Anti-France protests draw tens of thousands across Muslim world

Abdus Sattar Ghazali 

A rift between the Muslim world and France is widening, as leaders and the public in Muslim countries respond to the October 2 speech of President Emmanuel Macron saying Islam was “in crisis” globally. The fallout deepened with renewed Macron support to show caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and anti-France demonstrations on Friday in several Muslim countries.

Tens of thousands of Muslims, from Pakistan to Lebanon to the Palestinian territories, poured out of prayer services to join anti-France protests on Friday, according to media reports.

About 10,000 people marched through Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city. Demonstrations in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad turned violent as some 2,000 people who tried to march towards the French embassy were pushed back by police firing tear gas and beating protesters with batons, Al Jazeera reported

Crowds of demonstrators hanged an effigy of French President Emmanuel Macron from a highway overpass after pounding it furiously with their shoes. Several demonstrators were wounded in clashes with police as authorities pushed to evict them from the red zone, a security area that houses Pakistan’s diplomatic missions.

In Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore, an estimated 10,000 followers of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik party celebrating the Mawlid, the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, took to the streets. .

In Multan, a city in eastern Punjab province, thousands more torched an effigy of Macron and demanded that Pakistan sever ties with France and boycott French goods.

A few hundred demonstrators in Lebanon’s capital Beirut flocked toward the Palais des Pins, the official residence of the French ambassador to Lebanon, but found their way blocked by lines of police officers in riot gear. Waving black and white flags peoplr cried, “At your service, oh prophet of God.” Some slung stones at police who responded with smoke and tear gas, according to the Associated Press.

In Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, worshippers thronged a mosque after Friday prayers, chanting religious slogans and holding signs lampooning Macron. Turkey has led regional condemnation of the French president, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s verbal attacks on Macron prompting France to recall its ambassador to Turkey last weekend.

Hundreds of Palestinians also protested against Macron outside the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam, chanting, “With our souls and with our blood we sacrifice for our prophet, Muhammad.” Some youths scuffled with Israeli police as they exited the esplanade into the Old City. Israeli police said they dispersed the gathering and detained three people, according to Associated Press.

Scores more turned out in the Gaza Strip, where the Hamas group organized anti-France rallies at mosques across the territory that it controls. Fathi Hammad, a Hamas official, addressed a demonstration at the Jabaliya refugee camp, vowing “to stand together to confront this criminal offensive that harms the faith of about two billion Muslims,” referring to depictions of the Muslim prophet. He reiterated Hamas authorities’ appeal for Palestinians to boycott all French products.

In a Friday sermon aired live on Egyptian state TV, the country’s minister of religious endowments appeared to denounce any violent retaliation for the cartoons. “Love of the prophet cannot be expressed by killing, sabotaging or responding to evil with evil,” said Mohamed Mokhtar Gomaa, addressing dozens of worshippers at a mosque in Egypt’s Delta province of Daqahleya.

In Afghanistan, members of Hezb-i-Islami set the French flag ablaze. Its leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, warned Macron if he does not “control the situation, we are going to a third world war and Europe will be responsible”. Cries of “Death to France” rang out in Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul and several other provinces as thousands filled the streets. Demonstrators trampled on portraits of Macron and called on Afghan leaders to shut down the French embassy, sever ties and ban French citizens from the country. In the country’s western Herat province, protesters hoisted an effigy of Macron on a crane and set it alight.

An estimated 50,000 people in Bangladesh marched after Friday prayers in the capital Dhaka. The angry protesters carried signs reading “World Muslims united,” “Macron will pay a high price,” “Stop Islamophobia,” “boycott French products” and “Macron is Satan.”

In Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal, thousands of Muslims led by Congress MLA Arif Masood staged a protest against France, raising slogans against Macron, according to ZEE News.  An FIR has been registered against the Congress MLA and 2000 others who took part in the demonstrations. Protesters in Aligarh of Uttar Pradesh, raised slogans of the death sentence of the President of France. In a Muslim-majority district of India’s financial hub Mumbai, some 100 posters showing Macron with a boot on his face and calling him a “demon” were pasted on pavements and roads, according to Reuters.

Thousands in Somalia turned up for Friday prayers in mosques where sermons were dominated by curses and condemnation of Macron and his government. Abdirahman Hussein Mohamed,, a shopkeeper in the capital Mogadishu, set aside all French products including face wash, perfumes and other cosmetics with a large sign, “NOT FOR SALE”. “I will never sell those products…as long as France does not apologise. France insulted our Prophet,” Mohamed told Reuters.

Russian police detained around 15 people in Moscow after dozens gathered outside the French Embassy to protest against Macron. Some of the protesters stamped on portraits of Macron and chanted “Allahu Akbar, according to Reuters.

Several leaders in Asia, including Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, expressed solidarity with Macron and France, Reuters said.

“It is just the most callous and cowardly and vicious act of barbarism by terrorists and should be condemned in the strongest possible way,” Morrison said. “We share values (with France). We stand for the same things.”

He also condemned as absurd comments by ex-Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohammad that Muslims had a right to be angry and kill “millions of French people for the massacres of the past”. Mahathir said Friday that his comments were taken out of context and criticizes Facebook, Twitter for ‘deliberately’ deleting parts of his statement on Islamophobia.

The Qatar World Cup: Dreaming of Bridging the Gulf Rift

James M. Dorsey

With the 2022 World Cup in Qatar only two years away, and a resolution of the three-year-old Gulf rift nowhere in sight, government officials, soccer governance executives, and pundits are playing with the notion that the tournament could serve as an icebreaker in the dispute between Qatar and its detractors, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain.

