Constitutional crisis grips Samoa

John Braddock

The parliament in the Pacific island state of Samoa was shut down on Monday as the country plunged into a constitutional crisis following a disputed April 9 election. The former speaker of the house ordered the legislature closed, prompting the Faatuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi—Faith in the One True God Party (FAST)—which won a narrow electoral majority, to declare the action tantamount to a coup.

FAST set up camp in front of the parliament amid a heavy police presence. After the chief justice visited parliament, accompanied by the police commissioner, and unsuccessfully tried to open the locked door, prime minister elect Fiame Naomi Mata’afa told the crowd, “What we have just seen is the judiciary witnessing their ruling has not been upheld.”

FAST Party leader Fiame Naomi Mataafa (Source: FAST Party Facebook)

FAST held an outdoor ceremony to swear in its own members, with Fiame as prime minister. The opposing Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) was not there, nor was the judiciary, the speaker, or the head of state. The HRPP’s caretaker Prime MinisterTuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi accused FAST of “treason.”

The parliamentary sitting, which had been ordered by the Supreme Court, was meant to convene to swear in MPs and form a new government. Under the constitution parliament must sit within 45 days of an election and May 24 was the last day for this to be possible.

Tuilaepa, who has held office unchallenged for 23 years, is refusing to stand aside. He told the Samoa Observer on May 12 he was “appointed by God” and the judiciary had no authority over him. On Monday, he declared parliament house was owned by the government and “since there is no new government, all public servants listen to that government,” a message aimed at the police and other officials.

The election was a historic defeat for the ruling HRPP. Despite having only been formed last June, and running 50 candidates against HRPP’s 100, FAST held the HRPP to a dead heat in the poll. Each party won 25 seats in the 51-seat parliament, with one seat going to the sole independent Tuala Iosefo Ponifasio.

The government-appointed head of state, Afioga Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II, declared the creation of an extra seat on the pretext of meeting a requirement that women make up at least 10 percent of MPs. This put the HRPP ahead until the independent MP announced he would support FAST, leaving the two parties tied on 26 seats each.

Tuimalealiifano announced a new election to break the deadlock. Following a legal appeal by FAST, the Supreme Court overruled this and annulled the extra seat, handing FAST a 26–25 seat majority, and ordered parliament to resume.

Initially, Tuimalealiifano declared that parliament should convene as required by law. However, just before midnight on Saturday he abruptly announced parliament would not resume “until such a time as to be announced and for reasons that I will make known in due course.”

The Supreme Court, in an emergency hearing Sunday, ordered Monday’s parliamentary session to go ahead. Tuilaepa, in turn, accused the Supreme Court of “dirtying the name the Office of the Head of State.” At 8 p.m. on Sunday night, the HRPP’s house speaker said he took his orders from the head of state, not the Supreme Court, and postponed the session.

The impasse has continued this week with Tuilaepa refusing to stand aside and reiterating his call for a second election. In a press conference Wednesday Fiame denounced “the lawbreaking caretaker [Tuilaepa ] and his weak and complicit officials” for assaulting the constitution. FAST has lodged another legal challenge in the Supreme Court. The HRPP-appointed attorney-general demanded the present justices who would preside over election challenges be disqualified.

The broad population has not intervened in the crisis. It is a dispute between two competing factions of the ruling elite, driven initially by the escalating social and health crisis intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Samoa Observer, the country’s major newspaper, backed the FAST Party, declaring, “The actions of Tuilaepa Dr. Sailele Malielegaoi and those who aided and abetted him brought dishonour upon this nation.”

The vast majority of the 250,000 population has no say in the undemocratic political structure. Matais, the country’s clan chiefs, wield immense power over family welfare, land, property, religion and politics. Until 1990, only matais could vote and stand as electoral candidates. Candidates for the Legislative Assembly must still hold a matai title.

FAST was set up last year as a breakaway from the ruling HRPP, led by Fiame, who was the deputy prime minister. It undoubtedly benefited from opposition to growing inequality, poverty and authoritarian measures by the ruling hierarchy. The HRPP remains deeply unpopular over its disastrous handling of the 2019 measles epidemic when 83 people, mainly children, died. The government suffered further controversy over legislation changing the way land disputes are resolved. Meanwhile, while border closures have kept COVID-19 cases low, the tourism industry is in a state of collapse.

Neither party contested the election with a program that would address the deepening social, economic and health emergency. FAST’s manifesto contained vague references to “equitable development” and “a sustainable economy to benefit all people,” while promising more support for businesses. FAST declared its aim was to “ensure our people live in social harmony,” through the promotion of “culture and Christian practices.”

The issue of China’s position in the region, amid US-led preparations for war against Beijing, is central to the unfolding crisis. Samoa’s relationship with China dates back to 1976, when it began diplomatic relations at a time many Pacific Islands still recognised Taiwan. Throughout his terms in office, Tuilaepa has been regarded as a close ally of Beijing,

FAST has signaled it wants to shift Samoa’s foreign policy into line with Washington and its regional allies. Independent MP Tuala decided to support FAST because of his “concern” about Chinese influence in Samoa.

Fiame has pledged to shelve a $US100 million Chinese-backed port development, telling Radio New Zealand the project was “excessive” for the small island. Fiame said she wants to maintain “good relations” with Beijing but claimed the level of government indebtedness to China was “a pressing issue for voters.” China is the single largest creditor in Samoa, accounting for about 40 percent, or $US160m, of external debts.

The crisis underlines the growing instability across the Pacific under the combined impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, popular resistance and the global threat of war. Amid an escalating health disaster from rampant COVID-19 infections, Papua New Guinea’s prime minister, James Marape, recently adjourned the parliament for four months in order to avoid a vote of no confidence and his likely removal from office.

The local imperialist powers, Australia and New Zealand, have responded to the Samoa situation with hypocritical expressions of concern that “democracy” should prevail. Australia’s Foreign Minister Marise Payne said on Twitter that “it is important that all parties respect the rule of law and democratic processes.” New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called on “all parties and political leaders” to uphold the election outcome and the decisions of institutions including the judiciary.

