30 Dec 2020

Macron government rejects national lock-down in France

Samuel Tissot


Yesterday, French authorities reported that 969 people had died in the space of 24 hours on December 29, bringing the official total in the past week to 2,376, and the total since the beginning of the pandemic to 64,078. Over ten thousand cases are being reported every day, though this is likely a significant underestimate due to reduced testing through the holiday period. Over 48 hours from December 24 to 25, more than 40,000 new cases were recorded. As of yesterday, 24,776 people remained hospitalized with COVID-19 in the country.

French President Emmanuel Macron (Image Credit: AP Photo/Francois Mori)

On Monday evening, Health Minister Olivier Véran appeared on the France 2 evening news following a meeting of the defense council that morning. Despite the catastrophic and accelerating situation in France, Véran announced that the government “reject[s] the idea of general or local lockdowns.” The only new measures announced on Tuesday were that twenty departments, predominantly in the East of France, may see curfew measures brought forward by two hours to 6:00 p.m., beginning on January 2. Crucially, these measures do not include the closure of schools, nor the stopping of non-essential work.

The Eastern departments are emerging as the new epicenters of the virus in France. In the week from December 18 to 24, the departments of Doubs, Ardennes, Meurthe-et-Moselle, and Alpes-Maritimes recorded incidence rates of over 300 per 100,000, or over twice the national average. On December 29, the Grand-Est region recorded 68 deaths, overtaking Île-de-France as the region with the highest daily death-toll, despite having under half of the capital region’s population.

A document also made public on December 29 showed that the government-appointed COVID-19 Scientific Council warned leading ministers on December 23 that an “uncontrolled resumption of the epidemic is probable” in January. The council proposed three options, two of which included new lockdown measures to be implemented on December 28 in the one case, and January 2 in the other. The warning was not made public until six days later.

Desperate to avoid any disruption to the extraction of profit from French workers in the new year, the Macron government has instead opted to pursue the third option, described as a “later response” by the council that tweaks minor measures at a local level depending on the rate of hospital admissions. The council warned that this option “presents the risk of intervening too late and then leading to more sever, longer, and restrictive measures” at a later date.

Though not stated by the council’s report, the obvious implication is that it will also include additional preventable deaths. The Macron government is pursuing a policy that it knows will lead to tens of thousands of deaths and threaten to overwhelm the hospital system.

The extended curfew is a bit-part measure that will have a limited effect on the extent of the virus’ spread in the Eastern regions. In October, the national health authority reported that over 60 percent of COVID-19 clusters occurred in workplaces and schools. Nevertheless, Véran dismissed the findings as insignificant. A study published in November in Nature found that “school closures in the United States have been found to reduce COVID-19 incidence and mortality by about 60 percent.” Another July study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that “school closure was associated with a significant decline in both incidence of COVID-19 and…mortality.”

Despite Macron’s claims that “Reason and science” should be the guide for the coronavirus response, his government’s murderous policy flies in the face of the advice of both government-appointed and independent scientists.

Véran used his appearance on France 2 to promote the approval of the vaccine in France on December 27. While the vaccine offers the very real possibility of controlling the virus in the long-term, its premature promotion as a success story is a cynical distraction from the government’s current policy of “herd immunity” that will lead to tens of thousands of extra deaths before the summer.

As of Tuesday evening, only 100 people had received their first dose in France. Even if the goal of one million vaccinations by the end of February is reached, millions would have to be vaccinated each week after that period to provide immunity to the general population before the end of the year. As was the case with the government’s widely promoted, but drastically underfunded, test and trace system implemented after the first lock-down which failed to ascertain over 90 percent of infections, the roll-out of the vaccine will be subordinated to the profit interests of the ruling elite.

Hundreds of billions that could have been used by the Macron government to expand testing and tracing capacity, hire more health care workers, and improve hospitals were instead handed over to large corporations and banks.

The government has only enacted limited measures to maintain the pretense of a fight against the virus. It ended the second, limited lockdown in December although its own sub-5000 daily case threshold for loosening restrictions was never close to being reached. As the second wave rapidly accelerated in October and November, workers were kept on the job, and the government used the police to violently force striking students into schools. Tens of thousands have died unnecessarily as a result of these policies.

Another concern is the detection in France on December 26 of more contagious variant of the virus first sequenced in the United Kingdom. In the space of the last 48 hours the UK has recorded more than 100,000 cases, approximately five times the number reported in France. It has already been reported across multiple European countries, including Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Yesterday, German authorities revealed that the strain had been circulating in the country at least as early as November.

The emergence of a new and even more infectious strain of the virus only increases the urgency with which effective measures to control the virus must be introduced. A group of scientists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine modelled the effect of the new variant on the spread of the virus in England. They concluded that “control measures of a similar stringency to the national lockdown implemented in England in November 2020 are unlikely to reduce the effective reproduction number R to less than 1, unless primary schools, secondary schools, and universities are also closed.”

Going into the worst of the cold season, the policy of keeping millions of workers at work and children in school—followed by capitalist governments across Europe—ensures that hundreds of thousands of lives will be lost in a horrific winter of death. With the vaccine only beginning to be rolled out, stopping this requires the closure of schools and non-essential production. The decisive question is the political mobilization of the working class to oppose the ruling elite’s politically-criminal policy and impose a scientifically-based fight against the virus.

Spain to cut pensions as billions go to super-rich in EU pandemic bailout

Alice Summers


Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government is preparing to cut pensions by around 5.5 percent and raise the retirement age to 67 over the next six years. The attack on pensions is one of a series of cuts to basic social programs the government are carrying out at the European Union’s (EU) behest in exchange for hundreds of billions of euros in COVID-19 pandemic bailout funds.

