Fired aircraft carrier commander has COVID-19

Patrick Martin

The aircraft carrier commander who urged the evacuation of his ship because of widespread COVID-19 infection has himself tested positive for coronavirus, it was reported Sunday afternoon.

Captain Brett Crozier was fired, at the insistence of President Trump, after his letter to the Navy high command, warning that sailors would die unless urgent action was taken, was made public in the San Francisco Chronicle .

Crozier’s own illness is a further demonstration of the deep inroads that the coronavirus has made within the military. At latest count, testing has been completed for nearly 1,600 of the sailors on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, and 155, or 10 percent, were found to be positive for COVID-19. At that level of contagion, and given the close quarters for working, eating and sleeping, it would have been only a matter of days before virtually everyone on the ship was infected.

Trump angrily defended the firing of Crozier at the White House coronavirus press briefing Saturday. “He wrote a letter. A five-page letter from a captain,” Trump fumed. “And the letter was all over the place. That’s not appropriate, I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

Making clear that his main concern was the political embarrassment for the White House, not the fate of the sailors, Trump continued, “It looked terrible what he did. To write a letter. I mean this isn’t a class on literature. This is the captain of a massive ship … he shouldn’t be talking that way in a letter.” The “commander-in-chief” expressed no concern that Navy seamen might suffer permanent impairment or death from the coronavirus.

Trump also suggested that Crozier was responsible for allowing sailors to be infected, because he was in command during a port call at Da Nang in Vietnam in early March where several sailors apparently contracted the disease. Such a visit would not be the commander’s decision, however, but part of the high-level Pentagon strategy, coordinated with the White House National Security Council, in which US warships “show the flag” at ports of Asian countries Washington is seeking to align with its preparations for war against China.

Besides the political repercussions—which have escalated considerably after Crozier’s removal—there were concerns that the evident disabling of the Theodore Roosevelt by coronavirus would weaken the US force posture in the western Pacific. The aircraft carrier was one of four deployed in the Pacific region to threaten China with nuclear annihilation in the event of an open military clash.

Subsequent press reports indicate a deep split in the Pentagon between uniformed officers, who largely sided with Crozier, and civilian appointees of Trump, who sought to carry out the president’s wishes without regard to such traditional procedures as military investigations.

The sequence of events is worth reviewing, as it suggests that there are deeper crosscurrents in the political infighting within the military and the Trump administration.

Crozier had voiced his concerns about the growing coronavirus infection aboard his ship through a series of messages up the chain of command that ultimately reached Thomas Modly, the acting secretary of the navy. Modly responded by sending Crozier his personal cellphone number—as he revealed in a radio interview Friday—an action that amounted to inviting the captain to bypass the chain of command and go directly to the top civilian authority.

When Crozier sent his five-page letter, dated Monday, March 30, he copied it to 10 or 20 correspondents within the Navy hierarchy, but not to his immediate superior, Rear Admiral Stuart Baker, commander of the carrier battle group that included the Theodore Roosevelt. One press account indicates that the officers on board the Roosevelt had discussed the matter among themselves and decided on this unusual procedure in order to force action by making the issue public. Within a few hours, the Chronicle had a copy of the letter and published it.

There was consternation in both the White House and the Pentagon after the plight of the sailors became public. Crozier’s stark message—“We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die”—was a direct slap in the face.

According to a column published in the April 5 issue of the Washington Post, written by David Ignatius, the top uniformed officers—Admiral Michael Gilday, the Chief of Naval Operations, and General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—favored beginning a formal investigation of the crisis on the Theodore Roosevelt, but opposed any immediate disciplinary action against Crozier. Gilday actually told the press, “We’re not looking to shoot the messenger here.”

They were overruled by Modly, who told one colleague, “Breaking news: Trump wants him fired.” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who had initially sided with Milley and Gilday, then acceded to Trump’s demand. Significantly, as one defense publication pointed out, Crozier was fired three days after his letter became public, while ship commanders whose negligence led to collisions in which 17 sailors died—on the USS Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain—were not fired until 24 and 41 days had passed, respectively, and then only after preliminary investigations had been conducted.

Ignatius, the son of a secretary of the navy and a fixture in the US foreign policy establishment, has a wide range of contacts within the military-intelligence apparatus, and is frequently a conduit for the views of the high command. His column reveals mounting conflicts between the top brass and the White House, already seen in the reported uproar in the Pentagon over Trump’s abrupt decision to send a flotilla of warships large and small in the direction of Venezuela, at a time when naval operations are already under great strain because of the coronavirus.

Former Navy commanders denounced the firing of Crozier in interviews with Ignatius, including retired Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said, “I think the firing was a really bad decision, because it undermines the authority of the military commanders who are trying to take care of their troops, and significantly negatively impacts the willingness of commanders to speak truth to power.”

Sean O’Keefe, Navy secretary for George H.W. Bush., said Crozier “was running up an SOS,” adding, “It’s a judgment call, but you have to support the action of a deployed commander.”

Richard Danzig, who served as Navy secretary during the Clinton administration, told Ignatius: “If Capt. Crozier carelessly or intentionally jumped abruptly outside of military channels, then the Navy had good cause for removing him. But I doubt it was good judgment to rush to do it at this time.”

Prominent Democrats and former military officers aligned with them have denounced the firing of Crozier. Former NATO commander Admiral James Stavridis wrote in a column published Wednesday—the day before the firing—“He made the right choice and the Navy will back him up.”

The Democratic leaders of the House Armed Services Committee issued a statement that condemned Crozier’s removal, but was critical of his conduct. “Captain Crozier was justifiably concerned about the health and safety of his crew, but he did not handle the immense pressure appropriately,” they wrote. “However, relieving him of his command is an overreaction.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee to oppose Trump in the November election, told ABC News the firing of Crozier was “close to criminal… I think the guy, he should have a commendation rather than be fired.”

Navy Secretary Modly, formerly a highly paid consultant at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, became acting secretary in November when Trump fired Richard Spencer after he tried to demote Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, accused of war crimes by members of his own unit but celebrated by Trump. Modly was recently passed over for the permanent appointment, but he may have regarded firing Crozier as a means to regain favor at the White House.