Canberra and Wellington, however, have no interest in democracy in the impoverished former colonies of the southwest Pacific, which they regard as their own “backyard.” Their overriding calculations are to protect their own geo-political interests amid the rapidly sharpening tensions across the region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden to meet in mid-June

Clara Weiss

On Tuesday, the White House and the Kremlin announced that US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, will meet on June 16 in Geneva for bilateral talks.

The meeting will take place amid high tensions between the US and Russia over a whole range of geopolitical flashpoints, most notably Ukraine, where the Kiev government’s strategy to “recover Crimea” triggered a dangerous military crisis in the Black Sea region in April.

In this March 10, 2011, file photo, then Vice President Joe Biden, left, shakes hands with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

Ever since the US- and EU-backed 2014 coup in Kiev, which heavily relied on neo-fascist forces, the US and NATO have grown their military presence on Russia’s borders, staging numerous military and political provocations. Most recently, Washington and Berlin have heavily backed the anti-Putin oppositionist Alexei Navalny, a far-right figure falsely portrayed as a “martyr” and fighter for “democracy” by the Western press.

When coming into office, Biden appointed numerous figures that had been involved in the 2014 coup and advocate a rabidly anti-Russian course. However, Biden also made a point of prolonging the START nuclear treaty early on in his administration and proposed this summit to Putin personally amid the crisis in the Black Sea region in April. Moreover, following extensive discussions with German foreign policy leaders, the Biden administration also had announced that it would exempt the Russian-German gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 from a new round of sanctions against Russia, at least for the time being.

According to a brief statement by the White House at the summit: “The leaders will discuss the full range of pressing issues, as we seek to restore predictability and stability to the U.S.-Russia relationship.” Republican Senator Ben Sasse, who is a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, was one of many who denounced the summit, saying, “We’re rewarding Putin with a summit? Putin imprisoned Alexei Navalny and his puppet Lukashenko hijacked a plane to get Roman Protasevich. Instead of treating Putin like a gangster who fears his own people, we’re giving him his treasured Nord Stream 2 pipeline and legitimizing his actions with a summit. This is weak.”

At a press conference, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki defended the meeting, stating, “This is how diplomacy works. We don’t only meet with people only when we agree. It’s important to meet with leaders when we have a range of disagreements, as we do with the Russian leader.”

The summit comes amid ongoing discussions in Washington about the orientation of US foreign policy in light of the growing conflict with China. The Biden administration has further escalated the Trump administration’s war preparations against China. It has changed its policy toward Taiwan and is now also propagating the lie that the coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan.

Over the past decade, in response to growing pressure from US imperialism, Russia and China have developed an increasingly close collaboration on economic, technological and military levels. This was underscored by the three-day visit of Yang Jiechi, the head of China’s central committee for foreign affairs, to Moscow this week where he reportedly engaged in strategic and security consultations with the Russian foreign ministry. A few weeks ago, Putin described bilateral relations as being at the “best level in history.”

However, Russia and China so far have not established a formal military alliance. Several weeks before the US elections last year, Putin suggested that such an alliance was a possibility at a meeting with the Valdai Discussion Club, a leading Russian think tank for foreign policy. The announcement and a series of meetings between high-ranking Russian and Chinese government officials have triggered discussions in Washington about the potential costs of such an alliance for the US.

In early May, Foreign Affairs published a piece, “How to Encounter an Emerging Partnership. China’s and Russia’s Dangerous Convergence.” The authors, Andrea Kendall-Taylor and David Shullman, are active in various think tanks and previously had long careers as a high-ranking intelligence officers for the US with a focus on Russia and China, respectively.

The authors stressed that they did not advocate that the US integrate Moscow into an alliance against Beijing—a strategy that Henry Kissinger, the foreign policy advisor of President Richard Nixon, reportedly advised the Trump administration to adopt several years ago. Instead, they suggested “a far more modest and incremental approach designed to demonstrate to the people around Putin the benefits of a more balanced and independent Russian foreign policy.”

They wrote: “The Chinese-Russian relationship is not impermeable, and the United States should not shy away from proactive measures to exploit its fissures. U.S. efforts to capitalize on minor tensions may not change the overall trajectory of the two countries’ relationship. But driving even small wedges between the partners can contribute to friction and mistrust that limit the extent of cooperation. In the Arctic, for example, Russia is seeking to limit the role of non-Arctic states—especially China—in regional governance. The United States should support Moscow in this endeavor, as it shares an interest in limiting Chinese influence in the region.”

Other countries where the interests of Beijing and Moscow clashed, they argued, were Iran and Belarus. Belarus is a small country on Russia’s western border. The country maintains very close economic ties to Russia. However, in recent years China has also developed major investment projects there. Belarus has become a centerpiece in the conflict between Russia and the EU and US when mass protests and strikes broke out against the Lukashenko government last August. While the Kremlin has temporarily backed the Lukashenko regime, relations are tense and volatile.

The Russian press is warning that the renewed sanctions against Belarus by the EU over the Lukashenko’s hijacking of a plane carrying opposition journalist Roman Protasevich could cost the Russian economy $5 billion and is openly discussing the removal of Lukashenko. The internet newspaper Gazeta.Ru reported Thursday that President Putin had discussed Belarus with Biden directly over the phone and later formally apologized to Lukashenko for doing so. Belarus will be an item on the agenda of the Biden-Putin summit.

The Foreign Affairs piece was immediately translated into Russian and has been widely discussed in Russian foreign policy circles, which for some time now have become accustomed to discussing the fate of Russia-US relations in the context of the broader US rivalry with China. Sections of the Russian oligarchy no doubt fear a Sino-Russian alliance as leverage in the Kremlin’s ongoing efforts to negotiate with the imperialist powers.

