LIVING BEYOND THE WORLD'S IMAGINATION

9 Feb 2021

Tamil National People’s Front collaborates with allies of Sri Lankan regime

S. Jayanth

After two local councils’ proposed budgets were defeated in northern Sri Lanka, the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF), a Tamil nationalist party, joined the pro-government Eelam People Democratic Party (EPDP) to take over in those councils on December 30, 2021.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which governed Jaffna Municipal Council and Nallur local government, was defeated in the vote on its 2021 budget proposals. After this, Manivannan, the TNPF national organizer who was sacked from the party, became mayor with the support of TNPF and EPDP municipal councilors.

Similarly, one of Manivannan’s supporters contested for the chairmanship of the Nallur local government and became council chairman with EPDP support. The TNPF and EPDP thus allied to oust two widely discredited TNA local governments. However, this was only as part of an effort to tie the working class and youth to reactionary political allies of the regime in Colombo.

EPDP leader Douglas Devananda is a minister in President Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) government. The EPDP not only was a partner in several previous Colombo governments, but is notorious for being Colombo’s long-time partner in the communal 1983–2009 Sri Lankan civil war. It functioned as a paramilitary ally of the Sri Lankan and Indian militaries between 1987 and 1990, during the Indian intervention in the conflict.

The collaboration with the EPDP of the TNPF, led by Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, is another political exposure of the TNPF’s nationalist politics. This maneuver strengthens the government of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse, which is moving towards a military dictatorship.

To escape criticism, Ponnambalam cynically declared he would expel the 13 members who aligned with the EPDP and Manivannan in both local governments. This is rank hypocrisy, however. Though Ponnambalam has often denounced the EPDP as a “parasite group” in order to pretend that he pursues a separate policy, he has previously proposed alliance with EPDP to take over local councils.

The above events are another expression of the political bankruptcy of all the Tamil nationalist bourgeois parties and their move to the right. This has intensified the internal factional fights of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK) that leads the TNA, and the TNPF, which postures as an alternative to the TNA.

Under the leadership of Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the TNPF was formed by the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC), which is made up of forces expelled from the TNA in 2010. The TNA, for its part, was formed to cooperate with US-backed attempts by a faction of the Colombo bourgeoisie, led by the United National Party, to organize peace talks with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the communal war.

After the Sri Lankan army massacred tens of thousands of Tamil civilians and crushed the LTTE in May 2009, the TNA, led by R. Sampanthan, sought an alliance with the Colombo establishment. In 2010, it supported presidential candidate General Sarath Fonseka, who had commanded the offensive against the LTTE launched by Rajapakse in 2009.

The TNPF was formed by forces that feared the TNA would be politically discredited by its attempts to ally with parties who oversaw the communal massacre in 2009. Ponnambalam led the founding of the TNPF, trying to present it as the true defenders of bankrupt Tamil nationalism. There was, however, no fundamental political difference between the TNPF and the TNA. Like the separatist LTTE itself, both sought to secure the privileges of the Tamil bourgeoisie, by working out an alliance with the imperialist powers and the most powerful regional power, India.

Shortly after the TNPF was formed in 2010, Ponnambalam told the media that he was pursuing the TNA’s founding policies. “The founding principles of the TNA are the right to self-determination, sovereignty and the motherland. We are working hand in hand and friendly with India and the international community to achieve them,” he said, adding, “The international community is pressuring the Rajapakse government, and we should use it.”

The TNA was at the forefront of the Tamil nationalist parties in supporting US President Barack Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” policy. This extended up to the US-led regime change operation that ousted Rajapakse from power in the January 2015 presidential election and installed Maithripala Sirisena. The TNA became a leading defender of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe “good governance” government, emerging as an aid for Washington’s war drive against China.

The TNA was politically shattered, however, by the historic political crisis in the last presidential elections, that came amid an upsurge of strikes and protests by Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim workers and youth against austerity and police-state policies. The Sinhalese bourgeoisie’s traditional parties, the United National Party and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, which had ruled the country since formal independence in 1947, collapsed.

The TNA backed United People Power candidate Sajith Premadasa, who sought a compromise with Gotabaya Rajapakse after the latter became president. Meeting with his brother, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse, the TNA backed “herd immunity” policies in the pandemic.

The TNPF continues the TNA’s politics with at most a few tactical changes. In the 2015 elections, it called to abstain from voting for Sirisena—not because of US geopolitical strategy, but to posture as an opponent of the Colombo regime. Ponnambalam also called for an election boycott in the 2019 presidential election.

However, Ponnambalam and other Tamil nationalist parties are also aligned with the war strategy of the United States and its South Asian strategic partner, India, against China.

The crisis of these parties has erupted within the TNA, as factions led by Sumanthiran and Senathirajah blamed each other for the severe setbacks in the August general elections. In the 2015 election, the TNA received 515,963 votes or 4.62 percent of the country’s total vote, but it received only 327,168 or 2.8 percent in the last election. The number of seats won in 2015 dropped to 10 in 2019. Its sharp setback shows the growing discontent among Tamil workers and the poor with the TNA.

The ITAK, traditionally regarded as the Tamil bourgeoisie’s main party, and which led the TNA, has split over the past few years.

In the last election, though the Tamil People’s Alliance led by former Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran and the TNPF each won one seat, they are still unpopular. These parties’ occasional statements about those killed during the war, the disappeared, political prisoners and the disasters caused by the war, are only cynical attempts to quell growing mass anger against the government.

As the crisis of global capitalism intensified with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Tamil parties and the bourgeois parties in the south are exposed among workers and the poor.

Experience has shown time and again that the Tamil nationalist parties do not fight for the democratic rights of the Tamil people, but are conspiring with the capitalist regime in Colombo in the interests of the Tamil bourgeoisie, against the entire working class and poor of the island. In order to defend their privileges, they have turned themselves into outfits defending the global war strategy pursued by US imperialism.

In the context of the rapid spread of the coronavirus in Sri Lanka, the Tamil parties fully support the government’s move to force workers back to work and reopen schools to protect the profits of big business.

