Russian flight attendants carry out sickout against dangerous working conditions at Rossiya Airlines

Clara Weiss

Flight attendants in Russia took part in a series of sickouts in late July and early August at the Rossiya Airlines, forcing the cancellations of dozens of flights. In Russia, airline workers are by law prohibited from officially going on strike.

Workers are infuriated over miserable pay, woeful understaffing and the massive spread of the coronavirus exacerbated by company policies. Flight attendants are forced to fly for weeks on end without a break, with one flight attendant passing out on the job because of extreme exhaustion. Because of the insufferable conditions, an average of 20 flight attendants are quitting their jobs every day.

Rossiya, a subsidiary of Russia’s state-owned Aeroflot company, refuses to acknowledge that a strike took place. However, in a sign of extreme nervousness, on Thursday it announced “loyalty premiums” of 25,000 rubles (about $340) for its employees, provided they are fully “available for scheduling” between August 5 and September 10.

Rossiya Airlines Airbus A319-100 (Image credit: Marvin Mutz/ Wikipedia CC2.0)

Aeroflot kukhnia (Aeroflot kitchen), a popular channel for airline workers on the Russian social media site Telegram, which has covered the strike and published information on working conditions, has called upon workers to reject the offer and on passengers to boycott the airline. It also called for the removal of responsible managers whom it described as “potential murderers.”

Aeroflot kukhnia, apparently run by flight attendants, obtained the internal document outlining the new policy, which is circulating with no signature, no stamp, and “not even the name and position of those who worked it out and confirmed it,' according to the channel. “Overall, it does not have any legal legitimacy and not a single flight attendant will be able to contest or demand anything on this basis.”

Based on the document, workers would only receive the sum if they are fully “available for scheduling” regardless of their state of health, in other words, even if they are infected with COVID-19. Thousands of Russian airline workers have fallen ill during the pandemic, especially over the summer, when the country experienced a massive surge caused by the highly infectious Delta variant.

According to the aviation workers union, a staggering one third of the total workforce of flight attendants have either been infected or are recovering from COVID-19. Russia is still recording an average of well over 20,000 new cases per day, the fourth highest number in the world. In spite of this, virtually all public health measures have been lifted as vaccination rates stall, as is the case in western Europe and the United States.

“How dangerous will it be for the average passenger to fly with Rossiya, especially for those who are immuno-compromised?” Aeroflot kukhina asked. “This is not even manslaughter, but an entirely different article of the criminal code.”

In an earlier post explaining the reasons for the strike, the channel noted, “Not a single flight attendant has seen the salary that management has now been promising for five years. 80,000 rubles [$1,089] is a fairy tale even for those flying more than 100 hours. For 70 hours of flight time, you’ll get 50,000 rubles [$680] and even that is not guaranteed.” Instructors who have to teach new flight attendants are paid only for 40 hours of work but often work up to 80 hours or more. The channel added that workers were subject to “constant slander by management. You are no one, you are meat.”

A central grievance of flight attendants is also that the company routinely forces them to work in violation of safety rules, endangering their own lives and those of passengers. But in the case of accidents, it is the workers who face legal repercussions.

On social media, the sickouts won significant support. One airline worker wrote, “Great job. That’s what needs to be done, it cannot be everyone by themselves, but we must act together as united brothers in aviation. To hell with all those who scare and insult you. The fight is now in the open, fear nothing, you are correct. Period.”

Russia’s airline industry is notoriously unsafe, and plane crashes that kill hundreds of people are a regular occurrence. The unsafe conditions in the airline industry are stark example of the consequences of the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism.

Nationwide, Even before the pandemic, more than four workers died on average in work-related accidents each day, for a total of 1613 deaths in 2019, one of the highest industrial mortality rates in the world. The official figure for work-related, non-fatal accidents is 23,000. However, a recent investigation by investigative journalism outlet Istories found that the real number of safety-related accidents in Russian industries are between 22 and 44 times higher than officially reported.

The flight attendants’ strike no doubt has provoked enormous concerns in the ruling oligarchy. It is a clear indication of growing social and political opposition in the Russian working class amidst an upsurge of working class struggles internationally. In late June, autoworkers at the PSMA Rus’ plant in Kaluga engaged in a work stoppage to protest the unbearable heat at the factory.

The flight attendants’ strike comes just a few weeks before Russia’s parliamentary elections in September. Well aware of the explosive conditions created by the pandemic, the Kremlin has worked out an agreement “For safe elections,” according to which candidates are not allowed to address the pandemic. The agreement was signed by the ruling United Russia party, the Greens, the far-right Rodina and Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) and a few other parties.

As it has around the world, the pandemic, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives in Russia, has played a catalyzing role in fueling the class struggle. And, as everywhere, the unions are playing a critical role in suppressing any struggles by the working class in defense of their interests and their lives.