On May 26, the Washington Post, which has been spearheading the anti-China campaign over the “Wuhan lab lie,” published an opinion piece by Isaac Stone Fish. Fish is the founder of Strategy Risks, a company that “quantifies the corporate exposure” of US companies to China, an adjunct professor at NYU and visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund think tank.

The piece argued that “Moscow has more to fear from Beijing than Washington” and that in Central Asia, in particular, Russian and Chinese interests clash. The region, where Russia used to be the dominant economic power, has over the past two decades developed extremely close relations with China. Fish also pointed to longstanding discussions in Russia’s elites about potential territorial conflict with China over Siberia, and noted that, “Russia is inescapably the junior partner in the relationship. China is Russia’s largest trading partner, while Russia isn’t even in China’s top 10.”

Fish wrote: “Despite the countless irritants in the U.S.-Russia relationship, all this means that there is now space to enlist Moscow as a silent but meaningful partner in the global campaign to curb the pernicious aspects of the Chinese Communist Party’s international influence.” Pointing to the long history of conflict between the two countries, especially during the Sino-Soviet split, he concluded: “When President Biden meets Putin in June for the first in-person summit between the two leaders, one hopes he will keep this history in mind.”

Moroccan Scholarships for African Youth Excellence Scholarship Programme 2021

Application Deadline: Varying. Apply now

About the Award: The Ministry of Higher Education is offering 303 fully-funded scholarships across 119 specialties. African students in Morocco will also benefit from social advantages.

Under the scholarships, Morocco aims to support African countries by providing training to their future elites in cooperation with public and private universities.

The list of partner universities across Morocco involves the Euro-Mediterranean University of Fez (60 scholarships), Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane (40 scholarships), the International University of Agadir-Universiapolis (38 scholarships), Mohammed VI Polytechnical University of Ben Guerir (30 scholarships), and Mohammed VI University of Health Sciences in Casablanca (25 scholarships). 

Other universities also engaged in offering scholarships to African students include the Abulcasis International of Health Sciences in Rabat (20 scholarships), International University of Casablanca (UIC), International University of Rabat (UIR), the Private University of Fez (20 scholarships), the Private University of Marrakech (20 scholarships), and the Mundiapolis University of Casablanca (10 scholarships).

Type: Training, PhD, Masters

Eligibility: The Scholarship Program is intended for students from African countries

Eligible Countries: African countries

To be Taken at (Country): Morocco

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The Award is fully-funded.

How to Apply: African students can now access the website of the university of their choice to learn about the details of the offered scholarships and submit their applications.

SEE PRESS RELEASE “Moroccan Scholarships for African Youths”

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The Emperor’s New Rules

Medea Benjamin & Nicolas J. S. Davies

The world is reeling in horror at the latest Israeli massacre of hundreds of men, women and children in Gaza. Much of the world is also shocked by the role of the United States in this crisis, as it keeps providing Israel with weapons to kill Palestinian civilians, in violation of U.S. and international law, and has repeatedly blocked action by the UN Security Council to impose a ceasefire or hold Israel accountable for its war crimes.

In contrast to U.S. actions, in nearly every speech or interview, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken keeps promising to uphold and defend the “rules-based order.” But he has never clarified whether he means the universal rules of the United Nations Charter and international law, or some other set of rules he has yet to define. What rules could possibly legitimize the kind of destruction we just witnessed in Gaza, and who would want to live in a world ruled by them?

We have both spent many years protesting the violence and chaos the United States and its allies inflict on millions of people around the world by violating the UN Charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of military force, and we have always insisted that the U.S. government should comply with the rules-based order of international law.

But even as the United States’ illegal wars and support for allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia have reduced cities to rubble and left country after country mired in intractable violence and chaos, U.S. leaders have refused to even acknowledge that aggressive and destructive U.S. and allied military operations violate the rules-based order of the United Nations Charter and international law.

President Trump was clear that he was not interested in following any “global rules,” only supporting U.S. national interests. His National Security Advisor John Bolton explicitly prohibited National Security Council staff attending the 2018 G20 Summit in Argentina from even uttering the words “rules-based order.”

So you might expect us to welcome Blinken’s stated commitment to the “rules-based order” as a long-overdue reversal in U.S. policy. But when it comes to a vital principle like this, it is actions that count, and the Biden administration has yet to take any decisive action to bring U.S. foreign policy into compliance with the UN Charter or international law.

For Secretary Blinken, the concept of a “rules-based order” seems to serve mainly as a cudgel with which to attack China and Russia. At a May 7 UN Security Council meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested that instead of accepting the already existing rules of international law, the United States and its allies are trying to come up with “other rules developed in closed, non-inclusive formats, and then imposed on everyone else.”

The UN Charter and the rules of international law were developed in the 20th century precisely to codify the unwritten and endlessly contested rules of customary international law with explicit, written rules that would be binding on all nations.

The United States played a leading role in this legalist movement in international relations, from the Hague Peace Conferences at the turn of the 20th century to the signing of the United Nations Charter in San Francisco in 1945 and the revised Geneva Conventions in 1949, including the new Fourth Geneva Convention to protect civilians, like the countless numbers killed by American weapons in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Gaza.

As President Franklin Roosevelt described the plan for the United Nations to a joint session of Congress on his return from Yalta in 1945:

“It ought to spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries – and have always failed. We propose to substitute for all these a universal organization in which all peace-loving nations will finally have a chance to join. I am confident that the Congress and the American people will accept the results of this conference as the beginning of a permanent structure of peace.”

But America’s post-Cold War triumphalism eroded U.S. leaders’ already half-hearted commitment to those rules. The neocons argued that they were no longer relevant and that the United States must be ready to impose order on the world by the unilateral threat and use of military force, exactly what the UN Charter prohibits. Madeleine Albright and other Democratic leaders embraced new doctrines of “humanitarian intervention” and a “responsibility to protect” to try to carve out politically persuasive exceptions to the explicit rules of the UN Charter.

