Spain’s ruling PSOE, Podemos use “anti-disinformation” tool for internet spying

Alice Summers

More details have emerged on the censorship apparatus operated by Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government. A new cyber-monitoring tool, known as ELISA, has been rolled out across the country, which will scour the internet for supposed instances of “disinformation” and report them to Spain’s central government for further action.

Podemos party leader Pablo Iglesias speaks as Spain's caretaker Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez looks on after signing an agreement at the parliament in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. (AP Photo/Paul White)

According to the daily El País, which is closely linked to the PSOE, ELISA began by monitoring only a few dozen web pages. However, its surveillance operation has now expanded to around 350 sites. It has been described as a “Digital Observatory,” designed to “facilitate the monitoring of open sources, as well as the profiling of media and social networks,” according to the National Cryptological Centre (CCN), which developed and runs the program under the aegis of Spain’s National Intelligence Centre (CNI) spy agency.

To avoid any judicial oversight, ELISA will supposedly only monitor open source data, rather than private communications. It will nonetheless mine vast quantities of information on online sources, social media usage, news platforms and other internet content.

According to El País, quoting a CCN source, ELISA’s aim is to detect “systematic and malicious campaigns to distribute disinformation which aims to generate polarisation and to destabilise society, exacerbating its conflicts and taking advantage of its vulnerabilities for the benefit of a foreign state.”

ELISA’s development and implementation is the latest in a series of internet-monitoring and censorship measures recently made public in Spain. As unrest grows in Spain and internationally at governments’ criminal handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Spanish ruling elite is intensifying efforts to crack down on domestic political opposition and denounce foreign states—particularly Russia.

Revelations about the CCN’s ELISA tool come hot on the heels of a new protocol, the “ Procedure for Intervention against Disinformation ,” approved by Spain’s National Security Council (CSN) in October. Details of this document were made public in November in the Official State Gazette (BOE). It allows the state to monitor and suppress internet content, under the pretext of combatting “fake news” and “disinformation.”

This gives the Spanish government full decision-making power to determine what is or is not fake news, and makes legal provision for constant state surveillance of social media platforms and the media more broadly to detect “disinformation” and formulate a “political response.”

The ELISA tool will expand on this spying framework. The CCN will report on ELISA’s findings fortnightly to the Permanent Commission against Disinformation, a body set up to operate the censorship apparatus detailed in October’s protocol.

The Permanent Commission is coordinated by the Secretary of State for Communication and directed by the National Security Department. Members of the committee will come from the Foreign Ministry, the Finance Ministry and the CNI spy agency, among others. The CCN’s reports on ELISA findings are thus received and studied at the highest levels of the Spanish state.

Podemos general secretary Pablo Iglesias sits on the board of the Intelligence Affairs Commission, which supervises the CNI and thus its subordinate body, the CCN. The “left populist” Podemos party will therefore directly oversee the operations of the CCN and ELISA, receiving the fortnightly spying reports.

Information on the exact functioning of the ELISA tool is limited. While it was designed at the end of 2019, according to the CCN, it appears to have become operational as of April this year, during the first wave of the pandemic in Spain.

According to an initial report published online by the CCN, between April and September this year, 1,808 items of “anti-globalist” content were detected by ELISA across 157 different online platforms. The CCN report states that these “anti-globalist” narratives have an “anti-system character, [and are] against democratic institutions and can pose a direct threat to social cohesion [and to] stability, including to the country’s health.”

“The Covid-19 crisis has facilitated a large growth in these narratives,” the report continues, “as well as in the digital sources which have disseminated this type of content.” The CCN makes clear that the rollout of ELISA was intended in no small part to combat the massive popular opposition to the government’s murderous handling of the pandemic, and prevent strikes and protests against it.

The CCN tries to obscure the main targets of its surveillance operations with references to the alleged anti-Semitic content published by “anti-globalist” sites, which include far-right web pages like El Correo de España, Alerta Digital and Mpr21, according to online newspaper El Confidencial. These sites “systematically link hidden interests to the ‘Jewish Lobby’ (George Soros or the Rothschild family and including Bill Gates),” the report states.

While no doubt anti-Semitism proliferates on the far-right websites cited by the CCN, these are by no means the only sites being monitored, and the objective of the ELISA spying tool is not to eradicate fascistic sentiment online. Anti-Semitic content is only a small part of the vast array of material flagged as “potentially malicious” by the CCN, which seeks to detect and criminalise any perspective challenging the rule of the bourgeoisie. Ultimately the target of this censorship operation is the working class, including various religious minorities.

According to El País, of the sites monitored by ELISA thus far, around 25 percent were pro-Russia, with a third based in Russia and another third in Spain. Thirty-five percent were anti-system websites in Spanish, 22 percent were far-right pages and 18 percent were far-left. These web pages were located both on Spanish servers and on foreign ones, including in other European countries, in Latin America and in the United States.

“[The] main nucleus [of the anti-globalist content],” the CCN report states, “consists of stating that democracies do not obey the needs of citizens, but are at the service of hidden elites who make the decisions, beyond the will [of a country’s citizens].” In a world where a handful of multi-billionaires control more resources and wealth than the vast majority of the world’s population, this is hardly an unpopular opinion.

Other viewpoints marked as online “disinformation” include opposition to “the legitimacy of States” and the “market economy,” lack of trust in “traditional media,” and opposition to “multilateral organisms” like NATO, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

In a PowerPoint presentation on the “Characteristics of disinformation narratives and media,” the CCN lists the following as possible signs of disinformation: the “dissemination of an image of the State as violent and/or corrupt”; “support for organisations that reveal state secrets like WikiLeaks”; “denial of the official, proven and judged version of terrorist attacks or great crimes”; and “theories about reverting to the gold standard [or about] the corruption of the capitalist system.”

