Iraq’s economic and political crisis threatens to ignite new upheavals

Jean Shaoul

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi has failed to meet any of the social and political demands of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who took to the streets in October last year and forced the resignation of Adel Abdul Mahdi’s government.

His caretaker government, widely viewed as Iraq’s “last chance,” is now discredited and reviled.

The mass demonstrations were the result of growing anger among young people unable to find jobs, under conditions where 60 percent of the population is under 24 and most young people have no work. Over 90 percent of Iraqi jobs are casual, day-labour jobs in the informal sector, with just 10 percent providing regular employment, largely in the public sector and allocated on the basis of Iraq’s sectarian political system.

A wounded protester is carried to receive first aid during clashes with security forces on Rasheed Street in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 28, 2019. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

Repression of the initial protests—more than 560 demonstrators were killed and thousands injured as the government sought to disperse the crowds—led to their mushrooming into a generalised uprising against the conditions of poverty, the failure of essential social services and the endemic corruption in the sectarian-based regime ushered in by the US-UK military occupation after the criminal US-led invasion of 2003.

Successive Iraqi governments have presided over obscene levels of social inequality in a country that in 2009 was the world’s fifth-largest oil producer. Its immense wealth has been looted by the multinational oil corporations and banks as well as Iraq’s politically connected kleptocrats. In May, the UN predicted that poverty would rise to 40 percent of Iraq’s 39 million population because of the pandemic restrictions and falling oil prices. According to ReliefWeb, around 8 percent of households (3 million people) were not getting enough to eat in September.

While al-Kadhimi, a former intelligence chief and a Washington stooge who had promised “justice” for those killed during the protests, has pledged $8,400 for the families to cover funeral and burial expenses, none of those responsible have been prosecuted.

He had also pledged to hold elections next June, but this is looking increasingly unlikely as he has been unable to get agreement on new legislation that would overturn Iraq’s sectarian political system, as demanded by the protest movement.

His government has slipped ever deeper into crises on several fronts. With more than 500,000 COVID-19 cases and nearly 12,000 deaths, hospitals have been overwhelmed. Iraq’s health care system, once the best in the Arab world, was gutted by the 1991 Gulf War, a decade of US sanctions, the 2003 US-led war and occupation of Iraq, and the terrible political sectarian system imposed by Washington. Health care budgets were turned into a mechanism for doling out patronage, while hospitals became a place to die.

The government faces a catastrophic financial crisis and teeters on the brink of insolvency. Dependent upon oil for 95 percent of its revenues—based on a price of $56 a barrel as opposed to the current price of $40—it faces a 45 percent budget cut for 2020, according to parliament’s Economic and Investment Committee. While al-Kadhimi had sought parliament’s approval to borrow $34 billion, parliament sanctioned just $10 billion, barely enough to cover the wages for 4 million government employees, who have seen their salaries delayed for nearly two months, until the end of the year.

As well as adding to the government’s debt, which stood at $133.3 billion in September and constitutes 80 percent of GDP, and interest repayments that consume at least 10 percent of the budget, this has further strained relations with the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), where three out of four workers are paid by the regional government to which the federal government in Baghdad pays $270 million, a reduction from an earlier agreement under which it paid $400 million a month, after the KRG began to export its oil independently.

As the government eats through its foreign currency reserves (under US control in New York) and faces the prospect of having to devalue its currency, it is in urgent need of about $40 billion in external financing. That will only be forthcoming if it falls in line with Washington’s political and economic requirements—curbing the power of Iranian-backed militias and politicians and implementing economic “reforms,” privatisations and above all the slashing of public sector wages and benefits that will further impoverish Iraqi workers and their families.

At a meeting in London last month, Iraq agreed to the establishment of an international financial alliance, to be known as the Iraq Economic Contact Group, consisting of the G-7 countries, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Iraqi Finance Ministry, the Central Bank of Iraq and the Finance Committee, to monitor Iraq’s economic performance, effectively turning Iraq into a colony in all but name.

The cabinet has now approved plans to halve the public sector wage bill and slash the budget deficit, threatening to ignite a mass political upheaval far greater than that of October 2019.

Iraq has become a key political battleground in US imperialism’s militaristic confrontation with Iran, further exacerbating the crisis. This in turn is bound up with Washington’s buildup for “great power” confrontation with China—attempting to use military force to establish a chokehold over the energy resources upon which the Chinese economy depends.

While Baghdad had agreed in mid-2019 to a 20-year deal to supply Beijing with 3 million barrels of oil a month in exchange for Chinese investments in projects to repair Iraq’s war-damaged infrastructure, Alquitisad News cited Ali Saadoun, a member of the parliamentary economy and investment committee, as saying this had been frozen due to pressure from Washington.

In contrast, al-Kadhimi’s government has signed several economic and investment agreements with Saudi Arabia in order to limit Iraq’s dependence upon Iran. The two countries have opened to both goods and people the land border crossing at Arar in Anbar province that was shut after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.

After unilaterally abrogating the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran, the Trump administration has imposed ever-harsher sanctions on Tehran as well as pro-Iran militia leaders and politicians in Iraq as part of its “maximum pressure campaign” designed to bring about regime change. While Iraq, whose economy is inextricably linked to Iran’s, was initially granted repeated six-month waivers, the latest 45-day waiver is set to expire before President Donald Trump leaves office on January 20 and amid threats that the waivers will end completely.

Tensions escalated sharply in January following the targeted assassination in Baghdad of senior Iranian commander Qassem Suleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a prominent member of the Iraqi government and deputy commander of Iraq’s Hashd al-Shaabi, an Iran-backed umbrella organisation of militias. These Shiite militias played the predominant role in the ground fighting against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) which overran western Iraq in 2014, routing US-trained security forces, and have since been incorporated into Iraq’s armed forces. The assassinations further fueled popular hostility to Washington, with mass demonstrations demanding the immediate withdrawal of US troops from the country.

The Trump administration has demanded that Baghdad rein in the Shiite militias. They have repeatedly fired rockets into the Green Zone, the heavily fortified area that houses the US and other embassies as well as US military forces and contractors, and attacked the convoys supplying US facilities in the zone.