It is a notion that is grounded in the long-standing illusion that soccer can drive events and in and of itself build bridges, even if parties are unwilling or unable to negotiate a resolution of their differences.

Sports in general and soccer in particular have only built political bridges in environments in which sports was just one node in a far broader, politically enabled process that sought to engineer a rapprochement. Perhaps the most obvious example of this was US–Chinese ping pong diplomacy in the early 1970s that helped engineer a thaw in relations between Washington and Beijing.

More typical examples are soccer creating a fleeting sense of unity or warming up, only for situations to revert to the status ante quo of confrontation, violence, and war. That is what happened in December 1914 when Germany and Britain declared a local ceasefire to play a match and then went back to fighting a world war for four more years.

It is also the story of Iraqis of all stripes rejoicing on the streets of Baghdad in 2007 after their country won the AFC Asian Cup, only to revert days later to years of sectarian infighting.

Fueling the illusion that the World Cup potentially is a central factor is the fact that the UAE has for the past decade sought to engineer a withdrawal of Qatar’s World Cup hosting rights.

As the UAE stepped up its campaign, some prominent Emiratis have suggested that a surrender or sharing of those rights with other Gulf states could put an end to the economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar imposed by its detractors in 2017.

“If the World Cup leaves Qatar, Qatar’s crisis will be over … because the crisis is created to get away from it,” said former top UAE security official, Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan.

A mitigating impact of the World Cup on the rift in the Gulf would at best amount to the Gulf equivalent of the 1914 World War One ceasefire, or the temporary sense of unity in Iraq.

The World Cup would hardly help Saudi Arabia and the UAE save face, given that the rift was designed to force Qatar to subjugate itself to the dictates of the two states. Nor would it solve or contain what UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed sees as an existential threat: Qatar’s support for political Islam, its alliance with Turkey, and the existence of Al Jazeera as a free-wheeling television network.

The joker in the pack could be next month’s US presidential election. As president, Joe Biden is likely to be less protective and more critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as well as Emirati Prince Mohammed’s military interventions and politically repressive rule at home.

Mr. Biden may also be more inclined to manage the use by Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent the UAE, of US-made weaponry in the Yemen war.

The World Cup could play a role in an environment in which the two crown princes seek to accommodate a Biden administration. That would reinforce the notion that sports and soccer are useful bridge builders only when the circumstances and political will mitigate towards bridge building.

Casualties mount in Armenian-Azeri war as US-brokered ceasefire collapses

Alex Lantier

Casualties are mounting rapidly in the war between the former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan over control of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. The conflict, which erupted in the run-up to the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, led to a 1988-1994 war that claimed 30,000 lives and forced over one million to flee their homes.

Thousands have already died in this year’s conflict, which broke out again on September 27, as both sides deploy heavy weapons and bomb each other’s populations. On October 10 and 18, Moscow brokered ceasefires between Armenia and Azerbaijan in an attempt to halt the fighting that failed only hours after going into effect. This week, Washington made its own failed attempt at brokering a cease-fire, which collapsed as Azeri forces advance into Armenian-held territory.

US officials tried to negotiate a deal after an appeal by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Last week, Putin declared in a televised meeting: “There are a lot of casualties from both sides, more than 2,000 from each side.” He said the number of deaths was “nearing 5,000,” a far higher number than what has been publicly admitted by either side, and said he speaks “on the phone several times a day” with both Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azeri President Ilham Aliyev. Putin called on Washington to “work in unison” with Moscow to end the Caucasus fighting.

Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and Azeri Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov traveled to Washington in October and met with Deputy Secretary of State Stephen E. Biegun. The next day, the US State Department issued a statement praising the “intensive negotiations” it had overseen and announcing a “humanitarian ceasefire” taking effect “at 08:00 a.m. local time on October 26, 2020.”

In this image taken from footage released by Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry on Sunday, Sept. 27, 2020, Azerbaijan's soldiers fire from a mortar at the contact line of the self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan. (Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry via AP)

US President Donald Trump published a tweet congratulating the US officials for negotiating the deal. “Many lives will be saved. Proud of my team [Secretary of State Mike Pompeo] & Steve Biegun & [National Security Council] for getting the deal done!”

Azeri officials however accused Armenian forces of shelling the town of Terter in “gross violation” of the ceasefire only minutes after the deal went into effect, while Armenian officials denied this and alleged that Azeri artillery had fired on their troops after the ceasefire went into effect.

Deadly attacks on civilians are mounting. On Wednesday, Azeri officials accused Armenia of firing Smerch missiles with cluster bomb warheads at the Azeri city of Barda. The attack reportedly hit a densely populated civilian neighborhood, killing at least 25 and wounding dozens more.

Armenian officials in turn accused Azeri forces of firing five missiles at Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, including one which destroyed the town’s maternity hospital. “This war crime, which is a gross violation of international humanitarian law, customary law, clearly shows that Azerbaijan’s target in Artsakh is the people—infants, mothers, the elderly,” the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared.

Azeri forces are advancing through the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave towards the Lachin Pass, which connects the enclave to Armenia proper. They have closed the distance between their troops and the pass from over 60 to 30 kilometers, placing the road link between Armenia and the Karabakh in range of Azeri heavy artillery. One report in the Bangkok Post claimed that Azeri troops had in fact already seized the pass—which would mean that half the civilian population of 146,000 that has not fled would be trapped, largely cut off from resupply.

There are several reports that Turkish and Israeli drones sold to Azerbaijan have given it a decisive military edge over Armenian forces. Hikmet Hajiyev, an Azeri official, told the Financial Times: “What we see is that there was a factor of invincibility that Armenia had tried to propagate over many years… but they relied too much on old military doctrine and thinking: tanks, heavy artillery and fortifications. It simply reminded us of the second world war. Instead, mobile forces, drone technology and a modern approach has been applied by us.”