ELISA is only one of a number of cyber-monitoring tools developed by the CCN, with others including ANA, CARMEN and MONICA, most of which were developed and rolled out in 2019. In total, the CCN uses around 20 different tools, each bearing a woman’s name.

The new ELISA framework creates an ideological dragnet for criminalising an exceptionally broad range of viewpoints commonly held by the left, under the pretext that these are “disinformation” or “potentially malicious.” These anti-democratic measures are only the thin end of the wedge. Monitoring and reporting on oppositional viewpoints prepares the censoring and prosecution of those who espouse them.

The working class most oppose these authoritarian moves, beginning by opposing those who are ramming them through: the “left populist” Podemos party and similar pseudo-left organisations across the world.

Private school permitting students to wear Islamic clothing closed in Paris

Samuel Tissot

The Meo High School (MHS) in Paris’s 19th district announced its closure following an order on December 7 from the Parisian police prefect. The school gives instruction to 110 children aged 11-18 years old, many of whom are from a Muslim background. The school’s closure is only the latest provocation in a series of attacks launched by the Macron government against institutions that serve France’s six million Muslims.

A statement published on Twitter by the school’s staff described the “disproportionate and manifestly arbitrary response” that was not “taking into account the welfare of the children in this unprecedented situation.” The staff statement reiterated the school’s commitment to “universalist values and excellence in education” and asked for “responsible support, solidarity, and peace in the face of this injustice.”

The closure of MHS takes place as the vast majority of French children and teachers are forced to remain in school under the criminal “herd immunity” policy of the Macron government. The announcement exposes the government’s claim that the deadly drive to reopen schools is aimed at protecting children’s education and welfare, rather than permitting the continued extraction of profit from working parents. The shutdown of MHS will leave 110 students out of school half-way through an already thoroughly disrupted semester.

MHS is in a predominantly immigrant district in north-eastern Paris and provides education to a high proportion of Muslim students. The private school is secular and teaches the national syllabus. Its website describes its “conception of education for all without any prejudices and with the acceptance of the personal freedom of conscience of each individual.”

The closure of MHS is part of a wave of mosque and Muslim charity closures ordered by the Macron government. The message of the French state is clear; any institution that refuses to conform to its attacks on freedom of expression will be targeted. Many families have undoubtedly sent their children to MHS and other similar private schools to avoid draconian laws passed by successive administrations outlawing religious clothing at public schools.

Religious symbols were banned in schools in 2004, by a law that was aimed at whipping up anti-Muslim sentiment and was targeted at the veil. In 2010, full-face veils like the burqa were banned in all public places in France.

MHS was closed through byzantine administrative methods. The authorities ordered the shutdown on the pretext of the school’s utilization of an unsafe building. The school explained in its English-language statement that “this building is shared with other institutions also working with kids that were not asked to shut down.” The statement reports that the school has enacted “massive work” to ensure security requirements have been met in recent months.

The closure order followed an inter-ministerial inspection on November 17, when the school was stormed by 40 inspectors, ministerial agents, and police officers. The unnecessary presence of police in what was officially a safety inspection, seems to have been an effort to intimidate students and staff at the school.

Macron’s cynical efforts to posture as the defender of French teachers in the aftermath of the murder of Samuel Paty have been further exposed by the closure. In the context of a worsening economic crisis, the closure has left eighteen teachers without jobs. This follows his use of the police to violently suppress lycée students and teachers striking against dangerous health conditions in schools.

MHS’s shutdown came just two days before the anti-separatism bill (recently renamed the bill confirming republican principles) was presented to the council of ministers on December 9. In an interview with Le Monde published on the same day, Prime Minister Jean Castex stated, “[Muslim separatism] is not there in the text [of the law]. But the enemy of the Republic is an ideology called radical Islamism, which aims to divide the French people.”

Castex went to absurdly insist that “we [the French government] will never equate radical Islamism with Muslims.” In fact, the government has been engaged in an increasingly open campaign targeting Muslims. Last week, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin announced that 76 mosques around the country will be targeted for inspection and closure. Already before his announcement, there had been more than 70 mosques closed since the beginning of the year.

In the wake of the terrorist killing of high-school teacher Samuel Paty on October 15, this campaign has been intensified. Following the attack, Darmanin declared in a television interview that he was personally “shocked” when he saw supermarket aisles with international—i.e., kosher and halal—foods, and making clear that the mere presence of such food aisles led inexorably toward “separatism” that the government is combatting.

Another 52 cultural and other associations were closed down, including the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), one of the largest Muslim charities in the country, which primarily offers legal aid to Muslims in discrimination cases.

Speaking at the beginning of this month to Le Figaro, Darmanin stated that “up until now, the government has been interested in radicalization and terrorism. Now, we will also attack the terrain of terrorism, where can be found those people who create the intellectual and cultural space to secede and impose their values.” His definition, of those who “create the intellectual and cultural space to secede,” could be used to encompass Muslim cultural associations across the country.

Private education institutions such as MHS are a main target of the anti-“separatism” law. The law will make it easier for the government to dissolve such institutions by executive decree—as well as vastly expanding the state’s power to dissolve a broad array of political and cultural associations. Pointing to the government’s wider preparation for anti-democratic attacks on the entire population, Castex stated in his interview with Le Monde that although the current target is “Islamism,” in the future, “Any political ideology that stands against the values of the Republic would be concerned.” The government’s campaign against Muslims is directed against the rights of the entire working class, under conditions of mass opposition to social inequality and police violence. At the same time, it is aimed at dividing the working class along religious lines while promoting the far-right.

