Brazil’s Bolsonaro attacks socialism and COVID-19 lockdowns at UN

Tomas Castanheira

The opening session of the 76th UN General Assembly began on Tuesday, September 21, with a speech by Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro. Exactly two weeks earlier, Bolsonaro had led far-right demonstrations that threatened to install a military dictatorship in Latin America’s largest country.

In his speech, Bolsonaro openly vindicated his September 7 coup threat. He also defended his criminal state policies, particularly his homicidal “herd immunity” strategy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has already caused nearly 600,000 recorded deaths in Brazil. Bolsonaro personified this criminal policy, as he attended the international event as the only speaker who refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

The Brazilian president opened his speech by clearly presenting the counterrevolutionary perspective that guides his policy. He proclaimed, “Brazil has a president who believes in God, respects the Constitution and its military, values the family and owes loyalty to his people. That is a lot, it is a solid foundation, if you take into account that we were on the verge of socialism.”

He went on to say that the epoch in which Brazil “[financed] works in communist countries” is over and that today the country has “the largest investment partnership program with private enterprise in its history.”

Based on outright data distortions, he affirmed his government’s environmental commitment, including the preservation of the Amazon rainforest, whose devastation he claimed had been radically reduced. While Bolsonaro declared “a 32 percent reduction in deforestation in the month of August,” the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) says that in the first years of his term there was a 56 percent increase in the average deforestation of the Amazon.

Speaking about the COVID-19 pandemic, Bolsonaro viciously attacked policies based on science and in the interests of preserving human lives. He stated that “isolation and lockdown measures have left a legacy of inflation, particularly in foodstuffs worldwide.”

The president also declared himself opposed to “any vaccine-related mandates” and advocated the use of drugs without scientific proof against COVID-19, claiming “[to be] one who has taken the ‘initial treatment,’ always respecting medical autonomy.”

At the same time as he gave this hideous statement, a scandal was revealed in Brazil involving the medical company Prevent Senior, which conducted a barbaric experiment on elderly COVID-19 patients, who were given hydroxychloroquine and erythromycin without their consent, provoking hundreds of deaths. These results, in turn, were falsified to support a “study” that would claim the efficacy of such drugs against COVID-19. Bolsonaro was deeply involved with the organizers of this criminal experiment and systematically publicized its fraudulent results.

The Brazilian corporate media reported Bolsonaro’s speech and participation in the UN event as a national “shame.” He “has no place in the world,” an article by Jamil Chade at Uol stated. The press also claimed that the speech was entirely aimed at his domestic ultra-right base and that he refused to “speak to the world.”

These assessments attempt to single out Bolsonaro as an aberration, a black stain invading the sea of roses of fraternal international political relations embodied by the United Nations. The profound hypocrisy of imperialist leaders, such as US President Joe Biden, who proclaimed the end of a “period of relentless war” and the opening of a “new era of relentless diplomacy,” is portrayed by them as the purest truth.

The 2021 UN General Assembly was, however, marked by the announcement, just a few days earlier, of the formation of the AUKUS military alliance between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. This military agreement exacerbated the threats of an imminent war against China and exposed the deepening conflicts between the imperialist powers themselves—as the unprecedented diplomatic crisis between the AUKUS countries and France unequivocally demonstrated.

While uttering speeches extolling “peace” and “diplomacy” and advocating “humanitarian” policies, the world bourgeoisie walks blindfolded towards the eruption of catastrophic wars, while domestically advancing policies of social murder in response to COVID-19 and of widespread repression against growing social opposition.

Regardless of whether his peers turn up their noses at him, the fascistic Bolsonaro is a legitimate expression of the political degradation of the international bourgeoisie driven by the deep crisis of world capitalism.

Bolsonaro’s attitude of criminal neglect towards the COVID-19 pandemic, known in Brazil as “denialism,” is not peculiar to him either. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson—who this week was highlighted in the Brazilian press for allegedly warning Bolsonaro that “vaccines save lives”—will go down in history for his nefarious phrase: “No more f…ing lockdowns; let the bodies pile high in their thousands.”

Although Bolsonaro focused on promoting his domestic political conspiracies, his speech aimed far beyond his fascistic foot soldiers in Brazil. By attacking socialism, lockdowns and mandatory vaccination, by advocating a chauvinistic policy based on “God and family,” he spoke on behalf of fascistic forces that are being brought to the fore and integrated into capitalist governments around the world.

In conjunction with the Brazilian president’s participation in the UN event, his son and political right-hand aide, Eduardo Bolsonaro, participated in Tucker Carlson’s reactionary program on Fox News. With Carlson’s enthusiastic approval, Eduardo attacked New York City’s Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, declaring he “is a Marxist that follows a lot of what Antonio Gramsci says.” De Blasio had recommended that Bolsonaro get vaccinated before entering the US or to not come at all.

