans for an all-out invasion of Ukraine. Moreover, when reporters challenged US claims that Russia is preparing an attack, State Department spokesman Ned Price could do nothing but argue that undisclosed “intelligence information” meant his claims were true.

Nearly two decades after Washington invaded Iraq based on lies that it had “weapons of mass destruction,” US imperialism and its NATO allies are concocting a strategy to trigger a war with Russia, a nuclear-armed power, under conditions where they can blame Russia for it. Reports of mounting Ukrainian military activity in the Donbass region suggest that a NATO-backed military provocation can be staged there to trigger the war.

Yesterday, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Russia is “in a position to be able to mount a major military action” and refused to give any further details, stating: “I will not comment on the details of our intelligence information. But I do want to be clear, it could begin during the Olympics, despite a lot of speculation that it would only happen after the Olympics.” On this basis, Sullivan urged US citizens in Ukraine to “leave as soon as possible.”

Significantly, Sullivan added that the NATO alliance had concluded very detailed planning for a confrontation with Russia. He said, “We have achieved a remarkable level of unity and common purpose from the broad strategy down to the technical details. If Russia proceeds, its long-term power and influence will be diminished, not enhanced by an invasion. It will face a more determined transatlantic community.”

This followed a statement by Biden the day before calling on US citizens to leave Ukraine, adding that “things could go crazy quickly” and that a US-Russian conflict would be “world war.”

This strategy is coordinated with the European powers. Yesterday, Biden’s emergency call went to Prime Ministers Boris Johnson (UK), Justin Trudeau (Canada), and Mario Draghi (Italy); Presidents Emmanuel Macron (France), Andrzej Duda (Poland) and Klaus Iohannis (Romania), German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and EU and NATO officials. According to a White House report, they pledged “to impose massive consequences and severe economic costs on Russia, should it choose military escalation, and to continue reinforcing the defensive posture on NATO’s eastern flank.”

US officials insist war could begin next week, Der Spiegel reported, stating that “both the CIA and the US military informed the German government and other NATO states on Friday that they feared, based on new information, that the attack could take place as early as next Wednesday.”

At the same time, NATO is holding several major military exercises. The “Dynamic Manta 22” anti-submarine exercise begins on February 20 in the Mediterranean, followed by the “Dynamic Guard” exercise in Norway two days later. Both transition into “Cold Response,” the largest “war game” in Norway since the 1980s, involving 35,000 troops from 28 countries.

Yesterday, at Romania's Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg promised to reinforce Eastern Europe. About an upcoming Madrid summit, he said, “next week, NATO Defence Ministers will meet and discuss how we can further strengthen our presence in the Eastern part of the Alliance, including with new battlegroups. And I welcome France’s offer to lead a NATO battlegroup here in Romania.”

A war would be the product not of Russian aggression but of the imperialist powers’ aggressive response to the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Over the last 30 years, Washington sought to establish its global primacy by dominating the Middle East and Central Asia. NATO waged wars, notably in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria, that cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars.

Russia and, increasingly, China’s rising economic weight have become major obstacles to this strategy. In 2013, Russian warships based at Sevastopol in the Crimea confronted NATO warships that were threatening to bomb Syria, after which NATO backed down. Alongside Iran, Russia then intervened and defeated NATO-backed Islamist militias in Syria which have now joined China’s “Belt and Road” global industrial infrastructure project.

In 2014, shortly after Russia helped prevent direct NATO intervention in Syria, the NATO powers backed a putsch in Kiev, where far-right militias toppled a pro-Russian Ukrainian president and set up a NATO puppet regime. As these militias backed by NATO mercenaries attacked Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine like Donbass and Crimea, these areas broke off from Ukraine, with Crimea voting to rejoin Russia. Since then, far-right Ukrainian militias have faced off against Russian troops in Crimea and Russian-backed militias in the Donbass.

NATO’s conflict with Russia has been escalating again after last year’s humiliating NATO defeat in Afghanistan. The alliance is now redeploying towards Ukraine, bidding to seize a vast swath of territory around the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. This would allow them to isolate and threaten Russia, cut off Russian military aid to the Middle East, and intervene in Central Asia up to China’s western borders. This plan is being set into motion in Ukraine.

Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine are reporting highly advanced NATO war preparations. Yesterday, Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) leader Denis Pushilin cited Biden’s call on US citizens to leave Ukraine, warning that war was imminent. “The US President, probably, given US influence in Ukraine, has information that allows him to make such statements and take such a position. … Ukraine may attack at any moment. Ukraine has everything ready for that: the concentration of forces and means makes it possible to do it at any moment, as soon as a political decision is made.”

On February 9, the DPR Militia’s Deputy Chief Eduard Basurin said Ukrainian tanks are taking positions only 15 kilometers from theirs, near Avdeyevka, Gorlovka and Novgorodskoye. Yesterday, Basurin said Ukrainian forces also deployed an S-300 missile system.

Such deployments violate the 2015 Minsk accords, which temporarily froze the Ukraine conflict and sent the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor the front line. Basurin said, however, that Kiev regime forces are using electronic jamming to prevent OSCE observers from using drones to observe these deployments. “It seems that OSCE observers are quite content with a situation where it is impossible to record violations by Ukraine,” he said.

Significantly, DPR forces last month warned, based on their sources in Kiev, that they expect an attack to come as soon as Ukrainian armored assault brigades are assembled and in position.

On January 28, Basurin said: “According to our intelligence, the Ukrainian General Staff under the guidance of US advisers at the Ukrainian Defense Ministry is putting final touches to a plan for offensive operations in Donbas. The date of aggression against the people’s republics will be set when the attack groups have been created and the operation’s plan approved by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.”

These are conditions in which NATO could goad Russia, a nuclear power, into war. Were such an attack to begin, DPR forces would likely require Russian military assistance to avoid being overrun by far-right Ukrainian militias, which call to kill Russians and have bombed Russian-speaking Ukrainian cities near Russia’s borders. If Moscow intervened against this, however, would provide grounds for NATO war propaganda, denouncing Russian aid to the DPR as an “invasion” of Ukraine.

The Link Between Gun Violence and Economic Hardship in Black Communities

Algernon Austin

With the spike in murders across the nation, many Americans have become more concerned about gun violence. While the increase in gun violence is worrying, it is important to be aware that even before the recent spike, the US suffered from a very high rate of gun violence relative to other rich countries. For example, in 2019, the US homicide rate from firearms was more than eight times the rate in Canada, more than 50 times the rate in Germany, and more than 100 times the rate in the United Kingdom.

As bad as the problem of gun violence is for people in the US generally, it is intensified in Black communities. In 2019, Black males between 15 and 34 years old were only two percent of the population, but 37 percent of gun homicide victims. Among racial and gender groups, homicide ranks highest as a cause of death for Black males—their fifth leading cause of mortality—and close to 80 percent of homicides are committed with firearms.

Gun violence is a complex issue with multiple causes. One important factor driving gun violence is economic hardship. A substantial body of criminological research finds that poverty is a powerful predictor of homicide rates. The figure illustrates this relationship at the state level for Black communities. In states where Black households are experiencing greater economic hardship, we find higher rates of gun violence.

If the US wants to reduce gun violence, it is important that to address the profound jobs crisis among Black men. We also need to combat racial discrimination in the labor market, and raise the federal minimum wage. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all that needs to be done to have a gun violence rate more like other rich countries, but it is a good place to start.