In September, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened to close the US embassy in Baghdad as a prelude to US military attacks aimed at “liquidating” Shia militia elements charged with responsibility for attacks on US facilities in the country. He specifically named Kata’ib Hezbollah, which al-Muhandis led before his assassination, and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq.

Despite a détente declared last month, there have been further rocket attacks targeting the US embassy and a nearby military installation in Baghdad, with a previously unknown armed group called Ashab al-Kahf claiming responsibility.

Iran sent General Esmail Ghaani, Suleimani’s successor as head of Iran’s Quds Force, to meet militia and political leaders in Baghdad, reportedly telling them to “stand down to avoid giving Trump the opportunity to initiate a fresh tit-for-tat round of violence.” But Qais al-Khazali, the leader of Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haq, told Iraqi state television that the conditions of the détente had not been met, and that “we will demonstrate the full right to military confrontation with the foreign forces.”

Greece’s hospitals face collapse in the second coronavirus wave

Katerina Selin

The second wave of the pandemic has brought the Greek health care system, which has been bled dry for decades, to the brink of collapse. With death and infection figures skyrocketing, doctors and nurses are sounding the alarm.

Public-sector unions have called for a 24-hour strike for today because they fear the seething mood in the workforce will explode. On November 10, hospital workers organized small protests in Athens, Thessaloniki and other cities, and in October thousands of students went on strike and protested against the Greek government’s criminal coronavirus policies.

Hospital workers test a woman in Athens for Corona, November 23, 2020 (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

With 1,815 deaths and over 95,000 infections among a population of 10.4 million inhabitants, this was the new high point of the pandemic in Greece on Tuesday evening. In November alone, almost twice as many people have already died from the virus than in the entire period from the beginning of the pandemic until October combined. On Saturday, the daily death toll reached a record 108, and 549 people are currently connected to respirators.

Greece was not as badly affected in the first phase of the pandemic as other countries, thanks to a quick and tough lockdown. But since the summer, the numbers have been shooting up because the government, under the right-wing Nea Dimokratia (ND, New Democracy), opened up the economy and schools prematurely and comprehensively.

Only in November was another partial lockdown imposed and schools and kindergartens closed. People are only allowed to leave the house for specified reasons, such as going to work or doctor’s visits. Restaurants, cultural facilities and stores except supermarkets and pharmacies are closed. However, the measures do not include industry, wholesale outlets and hotels and, moreover, they came much too late. The virus was already raging in all parts of society.

According to the Ministry of Health on Friday, at least 82 percent of intensive care beds in Greece are occupied and hospitals will be unable to bear the burden of the new cases. They can only keep their heads above water at the moment because doctors and nursing staff are doing everything they can to make the impossible possible and to keep things going under the most adverse conditions.

The situation is particularly serious in northern Greece. “We are in a desperate state, the intensive care units are full,” Nikos Kapravelos, head of the intensive care unit at the Papanikolaou Hospital in Thessaloniki, warned on the Skai television station. Special trains are standing by in Thessaloniki to transport coronavirus patients to other cities and even to Athens, 500 kilometres away.

Emergency physician Vasilis Tsapas reported to Mega TV that COVID-19 patients had to be ventilated in other rooms, although the conditions there are not as suitable as in the intensive care unit. No preparations had been made to strengthen the health system, Tsapas said.

Treating some, letting others die

The government’s herd immunity policy is driving doctors into the deadly impasse of triage—selecting some patients for treatment and allowing others to die. A shocking case in the northern Greek city of Florina a few days ago shows what this means for people and their loved ones. In an interview with Mega TV, Kostas Ikonomidis described the last hours of his father, who succumbed to the coronavirus in only five days after his diagnosis because no respirator was available for him.

“The situation is tragic because we have reached a point where we have to decide who will live and who will die,” said Ikonomidis. Doctors from the hospital in Florina “told us that there are no intensive care beds in northern Greece, they said, ‘Believe me, even if a bed is found, for example in Thessaloniki or Larissa, they will not give it to your father, who is 73 years old, but choose someone younger who has a higher chance of survival’.” Ikonomidis could only attend his father’s funeral via video link. “I am devastated,” he writes in a Facebook post.

In recent weeks, Greek prisons have also turned into breeding grounds for the virus. More than 100 positive cases and two deaths have been registered in the Diavata prison near Thessaloniki. There, as in other prisons, the virus can run free, because inmates cannot maintain a safe distance due to drastic overcrowding.

The situation is even worse in the overcrowded refugee camps and facilities, where coronavirus can spread like wildfire. On Samos, more than 100 people were infected in early November and were quarantined by being locked into tiny, dirty containers.

At the same time, infections are spreading among hospital staff. According to the state news channel ERT, 1,500 hospital staff were on sick leave because of COVID-19 on Sunday. One week ago, a 42-year-old pneumologist in Athens died of the virus after becoming infected by a patient. Just one day later, a 49-year-old woman died at the Achepa University Hospital in Thessaloniki, where she had worked in radiology.

Since October, the number of infections among children and young people has also increased dramatically. As reported by the television station Open TV, almost 6,000 infections among children under the age of 17 were recorded by November 20—six times as many as by the end of September.

Kostas Imprialos, a pathologist at the Ippokratio Hospital in Thessaloniki, told Open TV, “Recently, we have had many patients in their thirties among the sick.” Meanwhile, “we see a very large proportion of them, perhaps 30 to 40 percent, who have no significant pre-existing conditions and yet develop very severe COVID.”

On Monday, a 25-year-old from Serres lost the battle against the virus. Two days earlier, 39-year-old Athenian DJ Decibel (Dimitris Belos), who had previously been in perfect health, died. He leaves behind his wife, an infant and a new-born. The well-known musician was probably infected during a gig in October, a friend reports.