Eduardo Bolsonaro was directly addressing the base of support of Donald Trump, who, like the Brazilian president, declared the minimal social distancing measures promoted by governors and mayors as “dictatorial” and instigated a fascistic insurrection against them.

Also during the trip to New York, members of Bolsonaro’s entourage, including his Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga and Eduardo Bolsonaro himself, tested positive for COVID-19. Following up on his provocations, Eduardo implied he was making use of the unproved drugs and, in a post on Twitter on Friday, raised doubts about the effectiveness of the vaccines. He wrote: “We know the vaccines were made faster than standard. ... Does that mean the vaccine is useless? I don’t think so. But it is another argument against the vaccine passport.”

Entertainment industry union IATSE calls for strike authorization vote

Hong Jian

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), the bargaining agent for 140,000 technicians, artisans and craftspersons in the media and entertainment industry, called for a strike authorization vote on September 20, ten days after an extension of the previous contract expired. The vote will be held October 1–3 and cover the 13 West Coast locals that belong to the Hollywood Basic Agreement.

IATSE image montage [Credit: IATSE/Facebook]

The following day, September 21, IATSE President Matthew Loeb and the leaders of the 23 locals located outside Los Angeles, covered by the Area Standards Agreement, sent a letter to their members calling for a strike authorization vote, claiming that the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) had broken off negotiations by failing to respond to IATSE’s last offer.

In a statement about the contract negotiations, IATSE officials asserted, “It is incomprehensible that the AMPTP, an ensemble that includes media mega-corporations collectively worth trillions of dollars, claims it cannot provide behind-the-scenes crews with basic human necessities like adequate sleep, meal breaks, and living wages. Worse, management does not appear to even recognize our core issues as problems that exist in the first place.”

Conditions for below-the-line employees (crew members as opposed to script and story writers, producers, directors, actors and casting) have not only become intolerable, but they are also a danger to the health and safety of everyone on the set. Twelve-hour shifts are the norm and a majority of entertainment workers in Los Angeles are not earning a livable wage. Abuse is rampant, and breaks—if they are permitted—are too short and too infrequent. Workers complain they are being worked to death and that these conditions cannot continue.

The overwhelming sentiment of workers as it finds expression on social media is that change is urgently needed and that a strike is necessary. One worker, criticizing the union leadership, explained that Loeb “is the one that led us to this mess we are in. He alone said all the past contracts were great and we should ratify them. Now … all of a sudden everything is wrong. That said … if the producers can’t agree on a basic human need of time off (10- or 12-hr turn around and proper meal breaks) it really says it all. … Money and benefits are highly negotiable. The basic human necessities are not. For those alone I would vote [to] strike.”

One worker on the iatse_stories Instagram site commented bitterly, “You know what’s funny? The fact that we need to hear stories of 14–18 hour work days for people to be riled up. You know what’s crazy? 12 hour days. The fact that this hardly sets off alarms shows how far we’ve normalized this work/life imbalance.”

The World Socialist Web Site spoke with Elizabeth, who has been working in the business for two years. She began as a production assistant (PA) and then as an office PA before transitioning to her current position as a set decorator coordinator. She explained that when she worked as a PA, her shifts were normally from 14 to 17 hours a day. In six months, she only had two 12-hour shifts. She said, “Fatigue is a major issue, you have to stand all day, with only a half-hour break every six hours if you are lucky. Once we worked straight through without eating for an entire shift, but I did get the meal penalty pay, which is minimal.”

She also stated that, like others whose stories have come out on the iatse_stories Instagram page, she had fallen asleep twice in her car because of the grueling schedule. Elizabeth said that even when a crew member is ill, it is hard to get time off. She said she was sick for a week at the beginning of last year before her employers finally let her go home, and even then, it was only for two days. She also complained of abusive managers and rampant sexual harassment.

Elizabeth noted that the current project she is working on has so far been a good experience, but there was no guarantee that it would continue, or that the next project she works on would be the same. For that reason, she supports the strike authorization vote and would be very supportive of a strike if it occurs. “It’s good that they (IATSE), are taking a stand. The AMPTP does not want to even consider negotiating or changing anything.”

A warning must be issued. Matthew Loeb, IATSE president since 2008 and with a compensation package worth over $500,000, along with the rest of the IATSE leadership, will not conduct a struggle to improve wages and working conditions. They will sabotage and betray such a struggle. They are fully responsible for the current miserable conditions, the product of a history of accepting concessions to the AMPTP, contract after contract.

Moreover, the union is only now calling a strike authorization vote, 10 days after the extension of the contract had expired and almost two months after the expiration of the original contract. This is an indication of how little appetite they have for a confrontation with the employers.

Loeb was well aware of the issues IATSE workers faced before the contract expired July 31 and yet did nothing to prepare workers for the impending conflict. Rather than calling for a strike authorization vote before the contract ended, the IATSE leaders opted to extend the contract, while pausing negotiations to implement a looser (and more dangerous) COVID-19 protocol under which the industry works.