President Rajapakse’s regime is accelerating its efforts to suppress growing workers’ struggles, incite anti-Tamil and anti-Muslim violence and resort to military dictatorship. The government seeks to divide the working class along racial lines. Similarly, the Tamil parties’ nationalist propaganda only serves to divide workers in the north and east from their class brothers in the south.

Tamil workers, the poor and youth must reject Tamil nationalism and the bourgeois parties that promote Tamil nationalism. The abolition of racial discrimination against the Tamil people and the defense of their democratic rights is bound up with the struggle to overthrow of the pro-imperialist bourgeois regime and fight for socialism.

World Health Organization confirms natural origins of coronavirus

Bryan Dyne

On February 9, the World Health Organization confirmed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus evolved naturally, possibly in bats in southeast China, and passed to humans either directly or through another intermediary species. It ruled out the hypothesis that the virus had been made by humans and released into the wild.

These findings were presented in preliminary fashion at a press briefing which concluded the 12-day joint WHO-China mission to study the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus which has caused the COVID-19 pandemic. The mission, which included 17 medical experts from 10 countries, was a follow-up to the initial January 2020 investigation into the origins of the virus and provided more details about the path of transmission from animals to humans.

A worker wearing a hazardous materials suit takes the temperature of a passenger at the entrance to a subway station in Beijing, Sunday, Jan. 26, 2020. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

The results were released at a critical stage of the pandemic. An average of more than 12,000 people are dying everyday worldwide, and a total of more than 2.34 million are now dead. There have been more than 107 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus since the pandemic began in December 2019, and nearly 26 million people have known active infections. New, more infectious and deadly variants of the virus have spawned in Britain, South Africa and Brazil, all of which threaten a renewed surge of the deadly pandemic.

The team examined four ways for the virus to have emerged, including directly from wildlife to people, from wildlife to people through some number of intermediate hosts, from wildlife to people though food and from a laboratory.

“Our initial findings suggest that the introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway and one that will require more studies and more specific targeted research,” said Dr. Peter Embarek, a specialist in food safety and zoonotic diseases and the leader of the WHO delegation. He continued, “All the work that has been done on the virus and trying to identify its origin continue to point toward a natural reservoir.”

Such natural reservoirs include local farms, where viruses jump from animal to animal, as well as the possibility of an origin in animals from another country in Southeast Asia.

The WHO-China mission also addressed concerns that the virus was circulating widely before it was detected, noting that there was “no indication” that the virus was circulating in broader parts of the world before being detected in Wuhan at the end of December 2019. At most, epidemiological teams led by Thea Fischer found that the virus had been circulating outside of the infamous Huanan wet markets, indicating more potential ways for the virus to have begun infecting humans.

Embarek also made clear that, “the findings suggest that the laboratory incidents hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus to the human population,” and that it would no longer be viewed as an avenue of study.

Such statements are a direct refutation of allegations first made by ruling circles in the United States and Europe last year, that the virus was made by Chinese authorities and that COVID-19 is a product of Chinese germ-warfare programs. The center of this campaign has been unfounded accusations that the virus was made and released by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that the Chinese government concealed this fact while stockpiling medical supplies to whether the initial storm.

This was promoted most heavily by then-US President Donald Trump, who alluded that China was “knowingly responsible” for the pandemic. The media latched on to this narrative, with the Washington Post for example making the incendiary remark in an editorial that the coronavirus was “spread from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” breathlessly noting that researchers there “had carried out research on bat coronaviruses.”

Even then, the scientific evidence clearly showed such claims to be false. A study written by US and UK biologists and published in Nature stated in no uncertain terms, “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” A different study from a group of US physicians wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that, “SARS-CoV-2 did not escape from a jar.”

Those same physicians also noted the coronavirus “RNA sequences closely resemble those of viruses that silently circulate in bats, and epidemiologic information implicates a bat-origin virus infecting unidentified animal species sold in China’s live-animal markets.” They further commented on the increasing likelihood of encountering zoonotic disease. “It took the genome of the human species 8 million years to evolve by 1 percent. Many animal RNA viruses can evolve by more than 1 percent in a matter of days. It is not difficult to understand why we increasingly see the emergence of zoonotic viruses.”

Moreover, it is a matter of public record that Chinese health authorities reacted swiftly to the emergence of the new coronavirus. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission reported a cluster of pneumonia cases on December 31, 2019. China informed the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on January 3 and on January 7 identified the virus that causes COVID-19. Chinese health authorities updated the WHO and warned of the dangers of human-to-human transmission of the disease.

On January 22, Beijing locked down Wuhan and the entire province of Hubei to contain the spread of the disease. This allowed the country to contain and suppress the virus to the extent that there has been no reported death of the coronavirus in China since last May. It is not a statement of political agreement with the Chinese government to admit these facts.

The opposite is now taking place in the United States, Brazil, Europe and other world powers. In the face of emerging and more infectious variants, lockdown measures are being lifted as swiftly and completely as possible. It was the unimpeded circulation of the coronavirus in animals that allowed it to evolve to infect humans in the first place, and it is the unimpeded circulation in humans that is making the virus more deadly.

As WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted in remarks on Monday, “These results are a reminder that we need to do everything we can to reduce circulation of the virus with proven public health measures.” He again stated that non-pharmaceutical interventions, which include lockdowns of schools and nonessential businesses, are critical in “denying the virus the opportunity to spread, and the opportunity to change in ways that could make vaccines less effective.”

Dam disaster in India: Over 200 construction workers and villagers trapped or dead

Saman Gunadasa

On Sunday morning, part of the glacier at Nanda Devi, India’s second highest peak, burst. Massive floodwaters and silt gushed downstream along the Dhauliganga and Alaknanda rivers, virtually wiping out power plants, bridges and tunnels, and cutting off villages.

By official estimates, the disaster trapped and killed more than 200 power plant workers and villagers in Joshimath in the state of Uttarakhand, near the Chinese and Tibetan borders in India’s Himalayan region.

At the time of writing, 28 bodies had been found and another 197 people were officially missing. Rescue operations are underway to try to free around 39 construction workers trapped in a tunnel. To reach them, teams were drilling, around-the-clock, through a 12-foot high and 15-foot wide, 2.5 kilometre-long tunnel at the Tapovan Visnugad power plant site that is blocked with the debris and silt. Earlier, 16 workers were rescued from a comparatively shorter tunnel at the Rishiganga Hydroelectric Project.