Spain is to receive €140 billion of the EU’s €750 billion coronavirus stimulus package, including €72 billion in grants. A draft law unveiled in late November made clear this funding will be funneled directly to the banks and large corporations. This process will be overseen by the “left populist” Podemos party.

People walk along a boulevard in Barcelona, Spain, earlier this year. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

According to a draft by PSOE Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, José Luis Escrivá, the number of working years taken into account in calculating pension benefits will rise to 35. This would slash the average pension payment retirees receive.

Workers are generally on better contracts and pay in the later years of their working life, and so contribute more to the pensions system at the end of their careers. Calculating pensions based on an average wage across almost the entire working life ensures that most workers will end up with a far smaller pot than they would with a calculation based only on the later years.

Pensions have been in the firing line of both PSOE and right-wing Popular Party (PP) governments for decades. Increasing the number of years used to calculate a worker’s pension has been a key part of both PSOE and PP cuts. In 1985, only the last two years of working life were used to compute retirement, rising to 11 and then 15 years. In 2011, a pension bill agreed by the unions and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s PSOE government laid out plans to increase this from 15 to 25 years between 2013 and 2022.

The current plan to suddenly raise this figure to 35 amid the social crisis caused by the pandemic represents a drastic escalation of austerity. The 2011 legislation would have raised the number of years used for pension calculations to 25 by 2022. Escrivá’s proposal was not included in recommendations published in October by the Toledo Pact commission—a permanent, cross-party non-legislative body set up in 1995 to propose attacks on pensions.

The Toledo Pact recommendations include eliminating the social security deficit by 2023; encouraging workers to keep working past the official retirement age; stepping up inspections and sanctions for alleged fraud; and pressing workers to invest in private pension plans.

While PSOE Economy Minister Nadia Calviño claimed “workers will be able to exclude the worst years of their contributions” from the calculation, it is unclear how this would be done. Whatever calculation methodology is eventually agreed by the PSOE and Podemos, it will provide little comfort to the millions of workers set to lose much of their retirement.

The retirement age will also rise to 66 years in 2021, up from the current 65. This is in line with the proposals set out by the PSOE government of Zapatero in 2011 and ratified in 2013, which introduced legislation to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 years of age by 2027.

If a worker chooses to take early retirement at 65 years of age, they will only be able to draw a state pension if they have worked and made pension contributions for at least 37 years and three months. By 2027, this will rise to 38 years and six months.

According to the draft document sent by Escrivá to other government ministers, the new pension plan will see an average cut in each worker’s retirement fund of 5.5 percent. The amount lost by workers will vary from 3 percent and 7 percent based on factors like age, salary and number of years worked.

This will significantly exacerbate the dire situation facing retirees in Spain, many of whom face poverty and insecurity in their old age after decades of toil.

In 2019, roughly 1.6 million retirees in Spain were in poverty, meaning that they received less than €9,000 a year in pension income, according to Spanish government figures. This is 12.7 percent of Spain’s approximately 6.09 million retirees. Around 555,000 (9 percent) were in severe poverty, receiving less than €6,000 annually.

These figures rise to around 31.1 percent in poverty and 14.2 percent in severe poverty if all types of pensions are taken into account—including for those with permanent disabilities, for widows and widowers, and for orphans.

This bill exposes the reactionary class interests served by Podemos, a “left populist” party of the affluent middle class. It is a tool of the banks. Indeed, Podemos leader and Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias hailed the EU pandemic bailout, declaring: “For the first time in the history of the EU, a package of subsidies financed with joint debt is being proposed. Eurobonds, which seemed unfeasible a few years ago, are now a reality and will serve to face this crisis in a different way, without social cuts.” This is exposed as a pack of lies.

Like its Greek ally Syriza (“Coalition of the Radical Left”), Podemos supports slashing wages and living standards. This is why Podemos also voted to accept the Toledo Pact’s recommendations in November, which intensify attacks proposed by Zapatero in 2011.

Podemos is cynically posturing as an opponent of the pension cut, with its spokesperson Isa Serra declaring that the pension reform is “going backwards.” This is a pathetic charade: they are members of the very government imposing these attacks.

The PSOE-Podemos government also plans to freeze Spain’s minimum wage, which now stands at a paltry €950 a month—though in-work poverty rose by 16 percent from 2010 and 2019, even before the devastating impact of the pandemic. Across Spain, 12.7 percent of workers were in poverty in 2019, according to a study from the European Confederation of Unions. This makes Spain the sixth-worst affected country in terms of the increase in the number of working poor out of the 27 EU member states.

Exposing the class interests involved in the attacks on pensions, Escrivá’s pension proposal came as it was reported that €113 billion of bad debt held by Spain’s banks had been backed up by state guarantees from the government’s Official Credit Institute. This is far in excess of the roughly €14 billion Madrid expects to have spent on ERTE income support schemes for workers affected by the pandemic by the end of 2020.

The wide-ranging attacks on the pay and pensions make clear that the ruling elite intends to claw back every cent of its bailout of big business from the working class. As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, billions of euros were handed to the banks and large corporations by the European and international governments, while millions of workers lost jobs and incomes or were forced to continue working and risk exposure to the potentially deadly virus.

Meanwhile, the elderly and vulnerable, who are seen as a drain on resources by the ruling class if they can no longer work, were left to die in droves in care homes and hospitals.

The coronavirus pandemic has starkly posed the basic necessity of expropriating the wealth of the financial oligarchy in order to provide for workers’ social needs, including the fundamental right to a dignified and comfortable retirement.