While the Delta variant was already surging, IATSE helped the AMPTP reduce COVID-19 requirements, thereby allowing the employers to ramp up production and stock up on product in order to weather any possible strike.

The new COVID-19 protocols are set to expire on September 30. It is entirely possible that negotiations will be paused once again, so that the corporations can loosen restrictions one more time and further endanger the health and safety of IATSE workers. IATSE has not called attention to the rise of the Delta variant and the death and destruction it has caused, or demanded the implementation of tighter restrictions or a suspension of production during which workers would have to receive full pay from the billion-dollar corporations.

UNHRC session pushes for implementation of US-backed human rights resolution on Sri Lanka

Vijith Samarasinghe

During the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) sessions this month, High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, UK envoy to the UN Simon Manley and the EU delegation insisted on the implementation of a human rights resolution on Sri Lanka previously adopted at its meeting in March.

Backed by the US, the resolution was presented by the Core Group on Sri Lanka, which includes the UK, Canada, Germany, North Macedonia, Malawi and Montenegro. It called for the devolution of power to the Tamil elite, protection of human rights, a “review” of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), accountability, respect of religious freedoms and protection of human rights defenders.

Sri Lankan governments have a grave record of human rights violations and attacks on democratic rights, which has intensified under President Gotabhaya Rajapakse. The real purpose of the resolution, however, is to pressure Sri Lanka to break from Beijing and fully align itself with Washington’s military-strategic build up in the Indo-Pacific against China.

In a speech on September 13, Bachelet said that “militarisation and the lack of accountability” in Sri Lanka continues to have a “corrosive effect on fundamental rights.” She referred to the recent declaration of a state of emergency in Sri Lanka, draft regulations on civil society groups, numerous examples of arbitrary arrests and detention, and ongoing government interference in judicial processes.

Her office, Bachelet continued, had developed an information and evidence repository with nearly 120,000 individual items on Sri Lanka and urged UNHRC member states to provide the necessary funds to fully implement the March resolution. It would “collect, consolidate, analyse and preserve information and evidence” for future accountability processes in Sri Lanka, to help victims and survivors and investigations by UNHRC judicial proceedings, she said.

It was the first time a UN body outlined specific measures for an international intervention into Sri Lanka. Manley and the EU delegation called on Sri Lanka to “cooperate fully with the High Commissioner.”

The UNHRC previously focused on crimes committed by Sri Lankan armed forces during the final months of Sri Lanka’s communal war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). This has now been expanded to include the anti-democratic measures implemented by the current Rajapakse government.

Tamil families fleeing war in January 2009 [Source: Wikimedia]

Since coming to power in November 2019, President Gotabhaya Rajapakse has militarised key parts of his administration by plugging in-service and retired senior military officers into key state posts. Repressive legislation, such as the PTA has been invoked to arbitrarily arrest and detain Muslim political leaders, activists, artists and writers.

So-called “de-radicalisation regulations” were also added to the PTA in March. The laws prescribe 300 Tamil and Muslim groups and individuals allegedly “linked to terrorism.” On August 30, Rajapakse declared a wartime-style state of emergency, under the guise of ensuring food security.

Government intrusions into the judicial process have become rampant, with legal proceeding against war crime perpetrators called off. This includes the indictment of former navy commander Wasantha Karannagoda for the “disappearances” of 11 young men during 2008–2009.

Concerns about the unrelenting erosion of democracy and basic rights in Sri Lanka, however, is not the driving force behind the “human rights” campaigns of the US and other Western powers. These powers all backed the bloody communal war which ended in May 2009 with the military defeat of the LTTE. The UN has estimated that over 40,000 civilians were killed during the final months of the conflict. Hundreds of young persons who surrendered to the army simply disappeared and several LTTE leaders were killed.

The human rights posturing of the US, UK and other imperialist powers, given their horrific war crimes record in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places over the last three decades alone, is completely bogus. Great power pressure on Sri Lanka is aimed at forcing Colombo to break with Beijing and for the Rajapakse regime to fully commit to Washington’s escalating war preparations against China.

In the last years of the war, President Mahinda Rajapakse, the current president’s brother, developed close economic ties with China in order to obtain financial assistance and military hardware. Washington, which at that time was developing its “pivot to Asia” to diplomatically isolate Beijing and encircle it militarily, was thoroughly hostile to Colombo’s relations with China. It sponsored several UNHRC war crimes resolutions to pressure Colombo to fully endorse the US geo-strategic agenda.

Finally, in 2015, Washington orchestrated a regime-change operation to oust President Mahinda Rajapakse and replace him with the pro-US Maithripala Sirisena. Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe shifted the country’s foreign policy in favour of Washington and closely integrated the military with US Indo-Pacific Command.

Since coming to power in November 2019, however, current President Rajapakse and his cash-strapped government has increasingly turned to Beijing for financial assistance. Battered by the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Sri Lankan economy confronts an unprecedented crisis.

