Jeffrey Epstein’s associate Jean-Luc Brunel found dead in Paris jail cell

Kevin Reed

French business partner and friend of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Jean-Luc Brunel, was found dead in a Paris prison cell on Saturday. The Paris prosecutor’s office said Brunel’s death was being investigated and appeared to be a suicide.

Brunel, who had been charged with rape and jailed in 2020, was a member of Epstein’s inner circle of associates and started a modeling agency called MC2 Models in New York and Miami in 2004 with investment funds from the billionaire financier. They had broken off contact following Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea, conviction and sentencing to 18 months in prison for procuring for prostitution a girl below the age of 18.

Ghislaine Maxwell (left) and Jean-Luc Brunel (right) along with Jeffrey Epstein (middle) on his private jet. (US DOJ)

Ghislaine Maxwell, who was recently convicted of sex trafficking with Epstein, originally introduced her billionaire boyfriend to Brunel, whom she had known since the 1980s when he was co-owner of the international agency Karin Models.

French officials said Brunel, 75, was found hanging in his cell at 1:30 a.m. at the historic La Santé prison, operated by the Ministry of Justice and located in a southern district of Paris. He was being held in pretrial detention on charges that he raped girls between the ages of 15 and 18. He was also under investigation as part of a government probe into the sex trafficking activities of Epstein in France that was begun in 2019.

In a statement, Brunel’s legal team said Brunel was in “distress” about his incarceration and the denial by the authorities of his repeated requests for a provisional release from the prison. Giving credence to the suicide explanation for his death, the statement said, “Jean-Luc Brunel never stopped declaring his innocence. His decision was not guided by guilt, but by a deep sentiment of injustice.”

Brunel is known to have traveled frequently with Epstein, who had an elite 8,000 square foot apartment in Paris in one of the wealthiest sectors of the city and that overlooked the Arc de Triomphe. The apartment, which had a specially built massage room and was put on the market for $14 million after the billionaire’s death, was the location of social gatherings organized by Epstein and Maxwell that included liaisons between his super rich friends and underage girls.

Virginia Giuffre, the most prominent of Epstein’s abuse victims who settled a lawsuit against Prince Andrew of the UK last week for an undisclosed amount, has said in court filings that Brunel would offer modeling jobs to girls as young as 12, take them to the US and “farm them out to his friends, especially Epstein.” The court documents also include accusations made by Giuffre that Epstein sexually trafficked her to Brunel on “numerous occasions and in numerous places.”

There was also evidence of Brunel’s supplying Epstein with underage girls that was uncovered when a trove of court documents from 2004 and 2005 were unsealed shortly after Epstein’s death. Written phone call messages retrieved from Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion included in instance where a friend named “Jean-Luc” called about a “teacher for you to teach you how to speak Russian” who was “2x8 years old” and “not blonde.”

Meanwhile, there were accusations against Brunel as far back as 1991 that he drugged and raped young women. Former Dutch model Thysia Huisman, told the Times on Saturday of Brunel’s death, “It makes me angry, because I’ve been fighting for years. For me, the end of this was to be in court. And now that whole ending—which would help form closure—is taken away from me.”

Anne-Claire Le Jeune, a lawyer representing Huisman and other victims, told the Associated Press that she felt “Great disappointment, great frustration that (the victims) won’t get justice.”

Responding to the news of Brunel’s death, Virginia Giuffre tweeted: “The suicide of Jean-Luc Brunel, who abused me and countless girls and young women, ends another chapter. I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to face him in a final trial to hold him accountable but gratified that I was able to testify in person last year to keep him in prison.”

Giuffre’s attorney Sigrid McCawley, said in a statement, “For the women who have stood up and called for accountability from law enforcement around the world, it is not how these men died, but how they lived, and the damage they caused to so many. The fight to seek truth and justice goes on.”

The fact that Brunel’s death is being attributed to suicide, just like Epstein’s, adds to further suspicions that there is an ongoing conspiracy within the ruling establishment to cover up the extent of the criminal sex trafficking operations of the capitalist elite that lasted for two decades. While the New York Medical Examiner declared Epstein’s death a “suicide by hanging,” an independent autopsy expert hired by the billionaire’s family showed that the injuries to his neck were consistent with strangulation by another person.

When accusations of Epstein’s sexual abuse of underage girls reemerged in a civil suit by two “Jane Does” in December 2014, Brunel sought compensatory damages in a Dade County, Florida court from the billionaire, saying he had been unfairly embroiled in the scandal and his modeling agency had suffered financially from the impact on his reputation.

Accusations contained in those court documents included evidence submitted by four victims, one of whom was Virginia Giuffre, that Epstein, Prince Andrew, US lawyer Alan Dershowitz and Brunel had forced her to have sex with them. The three men denied the allegations and Epstein’s lawyer said they were old and discredited.

The way this case was worked out shows the manner in which the criminal sex trafficking operation of Epstein and others was repeatedly swept under the rug by the US judicial system. In April 2015, the presiding judge ruled that the allegations against Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz were to be stricken from the case because Jane Doe 3 (Giuffre) and Jane Doe 4 were not part of the initial lawsuit and had no bearing on the issues related to Epstein.

In her 2015 affidavit, Giuffre said, “Jeffrey Epstein has told me that he has slept with over 1,000 of Brunel’s girls,’’ adding that the men “loved orgies with kids — that is having sexual interactions with many young teenagers at the same time. Sometimes as many as 10 underage girls would participate in a single orgy with them. I personally observed dozens of these orgies.”

Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald, who has covered the Epstein sexual abuse story for many years, wrote on Sunday morning that, just like Epstein, Brunel was reported to have attempted suicide previously while in jail. According to an anonymous source, Brunel had “tried to kill himself several times” and this was confirmed to the Herald by his attorney Mathias Chichportich, who said his client made “several suicide attempts” over the 14 months of his detainment.

However, the lawyer told the Herald that Brunel was not under any active suicide watch and was being held in what is known as the “vulnerable people area” of the prison which is for people who are at risk of facing violence, a common problem for detainees facing sexual assault charges. Following an attempted suicide during the Christmas holidays, a judge ruled Brunel’s “detention was no longer justified given the status of the prosecution,” Chichportich said. That decision was overruled a few days later and Brunel was sent back to jail.

10,000 New Zealand healthcare workers vote to strike

Tom Peters

Last week, 10,000 allied health workers in New Zealand’s public health system voted overwhelmingly in favour of holding two 24-hour strikes, on March 4 and 18.

The Public Service Association (PSA) members work in dozens of vital roles throughout the country, excluding as doctors and nurses. They include workers who sterilise hospital equipment, pharmacists, physiotherapists, social workers, dental assistants, hundreds of laboratory workers responsible for COVID-19 tests, and about 100 contact tracing workers.

Wellington Regional Hospital (Google Streetview)

In December, more than 90 percent of these workers voted to reject an offer from the country’s District Health Boards (DHBs), which did not match the rate of inflation and, for many, would have been a real wage cut.

The strike vote is a sign of international working-class anger over soaring living costs, as well as chronic understaffing and decades of underfunding of essential services—conditions which have fueled the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent weeks, nurses in New South Wales, Australia, held a statewide strike, and there have been nationwide strikes in Turkey and Sri Lanka.

In New Zealand, the Omicron surge that began late last month is already placing huge pressure on healthcare services. There are more than 16,000 active cases, and hospitalisations have reached 116, an all-time high for New Zealand.

The Labour Party-led government abandoned its elimination strategy for COVID-19 last October, at the behest of big business. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has declared an end to nationwide lockdowns and has joined other governments internationally in allowing Omicron to spread.

The PSA described the DHBs’ offer as “insulting,” but has not publicly announced any specific claims on pay and conditions. In a media statement, the union vaguely called on the government to make “an offer that ensures fair pay and treatment for our members.” It noted that many allied health workers make less than $22.75 an hour, which the unions call a “living wage,” even though it is clearly not enough for a reasonable standard of living.

The 10,000 workers have had their pay frozen since their last Multi-Employer Collective Agreement (MECA) with the DHBs expired 15 months ago. That agreement included an increase of just over 9 percent for most workers, over a three-year period from 2017-2020. This has been outstripped by the cost of living, which officially increased 11.7 percent from September 2017 to the end of 2021.

The annual rate of inflation is now 5.9 percent, the highest rate in 30 years, meaning real wages are going backwards at a rapid pace.

The 2018 allied health workers’ MECA was similar to a sellout deal imposed on 30,000 nurses and healthcare assistants by the New Zealand Nurses’ Organisation, following a nationwide strike in 2018. Both agreements failed to address the staffing crisis in the health system which was a major factor behind the nurses’ strike.

Nurses held a further strike last year over the continued staffing crisis and low pay, but the unions again ensured that the struggle remained isolated, and the workers were soldout. Now, amid a global health crisis, conditions are worse than ever.

A government-ordered review of hospital staffing, released this month, based on a survey of 3,992 nurses and other health workers, found that 62 percent of frontline staff “reported that half or more of their last 10 shifts were understaffed.” Two out of five nurses reported being asked to take extra shifts every week.

Data released to the opposition National Party shows there are 2,200 vacant nursing positions across the country, a 7.8 percent vacancy rate.

Radio NZ (RNZ) today reported that “patients are spending as long as 36 hours in emergency departments—often waiting hours in corridors.” Emergency physician Dr John Bonning, from the College of Emergency Medicine, said overcrowding was “manifestly worse than this time last year… worse than ever.” Patients have “zero privacy” and there are serious “infection control issues.”

Lab workers are also under growing pressure. The Institute of Medical Laboratory Science told RNZ on Sunday that laboratories can’t keep up with the demand for processing tens of thousands of COVID tests each day. In Auckland, the waiting time for a test result can be as long as five days, which makes effective contact tracing for positive cases virtually impossible.

The crisis is exacerbated by the Labour government’s refusal to expand the border quarantine system to allow more migrants into the country. Hundreds of applications from healthcare workers wanting to relocate to New Zealand have been rejected by immigration authorities over the past two years.

In response to the allied health workers’ strike vote, Health Minister Andrew Little announced on February 17 that “the DHBs are now going to apply to the Employment Relations Authority for facilitation to try and break through the remaining issues.” He urged the DHBs “to do everything they can to come to the party, to come to terms and reach agreement to avoid a strike action happening.”

The government is relying on the PSA to either call off the strikes or, if this proves impossible, to minimise their impact. The ruling class is fearful that health workers could set an example for others looking for a way to oppose low wages and unsafe conditions as Omicron explodes.

About 5,000 senior doctors and dentists last year rejected a zero pay offer, with many reportedly calling for strike action.

Last December, about 2,000 rail workers employed by the state-owned company Kiwirail voted for a nationwide strike, only to have it cancelled by the Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU). The union then pushed through a deal that failed to keep pace with living costs.