“Employees are desperate”

Faced with this shocking emergency, anger is seething in the working class and especially in the health care system. “The employees are desperate,” writes the Staff Council of the General Hospital of Chalkidiki in an open letter to the Health Minister published by the online newspaper ThePressProject. “You don’t go to war without soldiers and supplies.” They describe the difficult conditions for the overworked and understaffed personnel in the different departments. In response to their concerns that they “cannot work safely” in this way, their hospital director replied, “Those who cannot, should resign.”

In their letter, they are demanding the resignation of the director and the provision of immediate protective measures and an increase in staff by the local government and party representatives. “Where was the state when the pandemic was at a low level? Why was nothing organized in all this time, even though they knew that the second wave of the pandemic was coming in the fall? The situation is extremely critical!!! WE ARE ALONE!!!”

At an online event, pathologist Christina Kydona provided an insight into the work in a COVID-19 ward at Ippokratio Hospital in Thessaloniki, where instead of the planned 50 coronavirus patients, 300 now have to be treated. “I don’t even want to talk about the fatigue, exhaustion, the constant staff illness and the pervasive fear that prevails in the hospital... A specialist and an assistant doctor look after 50 patients and work 26 hours without a break in their protective overalls, with at least 30 percent being very severe cases.”

Moreover, Greek doctors and nurses live on low wages. According to To Vima, a doctor in the public sector (level “epimelitis B”) receives an average of €1,200 a month—around 40 percent less than ten years ago. The cost of living in Greece is only slightly lower than in Germany.

Last week, government spokesman Stelios Petsas announced a coronavirus bonus for various professions. When asked whether doctors would also be supported, he laughingly replied that this was not planned.

The situation is particularly precarious for assistant staff and doctors who do not have a permanent position. On Friday, assistant employees of the National Emergency Medical Service EKAV in Thessaloniki were informed that they will not be paid a salary in October and November.

Instead of pulling out all the stops to alleviate the health emergency and save lives, the ruling class is already planning to reopen schools as soon as possible and ramp-up the economy (most companies remained open anyway). There is speculation this could happen in mid-December, so as not to miss the Christmas trade. As in other European countries, the battle cry of the ruling class is “profits before lives.” Money is not being mobilized for the health and protection of the population, but mainly to benefit the banks and large corporations. On Tuesday, the government announced it will donate another €120 million in state aid to Aegean Airlines.

On Monday, referring to the pandemic, Development Minister Adonis Georgiadis tried to put a positive spin on the government’s catastrophic coronavirus policy. “We are 12 times better off than Belgium,” he claimed in a cynical calculation of the numbers of dead.

Privatization and armaments instead of fighting the pandemic

Amid this crisis, the right-wing ND under Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is seizing the opportunity to push ahead with long-held privatisation plans in the health care system. Doctors have long called for the immediate requisition of all private hospitals in the fight against the pandemic. On Friday, the Health Ministry declared that it had “requisitioned” two private hospitals in Thessaloniki. Previously, the government had negotiated for months with the owners of the private facilities, but they had refused to provide beds for COVID-19 patients because of the cost.

On closer inspection, the current alleged “seizure” of the private hospitals turns out to be another step by the government to strengthen the private sector at the expense of the public purse. On Monday, it came to light that workers from the understaffed public hospitals are being ordered to work in one of the “seized” private hospitals. Also, the private clinics receive a daily compensation payment—because “we are not in Soviet country,” as Health Minister Vasilis Kikilias commented sarcastically.

In a statement on Facebook, Dafni Katsimba, chairman of the Association of Hospital Doctors of Thessaloniki, spoke of a “disgrace.” He said this meant “the public sector was being seized by the private sector—instead of the other way around.”

The government’s deadly policy is to be continued at a fast pace next year. This is shown by the 2021 draft budget, currently being discussed in the parliamentary Economy Committee. According to media reports, the draft does not envisage a massive increase, but rather a cut in public health spending of €572 million. While €4.83 billion were earmarked this year for health—€523 million for combating the pandemic—next year, the figure is to be only €4.26 billion, with only €131 million of that for coronavirus measures. According to OECD figures, Greece is in next-to-last place in Europe in terms of additional health expenditure in the fight against COVID-19.

Instead, the government wants to pump even more money into the huge war machine. The defence budget is to increase by 30 percent from €3.8 billion this year to €5.4 billion next year.

These plans reveal that the tremendous bloodletting through the pandemic is not an inevitable stroke of fate, but the result of deliberate class politics supported by all capitalist parties. Before ND returned to government last year, the pseudo-left Syriza government under Alexis Tsipras had spent four years organizing a policy of social cutbacks, militarism and attacks on refugees, implementing it with the assistance of the unions against resistance in the working class. In the years before, the now completely discredited social-democratic PASOK had played the same role.

Thai protesters defy threat of draconian lèse-majesté law

Peter Symonds

Thousands of mainly young Thai protesters demanding democratic reforms gathered outside the Siam Commercial Bank’s headquarters in Bangkok yesterday despite a threat by the military-backed government to charge rally leaders under the lèse-majesté law. Section 112 of the criminal code makes insulting the king and his close family an offense punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Some 15,000 demonstrators joined the protest which was directed against the monarchy and the current King Maha Vajiralongkorn in particular, who in 2018 had the huge assets previously held and managed by the Crown Property Bureau transferred into his own hands. The assets, estimated at a value of $US40 billion, include a 23.4 percent stake in the Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) worth around $2.3 billion at its current share price.

Protesters turn on mobile phones with lights during a rally outside the headquarters of the Siam Commercial Bank, a publicly-held company in which the Thai king is the biggest shareholder, Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2020 in Bangkok Thailand. (AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn)

Outside the bank, the protesters erected a sign declaring that the king had “robbed the nation’s business by stealing shares in SCB.” The protest group Free Youth issued a statement prior to the rally declaring: “Transferring the crown property to the king’s property is equivalent to a robbery of the nation’s wealth.”

Protest leader Panupong “Mike” Jadnok was cheered when he told the demonstrators: “This is the country with the biggest inequality, but it has the richest king in the world.” The Guardian cited one of the protesters, Nik, as saying: “At least people should have the space to investigate [how money is spent] and check the institution—not only the monarchy but also other institutions. We will not accept military power anymore.”