Most of the victims are workers in power plants, dam sites and tunnels. The number has increased in the reports since the disaster and it could grow further in coming days. According to Uttarakhand police chief Ashok Kumar, more than 50 people working at the Rishiganga project are feared dead.

“There was a cloud of dust as the water went by. The ground shook like an earthquake,” a resident in the area told Al Jazeera. Another resident said: “It came very fast, there was no time to alert anyone.”

Floods washed away five bridges. One bridge in Raini village had connected 13 villages in Malari and Ghansali, which are presently cut off. According to the authorities, food supplies are to be dropped into these areas.

Sunday’s disaster was a result of various projects carried out in the area by successive governments, with total disregard for possible environmental hazards, in order to provide opportunities for big business investors. Having paved the way for such a disaster, the Indian ruling class is shedding crocodile tears for the victims. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) declared on Twitter: “India stands with Uttarakhand and the nation prays for everyone’s safety there.”

Modi announced a pittance of 200,000 rupees ($US2,743) for the next of kin of those who died in the disaster and 50,000 rupees for the seriously injured, from the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund. Uttarkhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, a member of Modi’s BJP, announced another 400,000 rupees for the next of kin of each deceased.

Map showing Uttarakhand (Credit: Google Maps)

The magnitude of this disaster is linked to several hydroelectric projects. The Rishiganga plant (13.2 megawatt) was the first to face the brunt of the gushing waters and the debris from this plant hit other units downstream. These included the state-run Tapovan (520 MW) and Pipal Koti (4×111 MW) projects and the private Vishnuprayag (400 MW) project. Most of the casualties so far reported are from the Tapovan plant.

Indian governments have increasingly exploited this environmentally sensitive area as a resource frontier to generate corporate profits, overriding opposition from villagers over the resulting dangers.

In 2019, villagers of Raini petitioned the Uttarkhand high court against various environmental hazards emanating from “developmental” activities, including illegal stone quarrying on the Rishi Ganga riverbed and the blasting of mountains. Even though some of those allegations were proved to be true, authorities went ahead with the projects.

The upper regions of Uttarakhand already have 16 dams, with a further 13 under construction. Moreover, the state government has proposed another 54 dams. On the Dhauliganga river, eight new back-to-back hydro-electricity plants are proposed, in addition to the Tapovan project, which was badly damaged.

Many glaciers form part of India’s long northern border in the Himalayan region. Globally, glaciers are thawing. According to Sarah Das, an associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, “most mountain glaciers around the world were much larger in the past and have been melting and shrinking dramatically due to climate change and global warming.”

An article on the Wire quoted a 2018 policy brief from the Divecha Centre for Climate Change, Bengaluru, indicating that “the average temperature in the northwestern Himalayas has risen by 0.66º C since 1991—an increase much higher than the global average.” Also, scientists from the Snow and Avalanche Study Establishment in Chandigarh reported that winters in the northwestern Himalayas had been getting warmer and wetter for the past 25 years.

Research based on the study of 650 glaciers spanning 2,000 kilometres and published in the journal Science Advances in June 2019, showed that glacial melting had doubled since 2000 as compared to 1975-2000. According to this study, “following a more pronounced warming trend starting in the 1990s; from 2000 the loss accelerated to about half a metre annually.”

The present disaster has occurred less than a decade after a 2013 catastrophe in Uttarakhand, which was dubbed the “Himalayan tsunami.” In June that year, torrents of water, mud and rocks were unleashed, sweeping away homes, buildings, roads and bridges, and killing close to 6,000 people.

In 2018, Vimal Bhai of Matu Jan Sangathan, a Uttarakhand-based non-government organisation, told the media: “It has been five years since the devastating floods occurred but the conditions in Uttarakhand are as they were. The floodplains are being encroached; massive infrastructure projects, mainly large dams, are being carried out in the fragile Himalayan region in the name of development without learning any lessons from the past.”

Writing this week to the Wire, C.P. Rajendran, an adjunct professor in the National Institute of Advanced Studies said: “The Chamoli disaster is still evolving, and it will be many days, if not longer, before we know all the significant details. But there should be no doubt it’s a sign of our stupid developmental priorities and proves our inability to sustainably develop ecologically sensitive zones.”

More than a “natural” disaster, this latest tragedy is another indictment of the capitalist profit system and its disregard for working class lives and the planet’s environmental problems.

Pornhub, QAnon and the War on Sex

Kenn Orphan

This month, following an opinion piece in the New York Times by liberal political commentator Nicholas Kristof, the Canadian based porn site Pornhub was put on trial. The accusations revolve around the site allegedly allowing and profiting from sex trafficking, child, and rape porn. Without a doubt, Pornhub as well as many other similar sites, have profited from some questionable content. Like social media, it is not responsible for the content uploaded by individuals. It is only responsible for dealing with it once it is there. This is the only logical way that a free and open internet could possibly work. But there is a dark side to Kristof’s Pornhub diatribe. This crusade against porn comes at a time of unhinged QAnon conspiracy theories involving secret elite pedophile rings. And much of it smacks of a typical American-style sex panic.

Following the publication of Kristof’s piece in the NYT, credit card behemoths Visa and Mastercard discontinued their service to the site, adversely affecting the livelihoods of scores of sex workers and performers. In addition to this, far right groups, such as Exodus Cry, have seen the article as a clarion call in their crusade for sexual “purity.” Morphing from the early Puritans into today’s evangelicals, this war has never ended for them. Exodus Cry claims that its aim is to stop human trafficking, an admirable goal. But the organization never addresses decriminalizing sex work or the inhumane immigration laws and policies which are at the root of the problem. They also exclude gay men and transgender people as victims of sex trafficking and assault, even though this is a well documented problem. In addition to this, the founder Mike Bickle and the president Benjamin Nolot have expressed their antigay and anti-choice positions on several occasions, with one comparing being gay to opening “the demonic realm.”