Colombo’s inauguration of the Beijing-funded Colombo Port City (CPC)—built on reclaimed seafront land—has particularly angered the US, and its strategic ally India. China regards the CPC as a important component in its strategic Belt and Road Initiative to counter the US threats, defend its investments and protect its vital trade routes through the Indian Ocean.

Deep trepidation now grips Sri Lankan ruling circles over the UNHRC human rights resolution.

Addressing the current UNHRC session on September 14, Sri Lanka’s foreign minister G. L. Peiris desperately tried to convince attendees that Sri Lanka was well on the way to meet its human rights commitments. He claimed that the Office of Missing Persons (OMP) was smoothly functioning and the reconciliation process proceeding.

The OMP, a toothless body established by the previous government in 2018, is supposed to be collecting information about persons who went missing during the war. Nothing has come out of its so-called investigations. The reconciliation process is code for power-sharing arrangements with Tamil elite. The Sri Lankan ruling elite and its Sinhala-Buddhist constituency, is averse to any such devolution of powers.

Peiris also questioned the need for “external initiatives” on human rights investigations during his speech. The Rajapakse government, which depends on military support, opposes war crime investigations. Any such probe would rapidly implicate the president, who was defence secretary during the final stages of the war. In fact, every faction of the Sri Lankan ruling elite depends on the military’s support.

Sri Lankan ruling class concerns are also reflected in media coverage of the UNHRC session. An editorial in the Sunday Times entitled “Paying a heavy price in Geneva,” for example, slammed the government for “abysmally failing in Preventive Diplomacy.” Translated into plain English, the newspaper’s main concern is the Rajapakse government is not doing enough to appease Washington.

Prior to the UNHRC session, US diplomats in Colombo sought the support of the bourgeois Tamil parties, and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in particular. Its leaders held several talks with the US ambassador in July and August. The Tamil elites back the US geopolitical moves against China in the hope that Washington will force Colombo to grant them some increased power and privileges.

Notwithstanding his rabidly nationalist rhetoric, Rajapakse has been desperately scrambling to accommodate Washington’s pressure while maintaining his balancing act with Beijing. He has not ended Sri Lankan military ties with the Indo-Pacific Command and this week signed an agreement to sell 40 percent of the state-owned Kerawalapitiya West Coast Power Plant to the US-owned New Fortress Energy Company. The company has also obtained rights to develop a new offshore liquefied natural gas terminal that will supply Sri Lanka. Land has also reportedly been provided for US investments.

Rajapakse’s attempts to balance between Beijing and Washington will be shattered as US imperialism steps up war plans against China. The room for manoeuvre was further undermined last week with the AUKUS military agreement between the US, UK and Australia and directed against China. The deal includes the provision of nuclear submarines to Australia “to more efficiently patrol off the coast of China.”

Quad summit heightens threat of US-led war against China

Peter Symonds

The first face-to-face leaders’ summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or “Quad” took place in Washington yesterday, hosted by US President Biden with the prime ministers of Australia, Japan and India—Scott Morrison, Yoshihide Suga and Narendra Modi respectively.

President Joe Biden walks to the Quad summit with, from left, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, in the East Room of the White House, Friday, Sept. 24, 2021, in Washington [Credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci]

The summit, following the first online leaders’ meeting of the Quad in March, is part of an escalating US-led drive to confront, undermine and subordinate China, by military means if ultimately necessary, to the “international rules-based order” dominated by Washington.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisted that the Quad summit was not about “security”—that is, the military build-up against China—but was about “COVID, climate, emerging technology and infrastructure.” She emphasised to reporters that “the focus is not [on] a security meeting or security apparatus.”

To deny that the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue has anything to do with “security” obviously flies in the face of reality.

The Quad summit followed immediately the declaration by the US, Britain and Australia of a new AUKUS military pact, which includes the provision of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. That announcement has fueled further tensions with China and threatens to fracture US relations with France—an American ally that regards itself as a Pacific power—and more broadly with the European Union.

By announcing AUKUS just a week before the Quad meeting, the Biden administration put both Japan and India on the spot as to their commitment to the escalating US confrontation with China.

Suga, however, is standing down as Japanese prime minister amid public anger over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and was in no position to make categorical statements. Moreover, Tokyo is still hampered by widespread public opposition to abandoning the so-called pacifist clause in its constitution that bars it from waging war.

For its part, India’s reaction to the AUKUS announcement has been muted. While New Delhi has developed close strategic relations with Washington over the past decade, it was in the past a close partner with the former Soviet Union and is not a formal US ally. It is an observer member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, initiated by China and Russia to counter US influence in Central Asia.

Nevertheless, the Quad has all the hallmarks of a quadrilateral military alliance in the making—Australia and Japan are already formal US allies and host American military forces, while India, particularly under Modi, has been strengthening its strategic partnership with the US. India has signed agreements not only with the US but also Japan and Australia to provide military logistics support and all four militaries now participate in India’s annual Malabar naval war games with the US.