In a subsequent interview, Modly emphasized that there were broader national security considerations in the decision, saying that other US warships in the Pacific “are now perhaps on higher standard of alert because our adversaries in the region think that one of our warships might be crippled, which it’s not.”

Another columnist with close ties to the military, onetime Iraq War cheerleader Max Boot, wrote a scathing denunciation of the firing of Crozier from the standpoint of aggrieved military officers.

“The damage that was done to the military by Trump’s decision to pardon suspected war criminals will be compounded by Thursday’s decision to fire the skipper of the Theodore Roosevelt,” he wrote. “The message that the administration is sending to the armed forces is that committing war crimes is acceptable but telling the truth and protecting the personnel under your command is not.”

Strikes, protests continue against unsafe working conditions amid coronavirus pandemic

Marcus Day

With increasing forcefulness, workers around the world are demanding adequate workplace safety measures, an end to nonessential work and the resources needed to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Strikes and protests by those who are providing critical services with virtually no protection, including nurses and health care workers, Amazon and postal workers, and grocery, food processing and service workers, have continued to erupt in country after country.

At the same time, the Trump administration and its global counterparts are seeking to lay the groundwork to force a return to work, even if it means even more catastrophic death rates among workers and a further spread of the pandemic.

At his White House press conferences Saturday and Sunday, Trump warned that the coming week would see “a lot of death,” but nevertheless revived his demand for the US economy to be quickly “opened up.” Complaining that “we’re paying people not to go to work,” he said. “We have to get back to work.”

Amazon worker at Staten Island Facility JFK8 (Image Credit: @AngeMariaSolis)

While Trump and the world’s capitalist governments are preoccupied with planning how quickly they can restart production and renew the flow of profits to the corporations and banks, workers are increasingly asserting their own interests and demands through walkouts and protests, many of them wildcat actions:

• In Belgium, 10 supermarkets in the Carrefour chain were closed Friday after workers walked out over low pay and inadequate protection against the coronavirus. Workers at a Carrefour in southern France previously walked out in late March.
  
• Royal Mail workers at a sorting facility in Kent in the United Kingdom walked out last week to protest the lack of hand sanitizer and other safety measures. The Communication Workers Union called off a strike earlier in March despite Royal Mail’s intransigent opposition to implementing more safety precautions.
  
• Postal workers in the United States started an online petition last week to demand hazard pay. The petition, which had garnered nearly 500,000 signatures by Sunday night, denounced the postal workers union, stating: “The union is no help to employees during this time at all. They should be fighting for this hazard pay or threatening another shutdown. We have to get louder, post office!!”
  
• In the Bahamas, emergency medical workers staged a sickout late Friday to protest the lack of safety measures. In response, the country’s health minister promised a payment of up to $5,000 for frontline health care workers.
  
• In Massachusetts, over 10,000 construction workers, members of the North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters, plan to strike today over worksite safety concerns. The governor has thus far left the decision to local governments on whether to allow construction to continue, while issuing toothless guidelines for safety practices.
  
• Nearly 1,000 meatpacking workers at JBS, a major pork and beef processor, stopped work in Colorado last Monday. Much of the heavily immigrant workforce at the plant, who speaks 27 different languages, refused to report to work after as many as 10 workers tested positive for COVID-19. The job action was not organized by the UFCW, the local union president said.
  
• Amazon workers at a delivery facility in Chicago demonstrated Friday and Saturday after two of their coworkers tested positive. This followed strikes by Amazon workers in Detroit and New York earlier in the week.
  
• On Thursday, dozens of workers walked out at a Hershey’s food packing plant in Palmyra, Pennsylvania operated by logistics giant XPO. “We demand an explanation of why they did not close the factory since there was an infected person, and they kept it quiet,” a worker at the plant told the local press.
  
• Over two dozen poultry workers at a Pilgrim’s Pride plant in Timberville, Virginia walked out to protest the lack of information after a person at the plant tested positive for COVID-19. “They worked us all day. They didn’t tell us, and we didn’t know how long that they have known,” a worker told local news.
  
• In Louisville, Kentucky, baristas at the coffee shop chain Heine Brothers carried out a sickout Friday demanding better protective measures and hazard pay. Hannah Jones, a shift lead, told local media, “This entire COVID-19 outbreak [the company has been saying], ‘Wait and see, wait and see, wait and see. We hear you, we hear you. We’re nervous too.’” She added, “They aren’t coming into contact with 200 people a day.”

The Trump administration, after saying the economy needed to be “raring to go” by Easter, temporarily retreated in the face of widespread anger and mounting protests by workers, combined with an accelerating wave of infections and deaths. It is nonetheless seeking to develop a narrative, with support from a pliant corporate media, that it will be possible to safely restart economic activity and a large-scale return to work in the near future.

At Saturday’s press conference, Trump’s Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Stephen Hahn, said that antibody tests “will be a tool to help us get people back to work,” despite the lack of scientific evidence that the presence of antibodies guarantees immunity to the virus that causes COVID-19.

The automakers, which lobbied to be designated “essential critical infrastructure” by the Department of Homeland Security, remain largely shut down, primarily in response to the wave of wildcat strikes that erupted in late March. Although autoworkers continue to succumb to the pandemic, with at least 11 Fiat Chrysler workers and six Ford workers having died, the auto companies are nevertheless floating the possibility of a restart later in the month.

“General Motors stated that it would take the situation ‘day by day’ and would not reopen until April 14,” a veteran GM worker in Indiana told the WSWS. “But after that, what’s going to be different? Are we going to be tested for the virus and get our temperatures taken?

“At the very least, before we return everyone should be tested once and have their temperature taken at the gate before entering the plant. But if we have a stay-at-home order in the state that goes past April 14, I don’t see how they can legitimately open again. I understand that some jobs are essential, but not making new cars. This is getting out of control.”