America’s “endless wars,” its revived Cold War on Russia and China, its blank check for the Israeli occupation and the political obstacles to crafting a more peaceful and sustainable future are some of the fruits of these bipartisan efforts to challenge and weaken the rules-based order.

Today, far from being a leader of the international rules-based system, the United States is an outlier. It has failed to sign or ratify about fifty important and widely accepted multilateral treaties on everything from children’s rights to arms control. Its unilateral sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and other countries are themselves violations of international law, and the new Biden administration has shamefully failed to lift these illegal sanctions, ignoring UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ request to suspend such unilateral coercive measures during the pandemic.

So is Blinken’s “rules-based order” a recommitment to President Roosevelt’s “permanent structure of peace,” or is it in fact a renunciation of the United Nations Charter and its purpose, which is peace and security for all of humanity?

In the light of Biden’s first few months in power, it appears to be the latter. Instead of designing a foreign policy based on the principles and rules of the UN Charter and the goal of a peaceful world, Biden’s policy seems to start from the premises of a $753 billion U.S. military budget, 800 overseas military bases, endless U.S. and allied wars and massacres, and massive weapons sales to repressive regimes. Then it works backward to formulate a policy framework to somehow justify all that.

Once a “war on terror” that only fuels terrorism, violence and chaos was no longer politically viable, hawkish U.S. leaders—both Republicans and Democrats—seem to have concluded that a return to the Cold War was the only plausible way to perpetuate America’s militarist foreign policy and multi-trillion-dollar war machine.

But that raised a new set of contradictions. For 40 years, the Cold War was justified by the ideological struggle between the capitalist and communist economic systems. But the U.S.S.R. disintegrated and Russia is now a capitalist country. China is still governed by its Communist Party, but has a managed, mixed economy similar to that of Western Europe in the years after the Second World War – an efficient and dynamic economic system that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in both cases.

So how can these U.S. leaders justify their renewed Cold War? They have floated the notion of a struggle between “democracy and authoritarianism.” But the United States supports too many horrific dictatorships around the world, especially in the Middle East, to make that a convincing pretext for a Cold War against Russia and China.

A U.S. “global war on authoritarianism” would require confronting repressive U.S. allies like Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, not arming them to the teeth and shielding them from international accountability as the United States is doing.

So, just as American and British leaders settled on non-existent “WMD”s as the pretext they could all agree on to justify their war on Iraq, the U.S. and its allies have settled on defending a vague, undefined “rules-based order” as the justification for their revived Cold War on Russia and China.

But like the emperor’s new clothes in the fable and the WMDs in Iraq, the United States’ new rules don’t really exist. They are just its latest smokescreen for a foreign policy based on illegal threats and uses of force and a doctrine of “might makes right.”

We challenge President Biden and Secretary Blinken to prove us wrong by actually joining the rules-based order of the UN Charter and international law. That would require a genuine commitment to a very different and more peaceful future, with appropriate contrition and accountability for the United States’ and its allies’ systematic violations of the UN Charter and international law, and the countless violent deaths, ruined societies and widespread chaos they have caused.

Testimony by former Johnson advisor exposes UK "herd immunity" policy

Robert Stevens

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings has lifted the veil on a vast criminal exercise that has led to the deaths of more than 150,000 people from COVID-19 in Britain.

Testifying before a joint hearing of parliament’s health and science committees into “the lessons that can be drawn from the handling of the pandemic, and applied now and in the future,” Cummings said, “Tens of thousands of people died who didn’t need to die.”

Referring to a public inquiry authorised by Johnson that will not take place until next year, he added, “There is absolutely no excuse for delaying that because a lot of the reasons for why that happened are still in place now.”

Cummings speaking before a Commons inquiry hearing (Screenshot/UK Parliament TV)

During seven hours of questioning, Cummings showed how the refusal of the government to take any measures to prevent the spread of the virus in January, February and most of March 2020 laid the basis for mass deaths.

Cummings gave substantial evidence that Johnson and his chief scientific advisers favoured a policy of “herd immunity” to allow the virus to spread unchecked through an unvaccinated population. Herd immunity “was the whole logic of all the discussions in January and February and early March,” he said.

For months, nothing was done to combat the pandemic, with Johnson frequently comparing it to a “scare story.' So blasé was Johnson about COVID-19 that he suggested, “I’m going to get [Chief Medical Officer] Chris Whitty to inject me live on TV with coronavirus so everyone realises it’s nothing to be frightened of.”

Even after the World Health Organisation, on January 30, stated that the pandemic was a global emergency and the first case had emerged in Britain, Cummings reported, 'It was not at all seen in Whitehall that there was going to be a pandemic.'

Asked if the spread of COVID-19 was 'the most important matter' for the government, Cummings replied, 'At the time, in no way shape or form did it act like it was the most important thing in February, let alone January.'

In February 2020 as the virus was spreading exponentially throughout Britain, Johnson “went away on holiday for two weeks” to his Chevening grace-and-favour countryside estate and “lots of key people were literally [on holiday] skiing in the middle of February.'

As it became clear that the virus was spreading rapidly and there was talk about having to enact some containment measures, Johnson was resolutely opposed. His central concern was that this would harm the economy. Cummings said, “There were quite a few people around Whitehall who thought the real danger was the economy. The PM's view was that the real danger was not the disease, but the measures we take against the disease and the economic consequences.” Johnson said, “in several meetings: ‘We're going to completely destroy the economy with lockdown.’”

No plans were enacted to close borders, despite Cummings claiming that he advised a root and branch copying of the policy of Singapore and Taiwan who successfully carried this out. “There was no proper border policy because the prime minister never wanted a proper border policy.” It was already known that among Johnson’s favourite characters is the “real hero” of the film Jaws, the mayor of Amity, who orders the beaches to stay open despite a great white shark eating people.