The FT also cited Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute think-tank, who said: “The Armenians have been caught flat-footed. One side is deploying modern weaponry, and the other is using weaponry from the 1970s and 1980s.” Watling added that given Azeri skill in using drones against Armenia, “it’s obvious that they have received significant levels of advice from Turkey.”

In this war, the nationalist conflicts encouraged by the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union come together with the explosive geopolitical conflicts triggered by three decades of imperialist war since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. While Turkey aggressively backs the ethnic-Turkic Azeris, Russia and Iran have indicated sympathies for Armenia while trying to remain more neutral.

Tensions are mounting between these major regional powers, which are already in bitter conflict as a result of the decade-long NATO war in Syria. While the Turkish government supports NATO-backed Sunni Islamist militias aiming to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Russia and Iran have both deployed forces to Syria to support the Assad regime against the NATO powers. The longstanding Armenia-Azeri conflict over the Karabakh is further inflaming these tensions, which have seen Turkish and Russian forces directly clash inside Syria.

Azerbaijan’s increasingly powerful position in the conflict is stepping up pressure on the Russian and Iranian governments. After Azeri and Armenian shells and missiles landed in Iran, the Iranian government on Tuesday strengthened its air defense along its borders with Azerbaijan and Armenia. On Wednesday, it deployed ground troops to reinforce the border, as Iranian official Abbas Araghchi began a tour to visit Azeri, Armenian and Russian officials to try to work out a ceasefire.

This came as Moscow, who has a military base at Gyumri in Armenia, deployed border guards to the Armenian border with the Karabakh. This is apparently aimed at discouraging Azeri forces from launching an invasion of Armenia if they conquer the Karabakh.

Moscow and Tehran are both increasingly concerned at multiple reports that Syrian Islamist militias and Turkish private security forces are sending Islamists to Azerbaijan to fight Armenia. There are also unconfirmed reports that the Al Qaeda-linked Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), recruited among Muslims of China’s Uighur minority in Xinjiang, are deploying to Azerbaijan. These deployments all raise the question of whether CIA-backed Islamist militias could be sent to exploit religious or ethnic conflicts inside Russia, Iran or conceivably China.

These conflicts underlying the Azeri-Armenian war are made all the more explosive by the uncertainty hanging over the US presidential elections, what foreign policy American imperialism will pursue after those elections, and whether it will attack Iran. The Al Monitor news site noted: “Azerbaijan is supported by both Israel and Turkey, which causes concern for Iran, and therefore Iran has additional urgency in wanting to end the fighting as soon possible for fear of giving either country more influence on its borders, should a wider war break out.”

These conflicts underscore the extraordinary danger of escalation posed by the war in the Caucasus, and the necessity to mobilize workers and youth internationally in a socialist, anti-war movement against the risk of a large-scale regional or global war triggered by the conflicts in the region.

Hurricane Zeta leaves 2.6 million without power, kills six as record breaking US storm season continues

Alex Findijs

Hurricane Zeta made landfall west of Grand Isle, Louisiana Wednesday at 5 p.m. local time as a Category 2 hurricane with winds reaching 110 mph. Weakening to a tropical storm, it continued to tear across the American South on Thursday before dissipating over Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean Thursday night.

As of Friday, the storm had left 2.6 million people without power across seven states and killed at least six.

In New Orleans, the storm was the strongest in recorded history to have its eye pass directly over the city. Approximately 80 percent of the city of 390,000 people was left without power and it could take 3-5 days before it is fully restored.

Several states, including Louisiana, Georgia and North Carolina, saw early voting polling sites disrupted by power outages throughout the day on Thursday. Friday, October 30, is the last day for early voting in Georgia, prompting calls for the Governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, to extend the deadline through 9 p.m. on Friday night.

Hurricane Zeta on October 28, 2020 (NASA)

Early voting cannot be extended by a day in Georgia, but each county can choose their own hours. This will leave tens of thousands of voters to wait in line and hope their polling places remain open long enough into the evening.

Zeta is the twenty-seventh named cyclone of 2020, tied with 2005 for the second highest recorded number in a year. It is also the record breaking eleventh hurricane to make landfall on the continental United States; the previous record was nine set 104 years ago.

Zeta was a remarkable storm in an exceptional cyclone season.

Only two other tropical storms since 1850 have landed as far west along the Gulf Coast this late in the year according to meteorologist Matt Lanza. Additionally, according to AccuWeather Senior Weather Editor Jesse Ferrell, no tropical storm has ever traveled across Northwestern South Carolina and Southwestern North Carolina in or after October.

While the 2020 hurricane season was expected to be above average, the number of tropical storms has defied all expectations.

On April 2, the Colorado State University Tropical Meteorology Project forecast 16 named storms and eight hurricanes. On May 21, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published a prediction of an above-normal season with a 70 percent chance of 13 to 19 named storms, including six to ten hurricanes and three to six major hurricanes.

By August 6, NOAA had updated its forecast to an “extremely active” season with 19 to 25 named storms and 11 hurricanes.

With a month left in the hurricane season and the possibility of further storms forming as late as December, it is very likely that 2020 will become the most active hurricane season in recorded history.

There are two main causes for this: a developing La Niña event and global climate change.

La Niña is part of a climate pattern known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). El Niño is a warming event in the ocean off the coast of South America along the equator. This causes wetter conditions in the Caribbean and Central and South America, and results in a weakening of the conditions for hurricane formation in the Atlantic.