The worker denounced the criminal lack of preparation by both the Republicans and the Democrats, saying it demonstrated the government’s hostility to workers. “This virus has really showed that both parties are incapable. If anything good has come out of it, it’s that most people will know that our government values profit over lives and thinks that we are expendable.”

Agreeing that the working class has to lead the fight against pandemic, he concluded, “If we don’t do it, no one else is going to. I believe in strength in numbers. For so many years we have been complacent. Now we need to stand up for the future generations.”

The Relevance of Aslam Farooqui’s Arrest

Rajeshwari Krishnamurthy

On 4 April, Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) announced that Aslam Farooqui, the chief of the Islamic State ‘Khorasan Province’ (ISKP) had been arrested in Kandahar, Afghanistan, along with 19 others, including two key commanders. Given Farooqui’s background, i.e. his connection to the ISKP, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), etc, the context and timing of his arrest (and its announcement) are significant.

The Arrest

Although further details are awaited and several theories have begun to float, basic facts vis-à-vis the arrest are: ISKP Chief Farooqui, a Pakistani national, was arrested in Kandahar, and his arrest was announced on 4 April. The precise date of arrest is unclear. The NDS stated that he had been arrested in a ‘targeted’ and ‘complex’ operation, and that he had, during initial interrogations, “confessed of strong relationship between Islamic State-Khurasan and regional intelligence agencies.” This is essentially a hint at Pakistan’s Inter-services Intelligence (ISI), whose links with various regional terror groups is well documented.

Timing and Relevance

Developments relevant to the announcement suggest that Farooqui was probably arrested sometime before 4 April.

The ISKP had cited ‘revenge for the Muslims of Kashmir’ as their rationale while claiming responsibility for the 25 March Kabul Gurdwara attack in which several Afghans and one Indian national were killed. Perpetrators of the attack equated Afghan nationals as their Indian target in Afghanistan. A suicide bomber involved in this attack was an Indian national who, along with some others, had been involved with the Islamic State’s Kasargod module and relocated to Afghanistan to join the ISKP some years ago.

On 2 April, Afghanistan’s President, Dr Ashraf Ghani, and Pakistan’s Army Chief, Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, held a phone conversation. The same day, Pakistan’s Sindh High Court commuted Omar Sheikh’s death sentence and acquitted three others who were serving time for the 2002 kidnap and murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, in Pakistan. Although they were re-arrested and detained pending appeal on 3 April (conceivably due to US backlash), the judgement itself holds relevance for both India and Afghanistan. He was one of the three terrorists New Delhi had released in exchange for safe passage of around 149 Indian hostages during the 1999 Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight IC-814. The other two were Jaish-e-Muhammad’s (JeM) Masood Azhar and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front’s (JKLF) Mushtaq Zargar. The hostages were kept captive in Kandahar in the then Taliban-run Afghanistan, with the Taliban assisting the hijackers till the exchange concluded. In 2002, in the aftermath of the Daniel Pearl killing, Sheikh had ‘surrendered’ to former ISI officer, Ijaz Shah, who is Pakistan’s incumbent interior minister.

On 2 April, the Taliban’s Doha-based spokesperson, Suhail Shaheen, gave an interview to an Indian media outlet. Some of his remarks, such as “[t]here is no externally sponsored terrorism…” (an assertion which was probably intended to project compliance with the US-Taliban agreement), and those on minority rights, such as “We are committed to minorities’ rights and have strongly condemned the recent attack by Daesh (IS) on a Sikh minority temple. We also urge India to protect the rights of its Muslim minority. They are Indian citizens and your people”—seem to have additional undertones.

While the Taliban has denied involvement in the Kabul Gurudwara attack, a Haqqani Network (HN) role in the attack cannot be ruled out. The relevance of a HN role lies in the nature of the Taliban-HN relationship, the HN’s complex equation with the ISKP, and the history of HN attacks targeting Indian personnel and projects, etc, in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, around two hours after Farooqui’s arrest was announced, Ehsanullah Ehsan, a former TTP spokesperson associated with several jihadi groups (and whose 2017 ‘voluntary surrender’ and 2020 ‘escape’ from Pakistani custody is another curious case) claimed that Farooqui had been deposed some time ago, and that a man from Afghanistan’s Kunar province was now the ISKP chief. However, this does not explain how such a major claim emerged only after Farooqui’s arrest was announced.

Looking Ahead

On 1 April, India’s National Investigative Agency (NIA) filed a case to investigate the 25 March attack on a Kabul Gurudwara—making it the first case pertaining to a terror attack on foreign soil the NIA would investigate since the National Investigation Agency (Amendment) Act, 2019 was passed last July. An unnamed Indian official was quoted as saying “[w]e will first seek all the documents from Afghanistan authorities through official channels to see what kind of evidence they have collected so far. A team will later visit Kabul.”

Would Afghanistan grant India access to interrogate Farooqui? Was the judgement on Sheikh’s case in Pakistan precipitated by the prospect of Kabul granting New Delhi access to Farooqui? What explains Farooqui’s arrest in Kandahar, traditionally a Taliban stronghold?

Farooqui’s arrest and answers to the above questions would undoubtedly shed more light on the ISKP’s current structures, linkages, and strategies. As such, the arrest itself could have some bearing on the Kabul-Taliban talks. Additionally, deeper examination is needed on the potential ways in which this arrest might influence the ISKP’s organisational dynamics and operational agendas in Afghanistan and India.

Nepal: Masses confront enormous hardships from coronavirus pandemic

Rohantha De Silva

Nepal’s ongoing COVID-19 lockdown is creating serious problems for the country’s population. After much hesitation and concern about its impact on the tourist industry, the Stalinist Communist Party (NCP) government on March 25 imposed a national lockdown.

Prime Minister Sharma Oli’s government, however, has made no serious effort to ensure that the country’s overwhelmingly poor population will be provided with daily essentials, medicine and health safety equipment.

Last Saturday, nep123.com reported that many impoverished people and daily wage earners, including those in the quarrying and construction industries, are trapped in their homes and starving in Tanahun, one of 77 districts in the country.