The initial comments of the Indian, Japanese and Australian prime ministers prior to the summit copied Biden’s catch-phrase of promoting “a free and open Indo-Pacific.” Even as all four governments make deep inroads into democratic rights, the leaders posture as defenders of “democracy.” While China was not mentioned by name, despite being routinely and hypocritically denounced by the US over “human rights,” it was clearly the target.

Morrison was the most explicit, declaring that “we are liberal democracies that believe in a world order that favours freedom.” He continued: “[W]e wish to be always free from coercion, where the sovereign rights of all nations are respected and where disputes are settled peacefully in accordance with international law.”

In fact, the US has been engaged in waging one predatory war after another in the Middle East and Central Asia over the past three decades in a bid to shore up its global dominance. Australian governments have backed Washington to the hilt and committed military forces to the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Despite its debacle in Afghanistan, the US is building alliances in preparation for what is potentially an even more disastrous conflict with nuclear-armed China, which Washington regards as the chief threat to its global hegemony. Biden, who was vice president when Obama launched the “pivot to Asia” in 2011 against China, has continued all the Trump administration’s anti-China policies.

Behind closed doors, the four leaders undoubtedly focused on countering China. All the topics listed for discussion contained an element of rivalry and confrontation with Beijing: whether it was the provision of COVID-19 vaccines to the region, a new fellowship for students from the four countries or the more overtly strategic issues of addressing cyber security, collaborating on “critical technologies” and securing supply chains.

China has reacted to the AUKUS announcement by condemning it as a return to “Cold War mentality.” The danger, however, is not that the world is returning to the decades of standoff between the US and the Soviet Union. Rather it is facing the threat of a military conflict between the largest and second largest economies, both nuclear armed.

An opinion article by Edward Luce in the Financial Times was headlined “A US-China clash is not unthinkable.” It reflected fears in sections of the ruling class in Britain and internationally of the danger of war. Luce pointed out that for all of Biden’s talk about diplomacy and working with China on common issues, “the strongest winds, however, are towards confrontation” amid a “hawkish domestic US consensus on China.”

Luce warned that unlike the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union, “Cold war 2.0 offers a different spectre—escalating geopolitical rivalry between the world’s two largest powers with no clear exit ramp.”

Behind Washington’s escalating tensions with Beijing is the historic decline of US imperialism. Unlike the Soviet Union, China, by virtue of its sheer economic weight and requirements for raw materials, energy, parts and technologies, presents a challenge to continuing US global dominance. No longer able to rely on an unchallenged economic superiority, the US ruling class is determined to use all means, including its residual military might, to subordinate China to its interests.

Luce concluded his comment with a half-hearted appeal to Biden to reduce the risks by acknowledging “the possibility of a US-China collision—by accident or ignorance.” In reality, the Biden administration is actively preparing for such a conflict on all fronts—including the consolidation of military alliances and partnerships such as AUKUS and the Quad.

Corporate Cartels are Back

David Rosen

A century-plus ago, the U.S. economy was dominated by what were then known as “cartels,” “trusts” or “monopolies.”  According to one source, between 1897 and 1904 over 4,000 companies were consolidated down into 257 corporate firms. Among them were Standard Oil (40 refineries), AT&T (22 units), U.S. Steel (nine steel companies) and J. P. Morgan’s “holding” company, Northern Securities Company of railroad lines (from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest). These corporations ruled with vengeance, using predatory pricing, exclusivity deals and other anti-competitive practices to undercut smaller local businesses and gain market dominance.

Cartels or trusts are back and with an equal vengeance.  In 2017, Lina Khan, then at the Yale Law School and now chair of the Federal Trade Commission, published a critical essay, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” in the Yale Law Journal.  She provocatively stated: “Amazon is the titan of twenty-first century commerce.”  And added:

In addition to being a retailer, it is now a marketing platform, a delivery and logistics network, a payment service, a credit lender, an auction house, a major book publisher, a producer of television and films, a fashion designer, a hardware manufacturer, and a leading host of cloud server space.

She then raised a deeper concern, noting that “the current framework in antitrust — specifically its pegging competition to ‘consumer welfare,’ defined as short-term price effects — is unequipped to capture the architecture of market power in the modern economy.” Going further, she argued, “We cannot cognize the potential harms to competition posed by Amazon’s dominance if we measure competition primarily through price and output.”

Media attention has focused on growing public and political outrage in the U.S. and Europe over how “big tech” companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are using their control over multiple business lines to favor their own products and to suppress rivals.  At a Congressional anti-trust hearing, Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) insisted, “many digital markets are defined by monopoly or duopoly control.”  Pointing an accusatory finger, he argued: “Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have become gatekeepers to the online economy. They bury or buy rivals and abuse their monopoly power—conduct that is harmful to consumers, competition, innovation, and our democracy.”