The PSA, New Zealand’s largest union, represents the privileged upper middle class union apparatus. It is wedded to the Labour Party and urged workers to re-elect it at the 2020 election. The union falsely claimed, in a September 19 statement, that the Ardern government had delivered “significant progress toward fair pay and improved conditions for many workers in both the public and private sectors.”

In fact, the government used the pandemic to carry out an unprecedented transfer of wealth to the rich, pushing social inequality to record levels. Like capitalist governments internationally, Labour gave tens of billions of dollars to big business in the form of subsidies and tax breaks.

This money is now being recouped by starving public services, including healthcare, and driving down wages. In May 2021, the government announced a public sector wage freeze for workers earning more than $60,000, which is about three-quarters of the workforce.

The unions have sought to prevent any organised opposition to these austerity measures, just as they have enforced the government’s criminal policy of allowing COVID-19 to spread through the country. The unions supported the reopening of schools and non-essential businesses, with minimal public health restrictions.

Munich Security Conference targets Russia

Johannes Stern

This year's Munich Security Conference was dominated by the escalation of war preparations between the USA and NATO against Russia.

Leading representatives of the imperialist powers—including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht (both Social Democrats, SPD), Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens), American Vice President Kamala Harris, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—met in the Bavarian state capital to threaten Russia and fuel the conflict with the nuclear-armed power.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the Munich Security Conference (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool)

In his speech on Saturday, Scholz openly stated how acute the situation is. “War is looming again in Europe. And the risk is anything but averted,” he explained.

Like all speakers, with the exception of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, he blamed Russia alone for the situation. “The deployment of well over 100,000 Russian soldiers around Ukraine” was “not justified on any grounds.” Russia has “raised the question of Ukraine's possible NATO membership as a casus belli,” although “no decision at all” is pending.

Then he threatened Moscow. At his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 15, he “made it clear: Any further violation of Ukraine's territorial integrity will have high costs for Russia—politically, economically and geostrategically.” At the same time, he “emphasized that diplomacy will not fail because of us.” He added, “Ultimately nothing less than peace in Europe is at stake.”

Scholz's attempt to present himself as a broker “for peace” is absurd.

One does not have to support Putin's bankrupt Russian nationalism and militarism to acknowledge that NATO is the aggressor. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy 30 years ago, the military alliance has been systematically encircling Russia, contrary to all assurances at the time. Altogether there have been five eastward expansions of NATO in the past two decades. Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary joined the military alliance in 1999; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004; Albania and Croatia in 2009; Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020.

NATO's insistence on Ukraine's “right” to now also become a member of the military alliance is part of a strategy to weaken and ultimately completely subjugate Russia. When Western representatives in Munich repeatedly cited Moscow's “violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity,” they were turning reality on its head.

Indeed, in early 2014, Washington and Berlin, working closely with fascist forces, orchestrated a coup against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych after he refused to sign an association agreement with the European Union (EU). Since then, they have been systematically strengthening the right-wing, anti-Russia regime in Kiev in order to retake Crimea and Donbass, which opposed the coup by large majorities and were oriented toward Moscow.

The currently escalating confrontation is the result of NATO's systematic offensive, which is ever more openly taking the form of outright preparations for war. As early as 2017, the military alliance stationed four battle groups, each consisting of 1,000 soldiers, in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as part of the “Enhanced Forward Presence.” These battle groups are currently being strengthened. At their meeting in Brussels last Wednesday, the NATO defense ministers decided to set up additional battle groups in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia.

In Munich, Harris boasted about further troop redeployments. “We have deployed an additional 6,000 American service members to Romania, Poland, and Germany. We have put another 8,500 service members in the United States on a heightened sense of readiness. As President Biden has said, our forces will not be deployed to fight inside Ukraine, but they will defend every inch of NATO territory.” She added that they will continue to support Ukraine with “security, humanitarian and economic assistance.”

Zelensky's appearance underscored the extent to which NATO already regards the regime in Kiev as a close ally. To thunderous applause from those present, the Ukrainian President called for a “clear timeline” for the country's admission to the European Union and NATO and for the “the supply of the latest weapons, machinery and equipment for our army—an army that protects the whole of Europe.”

He added threateningly, “I want to believe that the North Atlantic Treaty and Article 5 will be more effective than the Budapest Memorandum.” In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine renounced nuclear weapons.

Scholz and Harris insisted in their speeches that Germany and the US fully support Article 5 of the NATO treaty. “Let me be clear: America’s commitment to Article 5 is ironclad. This commitment is sacrosanct to me, to President Biden, and to our entire nation,” Harris said. Scholz added, “Germany stands by the guarantee of Article 5—with no ifs and buts.”

These statements have far-reaching consequences. Article 5 states that “an armed attack against one or more ‘parties’ will be considered an attack against all of them” and “that in the event of such an armed attack, each of... the party or parties being attacked Provides assistance… including the use of force of arms.”

To put it bluntly: if the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which is being systematically fueled by right-wing extremist militias, spreads to include an eastern European NATO member, Washington and Berlin undertake to go to war against the world's second-strongest nuclear-armed power with unforeseeable consequences.

Nevertheless, in addition to the US, Berlin of all places, which attacked Russia in the Second World War and carried out a war of annihilation throughout Eastern Europe, is intensifying the war drive.

“The developments of the past few months in particular show us how necessary it is to continue concentrating on the topic of ‘alliance defence’ in the North Atlantic region. We have to muster the skills that are required for this,” Scholz demanded. “And yes, that also applies to Germany. Airplanes that fly, ships that can set sail, soldiers who are optimally equipped for their dangerous tasks—a country of our size, which bears a very special responsibility in Europe, must be able to afford that.”