US-China tensions at center of fight over Philippine vaccine procurement

John Malvar


The availability and distribution of a vaccine for COVID-19 in the Philippines has become the subject of a fierce dispute bound up with the struggle over the geopolitical allegiance of Manila to either the United States or China. While the lives and health of millions are at stake, under conditions of mass hunger and pandemic, and with no prospect of a vaccine yet available in the country, the ruling elite are fighting over participation in the war plans of Washington.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte stated on December 26 that he would terminate the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) unless the US provided the Philippines with vaccines. “If they are not able to deliver a minimum of 20 million vaccines, they better get out,” he told the press. “No vaccine, no stay here.”

A medical worker attending to a patient in Manila (Local Government of Manila)

The VFA, signed in 1998, governs the presence of US troops in the country and is a critical foundation for the joint military exercises conducted by Washington in the region. These military exercises have over the past decade turned to an ever-more openly aggressive targeting of China, in the name of maritime security. In 2019, the US military conducted over 300 such joint exercises under the auspices of the VFA.

Duterte’s threat of this past week is the continuation of an ongoing struggle over the VFA. On February 11, Duterte first announced that he would be terminating the VFA. Duterte was responding to the cancelation of Senator Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa’s US visa. De la Rosa, former head of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and long-time ally of Duterte, was instrumental in the creation of the Duterte’s murderous nationwide “war on drugs.” Washington used the issue of human rights violations to attempt to pressure the Duterte administration away from its growing alliance with Beijing.

As the WSWS wrote at the time, the cancelation of the VFA was “the most serious rupture in relations between Manila and its former colonial master since the granting of formal independence on July 4, 1946.”

The termination of the VFA was scheduled to take effect 180 days after the delivery of the notice to the US embassy in Manila, but in early June Duterte suspended the abrogation “in light of political and other developments in the region.” A critical consideration in the suspension was Duterte’s need to retain control over the Philippine military. The termination of the VFA had outraged a significant layer of the top brass and the possibility of a military coup d’état was the subject of public political discussion.

Then US Defense Secretary Mark Esper held a conference call with his Philippine counterpart, Delfin Lorenzana, in mid-June, in which he stated that the US would provide vaccines for COVID-19 to its “allies and partners.” He expressed “appreciation” for the Philippine military’s support for the government’s decision to suspend the termination. He was not thanking the government but the military itself as instrumental in the decision.

Strongly implied in Esper’s statement was the threat that if the VFA was terminated the US would no longer supply a vaccine to the Philippines, as it would no longer be a “partner.”

The termination of the VFA was suspended for six months and, unless Duterte extends the suspension, the 180-day clock on termination will resume ticking at the beginning of 2021.

Duterte’s renewed threat to the VFA was made in response to the fact that Singapore secured Pfizer-produced vaccines and would begin vaccinating the population, while the Philippines had received none. Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Teodoro Locsin Jr. announced in mid-December that someone in the Philippines government had “dropped the ball” and failed to sign a Confidential Disclosure Agreement (CDA) with Pfizer. As a result, he stated, discussions with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo broke down and no vaccine was forthcoming.

Department of Health chief Francisco Duque, stated that his signature on the CDA, which was completed in mid-October, was not a factor in the supply of Pfizer’s vaccine. Carlito Galvez Jr., head of the Philippine vaccination program, explained that the Philippines could expect to receive Pfizer’s vaccine in the third quarter of 2021 “at the earliest.” The Philippines was not a priority target, because “wealthy countries” would receive the vaccine first.

The Philippines is scheduled to receive 2.6 million doses of the UK-based AstraZeneca vaccine in the second quarter of 2021. For a country with a population of 109 million people, this does not begin to remedy the problem. While looking to secure vaccines from the United States with threats to the VFA, the Duterte administration is also attempting to procure 25 million doses of the Chinese-made Sinopharm or Sinovac vaccines.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio, who has played a prominent role in pushing for Duterte to assert Philippine sovereignty over disputed portions of the South China Sea in opposition to China, weighed in with an op-ed column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on December 31. China, he speculated, could make “make access to its own vaccine subject to the condition that the Philippines must set aside its arbitral victory in the West Philippine Sea (WPS).”

Eric Domingo, director general of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), stated that the FDA would rush approval of vaccines approved in the US and UK, but would be strict about vaccines from China.

Duterte revealed on December 26 that his own Presidential Security Group (PSG), comprised of military forces under the direct supervision of the president, had been vaccinated in September and October despite the fact that no vaccine had yet been approved by FDA. A political firestorm erupted over this admission.

Defense Secretary Lorenzana stated that the vaccines administered to the PSG had been produced in China and were “smuggled” into the country. Menardo Guevarra, secretary of the Department of Justice, announced on December 30, that the National Bureau of Investigation would launch a probe of the alleged “smuggling.”

The working masses and poor of the Philippines are currently suffering the worst levels of hunger and malnutrition since the Japanese Occupation. Unemployment has skyrocketed under the conditions of extended lockdown. Indifferent to this suffering, the ruling elite see in the procurement of a vaccine a weapon in their fight over the geopolitical orientation of the country and their hold on power.

Freedom of Information request reveals surge of COVID-19 infections among London bus, rail and tube workers

Laura Tiernan


A video clip from the BBC documentary “Hospital” has been widely shared among bus drivers this past week. Filmed in October at London’s Barnet Hospital, it features doctors and nurses fighting to save the life of Mr Tang, a London bus driver with COVID-19.

A driver for 17 years, Mr Tang (his first name is not provided) explains that he became sick while working. He believes he may have caught the virus from passengers, telling the BBC’s interviewer that as many as 50 percent were not wearing face masks.

BBC interviewer: Were you not worried when the pandemic came? Did that not stop you from going to work?

Mr Tang: I’m serving London… Keep London moving.

BBC interviewer: How long have you been on this [hospital] unit?