The reform of the monarchy, including the abolition of the draconian lèse-majesté law, is just one of the demands of the diffuse protest movement that has continued for months. The protesters are also demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a retired general who as army commander in chief led the 2014 coup that ousted the democratically-elected government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

In addition, the protests are seeking the rewriting of the anti-democratic constitution drawn up by the military to ensure its continued political domination. The upper house of parliament is stacked with military appointees virtually ensuring a majority at the joint sitting with the elected lower house that selects the prime minister. Moreover, Prayuth did not have to stand for election as the constitution allows the selection of an “outside” prime minister.

The extreme sensitivity of the traditional Bangkok elites to any criticism of the monarchy underscores the linchpin political role it has played. In times of crisis, the king has stepped in to impose a compromise and shore up faltering bourgeois rule. King Maha Vajiralongkorn, who was installed in 2016 after the death of his father, has none of his father’s political skills and spends much of his time in Europe. In addition to taking over the crown’s assets, Maha Vajiralongkorn has also assumed control of key military units.

Prime Minister Prayuth is determined to defend the monarchy at all costs, announcing this week that all laws, including the lèse-majesté section of the criminal code, would be used against the protests. The police have issued summonses for more than 12 people, including protest leaders Parit “Penguin” Chiwarak and Panusaya “Rung” Sithijirawattanakul, on charges of lèse majesté. No one has been charged under the law since 2017.

After receiving his summons, Parit told the New York Times: “I am not scared. I am more worried about the country if they are still using this 112 in politics like this. This will cause the monarchy to deteriorate further.” A 16-year-old student leader Benjamaporn Nivas told the newspaper that the threat of lèse-majesté did not alter her determination to protest for reforms. “I want to fight until the day when no one can fight anymore, then I will join the others in prison,” she said.

Last week, the police also stepped up their attacks on protesters using water cannon and tear gas against a rally outside the national assembly which was debating possible constitutional amendments. Several people suffered gunshot wounds. While the police deny the use of firearms, it is possible that provocateurs among a royalist counter-demonstration fired on the protesters. The only motion that passed in the national assembly was to establish a committee to examine limited changes to the constitution, but excluding any amendment to the clauses dealing with the monarchy.

While yesterday’s protest passed without incident, a significant factor may have been a last-minute decision to change the location which had been set down as the offices of the Crown Property Bureau. The police had prepared for a major confrontation at the initial location, mobilising some 6,000 officers and blocking roads near the building with shipping containers and barbed wire.

The government had been hoping to enlist the support of the opposition parties and to use the parliamentary debate to dissipate the protest movement. However, as protests have continued, Prayuth has begun to resort to more repressive measures.

The fear in ruling circles is that the longer the protests go on, the more likely that sections of the working class will begin to join in to fight for their own class interests. A World Bank assessment in August of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Thailand projected a 5 percent economic contraction in 2020, a doubling of the number of people surviving on less than $US5.50 a day and a loss of 8.4 million jobs.

Protest leaders, however, are making no appeal to the social situation facing working people, other than general references to the immense disparity between rich and poor in the country. No faith should be placed in the opposition bourgeois parties—Pheu Thai and the Move Forward Party—both of which are tied to wealthy business families that resent the political domination of the Bangkok elites, but share their hostility to any movement of the working class.

Around the world, the ruling classes are turning to anti-democratic methods of rule amid a deep crisis of the capitalist system and growing opposition among working people to their deteriorating living standards. In Thailand, as elsewhere, the struggle for democratic rights is bound up with a fight against the profit system and based on a socialist perspective.

What the rich are thankful for

Andre Damon

For most Americans, this will be the worst Thanksgiving they can remember. A quarter-million people in America are dead from the pandemic. Tens of millions have lost their jobs, and countless others are hungry or on the verge of being evicted from their homes. For months, workers throughout the country have played a daily game of Russian roulette every time they punched into a shift at a factory, warehouse or store.

But the view from Manhattan’s billionaires’ row is much more pleasant. On Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a record of 30,000, up nearly 70 percent since March. This, in turn, has fueled the wealth of the ultra-rich. A recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies gives a sense of the enormous upward redistribution of wealth that has occurred since the outbreak of the pandemic:

Ten billionaires have a combined wealth of $433 billion and have seen their wealth increase $127 billion since the beginning of the pandemic in mid-March, a 42 percent increase. These ten are Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Alice, Rob and Jim Walton (Walmart), Apoorva Mehta (Instacart), John Tyson (Tyson Foods), Stephen Schwarzman (Blackstone), Henry Kravis and George Roberts (KKR), and Steve Feinberg (Cerberus).

John H. Tyson, the billionaire owner of Tyson Foods, has seen his personal wealth increase over $600 million since the beginning of the pandemic as an estimated 11,000 Tyson workers have been infected with COVID-19.

The wealth of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has increased over $70 billion since mid-March while an estimated 20,000 Amazon workers have been infected with COVID-19.

To this list should be added Elon Musk, who recently eclipsed Bill Gates to become the second-richest man in the world. Musk has had his wealth surge by $112 billion—larger than the GDP of Kenya—in a single year as the stock price of Tesla and SpaceX soared.

On May 11, Musk announced the resumption of production at Tesla’s main facility in California, defying state law, with the complicity of the state’s Democratic Party government. In the period since Tesla reopened production, its stock price has more than tripled, making it the largest carmaker by market capitalization. Musk’s wealth is now five times what it was just two years ago.

The surge in the markets is driven by the vast and unprecedented intervention by the Federal Reserve, which has guaranteed that there will be no fall in stock prices regardless of the state of the real economy. Economists Raphaële Chappe and Mark Blyth note in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs that the growth in the rise in share values has almost exclusively benefited the super-rich.

“According to recent research by Goldman Sachs,” they write, “the bottom 90 percent of Americans hold a mere 12 percent of the value of stocks owned by U.S. households. The U.S. economy has failed to deliver inclusive growth for decades, as real wages for many workers have been stagnant since the mid-1970s.” They continue:

The Fed itself determined last year that the majority of American adults would not be able to cover a hypothetical unexpected expense of $400—a scenario that for millions of Americans became a reality when the pandemic forced the country to shut down.