Scholz left no doubt that Germany was taking part in the war effort against Russia in order to pursue its own geostrategic and economic interests as a major power.

“The European Union is our framework for action, our opportunity,” he emphasized. “Remaining a ‘power among powers’ is what we're talking about when we talk about ‘European sovereignty.’ Three things are needed on the way there: First, the will to act as a ‘power among powers,’ second, common strategic goals, and third, the ability to achieve these goals. We are working on all of these.”

At the beginning of the security conference, Social Democratic Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht called for another massive increase in the defense budget. On Sunday she repeated her appeal. “We will continuously increase defense spending,” she announced at a panel discussion on the future of EU security and foreign policy. The goal of Germany’s traffic light coalition government is to spend 3 percent of gross domestic product on defense, diplomacy and development aid in the future.

Bayer Foundation Women Empowerment Award 2022

Application Deadline:

18th March 2022

Tell Me About Bayer Foundation Women Empowerment Award:

Game-changing female entrepreneurs of Sub-Saharan Africa – is your innovation driving positive change by bringing better health and nutrition to everyone? Harvest a healthier future by applying for the Bayer Foundation Women Empowerment Award 2022. Lace up your gloves, Get in the Ring and grab the spotlight for a chance to win €25,000!

The value of this award comes to 50,000 Euros. Winners of the award will receive a cash prize of 25,000 Euros. They will also be entered at no additional cost, into an intensive 24-week growth accelerator, the value of which is 25,000 Euros. The accelerator provides a rare opportunity for awardees to receive tailored support and training for scaling, including active investor feedback. They will also gain access to relevant mentorship and advice from Bayer experts, as well as membership of the Bayer Foundation global alumni and partner network, which offers the opportunity to raise capital and exchange knowledge about the experience gained.

Dr. Monika Lessl, Executive Director of Bayer Foundation, says “Studies have shown that women play a central role in bringing change and working towards a more equal society. We also see this in our daily work. In the many years of Bayer Foundation’s activities, the positive impact of strong women has been a central theme. They are the change-makers we need. As a basic principle for our activities, we, therefore, have chosen to strengthen and highlight the role of women as leaders in science and as entrepreneurs,”

What Type of Scholarship is this?

Entrepreneurship

Who can apply for Bayer Foundation Women Empowerment Award?

Are you a woman game changer, driving sustainability and social impact through entrepreneurial innovation? To apply for the Open Application, you can sign up from any country within Sub-Saharan Africa. Through the Open Application, you may become one of the 16 finalists that will be selected from this group by the Bayer Foundation and Get In The Ring team.

Which Countries are Eligible?

Sub-Saharan African countries

How Many Scholarships will be Given?

Not specified

What is the Benefit of Bayer Foundation Women Empowerment Award?

• 24-week growth accelerator program
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Victoria Nuland in Colombia: Is Washington plotting another coup?

Bill Van Auken

U.S. State Department Under Secretary for Public Affairs, Victoria Nuland, speaks during a joint statement with Colombian National Police Director Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas, not in picture, in Bogota, Colombia, Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Following high-level security talks held in Colombia last week, Washington’s Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, alleged that “foreign actors” are attempting to subvert that country’s upcoming elections. She vowed that the US military and intelligence apparatus would work with its Colombian counterparts to assure “a free and fair election here; a Colombian election for Colombians.”

“We must safeguard it against outside actors interested in manipulating elections, as they have tried to do in other parts of the world,” Nuland told reporters.

Polls have placed Senator Gustavo Petro, a former member of the M-19 guerrilla movement, which traded the “armed struggle” for bourgeois politics, as the clear front-runner in the presidential race. Approval ratings for incumbent President Iván Duque, Washington’s closest ally in the region, and for his far-right party stand in the low teens.

Accompanied by Pentagon and US intelligence officials, Nuland was in Bogota for the US-Colombia High-Level Strategic Security Dialogue, a mechanism created in 2012 to better coordinate the actions of Colombia’s right-wing government with the counterrevolutionary operations of US imperialism in the Western hemisphere.

While Nuland did not directly name the “malign external actors” who are supposedly plotting to interfere with Colombian votes by “propagating lies and stories that are not of Colombian origin,” she and her aides, along with Duque’s far-right regime in Bogota, left no room for doubt that their target was Russia.

Just days before Nuland set off for Colombia, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian Nichols, who was part of the mission to Bogota, told a US Congressional panel that Russian “efforts to destabilize our hemisphere or to inject conflict from Ukraine to the Western Hemisphere [are] unacceptable, and we will work with our partners throughout the hemisphere to prevent that.”

Nichols’ warning followed a statement by Russian Vice Chancellor Sergei Ryabkov that Moscow would not rule out deployment of military assets to Cuba and Venezuela if the US and NATO continued their buildup on Russia’s western borders.

Washington’s efforts to line up Latin American governments against Russia over the Ukraine crisis have yielded spotty results. Argentine President Alberto Fernandez traveled to Moscow at the beginning of this month for meetings with President Vladimir Putin, while Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro embraced Putin at the Kremlin on February 16, the very day that US intelligence sources had claimed Russia would invade Ukraine. Bolsonaro used the occasion to declare Brazil “in solidarity” with Russia.

In Colombia, however, Washington’s anti-Russia campaign has been greeted with open arms. It dovetails with the anti-Russian propaganda of the Duque government itself, which claimed implausibly that the mass strikes and protests that swept the country last spring had been fueled by Russian social media propaganda.