The Russian unions across aviation and other industries have maintained conspicuous silence about the sickouts, seeking to isolate the strikers. The union of flight attendants has not even condemned the “offer” by the company for workers to endanger their own lives and those of passengers for a miserable 25,000 rubles.

The trade unions in Russia have all emerged either directly out of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s official unions or out of attempts by layers of the bureaucracy and middle class to set up so-called “independent” unions to gain a larger share of the spoils in the process of privatization. They are complicit in the social catastrophe that capitalist restoration has wrought and are integrated into the state and various oligarchy-controlled political parties.

IMF offers crumbs to poorer countries

Nick Beams

To the accompaniment of overblown rhetoric and after months of haggling, the International Monetary Fund has agreed to try and boost the finances of low- and middle-income countries as they struggle to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic amid lack of access to vaccines and already inadequate public health services.

Last week it signed off on a $650 billion expansion of its Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) program. SDRs have no conditions attached and do not have to be repaid, enabling countries to employ them without making compensatory cuts to public spending. But the decision will make little difference to the worsening situation confronting many countries as they face a continuing slowdown in the growth of their national income.

This was acknowledged, at least indirectly, by the IMF itself in its latest update to its world economic outlook. It cut the forecast for growth for emerging-market and less-developed countries, reversing the trend that has prevailed over the past two decades and more.

Kristalina Georgieva of the International Monetary Fund (Source: imp.org)

However, this did not stop IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva from talking up the SDR expansion when she announced it.

She said it was a “historic decision—the largest SDR allocation in the history of the IMF and a shot in the arm for the global economy at a time of unprecedented crisis.

“The SDR allocation will benefit all members, address the long-term global need for reserves, build confidence and foster the resilience and stability of the global economy. It will particularly help out most vulnerable economies struggling to cope with the impact of the COVID-19 crisis,” she continued.

These claims are contradicted by the very structure of the allocation. The expansion of SDRs, the equivalent of newly printed money, will be allocated to the IMF’s 190 members in proportion to their share of the global economy. This means that only $275 billion will go to emerging and developing economies, with the rest allocated to the world’s major economies.

Furthermore, it is estimated that only 8 percent of the new money will go to countries that are classified as “highly debt vulnerable.”

Debt is a problem across the board. According to the Institute of International Finance, average government debt in large emerging market economies rose from 52.2 percent of gross domestic product to 60.5 percent in 2020—the largest increase on record.

The IMF itself has reported that more than half of emerging and developing countries had inadequate finances to meet the pandemic and had been forced to deplete their foreign currency reserves to combat it.

Many of these countries operate under the threat that a tightening of financial conditions in the US and other major economies would see the reversal of capital inflows, further escalating their economic and financial problems.

There have been calls for richer countries to channel their allocation of SDRs to poorer countries and Georgieva said the IMF was seeking to advance those efforts. But given the record on the allocation of vaccines against the coronavirus, which shows that poorer countries have received only a tiny fraction of what is needed, there is little prospect of any meaningful movement on this front.

One of the most significant effects of the pandemic on less developed countries is in the tourist industry.

According to the UN’s World Tourism Organisation, global international arrivals for the first five months of this year were, on average, 85 percent down from their levels in 2019, compared to a reduction of 65 percent for the same period in 2020.

In the Asia-Pacific region, now being hard hit by the Delta variant, there has been a 95 percent fall in arrivals compared to 2019 levels. Chinese tourism to the region has virtually ceased. The dependence of many of these countries on foreign visitors is exemplified by Thailand where 20 percent of GDP and employment is generated by tourism.

Luiz Eduardo Peixoto, an emerging-markets economist at BNP Paribas in London, told the Financial Times that the situation this year was worse than predicted.

“Last year, there was an assumption that in 2021 we would see a rebound,” he said. But the drop in number last year was close to the most pessimistic scenario because “we didn’t get a recovery during the [northern] winter—quite the contrary. This year, things are not recovering as expected.”

Viewed within a longer term historical perspective, the IMF’s latest intervention via SDRs could well be described as the case of a criminal returning to the scene of the crime and seeking to expunge vital evidence.

One of the main reasons health services in less developed countries are in such parlous condition and why debt levels are so high—constricting the spending on vital health services—is the impact of so-called “structural adjustment” programs imposed on them in an earlier period by the IMF.

First imposed in the 1980s and then continuing into the 1990s and the present century, countries that sought assistance from the IMF were required to meet strict conditions including the privatisation of public services, deregulation of financial markets and reduction of social spending, including on health.

Between 1980 and 2014, 109 out of 137 developing countries had to enter at least one structural adjustment program.

A recent article by Adele Walton in the UK Tribune magazine pointed out that some 25 countries were spending “more on debt than healthcare, education, and social protection combined in 2019, meaning the intense strain of an international health care crisis has left swathes of populations without access to essential services and resources.”

The measures imposed by international finance capital via the IMF have had a particularly significant impact on two of the countries that have been hardest hit by the pandemic, South Africa and India.

According to Walton’s article a study in South Africa has found “privatisation to be the primary cause of deprivation of most of the population’s access to health care.”