Thousands of daily wage workers, street vendors and poor people from different parts of Nepal are also stranded in Kathmandu, the country’s capital, because transport services have been halted.

Concerned about rising social discontent, senior establishment figures, including former chief justices Kalyan Shrestha and Sushila Karki, on March 26 publicly called on the government to provide special relief for its most needy citizens.

Three days later, on March 29, the Oli government announced various relief measures, including a 25 percent discount on electricity for consumers who use up to 150 units every month and a 10 percent discount on rice, flour, dhal, salt and sugar for daily wage workers who are not being paid. Daily wage workers who are not receiving any income, however, are unable to pay even these discounted prices.

The Kathmandu Metropolitan City has announced 100 million rupees ($US830,000) for prevention and control for COVID-19 but for the 6.5 million people living in the national capital and its metro area this is a pittance. It will do nothing to overcome the country’s seriously understaffed and under-equipped health infrastructure.

The Nepali masses have been told to wear face masks, regularly wash their hands with soap, use sanitisers, avoid crowds and observe social-distancing. The poorest sections of society, however, cannot afford such products, let alone live in areas where social-distancing is possible.

As veteran physician Mani Dixit explained to the Kathmandu Post on March 22: “Sanitisers are becoming a privilege that even those from the middle class are finding hard to access. These protective resources are becoming more expensive and scarce by the day.”

According to the International Labour Organisation, about 62.2 percent of Nepal’s workforce is employed in the informal sector, including street vendors, garbage collectors, cleaners, rickshaw pullers and domestic helpers. These workers are not able to get access to basic virus protection materials, let alone increasingly expensive daily essentials.

According to media reports, the price of vegetables tripled in the first week of the lockdown and they are now becoming scarce. Although the government has allowed vehicles to transport vegetables during the lockdown, the drivers and their work assistants are not provided with face masks or sanitisers. Confronted with these unsafe conditions, farmers and traders are reluctant to exchange their products.

On March 27, Federation of Fruits and Vegetable Entrepreneurs president Khom Prasad Ghimire said: “Demand for fruit, vegetables and milk has declined because they are perishable items and people cannot store such food items for more than two or three days.”

Transportation of milk from villages to the cities is being restricted and in remote areas milk collection has been halted. Poultry farmers have also been hit by the lack of animal feed and their businesses are now at risk. Among the worst affected are daily wage agricultural workers, particularly in Tarai, Nepal’s main agricultural region.

While only five COVID-19 cases have been officially confirmed in Nepal so far, the real figure is no doubt higher because mass testing is not being carried out.

“The impacts are already visible,” Jeevan Baniya, assistant director of the Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility at Social Science Baha told the Kathmandu Post on March 21.

“Some employers have already started laying off employees whereas others have asked them to stay on unpaid leave for some time. The effects are likely to worsen in the coming days, as often happens during times of shocks and disasters,” he said.

More than one million foreign visitors travel to Nepal each year, including mountaineers, trekkers and others drawn to its spectacular mountain scenery, including Mount Everest and seven of the other 10 highest mountains in the world. The land-locked country’s cool weather and ancient Hindu and Buddhist historic sites and cultural heritage are strong attractions.

Tourism is Nepal’s largest source of foreign exchange, generating up to $US500 million annually. The industry provides jobs for an estimated 1.5 million workers in the hotel, airline, transportation, accommodation, restaurant and leisure industry sectors. In 2017, the travel and tourism sector comprised 7.8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

The national lockdown and fear of the virus has thrown the tourism industry into free fall. Around 20,000 workers in tour, trekking and mounting guide employment are predicted to lose their jobs. The estimated one million residents living in the country’s mountain belt, who depend on the spending of foreign trekkers and mountaineers, are being severely impacted.

The hardest-hit is the Mount Everest tourist sector, which relies completely on the spring mountaineering season to provide jobs for climbing guides, porters and hotel and lodge workers, has collapsed.

All this is drastically worsening Nepal’s already high levels of poverty. Nepal is amongst the world’s poorest countries, ranking 148 out of 189, with around 25 percent of the population below the official poverty line and living on less than 35 rupees per day.

Around five million people are undernourished with the country recording some of the highest child mortality and disease rates on the planet. Forty-eight percent of pregnant women in Nepal are anaemic.

Canadian government’s bailout increases banks’ control over economy and state

Roger Jordan

Canada’s Liberal government is funneling hundreds of billions of dollars in financial support to the country’s big banks and major corporations so as to guarantee the wealth and investments of the country’s billionaires and multi-millionaires amid the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Meanwhile, the millions of workers who have or will soon lose their jobs are receiving utterly inadequate assistance through makeshift temporary programs.

Heath care—the global pandemic notwithstanding—is also being given short shift. On Wednesday, federal Health Minister Patty Hadju admitted that years of austerity have left the country’s hospitals, which are overstretched at the best of times, without crucial equipment to fight the pandemic. Yet the Liberal government is injecting no more than a pittance in emergency funding into Canada’s beleaguered health-care system,

The corporate-controlled media, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government, the New Democrats, and the trade unions have created a public perception that with parliament’s adoption of Bill C-13 on March 24 generous support, totaling $107 billion, has been secured for working people adversely impacted by the pandemic. This is all lies. The lion’s share of this oft-repeated sum is eaten up by tax deferrals that will overwhelmingly benefit big business and the rich.

By contrast, the government is giving laid-off workers a taxable $2,000 Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and this for a maximum of four months. Workers eligible for Employment Insurance, who would have been entitled to a maximum of $2,292 per month, can no longer obtain the additional $292 per month because the government has transferred all EI claims made after March 15 to the CERB system.

To date, federal funding for Canada’s resource-starved healthcare sector has been restricted to a mere $3 billion. Only on March 10 did the federal Liberal government even write the provinces, which are responsible for running the healthcare system, to determine their supply needs, even though the threat of a pandemic had been clear since January.

In contrast, the sums being made available to the corporate elite are literally unlimited. They include:

• A $150 billion program to buy up bank mortgages.