During a La Niña event, colder water rises to the surface along the South American coast, resulting from stronger trade winds and ocean currents pushing warm water west. When this occurs, it slows the progression of winds from the Atlantic to the Pacific, giving hurricanes more time to form and strengthen as they move into the Caribbean.

A La Niña event has been forming since August and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has given a 90 percent probability that it will persist through January at a weak to moderate rating.

The La Niña event highlights the dangers of climate change. The WMO predicts an average decline in the surface temperature of the Pacific off the South American coast of one degree Celsius during this La Niña. This seemingly small drop in temperature is expected to cause drier and warmer conditions in parts of Central America and the Southern United States, while causing wetter and colder conditions in the Northern United States.

As average ocean temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, the effect on hurricanes will be significant.

Rising ocean temperatures are not directly related to the number of tropical storms that form, but they are related to their severity. According to Yale Climate Connections, a one degree Fahrenheit rise in ocean temperature can cause a 15-20 mph rise in wind speed as a hurricane develops.

According to NOAA, a two degree Celsius rise in ocean temperatures could result in a 10-15 percent increase in storm rainfall, an up to 10 percent increase in storm severity, and a larger number of storms reaching Category 4 and 5 levels.

This will have even more devastating effects as storms slow down, allowing them to build strength for longer. A 2018 study by James P. Kossin found that tropical storms have slowed by about 10 percent between 1949 and 2016. This means that storms spend more time in one place, dumping more rain and subjecting areas to prolonged exposure to high winds and storm surges.

It is unclear how exactly climate change will impact ENSO events, largely due to their natural variability, but recent research published by the National Center for Atmospheric Research concludes that “the impact of an El Niño/La Niña event of a given strength is enhanced by mean climate warming, with accompanying increases in the probability and severity of regional temperature extremes.”

With hurricanes increasing in severity, and the potential for more severe La Niña events (which can last for up to three years) the possibility of more frequent and violent storm events is greatly enhanced.

The progressing climate disaster facing humanity is the product of the ruling class’ opposition to any significant reduction in carbon emissions or substantial restriction on environmental degradation.

In the United States, both the Republican and Democratic parties have been active participants in protecting the profits of capitalists who pillage the planet for profit.

The Obama administration protected BP following the Deepwater Horizon spill of 2012, then proceeded with deregulating offshore drilling despite the clear dangers. It also pursued the Dakota Access Pipeline, deploying federal agents to suppress the protests of environmental groups and Native American protesters attempting to protect their water sources and sacred lands.

Fracking was expanded under the Obama administration, as well as access of fossil fuel companies to public lands. The Trump administration has garnered criticism for its similar but more aggressive policy. However, the groundwork was laid by Obama and Biden when they opened 5.7 million acres of federal land for exploitation.

Now, the Trump administration has dismantled already weak environmental regulations with little to no resistance from the Democrats. The Green New Deal, a non-binding and nationalist program, was ultimately rejected by the Democratic Party, including by most of its own sponsors.

The fight against climate change cannot be entrusted to either capitalist party. It is clear that they are opposed to any genuine attempt to fight climate change and its effects, as this would threaten the profits of their handlers.

The working class must take this fight into its own hands by fighting for socialism, transforming the global economy to serve social need and launch a global campaign to stop and reverse the effects of capitalist pollution.

Mass layoffs in the US as states face unprecedented budget crisis

Shannon Jones

A growing number of mass layoffs across the US point to greater economic hardship for millions as the deadly coronavirus pandemic resurges. Major corporations recently announcing cuts include Walt Disney (28,000), Raytheon (19,000) and Boeing (7,000).

Temporary furloughs related to lockdown measures are giving way to permanent job cuts as it becomes clear that there is no end in sight to the economic crisis triggered by the pandemic. Among the sectors hardest hit by mass layoffs are aviation, travel, entertainment and the oil industry. Meanwhile, state and local governments are facing unprecedented budget shortfalls greater than anything seen since the Great Depression and portend devastating cuts to jobs and social services.

A man wearing a mask walks by a New York department store, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2020. The discount department store chain has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and is closing its 13 stores. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

While new unemployment claims fell to 751,000 last week, the lowest level since March, the number is still enormous, three times higher than the pre-pandemic average. Overall, the economy has lost 10.7 million jobs since the start of the recession. The number receiving unemployment benefits in the week ending October 10 was 22.7 million. Some 14 million workers out of that total were receiving benefits under Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation or Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. Both are set to expire at the end of the year.

The $600 supplemental unemployment payments have long ago expired and the additional $300 weekly benefit allocated by the Trump administration has also been exhausted.

Drastic declines in revenue due to the pandemic have created massive state budget shortfalls. According to Moody Analytics, state budget deficits from 2020 through 2022 could amount to about $434 billion. This would of necessity lead to huge state workforce reductions and the elimination of vital services if not made up through taxes or federal subsidies.

To put the number in perspective, it is more than the entire K-12 education budget for all states combined and more than twice the amount spent on roads and transportation infrastructure.

Nevada, Louisiana and Florida have the deepest shortfalls when measured against their 2019 budgets. The state of Connecticut is projecting a total revenue decline of $8.4 billion through the 2024 budget year, which is more than twice its cash reserves built up over previous years. Already many states have begun imposing layoffs as well as instituting pay cuts.

While the unemployed face eviction and social services are starved of funds, US billionaires are enjoying a massive windfall. The Institute for Policy Studies reported the wealth of 643 of America’s richest billionaires rose from $2.95 trillion to $3.8 trillion between March 18 and September 15, almost $1 trillion. This figure is more than twice the entire budget deficit facing the states.

The largest announced layoff this week was by Walt Disney Company, which plans to cut 28,000 jobs at its theme parks. Ten thousand of those cuts will hit the city of Anaheim, California. About 135,000 are employed at theme parks in California and most of those workers have been furloughed since the start of the pandemic due to restrictions on large gatherings.