In India, privatisation of health care “significantly reduced the government’s capacity to prioritise public health needs over private profit interests.” And the lack of resource coordination had “cataclysmic consequences for the country when it experienced oxygen shortages at the height of its second wave.”

Facebook Fellowship Program 2022/2023

Application Deadline:

20th September 2021 11:59pm PST

Eligible Countries:

Any

To be taken at (country):

Any country (excluding US embargoed countries)

Research Areas:

• CommAI
• Computational Social Science
• Compute Storage and Efficiency
• Computer Vision
• Distributed Systems
• Economics and Computation
• Machine Learning
• Natural Language Processing
• Networking and Connectivity
• Security/Privacy
• Research Outside of the Above: relevant work in areas that may not align with the research priorities highlighted above.

About the Facebook Fellowship: 

The Facebook Fellowship is a global program designed to encourage and support promising doctoral students who are engaged in innovative and relevant research in areas related to computer science and engineering at an accredited university.

The program is open to students in any year of their PhD study. We also encourage people of diverse backgrounds and experiences to apply, especially those from traditionally under-represented minority groups. Applications are evaluated based on the strength of the student’s research statement, publication record, and recommendation letters.

Winners of the Fellowship are entitled to receive two years of paid tuition and fees, a $42,000 annual stipend to cover living and conference travel costs, a paid visit to Facebook headquarters for the annual Fellowship Summit, and various opportunities to engage with Facebook researchers.

Giving people the power to share and connect requires constant innovation. At Facebook, research permeates everything we do. We believe the most interesting research questions are derived from real-world problems. Our engineers work on cutting edge research with a practical focus and push product boundaries every day. We believe that close relationships with the academic community will enable us to address many of these problems at a fundamental level and solve them.

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• Applicants must be full-time PhD students who are enrolled in an accredited university (in any country) by the start of the Fellowship (i.e., Fall 2021)
• Students must be involved in ongoing research related to one or more relevant disciplines (see available fellowships below)
• Students must remain enrolled full-time for the duration of the Fellowship to receive program benefits
• Students should not apply for Facebook Fellowships if they are actively being funded by Facebook through some other sponsorship or collaboration and/or if they are actively being supervised (or co-supervised) by a Facebook researcher. If in doubt, please email academicrelations@fb.com.

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Each Facebook Fellowship includes several benefits:

• Tuition and fees will be paid for the academic year (up to two years).
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• Paid visit to Facebook HQ to present research.

As part of the program, current Fellows are invited to Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park for the annual Fellowship Summit. At the Summit, Fellows can engage with other winners, share their current research, speak with Facebook researchers and teams, and learn more about research at Facebook.

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How to Apply for the Facebook Fellowship:

• 500-word research summary that clearly identifies the area of focus, importance to the field, and applicability to Facebook of the anticipated research during the award (reference the available fellowships below)
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Available Fellowships

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Afghanistan: bullied, bombed, betrayed

Megan Cornish

The corporate media was forced to admit the obvious by early July. Even before U.S. troops left Afghanistan, the reactionary Islamist Taliban that their invasion overthrew had retaken huge swaths of the country. After 20 years and over $2 trillion spent, Washington faced a massive failure with nothing to show for it but death and destruction.

What apologists for U.S. barbarism avoided at all costs was a tally of the devastation or the lies used to justify it. Corrupt collaboration government officials and their allies have looted the country. Not only the Taliban, but also al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS or Daesh), are stronger than ever.

It will be up to the Left in Afghanistan, the U.S., and around the world to draw the lessons of this history and back the fight of the Afghan people for a better future.

Lies, corruption and imperial hubris.

The invasion of Afghanistan after al-Qaeda brought down the World Trade Center in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, was always built on fabrications. The “war on terror,” like the “war on communism” before it, was a handy excuse for attacks on whatever targets served U.S. geopolitical interests.

The invasion was not to free the women of Afghanistan or install democracy, as advertised. It was about political hegemony over this key country at the crossroads of the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia — and about war profiteering. Now Washington’s relations with countries surrounding the “Graveyard of Empires” are worse than ever. The only success was enriching the enormous military industry.

In late 2019, the Washington Post printed the Afghanistan papers, some 600 interviews with insiders to the occupation. They revealed how Republican and Democratic administrations alike systematically lied about the huge sums wasted on corruption and empty “development” schemes. The total failure to bring peace or prosperity was well known but covered up.

Throughout, war crimes were committed with impunity by U.S. and NATO forces and their installed government (See “War crimes and civilian casualties in Afghanistan,” by Left Radical of Afghanistan, or LRA, at socialism.com). Barack Obama explicitly declined to investigate George W. Bush’s policy of widespread prisoner torture. In November 2019, Donald Trump had the gall to pardon two soldiers for war crimes, one convicted in U.S. courts and another before even standing trial.

Devastation wrought.