Mr Tang: About four, five days.

BBC interviewer: And is your breathing getting better?

Mr Tang: Sometimes… Sometimes getting better. Sometimes getting worse.

Mr Tang, London bus driver

Mr Tang’s health quickly deteriorated. He developed COVID pneumonia, was admitted to the intensive treatment unit (ITU) and placed on a ventilator. Doctors prescribed experimental drug therapies, including Remdesivir and Baricitinib, the latter targeting the body’s immune response to COVID-19. After two months under the care of dedicated nurses and doctors, the 72-year-old bus driver was discharged. A postscript explains that Mr Tang “is considering retiring”.

The BBC’s episode struck a chord among bus workers as a rare instance of the dangers they face being acknowledged. Despite the widely publicised deaths of London bus drivers in April and May of this year, the spread of coronavirus among the city’s bus, rail and tube workforce has been systematically concealed. Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and his deputy, Heidi Alexander—respectively chair and deputy chair of Transport for London (TfL)—have suppressed information about the COVID-19 threat across the capital’s transport network to “keep London moving”.

Khan and Alexander have worked with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, enforcing its homicidal “herd immunity” strategy that prioritises the City of London (i.e., the stock exchange, banks and corporations) over the lives of the working class.

Throughout 2020, the Mayor’s office colluded with the major transport companies—Metroline, Abellio, GoAhead, RATP Dev and Arriva—to block information about the location of COVID-19 infections among its 25,000-strong workforce. They were backed by Unite the union, which helped conceal workplace transmission of the virus as part of their tripartite agreement with TfL and the bus operators pledging “industrial harmony” and “operational efficiency”.

Faced with this political conspiracy, on November 18 the London Bus Drivers Rank-and-File Safety Committee submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request asking TfL to provide the number and location of COVID-19 infections, hospitalisations and deaths among London Underground, rail, bus and private taxi workers for September, October and November.

TfL’s FOI response, received on December 16, came with lengthy qualifications, including an admission that: “While some information in relation to your questions has been reported to us from private operators, it is not necessarily consistent nor provided to us in all cases.” In other words, the information was incomplete. TfL also refused to provide any information about COVID-19 infections among taxi drivers, who are known to suffer among the highest occupational mortality rate from COVID-19.

Nonetheless, TfL’s FOI response has revealed the extent of COVID-19 exposure across the capital’s transport network.

According to TfL, Mr Tang was one of 98 London bus workers diagnosed with COVID-19 in October. By November, that number had nearly doubled, with 170 confirmed cases. No figures were available for December, but a further doubling would mean 340 bus workers are currently infected with COVID-19.

Across the London Underground, 33 Covid-positive tests were recorded in September, 122 in October and 121 in November, among frontline and office-based staff.

London’s rail services also registered an increase in COVID-19 infections, indicated by the following breakdown:

Tragically, the FOI request revealed that two more transport workers died from COVID-19 in October—a London bus worker and a London Underground (LU) worker—taking the official death toll to 46.

Miles Driver, a founding member of the London Bus Drivers Rank-and-File Safety Committee, a member of the Socialist Equality Party and a London bus driver for nearly 20 years, explained the background to the group’s FOI request. “In April and May, we lost 30 drivers to Covid. Back then, we found out through word-of-mouth, or when notices were put up that such-and-such colleague has died. We were deliberately kept in the dark, a huge factor in allowing the virus to spread and claim so many lives.

“By mid-September we were hearing reports about new infections. The company issued contact tracing letters, but we were none the wiser about the number or location of new cases. Once again the information was being concealed.”

In September, the newly formed rank-and-file committee issued an open letter to bus operator Metroline after a driver tested positive at Cricklewood garage. The committee demanded Metroline immediately inform workers about the number and location of COVID-19 infections and called for urgent safety measures, including mandatory onsite testing and full pay for bus workers needing to self-isolate.

Driver says Metroline made no formal reply to the committee’s letter, but within days, company executives held secret tripartite talks with TfL, Khan and Unite the union. The committee’s letter to Metroline went “viral” at the garages, says Driver, with Unite officials suddenly emailing their members, promising a “renewed safety campaign” including a demand for “reporting of positive testing to Unite”. Unite’s safety campaign and its pledge that “we will keep you informed” have proved to be a dead letter.

While TfL has provided a partial tally of COVID-19 infections among bus, rail and tube workers, they have refused to provide a breakdown by garage or depot. The reason is not hard to fathom. Khan and the transport companies are determined to conceal infection clusters showing workplace transmission of COVID-19.

In refusing to provide information on the location of Covid infections, TfL cited Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act: “TfL is not required to respond to a request if it would cost more than £450 to determine if that information is held, and to then locate, retrieve or extract that information from elsewhere (calculated at a rate of £25 per hour).”

TfL, Sadiq Khan, the Labour Party and Unite hold workers’ lives in such low regard.

Indian farmers’ agitation enters second month

Wasantha Rupasinghe


Hundreds of thousands of farmers have been camped on the outskirts of Delhi, India’s capital and largest urban agglomeration, for more than a month as part of a protest against the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s pro-agribusiness “reform” laws.

The farmers launched their Delhi Chalo (Let’s go to Delhi) agitation on November 26. It was timed to coincide with a one-day general strike, joined by tens of millions of workers, to protest the Narendra Modi-led BJP government’s “pro-investor” policies, and demand aid for the hundreds of millions of impoverished workers and toilers whose incomes have been slashed amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Indian farmers listen to a fellow farmer speak as they block a highway in protest against new farm laws at the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh state border, on the outskirts of New Delhi, India, Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Modi and the BJP-led state governments of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, which surround the National Capital Territory, deployed thousands of police and paramilitary forces, water cannon and tear gas to prevent the Delhi Chalo protesters from reaching the national capital as planned on Nov. 27. But to the government’s dismay, the farmers responded by setting up camp along half-a-dozen major highways at Delhi’s border.