Defense contractor and aerospace company Raytheon Technologies is cutting 19,000 jobs, including 15,000 staff and 4,000 contract positions. Most of the cuts will come at its Pratt & Whitney and Collins Aerospace divisions that have suffered due to the sharp decline in air travel. However, despite the downturn in aircraft orders Raytheon still made $264 million in profits for the third quarter of 2020, beating analysts’ expectations.

Aircraft maker Boeing is laying off another 7,000 workers on top of the 19,000 slashed earlier this year. The company said it intends to reduce overall staffing to 130,000 by the end of 2021, which would mean an additional 7,000 job cuts on top of normal attrition. The job cuts have come despite the fact that the aircraft and defense giant received $17 billion in federal bailout money.

The company said this week that it expects to get the OK from federal regulators to resume shipments of its 737 MAX airliner that was grounded due to a deadly design flaw tied to crashes that killed 346 passengers and crew.

Oil giant ExxonMobil is cutting 1,900 jobs, a move it says is due to the impact of the pandemic. Most of the cuts will come at the company’s Houston, Texas management offices and will be carried out through “voluntary and involuntary programs.” It cited efforts to improve efficiency and reduce costs as the driving force behind the reductions. Earlier in October the company announced 1,600 job cuts at its European affiliates. ExxonMobil says job cuts could total 15 percent of its 88,300 global workforce.

Petrochemical companies have been the beneficiaries of some $5 billion in handouts under the CARES Act, the money not tied to any specific requirements to preserve jobs. Marathon Oil, for instance, plans to cash in an extra $411 million in tax refunds under the CARES Act while it laid off 2,000 workers September 30.

San Francisco-based Wells Fargo bank and financial services firm has begun issuing layoff notices to employees. In a statement to the media, Steve Carlson, vice president of corporate communications, said, “the company has been transparent about a multi-year effort that will include workforce reductions in nearly all of the company’s business lines and locations.”

Wells Fargo employs 266,000 people. According to an anonymous source speaking to the website Pensions & Investments, the company plans an overall 20 to 25 percent workforce reduction or, 50,000 to 66,000 jobs worldwide. Many of the cuts would come through the closure of branches and a heavier reliance on online and telebanking.

According to one report, New York state alone, with a population of 19 million, has lost 1 million private sector jobs over the past year. The cuts have been concentrated in the New York City metropolitan area, with the counties of Nassau, Suffolk, Orange, Rockland and Westchester as well as New York City itself accounting for 60 percent of the total.

All told, New York state has seen more job cuts this year than during the last six years combined. The list of layoffs includes 2,220 separate filings, all but 54 occurring in the eight months of the pandemic. Layoffs peaked in April as the death toll from the pandemic exploded.

More recent layoffs include 585 workers at Remington Arms in Ilion, New York. The company was recently purchased by Roundhill Group after going into bankruptcy under its previous owner. The United Mine Workers said the company is refusing to pay severance and vacation time as required under the collective bargaining agreement. Remington is the oldest US gun manufacturer.

Both parties in Washington have sought to place the cost of the COVID-19 pandemic on the working class while effecting a further mass transfer of wealth to the supper rich. While the ruling class has responded to the pandemic with criminal negligence and incompetence it has been extremely efficient in looking after the needs of the billionaires. The resources exist to fight the pandemic and provide for pressing social needs. This requires the working class to adopt a socialist strategy directed at expropriating the wealth of the billionaires and utilizing society’s resources on a rational and scientific basis.

Large bonuses awarded to executives of bailed-out US companies

Kevin Martinez

Since the start of the pandemic, large corporations, including Hertz Global, JCPenney and Neiman Marcus, have awarded their executives millions in payouts just before filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to court documents and regulatory filings obtained by the Washington Post.

Altogether at least 18 companies, many of which were bailed out with taxpayer money under the CARES Act, paid out more than $135 million to executives while listing $79 billion in debts to landlords, suppliers and other creditors. Experts say the timing of the payouts was calculated to bypass a 2005 law forbidding such actions by companies that are under bankruptcy protection.

While these companies awarded their executives anywhere from $600,000, as in the case of retailer New York & Co., to Chesapeake Energy’s $25 million, they laid off tens of thousands of workers, who on average earned less than $29,000 a year.

One of the laid-off workers interviewed by the Post was Utobia Horbuckle, a grandmother who worked at the family restaurant chain Chuck E. Cheese’s corporate offices near Dallas. Her part-time job barely allowed her to afford a motel room. She was saving to move into a single-bedroom apartment with her daughter and three grandchildren.

Her hopes were dashed after being furloughed from her $12.50-an-hour job on March 17 and laid off six months later, along with dozens of her colleagues. Chuck E. Cheese’s parent company had filed for bankruptcy with $2 billion in debt.

Chief Executive David McKillips, who had been with the company for less than five months, was awarded $1.3 million, part of nearly $3 million in bonuses he shared with other top executives. The parent firm, CEC Entertainment, told the Post the bonuses were a way to retain employees “while providing them with financial stability.”

Hornbuckle was quoted as saying, “Of course it makes me mad. But that’s the way of the world now. Big corporations do what they want to, and the rest of us—the peons, the small people—fall off our feet.”

She and her daughter, who works at a day care center, pay $268 a month for their motel room and rely on food stamps to make ends meet. She continues to apply for jobs, her $600-a-week supplemental unemployment benefit having long since expired.

Many companies awarded their CEO bonuses only a few days before declaring bankruptcy. Extraction Oil & Gas paid out $6.7 million in retention bonuses a week before its June bankruptcy filing, while laying off more than 120 employees, about 40 percent of its total workforce.