Auto companies’ stocks rise as workers die from COVID-19

Shannon Jones

With COVID-19 cases surging in auto plants, Wall Street is demanding car companies increase production to restock depleted dealer inventories. At same time, anger among workers is growing over the mounting toll of sickness and death and the efforts of the United Auto Workers and management to suppress opposition to unsafe conditions.

According to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, manufacturing facilities, including auto plants, continue to be major vectors of virus transmission in the state. For the week ending Dec. 3 the state’s health department reported 40 new outbreaks at manufacturing and construction sites, including 12 in the greater Detroit area and another four at agricultural and food processing worksites. These are in addition to 112 ongoing outbreaks identified in manufacturing and construction sites.

As the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter has reported, there have been three recent COVID-19-related deaths of workers at Detroit-area Fiat Chrysler plants, including one death at Sterling Heights Assembly (SHAP) and two at Warren Truck. On Monday, 53-year-old John Stamper, who worked at the Faurecia auto parts plant in Saline, Michigan, died of a COVID-related heart attack.

Workers at the FCA Warren Truck Plant in Warren, Michigan (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

On Wednesday, the Detroit Free Press broke its silence on the deaths at Warren Truck and SHAP and was compelled to acknowledge the role of the WSWS in bringing the deaths to light. At the same time, the newspaper promoted the false narrative peddled by FCA and the UAW that there is no spread of the virus in the plants, and that workers are essentially at fault for contracting the disease.

Despite the growing number of deaths, auto sales and car company profits are booming. Stock rating firm Zack’s Equity Research has upgraded Fiat Chrysler stock to “strong buy,” meaning that the company has a high likelihood of producing profits well above market estimates. Over the last three months the estimate for FCA has increased 158 percent. The Dodge Ram, produced at SHAP and Warren Truck, is one of FCA’s most profitable vehicles.

Fiat Chrysler stock prices have been rising steadily since May, and now are slightly above pre-pandemic levels. The same is true for rivals Ford and General Motors.

RJ, a worker at the FCA Jefferson North Assembly Plant (JNAP) in Detroit, told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter, “It is not about human life, it is about profit. When you put profit before human life, that means you care more about money than you do people. If you were worried about coronavirus you wouldn’t have people here seven days a week. Most plants are running 10–12 hours a day.”

A worker at the Fiat Chrysler Tipton, Indiana, transmission plant said, “It’s pretty evident that the workers are being used like sheep and treated like farm animals and not the great men and women who have carried Fiat Chrysler for years.”

Outbreaks are not limited to the Detroit automakers. According to Facebook posts by workers there is an outbreak at Nissan’s Smyrna, Tennessee, plant. One worker wrote, “Management at Smyrna is flailing trying to get the COVID numbers under control. They think videos are going to help it.

“They are flailing, numbers are going up and it’s getting to the point that we are going to have more people out with COVID than we have working.”

Stephanie Weems, the sixth worker to die from COVID-19 at FCA Warren Truck

Meanwhile, investors are demanding that auto production be ramped up even further. “Factories have to get back to work,” said Ally Financial CEO Jeffrey Brown, referring to depleted inventory levels. Ally Financial is a Detroit-based company that performs auto lending and other banking services. Sales of new and used cars have been booming due to low interest rates.

Auto companies are currently running at near pre-pandemic levels despite a rising number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. Michigan, the home base of FCA, Ford and General Motors, is experiencing record numbers of new COVID-19 cases and deaths. For December the state has seen a daily death toll in excess of 100 and more than 5,000 confirmed cases each day. Measures imposed by Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer to supposedly contain the pandemic specifically exclude manufacturing facilities and K-8 schools, major centers of disease transmission.

Workers have reported that management in some cases is telling workers infected with COVID-19 not to share the information with coworkers. Where workers are confirmed to have COVID-19, management refuses to acknowledge in-plant transmission. In some cases this has resulted in management refusing to grant sick workers paid leave to recover.

RJ said, “They are not following the guidelines. The numbers are not going down, if anything they are doubling.” Remarking on management’s claim that COVID-19 is not spreading inside the plants, she added, “They know it’s not true. They are not allowing us to clean as we once did. There is lukewarm water in bathrooms all-year round.

“When you are in an environment where there are a lot of people, you can only social distance so far. The jobs are set up so that it is like you are piggy-backing on one another.” For those who are sick or in quarantine, she said, “The big corporations aren’t going to pay you to be off, unless you use your vacation.”

A leaked management memo at JNAP revealed that as of Oct. 5 there had been 59 confirmed COVID-19 cases at the plant and two deaths. Fiat Chrysler management provides the UAW with details on the number of infections, but these numbers are kept hidden from workers.

The Tipton transmission worker said, “In [UAW President] Rory Gamble you see a man can talk a game one way, but when Rory is in the eyes of the company he’s a completely different person who cares more about the shareholders than the lives of the workers and their families.

“The union is virtually non-existent inside the plant and the union stewards are on the side of the company. It’s truly unbelievable how little the union is about the people and more about money period. They help management single out certain people who do not play their games. They feel the best way to fix a problem with union workers is to just get them fired and that’s one less person who can expose everything that’s actually going on in the plant.”

The JNAP worker, RJ, said, “The UAW is not saying anything because they don’t care. They were bought and sold years go. All they do is support their friends and families. None of us can stand on the sidelines. We have to act to save lives.”

She continued, “Wall Street and Washington are in it for the rich. I have heard that some people who get sick, their companies are not even paying for coronavirus. This is a world disaster, it is not natural causes. I just want to stay alive. We have to draw the line somewhere.

“People have to fight with their voice and their knowledge. Michigan is being hit hard just like the South. When they opened back up, they did not use the precautions they should have.”