Cummings recounts that in April, after the March 23 lockdown was reluctantly put in place but with airports still open and people coming to Britain from countries where COVID-19 was rife, he and others advised that a strict border closure policy be imposed. Cummings said, “At that point he [Johnson] was back to, ‘lockdown was all a terrible mistake, I should’ve been the mayor of Jaws, we should never have done lockdown… the travel industry will all be destroyed if we bring in a serious border policy’.”

In March, Cummings said that it was then “far, far too late” to prevent mass deaths. This outcome was well understood at the top of government. On March 13, Helen McNamara, “the second most powerful civil servant in the country… the deputy Cabinet Secretary, walked into the office while we were looking at this whiteboard.” Among the information written on the whiteboard in Johnson’s Downing Street office—that Cummings said was used to plan the government's early response was the question—“Who do we not save?” and “1. No vaccine in 2020… 3. to stop NHS collapse we will probably have to ‘lockdown’.”

He recounted, “Helen Macnamara said 'I’ve come through here to the Prime Minister’s office to tell you all—I think we are absolutely f****d’, I think this country is headed for a disaster, I think we’re going to kill thousands of people’.”

Cummings claims that on March 11, after speaking with scientists, he had insisted that the original herd immunity strategy had to be discarded for a Plan B including some measures to contain the pandemic. He said that he warned, “We must force the pace, we’re looking at 100 to 500,000 deaths between optimistic and pessimistic scenarios.”

But another day passed with nothing done to combat COVID-19’s spread. The militarists agenda of US and British imperialism and Johnson’s family life were both deemed far more important. Cummings told the parliamentary committee that in the morning “suddenly, the national security people came in and said ‘Trump wants us to join a bombing campaign in the Middle East tonight’… and we need to start having meetings about that through the day with Cobra [an emergency committee] as well.

“So everything to do with Cobra that day on Covid was completely disrupted because you had these two parallel sets of meetings. You had the national security people running in and out talking about ‘are we going to bomb the Middle East?’…”

On top of this “the prime minister’s girlfriend [Carrie Symonds] was going completely crackers” as the “The Times had run a huge story about the prime minister and his girlfriend and their dog about this story and demanding that the press office deal with that.”

The herd immunity agenda had been publicly espoused by Johnson and his Chief Scientific Officer, Sir Patrick Vallance, for well over a week. This was stressed by Cummings when he quoted senior civil servant Sir Mark Sedwill telling Johnson on March 12, “Prime Minister, you should go on TV tomorrow and explain the herd immunity plan and that it is like the old chicken pox parties. We need people to get this disease because that’s how we get herd immunity by September.”

Cummings said that on March 13 he decided to confront Johnson with the need to change policy as “we’re going to have to ditch the whole official plan, we’re heading for the biggest disaster this country has seen since 1914.”

Despite being forced into a lockdown and Johnson himself contracting the disease, Cummings said the prime minister doubled down on his prioritisation of the economy over public safety.

The main priority was to bailout out big business and to get the spring lockdown over as quickly as possible.

Ahead of Cummings appearance, ITV News reported that Cummings alleged that Johnson had delayed a lockdown in the autumn with the prime minister saying that “Covid is only killing 80-year-olds”. The Daily Mirror said it had “a second government source” that backed Cummings version and who also recalled that Johnson had said, 'If I was 80 I wouldn't care, I'd be more worried about the economy'.

Last month it was reported in several newspapers and by the BBC that Johnson blurted out at the end of October, before being forced to sanction a further four week limited lockdown, “No more f***ing lockdowns, let the bodies pile high in their thousands!” Asked by the committee if he heard Johnson say this, Cummings said that the BBC version of events was correct, “I heard [Johnson say] that in the prime minister's study.”

The “Plan B” Cummings claims won out consisted of the most limited lockdowns and other containment measures that were politically possible to get away with, being abandoned, repeatedly, at the earliest opportunity. This led to even more deaths in the winter months, as the government kept much of the economy open for months with the virus allowed to spread out of control and to mutate into even more deadly variants.

Cummings was finally forced out of Downing Street last November, after having burnt his bridges with Johnson. He stated in his evidence that he considered Johnson “unfit for the job.” A critical motive involved in Cummings testifying is seeking to distance himself from the crimes carried out by a government in which he played such a prominent role. He denied reports first published in the Sunday Times that he had summed up government policy at a private meeting in February 2020 as “herd immunity, protect the economy and if that means some pensioners die, too bad.”

Cummings spent much of his testimony denouncing Health Secretary Mat Hancock, saying that he should have been fired on 15 to 20 occasions, including for lying to the public during the pandemic. Asked by a committee member if people in government might face “corporate manslaughter charges,” Cummings replied, “I think that there is no doubt many senior people performed far, far disastrously below the standards which the country has a right to expect. I think the secretary of state for health is certainly one of those people.”

No matter what Cummings motives, he has revealed the extraordinary level of criminality in ruling circles that has led to mass deaths and unimaginable suffering. More than 3.5 million lives have been lost internationally. Given the extraordinary unanimity of the responses of government of all stripes in prioritising profits over lives, the type of discussions sanctioning social murder revealed by Cummings will have taken place in every country.

As over 50 refugees drown, UN condemns EU’s Mediterranean migrant policy

Will Morrow

More than 50 refugees drowned attempting to cross the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe last week. The mass drowning is the latest such disaster this year, produced directly by the anti-migrant policies of the European Union (EU).

In another demonstration of the illegality of the EU’s refugee policy, the United Nations human rights commission handed down a report yesterday, branding the EU as jointly responsible for causing hundreds of entirely preventable deaths in the Mediterranean since the beginning of the year, and thousands in the years before.

A woman holds a 3 month old baby as migrants and refugees from different African nationalities wait for assistance on an overcrowded rubber boat, as aid workers of the Spanish NGO Open Arms approach themv. (AP Photo/Bruno Thevenin)

The latest disaster took place on Monday, May 16. A boat that was reportedly carrying 90 people when it departed from Libya sank off Tunisia’s southern coast, near the city of Sfax, the following day. Only 33 of the passengers survived, saved by workers on a nearby oil platform, who spotted the boat sinking and alerted authorities. The survivors were all from Bengal. The remaining 57 passengers were never recovered.