Pornography has always been a charged topic in America, and it is often painted with a broad brush. Most people understand that exploitation of children or non-consensual sex are abusive and thus designated as crimes. Certainly, the modern porn industry is rife with abuses. But beyond this, who decides what is acceptable for adults? Back in the late 1980s, Robert Maplethorpe’s art works were censored in the US because they were labeled “obscene” by some politicians. And the genre of erotica is often lumped in with more explicit, hardcore pornography. Indeed, sexual expression in the visual medium has been a part of human culture for millennia. In fact, to many evangelicals and other religious conservatives all or most displays of public nudity or eroticism are considered offensive or perverse.

But this crusade against a pornography giant cannot be understood outside of the context of the rise of QAnon, a cult that centers around an antisemitic conspiracy about an elite, pedophile ring run by prominent Democrats who sacrifice children to extract a life prolonging chemical called adrenochrome. It is reminiscent of the debunked satanic ritual abuse scandal of the 1980s and 90s. Both panics were over the top and deranged in their allegations and accusations. Both rallied around the noble cause of “protecting children.” But, as in the panic of earlier times, there is no other reason for this other than the reactionary elements of a society being confronted with the agency of groups who have been historically oppressed.

The liberation movements of the 70s which saw great gains for women and LGBTQ people were seen by many conservative Christians to be the ultimate evidence of America’s denigration. Traditional gender roles were being challenged. Children were suddenly being taken care of by others while women joined the workforce. Today, there is a similar dynamic at play. Transgender people are challenging the very notion of a fixed gender. Sex workers are demanding recognition and labor rights. And once again, the hegemony of reactionary sections of society are feeling threatened. The difference now is that there is a marked disconnect from reality in a huge section of the population.

QAnon is perhaps one of the most dangerous of all conspiracy phenomenon in recent history thanks to its enormous influence. There are now sitting members of congress who are adherents. And it gained momentum thanks to the slow and steady chipping away of scientific education. But it should not come as a surprise that it arose in the United States. This is a country, after all, where many politicians still blame natural disasters on gay marriage or supposed sexual immorality.

Without a doubt, the pornography industry was given a significant boost by technology this century. The internet has enabled access to images and videos with ease and in the comfort of one’s own home. And it is no wonder that it has become one of the most lucrative industries on the planet. Sex, after all, sells. And capitalism has created a market where virtually everything, including sex, can be stamped with a barcode. But although pornography is, at best, a poor facsimile of sexual intercourse and relations, it sells because of its power to remove a person from the staleness and monotony of modern life. Like opioids, internet porn serves as a temporary release from the crushing reality most Americans deal with daily. But the latter is far less damaging to the individual and society in general.

To be clear, Pornhub is not a victim in this battle. It will still rake in millions of dollars off the backs of underpaid sex workers. And its content is not likely to change very much from the standard porn it profits from. Sex workers, an already marginalized community, will continue to lose their livelihoods and be demonized as societal degenerates. The real victims of sex trafficking will not see any justice in this crusade against porn either, because ultra-conservative organizations like Exodus Cry are only interested in promoting their rigid and reactionary mores regarding human sexuality. But QAnon has brought this issue to a different level, one fraught with both hysteria and idiocy. No one should kid themselves that the attacks on a prominent porn site are without a broader agenda. This has never been about pornography or “saving” children or women. Conservative evangelicals have an axe to grind. And this is only the beginning of their renewed war on human sexuality and the diversity of its expression.

Farmers’ Protest in India: Price of Failure Will Be immense

Colin Todhunter

Globally, there is an ongoing trend of a handful of big companies determining what food is grown, how it is grown, what is in it and who sells it. This model involves highly processed food adulterated with chemical inputs ending up in large near-monopoly supermarket chains or fast-food outlets that rely on industrial-scale farming.

While the brands lining the shelves of giant retail outlets seem vast, a handful of food companies own these brands which in turn rely on a relatively narrow range of produce for ingredients. At the same time, this illusion of choice often comes at the expense of food security in poorer countries that were compelled to restructure their agriculture to facilitate agro-exports courtesy of the World Bank, IMF, the WTO and global agribusiness interests.

In Mexico, transnational food retail and processing companies have taken over food distribution channels, replacing local foods with cheap processed items, often with the direct support of the government. Free trade and investment agreements have been critical to this process and the consequences for public health have been catastrophic.

Mexico’s National Institute for Public Health released the results of a national survey of food security and nutrition in 2012. Between 1988 and 2012, the proportion of overweight women between the ages of 20 and 49 increased from 25 to 35 per cent and the number of obese women in this age group increased from 9 to 37 per cent. Some 29 per cent of Mexican children between the ages of 5 and 11 were found to be overweight, as were 35 per cent of the youngsters between 11 and 19, while one in ten school age children experienced anaemia.

Former Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, concludes that trade policies had favoured a greater reliance on heavily processed and refined foods with a long shelf life rather than on the consumption of fresh and more perishable foods, particularly fruit and vegetables. He added that the overweight and obesity emergency that Mexico faces could have been avoided.

In 2015, the non-profit organisation GRAIN reported that the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) led to the direct investment in food processing and a change in Mexico’s retail structure (towards supermarkets and convenience stores) as well as the emergence of global agribusiness and transnational food companies in the country.

NAFTA eliminated rules preventing foreign investors from owning more than 49 per cent of a company. It also prohibited minimum amounts of domestic content in production and increased rights for foreign investors to retain profits and returns from initial investments. By 1999, US companies had invested 5.3 billion dollars in Mexico’s food processing industry, a 25-fold increase in just 12 years.

US food corporations began to colonise the dominant food distribution networks of small-scale vendors, known as tiendas (corner shops). This helped spread nutritionally poor food as they allowed these corporations to sell and promote their foods to poorer populations in small towns and communities. By 2012, retail chains had displaced tiendas as Mexico’s main source of food sales.

In Mexico, the loss of food sovereignty induced catastrophic changes to the nation’s diet and many small-scale farmers lost their livelihoods, which was accelerated by the dumping of surplus commodities (produced at below the cost of production due to subsidies) from the US. NAFTA rapidly drove millions of Mexican farmers, ranchers and small businesspeople into bankruptcy, leading to the flight of millions of immigrant workers.