More recently, Duque’s Minister of Defense, Diego Molano, charged—without providing a shred of evidence—that the Venezuelan National Armed Forces (FAN) were being mobilized on Colombia’s border “with the support and technical assistance of Russia and Iran.”

In an interview with Colombia’s BluRadio, Nuland echoed the false charges of the Duque government. “We are concerned that the Russians seem to be increasingly active in these border regions and these are the same border regions where we are seeing violent actors, we are seeing drug trafficking, we are seeing criminality, we are seeing money laundering these kinds of things,” she said. “So what exactly is Russia doing there and, more importantly, what can the United States do together with Colombia to harden those borders and ensure that any negative activity remains on the Venezuelan side?”

Aside for the completely unsubstantiated character of the fantastic charge that Russia has any presence whatsoever on the Colombia-Venezuela border, the claim that sealing this frontier would protect Colombia from “negative activity” spilling over from Venezuela is preposterous.

Colombia is responsible for an estimated 70 percent of the world’s cocaine supply, and top government officials are deeply involved in drug trafficking. Just days before Nuland’s arrival in Bogota, a top Colombian Army general was relieved of his command for connections to traffickers, while the former commander of the armed forces, a close ally of Duque popularly known as “the godfather,” was formally accused of using the military to protect the interests of a cocaine cartel.

Duque, besieged by crises and widely hated in his own country, appeared buoyed by his meetings with Nuland. He boasted that his government and Washington would be sharing “intelligence information, national security information, where any foreign influence, or attempted influence, can be identified in our electoral process.”

In the immediate wake of these talks, Duque flew to Europe where he presented the same narrative about election interference before the European Parliament and held meetings at the Brussels headquarters of NATO. He vowed that Colombia, the only Latin American country to be named a “global partner” of the US-led alliance, would defend Ukraine’s right to join NATO, blindly following its patron Washington down the path to World War III.

The United States is an unlikely guarantor of election integrity in Latin America, and Under Secretary Nuland an equally improbable champion of democracy. The CIA has interfered in countless Latin American elections and engineered coups throughout the continent to overthrow elected governments out of favor with US imperialism.

As for Nuland, she is infamous for her role in preparing the 2014 fascist-led coup that overthrew the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovich Ukraine, installing a pro-Western regime.

In 2013, Nuland bragged that Washington had “invested over $5 billion” in the Ukrainian opposition, and in 2014, she was recorded on a telephone call with the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, selecting the head of a post-coup government and discussing US collaboration with neo-fascist forces like the Svoboda party.

Nuland’s mission to Bogota and unsubstantiated claims of Russian election meddling—recycling similarly fabricated claims of the Democratic Party about the 2016 election in the US—has all the earmarks of an operation along the lines of the one she organized in Ukraine.

It provides Duque and the Colombian right Washington’s validation of a pretext for abrogating the presidential election set for this May and preventing the victory of Gustavo Petro.

Petro, the former mayor of Bogota, has done everything in his power to prove his reliability to Colombia’s ruling elite, eschewing any association with socialism and leftism and running as the anti-corruption, pro-ecology candidate. Nonetheless, his victory would call into question Colombia’s unconditional diplomatic and military alignment with US imperialism in Latin America.

Under Plan Colombia, inaugurated under the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton in 1999, the US poured some $10 billion into Colombia between 2000 and 2016 to fund a brutal counterinsurgency campaign waged in the name of a “war on drugs.” These vast sums secured the allegiance of the Colombian military and successive right-wing governments to Washington. They also bought the Pentagon access to bases on Colombian soil and the use of the country as a launching pad for coup attempts against the government of neighboring Venezuela.

US imperialism will hardly be indifferent to these arrangements being upended by the votes of the Colombian people.

While in Colombia, Nuland handed over a check for $8 million to the Colombian National Police, supposedly to finance “human rights” training. Established in the 1950s, the National Police has operated under the direction of the Colombian Defense Ministry as a counterinsurgency force to combat left-wing guerrillas and social opposition. During the mass protests and strikes last year, it was responsible for the killing of scores of workers and youth, and the torture, beating, sexual assault and extra-legal imprisonment of many more.

Nuland hailed this repressive force as “the backbone of our cooperation to strengthen Colombia’s democracy,” protecting its “citizens from all forms of malign influence and activity.”

This tribute echoes the language used in the days when Washington extolled the torture regimes of Pinochet in Chile, Videla in Argentina and Médici in Brazil as bastions of the “Free World” against the “malign influence” of socialism.

The threat that, as US imperialism prepares for world war, Washington will resurrect the methods of fascist-military coups in Latin America is very real.

UK government spent billions on substandard PPE, as private sector made a killing

Rory Woods

Britain’s Conservative government wasted billions of pounds buying Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) that was not fit for purpose.

The amount wasted—almost £9 billion—could easily have provided over one million National Health Service (NHS) workers a 25 percent pay rise, instead of the well below inflation 3 percent increase imposed by the government. Even building 14 new hospitals would not have cost this amount of money.

Buried in page 199 of the 346-page Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) annual report is a damning admission: “The Department estimates that there has been a loss in value of £8.7 billion of the £12.1 billion of PPE purchased in 2020-21. Of this £8.7 billion impairment, £4.7 billion relates to reductions in market prices since the goods were purchased.”

NHS supply chain lorry delivering supplies to a hospital in south west England during the pandemic (WSWS Media)

The other key features of this massive “impairment” include:

• £0.67 billion of PPE which cannot be used, for instance because it is defective.

• £2.6 billion of PPE which is not suitable for use within the health and social care sector but which the Department considers might be suitable for other (as yet uncertain) uses.