According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, some 241,000 people have died in Afghanistan and Pakistan due directly to the violence of the war. Several times that number have died from lack of food and water or other indirect causes. Among the dead are more than 71,000 civilians, 78,000 Afghan soldiers, and 84,000 opposition fighters. The deaths of U.S. and NATO troops and military contractors number 7,522. Tens of thousands on all sides have been wounded.

There are 2.7 million UN-registered Afghan refugees. Most are stuck in camps with no hope of permanent settlement. Over 2 million people are internally displaced within the country.

Eteraz monthly is a collaboration by Afghan radicals, including LRA. Recent journal articles, reprinted at socialism.com, describe dire conditions for women and youth. Violence against women is at an all-time high, not only in rural areas dominated by Islamist forces, but also in large cities under government control.

Women and girls are not allowed to go to school in Taliban-controlled areas. Media reports say that three female journalists, a woman physician and two female judges have been assassinated since the beginning of 2021. In May, a school bombing in Kabul killed 85 girls, most of them Hazara Shiites, an ethnic and religious minority.

As for youth, Eteraz reports that about 70% of the population is under the age of 22, and schools have been closed throughout the country during the war. Many Afghans are illiterate, and the numbers are much higher for women and young people. All the factions in conflict, including the government, target unemployed and impoverished youth for recruitment. With an unemployment rate estimated at 72%, options are few beyond taking up arms, getting into the opium trade, or attempting to flee the country.

A Taliban takeover or civil war seems imminent. Either way, women and religious and ethnic minorities are in serious peril.

Looking forward.

Even by the probably rosy estimates of the Pentagon, the Taliban took over a third of the country between the beginning of May and early July. The U.S. played a key role in creating the disaster it is backing away from. To engineer the overthrow of a Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan during the 1980s, Washington funded the mujahideen (precursors to the Taliban), spawning the spread of right-wing Islamic fundamentalism throughout the region. Now it and its NATO allies are cutting their losses and leaving Afghans to pick up the pieces.

In early July, defiant women took up that challenge. Demonstrations of hundreds of women armed with assault rifles broke out in the north and central areas where the Taliban have been conquering territory and reinstituting heavy misogynist restrictions. The Guardian quoted a marcher who is head of the women’s directorate of Ghor province saying that while some women’s protest may have been symbolic, others “were ready to go to the battlefields.”

Afghan women, youth and poor people, and the Left that defends them, urgently require international solidarity, especially from socialists in the imperialist heartland. People in the U.S. can begin by demanding that their government pay war reparations and provide real reconstruction aid, no strings attached, to Afghanistan!

Cognitive impact of COVID-19 often worse than a stroke or lead poisoning

Thomas Scripps

Governments around the world are letting COVID-19 rip through their populations. Besides the terrible toll in deaths, which officially stands at over 4.2 million, this policy is condemning millions more to severe long-term health problems.

A scientist researching Covid-19 (credit: Creative Commons)

A growing body of research has pointed to the serious neurological impact of a COVID-19 infection. Last month, a major study led by Imperial College London, “Cognitive Deficits In People Who Have Recovered From COVID-19”, provided an alarming confirmation of these effects.

Published in The Lancet, the study reveals that people who recover from COVID-19 are more likely to score substantially lower on IQ tests than they were before they were infected, with the impact increasing with the severity of the illness.

Using records from the ongoing Great British Intelligence Test, the researchers analysed the cognitive test scores of 81,337 people, of which 12,689 indicated they had experienced or suspected they had experienced a COVID-19 infection. Forty-four were hospitalised on a ventilator, 148 were hospitalised without a ventilator, 173 received medical assistance at home, 3,386 had symptoms which they self-managed at home, 8,938 had no noticeable symptoms and 68,648 were not ill.

The study found that people hospitalised with COVID showed “substantial” cognitive performance deficits, with those placed on a ventilator losing roughly seven IQ points, and those not ventilated losing roughly four.

Putting this in perspective, the “score reduction for the hospitalised with ventilator sub-group was greater than the average 10-year decline in global performance between the ages of 20 to 70 within this dataset. It was larger than the mean deficit of 480 people who indicated they had previously suffered a stroke.”

Half a million people have so far been hospitalised with COVID-19 in the UK.

Even those who were not hospitalised showed “small” but “statistically significant” performance deficits in the Lancet study. People who experienced respiratory difficulty lost between one and two IQ points. This is roughly equivalent with the effects of lead poisoning.

A study of 24,000 COVID patients published last June found that breathing problems affected 23 percent of infected people, broadly confirmed across multiple sources. The UK has recorded close to six million COVID-19 cases. On this rough calculation, close to 1.4 million people have had their cognitive function significantly impaired.

Deficits were most pronounced for tests which “tapped cognitive functions such as reasoning, problem solving, spatial planning and target detection whilst sparing tests of simpler functions such as working-memory span as well as emotional processing.”