In short, the United States seems to have stumbled into a monetary policy regime that has untethered the fate of economic elites, who derive most of their income from state-protected financial assets, from that of ordinary people, who rely on low and precarious wages. Such a regime offers permanent protections to those with high incomes from financial assets.

In reality, US capitalism has not “stumbled” into this policy. This state of affairs is the product of a decades-long campaign to slash the living standards of the working class while enriching the financial oligarchy.

Beginning with the Reagan/Thatcher/Volcker anti-inflation policies in the early 1980s, the world’s ruling classes launched a systematic campaign to drive down workers’ wages and living standards. “Anti-inflation” policies, which originally entailed the raising of interest rates to create a manufactured recession in the early ’80s, were soon supplanted by decades of extremely low interests rates for banks and the implicit guarantee that central banks would ensure there would be no serious fall in the value of financial assets.

The ruling class responded to the economic and financial crisis of 2008 by launching, under both Bush and Obama, a massive, multi-trillion-dollar bailout, implemented over the course of years, that led the stock market to surge amid mass unemployment.

In 2020, the ruling class used the crisis conditions created by the pandemic to launch a bailout twice the scale of 2008, implemented within a matter of just a few months, leading stock markets to surge to record highs almost immediately.

Beyond the trillions of dollars that went directly to Wall Street, even the funds supposedly meant to preserve workers’ jobs took the form of corporate handouts. As Chappe and Blyth noted, “An MIT team concluded that the PPP [Paycheck Protection Program] handed out $500 billion in loans yet saved only 2.3 million jobs over roughly six months… the annualized cost of the program comes out to roughly $500,000 per job.”

The bailout was followed by the reopening of workplaces in April and May. By the end of July, the emergency federal unemployment benefits available to some workers were allowed to expire, with legislators of both parties arguing that keeping the unemployed afloat was a “disincentive” to workers getting back on the job.

In the 2020 elections, millions of workers voted against the “herd immunity” policies of the Trump administration and the single-minded subordination of the well-being of the population to the stock market.

But immediately after the election, Biden declared that there will be “no national shutdown” while reaffirming the Federal Reserve’s unlimited commitment to propping up the stock market. “Our interest rates are as low as they have been in modern history. And I think that is a positive thing,” Biden declared. Biden’s selection of former Fed Chair Janet Yellen as his Treasury Secretary is a signal to Wall Street that the flood of free money will continue.

Neither Biden nor congressional Democrats have shown any interest in restoring emergency jobless aid, even as states close restaurants, bars and gyms to prevent hospitals from being overrun.

The year 2020 has exposed American society as an oligarchy, in which a tiny group of billionaires inflicts enormous social misery on the great majority of society for its own personal enrichment. If hundreds of thousands of people need to die to generate more wealth for the oligarchs, so be it.

The unprecedented enrichment of the financial oligarchy, in the midst of the greatest crisis since the 1930s, has exposed the arguments that have been made to justify decades of job-cutting and the destruction of social programs. If there is no money to pay jobless benefits, where on earth did society find $112 billion to give to Elon Musk?

These events have not passed unnoticed by millions of workers. Even before the pandemic, socialist sentiment was on the rise among broad sections of the population. Now it is becoming self-evident that the basic needs of society—including the preservation of human life itself—are incompatible with the domination of a few thousand billionaires over society.

The United States is facing an emergency. The pandemic is raging, and millions are hungry and jobless. Urgent measures are necessary. Containing the pandemic requires the immediate nationwide shutdown of nonessential production. This must be accompanied by full compensation for lost wages of workers and earnings of small businesspeople.

The money to save hundreds of thousands of lives exists in the overflowing bank accounts of the oligarchs. These funds must be immediately frozen, seized, and put to use to stop the pandemic and ensure that no one goes hungry or homeless as a result of lockdowns. The demand for these urgent measures is a critical component for the struggle for socialism and the reorganization of society to meet social need, not private profit.

French National Assembly adopts “global security” ban on filming of police

Anthony Torres & Alex Lantier

On Tuesday, despite mounting concerns in the press over President Emmanuel Macron’s authoritarian agenda, the French National Assembly adopted the “global security law.” The law, which bans filming of police in public places and escalates police surveillance of demonstrations, testifies to the Macron government’s authoritarian evolution since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The bill, presented by Macron’s Republic on the March (LRM) party and the Act party, a pro-Macron split-off from the right-wing The Republicans, was adopted by 388 votes to 104 with 66 abstentions. It will now go to the Senate in January for approval. Prime Minister Jean Castex said it “will be the subject, after its passage through parliament, of validation by the Constitutional Council.” This was a cynical attempt to reassure the public that the law’s blatantly anti-democratic and unconstitutional provisions will be subject to control by constitutional lawyers.

The law contains multiple provisions aiming to block the exercise of fundamental, constitutionally protected rights. It would allow police to massively escalate the deployment of drones to monitor demonstrations. Above all, the publication of images of events in a public space involving police agents in a way that could potentially harm their “physical or psychological well-being” would be punishable by a €45,000 fine and 1 year in prison.

This aims to prevent the documentation and exposure of police brutality, giving security forces a free hand against strikes and protests. During “yellow vest” protests, as police beat and detained over 10,000 people, wounded 4,400, and shot two dozen eyes out with rubber bullets, they were constantly recorded in acts of brutality. Videos of police choking to death deliveryman Cédric Chouviat in Paris or George Floyd in Minneapolis, which provoked a global wave of mass protests, could be banned and their authors face draconian penalties.

Associations of journalists, who have been repeatedly beaten at protests in recent weeks, criticized the law as a “serious threat” to press freedom. The Magistrates Union (SM) criticized its turn to a “police state” and a “collapse of democratic controls.” Claire Hédon, the French government’s official human rights ombudsman, declared that it “poses serious risks of infringing several fundamental rights, including the right to privacy and freedom of information.”