Warning for India

What happened in Mexico should serve as a warning as Indian farmers continue their protest against three recent farm bills that are designed to fully corporatize the agrifood sector through contract farming, the massive roll-back of public sector support systems, a reliance on imports (boosted by a future US trade deal) and the acceleration of large-scale (online) retail.

If you want to know the eventual fate of India’s local markets and small retailers, look no further than what US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in 2019. He stated that Amazon had “destroyed the retail industry across the United States.”

And if you want to know the eventual fate of India’s farmers, look no further than the 1990s when the IMF and World Bank advised India to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture in return for up to more than $120 billion in loans at the time.

India was directed to dismantle its state-owned seed supply system, reduce subsidies, run down public agriculture institutions and offer incentives for the growing of cash crops for export to earn foreign exchange. Part of the strategy would also involve changing land laws so that land could be sold and amalgamated for industrial-scale farming.

The plan was for foreign corporations to capture the sector, with the aforementioned policies having effectively weakened or displaced independent cultivators.

To date, this process has been slow but the recent legislation could finally deliver a knock-out blow to tens of millions of farmers and give what the likes of Amazon, Walmart, Facebook, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midlands, Louis Dreyfus, Bunge and the global agritech, seed and agrochemical corporations have wanted all along. It will also serve the retail/agribusiness/logistics interests of India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, and its sixth richest, Gautam Adani.

During their ongoing protests, farmers have been teargassed, smeared and beaten. Journalist Satya Sagar notes that government advisors fear that seeming to appear weak with the agitating farmers would not sit well with foreign agrifood investors and could stop the flow of big money into the sector – and the economy as a whole.

And it is indeed ‘big’ money. Facebook invested 5.5 billion dollars last year in Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Platforms (e-commerce retail). Google has also invested 4.5 billion dollars. Currently, Amazon and Flipkart (Walmart has an 81% stake) together control over 60% of the country’s overall e-commerce market. These and other international investors have a great deal to lose if the recent farm legislation is repealed. So does the Indian government.

Since the 1990s, when India opened up to neoliberal economics, the country has become increasingly dependent on inflows of foreign capital. Policies are being governed by the drive to attract and retain foreign investment and maintain ‘market confidence’ by ceding to the demands of international capital. ‘Foreign direct investment’ has thus become the holy grail of the Modi-led administration.

Little wonder the government needs to be seen as acting ‘tough’ on protesting farmers because now, more than ever, attracting and retaining foreign reserves will be required to purchase food on the international market once India surrenders responsibility for its food policy to private players by eliminating its buffer stocks.

The plan to radically restructure agrifood in the country is being sold to the public under the guise of ‘modernising’ the sector. And this is to be carried out by self-proclaimed ‘wealth creators’ like Zuckerberg, Bezos and Ambani who are highly experienced at creating wealth – for themselves.

According to the recent Oxfam report ‘The Inequality Virus’, Mukesh Ambani doubled his wealth between March and October 2020. The coronavirus-related lockdown in India resulted in the country’s billionaires increasing their wealth by around 35 per cent, while 170,000 people lost their jobs every hour in April 2020 alone.

Prior to the lockdown, Oxfam reported that 73 per cent of the wealth generated in 2017 went to the richest 1 per cent, while 670 million Indians, the poorest half of the population, saw only a 1 per cent increase in their wealth.

Moreover, the fortunes of India’s billionaires increased by almost 10 times over a decade and their total wealth was higher than the entire Union budget of India for the fiscal year 2018-19.

It is clear who these ‘wealth creators’ create wealth for. On the People’s Review site, Tanmoy Ibrahim writes a piece on India’s billionaire class, with a strong focus on Ambani and Adani. By outlining the nature of crony capitalism in India, it is clear that Modi’s ‘wealth creators’ are given carte blanche to plunder the public purse, people and the environment, while real wealth creators – not least the farmers – are fighting for existence.

The current struggle should not be regarded as a battle between the government and farmers. If what happened in Mexico is anything to go by, the outcome will adversely affect the entire nation in terms of the further deterioration of public health and the loss of livelihoods.

Consider that rates of obesity in India have already tripled in the last two decades and the nation is fast becoming the diabetes and heart disease capital of the world. According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), between 2005 and 2015 the number of obese people doubled, even though one in five children in the 5-9 year age group were found to be stunted.

This will be just part of the cost of handing over the sector to billionaire (comprador) capitalists Mukesh Ambani and Gautum Adani and Jeff Bezos (world’s richest person), Mark Zuckerberg (world’s fourth richest person), the Cargill business family (14 billionaires) and the Walmart business family (richest in the US).

These individuals are poised to siphon off the wealth of India’s agrifood sector while denying the livelihoods of many millions of small-scale farmers and local mom and pop retailers while undermining the health of the nation.

Are We Ready For Vaccinating With Sputnik V?

Daniel Warner

Millions of people have died from Covid-19. Many more are infected; many more are at risk. With new variants popping up as the virus mutates, scientists around the world are searching for better protection with different vaccines. As supplies of the approved vaccines become limited, any new vaccine should be universally welcomed. After all, the pandemic has become a global danger. Any new and successful vaccine should be globally welcomed.

The scientific journal The Lancet has confirmed that “Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine shows 91.6% efficacy in clinical trials.” Wow. What a relief. Since Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are in short supply, this should be a most welcome development.

But it hasn’t been. Why not?

Maybe the answer is in a nostalgia for a binary world. We have lived in a binary world. Our computers are programmed with two numbers, 0 and 1. Since the end of the Cold War, there have been two dominant political/economic systems, liberal/capitalism and state/socialism. Sexual orientation has been defined as male or female, he or she. In sum, our perceptions have been oriented towards either/or, black or white, good or bad. During the pandemic it’s been health or wealth, science or politics.

That binary world is over. Quantum computers do not use 0 and 1. The choice between liberal capitalism or state socialism is passé. The Chinese economy, projected to become the world’s largest in the very near future, has state capitalism, neither state dominated socialism nor market-oriented capitalism. Sexual orientation is no longer male or female. Third gender sexual theories distinguish between biological sex and social/psychological gender. The use of he or she can now be replaced by they, them or everyone. Either/or has become fluid; black or white has many shades, and good or bad depends on the situation and perspective. Absolutes no longer exist, except perhaps for pregnant or not, dead or alive.