• A Bank of Canada asset-purchasing program under which it will buy at least $5 billion of financial assets each week, with no upper limit. Conservative estimates say the initiative, commonly referred to as “quantitative easing,” will add $200 billion to the central bank’s balance sheet by the end of the year.

• A decision by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions to cut the capital buffer requirements for the big banks from 2.25 percent to 1 percent, thereby providing Canada’s principal financial institutions with a $300 billion liquidity injection.

• A myriad of new buy-back initiatives, such as the Banker’s Acceptance Purchase Facility, under which various arms of the Canadian state will purchase arcane financial instruments used by financial institutions and businesses to provide credit and spread risk, but whose value has crashed along with the financial markets.

Taken together, these measures amount to more than $650 billion in public funds being poured into the coffers of the corporate and financial elite.

The mechanisms being put in place to facilitate this vast transfer of wealth are designed to ensure not only that that banks can make good their losses, but that they can further enrich themselves by acting as the conduits and middlemen for much of the emergency loans and aid the government is extending to business, big and small alike, and to homeowners.

Take the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s $150 billion Insured Mortgage Purchasing Program. In so far as the politicians and media talk about it, they present this scheme as a means of injecting funds into the banks that they will in turn use to “aid” troubled clients, including working people, who can’t pay their mortgages.

But, as has already been exposed in a number of media reports, the banks are adding any mortgage-payment deferrals to the total money owed, meaning homeowners end up owing them still more money. Moreover, the banks have balked at “passing through” the Bank of Canada’s recent cuts to its prime lending rate by reducing the cost of new mortgages.

The banks will also rake in millions in interest payments and other fees from any loans or other investments extended by the government to corporations. These include $12.5 billion of government guarantees for banks to provide loans to exporters, and a program for $40,000 loans to small and medium-sized businesses. Planned but not yet publicly announced multi-billion-dollar bailouts for specific industries, like oil and air travel, will also likely be funnelled through the banks.

The scale of potential government support for the private sector knows no bounds. A Globe and Mail article reported that Part 8 of Bill C-13 permits Finance Minister Bill Morneau to create a corporation or entity to purchase assets from financial institutions or private companies, including material assets. Morneau “would be permitted to hold all of the shares of this holding company on behalf of the [government]. The minister would have the power to set rules for running the corporation, give direction to it, and merge, sell, wind up or dissolve it, including selling any or all shares of the corporation,” the newspaper noted.

Morneau, the former proprietor and chief executive at one of Canada’s largest private pension funds, also has the power until September 30 to loan any amount of money to any company, provide it with a line of credit or loan insurance, or guarantee its debt. After that date, these steps can still be taken following consultation with cabinet.

Significantly, the Globe cited as an example of the measures being considered the $13.7 billion 2009 bailout of the Canadian operations of Chrysler and General Motors. This bailout, implemented amid the global financial crisis, secured the profitability of the automakers through massive wage cuts, the entrenchment of a multi-tier pay structure, the gutting of workplace benefits, and the destruction of thousands of auto jobs. Paul Booth, a senior civil servant involved in the auto bailout, remarked to the Globe that government support to companies should be provided on condition that they can “rebuild after the crisis.” In other words, companies receiving government support should be restructured at workers’ expense to guarantee the continued flow of multi-billion-dollar payouts to executives and shareholders.

While workers’ living standards will be further undermined, the government’s various bailout schemes make no demands, even of the most limited character, on the banks, such as reducing executive pay and bonuses or rolling back their usurious credit-card interest rates. On the contrary, a Globe article yesterday reported that Canada’s big banks are boasting that unlike their international competitors, they will continue to pay out dividends to shareholders at pre-crisis rates.

The unprecedented scope of the wealth being transferred from public into private hands by means of the socialization of private corporate debt is producing a qualitative change in the relationship between the state and the financial elite. The government is not merely transferring resources into the hands of the super-rich, but hiring financial firms to assist the work being carried out by nominally public agencies and institutions.

This is underscored by the news that the Bank of Canada has hired BlackRock, the world’s largest manager of private equity wealth, to help run its asset purchasing programs. While the Bank will continue to manage its purchases of government and municipal debt, BlackRock will advise it on the buying up of corporate debt under the its new Commercial Paper Purchase Program.

As the right-wing National Post approvingly noted, in opting to work with BlackRock, Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz “put urgency ahead of dithering over potential traps such as conflict of interest, a rushed tendering process and bad optics.” The business-friendly daily was even compelled to note that Black Rock has “become a symbol of the revolving door between government and finance,” and pointed to the example of Jean Boivin, a former deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, who currently is the head of research at BlackRock and widely seen as a potential successor to Poloz.

Leading Canadian banks will also be directly involved in managing the Bank of Canada’s newly acquired assets. TD Asset Management will oversee its portfolio, while CIBC Mellon will act as the custodian—services for which they will no doubt be handsomely compensated.

The direct and open integration of the financial elite into the institutions of the capitalist state on an unprecedented scale is incompatible with the retention of democratic forms of rule. Under conditions in which working people face the double-threat of an unprecedented economic collapse and the growing likelihood the country’s chronically underfunded healthcare system will buckle under a surge of COVID-19 patients, the capitalist ruling elite is orchestrating the greatest public heist in the country’s history.

In this regard, the news that over 24,000 military personnel are being readied to deploy across the country assumes a new and disturbing significance. While presented in the media as a necessary step to support overwhelmed civilian authorities with medical care and logistics, like transport, the reality is that the ruling elite is readying police state and military repression to defend its vast wealth from the eruption of social anger it knows will inevitably come. While hundreds of billions of dollars are being showered on the financial elite with virtually no strings attached, millions of Canadians are on the verge of economic ruin. As a survey carried out by accountancy firm MMP prior to the announcement of sweeping lockdowns by governments across Canada noted, 47 percent of the population is just $200 away from insolvency.

Turkish workers strike as bosses keep them at work despite COVID-19

Ulas Atesci

With over 1 million coronavirus cases detected worldwide, Turkey is emerging as an epicenter of the pandemic in the Middle East after Iran, which has reached more than 50,000 cases and at least 3,300 dead as its health care system is devastated by punishing US and European sanctions.