As Indian farmers step up protests against pro-agribusiness “reform,” Modi prepares mass repression

Wasantha Rupasinghe & Keith Jones

Indian farmers are threatening to expand their protests after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led central government reiterated that it will not repeal the three pro-agri-business laws it rushed through parliament last September.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers, many with their wives and children, are currently camped at four entrances to the Delhi National Capital Territory. Many have been there since Nov. 27, when phalanxes of security forces, acting on the orders of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP government, barred them from bringing their Delhi Chalo (Let’s go to Delhi) agitation to India’s capital and largest city.

On Tuesday, millions across India joined a Bharat Bandh (all-India shut down) called by farmer organizations. According to the coordination committee of the Kisan Morcha (Peasants’ March), more than five million people participated in the four-hour shutdown, with 20,000 protests held in at least 22 of India’s 28 states.

Supporters of farmers shout slogans during a nationwide shutdown called by thousands of Indian farmers protesting new agriculture laws in Mumbai, India, Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)

In the Punjab, where the farmers’ agitation is centered, daily life ground to a halt. In Haryana, which lies between Punjab and Delhi, there were protests throughout the state. Markets were shut down, and several roads and highways were occupied. Workers from Maruti Suzuki, Hero Motorcycle, and other auto plants in the Gurgaon-Manesar industrial belt, which lies in Haryana on the outskirts of Delhi, held a demonstration in support of the farmers.

On Tuesday evening, Modi’s chief henchman, Home Minister Amit Shah, led a government delegation in a hastily-organized, four-hour meeting with representatives of some of the dozens of farm organizations that are leading the protest movement. Shah repeated previous government offers to make minor amendments to the three laws, which will throw open Indian agriculture to domestic and transnational corporations by gutting the system of state-run markets, and reducing or eliminating restrictions on contract farming and land ownership. But he dismissed out of hand the farmers’ call for the three laws to be repealed.

Big business, which applauded the agrarian “reform” laws and an accompanying labour “reform” that outlaws most strikes and promotes “labour market flexibility,” is adamant that the BJP government stand its ground. First, because they view “modernizing” Indian agriculture at small farmers’ expense as a key element in competing with China for investment; and second, because they fear a visible government retreat in the face of the farmer protests would galvanize social opposition.

On Nov. 26, the first day of the Delhi Chalo agitation, tens of millions of workers across India mounted a one-day general strike to protest the government’s “pro-investor” economic policies. They also demanded emergency aid for the hundreds of millions who have been left to fend for themselves over the past 8 months as India has been roiled by the COVID-19 pandemic and its catastrophic economic fallout.

On Wednesday morning, the BJP-dominated Union cabinet met and formally approved a 9-point “offer” to the farmers. Under this “offer,” a handful of the most provocative clauses in two of the three laws would be eliminated. These include a stipulation that private markets, unlike the state-run mandis, shall be tax-free, and provisions that bar farmers from seeking redress from the courts for any matters regulated by the agrarian “reform” laws if government officials or corporate representatives have acted in “good faith”

The government also now says it is willing to “provide a written assurance that the existing Minimum Support Price (MSP) system will continue.” Farmers, however, want the MSP enshrined in law, since they have no confidence the government will honour its word. As it is, the MSP system has already largely collapsed due to the “pro-market” policies pursued by central and state governments, both those led by the BJP and its allies and those led by the ostensible “pro-farmer” opposition parties.

The farmers’ organizations have rejected the BJP government offer, and are now threatening to begin blocking the Jaipur-Delhi and Agra-Delhi highways and other roads into Delhi, one by one, starting no later than Saturday, Dec. 12. In a press release, the aforementioned All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee said the “Modi government (is) insincere and arrogant about resolving farmers’ demands; all farmers’ rightly reject old proposals dressed up as new.”

The farm organizations have also called for a nationwide gherao or sit-down protest blocking transportation routes on Dec. 14. But they remain open to further talks with the government.

The militancy of the farmers has clearly rattled Modi and his government.

They continue to seeking a means to defuse the crisis, by offering minimal concessions and exploiting divisions within the farm groups whose leaders are largely drawn from more privileged farmers and who have close ties to various factions of the political establishment. And while the BJP lashes out, often in vile communally-charged rhetoric against the opposition parties, it also knows that it can count on their help in preventing the farmer agitation from becoming a catalyst for a broader explosion of social anger, especially from the working class.

Last week, Amit Shah held private talks with the Punjab Congress Chief Minister Captain Amerinder Singh. At their conclusion, the Congress leader called on both the government and farmers to seek a compromise so as to ensure “national security” is not jeopardized.

That said, it is manifestly evident that the government is also making the political and technical preparations for violently suppressing the farmers’ agitation. Defence Minister Rajanth Singh has been conspicuously present whenever the most senior BJP ministers have met to discuss the government’s response to the farm protests.

Massive repression, it must be recalled, was the government’s initial response. On Nov. 26-27, the central government and the BJP state governments in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh mounted a massive security operation to prevent the farmers from ever getting close to Delhi. Despite deploying para-military forces, tear gas and water-canon, invoking Section 144 of the Criminal Code in Haryana, thereby making all gatherings of more than four people illegal, and arresting hundreds; the authorities failed to stop tens of thousands of farmers reaching the borders of Delhi. There they were met with an ever-larger show of force.

The government provided a taste of what it is preparing during Tuesday’s Bharat bandh. Section 144 was imposed throughout Delhi and the entire state of Gujarat. The Delhi police, which are under the direct control of Home Minister Amit Shah, placed Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) head Arvind Kejriwal, under house arrest after he met farmers protesting at the city’s Singhu border entrance.