And Sputnik V? From a nostalgic perspective, can you see Western countries such as the United States buying a Russian vaccine? Its very name is an obvious provocation. Referring to the world’s first satellite launched by the U.S.S.R. in 1957 and the vaccine, Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, a major sponsor of Sputnik V, boasted on CNN in late July, “Americans were surprised when they heard Sputnik’s beeping. It’s the same with this vaccine. Russia will have got there first.”

(I do remember the trauma of watching the satellite circling the globe in 1957 on a TV in an auditorium in my high school and fearing that the Soviets were going to invade us from outer space soon after Nikita Khruschev threatened to bury us in 1956.)

Currently, with the jailing of Russian opposition leader Alexsey Navalny, any purchase of something Russian, even if it benefits people medically will be seen as an appeasement of President Putin, especially post-Trump. The recent unsuccessful visit of the European head of diplomacy, Josep Borell, to Moscow has further heightened tensions between the West and Russia.

But not all countries or leaders are mired in binary nostalgia or anti-Russian animosity. “Every vaccine is welcome in the European Union,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told German public broadcaster ARD, praising the “good data” related to Russia’s Sputnik V product. Merkel, a former scientist in East Germany, had no nostalgia problem in recognizing the value of the Russian vaccine as European countries scramble to find new sources of vaccines.

It was reported that Merkel discussed the pandemic with President Putin. During that call, it was confirmed that she said she is “is open to the idea of bilateral cooperation for the purpose of tapping European production capacities (for the Russian vaccine).” Europe’s regulators have approved the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and Moderna’s, but have yet to receive a formal request to approve Sputnik V.

Europeans have been sceptical of the Russian and Chinese vaccines and are waiting for more “transparency” before making decisions. However, The Lancet article has given further incentives for the vaccines to be approved. European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen told EU lawmakers that “if the Russian producers, the Chinese producers open their books, show transparency, show all the data… then they could get… a conditional market authorisation like the other ones.”

Dmitriev recently stated; “Sputnik V is now approved in 18 countries and this number will keep increasing. High efficacy, safety, easy distribution and affordability allow regulatory authorities around the world to include Sputnik V in their national vaccine portfolio.”

But politics and medical science do not mix easily. Presidents Biden and Putin had their first phone conversation in late January. Among the items discussed, it was reported by the White House, were: election meddling by Russia in U.S. elections; Russian reaction to protests for Alexsey Navalny; the extension of the New Start nuclear agreement for five years; the SolarWinds cyberattack; the Kremlin placed bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, and the U.S. firm support for Ukrainian sovereignty. Nothing about the pandemic? Nothing about Sputnik V? Could Biden have even pronounced that word to Putin?

Indeed, in his first major foreign policy speech at the U.S. State Department on February 4, President Biden took a much harsher stance towards Russia than Donald Trump: “I made it clear to President Putin, in a manner very different from my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions, interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens, are over,” he said.

Can we imagine Dr. Fauci being injected with Sputnik V? Or President Biden? Or President Putin being injected with Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna? Why not? Wouldn’t that be a real sign of détente and resetting the relationship? A triumph of medical science over politics?

If the pandemic is the major global issue today, why can’t we imagine global cooperation for vaccines? Granted that Sputnik V needs final approval by the World Health Organization, several non-Western countries are already using the Russian vaccine. They are desperate. Does our nostalgia for a binary world continue to be self-defeating? In outdated binary terms, politics seems to be winning over medical science. While the West may have political differences with Russia, getting people vaccinated could be a non-political benefit for millions. Amid the shrill calls for science to (T)rump politics, are we ready for vaccinating with Sputnik V?

The Clash Between the UK and EU Over Northern Ireland is a Precursor to Confrontations That will Last Decades

Patrick Cockburn

“Get your retaliation in first,” is a cynical old saying in Northern Irish politics that means you hit your opponent whenever you can without waiting for a provocation. It neatly captures the violent traditions of the province and explains why the political temperature there is always close to boiling over.

Imagine then the pleasure of those unionists who had always opposed the Northern Ireland Protocol, which places the new EU/UK commercial frontier between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain, to find that they had been genuinely provoked by the European Commission. In a classic cock-up, but one with grave and lasting consequences, Brussels had briefly called for a “hard border” between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, something it had repeatedly told Britain was an anathema because it would endanger the Good Friday Agreement and open the road to communal violence.

Yet here was a glaring example of the EU selfishly backtracking on its own warnings and fecklessly reopening one of the most explosive issues in European politics, the culpable purpose of this being to stop vaccines capable of saving the lives of British pensioners from being exported from the EU to the UK.

The Commission was instantly struck by a hail of abuse for its folly and it promptly withdrew the proposal with embarrassment, but for almost the first time in four years the EU was on the back foot in its relationship with Britain. No wonder Michael Gove was openly gloating as he told the House of Commons that the European Commission’s action had been condemned by everybody from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the former prime minister of Finland. And there was indeed some innocent pleasure to be had in watching somebody as poised and ostensibly competent as the Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, get quite so much egg on her face.

She had presumably miscalculated or ignored, as have so many politicians before her, the extreme combustibility of Northern Irish politics, or failed to notice how far they had already been inflamed by the creation of an Irish Sea EU/UK commercial border at the start of this year. Such flames are not be easily put out, whatever calming noises may come from Brussels, London and Dublin.

Port officials in Belfast and Larne, who actually conduct the border checks, have stopped working on the grounds that they fear for their safety. A piece of graffiti has appeared on a wall in Larne reading: “All Border Post Staff are Targets.” For weeks, the media had been full of stories about frustrated Northern Irish businesses facing ruin because of the new border checks.

Ever since Boris Johnson openly betrayed the unionists and signed the Irish protocol, they have felt the ground shifting under their feet and, they found to their horror, apparently shifting inexorably towards a united Ireland. They complain that even the British Army was having to fill in EU forms to bring military equipment into the province (it turned out that they were doing so, though they did not have to under the terms of the Protocol). An element of “getting your retaliation in first” surfaces here since, under pressure from those even more hard line than themselves, the Democratic Unionist Party leadership which – along with Sinn Fein – heads the government in Northern Ireland, has switched its stance. Instead of reluctantly enforcing the Irish Protocol, it now opposes it.