As of Friday night, Turkey had passed 20,000 cases and 400 deaths. Amid the rapid spread of the disease, opposition is rapidly growing in the working class to the government’s policy of keeping them at work despite a growing number of COVID-19 cases in the factories. There is deep anger at the Turkish ruling elite’s willingness to sacrifice thousands of workers to boost profits during the pandemic.

After wildcat strikes erupted across America and Italy to demand the idling of plants during the pandemic, workers in Turkey in non-critical industries like metal or construction, are increasingly looking to wage a militant struggle against the pandemic.

Among others, in a metal factory, more than 600 workers walked out on Wednesday in Gebze, an industrial town close to Istanbul, after they had been forced to work despite some positive coronavirus cases among workers. Fearing a potential spread of wildcat strikes after this walkout, the governorship of Kocaeli declared that it had banned work stoppages and other protests for 15 days. It comes after wildcat strikes by Istanbul construction workers at some sites and a work stoppage in a filter factory in the southern border city of Hatay.

Workers’ determination to work in safe conditions and to fight to stop the spread of the disease is bringing them into direct collision with the Turkish government.

Yesterday, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that the government would impose a curfew for citizens under age 20. Last month, it imposed a curfew for people over age 65. Vehicles are barred from entering and exiting 31 provinces, including Turkey’s larger cities, but workers still have to work in non-critical sectors.

On Wednesday, during a press conference, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca declared, “We did not know that the virus spread so quickly.” In fact, the Turkish government confirmed its first case on March 11 and had an opportunity to monitor the response of other countries such as China, Italy and the United States. However, instead of taking extensive measures, it wasted critical time, focusing on the needs of big business.

The health minister only unveiled the case figures by provinces on Wednesday, after the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) had begun to publish its own data. According to the official figures, Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city and economic capital with more than 16 million, has 60 percent of all cases. However, hospitals in Istanbul had only 7,280 intensive care beds, according to the official 2018 report of the Health Ministry.

While Turkey has 25,466 adult beds—almost half in private hospitals—it has just 187 doctors per 100,000 people in its intensive care units. Ebru Kıraner, the head of the Intensive Care Nurses Association, warned that there are about 15,000 intensive care nurses. Koca admitted that there is already a 63 percent occupancy rate in intensive care units. For weeks, TTB and health care workers have also complained about the lack of necessary medical equipment.

He also stated that 601 health care workers already contracted coronavirus in Turkey, after Prof. Dr. Cemil Taşçıoğlu, a well-loved doctor among his patients and students, who had decades of experience, died on Wednesday of coronavirus.

While the government refuses to take necessary measures such as stopping production and providing all workers with full income during the pandemic to prevent the spread of the virus across the country, other measures only serve to spread the disease. Masses of people gathered in front of post offices across the country to take 1,000 Turkish liras of financial aid given by the government to 2 million poor families. This insufficient amount is part of a package for business totaling 100 billion Turkish liras.

While making clear that maintaining production and exports has top priority, the Erdoğan government aims to suppress growing opposition among workers to its response to the coronavirus crisis.

After a truck driver named Malik Baran Yılmaz was detained last week for his social media post attacking the class character of the government response to the coronavirus crisis, officials were forced to release him due to growing protests on social media. His video, in which he said, “But if this virus does not kill me, your system will kill us,” was watched millions of times.

Fearing this growing sentiment among workers, Erdoğan launched a “National Solidarity Campaign” on Monday, calling on big business to make donations to “provide additional support to low-income people.” This campaign’s main purpose is to promote nationalism and the lies that capitalists and workers are waging a common fight against the pandemic.

Indeed, Fahrettin Altun, Erdoğan’s communications director, called on the Turkish people to support each other “without separation based on class, ideology and politics.”

While the Erdoğan government claims that “there is no money” to provide full income to all workers idled during the pandemic, in fact, the main obstacles to a struggle against the disease are the privileges of the corporate and financial elite. In Turkey, there were 27 dollar-billionaires in 2019, owning more than $US50 billion in total. Net profits in the Turkish banking sector in 2019 were about 50 billion liras (approximately $US7.43 billion). Moreover, the Turkish government has spent $US19 billion on its military.

As COVID-19 spreads in the factories, the trade union confederations are collaborating with the state’s efforts to suppress working class opposition so as to protect the profits of big business and their collaboration with it.

After waiting three weeks, the pro-opposition Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions (DİSK) declared on Monday that in 48 hours it would begin to invoke the constitutional right to not to work in unsafe conditions, if the government failed to take necessary measures. It did not, however, ultimately call on workers to strike.

To channel growing opposition among workers and limit the danger of wildcat strikes, the DİSK and Türk-İş union confederations issued a joint statement on Tuesday, demanding a halt to all production for at least 15 days and banning all layoffs during the pandemic.

Against this reactionary collaboration between the government, big business and trade unions at the expense of workers’ health and lives, the working class must build its own, independent rank-and-file committees in workplaces and neighborhoods. It faces a political fight to protect the lives and health of millions of people.

All non-essential workplaces must be shut down immediately, with full pay for all workers, and necessary measures must be taken to protect refugees, prisoners, and others in the most vulnerable sections of society. Refugees must be able to get testing and free health care equal in quality to that enjoyed by Turkish citizens. Political prisoners and imprisoned journalists should be granted a planned release of prisoners to prevent the pandemic from spreading in the prisons.

This global crisis has clearly exposed that there is no other way to fight for such critical demands without transferring political power to the working class all over the world and expropriating the wealth of the super-rich to protect billions of people.

Russian doctors, nurses protest against horrifying conditions in hospitals

Clara Weiss

Nurses and doctors across Russia have walked out of their jobs and issued desperate appeals to the public, pleading for medical and personal protective equipment, and renovations of dilapidated hospital buildings.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia has now climbed to 4,149, and 34 have died. Cases have been registered in 78 out of 85 regions. A nation-wide lockdown with regional modifications that was imposed in the last week of March has been prolonged until April 30. So far, Moscow and its surrounding area has been the center of the outbreak with 448 confirmed cases in the capital as of Friday evening.