The researchers suggest, “recovery from COVID-19 infection may be associated with particularly pronounced problems in aspects of higher cognitive or ‘executive’ function, an observation that accords with preliminary reports of executive dysfunction in some patients at hospital discharge”.

These findings “accord with reports of long-COVID, where ‘brain fog’, trouble concentrating and difficulty finding the correct words are common.”

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 945,000 people in the UK are currently living with Long COVID, defined as persistent symptoms lasting more than four weeks after infection. This includes 11,000 children aged 2-11 and 23,000 children aged 12-16. There are 380,000 people who have suffered the effects of Long COVID for more than a year.

A link between severe respiratory disease requiring hospitalisation and negative cognitive effects is not new. The study’s authors explain: “previous studies in hospitalised patients with respiratory disease not only demonstrate objective and subjective cognitive deficits but suggest these remain for some at 5-year follow-up.” They describe the impact on ventilated patients as “not altogether surprising”.

However, they add, “the scale of deficits in cases who were not put on a ventilator, particularly those who remained at home, was unexpected”.

Addressing the rigour of their results, the scientists explain, “Our analyses provide converging evidence to support the hypothesis that COVID-19 infection is associated with cognitive deficits that persist into the recovery phase.” The observed deficits “could not be explained by differences in age, education or other demographic and socioeconomic variables, remained in those who had no other residual symptoms and was of greater scale than common pre-existing conditions that are associated with virus susceptibility and cognitive problems.”

Placing the findings in the context of the UK government’s policy of herd immunity by mass infection, lead researcher Dr. Adam Hampshire told psychology and neuroscience website PsyPost, “We need to be careful as it looks like the virus could be affecting our cognition. We do not fully understand how, why, or for how long, but we urgently need to find out…

“I think it is fair to say that those of us who have been analysing data such as this are somewhat nervous at the decision to let the pandemic run its course within the UK.”

The study’s authors collectively stress that these results “should act as a clarion call for further research… to plot recovery trajectories and identify the biological basis of cognitive deficits in SARS-COV-2 survivors.”

A recent review of such research by the journal Nature charts the growing biological evidence base for COVID’s neurological symptoms, which it notes “appeared in 80% of the people hospitalized with COVID-19 who were surveyed in one study”. Experiments and studies have demonstrated the virus’ ability to infect astrocyte cells which perform important functions in the brain and pericyte cells which are important to brain blood flow. COVID-19 can also prompt the production of “autoantibodies” which attack the body’s own tissues.

The Nature article refers to a preprint study led by the Welcome Trust, “Brain imaging before and after COVID-19 in UK Biobank”, which found a loss of grey matter in several areas of the brain among those who had recovered from COVID-19. The loss particularly affected the areas concerned with sense of smell and taste.

That the resources have not been made available for scientists to submit these questions to vastly more extensive research at this stage of the pandemic, as the basis for preparing effective treatments, is an abject failure of capitalist society. That reference to these grave health risks is largely suppressed in the media and political discussion, in service to the mantra of “learning to live with the virus”, is an immense social crime. To sustain profits, millions more people are being exposed to a virus whose known effects are frequently devastating and whose full consequences for a person’s health are still being explored.

Still no justice for UK victims of infected blood scandal after decades

Barry Mason & Robert Stevens

Over three years after the Conservative government’s announcement that an Infected Blood Inquiry would be held, the families and loved ones of the thousands of people who died are no nearer seeing justice.

Bottles of Factor VIII (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The inquiry was announced by then Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May in July 2017, with opening hearings held in Westminster in late September 2018. The inquiry began to take evidence from those infected and affected at the end of April 2019. A series of current and former government ministers have been called to give evidence over the last weeks.

The contaminated blood scandal saw the deaths of thousands of people in Britain and internationally after they were given blood infected with diseases in the 1970s and 1980s. Major drug companies made enormous profits through the sale of blood products, including infected blood.

According to a 2015 parliamentary report, around 7,500 people were affected in the UK. Most other sources agree that far more, up to 30,000 people, including many with bleeding disorders were given contaminated blood products. Among others who have suffered are people who received blood transfusions or received blood after childbirth.

The suffering was on a vast scale, with the needless deaths of so many described as a “horrific human tragedy.” Some of those who died did so as the result of multiple organ failure.

Even today, decades later, people continue to die due to infected blood at a rate of one every four days according to estimates.

Haemophiliacs represented the majority of those affected by infected blood products in the 1970s and 80s. Among the deadly diseases they contracted were Hepatitis C and/or HIV. According to the Haemophilia Society nearly 5,000 people were infected with around 3,000 dying.

Among those who died were many from Treloar’s College, a disabled children’s boarding school in Hampshire, England. Dozens of the children died after the school’s on-site health centre gave them infected blood products such as plasma to treat their haemophilia. The inquiry heard in June that of all 89 former haemophiliac students who attended the school in the 1970s, only 16 of them are still alive. All were infected with hepatitis B and C, and 64 contracted HIV.