One of DUP ministers, Edwin Poots, ordered the withdrawal of the port inspectors, though the police had told him that they did not believe the inspectors were under threat from loyalist paramilitaries. Poots claims the police did not have “a full understanding of the risks” – and in the long term he is probably right.

UK dismisses UN Maritime Court ruling that it has no claim to Chagos Islands/Diego Garcia

Jean Shaoul

Britain, with customary imperial arrogance, has again dismissed a United Nations court decision that it has no entitlement to the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean.

On January 27, the United Nations International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), in the latest round in a protracted legal battle, ruled that the UK has no sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, which includes Diego Garcia, home to one of the US’s largest airbases.

It follows a similar decision in 2019 when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in an “advisory” opinion, ruled that Britain’s separation of islands in 1965 from Mauritius before it became independent in 1968 and their incorporation into the specially created British Indian Ocean Territories (BIOT), violated 1960 UN resolution 1514 banning the breakup of colonies before independence.

The ICJ described the UK’s method of gaining control over the islands as coercive and the removal of the residents to make way for the US base as “shameful” and urged the UK to end “its administration of the Chagos Islands as rapidly as possible.” The overwhelming majority of the UN General Assembly supported the ICJ’s ruling.

The maritime court confirmed the legitimacy of Mauritius’s claim to the Chagos Islands, calling Britain’s continuing administration of the islands “unlawful” and criticised its failure to hand the islands back.

The ruling implies that the UK’s leasing of Diego Garcia to the US is also illegal. Britain recently extended the rent-free lease on Diego Garcia, the largest island in the archipelago, halfway between Tanzania and Indonesia, to 2036. The US uses the site as a launching pad for its criminal operations in the Middle East, with the CIA using Diego Garcia as a “dark site,” where it detained and tortured people and also refueled extraordinary rendition flights.

Following London’s refusal to accept the 2019 ICJ and the UN opinions because they were advisory, Mauritius took the case to the international maritime court to press its claim to the islands. It asked the court to resolve its separate maritime dispute with the Maldives, the other nearest island to the waters around the archipelago, which tried to avoid negotiations with Mauritius by arguing that there was a valid live dispute over the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands between the UK and Mauritius. The court ruled that the Maldives could not avoid negotiating its maritime boundaries with Mauritius on this basis.

With no powers of enforcement, the court’s ruling is a dead letter and Britain knows this, declaring, “The UK has no doubt as to our sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory, which has been under continuous British sovereignty since 1814. Mauritius has never held sovereignty over the BIOT and the UK does not recognise its claim.”

The Foreign Office said that since it had not been a party to the maritime court case, it was not obligated to comply with the ruling. Nevertheless, it has previously stated that it would eventually hand the Chagos archipelago over to Mauritius when it is “no longer needed for defence purposes.”

The UK’s rejection of the UN rulings is in line with a broader assault, led by the US, on the institutional arrangements established in the aftermath of World War II. It indicates that the imperialist powers, facing an ongoing decline in their economic position, will brook no constraint on their geostrategic interests and their plans for a new imperialist carve up of the world and new forms of colonial-style exploitation of the poorest nations on earth.

It is significant that apart from short articles in the Guardian and the BBC, Britain’s media has failed to report the UN maritime court decision, indicating their dismissal of the UN when it conflicts with Britain’s interests.

Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth called on Britain to end its unlawful occupation of the Chagos Islands and said that ITLOS would now determine the maritime boundary between Mauritius and Maldives on the basis that Mauritius held sovereignty over the Chagos archipelago.

Britain incorporated the Chagos archipelago into the newly created BIOT in 1965 for defence purposes and forcibly evicted and deported the Chagossians to Mauritius and the Seychelles, another former British colony, to make way for the leasing of Diego Garcia to the US Naval Support Facility. The UK rode roughshod of the 1,344 islanders’ rights, including denying them the right to return to their homeland, which international lawyer Professor Philippe Sands QC, who represented Mauritius, said was arguably “a crime against humanity within the meaning of Article 7 of the [International Criminal Court] Statute.”

Britain’s purpose in granting Washington the 50-year lease on Diego Garcia—kept secret from both Parliament and the US Congress--was to secure an $11 million discount on the US-made Polaris nuclear weapons system, which Labour had pledged to scrap when in opposition.

For more than five decades, Britain has acted like a colonial master, carrying out one crime after another against the Chagossians while lying, ignoring court decisions, invoking Royal Prerogative and then covering up its actions. The islanders have lived in impoverished conditions ever since, with just a few allowed into Britain.

None of the promises of support and compensation were kept. Many of the islanders were simply abandoned when they landed. The islanders, as a condition of accepting Britain’s derisory offer of compensation in the 1980s, which largely failed to materialise, were required to renounce their right to return. In 2016, the British Foreign Office set up a £40 million fund to compensate the islanders. Five years later, after it had distributed just £12,000 in direct support to them, Croydon Council, tasked with assessing how to allocate the money, abandoned the work.

Mauritius has sought the return of the archipelago in pursuit of its own interests, not those of the Chagossians. Sovereignty over the archipelago could bring significant benefits. Its size would increase dramatically. Included within the territory is the Great Chagos Bank, the largest coral reef structure in the world, much of it in pristine condition. Ownership would also allow Mauritius to charge the US for using Diego Garcia, potentially a large annual sum. Hosting the US base would expand and cement the US-Mauritian defence relationship and thus allow Port Louis to limit its dependence on India. Thus far at least, Washington appears to prefer to lease Diego Garcia from the UK than from Mauritius.

Britain is determined to hold onto its remaining 14 colonial possessions and to support the US, which has five, in pursuit of their predatory imperialist interests. It fears claims from the Mauritian government for compensation and the implications for other sovereignty disputes, including with Spain over Gibraltar and Argentina over the Falklands/Malvinas.

In the last weeks, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government has lambasted China for its abuse of democratic rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab criticized Beijing for imposing wide ranging national security legislation that undermines Hong Kong’s autonomy as set out in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. He specifically called out Beijing for violating its international legal obligations. Since then, Britain has suspended its extradition treaty with Hong Kong.