Thirty years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and after decades of cuts in the health care system, Russian hospitals are in no position to deal with the rapidly rising number of cases. While Russia has a relatively large number of hospital beds per capita compared to countries like the US, the hospitals barely have modern equipment or even sanitary conditions. Most medical workers are also grossly underpaid, with doctors and nurses often earning just a few hundred dollars a month.

In Kamensk-Shakhtinsk in the Rostov region in southern Russia, 11 doctors and nurses have publicly stepped down from their work in a desperate attempt to draw attention to the catastrophic conditions prevailing in their hospital.

One of the nurses told the newspaper Argumenty i fakty: “We have taken this step because we fear for our health and for the health of the patients of the unit.” She said that the infectious disease unit of her hospital was “not prepared to take in patients that have been infected with COVID-19.” Another medical worker said: “In the division where patients do the COVID-19 test we don’t even have surgical masks. They pay only 70 rubles (90 cents) for the night shift, we insist that the pay be increased.”

The workers also demand setting up a special department or building to process people that have been infected under sanitary conditions and a renovation of the entire building. One described the horrifying conditions in the hospital: “There is linoleum all over the rooms, the ceilings are stripped, the pipes are leaking, the flush in the toilets is not working.”

Another nurse told the newspaper: “We entered the room with isolated patients in anti-plague suits which had been lying for 40 years in our cellar. We used the same suits a few years ago to treat patients amid a cholera outbreak in the village Chistoozernyi.”

The situation in Kamensk-Shachtinsk is not unique. Across the country, hundreds of hospitals are in dire need of renovation, there is a dramatic shortage of personnel and basic medical equipment.

In St. Petersburg, the second largest city in the country, doctors of the Pokrovskaya hospital issued a video appeal on Friday, pleading for personal protective equipment. They said: “We don’t have any protective equipment. What we are wearing now is not equipment that is designed to protect from viral infections. We don’t refuse to work. We love our patients and want them all to recover. But we find it impossible to conceive of working under conditions where we are completely unprotected… We want to return to work healthy, and we want that our families and those close to us remain healthy.”

So far, three hospitals in St. Petersburg that have treated COVID-19 patients have been closed down entirely since the risk of infection has been deemed too high. The entire medical personnel have been sent home and asked to self-isolate.

The conditions facing medical workers are a direct result of the restoration of capitalism. While shortages are very acute in Russia, medical workers internationally are confronting a dramatic shortfall of PPE and medical equipment such as ventilators. They are forced to put their own lives and those of their families at risk when no adequate measures are taken to protect them. In the US, the richest capitalist country, hospital workers are forced to wear bandannas and other do-it-yourself masks to protect themselves, while there are already not enough ventilators to treat all patients who need them. Last Saturday, nurses at the Jacobi Medical Center in New York City protested against the lack of medical staff and PPE. Similar protests are taking place across the US.

The mounting anger and social opposition among medical workers in Russia comes as the surge of coronavirus cases is expected to escalate significantly in April. Amid a global disruption of supply chains which the head of the Russian Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina called “unprecedented,” the economy is widely expected to enter a recession.

Russia relies for almost half of its budget revenues on the export of oil and gas and is hard hit by the massive decline in oil prices. Experts now calculate that Russia will have to reckon with a global oil price of just $20 per barrel for the rest of the year—a historic low.

The Kremlin has ordered a closure of non-essential businesses across the country but gave regions significant freedom of maneuver. Some like Moscow are considering even stricter restrictions, including the introduction of access permits and the closure of some essential businesses.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised that all workers must receive their full income through the quarantine period. However, it is unclear whether all businesses will be willing or in a position to actually grant that.

The Russian government has allocated only the equivalent of about 2 percent of GDP for economic relief measures. By contrast, during the crisis of 2008–2009, the government spent about 10 percent of the GDP, much of which was directed toward bailing out oligarchs that faced bankruptcy.

In a recent poll, 60 percent said that they did not have enough money to make it until the next monthly salary payment. Of the 33.3 percent who said that they could make it, most have savings that will last for only 2 to 6 months. In some regions, less than 10 percent had enough savings to make it for more than a month. About 20 million people in Russia, almost 20 percent of the population, count officially as “extremely” poor and have to live on less than $165 a month.

Through the destruction of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy and the rise of a criminal oligarchy, Russia has become one of the most unequal countries in the world. Half of the population own less than five percent of the country’s net wealth. Meanwhile, the top ten percent of the country controls 65 percent of the wealth, and the top 1 percent controls more than a third of total wealth. The top 100 billionaires control a staggering 6–10 percent of all wealth. The combined wealth of the ten richest Russians in 2019 was about $178.5 billion.

The personal wealth of these oligarchs would be more than enough to pay for the building of new hospitals and renovation of all existing hospitals, to buy all new equipment that is necessary in the hospitals and to pay for decent wages for all health care workers and other sections of the working class.

Ecuadorians protest bodies of COVID-19 victims being left in the streets

Andrea Lobo

The COVID-19 pandemic’s overwhelming of hospitals and morgues in Ecuador has left dozens of those stricken with the disease to die in their homes, while desperate families and neighbors have flooded social media with videos and reports of corpses rotting in their living rooms, on sidewalks and in parks for days.

In the latest count on Friday morning, the Health Ministry reported 3,368 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 145 deaths, registering 25 new deaths in 24 hours. Seventy-one percent of cases are found in the Guayas province, which includes the country’s largest city of Guayaquil, with 2.7 million people. Guayaquil is also where the first confirmed case arrived in Ecuador on February 14.

The hundreds of bodies that are left lying in homes and on the streets are evidence of the vast underestimation of the real toll that the deadly virus is inflicting upon Ecuador

The government of Lenín Moreno initially sought to cover up the total collapse of the health care system and emergency services, and police were even filmed dumping bodies in working class neighborhoods.