JCPenney awarded its top four executives $7.5 million only five days before it declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The retail chain has not turned an annual profit in almost a decade and is saddled with more than $8 billion in debt. The company is now starting to close almost 150 stores and lay off thousands of workers.

Car rental company Hertz argued in bankruptcy court that its bonuses were meant as an “incentive” for executives to stay while the company reorganized. In its Chapter 11 filing in May, the company asked the court permission to pay out another $14.6 million in bonuses, on top of the $16.2 million already paid out before declaring bankruptcy.

The judge rejected Hertz’s request and called it “offensive,” but later approved a smaller payout of $8.2 million on the condition that the company met “certain financial goals.” Hertz has more than $24 billion in debt and has already laid off a third of its workforce, more than 11,000 employees.

European Central Bank set to expand bond-buying program

Nick Beams

The European Central Bank has given a clear indication, following the meeting of its governing council on Thursday, that it will pump more money into the financial system in response to an expected worsening in the state of the European economy in the current quarter.

The anticipated downturn is the outcome of rising COVID-19 infections and deaths, following the lifting of restrictions in the summer, as part of the drive by capitalist governments around the world to open up their economies,

In its analysis, presented by its president Christine Lagarde, the ECB said the resurgence of the virus presented renewed challenges to public health and the growth prospects for the euro, as well as the global economy.

Stocks (Credit: QuoteInspector.com)

“Incoming information signals that the euro area recovery is losing momentum more rapidly than expected, after a strong yet partial and uneven, rebound in economic activity over the summer months,” she said.

Of course, there was nothing in her remarks that assigned any blame to governments, whose “return to work” policies, without regard to public health, have produced the worsening situation on both the health and economic fronts, despite the clear warnings that this would be precisely the effect.

Lagarde laid the groundwork for further ECB intervention to support corporations and the financial system. Consumers were “cautious in the light of the pandemic and its ramifications for employment and earnings” and “weaker balance sheets and increased uncertainty about the economic outlook are weighing on business investment,” she said.

Significantly Lagarde noted that besides low energy prices, there were “muted price pressures in the context of weak demand and significant slack in labour and product markets.” The ECB’s injection of more money into the financial system has to be justified on the basis of lifting inflation to or near a target of 2 percent.

The ECB maintained its present settings on interest rates and monetary policy, but indicated there would be further easing when it next meets in December.

Lagarde said that despite the ECB having provided “crucial support” in the current environment, the economic risks in the current environment were “clearly tilted to the downside.”

It would carry out a “thorough reassessment of the economic outlook and the balance of risks” and “recalibrate its instruments, as appropriate, to respond to the unfolding situation and to ensure that financing conditions remain favourable to support the economic recovery and counteract the negative impact of the pandemic on the projected inflation path.”

During the question and answer session of her press conference, Lagarde emphasised it was “necessary to take action” and that staff had started work on “potential adjustments” to its policies.

When the pandemic struck, the ECB set up an emergency bond-buying fund of €1.35 trillion, almost half of which has already been spent. There is a widely-held expectation that the fund will be expanded by at least €500, and its operation will be extended from June 2021 until the end of next year.

Commenting on the bank’s statement to the Financial Times, Paul Diggle, senior economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments, said: “This is as close as the ECB can come to pre-committing to further easing in December.”

In a further indication of more easing, Lagarde said the ECB was “very attentive” to bank lending, after a majority of lenders in its quarterly survey had indicated they intended to cut back on lending to households and businesses.

Lagarde noted that, according to the survey, credit conditions had tightened, and, while banks indicated they had adequate funds available, “higher risk perceptions could weigh on their attitude towards loan creation.”

The markets received the ECB statement favourably with an increase in purchases of government bonds. This sent interest rates lower (the price of bonds and interest rates have an inverse relationship) and prompted a rise in stock market indexes, which had been falling over the previous week.

The ECB reported that the euro area had contracted 11.8 percent in the second quarter, with a sharp decline in April. The third quarter recovery only made up half the losses incurred in the first six months of the year.

Its forecast for the fourth quarter is presently around 3 percent. But with the resurgence of the pandemic and the re-imposition of restrictions, this figure is in considerable doubt, with economists warning the region faces the prospect of a double-dip recession.

Further signs of that prospect emerged yesterday, as data showed the eurozone experienced the third consecutive month of deflation, with the price of consumer goods falling by 0.3 percent. Even more significantly, a five-month improvement in the labour market reversed, as jobless numbers rose by 75,000.

Largarde repeated earlier calls for governments to provide fiscal support and for the European Union’s €750 billion recovery fund—a mixture of loans and grants to EU members—to “become operational without delay.” The fund was agreed in principle earlier this year but has not been put into effect, because of conflicts among member states over its operational details.

With the ECB set to further expand its bond-buying program, the extent of the intervention already being carried out was highlighted by calculations made by Citigroup, reported in the Financial Times this week.

Examining the draft plans of EU member states, it found that, even without an increase of €500 billion in December, the ECB “will buy up a greater quantity of debt than all the new bonds hitting the market.”

In other words, the situation has now developed where one arm of the capitalist state—national governments—issues debt, while another arm—the central bank—buys it up. This process is not confined to Europe. It is already well developed in Japan, where the Bank of Japan is virtually the market for government bonds, and in the US, where interventions by the Fed mean it has become the backstop for all areas of the financial system.

Within the confines of the capitalist profit system, these developments are a contradictory expression of the “socialisation” of the commanding financial heights of the economy.