• £0.75 billion of PPE which will expire before it can be used.

Citing a Freedom of Information response, the Good Law Project revealed that “between April 2020 and August 2021, the Government spent £677.6 million storing excess equipment. And it continues to spend £500,000 a day on this.”

Of every £13 spent on PPE, £10 was wasted.

The DHSC cynically claimed in response that its “absolute priority throughout this unprecedented global pandemic has always been saving lives.” It peddles this lie even after the preventable deaths of thousands of health and other key workers. At every stage of the pandemic, the government put the profits of a few before lives.

When the virus began to rip through the population in 2020, there was a severe shortage of necessary PPE—the result of years of underfunding of the NHS and social care. Between 2013 and 2016, the national stockpile of PPE was slashed by 40 percent as a part of £20 billion in NHS “efficiency savings.” In March 2020, the government had the opportunity to join the European Union’s joint procurement scheme but refused to do so.

Leaving frontline NHS staff and social care workers with no or inadequate PPE as infections soared, the government and Public Health England—along with the Health and Safety Executive—changed the safety guidelines. COVID-19 was criminally downgraded to a non-High Consequence Infectious Disease (HCID) from March 19, 2020—reducing the standard of what constitutes safe PPE for staff.

As a result, many health workers were forced to look after patients with highly contagious coronavirus without satisfactory protection. Only flimsy aprons, simple surgical masks, visors and gloves were provided when carrying out tasks such as personal care, turning patients, feeding, oxygen therapy, nebulisations and physiotherapy. Highly effective FFP3 masks and gowns, along with higher quality gloves and visors, were available only to those who conducted aerosol generating procedures, i.e., in intensive care and theatres.

Some of the PPE used in NHS hospitals (WSWS Media)

The first priority of the Tories was to seize on the PPE shortage to enrich their cronies. A “VIP lane” was established to offer lucrative contracts, bypassing the usual tendering processes. Some 68 companies were able to profiteer at public expense, several even without any prior experience supplying PPE. The Good Law Project revealed that these “68 VIPs were awarded a total of £4.9 billion in PPE contracts—all without competition.”

An analysis of the DHSC figures by Open Democracy found that almost 60 percent of PPE procured from firms with links to the Tory government was unusable. A company owned by David Meller, who has donated over £63,000 to the Tory party since 2009, supplied over half a million items at a cost of £8.5 million that went unused. MedPro, referred to the VIP lane by Conservative peer Baroness Mone, supplied 25.5 million items worth £124.6 million that were not used.

Following a legal challenge mounted by the Good Law Project, Justice O’Farrell found that two companies, PestFix and Ayanda, had been unlawfully awarded contracts to supply PPE through the VIP process. PPE valued at £225 million supplied by the two companies went unused.

Last year, the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee revealed yet another multi-billion-pound scandal in relation to the NHS Test and Trace Service (NHST&T). The committee found that despite the unimaginable amounts of public money thrown at it, NHST&T failed to have a “measurable difference to the progress of the pandemic.” Private companies involved in the delivery of test and trace services reaped huge financial benefit from these contracts.

The government ensured its friends in the private health sector did not miss out on the feeding frenzy, spending an estimated £2-5 billion purchasing treatment services from private hospitals during the pandemic. With 8,000 beds, these hospitals only contributed to the delivery of 0.08 percent of COVID care for patients but provided rich rewards for their shareholders.

Describing the character of this government, the World Socialist Web Site wrote last year: “There has been much talk of ‘cronyism’ in response to such revelations. The more appropriate term is kleptocracy—the form of government associated with dictatorships and military juntas whose political leaders steal public funds to enrich themselves and their corporate backers.”

Having robbed the public purse to enrich the oligarchy, the government now demands that workers pay an extra 10 percent in National Insurance Contributions to fund a collapsing NHS and social care services. More cuts in public spending, wage freezes and the slashing of welfare benefits and pensions are on the agenda.

Corporate looting of public funds over PPE occurred while key workers, including health and social care staff, transport workers and teachers, were being compelled to work without adequate protection, with catastrophic consequences. Thousands succumbed to COVID-19, while tens of thousands are still suffering the debilitating effects of Long COVID. By January 2021, nearly 50,000 health care workers had contracted the virus. With the emergence of the Omicron variant, an order of magnitude more have contracted the disease.

This suffering is the direct result of the government’s inadequate PPE guidelines. Studies among nurses and other health workers have shown that significant numbers were working without PPE. A survey conducted by the Royal College of Nursing several months after the beginning of the pandemic found that more than a third of nursing staff (34 percent) “say they’re still under pressure to care for patients with possible or confirmed COVID-19 without adequate personal protective equipment (PPE).” The British Medical Association found that “a significant proportion of doctors still report struggling to access basics: masks, gowns, and protective glasses”.

In January 2021, hundreds of health professionals, including doctors, nurses and consultants, issued an open letter demanding higher-grade PPE. They pointed out that healthcare workers on general wards were about twice as likely to contract COVID-19 as intensive care unit staff, who could access the best equipment. These demands fell on deaf ears despite the airborne transmission of the virus having been conclusively demonstrated by scientists.

Grotesquely, the government will now dump useless or expired items deemed unfit for NHS settings on schools—where over 115 million face coverings have been supplied, but where masks are no longer mandated and in fact actively discouraged—or in poorer countries still desperate for any sort of PPE at all.