Similarly, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had expressed its “serious concerns” about the “global security” law in a November 16 statement, which declared: “We fear that the adoption and entry into force of this bill could lead to important attacks on human rights and fundamental liberties.”

Statements by Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin aiming to reassure the public—declaring that the law means “Film the police yes, but hunt them down, no”—are politically worthless. Police will be empowered to arrest protesters and seize their phones or cameras, based on nothing more than the assertion that they feel “psychologically uncomfortable” being filmed while assaulting protesters.

Fundamental rights inscribed into the constitution after the fall of the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime, as a safeguard against future fascist dictatorship, would thus be a dead letter. To exercise the constitutional rights to strike and to demonstrate publicly today, in France and across Europe, entails the ever-present danger of police assault, serious injury or worse. Macron has backed police in acts of unprovoked, lethal violence like the killing of an elderly female bystander at a Marseille “yellow vest” protest, Zineb Redouane; the police unit involved was later awarded a medal.

The only limited control holding back riot police is fear of public exposure by videos posted online by protesters. Now, the Macron administration is attempting to remove this protection.

The truth must be told: Macron is setting up a dictatorship. Prominent Macron voters including football player Lilian Thuram and filmmaker Costa-Gavras have published an open letter titled “Mr President, we did not vote for this,” making a warning and an appeal to Macron that will of course inevitably be disappointed: “Letting this attack on our liberties and our rights go through means installing what the neo-fascist far right has always dreamed of: an authoritarian state, where rule of law becomes rule by police, criminalizing social protests and popular demands.”

The arbitrary, dictatorial nature of Macron’s policy was underscored by reports that the government slipped a provision into a law on university research funding that punishes students occupying universities with up to 3 years in jail and a €45,000 fine.

These events confirm the analysis of the Parti de l’égalité socialiste (Socialist Equality Party—PES), the French section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), during the 2017 presidential elections. It called for an active boycott and a mobilization of the working class against a second round between Macron and neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen. The PES warned that Macron was in no way an alternative to the authoritarian, far-right regime a neo-fascist president Le Pen would oversee.

The middle class, pseudo-left organizations like Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France party or the New Anti-capitalist Party took an opposed line. Despite broad hatred among their voters of Macron, a former investment banker, they refused to take a clear position on the vote and, in particular, to oppose the press campaign asserting that those who did not vote for Macron were complicit in the coming to power of fascism.

Macron’s presidency confirmed the warnings of the PES, however. Working in lockstep with the European Union, he sought to massively enrich the financial aristocracy by systematically reversing social and democratic concessions made to the working class after the fall of fascism. While rewriting the Labor Code, waging war in Mali, privatizing the national rail network, and adopting deep pension cut in the face of overwhelming popular disapproval, he relied on a far-right police apparatus to protect him from mounting popular anger.

Facing an upsurge of international class struggle since 2018 that has spread across every continent, launched by mass strikes of US teachers and auto workers and that took the form in France of the “yellow vest” protests, Macron promoted the far right. Hailing Vichy dictator Philippe Pétain as a “great soldier,” he has mobilized the riot police in a ferocious assault on working class opposition.

The ruling elite’s fascistic “herd immunity” policy on Covid-19, which led to nearly 800,000 deaths in North America and Europe, has brought this crisis to unprecedented intensity. Democratic forms of rule are disintegrating. In America, a coup attempt is unfolding: Trump is refusing to admit defeat in the 2020 presidential elections while naming far-right Special Forces operatives to lead the Pentagon and endorsing far-right networks that tried to assassinate officials opposing him.

In France, Macron is also setting up a fascistic police-state in real time, relying primarily on the fact that no one in the political establishment will mount opposition to his policies, let alone mobilize the vast opposition that exists in the working class to his police-state regime. The trade unions have in fact worked closely with Macron throughout his presidency.

Workers and youth have set up many organizations and groups in the social struggles that have unfolded in recent years. It is vital now to build workplace and school security committees against the pandemic. Above all however, political perspective is decisive. Building a socialist movement in the working class internationally to oppose “herd immunity” policies, police-state policies and prepare the transfer of power to the working class is the only way to stop mass deaths and far-right rule.

British government’s pandemic response threatens art and culture

Paul Bond

Britain faces the possible loss of its enormous artistic heritage through the philistinism of the ruling class. It is a cultural crime that demands a political answer from the working class. The ruling class is no longer capable of any defence of culture.

The crisis has come to a head during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s second lockdown halted the partial resumption of performances, which his government had insisted would rescue the arts from looming disaster and showed the absence of any safety net for the arts or their creators.

Backdropped by parliament, demonstrators hold a silent vigil in Parliament Square to rise awareness of the crisis facing the arts world, in London, Saturday, Oct. 31, 2020. Backstage technicians and crews called for more funding from the government for the performing arts and hospitality sectors. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

When the government belatedly imposed its first lockdown, performers were among the last to be offered any financial support. That lockdown was lifted prematurely to bail out businesses. Commercially the government wanted venues reopened, as their tokenistic and long-delayed Cultural Recovery Fund (CRF) showed, but it was clear this could not be done safely.

The government has shown a complete disregard for artists, who have struggled conscientiously with the implications of coronavirus. This was not simply commercial: the virus poses particular health challenges for singers and actors.

The premature lifting of the first lockdown endangered the whole population. A surge in infection was inevitable. The resulting second lockdown halted even the performances that had resumed, whilst casting doubt on others.

Ed Lay, of the band Editors, spoke for many artists when he told the World Socialist Web Site, he thought it might be “the beginning of the end for my career.” Liz Rossi, a classical violinist, told us she had worked only four full days as a player since March 17.

Actor and director Samuel West, of lobbying group the National Campaign for the Arts (NCA), has said live performance is “in a fight for its very existence,” but the crisis affects all forms of culture. A survey of museums and art galleries reported 60 percent of respondents seeing this situation as an existential threat. Many museums, struggling with the loss of local funding, face uncertainty, and some are already discussing selling parts of their collections.

In September, Chancellor Rishi Sunak presented the Jobs Support Scheme (JSS), another bailout for big corporations, as a wage top-up to protect “viable” jobs.