In September, the Modi government rammed three farm “reform” laws through the national parliament. Long demanded by big business, these laws will boost domestic and international agribusiness at the expense of India’s farmers, the vast majority of whom have only small land holdings of two hectares (5 acres) or less.

The BJP’s agrarian reform is part of a much wider assault on India’s workers and toilers. The same Monsoon session of parliament that passed the three farm laws, amended the labour code to promote contract labour, outlaw virtually all strikes, and empower large employers to lay off workers at will.

The Modi government has sought to quell the farmers’ agitation, with threats of further repression and offers of small, largely cosmetic changes to the farm bills. Buoyed by widespread popular support, the farmers have braved winter weather, the threat of COVID-19 and numerous health and other challenges to press their demand for the repeal of all three laws.

The government has smeared the protesting farmers, in an attempt to undermine their public support and with a view to laying the political groundwork for mobilizing state security forces to violently evict them. BJP ministers and spokespersons have claimed the farmers’ agitation is backed by China and Pakistan, and that it has been infiltrated by Naxalites (Maoist insurgents) and Khalistanis, (supporters of a separate Sikh state).

After the government failed to persuade the farmers to withdraw, it ordered water supplies cut to the protest sites, creating a sanitary disaster. At least 30 farmers have died during the month-long agitation, as a result of the trying physical conditions and traffic accidents.

The farmers’ agitation has thrown the Modi government and the entire Indian ruling elite into crisis. Their greatest fear is that the farmers’ struggle could become the catalyst for a broader working-class-led movement—a movement that would challenge not just Modi and his Hindu supremacist BJP, but the right-wing, pro-investor agenda that every Indian government has pursued for the past three decades.

The corporate media has strongly backed Modi’s repeated vows that his government will not repeal the farm laws. Big business fears that if the government is seen to retreat before the farmers’ agitation it will galvanize mass opposition among working people, and jeopardize their plans to establish India as an alternate cheap-labour production-chain hub to China.

At present, the corporate elite favours the government seeking to wear down the protesters through dragged out talks and by undercutting their support with smears and other subterfuges, rather than risking a violent confrontation that could ignite protests across India.

This is the significance of the ruling India’s Supreme Court issued on the farmers’ protest on December18. Multiple petitions had been brought before the court requesting it declare the farmers’ agitation illegal, on the grounds that the protest has impeded, and much of the time blocked, traffic on the major highways in and out of Delhi.

India’s highest court has repeatedly provided a legal imprimatur for some of the Modi government’s most aggressive and anti-democratic measures, from the last year’s constitutional coup against Kashmir to the building of a Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Ram on the site of the razed Babri Masjid.

Yet in its December 18 ruling, the Court asserted that the farmers have “a fundamental right to protest against” the agrarian reform laws. “There is no question,” declared Chief Justice S.A. Bobde, “of balancing or curtailing” that right.

The court urged the government and farmers’ organizations to find a negotiated solution, and even offered to help mediate the dispute. But it also left the door wide open to declaring the farmer protest illegal in the future, and green-lighting its state suppression. “We are of the view at this stage,” said the Supreme Court, “that the farmers’ protest should be allowed to continue without impediment and without any breach of peace either by the protesters or the police.”

The Modi government is continuing to press the farmers’ organizations to call off their protest. Yesterday, at the conclusion of a sixth round of talks between government representatives and 41 farmer organisations, the government claimed agreement had been reached on two issues: the farmers’ complaints about proposed electricity price hikes and recently enacted penalties for the burning of stubble. However, there was no movement on the farmers’ key demands, which are the repeal of the three farm laws and a legal guarantee that the Minimum Support Price (MSP) system will be maintained. The two sides agreed that they will meet again on January 4.

In recent weeks, Modi has been trying to promote himself as a “pro-farmer” leader. At a December 25 event, Modi released the next installment of the government’s Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme, under which all farmers are entitled to 6,000 rupees (about US $82) a year in minimum income support. Such posturing has gone alongside incessant attacks on the opposition parties, whom Modi accuses of inciting and “misleading” the farmers.

The claims of the Congress Party and the other regional and caste-ist opposition parties to “oppose” the BJP’s farm laws and “support” the farmers’ agitation are utterly cynical and hypocritical. These parties are no less committed to enforcing pro-investor reforms than Modi and his BJP. Congress, till recently the Indian bourgeoisie’s preferred party of government, initiated in 1991 and for much of the next quarter-century spearheaded the process of transforming India into a cheap labour platform for global capital, and a close ally of Washington.

When Modi claims that Congress-led governments tried to impose similar pro-agribusiness reforms but retreated due to fears of popular opposition, the BJP leader is for once telling the truth.

As for the main Stalinist parliamentary parties—the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, and the Communist Party of India (CPI)—they have been working tirelessly to prevent the working class from emerging as the political leadership of a mass movement against Modi’s “pro-investor” reforms and the Indian capitalist class as a whole.

That the objective conditions exist for such a movement has been shown by the mass participation in the November 26 and January 8 general strikes and a mounting wave of strikes and worker protests against job cuts, poverty wages, speed-up and, among health care workers, the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE). In the state of Karnataka, for example, over 3,000 Toyota Kirloskar Motors (TKM) workers have been defying a government back-to-work order for more than a month, after striking in opposition to management’s demand they boost production by 25 percent.