Haemophiliacs were given Factor 8 products to control their bleeding. The UK began to import Factor 8 products from the US because it was unable to produce enough and because it was cheaper. Unlike in the UK, the US authorities would pay people to give blood. Many drug addicts and those with compromised health would donate for the money. The process of producing Factor 8 involves pooling many donations which vastly increased the risk of it being infected with hepatitis C and then HIV as that infection took off in the US.

Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government opened the door to mass infection and deaths in order to save money. Everyone who lived through the 1980s remembers the governments public information film campaign which included the warning: “AIDS: Don't Die of Ignorance”. In 1987, every household in Britain received a leaflet warning about AIDS, “Anyone can get it, gay or straight, male or female. Already 30,000 people are infected.”

Yet while this was taking place, people were being injected with infected blood containing HIV.

Decades have since passed with no single individual or corporate entity anywhere brought to account for these crimes.

Two previous inquiries were whitewashes. The first inquiry into the contaminated blood scandal was led by Lord Archer of Sandwell, under the Labour government of Gordon Brown. Set up in 2007, it reported in 2009. Archer’s was a non-statutory inquiry with no powers to force government ministers or civil servants who declined invitations to give evidence. Archer concluded that commercial interests had been given a higher priority than patient safety. While criticising the government’s slow response, the inquiry apportioned no blame.

The Scottish National Party-led government announced an inquiry in 2008 that only finally reported in 2015. The Penrose Inquiry, called under the 2005 Inquires Act, did not even take evidence from anyone at Westminster and concluded that the Scottish authorities at the time did their best. Costing over £12 million, it made just one recommendation, that blood tests should be offered to anyone in Scotland who had a blood transfusion before 1991 and who has not already been tested for hepatitis C! It too apportioned no blame.

Those seeking to establish the truth through researching documents from the 1970s and 1980s hit a brick wall. David Watters, general secretary of the Haemophiliac Society from 1981 to 1993, said all files relating to the HIV crisis, including correspondence with the Department of Health, had been destroyed. Even former Labour Health Secretary David Owen (1974-76) was unable to get hold of ministerial papers relating to the contaminated blood event. They had been “cleaned up” to prevent the matter going to court, he was told.

The Infected Blood Inquiry is being led by former High Court judge Sir Brian Langstaff. Its remit is to “examine the circumstances in which men, women and children treated by National Health Services in the United Kingdom were given infected blood and infected blood products, in particular since 1970.”

Previous calls by campaigners for an inquiry with the powers to summon witnesses and access documents were rebuffed by Conservative and Labour governments. However, following the launching of a civil litigation case in 2017 by Jason Evan s, —whose father died as a result of infected blood products and who runs the Factor 8 campaign—May was forced to call for an inquiry with such powers.

After his inquiry testimony last week, Tory Lord Kenneth Clarke was denounced for displaying “contempt” for his reluctance to answer questions during his three session appearance. Clarke was a leading figure in Thatcher’s government (1979-1991) and in that of her successor John Major (1991-1997), in which he served as home secretary and chancellor. He was a health minister from 1982 to 1985 and was health secretary from 1988 to 1990.

While a health minister, Clarke issued a press release issued in September 1983 asserting, “there is no conclusive proof that Aids is transmitted by blood products”. At the inquiry he stood by the statement as being correct at the time. Yet in May 1983, the director of the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre in England and Wales had notified the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) of the death from AIDS of a haemophiliac who had been given Factor 8 imported from the US.

A vital document unearthed by Evans was a letter to a constituent, dated May 4, 1983, from Hugh Rossi, a Department of Health and Social Security minister. It read, “It is an extremely worrying situation, particularly as I read in the weekend press that the disease [AIDS] is now being transmitted by blood plasma which has been imported from the United States.”

In his July 27 testimony, Clarke let rip his irritation at the line of questioning by inquiry lead counsel Jenni Richards QC, complaining, “Why do we have to go through such meticulous detail through who said what when, when did he change his mind?”, dismissing the inquisition as “pretty pointless”.

Inquiry chair Langstaff chastised Clarke for his response but it didn’t stop him from minimising his role in the scandal. Clarke declared, “I was not directly responsible for any of this. I only play such a prominent part in evidence because I am… slightly better known than any of the others and the nearest to a B list celebrity you’ve got.”

Victims and their family members had in some cases travelled long distances to hear Clarke give his account and then had to go on a waiting list to get into the inquiry. Sam Stein QC, representing some victims, made an application for permission to address Clarke on his behaviour over the three days of questioning. Langstaff turned down the request.

Commenting after Clarke had finished his evidence, Evans said, 'We've all waited a long time to hear Clarke give evidence but what we will all remember from this week is not answers or the truth, it will be the total disrespect shown to all those infected, affected and the inquiry's own legal team.”

On July 29, Clarke was asked by the inquiry whether the victims should be compensated. He responded, “You can't just pay out compensation in all those cases where there's no fault on the part of the doctors there's no fault on the part of the health authority… that’s still the approach today… I think any other approach would be quite, quite impossible you would destroy the health service.”