***

The website Digital History reminds us that “during the late 19^th century, business competition was cutthroat. In 1907, there were 1,564 separate railroad companies in the United States, and two years later there were 446 companies manufacturing steel. … During the panic of the mid-1870s, 47,000 businesses went bankrupt.”  It then acknowledges, “In hard times, the competitive marketplace became a jungle and businessmen sought to find ways to overcome the rigors of competition.”  Between 1897 and 1901, more than 2,000 mergers took place in the United States. This horizontal integration reduced the number of competitive companies in an industry.

The increasingly cartel-dominated economy fueled the Gilded Age.  In response, the Progressives movement emerged, fostering what Teddy Roosevelt mockingly dubbed “muck-raker” journalist who investigated and publicized social and economic injustices.  They included Jacob Riis, Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell and Ida B. Wells. Progressives sought to elimination of government corruption, supported women’s suffrage, championed social welfare, racial justice, prison reform, civil liberties and prohibition. Many feared that concentrated, uncontrolled, corporate power threatened democratic government.  They argued that large corporations could impose monopolistic prices to cheat consumers and squash small, independent companies.  And these cartels could strongly influence both federal and state governments.

In 1887, Congress established the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to stop discriminatory and predatory pricing practices. There years later, it passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890) aimed to limit anticompetitive practices, such as those institutionalized in cartels and monopolistic corporations.

Looking back, Elizabeth Laughlin reminds us: “As monopolies and oligopolies became more staple of the American capitalist economy at the end of the nineteenth century, the industrial leaders who controlled these companies were simultaneously becoming more prevalent in society.”  The outcome of this development marked the Gilded Age: “Their mass wealth and influence created a shift toward plutocracy.”

Now, more than a century later, the issues of corporate cartels and the new plutocrats are finding new resonance.

***

Perdue University economist John Connor defines cartels as “voluntary associations of legally independent companies that manipulate market prices or industry output in order to increase their collective profits.” He distinguishes between “private” cartels (i.e., “not protected by national sovereignty or by treaties”) and “international” cartels (i.e., those that have participants from two or more nations”).  He adds, “private cartels operate secretly to avoid detection.”

The notion of the U.S. as an increasingly “cartel” dominated economy is gaining academic and public credence.  Looking at one sector, the telecommunications industry, the journalist David Cay Johnston, writing in a 2012 New York Times op-ed, linked the issue of cartels to the deepening telecom crisis.  He argued, “what we’ve witnessed instead is low-quality service and prices that are higher than a truly competitive market would bring.” He went on, noting, “after a brief fling with competition, ownership has reconcentrated into a stodgy duopoly of Bell Twins — AT&T and Verizon. Now, thanks to new government rules, each in effect has become the leader of its own cartel.”  He added, “because AT&T’s and Verizon’s own land-based services operate mostly in discrete geographic markets, each cartel rules its domain as a near monopoly.”

Susan Crawford, a Harvard Law School professor, given credence to Johnston’s assessment of the telecom industry. In Fiber, The Coming Tech Revolution (Yale University Press, 2019), she observes: “A handful of private companies dominate last-mile data delivery in American cities. They choose the richest, densest areas to serve with expensive second-class services – not with malign intention, but with a detrimental effect on the country.”

Following merger after merger over the last two decades, the four corporations that make up the telecom cartel came to not only control wireline and wireless services but internet and streaming services as well and are moving to acquire media/content businesses and theme parks. Collectively, the total 2020 revenues of the four telecom conglomerates totaled nearly $430 billion. The individual telecom’s 2020 revenues are: AT&T ($181.2 billion), Comcast ($108.9 billion), Charter Communications ($45.8 billion) and Verizon ($131.9 billion). Their total “market value” is nearly $1 trillion.

***

Going unobserved, what’s happened in the telecom sector is reshaping other corporate sectors.  An insightful, if ominous, 2016 study by The Economist lays out the profound corporate realignment then underway. “Since 2008 American firms have engaged in one of the largest rounds of mergers in their country’s history, worth $10 trillion,” it reported. “Unlike earlier acquisitions aimed at building global empires, these mergers were largely aimed at consolidating in America, allowing the merged companies to increase their market shares and cut their costs.”

The magazine further clarified its findings, reporting that it “divided the economy into 900-odd sectors covered by America’s five-yearly economic census. Two-thirds of them became more concentrated between 1997 and 2012.”  Going further, it noted, “the weighted average share of the top four firms in each sector has risen from 26% to 32%.”

In March 2021, U.S. News released a study that updates The Economists’ findings.  It reports:

The four biggest airlines control about 65% of U.S. passenger traffic, five giant healthcare insurers control an estimated 45% of the market, pharmaceuticals are dominated by three major companies, the top four banks control about 44% of the market, the so-called Big Five book publishers control some 80% of the U.S. book market, and Google alone accounts for about 90% of web searches worldwide.

Four companies are estimated to control 80% of U.S. meat-packing; the top four brewers and importers control about 76% of the U.S. beer market.

These revelations came during Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s (D-MN), chair of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on competition policy, held hearings in March to overhaul U.S. antitrust law.