Rather than fighting for the working class to intervene as an independent political force, the Stalinists’ main goal is to boost the political authority of the Congress Party and the other right-wing opposition parties. Throughout the farmers’ agitation, the CPM and CPI have been working in tandem with the Congress, issuing joint statements of “support” and even organizing a joint delegation of opposition leaders to visit Indian President Ram Nath Kovind, a notorious BJP hack, to urge him to press Modi to address the farmers’ grievances.

Last week, the Congress Party high command officially announced that it will contest the coming state elections in West Bengal, India’s fourth most populous state, in an alliance with the CPM, CPI and their Left Front.

While keeping the working class on the sidelines, the Stalinists are also doing nothing to broaden the movement among the rural toilers, by advancing demands to meet the needs of the agricultural workers and landless who make up the majority of rural households.

The Stalinists are using what influence they have among farmers and the rural poor through the CPM-led All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) and other farmer organizations to push for the farmers to reach a compromise with the Modi government. Earlier this week, CPM Politburo member and AIKS General Secretary Hannan Mollah insisted, “that there cannot be a resolution without a dialogue with the government.”

He then proceeded to dismiss Modi’s claim that the Stalinists are playing a leading role in the farmer’s agitation with the aim of destabilizing BJP government. In the process, Mollah made clear that the CPM is determined to keep the farmers’ agitation apart from the growing groundswell of opposition to the government and its pro-investor policies, and within the strict confines of establishment politics. The BJP, said Mollah, “are busy pushing an agenda on the movement that was never ours to start with. Out of the 500 organizations which are part of the farmer struggle, around 10-11 would be left-leaning.”

Political crisis deepens after Nepali parliament dissolved

Rohantha De Silva


Political turmoil has intensified in Nepal following dissolution of the parliamentary lower house by President Bidya Devi Bandari on December 20, two years ahead of its scheduled term.

Bandari declared the dissolution at the request of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, with fresh elections to be held on April 30 and May 10 next year.

Oli, with the approval of his cabinet, initiated the anti-democratic operation even though his ruling Stalinist Nepal Communist Party (NCP) had an overwhelming majority of 174 in the 275 members in the lower house. It followed his attempts to prorogue parliament in July to avert a planned no-confidence vote. The no-confidence proposal was initiated by a faction of the NCP headed by its co-chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal.

Nepalese demonstrators participate in a torch rally to protest against the dissolution of parliament in Kathmandu, Nepal. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

In 2017, the two Stalinist parties—the Oli-led Nepal United Marxist-Leninist and Dahal’s Communist Party of Nepal Maoist Centre—united during the national election. In 2018, they merged in the NCP in the hope of diverting growing social opposition across the country.

The conflict erupted after Dahal requested he be made prime minister in line with a unity agreement struck by the two parties. Under that deal, Dahal would assume the prime ministership two and half years after the 2017 election victory.

The split within the ruling party is not simply over ministerial positions but is driven by the escalating economic and social crisis within the landlocked Himalayan country, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and growing geo-political tensions across the region. As of yesterday and according to understated official data, over 260,000 people have been infected and 1,847 have died.

A total of 12 petitions have been filed in Nepal’s supreme courts by supporters of the Dahal faction within the NCP and several activists challenging the dissolution of parliament. They claim the dissolution was anti-democratic, undermines the constitution and branded it a “constitutional coup.”

The NCP is on the verge of open split, with Oli, on one side, and Dahal and former prime minister and Stalinist leader Madhav Kumar Nepal, who control the parliamentary majority, on the other. Both factions have begun counter moves to control the party apparatus.

There are no fundamental political differences between these factions. Both have worked together to implement pro-market reforms and are responsible for the social crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Each of the factions, which have previously ruled the country, defend big business profits.

Oli’s dissolution of parliament has seen protests and demonstrations erupt across the country, including in the capital Kathmandu. On Monday, tens of thousands participated in a demonstration in Kathmandu organised by the Dahal-led NCP faction.

“The prime minister has no authority to dissolve the parliament under the constitution. Therefore, he should reverse his decision immediately,” Rajesh Thapa, a 19-year-old student, told the Aljazeera news agency.

Police have been mobilised to crack down on protesters. Sixteen human rights activists and leaders of various civil rights groups were arrested at a demonstration in the capital on December 21.

In 2017, the united Stalinist parties promised democracy and “prosperity” to workers and youth while attempting to divert growing social opposition into a nationalist anti-Indian campaign.

The election of the NCP government in 2017, however, resolved none of the social problems confronting the masses. The Dahal faction and its allies, in an attempt to deny their own role, claim that the country’s mounting economic problems are simply the result of Oli’s corruption and autocratic measures.

The widely discredited, conservative pro-Indian Nepali Congress Party is seeking to exploit the political crisis. Having quietly supported the Oli regime in recent months, on December 14 it shifted course and held rallies over 70 districts, including in Kathmandu.

While the country’s economy is in tatters, Nepal’s wage workers have increased by four million between 2008 and 2018. Every faction of the ruling elite is nervous about a social explosion.

According to a World Bank report issued in October, Nepal’s economic growth will only be 0.2 percent this year and 0.6 percent in 2021. Last year Nepal recorded 5.7 percent economic growth. An assessment in May by the International Labor Organisation found that “between 1.6 million and 2 million jobs are likely to be disrupted in Nepal in the current crisis, either with complete job loss or reduced working hours and wages.”

Tourism, which employed over half a million people and earned $US2 billion as foreign exchange annually, has collapsed, while the pandemic has seen a drastic cut in income from the country’s 3.5 million migrant workers.

Media reports are scanty but in recent months there have many protests and strikes by health workers in Nepal demanding payment of outstanding wages and allowances, proper health facilities and protective clothing to combat the pandemic.