They point to the fact that the so-called “free market” system, touted by the ideologues of capitalism as the only viable form of economic organisation, has completely broken down. The fight for a socialist program—taking the major corporations and the financial system into public ownership, under democratic control—is thus rooted in the objective development of the capitalist economy itself.

AT&T slashes jobs, leaves areas without broadband internet while funneling dividends to Wall Street

Mark Witkowski

AT&T, the world’s largest telecommunications company, is continuing to slash jobs across its business units in spite of strong demand for broadband internet access due to large numbers of people working from home. The company also increased its dividend payments for the 36th consecutive year, paying out approximately $14 billion annually to Wall Street.

AT&T was among the biggest beneficiaries of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 pocketing an estimated $42 billion tax windfall. The company repeatedly claimed the tax cut would lead to job growth and major investments in its network. In reality it has cut approximately 41,000 jobs, while failing to roll out new high speed internet services in much of its franchise area. Although AT&T has used the pandemic as a pretext to slash jobs, it had already been cutting on average 4,500 jobs each quarter over the last two years.

Unionized wire line jobs in the Midwestern US have been particularly hard hit by the latest round of job cuts. Thirty-five hundred jobs held by Communications Workers of America (CWA) members have been eliminated in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Indiana with more cuts planned. On Oct. 1 AT&T stopped taking orders for new installations of its DSL service in the Midwestern states where layoffs have been announced.

The CWA has done nothing to oppose the job cuts other than engage in a various stunts aimed at focusing workers’ attention on fruitless appeals to Democratic politicians. One involved a letter writing campaign to AT&T CEO John Stankey by prominent Democrats including Rashida Tlaib and Andy Levin of Michigan, Wisconsin Senator Chris Larson, and the mayor of Youngstown, Ohio, Jamael Tito Brown. The toothless and ineffectual letter pleaded with AT&T to suspend job cuts.

In reality, the CWA is collaborating with the company in enforcing the cuts. Last August, the CWA shut down a strike by 22,000 AT&T workers and forced through a sellout contract which included givebacks on medical coverage and failed to address working conditions and hours, two of the most important issues for workers. This follows its sellout of the Verizon strike in 2016 and the isolation of the Frontier strike in 2018.

Growth of its network and the expansion of the new technologies has been slow while the company has cut back on its legacy services. Wall Street is pressuring AT&T to cut jobs and funnel funds from operations to investors. Earlier this year it announced nearly $6 billion in cuts. According to the Dallas Morning News much of the impetus for the cuts came from activist investor Elliott Management, a New York hedge fund that acquired a minority stake in the company in 2019.

AT&T has held back on deploying new higher-speed fiber optic technology in many parts of its service territory even as its outmoded DSL network experiences significant reliability issues. DSL (Digital Subscriber Line), is still the only choice for millions of customers in rural and exurban areas of the country. DSL is a data transmission technology developed in the 1980s and deployed widely in the 1990s by wire-line telephone companies which utilizes sound frequencies above the dynamic range of the human voice to transmit signals over a traditional voice wire line. Using traditional landline phone wiring, it transfers data at rates much slower than coaxial, fiber optics or many wireless options.

Telecom companies tend to avoid investing in new infrastructure in rural areas because in sparsely populated areas miles of infrastructure have to be built to serve relatively few customers. They also tend to avoid impoverished areas where few can afford premium services.

A 2018 report by the US Census found particularly low broadband internet subscription rates in many counties in the upper Plains, the Southwest and South, as well as poorer inner city areas around the country. Affluent areas on both coasts had the highest rates.

The fact that the telecoms have ever provided service to rural or poor areas to begin with was the result of regulations from the 1930s requiring universal service. The industry was allowed to function as a monopoly in profitable areas, so long as it used some of the revenues to provide service to less profitable areas.

In the 1990s the Clinton administration deregulated the telecom industry, thus giving the profit motive even greater influence over how the industry directs its resources while diluting the universal service mandate. As with every other industry, decisions are based not on the needs of the public or even technical and practical considerations, but rather on the short-sighted profit demands of Wall Street.

Building out an advanced fiber-optic network over a wide geographic area can take years to complete, meaning significant upfront capitalist investments will not provide a return in the short term.

But with Wall Street demanding massive profits each quarter, companies are punished in the form of having their share prices driven down if they do not comply, leaving critical infrastructure investments unfulfilled.

However, this is not unique to AT&T. Verizon, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekon, Telefonica, to name just a few, have all slashed jobs in recent years to increase their profits while failing to make true broadband service available to all.

Telecommunications networks provide the basis for a globally integrated economy, and everything from health care and manufacturing to logistics and education are dependent on them. But the further development and proper maintenance of these networks is impeded by the profit motive, demonstrating the need for workers to fight to place them under public ownership.

Australian ruling elite again demands premature lifting of pandemic restrictions

Mike Head

Despite the intensifying global pandemic, agitation by Australian big business, media empires and the political establishment for a full lifting of all restrictions reached a new crescendo this week, following the Victorian state Labor government’s moves to substantially lift its three-month partial lockdown.

The fury, driven directly by corporate profit interests, further intensified yesterday, after the state Labor governments in Queensland and Western Australia announced only limited removals of their border controls, largely keeping out residents of the two most infected cities, Melbourne and Sydney.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce declared the Queensland border decision “ridiculous,” and threatened to cancel thousands of planned flights into the state. Village Roadshow Theme Parks, based on Queensland’s Gold Coast, was the crudest in asserting its money-making concerns. Chief operating officer Bikash Randhawa said the “entire arrangement is bullshit.”

People queuing for coronavirus tests at Royal Melbourne Hospital in March (Credit: WSWS)

A similar lifting of safety measures caused the catastrophes now engulfing hospitals throughout Europe, the United States and many other parts of the world, where the toll of infection and death exceeds that of the “first wave” of COVID-19 in March and April.