The tragedy is the fifth such incident off the coast of Tunisia in just the last two months. Another 17 people drowned at the beginning of the month. The deadliest single drowning of the year took place on April 21, when more than 130 people are presumed to have drowned after their boat sank off the coast of Libya.

The United Nations reports that a staggering 685 people have drowned in the Mediterranean since the beginning of this year. Over the past seven years, the number is over 20,000. Yet even these appalling tallies are likely significant underestimates, because they do not count the untold numbers who perished without leaving a trace.

These deaths are the intended outcome of the policies of the European Union and its member states, which have turned the sea separating Africa from Europe into a vast graveyard to deter refugees from exercising their legal and democratic right to claim asylum on the continent.

This was all but acknowledged in a report published yesterday by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), entitled “Lethal disregard: Search and rescue and the protection of migrants in the central Mediterranean Sea.”

It notes that there has been a significant and continuing rise in the mortality rate of boat crossings over the past four years. In 2017, when 119,310 migrants reached Europe, the mortality rate was already almost 2 percent, or one in every 51 people who attempt to make the journey. By 2018, it had reached one in 35. In 2019, it reached one in every 21 people.

“At least since August 2017,” the report states, “the EU and its Member States have gradually reduced their maritime assets in the central Mediterranean, shifting responsibility for search and rescue operations in international waters to the” Libyan border force.

In March 2020, the former Operation SOPHIA of the EU in the Mediterranean “was replaced by operation IRINI… however, IRINI vessels have no specific search and rescue mandate,” and its “more eastward operational area also avoids placing EU maritime assets in the area of the central Mediterranean where most migrants seek to cross…”

In other words, the EU ceased its rescue operations in the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, NGO rescue ships have had their sailing rights stripped on baseless pretexts and been denied flags to sail under by EU member states, to prevent them from carrying out rescues.

“Humanitarian SAR vessels and aircraft operating in the central Mediterranean continue to be prevented from monitoring, searching for, assisting and rescuing migrants in distress,” the report states.

“At various times during the reporting period, this led to periods in which no humanitarian SAR NGOs were present at sea in the central Mediterranean, leading to tragic and preventable loss of life.” Since 2018 alone, “national authorities in EU member states have initiated some 50 administrative and criminal proceedings against crew members or vessels, including the impounding or seizure of vessels.”

Meanwhile, the EU provides funding and live intelligence on refugee boats to the Libyan coastguard, to whom it has contracted out to catch refugees and return them to Libya, in gross violation of international law.

“Once in Libya, they become vulnerable to unlawful killings, slavery and forced labour, torture and ill-treatment, gender-based violence, arbitrary detention, extortion, and other human rights violations and abuses by both State and non-State actors, which have been confirmed by an overwhelming amount of evidence and reports, including previous public statements and reporting by OHCHR.”

This is only the latest report documenting the illegal and murderous refugee policy of the EU. Like all previous such reports, it will be ignored by EU governments, and noted briefly if at all by international media outlets, who will quickly move on.

Just this week, these same governments and news publications have been gripped by moral outrage over the actions of the Belarussian government, which forced down a RyanAir plane carrying an opposition journalist and kidnapped him. The European powers have suspended all flights to Belarus, blocked investments to the country, and issued a series of provocative militarist threats against Belarus’ ally Russia.

As the WSWS noted, these actions have nothing to do with the defense of democracy and the “rule of law,” but are driven by the geopolitical interests of the major imperialist European powers.

One need only ask what would happen if hundreds of refugees were drowning off the coast of Russia or China each month, with documented evidence that it was an intended result of their policies. The drownings would be featured in front-page columns. As it is, refugee drownings in the Mediterranean are treated by the European media and political establishment as non-events.

EU anti-migrant policies are aimed at diverting outward social tensions produced by the enormous levels of social inequality and poverty across the continent. They are also one of the mechanisms through which the EU is strengthening and promoting extreme-right politics. The defense of the rights of all people to live and work in whatever country they choose, with full citizenship rights, including the provision of safe passage, is an elemental task of the working class of Europe.

Bolsonaro prepares electoral coup amid Brazilian Congress probe of COVID-19 response

Miguel Andrade

Over the past two weeks, Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro has stepped up his preparations for an electoral coup, pressing Congress to pass a so-called “print ballot amendment” to the Brazilian Constitution. He has claimed that this is the only guarantee against what he describes as massive and recurrent electoral fraud preventing his reelection next year.

Bolsonaro’s approval rating has sunk to an all-time low of 24 percent, and a plurality of 49 percent of Brazilians support his impeachment for the first time, with public attention drawn to the ongoing proceedings of a Senate commission of inquiry (CPI) into his murderous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jair Bolsonaro (Wikipedia Commons)

With the help of his close ally, House Speaker Arthur Lira, Bolsonaro has succeeded in creating and stuffing with far-right loyalists a special panel to discuss, and bring to the center of the national debate, his longstanding and baseless allegations against the Brazilian electronic voting system, in place for almost 20 years. He claims it was rigged to stop him from winning the first round of the 2018 elections, in which he beat the Workers Party (PT) candidate Fernando Haddad in a run-off. The panel will analyze and vote on a constitutional amendment to attach to every electronic ballot a backup paper ballot. Bolsonaro alleges the current system doesn’t allow recounts and is prone to vote rigging, an accusation debunked by Army-promoted hacking competitions to find loopholes in the system, and by the very fact that the 2014 presidential elections saw a recount at the behest of runner-up Aécio Neves.

Bolsonaro is following a carefully calculated strategy. After supporting until the eleventh hour Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 US elections were stolen by the Democrats, Bolsonaro endorsed the January 6 putsch at the US Capitol, declaring Brazil would see “much worse” if his backup print ballot amendment was not adopted. In an undeniable indication of preparations for such an electoral coup in Brazil, Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo, a House member and former head of the Foreign Relations Committee, was present in Washington for a pre-coup meeting held at the Trump International Hotel on January 5.