In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP Chief Minister and arch Hindu supremacist Yogi Adityanath ordered the temporary detention of his main political rival, Samajwadi party leader Akhilesh Yadav, and other Samajwadi party leaders as they were en route to participate in a Bharat Bandh rally. The UP police also detained Chandrashekhar Azad, leader of the Bhim Army, a Dalit rights organization, to prevent him from joining the farmers’ protest.

Yesterday, the two BJP ministers most directly responsible for the farm “reform” laws—Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Raosaheb Danve—sought to smear the farmer agitation as treasonous in a transparent attempt to manufacture a pretext for its violent repression.

“The agitation that is going on is not that of farmers,” Danve told a public event in Maharashtra. “China and Pakistan have a hand behind this … This is the conspiracy of other countries.” Later Agriculture Minister Tomar urged the media to investigate who is behind the farmers’ protest.

“Media’s eyes are sharp and we will leave it to find it out.”

In so far as the Modi government retains room for maneuver, it is because of the treacherous role being played by the organizations that claim to speak in the name of the working class: the trade unions and the Stalinist parliamentary parties, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM and the Communist Party of India (CPI).

They are determined to prevent the working class from intervening in the political crisis as an independent political force, rallying the farmers and all the rural masses—above all the agricultural workers and landless peasants—behind it in a struggle against the Modi government and Indian capitalism.

The Stalinist unions, the CPM-affiliated Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and the CPI-aligned All India Trades Union Congress (AITUC), joined the other unions in instructing workers to remain on the job during Tuesday’s Bharat bandh, and to confine any show of support for the farmers to participation in protest rallies.

This goes alongside the CPM and CPI’s longstanding efforts to divert the mass opposition to Modi behind the Congress Party, until recently the Indian bourgeoisie’s preferred party of government and the party that long spearheaded the implementation of “pro-investor” policies, and various right-wing regional and caste-ist parties

Last Sunday, the Stalinist parties joined with the Congress, the Tamil Nadu-based DMK, the Maharashtra-based Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and other right-wing parties in issuing a statement hypocritically declaring support for Tuesday’s farmer protest. On Wednesday evening, CPM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury and CPI head D. Raja joined former Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and a handful of other opposition leaders in presenting their concerns about the farm bills to Indian President Ram Nath Kovind, a BJP hack.

Spelling out their opposition to the emergence of a mass movement and political general strike to bring down the hated Modi regime, both Yechury and Raja have declared that they don’t want to “politicize” the farmers’ agitation.

‘“It is a conscious decision on our part to stay away from the protest sites,” said Yechury. “The farmer groups themselves also told us that they would want it this way. So, we have no party banners at the protest sites. The CPI’s Raja was even more explicit, declaring, “We don’t need to politicize it [the farmers’ agitation].”

Meanwhile, in a ruling class frightened by the surge in social opposition and above all the possibility of an explosive intervention by the working class, support is growing for state repression and authoritarian methods of rule. Amitabh Kant, the head of the India government think thank NITI Aayog, told an online event Tuesday that “many more reforms still need to be done” if India is to compete against China as a “manufacturing nation.” He then complained “tough” reforms are “very difficult in the Indian context,” because “we are too much of a democracy.”

Sweden sees ICU occupancy approach 99 percent in Stockholm

Benjamin Mateus

The Swedish “experiment” to allow the virus to run rampant has proved to be an utter disaster. Intensive care units in Stockholm have nearly reached capacity as the death toll continues unabated.

Patient in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

The world has now seen over 70 million cases of COVID-19 infections, and nearly 1.6 million have died. Though the seven-day average has briefly peaked for new cases at 623,488 infections per day and deaths at 10,862 per day, there is still a tremendous velocity in the present surge ripping through Europe and North America as tepid containment measures attempt to stem not the virus but the economic damage the pandemic has wrought.

Much of the attention has turned to events in the United States, with deaths now exceeding 3,000 per day. The seven-day average has also surpassed 213,000, while the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations is approaching 110,000. Yet, the political establishment has washed their hands of any responsibility to contain the pandemic.

Yet, Sweden’s situation regarding the winter surge is not any better than in the United States. On a per-capita basis, the curves for new cases, deaths, and positivity rate grimly mirror each other, underscoring both countries’ criminal policies to let the virus run rampant.

Sweden vs US per capita cases

Sweden, a country with a population of just over 10 million, has documented 312,000 cases of COVID-19, or more than three percent of the population. The last 200,000 cases occurred in just the past two months as the surge has thoroughly thrashed the Scandinavian nation. There have also been 7,200 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, 1,200 in just the last month, and that figure is accelerating upwards.

On Wednesday, the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported that intensive care units in Stockholm hospitals had reached 99 percent of their capacity as an influx of new patients on Tuesday quickly filled beds. A handful of ICU beds are available in a city of one million.

Bjorn Eriksson, Stockholm’s health director, explained at a press conference that the situation is quite serious: “We have mobilized everything we could and taken to everything we had to offer so that everyone will get the care they need. We now need to continue to do our utmost, all actors in society as a whole, to offer resistance to the virus and the pandemic.” Changing only the names of the city and country, this is increasingly the situation throughout Europe.

The intensive care unit is the last safety net for patients with critical COVID-19 infections, who have to fight for their life. Lifesaving oxygen, dexamethasone and various therapeutic agents are but a few weapons in the arsenal needed to combat the infection and its sinister manifestations. The physicians and nurses must pay careful attention to vital signs and laboratory findings, looking for subtle changes in the patient’s physiology. When these capacities, specifically those of the ICU team, reach their limit, the situation begins to change rapidly for the worse.

Sweden vs US per capita deaths

According to Bjorn Persson, the operations manager for the intensive care unit, adjustments with nurse-to-patient ratios have been maximized at the Karolinska University Hospital. Staff work times have been extended, or they are kept after their shift to bridge shortages. Eriksson added, “It was exactly this development that we did not want to see. It shows that we Stockholmers have been crowded too much and had too many contacts outside the households where we left. The healthcare is not under so much pressure that there are no major margins in the healthcare system.”