A similar disaster could result in Australia, as more infections inevitably reach its shores, with doctors warning that public health systems still lack the resources to deal with a rapid resurgence. That is what happened in Victoria in July and August, when infections suddenly soared to over 700 a day, overwhelming the contact tracing system.

As a result, Australia’s officially-recorded infection cases rose to 27,391 by yesterday, with 907 deaths, 819 of them in Victoria. The lockdown in Victoria eventually contained the surge, only to see the ruling elite again demand the scrapping of most safety measures.

The dangers of a new surge have been on display in Melbourne’s northern suburbs over the past week, where 39 confirmed cases sprang from an infection suffered by a nurse at Box Hill Hospital, part of Victoria’s underfunded public health system. Likewise in Western Australia, the state’s Australian Medical Association president Andrew Miller warned that the health system was not ready for large outbreaks of COVID-19, and that the testing, tracking and tracing capacity had to be improved.

As far as the ruling class is concerned, however, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’s announcement on Monday of major concessions to the corporate campaign—such as allowing retail shops, restaurants, bars and other high-risk hospitality businesses to reopen—was nowhere near enough.

According to big business, crowd capacity limits and other safety precautions must be substantially swept aside, and much faster than Andrews indicated, and every state government must end their partial border shutdowns, so that profit-making can resume unhindered.

Liberal-National Prime Minister Scott Morrison gave full voice to this demand in parliament on Tuesday, declaring that there must be no return to lockdowns. “We cannot look to a future of lockdowns as a way of managing this virus,” he insisted. In other words, regardless of the likelihood of future COVID-19 outbreaks, no shutdown measures can be countenanced.

Morrison’s demand was endorsed by the Business Council of Australia (BCA), the Australian Industry Group and tourism chiefs. Australian Tourism Industry Council managing director Simon Westaway said it was imperative for Christmas holiday bookings that borders be opened as soon as possible.

BCA chief executive Jennifer Westacott, representing the largest companies, said reopening domestic borders by Christmas would be a “$3 billion gift to Australians.” She added: “Arbitrary border closures are a job-destroying blunt weapon.”

With slogans such as these, big business is cynically claiming to champion the interests of separated families, jobless workers and ruined small business operators, who face mass unemployment, bankruptcy and impoverishment.

By putting an unsubstantiated $3 billion tag on the alleged economic benefits of a full reopening, Westacott gave away the aim of this agitation. It has nothing to do with any concern for families, workers or small business.

On the contrary, the corporate giants are intent on exploiting the pandemic to further radically restructure the economy. They are slashing jobs, wages, working conditions and social spending, and driving smaller business rivals to the wall, all with the help of a partnership forged in months of backrooms talks between the Morrison government and the trade unions.

Once again, misleading myths are being peddled that Australia has exceptionally succeeded in containing the virus. In May, having bailed out the corporate elite to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, the “National Cabinet” of Liberal-National and Labor government leaders agreed to a premature and dangerous lifting of restrictions, claiming to have “flattened” the coronavirus “curve.”

Instead of the elimination strategy strongly urged by epidemiologists, the de facto coalition government opted for a “containment” policy, under which the virus would be allowed to continue to circulate. The government leaders claimed that infections could be kept at manageable levels through contact tracing and testing.

On June 3, the Socialist Equality Party issued a statement, “Oppose the premature lifting of COVID-19 safety restrictions!” The party warned: “Via decrees agreed by the so-called national cabinet, Liberal-National and Labor governments alike are gambling with the lives of the population.” This was quickly vindicated—infection rates climbed steadily in Victoria in June, before erupting in July with hundreds of new cases confirmed every day.

Australian governments have not explicitly embraced the homicidal doctrine of “herd immunity,” adopted by the Trump White House and the Johnson government in Britain. Public health experts globally have condemned the anti-scientific policy of letting the virus infect most of the population.

But the same ruling class calculations of subordinating human life to the requirements of private profits, by “reopening” the economy and getting workers back into workplaces, can be seen in the Australian financial press.

The October 27 editorial in the Australian Financial Review said the “real test” as to whether the Andrews government had abandoned the “cult of elimination” would come “when case numbers inevitably increase and hotspots emerge.”

On the same day, the Australian ramped up the pressure on Gladys Berejiklian, the premier of neighbouring New South Wales, to end the partial closure of the border between the two states. Threateningly, its editorial said, this was a “moment of truth” for Berejiklian, against whom a barrage of corruption-related allegations has been launched this month.

An October 24 feature in the Australian Financial Review laid bare the callous logic of the “reopening” demands. Health editor, Jill Margo’s headline presented the extraordinary question: “Has Australia been too successful in combating COVID-19?”

“With a vaccine months away and new case numbers in the low single digits, the Australian government needs a national plan for living with the virus.” the article’s introduction declared. “Living with the virus” means actively permitting the deadly infections to “percolate through the community” on the false, medically-discredited basis that eventually some level of “herd immunity” will result.

As Margo stated, her article was based on the Great Barrington Declaration, a manifesto by the free-market American Institute for Economic Research, which calls for the abandonment of all measures to contain the pandemic.

This discussion, currently taking place in ruling circles, is a warning of the ruthless readiness of the capitalist class in Australia, like everywhere else, to sacrifice working class lives to boost the fortunes of the wealthy. This underscores the necessity for the working class to take action independently of, and in opposition to, the trade unions.

To protect themselves, workers must form rank-and-file committees in every factory and workplace, fighting to ensure their own health and safety. This poses the necessity for the struggle to overturn the private profit system and transform society along socialist lines.