The UK is increasingly lining up with the US and its confrontational stance in the Indo-Pacific, both because of its dependency on US imperialism—dressed up as its “special relationship” with Washington—and the need to direct increasing class tensions outwards against an external enemy, China.

London is supporting US efforts to assemble a new “coalition of the willing” against Beijing with its “tilt to the Indo-Pacific” in which the Chagos Islands occupies a strategic position. It is hosting the G7 summit that will include India, South Korea and Australia. Having signed trade and security deals with Japan, it is now planning to join the US-led Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) aimed at economically isolating China. It is soon to publish its post-Brexit integrated Foreign, Defence, Security and Development policy review that focuses on China.

Defying riot police, Moroccan autoworkers at Kénitra launch wildcat strike

Alex Lantier

On January 27, autoworkers at Stellantis' Kénitra plant in Morocco walked out and blocked their factory to demand higher wages, proper health conditions, and improved working conditions. News of the strike spread quickly on social media, gathering strong support from workers in France and internationally. Stellantis is the new entity created by the January 15 merger between Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and French automaker PSA.

Stellantis plant in Kénitra, Morocco (source: Moroccan Interior Ministry)

The 2,500 workers at the site, which is expected to produce 200,000 vehicles this year, including the Peugeot 208 and the Citroën AMI, marched through the plant and blocked the exits. Speaking to the production director, they issued demands which are now circulating on social media. They want to resolve in particular the very low salary (2600 dirhams, $290 monthly), poor sanitary conditions, non-payment of bonuses and overtime, with a performance bonus that has not been paid for six months, and equipment failures.

The Stellantis-Kénitra workers also demanded medical coverage for all, compensation for work accidents, an increase in the length of breaks, and a more respectful attitude towards the workers by the plant managers. The workers said they would not resume before their demands were met.

In Morocco, L’Opinion, who contacted strikers in Kénitra, wrote: “The majority of workers are hired on a 12-month temp contract that does not provide medical coverage or protection in case of serious accidents, and their monthly salary does not exceed 2,400 dirhams. They also confirmed to us that many of the employees are obliged to work an extra hour after the end of their shift without pay.”

On the first evening of the strike, several squads of riot police surrounded the plant to try to intimidate the strikers before the next meeting with management on January 29. On the 28th, however, the workers staged a sit-in in front of the plant. Management refused a deal on the 29th, and the strike is continuing, according to the latest reports.

The Kénitra site is of strategic importance to Stellantis, as Morocco has overtaken South Africa to become the leading automaker in Africa. While its predecessor PSA saw a decline in sales in Europe in 2020, it also saw a 46 percent increase in its market share in the Middle East, thanks in part to significant increases in sales in Turkey and Egypt. A significant portion of Kénitra’s production is sold to Middle Eastern markets.

The movement at Kénitra reflects the rise in workers' anger internationally at the effects of the pandemic and the working conditions created by the merger between PSA and Fiat Chrysler.

While PSA's sales fell by 27.8 percent and Fiat Chrysler's by 17 percent, the new corporation is trying to create maximum profits by employing a highly exploited workforce in Morocco as well as in France and internationally amid the raging pandemic. COVID-19 has infected 475,589 people and claimed 8,408 lives in Morocco, officially, with 234 new infections confirmed yesterday. There have been 31.4 million cases and 740,000 deaths in Europe.

Workers reacted to news of the strike in Kénitra with great enthusiasm on social media. On Facebook, an Alstom transportation equiment worker in France commented on the difference between the Kénitra strike and the usual corrupt deals between unions and management: “They are right, and it's rare, presenting demands at Peugeot, and presenting demands is offensive, it’s not defensive like when you negotiate on proposals from bosses and management.”

Another addressed the Kénitra workers: “You’re in a strong position, comrades! Keep going, they are having trouble filling all the car orders that are coming in.”

The conditions are ripe for a powerful international strike against Stellantis and a broader mobilization of the working class. This could not only improve the wages and working conditions of Stellantis workers, but also lay the basis for a struggle to stop the COVID-19 pandemic and the wars waged by French imperialism in Mali and across West Africa. In this struggle, the best allies of the workers in Kénitra are Stellantis workers internationally, and their class brothers and sisters around the world.

To wage such a struggle, however, workers will need to organize themselves in rank-and-file committees, independent of the union bureaucracies, and prepare for a political struggle. In the United States, Stellantis workers have already formed such committees at several plants.

The sending of riot police on the first night of the strike in Kenitra is a warning that the corrupt Moroccan monarchy, whose close ties to Washington and Paris are well known, sees a strike at Stellantis as an intolerable threat to its interests and its ties to international finance capital.

Moreover, the applause from French union bureaucracy for the strike at Kénitra is utter hypocrisy. Not only have the French unions given their support to the wars waged by French imperialism in Syria, Libya, Mali and throughout the Mediterranean, but they are led by bureaucrats who work closely with Stellantis management at autoworkers’ expense.

This is particularly the case of Jean-Marc Mercier, the principal delegate of the Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT) union at Stellantis in France, who released a video cynically hailing the Kénitra strike.

A leading member of the petty-bourgeois Lutte Ouvrière (LO) party, Mercier led LO’s list in the 2019 European elections together with LO presidential candidate Nathalie Arthaud. Mercier has a long experience at Stellantis, having coordinated the shutdown of the Stellantis plant in Aulnay, north of Paris, in 2013. He is now a delegate at the Stellantis plant in Poissy.

In his video, Mercier said that in Morocco, “as in France, England, Germany and Algeria,” wages “are blocked.” He then stressed the contrast between autoworkers’ conditions and the financial situation of the company. According to Mercier, Stellantis recorded “2.5 billion euros” in profits last year. “However, we work every day of the week, Saturdays, nights (...) Our wages, your wages must increase.” He promised, “We will publicize your strike in factories in France and in all Stellantis factories in Europe.”

In fact, Mercier, aware of explosive social anger in Europe against the criminal official handling of the pandemic and the vast increase in social inequalities, is desperately trying to prevent the unions from being overrun by the workers. Whatever token solidarity actions Mercier may organize will not help workers in Kénitra any more than it helped workers at Aulnay.