Canada to arm Ukraine with lethal weapons as part of US-led war drive against Russia

Matthew Richter

Ukrainian soldiers use a launcher with US Javelin missiles during military exercises in Donetsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022. (Ukrainian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday that Canada will provide $7.8 million worth of lethal weaponry and a $500 million loan to the right-wing Ukrainian regime as part of the US-led drive to war with Russia. The announcement was tacked on to the end of a press conference at which Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act to end the ongoing far-right “Freedom Convoy” occupation of Ottawa.

A news release from the Department of National Defence noted that the weaponry, referred to cynically as “lethal aid,” would include machine guns, pistols, carbines, sniper rifles, 1.5 million rounds of ammunition, and other small arms equipment. Canada has previously gifted Ukraine more than $23 million in “non-lethal” military aid, including communications equipment, body armour, and a mobile field hospital.

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC), a rabidly anti-Russian, vocal pro-Kiev lobby group, enthusiastically greeted the announcement of the delivery of Canadian “lethal aid.” Alexandra Chyczij, the UCCs president, said, “Canada has shown again that it is a true friend to Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.”

The $500 million loan is in addition to a $120 million loan announced on January 21. Both of these loans are being provided through the Bretton Woods and Related Agreements Act R.S.C 1985, which also regulates Canada’s collaboration with the IMF. They bring the total Canada has lent Ukraine since 2014 to $1.02 billion. In February 2014, a US-orchestrated, fascist-spearheaded putsch overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected, pro-Russian president, Victor Yanukovych, paving the way for the current crisis.

Foreign Minister Melanie Joly, reiterating the common line of all NATO governments, stated that “Canada will not stand idly by while the rules-based international order is challenged ... Any further invasion of Ukraine by the Russian military will be met with severe consequences.”

Canada’s foreign ministry ratcheted up the anti-Russia propaganda Thursday after reports emerged of an exchange of shellfire between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. In a grotesque distortion of the reality on the ground, where the first shells were fired by Ukrainian government forces, Joly declared in a statement, “Canada strongly condemns the unprovoked Russian military activity in the Donbas region of Ukraine. Innocent civilians were put in danger by this clear effort by Russia to escalate the crisis. We commend the restraint shown by Ukraine.”

The endless stream of lies about finding a “diplomatic solution” to “Russian aggression” is intended to dupe the public as to who the actual aggressor is. With every day that goes by, it becomes ever clearer that Canada, like its NATO allies, is recklessly inflaming the conflict with Russia in order to provoke an all-out war.

The present crisis is the product of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union three decades ago, which unleashed a period of aggressive NATO expansion into Eastern Europe. In 1990, the US, UK and France offered Gorbachev assurances that they would not expand NATO into the former Warsaw Pact countries in exchange for the Soviet Union not exercising its legal veto power against the unification of Germany. Intent on offsetting its economic decline with its considerable military might, American imperialism has overseen the integration of numerous Eastern European states, which are riddled with virulent nationalist, fascistic, and outright neo-Nazi movements, into NATO. Ultimately, the NATO war drive is part of imperialism strategy to carve up Russia, reduce it to semi-colonial status, exploit its resources, and consolidate a hegemonic geopolitical position on the Eurasian continent in preparation for war with China.

Canada—a junior partner of American imperialism with extensive and lucrative cross-border economic and military supply chains and its own strategic rivalry with Moscow in the Arctic—has assumed a major role in NATO’s military buildup and encirclement of Russia. Barely two months after the far-right coup in Kiev, Canada offered its military assets to Operation REASSURANCE, the ongoing NATO deployment in Eastern Europe. Military deployments undertaken since 2014 include: a rotating task force of six CF-18 Hornets for what is euphemistically called “air policing”; 540 soldiers of the Enhanced Forward Presence Battlegroup in Latvia, who will be deployed there until at least 2023; and the dispatch of Halifax class frigates to the Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 in the Baltic Sea.

Canada plays a significant role in Ukrainian political life. Two weeks ago, a report in the Globe and Mail noted that pressure from Ottawa played a decisive role in persuading President Volodymyr Zelensky not to detain former President Petro Poroshenko on corruption charges following his return to the country. Poroshenko, the first Ukrainian president following the 2014 coup, is seen as even more loyal to US imperialism and its allies than Zelensky and is being held in reserve as possible replacement for the latter.

Through Operation Unifier, the Canadian Armed Forces provides training to the Ukrainian army, which is infested with far right and outright fascist forces. Trudeau recently announced the expansion of Operation Unifier from 200 to as many as 400 troops.

Operation Unifier sheds some light on the sort of “democratic” forces Canada is cultivating in Ukraine. In November, it was revealed that Canadian soldiers provided training on firearms usage and infantry tactics to the neo-Nazi Azov battalion. Canadian officers and diplomats actively tried to cover this fact up.

The cultivation of relationships with outright fascist forces abroad is complemented by a similar process domestically. Sections of the political establishment—including leading Conservatives, like Pierre Poilievre and Candice Bergen, and Maxime Bernier, the former Harper Conservative cabinet minister who now heads the ultra-right People’s Party of Canada— have enthusiastically promoted the Freedom Convoy. They have used it to press for the elimination of all remaining anti-COVID public health measures, so as to remove any impediments to big business maximizing its profits, and to push politics far to the right.

The Liberal government has been continuously berated by the Conservatives and the corporate media for being insufficiently aggressive in confronting Russia. In a written statement in response to the Trudeau government’s announcement of the extension of the military training mission in Ukraine in January, Shadow Foreign Minister Michael Chong—widely considered a “moderate” in a party that is ever more closely following in the far-right footsteps of the US Republican Party—and two other front-bench Conservative MPs attacked Trudeau. They claimed his failure to provide Kiev with lethal weaponry “calls into question the Liberal government’s support for Ukraine in their fight against Russia’s aggression. “The time for half measures has long passed,” the statement continued. “Ukraine needs Canada’s support and today Mr. Trudeau let them down.”