Since cases began to rise in late September, Sweden has shifted to implementing piecemeal restrictions. On Nov. 20, bars and restaurants were banned from selling alcohol after 10 p.m. Five of the 21 regions across the country were placed under stricter guidelines, specifically urging public social distancing. Indoor and outdoor gatherings have been limited to eight, down from 50. Additional measures included public health warnings against attending parties, avoiding indoor gatherings and not using public transportation if unnecessary. Yet, these measures have done little to stall the surge.

On Nov. 22, an emotional Prime Minister Stefan Löfven addressed the nation over the pandemic, saying, “It is clear that it is going to take time before we can go back to normal. The little respite we got this summer and autumn is truly over. It is November now. People’s health and lives are still in danger. And the danger is increasing.”

In the face of their present circumstances, the Swedish Health Agency continues to reject face masks despite the World Health Organization’s recently expanded recommendations for their use, citing “poor evidence” of their effectiveness and concerns people will use them to avoid isolating.

State Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell (Credit: Wikipedia)

“Face masks may be needed in some situations. Those situations have not arisen in Sweden yet, according to our dialogue with the [healthcare] regions,” said Anders Tegnell, the government’s chief epidemiologist. Tegnell had endorsed the homicidal policy of herd immunity under the deceitful pretense that this would entail “focused protection” that would supposedly protect society’s most vulnerable. The young and healthy were to become infected in sufficient numbers to establish broad-based immunity within the community while the elderly remained isolated to avoid infection. Yet, half of Sweden’s deaths in the spring occurred in long-term care facilities.

On the contrary, many scientists have criticized the Health Agency’s approach. Anders Vahlne, a professor of virology at Karolinska Institute, said, “They didn’t try to save their lives. They were scared that the intensive care units would be overwhelmed and you couldn’t take care of young people. And so, they were selecting [patients], a bit too harshly, I think.”

Piotr Nowak, a physician working at Karolinska with COVID patients, said, “Authorities chose a strategy totally different to the rest of Europe, and because of it the country has suffered a lot in the first wave. We have no idea how they failed to predict the second wave.” He explained that the medical community as a whole did not share the public-health agency’s misplaced “optimism.”

US Federal Trade Commission sues Facebook over monopolistic acquisitions and anticompetitive practices

Kevin Reed

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), with the support of 48 US states and districts, sued the social media monopoly Facebook on Wednesday, charging it with suppressing competition and violating antitrust laws.

In a 53-page “complaint for injunctive and other equitable relief,” the FTC brought the lawsuit in the US District Court for Washington, DC against Facebook with the backing of 46 states and the District of Columbia and Guam.

The lawsuit says that Facebook has “maintained its monopoly position by buying up companies that present competitive threats and by imposing restrictive policies that unjustifiably hinder actual or potential rivals that Facebook does not or cannot acquire.”

The aim of the lawsuit is to seek a permanent injunction by the court that would require Facebook to “unwind” its asset acquisitions by means of alleged monopolistic practices—including Instagram and WhatsApp—and to both prohibit Facebook from imposing anticompetitive conditions on software developers in the future and require the company to seek government approval for any future mergers or acquisitions.

Facebook responded to the antitrust action with a lengthy Newsroom statement by Jennifer Newstead, Vice President and General Counsel. Newstead points out that both acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were reviewed and approved by US regulatory bodies at the time. “The FTC conducted an in-depth ‘Second Request’ of the Instagram transaction in 2012 before voting unanimously to clear it. The European Commission reviewed the WhatsApp transaction in 2014 and found no risk of harm to competition in any potential market,” she writes.

Newstead adds defiantly, “Now, many years later, with seemingly no regard for settled law or the consequences to innovation and investment, the agency is saying it got it wrong and wants a do-over. In addition to being revisionist history, this is simply not how the antitrust laws are supposed to work.”

The FTC action against Facebook comes seven weeks after the US Department of Justice (DoJ) launched an antitrust lawsuit against Google in the same district court. The DoJ complaint stated that Google (and its parent organization Alphabet, Inc.) engaged in “unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising in the United States through anticompetitive and exclusionary practices.”

The suit also follows by eight weeks the publication by the House of Representatives antitrust subcommittee report on the business practices of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google. This report stated that the big tech companies “that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons.”

The FTC issued a press release and a video statement by Ian Conner, Director of the Bureau of Competition, along with its legal brief. The press release says that the lawsuit followed a lengthy investigation “in cooperation with a coalition of attorneys general” that found Facebook has engaged in a systematic strategy “to eliminate threats to its monopoly.”

The press statement says further, “This course of conduct harms competition, leaves consumers with few choices for personal social networking, and deprives advertisers of the benefits of competition.”

In his video statement, Ian Connor said that the lawsuit is the product of 18 months of work by the “recently formed Technology Enforcement Division” of the FTC. Conner made the claim that the case against Facebook has been brought because “the American public deserves a competitive and vibrant personal social networking market” and to “restore the competitive vigor necessary to foster innovation and consumer choice.”

The document quotes a 2008 email from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, where he wrote, “it is better to buy than compete,” as evidence that the social media company has engaged “in a course of anticompetitive conduct with the aim of suppressing, neutralizing, and deterring serious competitive threats.”

The lawsuit alleges that Facebook had already emerged as a monopoly in the “personal social networking market” when it acquired Instagram in April 2012 for $1 billion and WhatsApp in February 2014 for $19 billion. The brief states, “Since toppling early rival Myspace and achieving monopoly power, Facebook has turned to playing defense through anticompetitive means.”