Clarke was able to display such contempt safe in the knowledge he would not pay any political price, let alone face prosecution.

The Infected Blood Inquiry was set up under the 2005 Inquiries Act legislated by Tony Blair’s Labour government. The Act serves to protect the guilty as it stipulates, “An inquiry panel is not to rule on, and has no power to determine, any person’s civil or criminal liability.”

In his announcement David Lidington, Cabinet Minister in May’s government, wrung his hands declaring, “It is very important that the inquiry can identify why and how this tragedy occurred and provide answers for all the victims who have suffered so terribly and can identify lessons to be learned so that a tragedy of this scale can never happen again.”

The inquiry is not set to complete until next year or even 2023.

The Infected Blood Inquiry stands alongside other 2005 Act inquiries—including the already widely discredited four-year and ongoing inquiry into the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire. After 32 years, and multiple inquiries, inquests and panels, the 97 people who died and the hundreds injured in the Hillsborough disaster received no justice with all those responsible getting away with it.

All that is required of such inquiries is that they conclude by making a few recommendations and roll out stock phrases about how everyone has learned lessons. All those affected by the infected blood scandal must demand the immediate arrest and prosecution of all those in government and corporate circles who perpetrated and then covered up for terrible crimes.

New Zealand government’s proposed “hate speech” law attacks free speech

John Braddock & Tom Peters

Against a backdrop of rising social tensions, widening inequality and emerging resistance by the working class to austerity, New Zealand’s Labour Party-Greens government is preparing new “hate speech” laws that will severely limit free speech and muzzle political dissent.

The Justice Ministry last month released a discussion document, “Proposals against incitement and discrimination,” for a six-week public “consultation” period before legislation is finalised and taken to parliament. The document, which invites responses to six vaguely worded proposals, reveals no precise text of the foreshadowed law, although planning is doubtless well advanced.

The Socialist Equality Group (NZ) unequivocally condemns the government’s attack on freedom of speech and warns that, whatever its declared intentions, the law will inevitably be used against the working class, and target left-wing and socialist organisations and individuals as the emerging rebellion against the assault on living standards and basic rights intensifies.

PM Ardern visiting Muslim community at Phillipstown Community Centre, 16 March 2019 (Source: Wikipedia - Kirk Hargreaves)

Labour intends to alter two sections of the Human Rights Act 1993, which currently outlaws communications that are intended “to excite hostility or ill-will against, or bring into contempt or ridicule” any group on grounds of their colour, race, or ethnic or national origins. The proposed changes expand the list of “protected” groups to include those based on gender, religion, sexuality, marital status, age, employment status and political opinion.

The changes will apply to Section 61 of the Act, which contains civil provisions against inciting hostility on the basis of race or ethnicity, and Section 131 which make such activities a criminal offence. Under the reworked Section 61 any person who “encourages others” to treat members of a protected group worse or differently than others would be breaking the law and could trigger a complaint to the Human Rights Commission.

Section 131 will become a new offence within the Crimes Act, where it will have substantially increased penalties. The maximum fine is lifted from $7,000 to $50,000, and the maximum term of imprisonment raised from three months to three years.

The new section will specify that anyone who “intentionally incites, stirs up, maintains or normalises hatred” against a protected group breaks the law if they do so by being “threatening, abusive or insulting, including by inciting violence,” regardless of whether this is done verbally, in writing or online.

The terms used are vague and open to interpretation. What counts as “normalising hatred” or “abusive language” will be determined by the state.

Under the Bill of Rights Act 1990, everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.” However, several long-standing legal provisions already restrict what people can say or publish. The Summary Offenses Act 1981 makes it illegal to use racist slurs. The Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 regulates “extreme” tweets or Facebook messages while film classification rules target “harmful” material and content that “breaches society’s standards.”

The legislation is being promoted by the media and the government on the basis of middle class identity politics: the notion that the fundamental divisions in society are those of race, gender, religion and sexuality, and that a stronger state is required to protect “diverse” groups. A typical op-ed by Donna Miles-Mojab on the Stuff website, for example, declared that the new law would “make our great country a more inclusive, safe and tolerant place for all.” She dismissed concerns about the impact on free speech, saying “I trust [the courts] to get the balance right.”

In fact, the government’s discussion document pays scant attention to the basic democratic right of freedom of speech, and has nothing to say about how it should be protected. In two brief paragraphs, the Justice Ministry baldly asserts that legal limits on free speech are “justified in a free and democratic society.” The law preventing “incitement” will, it declares, prohibit the expression of “attitudes” that are “incompatible with human rights and Aotearoa New Zealand’s democratic values.”

The changes will purportedly clamp down on “intolerance, prejudice, and hatred” and defend “our values of inclusiveness and diversity.” In fact, New Zealand society is sharply riven on class lines, with deepening inequality, child poverty, an uncontrolled housing crisis and crumbling health system. The contention that the new law will “foster greater social cohesion” and “encourage unity and continue to strengthen our society” is as absurd as it is dangerous.