Blanca Moncada Pesantes, a journalist at Expreso, created a Twitter thread on Monday to report on bodies that have not been picked up. Out of dozens of reports, some corpses have been left as many as six days indoors. In some cases, police arrived and told the family members that the body would be picked up in several days.

The outright barbarism displayed by abundant reports on social media and in the press forced President Moreno to acknowledge that the reality was worse than reported. The government then began a police-military joint operation on Monday to pick up the bodies from homes and the streets, implemented curfew exceptions to accelerate burials—with the Health Ministry now claiming that cremations are not necessary—and set up refrigerated containers as temporary morgues, and will open a public cemetery in Guayaquil with 2,000 graves next Monday.

The government had closed all entry points into the country and domestic flights in mid-March and established a nationwide curfew from 2 p.m. to 5 a.m. Schools are shut down through April, while all on-site work has been suspended until April 12. Starting on April 13, a “semaphore” system will be implemented for the level of restrictions in each province, which will facilitate a mandatory return to work when the virus will be even more widespread.

The army, which is effectively governing the Guayas province, promised that all corpses would be buried by April 2. However, only 150 bodies were up picked between Monday and Wednesday, and reports of waiting days for pickups continued to be published on social media throughout Friday. As bodies continue piling up in homes, 3,000 soldiers remain deployed in working class neighborhoods to prevent people from going outside during 15 hours each day.

While certainly not all deaths were directly due to COVID-19, many others could have been avoided with timely care by paramedics and hospital attention. Many condemning pieces of evidence, however, do indicate a massive under-reporting in deaths due to the pandemic:

• The news outlet Expreso found that on March 30 and 31, the Guayas Province Civil Registry filed 722 death certificates for Zone 8, which includes the cities of Guayaquil, Durán and Samborondón. This was more than the 609 deaths registered in all of March 2019.

• The ambulance services reported on March 31 that they were being overwhelmed by calls to pick up bodies in Guayaquil, 40 that day compared to an average of 14.

• El Universo reported that police had a waiting list of 450 bodies for pickup in Guayaquil.

• Each new report on the Ministry’s Facebook page is accompanied by a storm of dissenting comments about under-reporting. For instance, a medical student in Guayaquil writes, “Many people are not being tested due to lack of tests and there are many more dead than what appear in the outlets. In one 24-hour shift in the emergency room [of each hospital], more than 100 people die.”

The deliberate cover-up of the number of dead due to the COVID-19 crisis is meant to justify the criminal negligence of the ruling class and of the Moreno government, which has faithfully implemented International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity measures, brutally slashing funds for health care.

The COVID-19 crisis is laying bare the irrationality of the continuation of capitalism globally and the urgent need for socialism. In Ecuador and other semi-colonial and backward economies, this means the subordination of economic life to the wealth and profit interests of a tiny elite and its access to foreign markets and credit.

As the uproar over the Guayaquil corpses spread worldwide, the World Bank “granted” the country a $20 million loan to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. This is a plain insult. The data published by the World Bank itself shows that the amount the country spends on servicing its debt has tripled in the last decade to $6.32 billion this year. At the same time, after a massive drop in oil prices, severely harming public finances, the Moreno government still decided Monday to disburse $325 million to bondholders.

Economist Jonathan Báez of the Universidad Central de Ecuador found last year that “there are 971 people who are investing partners in [Ecuador’s] Economic Groups. In total, in 2017, they represented 0.006 percent of the Ecuadorian population and control the asset equivalent to 1.64 times the GDP with $115.725 billion.” By comparison, the yearly health care budget for 2020 is $3.8 billion.

Even though a quarter of these multimillionaires didn’t even report an income in 2017, their average monthly income was nearly $80,000 or 213 times the minimum salary, found Báez.

It’s precisely these levels of inequality that the Moreno government sought to defend by using deadly military force to repress the mass upheavals and general strike against social inequality last October, which forced Moreno to temporarily move the seat of the government from Quito to Guayaquil. The betrayal carried out by the trade union bureaucracy and the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE) to protect their own political and economic privileges set the stage for the ongoing criminal response of the government to the pandemic.

Expreso interviewed the daughter of a deceased COVID-19 patient who had to wait six days to get the corpse from the hospital. The family then had to manage getting a burial against Health Ministry protocol. “They were charging us $1,500 for the cremation,” she said. A young man waiting days to bury his father denounced the situation on social media, stating that “they are asking $1,800 for a box, with funeral homes profiting off our pain.”

In Ecuador, informal and precarious labor comprises 62 percent of the population, which largely explains the fact that the average monthly income is $324, about $70 less than the minimum salary. Under these conditions, aggravated by the curfew and furloughs, buying a casket is a prohibitive expenditure. Over 200,000 in Guayaquil depend on informal street sales. Even those with the means to transport the bodies in caskets and pay funeral homes have to wait hours and even days in their vehicles in long lines to reach the cemetery entrances.

Amid enormous wealth, poverty is inflicting untold suffering. A young man at the hospital in Ceibos had to plead that “my father is also a person” to demand care. Doctors and nurses lack protective equipment and are also left without care if they get sick. Dr. Esteban Ortiz told the AP that he estimates that there are only about 173 respirators available for COVID-19 patients across Guayas.

The health care crisis is compounded by the fact that vast sectors of the population are going hungry from a lack of income, price gouging and mile-long lines into supermarkets.

Street corners in at least three instances have been turned into pyres for bodies as families fall into despair and anger. “The humiliation you are making families go through, demanding that their loved ones go for three days without eating, without sleeping, because we’ve been following those arrogant soldiers that provide no solution. … Even though my cousin gave his life working in a public company, he’s lying in some container,” commented Anita on the Health Ministry Facebook page.

Both AFP and Reuters spoke to Rosa Romero. The corpse of her husband, Bolivar Reyes, who died with symptoms consistent with COVID-19, remained at their home for more than a day and then went missing a week after supposedly being taken to a hospital. A video from a morgue reportedly in Ecuador shows piles of “unclaimed” bodybags and caskets stored without refrigeration. The harrowing and unforgettable stories and images are countless.