Known internally as Facebook Blue, the corporation’s primary social media product is the number one platform in the world, with over 3 billion users. The lawsuit states, “Facebook’s unmatched position has provided it with staggering profits. Facebook monetizes its personal social networking monopoly principally by selling advertising, which exploits a rich set of data about users’ activities, interests, and affiliations to target advertisements to users. Last year alone, Facebook generated revenues of more than $70 billion and profits of more than $18.5 billion.”

Instagram was founded in 2010 as a mobile-first photo and video sharing platform. Instagram began to threaten Facebook’s social media monopoly as it rode the wave of technology innovation associated with the rise of smartphones. As the FTC lawsuit explains, “Facebook initially tried to compete with Instagram on the merits by improving its own mobile photo-sharing features.”

However, Zuckerberg saw that Facebook had fallen far behind and he concluded in an internal email, “One thing about startups though is you can often acquire them.” The brief then states, “The Instagram acquisition has given Facebook control over its most significant personal social networking competitor, which both neutralizes the direct threat that Instagram posed by itself, and, additionally, makes it more difficult for other firms to use photo-sharing via smartphones to gain traction in personal social networking.”

WhatsApp was first launched in January 2009 and became the world’s most successful texting app and had 500 million users as of 2014 when Facebook acquired it. The lawsuit states that WhatsApp was viewed as “the next biggest consumer risk” at Facebook. An app offering mobile messaging services could “ enter the personal social networking market, either by adding personal social networking features or by launching a spinoff personal social networking app.”

Like with Instagram, WhatsApp was seen as a threat because it was mobile-first whereas many Facebook users’ activity remained desktop-based. Although Facebook was attempting to enable its platform for the growing number of smartphone users, it was having trouble catching up. As one of the Facebook executives wrote in an email, WhatsApp’s mobile messaging “is a wedge into broader social activity/sharing on mobile we have historically led in web.”

Lastly, the lawsuit focuses on other anticompetitive practices related to third party partners and its application programming interfaces (APIs). APIs are “adapters” that allow software developers to plug their applications into each other for interoperability.

The lawsuit says, “For many years— and continuously until a recent suspension under the glare of international antitrust and regulatory scrutiny—Facebook has made key APIs available to third-party apps only on the condition that they refrain from providing the same core functions that Facebook offers, including through Facebook Blue and Facebook Messenger, and from connecting with or promoting other social networks.”

In concluding their brief, the FTC states that sum total of these acquisitions and anticompetitive practices constitute a violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act and “constitute unfair methods of competition” The lawsuit argues that the FTC Act empowers the court to “issue a permanent injunction” and “order equitable relief to remedy the injury caused by Facebook’s violations.”

Passed in 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act was adopted during an era of significant industrial expansion, the emergence of huge monopolistic enterprises and the domination of the economy by finance capital associated with the emergence of the United States as a major global power. The law prohibited anticompetitive agreements and restricted monopolies, considering them a barrier to innovation and economic development. At that time, a section of the American ruling establishment identified monopolies with tendencies towards authoritarian and undemocratic forms of political rule.

It is safe to say that virtually none of those considerations are at work in the FTC lawsuit against Facebook. After the break-up of AT&T in 1982, there has been little in the way of major enforcement actions involving the Sherman Act for nearly four decades.

The timing of the government’s case—coming after the electoral victory of Democrat Joseph Biden in the 2020 presidential election and amid the ongoing coup plotting and refusal of President Donald Trump to acknowledge the results of the vote—is an indication that, regardless of the occupant of the White House in the coming weeks, there is a consensus developing within the ruling political establishment that big tech must be brought under control so that it can be wielded more effectively as an instrument of class rule.

The bipartisan offensive against Facebook was acknowledged by the New York Times in its initial report: “President Trump has argued repeatedly that the tech giants have too much power and influence, and allies of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. make similar complaints. The federal case against Facebook is widely expected to continue under Mr. Biden’s administration.”

While the two parties are approaching the offensive against Facebook from slightly different standpoints—the Democrats demanding the suppression of speech on the platform and the Republicans falsely claiming that right-wing views are the sole target of Facebook censorship—their class political objectives are the same.

There is no doubt that Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google are monopolies. These colossal conglomerates have functioned as a law unto themselves over a long period, trampling on the rights of users while contributing to the colossal wealth accumulation of the financial oligarchy. Indeed, as Facebook’s lawyers will doubtless argue in court, the conglomerate’s major acquisitions were ratified at every step along the way by the FTC itself.

However, the crisis of capitalism—intensified by the response of the Democrats and Republicans to the coronavirus pandemic—threatens to ignite mass struggles. The ubiquity of the mobile-wireless social media platforms in the hands of masses of people poses an existential threat to the entire capitalist system.

By pursuing antitrust actions against big tech, the ruling elite is seeking to tighten the reins on key technological infrastructure, with the aim of anticipating and obstructing its use by the working class to organize its struggles and restricting the circulation of material of a left-wing, anti-capitalist and socialist character.

US B-52 bombers threaten Iran for second time in three weeks

Bill Van Auken

For the second time in three weeks, Washington has sent a pair of B-52 heavy bombers to the Persian Gulf in a provocative threat of military aggression against Iran.

The two B-52H Stratofortress bombers carried out a 36-hour round-trip flight from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. The previous deployment of the bombers, which are capable of carrying both nuclear and conventional weapons, was from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, meaning that both B-52 wings of the US Air Force Global Strike Command have conducted rehearsals for airstrikes against Iran.