Election experts virtually unanimously see print backups as technically irrelevant for the safety of elections. They have already been approved four times by Congress for use in a limited number of locations. They were opposed for facilitating the tracking of votes and, thus, political intimidation, common in both urban areas controlled by organized crime and countryside areas dominated by landed oligarchs. The adoption of the system is entirely irrelevant to Bolsonaro plans. He is betting that the system will be opposed by the Electoral Court, as has happened before, giving him the opportunity to allege that the courts are part of a conspiracy against him. Bolsonaro now warns that if the paper ballot amendment passes the Congress and is not adopted, “there will be no elections” and he will not relinquish power.

Two days after the establishment of the Senate COVID-19 commission, on May 13, Bolsonaro led a rally of a thousand supporters, sponsored by agribusiness associations, in which he said that only fraud could stop him from winning the election against former Workers Party president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has recently appeared in the polls as the frontrunner for 2022. In a bid to mobilize the most backward and violent elements in Brazilian society, Bolsonaro now refers to Lula with the dehumanizing alias “nine-fingers,” mocking the severing of Lula’s finger in an industrial accident when he was a metalworker in the 1970s.

Bolsonaro appealed for the crowd to support a coup, declaring that “the greatest power in Brazil is not the Executive, the Judiciary or the Legislature, it is you,” adding that he “was following where you led.” At the rally, Bolsonaro stood side-by-side with his defense minister, Gen. Walter Braga Netto, who assumed office two months ago after Bolsonaro fired his predecessor along with the entire military high command in order to obtain the military’s full alignment with his government.

Braga Netto made a speech at the rally saying the Army was “ready to allow our people to work.” This follows Bolsonaro’s threats to the use military to overthrow local authorities and cancel their limited social distancing measures against the COVID-19 pandemic. As Braga Netto spoke, the crowd shouted, “I authorize,” the slogan adopted by Bolsonaro’s far-right base indicating support for a military takeover.

Bolsonaro’s provocations are unfolding in the shadow of the proceedings of the Senate’s investigation into his COVID-19 response, which have been followed by millions of Brazilians outraged by the catastrophic toll taken by the pandemic. Brazil has the second-largest number of recorded deaths in the world, with over 450,00 victims. At this point, nearly 2,000 Brazilians are dying every day. The country is sleepwalking into a deadly third wave with unpredictable consequences as the transmission rate, indicating the acceleration of contagion, climbs to 1.12 after two months below 1.0. In the ensuing economic catastrophe, the wealth of Brazil’s billionaires has skyrocketed, while 60 percent of Brazilians face food insecurity, and over 20 million have been thrown into poverty.

Bolsonaro is deeply aware that the inquiry’s exposures are feeding the growth of mass social opposition, despite the best efforts of the opposition to confine it to relatively bureaucratic questions such as the delay in buying Pfizer vaccines offered by the company in mid-2020. The opposition, which controls the commission, has entirely abandoned efforts to probe Bolsonaro’s herd immunity policy, which is shared by all Congressional parties.

In a damage control operation, the CPI has turned its main focus to Gen. Eduardo Pazuello, who headed the Health Ministry for almost a year, from April 2020 to March 15, 2021. He was fired under pressure from Congress at the height of the second wave of the pandemic, when Brazil reached a daily death toll of 4,000. Pazuello was installed after his two civilian predecessors resigned in protest over Bolsonaro’s herd immunity policy. He is an active-duty three-star general—the second-highest rank in Brazilian Army—who has for over a year resisted demands that he retire in order to safeguard the political neutrality of the Armed Forces. He has been the only active-duty officer to hold a senior post in the Bolsonaro government, despite the fact that a third of the cabinet is comprised of retired military personnel, including Bolsonaro himself, and over 6,000 officers hold junior and management positions in the cabinet and state companies.

In order to avoid his questioning by the commission implicating the Army itself, the commission’s vice president, Randolfe Rodrigues, insisted that Pazuello appear in civilian attire.

He was deposed by the CPI for two days on May 19 and 20, when he was chiefly questioned about the government’s promotion of quack cures such as hydroxychloroquine, the delay in buying Pfizer shots offered in mid-2020 and the government’s inaction in face of the catastrophic lack of oxygen in the city of Manaus that led to a 41 percent increase in COVID-19 deaths in the city. The collapse of Manaus’ health care system for the second time in less than one year, after Bolsonaro’s allies declared the city had reached “herd immunity,” led to widespread outrage. The more contagious P.1 variant, believed to have originated in the city’s second wave, spread throughout South America, as other Brazilian states scrambled to airlift dying patients out of Manaus without adequate preparations.

Bolsonaro’s response to the exposure of his crimes before the CPI was to invite Pazuello to yet another “I authorize” rally in Rio de Janeiro last Sunday. PT-aligned media outlets circulated an unverified report by pundit Denise Assis that the Army high command met on Sunday to discuss Pazuello’s possible arrest for breach of the military code prohibiting political partisanship, and a former president of the Supreme Military Court told the press that if he was not punished, it would provoke “anarchy” in barracks. Army commander Gen. Paulo Sérgio de Oliveira, however, has remained silent.

Oliveira, named by Bolsonaro after firing the entire military command in late March, had been hailed by the PT and the press as “opposed to herd immunity” and proof that the Army had not sided with Bolsonaro. Now he faces the dilemma of arousing a far-right faction of the Army if he punishes Pazuello and precipitating the exposure of the penetration of fascistic forces in the state apparatus against the best efforts of the bourgeois press and parties to lull workers into thinking otherwise. Such an outcome would threaten to unleash the very outpouring of opposition that Bolsonaro is rallying his far-right to suppress, while the Army considers itself not yet prepared for a dictatorship.