Discussing job losses last month, Sunak made clear that he did not regard arts jobs as viable. Pressed on the lack of work for many artists under the present circumstances, Sunak said everyone had to “find ways to adapt and adjust to the new reality… And that is why we’re allowing that to happen but also providing new opportunity for people if that is the right vehicle for them.”

Sunak said, “I can’t pretend that everyone can do exactly the same job that they were doing at the beginning of this crisis.”

The following week, as the first grants from the £1.57 billion CRF were about to be announced, his message was hammered home by the circulation of a 2019 advert encouraging training in cyber and tech security. A photograph of a ballerina was captioned, “Fatima’s next job could be in cyber (she just doesn’t know it yet): Rethink. Reskill. Reboot.”

The response from artists was so furious that even Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden had to admit the advert was “crass.” It was swiftly withdrawn, but it reflects accurately their attitude.

The initial wage furlough scheme made no provision for self-employed and freelance workers, who make up the bulk of arts workers. When the government did eventually introduce its Self-Employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS), many artists did not benefit. The Musicians’ Union (MU) estimates that 38 percent of musicians are not eligible for SEISS support.

Eligibility for the JSS top-up was made conditional on being able to work one-third of normal hours. This could not apply to industries still shut down, or unable to employ workers for the immediate future, like theatres. Soprano Louise Alder tweeted, “I cannot currently work in the UK because my industry doesn’t exist… In Germany I am ‘viable’.”

Even where SEISS has been available to performers, it is barely a lifeline. The first SEISS grant offered 80 percent of three months’ profits. Unlike the wage furlough, there is no employer to contribute the balance. The second grant provided 70 percent of profit up to August, with nothing for September and October. From next month it will resume at 20 percent.

The average musician’s wage in Britain is £23,059, below the overall national average of £29,832. Under SEISS this would mean an income for 2020 of just £4,600. Musicians still have to prioritise bills relating to instrument loans, maintenance and insurance ahead of other costs.

Musicians report already living off savings. An MU survey reported 87 percent of respondents will face financial hardship when the support schemes end. Around 70 percent of musicians cannot now undertake more than a quarter of their usual work. One third are contemplating leaving the profession.

Musicians are predicted to lose 65 percent of income this year, rising to 80 percent for those most dependent on live performance and studio work. Losing 65 percent of a £23,059 wage leaves an income of £8,070.

Dowden’s CRF was directed at venues, but it will be impossible to reconstruct an orchestra if its musicians have been forced out of the profession. This is not a logistical question, but one of culture itself.

The CRF reflected the ruling class’s attitude that the arts are a commercial numbers game. Over the last decade the Treasury’s arts budget has been cut to two-thirds of its 2010 level. The axing of subsidies has left arts organisations dependent on ticket sales, venue hire, and food and drink income.

To avoid complete disappearance, venues have tried to work within these constraints. Most UK venues with producing companies earn around 85 percent of their running costs and receive 15 percent or less in government money.

The financial requirement to play to 80-90 percent capacity means they cannot afford socially distanced opening.

The arts are now being killed off by the legacy of those cuts. In West’s words, “Doing the very thing the sector was asked do is what has brought it to its knees.”

The British ruling class may outstrip its international rivals in philistinism, but it is a difference of degree, not of kind. The OECD reports that cultural and creative sectors are among the most affected across its regions, with jobs at risk reaching up 5.5 percent of employment in some places.

Germany has a similar legacy of enforced privatisation and austerity budgeting for the arts. That its pandemic subsidies are seen by the NCA as relatively attractive is a further shocking indictment of the criminality of the British response.

The smaller the venue, the sharper the crisis. Small venues are vital in nurturing emerging artists and allowing experimental and non-commercial performances. Some fringe theatres—most recently the Bridge House in south London—have already closed. Thirty music venues are reported to be at risk of imminent, permanent closure. Some received nothing from the CRF. Others received insufficient funding to ensure their survival.

Under conditions of economic crisis, the bourgeoisie reveals itself as increasingly philistine. It is little concerned with culture, looking only to the commercially viable and the high arts, but even these will struggle without any plan for socially distanced and safe venues.

The Royal Shakespeare Company has suspended indoor performances at two Stratford theatres until 2022. It will reopen the third next year, but 158 jobs are at risk.

What is in peril is not just an artistic culture of performance, although this is no small thing. Actors have worked with streaming projects, but the experience of live performance, of seeing an artwork in the flesh rather than onscreen, is a vital part of the cultural development of society.

It also requires training and cultivation, which is directly threatened. The Department for Education last month announced it would not provide any bursaries for trainee art and design teachers for 2021-22.

We cannot yet know when it will be safe to reopen venues. This demonstrates the need for thinking ahead, for elaborating advance policies that will ensure the survival and development of art and culture. These in turn must be fully funded.

The safety of artists and audiences must be ensured. For venues to open with appropriate social distancing, when safe to do so, means supporting artists in the meantime. To ensure that small venues can open with appropriate social distancing means taking responsibility for arts and culture outside the government’s commercial boorishness.

Billions must be made available in support as part of an organised funding of all social measures. This requires the establishment of workers’ ownership and democratic control of the major banks and corporations.

This crisis has threatened the very survival of cultural institutions and artists, while the bourgeoisie is moving to dismantle all the social, democratic and cultural rights of the working class.

As Trotsky wrote in 1938, “Art can neither escape the crisis nor partition itself off. Art cannot save itself. It will rot away inevitably—as Grecian art rotted beneath the ruins of a culture founded on slavery—unless present-day society is able to rebuild itself. This task is essentially revolutionary in character.”

Censored Planet: University of Michigan research finds worldwide increase in internet censorship

Kevin Reed

A group of researchers from the University of Michigan (UM) have published a global database of instances of internet censorship that shows an “extremely aggressive” growth of online interference on a world scale over a recent 20-month period.

The team used an automated global censorship tracking platform called Censored Planet, which was developed in 2018 by UM assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science Roya Ensafi. Between August 2018 and April 2020, the team collected 21.8 billion measurements of online censorship from 221 countries.