Justice Minister Kris Faafoi has, unsurprisingly, been evasive about how the law might operate. Asked by Newshub reporter Tova O’Brien whether younger people “hating” older “Boomers” for the high cost of housing was “hate speech,” Faafoi replied that “potentially” such statements could trigger prosecutions. Prominent rugby player Israel Folau could also, he admitted, face prosecution if he was in NZ for his repeated anti-gay statements. Faafoi said that ultimately police would decide what prosecutions to take.

The law has been justified as a response to the March 2019 terror attack in Christchurch, in which 51 people were massacred in two mosques by the fascist Brenton Tarrant. Last year’s Royal Commission of Inquiry into the attack recommended stronger penalties for “hate speech” and to include religion as a protected category, in order to foster “social cohesion” and “prevent… the development of harmful radicalising ideologies and downstream violent extremism.”

Wellington vigil in solidarity with Muslim community following fascist terror attack on Christchurch mosques in March 2019 (WSWS Media)

Nobody should believe that the law will be used solely, or even primarily, against the extreme right. After initially denying it, Prime Minister Ardern admitted that “political opinion” could be declared a protected category. Section 21 of the Act currently lists “political opinion” among the prohibited grounds for “discrimination.” On this basis, the new law would make it unlawful to “insult” or “incite” hatred towards a group or party because of their political program or views.

This is being put forward in the context of rising, and completely justified, anger among workers towards the government’s austerity measures, including a three-year public sector pay freeze. During the June 9 strike by 30,000 nurses and healthcare workers, Health Minister Andrew Little was shouted down and booed off the stage while trying to justify the government’s actions to workers outside parliament. It is entirely conceivable that, in the future, such protesters could be accused of “hate speech.”

There are already clear indications that the government is preparing to target left-wing opponents. A report commissioned by the Department of Internal Affairs, published last month by the UK-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue, claimed that in addition to 170 far-right social media accounts, there were 25 “left-wing extremist” “accounts or websites” in New Zealand. It declared that the latter unidentified groups or individuals were “more politicised than any other group” and “most likely to be active on standalone forums and to use action-oriented or aggressive language [emphasis added].”

The report said these groups were “often influenced by communist and anarchist ideologies, reject the principles of social democracy” and “rely on extra-parliamentary struggle against capitalism and refuse to compromise with political actors who advocate maintaining the status quo.” The report must be taken as a serious warning that the government is laying the basis for the criminalisation of “aggressive” anti-capitalist and anti-establishment speech.

The hate speech proposal is only the latest in a series of measures that have exploited the Christchurch attack to boost the powers of the state and intelligence agencies, while advancing demands by governments internationally for censorship of the internet.

Since the attack, the political establishment and media have largely suppressed discussion about the political roots of the atrocity. New Zealand’s chief censor promptly banned possession of Tarrant’s manifesto, which expressed admiration for US President Donald Trump and contained racist, anti-immigrant and anti-socialist exhortations.

The Royal Commission identified “weaknesses” in the current Act and called for the criminal provision to outlaw “extreme speech” and to specifically include electronic communications.

The commission’s report meanwhile whitewashed the police and intelligence agencies in Australia and New Zealand, which overlooked the danger of fascist violence and ignored specific warnings about Tarrant. The inquiry, moreover, covered up the record of Labour and its then-governing coalition partner, the right-wing populist NZ First, which was responsible for stoking Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment.

Ardern has collaborated internationally with right-wing French President Emmanuel Macron, other world leaders and technology company executives to promote the so-called “ Christchurch Call to Action ,” intended to develop mechanisms to censor online content deemed to be inciting terrorism or “violent extremism.” The government has also doubled funding to the Office of the Censor and introduced legislation to expand its power to immediately take down online content, including social media posts.

The “hate speech” law is another step in this ever-expanding process. There is, however, widespread public opposition. A straw poll released by Newshub gained 5,345 responses in 24 hours, with an overwhelming 84 percent against the law and just 12 percent in support. Reasons cited include a lack of transparency, excessive overreach and the inherent right to freedom of speech.

The right-wing parties are seeking to exploit the opposition by falsely posturing as defenders of free speech and democratic rights. ACT Party leader David Seymour, for example, said: “Hate speech is subjective and politicised. Faafoi knows Police will end up facing pressure to prosecute people with unpopular views.” The previous National-ACT government, while overseeing a major increase in social inequality, vastly expanded the powers of the state surveillance agencies to spy on the population and joined the global witch-hunt against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The Labour-Green government’s widening assault on basic democratic rights is enabled, above all, by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups. None of the unions has uttered a word about the policy. The pseudo-left groups—Socialist Aotearoa, International Socialist Organisation (ISO), and Organise Aotearoa—are equally complicit, all of them assiduous promoters of the very identity politics nostrums being advanced to justify the new law.