The social democratic New Democratic Party—which has propped up the minority Liberal government for the past two-and-a-half years—is no less vociferous in its anti-Russia, pro-war rhetoric. NDP Foreign Affairs Critic Heather McPherson declared in a January 31 statement that the party was “alarmed by escalating threats of further Russian invasion into Ukraine,” and claimed to support an “independent and democratic Ukraine.”

In reality, the NDP, like the entire Canadian political establishment, wants Ukraine to serve as a loyal client state to the Western imperialist powers on Russia’s doorstep.

South Korean logistics workers strike against brutal conditions

Ben McGrath

Nearly 2,000 logistic workers in South Korea are on strike to protest the brutal conditions in their industry. Extreme overwork and low wages are the norm while package delivery companies have reaped huge profits throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The strike takes place as part of a series of struggles by delivery workers over the past year.

A food delivery rider shouts slogans during a rally to demand better working conditions in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Dec, 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Workers are fighting to expand a strike that initially began December 28, when 1,700 workers at CJ Logistics, the largest logistics company in South Korea, walked off the job. The strike enjoys wide support. In the approval vote, 93.6 percent of workers voted to take strike action from among 2,290 participants. Workers also struck in January and June of last year, while some logistics workers also took part in a larger, one day strike held by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) in October.

On February 14, the Parcel Delivery Workers Union (PDWU) stated that it would consider an industry-wide walkout if CJ Logistics refused to hold talks with striking workers within a week. The previous Thursday, approximately 200 members of the KCTU, to which the PDWU belongs, also occupied the company’s office in a sit-down protest. A demonstration is scheduled for February 21 of up to 7,000 delivery workers in Seoul. Jin Gyeong-ho, the head of the PDWU, claimed, “We will fight to the end to prevent CJ Logistics’ unfair profiteering and achieve the fulfillment of the social deal (in preventing overwork).”

Conditions in the package delivery industry are harsh. Logistics workers are often on the job for 12 to 14 hours a day, six days a week. They are paid per package delivered and are not compensated for sorting the parcels, which takes up a great part of their work day. Not only do workers face low pay and long hours, but the physical stress and demands have led to gwarosa, literally, death from overwork. Throughout the course of the pandemic, at least 21 logistics workers have died from causes related to these conditions on the job.

Last June, the PDWU reached an agreement with CJ Logistics, Hanjin Transportation, and Lotte Global Logistics under which workers would no longer sort packages and the work week would be limited to 60 hours. It followed a similar deal in January in which the companies promised to hire more workers and to pay them for sorting packages.

These pledges were not kept. Instead, workers are accusing CJ Logistics of raising delivery prices and pocketing most of the additional income. Last April, the company claimed it increased prices by an average 140 won ($US0.12) per package, with workers receiving only a paltry 50 percent from this increase. The union, however, states prices increased to 170 won per package, from which workers only receive 51.6 won.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, delivery companies have enjoyed a surge in profits as more and more people ordered goods online. CJ Logistics reported on February 11 that its net profit for 2021 reached 158.3 billion won ($US132 million), an 11 percent increase from the previous year. CJ CheilJedang, the conglomerate that owns 40.16 percent of the logistics firm, saw its net profit rise 13.5 percent to 892.3 billion won ($US745 million), beating market expectations.

Like the previous agreements, any deal reached with CJ Logistics or other companies, will be ignored. It is simply the means to get workers back on the job to ensure these huge profits are maintained. In this, the PDWU is entirely complicit.

The PDWU does not represent the legitimate interests of its members. Instead it works to limit the impact of strikes and end them as quickly as possible in the interests of big business. This was summed up by an industry official, speaking anonymously, who told the Joongang Ilbo in December, “Of the 20,000 CJ Logistics delivery workers nationwide, 1,700 is not a big number. And whether all those 1,700 will take part in the strike, which requires taking days off, is uncertain.”

From the beginning of the strike, the PDWU, with a total membership of approximately 7,000, has attempted to isolate the workers. The union branch at CJ Logistics has a membership of 2,500, meaning the union has ensured that at least 800 union workers are crossing the picket line. Furthermore, there has been no genuine appeal to the other 17,500 delivery workers at CJ who are not in the union nor to the tens of thousands of other delivery workers in other companies. There are approximately 50,000 delivery workers nationwide.

During the week-long strike last June, the union called off the struggle while negotiations were ongoing. The PDWU had reached a sell-out deal with several companies, but Korea Post, the country’s national postal service, rejected the agreement. Union head Jin Gyeong-ho claimed that the PDWU would never sign a deal if the dispute with the postal service was not resolved. However, this did not stop the union from sending its members back to work.

The PDWU and the KCTU as a whole, posture as militant worker organizations. However, the KCTU has spent the pandemic keeping workers on the job, while holding phony one-day general strikes, to let off steam and to give the impression of a fight for better conditions. During such “strikes,” workers in major industries such as auto manufacturing are typically kept on the job. Only a small portion of the KCTU’s membership is actually called out to participate in the one-day protests.

That the PDWU and KCTU now take action more than a month after the initial delivery workers’ strike began is due to the pressure they face from rank-and-file workers. The unions, however, have no intention of leading a genuine struggle. Instead, they will resort to cheap stunts while reaching new sell-out agreements behind workers’ backs.