The scale and scope of the corporate consolidation is suggested by following brief snapshots of various industrial sectors:

Airlines

Four firms — American, United, Southwest and Delta — control 80 percent of U.S. passenger traffic.

Hospitals & Health Care

The Economist reports that “the health-care industry, where a cohort of pharmaceutical and medical-equipment firms make aggregate returns on capital of 20-50%. The industry is riddled with special interests and is governed by patent rules that allow firms temporary monopolies on innovative new drugs and inventions. Much of health-care purchasing in America is ultimately controlled by insurance firms. Four of the largest, Anthem, Cigna, Aetna and Humana, are planning to merge into two larger firms.”

A 2014 Harvard study finds that “the top three hospitals and  systems account for 77 percent of all hospital admissions.”  Unfortunately, it does not identify the three hospitals.

Retail

Walmart controlled 9.5 percent share of all 2020 retail sales, up from the 8.9 percent level it posted in 2019; it controlled 50 percent or more of grocery sales in 43 metropolitan areas and 160 smaller markets as of 2018; in 38 of these regions, Walmart’s share of the grocery market is 70 percent or more.

Amazon controlled 9.2 percent share of all 2020 retail sales, up from the 6.8 percent retail stake it held in 2019; however, it controlled 51.2 percent of total U.S. digital retail sales in 2020, up from 48 percent in 2019.

Food

As For The People warns, “Six agricultural giants is set to threaten the safety of food and agriculture in America.”  These companies are Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (ADM), Bayer, John Deere, CNH Industrial and Syngenta. However, it notes, “the merger of Dow with DuPont, Monsanto with Bayer AG, and Syngenta with ChemChina, will result in the control of more than 61 percent of commercial seed sales and 80 percent of the U.S. corn seed market

Eggs & Milk

Two firms — Dean Foods and the Dairy Farmers of America — control as much as 80-90 percent of the milk supply chain in some states and wield substantial influence across the entire industry.

Eyeglasses

One sector of retail sales rarely examined is eyeglasses. For The People reports that more than 200 million Americans are affected by visions loss. It reveals that Luxottica owns and manufactures eyewear and sunglass brands under such as Oakley, Ray-Ban, Persol and other designer brands. In addition, it owns most of major distribution chains like LensCrafters, Pearle Vision, Sears and Target Optical as well as the vision insurance company EyeMed Vision Care. Essilor acquired Luxottica for $24 billion in 2017.

Glass

Corning controls 60 percent of all the glass used in LCD screens; Owens Illinois holds a near monopoly over market for glass bottles in the U.S.; and Rexam, a British company, dominants the international supply of bottle caps and pharmaceutical bottles.

Any number of other sectors can be analyzed to reveal the same tendency toward consolidation.

***

Much attention has been on the top-tier “big tech” companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft.  However, as suggested, other sectors of the U.S. economy are increasingly consolidating.

The proposed federal legislation now being considered would set up a mechanism by which a giant conglomerate could be broken up if it didn’t comply.  In addition, it could significantly limit the ability of any of the big tech companies to complete large mergers and would mandate them to make it easier for users to leave their platforms with their personal data intact.  The current Congressional debate and proposed legislation needs to be extended to all sectors of the economy in which consolidation is occurring.

England’s Chief Medical Officer admits to deliberate mass infection of millions of children

Robert Stevens & Thomas Scripps

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government sent 10 million children back to school this term in the certain knowledge they would be infected with COVID-19. This monumental crime was openly admitted by the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England Chris Whitty and his deputy Jonathan Van-Tam on Wednesday.

Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer of England speaking at Parliament’s Education Select Committee on Wednesday (credit: screenshot from Parliament TV)

Their comments were made giving evidence to parliament’s education select committee on the inclusion of children aged 12-15 in the government’s COVID-19 vaccination programme.

Whitty estimated that “roughly half” of all schoolchildren this age in England have already been infected. He added, “virtually any child unvaccinated is likely to get an infection at some point between 12 and 15.”

Answering a question on the (miniscule) risks of vaccination, he responded, “You’re not comparing a child being vaccinated against nothing happening, you’re comparing a child being vaccinated against a near-certainty that child will get COVID.”

Van-Tam confirmed, “we are not looking at a theoretical risk of children 12-17 becoming infected. I think it is really quite inevitable that they will be so at some point.”

Mass infection of children will have incalculable consequences. Close to 90 children in the UK have already been killed by COVID-19 and an estimated 38,000 aged 2-16 are currently living with Long COVID, according to the Office for National Statistics. Whitty admitted, “we don’t know the long-term effects of catching COVID in children.”

Whitty and Van-Tam made their comments in support of the Tory government’s decision to vaccinate 12-15-year-olds, against anti-scientific opposition from the ultra-reactionary wing of the Conservative Party. But this necessary decision has been made only after children have already returned to the classrooms, and it will be longer still before vaccinations in this age group actually begin.