In September, thousands of young people demonstrated in Kathmandu opposing the government’s move to use low cost and less effective rapid antigen COVID-19 tests and demanding the use of the more accurate PCR tests. The protests forced the government to resume PCR testing.

In mid-December, 100,000 sugarcane farmers resumed protests over outstanding payments. The demonstrations were halted in March because of the national coronavirus lockdown. These poor farmers are owed a total of 800 million rupees (around $US7 million) from mill owners and a 1 billion-rupee subsidy from the government.

India and China both are intensifying the efforts to maintain influence in Kathmandu.

China, which has boosted its role in Nepal during Oli’s administration, recently sent a high-level delegation led by Guo Yezhou, vice-minister of the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party, to Kathmandu.

During his four-day visit Guo met with leaders of rival factions, including Oli, Dahal and President Bandari, to try and patch up the rift, and also held talks with Congress party leaders. Late last month, Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe also visited Nepal to try and heal the divisions between the two factions. Facing increasing US aggression, Beijing is keen to enhance its relations with Nepal.

India regards Nepal as part of its traditional backyard and is hostile to Beijing’s growing influence in Kathmandu. The US, which is promoting India as its strategic partner, is also anxious about Chinese influence in Nepal.

Indian media commentators have praised the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government for not making “public comments” on the NCP’s factional conflict. Delhi, however, has been busy mending its relations with Nepal’s ruling NCP and other factions of the ruling elite.

In mid-October, three top Indian officials visited Nepal. They included Indian intelligence chief Samant Goel, Army Commander General Manoj Mukund Naravane and Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla.

India is determined to bring the strategically-located Nepal under its sway. This is not just for its own strategic aims but as a frontline state for US imperialism and its confrontation with China.

Vaccine distribution fiasco continues in the United States

Bryan Dyne


The first three weeks of coronavirus vaccination in the US have proven to be a debacle. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), less than one-fifth of the 11.4 million vaccine doses distributed have been administered.

At the current rate of about one million doses administered per week, it will take another 329 weeks, or more than six years, to administer the vaccine to everyone in the country. In addition, since the vaccines currently approved for use require two doses to be most effective, the time to properly vaccinate everyone in the country may be closer to double the above estimate.

A Health Department worker fills a syringe with Moderna COVID-19 vaccine before administering it to emergency medical workers and healthcare personnel. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

President-elect Biden claims that he will distribute 100 million vaccinations during his first 100 days in office, 14 times the current rate. However, little has been forthcoming from his transition team on exactly how this will be accomplished.

The slow rollout has been proceeding during the worst month of the pandemic to date. The US recorded more than six million cases of COVID-19 in December alone, along with more than 70,000 deaths. While dips in reporting caused by the holiday season are showing a decrease in the daily case and death rates, these are expected to spike back up after the new year, as reports from December are filed and an expected new wave of infections occurs as a result of travel during the last week of 2020.

In total, the US has now suffered more than 20,000,000 cases of COVID-19, and will have a death toll of more than 350,000 by the end of the month. Worldwide, there are more than 83 million confirmed cases and at least 1.8 million reported deaths.

An independent report from Bloomberg tells a similar catastrophic story about the state of vaccine distribution in the United States. According to the news outlet, nearly 20 million first doses of the vaccine have been allotted to states, but only 2.3 million have been administered, about 11.5 percent.

President Donald Trump has seen fit to blame the states for the ongoing chaos. He tweeted on December 30, “The Federal Government has distributed the vaccines to the states. Now it is up to the states to administer. Get moving!”

Trump, of course, made no mention of the fact that the states have no resources with which to swiftly distribute and administer the vaccines, something of which the US government was warned months ago. The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and the Association of Immunization Managers wrote to Congress in October that $8.4 billion in emergency funds were needed to ensure a successful vaccination campaign against the coronavirus. Measures needed include more workers in health departments to administer the vaccines, more infrastructure to provide shots, and upgrades to the communications infrastructure to report and track vaccinations.

During that same period, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar claimed, “We project having enough for every American who wants a vaccine by March to April 2021.” The Trump administration also asserted that it would have 100 million doses of the vaccine by the end of 2020. A month later, in November, this number was more than halved to 40 million.

The October letter was a follow-up to a similar letter in the summer, when the Phase II trials indicated that various vaccines were likely to be successful. Nothing was done by the Trump administration or pushed for by the Democrats in Congress to prepare for the current situation.

At best, 20 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed to states. Now, state and local health officials are being asked to give vaccines on top of the other public health measures—including testing and contact tracing—they are being asked to carry out with little or no national coordination or support.

In Florida, for example, the Lee County Department of Health told residents that anyone older than 65 or any frontline health care worker could come to one of seven “first come, first serve” vaccine sites. Each site only had 300 vaccines to administer, causing wait times up of to nine hours. In Palm Beach, the county has set up a hotline to make appointments by phone, but the system has been regularly crashing from the overwhelming number of calls. The scenes are reminiscent of attempts by workers to get unemployment benefits in March and April.

A retired Pittsburgh nurse, commenting on the state of vaccine distribution, said: “There is no plan. It’s a total clusterfuck. I’ve asked my colleagues who are still working whether or not anything is being implemented to get a smooth vaccine distribution, and the answer is nothing.” She added, “One thing I do know is that the rich are going to get it first, before the rest of us.”

There are already numerous reports of those with concierge medical service offering to pay or “donate” tens of thousands of dollars to their clinics in order to get the vaccine as soon as possible. Services for the rich, such as Sollis Health in the Hamptons, were among the first to buy up the specialized refrigerators needed to store the Pfizer vaccine, which must be kept at -94 degrees Fahrenheit to remain effective. This has made it increasingly difficult for hospitals and government services where workers are more likely to get their doses to procure the necessary equipment to receive the vaccines in the first place.