US Iran bombers

The deployments of the same massive warplanes that were used to devastate Vietnam half a century ago have been conducted in the context of mounting war threats and provocations against Iran from both the Trump administration in Washington and its closest ally in the region, the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On November 12, Trump convened a White House meeting of his national security cabinet to discuss a proposal for bombing Natanz, Iran’s main nuclear facility. Top aides, including Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, reportedly talked the president out of an act that would represent a world historic war crime, potentially killing thousands, while sickening many more.

This was followed by Pompeo’s extraordinary tour of the Middle East, which he preceded by telling a State Department press conference that he was committed to a “smooth transition” to a second Trump administration, making it clear that his foreign policy operations are directed at furthering the US president’s bid to overturn the results of the November elections.

Pompeo’s trip, which included extensive talks with Netanyahu and a semi-secret flight by himself and the Israeli prime minister to Saudi Arabia for talks with de facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was directed entirely against what he repeatedly described as the “malign influence” of Iran.

Within four days of this meeting, on November 27, Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, carried out the assassination of Iran’s top scientist, nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. This criminal provocation rivaled that of the US at the beginning of this year with the drone missile murder of top Iranian leader Qassem Suleimani after he had arrived at Baghdad International Airport for an official state visit. It is inconceivable that such an assassination would be ordered without the full support of Washington and preparations for an overwhelming military response to any Iranian retaliation.

Indeed, within hours of the murder of Fakhrizadeh, the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group sailed into the Persian Gulf in a highly unusual back-to-back deployment in the region by warships that had been scheduled to return to their US homeport. The US Navy has announced that the length of the latest deployment is indefinite.

The Navy’s top commander in the region, Vice Admiral Sam Paparo, told a press conference last week that an “uneasy deterrence” supposedly created by US forces in the Gulf has been “exacerbated by world events and by events along the way.” Summing up the Navy’s operations against Iran, Paparo quoted former US Defense Secretary Gen. Jim Mattis: “Be polite, be professional and have a plan to kill everyone in the room. That’s how we conduct ourselves at sea.”

Amid the steady drumbeat of military provocations, the Trump administration is rolling out a continuous series of new anti-Iranian sanctions as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign, an economic blockade tantamount to a state of war.

Among the cruelest of these are blanket financial sanctions against the entire Iranian banking system, which has been used deliberately to block Tehran’s buying medicines and medical supplies, which are supposedly exempted from sanctions on humanitarian grounds. The Iranian government had accused Washington of committing “medical terrorism” even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, as thousands of Iranians were left to die because of their inability to obtain imported medicines.

The pandemic has hit Iran the hardest of any country in the Middle East, with over a million cases and nearly 52,000 recorded deaths. The daily death toll is once again on the rise, now averaging 325. Health officials readily acknowledge that the real toll is probably twice these figures. The country is bracing for a “winter wave” of the pandemic that could bring its cash-strapped healthcare system to its knees.

The governor of Iran’s Central Bank charged Thursday that Washington is blocking Tehran’s efforts to secure vaccines to combat the pandemic. “The US pretends that food and medicine are not subject to sanctions but in practice (it) is stonewalling (the payments),” he said.

Kianoush Jahanpour, the spokesman for Iran’s Food and Drug Administration, said that announced plans to purchase 21 million coronavirus vaccine doses from four countries had been blocked by US sanctions. “While deals have been made for pre-orders, sanctions are casting a shadow over the banking transactions,” Jahanpour said.

At the outset of the pandemic in March, Iran applied for a $5 billion emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to combat the virus. Intense US pressure blocked the body’s executive board from even considering the request.

Far from dampening US imperialist aggression, the pandemic has only served as a trigger for its escalation, while being utilized as a weapon for regime change by inflicting death and suffering upon the Iranian population. Underlying this murderous policy is the drive by US imperialism to counter the decline of its global hegemony by military means, particularly in the Middle East, where Washington’s principal rival, China, is securing energy supplies, including from Iran.

The danger that the Trump administration will launch a war against Iran in the final weeks of its four-year term has by no means receded. The potential pretexts for such an attack include Iran’s exceeding the limitations on its civilian nuclear program imposed under the international accord, known as the JCPOA, that the White House reneged on two years ago.

Washington has also threatened to retaliate against Iran for attacks by predominantly Shia militias in Iraq. While at Tehran’s insistence, these militias had ordered a ceasefire, there have been sporadic attacks claimed by previously unknown groups, including a rocket attack last month on the sprawling US Embassy compound in Baghdad that did little damage.

On Thursday, US sources reported roadside bomb attacks on two convoys transporting supplies for US forces in Iraq, one near the border with Kuwait and another on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Pompeo has stated that the death of an American in such an attack would be a “red line” triggering a US military response against Iran. Washington has recalled much of the staff of the US embassy in preparation for such a conflict.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to bomb Iranian-linked targets in Syria, while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been placed on a state of high alert, reportedly because of a possible US attack on Iran. Netanyahu, who faces the collapse of his government and criminal prosecution, has his own reasons for welcoming a war crisis and could stage a provocation to bring one about.

The conventional wisdom within the corporate media and Democratic Party circles is that Trump’s aggression against Iran is designed to create new facts on the ground that would block an incoming Biden administration from fulfilling its pledge to rejoin the Iran nuclear accord. For his part, Biden’s commitment to this agreement is highly conditional, with likely demands that Iran make even further concessions, including on its missile program

There is, however, a more sinister explanation for the launching of war provocations in the supposed “lame duck” period of an outgoing administration. With Trump’s multiple pseudo-legal challenges to the presidential election failing, a war in the Persian Gulf, and with it the potential for mass casualties among the tens of thousands of US troops deployed in the region, would provide Trump a pretext for realizing his threats to impose martial law and upend the transfer of power.

In the face of this clear and present danger, Biden and the Democrats have worked to conceal the gravity of the situation, fearing an eruption of resistance by the working class far more than the prospect of war and dictatorship.