The government, with the support of the Labour Party and the education trade unions, rushed children back to school to facilitate the reopening of the economy, in the interests of the corporations and the super-rich. So vital was this policy to the ruling class that Johnson did not even wait for the cover of a vaccination rollout to enforce it, sending overwhelmingly unvaccinated children into crowded settings five days a week.

The move to vaccination is driven by the same cold economic calculation, out of fear that the unchecked spread of COVID-19 will cause a breakdown in the school system, undermining the reopening of the economy and the return of parents to work. Whitty argued, “You would have fewer days lost as a result of being vaccinated compared to allowing people to be infected.” He spoke of “damage that could be done” only “in terms of disruption.”

Children of secondary school age already have the highest rate of COVID infections, followed by primary school children, and the numbers are increasing rapidly. Infection rates among five to 14-year-olds increased 80 percent week-on-week to September 19, to a record 811 per 100,000. Infection rates for the five to nine age group stood at 382 per 100,000.

A snapshot of the social crime now unfolding was provided by the Department for Education (DfE)’s school attendance figures the day before Whitty and Van-Tam’s appearance.

On September 16, only two weeks after state schools in England formally reopened, and less than two weeks after most did so in practice, over 100,000 children were absent with a confirmed or suspected infection. This dwarfed the previous record set in mid-July of 82,000. Some 59,000 had a confirmed COVID-19 infection and another 45,000 were absent with suspected cases. One in every 100 secondary school pupils is ill with the disease. The DfE figures found that staff are being infected at a high rate with one in every 100 teachers in state schools off work with Covid last week.

There is also clear evidence that children are spreading the virus to older generations. The Financial Times noted Wednesday, “The steep jump in Covid-19 infections among children has been followed by an uptick in cases affecting people aged 30 to 49—their parents’ generation—which now stand at 286 per 100,000, having grown 7 per cent in the past four days.” This is despite their estimated levels of social mixing remaining steady.

Responding to Whitty and Van-Tam’s comments, Lisa Diaz, a parent and member of the SafeEdforAll (Safe Education for All) group, told the World Socialist Web Site, “How can you say that ‘it is really quite inevitable’ children will get COVID-19, and it’s ‘a near-certainty’ a child will catch it, without it causing huge concern, without saying ‘now we have to do this and take these actions to prevent it?’

“Even in the US, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, has said that no child should just be left to catch COVID. Now 88 children have died in the UK from this, and there is the risk of Long COVID which we know one in seven of those infected will get.

“So this is horrific. Especially when it is not inevitable that children will be infected. It is only inevitable when they are being forced into schools. People are being gas-lighted, told that children aren’t a risk and everything is under control. Those who fight for eradication, for Zero COVID, are treated as if we are the outliers, as if we are out of step with reality. The opposite is the case.

“We are now in a worse situation than we were one year ago. Infections are 26 times greater. Britain is basically like Bolsonaro’s Brazil—no eradication, no mitigation, they are just letting it rip.”

Mass infection of children has always been the government’s plan. In June, the Byline Times website revealed that the UK’s Cabinet Office asked the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) to model “herd immunity” through a “resurgence” of infection in young people. A document authored by SAGE in February noted that “many younger age groups have not yet been vaccinated or infected” before concluding in bold, “herd immunity is not reached without a large resurgence of transmission”.

At this stage, the government was still speaking in terms of “herd immunity”, through the murderous policy of mass infection, bringing an eventual end to transmission. It now pursues the same policy while admitting the extremely infectious Delta variant and waning immunity renders herd immunity impossible. Johnson’s winter autumn/winter strategy is based on the acceptance that COVID-19 is “endemic” and will remain so.

Whitty confirmed this approach on Wednesday, saying, “because immunity wanes, we’re not going to see a situation where this just sort of stops at a certain point.” Highlighting the fraud of the Johnson government’s focus on vaccination to the exclusion of all public health measures, Whitty added, “I don’t think we should assume that either having had an infection or having been vaccinated provides full long-term protection.” This leaves the door wide open to the development of even more infectious, dangerous and/or vaccine-resistant variants.

Every infection of a child is an act of violence carried out by the ruling class. Pfizer reported in March that a study of 2,260 children aged 12-15 found its vaccine was 100 percent effective in preventing COVID-19. Had schools been closed as part of a programme of workplace closures, rigorous testing and tracing, strict safety measures in essential industries and vaccination, tens of thousands of Long COVID cases, thousands of hospitalisations, and scores of deaths among children could have been prevented.

Precisely this policy is necessary to avert the next tidal wave of infections and suffering already underway. The biggest obstacle to its implementation is not scientific knowledge or technical skill but the treachery of the trade unions and the Labour Party, complicit at every stage of the reopening of schools and the economy. The National Education Union, the largest education union in Europe, responded to the DfE figures with a call for the education minister to report more details of COVID infections to help the union and the government “do everything we can collectively to ensure that as many young people as possible continue to learn on site”.