The problems facing the US vaccination program highlight the importance of maintaining other public health measures, including testing, contact tracing and isolation. A vaccine is another tool to end a pandemic, not a solution by itself. If vaccinations do end up taking months or years, they will be essentially worthless for preventing further death.

Such a state of affairs argues for a national lockdown and closure of non-essential workplaces, with full compensation to workers and small businesses, in order to stop the spread of the pandemic. It is the height of cruelty to have an effective vaccine against the coronavirus while forcing people to expose themselves and possibly die before they can get the cure.

The class divide and chaotic nature of vaccination in the US are being mirrored around the world. Even before the vaccines were approved for distribution, the United States and other major capitalist powers had already reserved 51 percent of the existing and planned doses. This has caused vicious competition between countries to get even a nominal amount of the vaccine for their respective health care workforces.

Such unequal distribution of the vaccine will also provide further opportunities for the pandemic to spread. As World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted in his New Year press release, “to protect the world, we must ensure that all people at risk everywhere—not just in countries who can afford vaccines—are immunized.”

“To do this,” he continued, WHO “needs just over 4 billion US dollars urgently to buy vaccines for low- and lower-middle-income countries.” This is a tiny fraction of the money spent on various bailouts and stimulus packages for Wall Street, and about 0.5 percent of the most recent US military budget, approved by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

That such relatively small sums are not available for mass inoculation of the world against a deadly pandemic speaks to the true orientation of the American ruling elite and the need for the international working class to take matters into its own hands.

COVID-19 Mauled 2020—A Nuclear Disaster Would End Time

Manpreet Sethi


2020 started on a grim note, with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists deciding in January to move the minute hand on its clock to 100 seconds to midnight. This was a reminder of the high level of risk that humanity faced from nuclear issues and climate change. It was meant to shake nations out of their complacency and seriously address the dangerous state of affairs.

However, as it turned out, the world found itself in the throes of an unexpected pandemic even before March was over. The situation only got worse over the rest of the year. As 2020 slips into history, the year will be remembered with sadness for the loss of nearly 2 million lives across the world.

2020 will also be recalled for the geopolitical fractures that became more pronounced as countries withdrew inwards. Gasping to cope with glaring gaps in domestic health infrastructure, governments were also left with battered economies. As reality sunk in, one would have thought that spending priorities would change. But they have not. The focus on military capability to project power, and within that, on nuclear weapons for national security, has remained unwavering.

Consequently, the year was witness to several political and technological factors that heightened the threat of nuclear risks, especially of inadvertent escalation resulting from misperceptions and misunderstanding. Low trust levels among major nuclear-armed states, manifest capability build-up to meet the elusive concept of ‘perfect’ deterrence, prospects of resumed nuclear testing, disavowal of arms control arrangements, refusal to participate in nuclear dialogue, and the unregulated development of emerging, disruptive technologies, are but some of the developments that contributed to the sense of increased nuclear risks. And, there were no moves towards reducing them.

Of course, one could argue that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), or the ban treaty, received its 50th ratification in 2020, and this should be a move towards reducing nuclear risk since it bans nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, however, while the treaty will enter into force in January 2021, this will not usher in a nuclear weapons free world (NWFW). The nine nuclear weapon possessors and NATO states have rejected the treaty for its inability to define disarmament, verification, and compliance processes. Nothing, therefore, will change for their nuclear holdings or plans for the future.

For that to happen, a deeper change in the value attributed to nuclear weapons is required. Till such time as countries believe that these weapons add to their security from a range of threats, they cannot be expected to eliminate them from their arsenals. Belief systems or doctrines that contend that the limited use of such weapons is possible for a limited nuclear war add further value to the weapon. The reality, however, is that nuclear use, irrespective of how limited a manner it starts in, would more likely than not end high on the escalation ladder. This fear has kept nuclear use in check until now. But as the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki fades, as trust deficits between multiple players grow, as nuclear doctrines favour ambiguities and risk-taking postures, as new capabilities promise prospects of winning a nuclear war, the chances of inadvertent deterrence breakdown significantly multiply.

Any untoward incident involving nuclear weapons would be a disaster several times more unbearable than what COVID-19 has been. For those who doubt this, the BBC documentary, Threads, is highly recommended. It was released in 1984, but has been only sporadically available for public viewing owing to its grim content, which gives a glimpse of how horrific life would be after the use of nuclear weapons. The documentary film, set in the UK, envisages a nuclear exchange between the East and West in which 210 megatons fall on the UK. Expectedly, it causes damage and destruction of a kind that are well-known—of men and material; of health services; of electricity or running water; of communications; of agriculture; of food; of the environment—leading first to extreme cold and then to high UV exposure.

The documentary, however, also brings out dimensions of destruction that we usually do not think about—the loss of unseen and yet essential social threads that hold us together—such as law and order; civility; language; art and culture; the ability to dignify the dead with a burial or cremation. In the fictional setting, the UK loses 30 million people to the nuclear attack. Its population further dwindles as survivors succumb to effects of radioactive fallout, and stillborn babies are delivered. In comparison, the pandemic that has raged on for the better part of this year has led to approximately 50,000 deaths in the UK and about 2 million across the globe. The scale of instant destruction with nuclear weapons is unmatchable.

It is therefore necessary that there be no year that is ever remembered by its sorry survivors for the kind of unthinkable damage that even a ‘modest’ nuclear exchange would cause. Hopefully, 2021 will not only bring good tidings in our fight against COVID-19, but also wisdom and good sense to address urgent nuclear risks. The vaccine is on the horizon. Can something be expected in the new year on the nuclear front, too, to enable a change to the Bulletin’s symbolic clockface?