The Censored Planet platform researchers have published a 3D interactive map of the instances of increasing censorship in countries that are ranked as “free.” [Photo credit: University of Michigan News]

Among the key findings of the research—presented at the Association of Computer Machinery (ACM) Conference on Computer and Communications Security on November 10—was that censorship is increasing in 103 of the countries that were studied, including Norway, Japan, Italy, Israel and Poland.

A press release issued by the UM on November 17 described the findings contained in the team’s research paper as “The largest collection of public internet censorship data ever compiled,” which “shows that even citizens of the world’s freest countries are not safe from internet censorship.” It also showed that among the countries where censorship is expanding are those “rated as some of the freest in the world by advocacy group Freedom House.”

The research reveals that, for the most part, the increasing internet censorship is “driven by organizations or internet service providers filtering content” and not “nationwide censorship policies such as those in China,” where online content is highly restricted by direct state intervention.

The UM press release says Assistant Professor Ensafi noted that, while the “uptick in blocking activity” in the US was small, “the groundwork for such blocking has been put in place in the United States.”

Ensafi explained further: “When the United States repealed net neutrality, they created an environment in which it would be easy, from a technical standpoint, for internet service providers to interfere with or block internet traffic.” She added, “The architecture for greater censorship is already in place and we should all be concerned about heading down a slippery slope.”

The five-member US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted 3-2 on December 14, 2017 in favor of ending net neutrality, and the new policy took effect on June 11, 2018, approximately two months before the Censored Planet data collection began. Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers (ISPs)—the companies that own the hardware infrastructure connecting consumers to the internet in the form of wired and wireless services, routers, switches and servers—must treat all content on their systems equally.

While the proponents of abolishing net neutrality argued that the change was necessary to “modernize” FCC policies and remove anti-competitive government intrusion into the corporate internet marketplace, the UM research shows that the logic of capitalist private property and nation-state-based interests in the global information infrastructure leads inexorably to undemocratic and repressive restrictions on public access to online content in a range of forms.

As the World Socialist Web Site has reported, the tech monopolies, including Google, Facebook and Twitter, have been engaged in censorship both within the US and internationally by targeting left-wing, anti-war and progressive websites and publishers with various types of internet content blocking, throttling and manipulation.

The WSWS itself and its affiliated organizations have been the target of this increasing censorship in the form of suppression of search results by Google, banning and de-whitelisting by Reddit, account suspension by Twitter and event blocking by Facebook.

Another of the UM researchers, Ram Sundara Raman, a PhD candidate in computer science and engineering, said, “What we see from our study is that no country is completely free. Today, many countries start with legislation that compels internet service providers to block something that’s obviously bad like child sex abuse material. But once that blocking infrastructure is in place, governments can block any websites they choose, and it’s usually a very opaque process. That’s why censorship measurement is crucial, particularly continuous measurements that show trends over time.”

In Norway, for example, laws were passed in early 2018 that require internet service providers to block some gambling and pornographic content. The Censored Planet data shows evidence of “network inconsistencies across a broader range of content, including human rights websites like Human Rights Watch and online dating sites like match.com” in Norway.

The Censored Planet automated monitoring platform is a novel approach to tracking online censorship. It uses public internet servers around the globe as data gathering nodes that monitor and report when access to websites is being blocked. It also uses artificial intelligence algorithms to filter the data, remove noise and recognize trends.

Previous censorship tracking methods have relied upon human activists to gather data manually. As the UM press release explains, “Manual monitoring can be dangerous for volunteers, who may face reprisals from governments. The limited scope of these approaches also means that efforts are often focused on countries already known for censorship, enabling nations that are perceived as freer to fly under the radar.”

The #KeepItOn campaign of the digital rights organization AccessNow, for example, tracks incidents of internet shutdowns annually in countries around the world. It uses some technical measurement tools and also relies upon “news reports and personal accounts” through a coalition of 210 organizations from 75 countries. The organization published its last report in 2019, which noted, “The constraints of our methodology mean that there may be cases of internet shutdowns that have gone unnoticed or unreported, and numbers are likely to change if and when new information becomes available.”

In describing their “longitudinal censorship observatory,” the UM researchers explain that they used four remote measurement techniques (Augur, Satellite/Iris, Quack, and Hyperquack) on six internet protocols to “detect 15 prominent censorship events, two-thirds of which have not been reported previously.” The reference to longitudinal measurement means that data points are gathered multiple times over an extended period of time.

Among the censorship methods that Censored Planet detects are internet shutdowns, Domain Name Server (DNS) manipulation, Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) blocking and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) layer interference. Among the countries that were studied for specific censorship events by Censored Planet (in addition to the countries mentioned above) were Egypt, Iran, Sri Lanka, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Ecuador, India, Sudan and Cameroon.

The instance of censorship in Sri Lanka, following a series of bombings on April 21, 2019 that killed more than 250 people, highlights the power of Censored Planet platform. To previous reports of social media censorship, the study says, “We observed 22 domains (compared to 7 reported previously) being blocked, including domains like twitter.com that were not reported. Five out of these 22 domains were only from the Alexa test list, showing that variety in test lists is important. After the initial peak, HTTPS censorship remained unusually high through April, and then spiked again in the week of May 12, 2019. This contrasts with most reports claiming that the social media ban was lifted by May 1st.”

It is significant that amid the near-continuous reporting in the corporate media of the false allegations from right-wing organizations and individuals that conservatives are being singled out for online censorship, including US President Trump’s complaints regarding the imposition of fact-checking labels on his Twitter account, not one of the major news organizations has reported on the Censored Planet study.

Along with publishing their methodology and disclosing the tools they are using for data collection, the UM researchers are making their data set available for further analysis by others. As Ensafi explained, “We hope that the continued publication of Censored Planet data will enable researchers to continuously monitor the deployment of network interference technologies, track policy changes in censoring nations, and better understand the targets of interference. While Censored Planet does not attribute censorship to a particular entity, we hope that the massive data we’ve collected can help political and legal scholars determine intent.”