The responsibility for the sharp dangers facing Brazilian workers, and for Bolsonaro’s ability to openly develop his conspiracy to hold onto power by nullifying an election, lies squarely with the self-styled opposition led by the PT. Its main aim is to avoid the deep anger against Bolsonaro turning against the whole of Brazilian capitalism. Whatever differences it raises with Bolsonaro’s policies, it seeks to frame them in the most chauvinist, pro-capitalist terms, while directing its appeals to the Army. The CPI has been the foremost example of this policy, transforming the central discussion on the scarcity of vaccines, a global catastrophe caused by the criminal vaccine hoarding of the imperialist countries and the irrational policies of ruling elites the world over, into an indictment of Bolsonaro’s “anti-patriotic” foreign policy, which should be reversed by the military.

Amazon to acquire MGM Studios for $8.45 billion

Kevin Reed

Amazon announced on Wednesday that it had reached a deal to acquire the media and entertainment giant Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM) for $8.45 billion.

In a joint press release, the two publicly traded corporations—MGM’s Wall Street market capitalization is $21 billion and Amazon’s is $1.65 trillion—said they entered “a definitive merger agreement” and emphasized how MGM’s “nearly a century of filmmaking history” is complimentary to “the work of Amazon Studios, which has primarily focused on producing TV show programming.”

The press statement also said that Amazon would “help preserve MGM’s heritage and catalog of films” and “empower MGM to continue to do what they do best: great storytelling.”

MGM logo (Bradford Timeline/Flickr)

MGM is one of the world’s oldest film studios—itself the product of entertainment industry consolidation in the 1920s—and has a catalog of 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows. Considered among the most valuable in its collection are the James Bond series of movies, Twelve Angry Men (1957), Rocky (1977), Raging Bull (1980), Moonstruck (1987), Thelma & Louise (1991) and Silence of the Lambs (1991). MGM had previously relinquished ownership of Gone with The Wind (1939), The Wizard of Oz (1939) , Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) among others in a series of deals involving Sony and Warner Brothers.

Senior Vice President of Prime Video and Amazon Studios Mike Hopkins bluntly explained the interests motivating the deal, “The real financial value behind this deal is the treasure trove of IP in the deep catalog that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM’s talented team.” IP is corporate-speak for intellectual property.

Kevin Ulrich, Chairman of the Board of Directors of MGM, said, “The opportunity to align MGM’s storied history with Amazon is an inspiring combination.”

Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos said during the company’s annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday that he was “really excited about MGM.” Also using business lingo in reference to the purchase of a century of Hollywood filmmaking, Bezos went on, “The acquisitions thesis here is really very simple: MGM has a vast, deep catalog of much beloved intellectual property and with the talented people at MGM and the talented people at Amazon Studios, we can reimagine and develop that IP for the 21st century.”

It was widely known that executives at MGM had been shopping around for a buyer and that Ulrich was asking $10 billion in discussions with Apple Inc. and Sony Group. In the end, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Amazon offer “has an equity value of $6.5 billion, people familiar with the matter said,” with the balance of the deal—$1.95 billion—paying off MGM’s debt.

The Wall Street Journal reported the agreement was reached on Monday, but the companies decided “to hold the announcement for Wednesday out of sensitivity that Tuesday was the first anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by a police officer in Minneapolis.”

For Amazon, which reportedly has $71 billion in cash, the higher-than-market purchase price is seen as a necessary step to bolster its Amazon Prime Video content library in the expanding and highly competitive streaming video industry. With a reported 175 million Prime members streaming shows and movies in the last year, Amazon is chasing Netflix (208 million subscribers) and attempting to stay ahead of Disney+ (100 million subscribers).

All of the other competitors in the content streaming industry—Apple TV+, Paramount+, Peacock, Hulu and HBO Max—have between 33 and 44 million subscribers.

Despite Amazon executive’s claims of fealty to “great storytelling,” the commitment to the Prime Video platform is based on a strategy of solidifying memberships—$12.99 per month or $119 per year—that now stand at 200 million globally. Last year Amazon spent $11 billion on video and music content, up from $7.8 billion in 2019, in order to reinforce what Jeff Bezos refers to as the “flywheel effect,” in which video subscribers also spend more money on consumer goods from the e-commerce site.

Amazon also announced in early May an $11 billion deal with the National Football League to exclusively broadcast the 15-game “Thursday Night Football” package for eleven years beginning in 2022.

More broadly the Amazon acquisition of MGM is part of the further consolidation and monopolization of both the entertainment content and direct-to-consumer streaming services. For example, AT&T Inc. said earlier this month that it would spin off its WarnerMedia assets and merge them with Discovery Inc. In 2019, Disney bought most of the content assets of 21st Century Fox, and Viacom Inc. merged with CBS Corp.

The Amazon-MGM deal is subject to regulatory approval. On Wednesday, Representative Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado and a senior member of the House antitrust subcommittee, said he was “deeply concerned” and “It’s critical that mergers and acquisitions involving monopoly companies experiencing tremendous and exponential growth are met with a greater level of scrutiny.”

Senator Amy Klobuchar (Democrat from Minnesota) said Wednesday that the MGM deal should be subject to an investigation. She said, “This is a major acquisition that has the potential to impact millions of consumers. The Department of Justice must conduct a thorough investigation to ensure that this deal won’t risk harming competition.”

Of course, neither Buck nor Klobuchar made any reference to how capitalist enterprises such as Amazon have benefited while the working class has suffered during the coronavirus pandemic. Due in part to the unprecedented rise in the stock market fueled by Treasury and Federal Reserve resources being poured into Wall Street as part of the government economic stimulus, Amazon’s share values have nearly doubled since the beginning of 2020. Meanwhile, Amazon’s e-commerce business also benefited from the self-isolation of the public during the pandemic, with revenue reaching record numbers including a 44 percent increase in the first quarter of 2021 to $108.5 billion, the company’s fastest rise in almost 10 years.