Amazon offers to aid US government’s botched vaccination effort

Nick Barrickman

Amazon officials made it plain last week that they wished to take part in the White House’s efforts to administer the coronavirus vaccine to the United States’ population. Dave Clark, Amazon CEO of global operations, addressed newly inaugurated President Joseph Biden last Wednesday, declaring in a letter his company was “prepared to leverage our operations, information technology, and communications capabilities and expertise to assist your administration’s vaccination efforts.”

On Sunday, Amazon’s Seattle headquarters held a day-long vaccination clinic, administering 2,000 shots. The company did another such clinic yesterday at the same location. The corporation has offered to expand its 650 warehouse self-testing sites into full scale vaccination clinics, capable of servicing over 50,000 individuals a day.

Amazon has nearly doubled in market capitalization and in its workforce over the past several years. During the pandemic, the web commerce giant has added over 400,000 new workers, reaching a total employee count of over 1.2 million. Throughout the pandemic, Amazon and other online technology companies have benefited handsomely from the onrush of demand from consumers seeking to avoid shopping for necessities at brick-and-mortar stores. According to Yahoo! Finance, stocks for the web retailer have shot up over 85 percent in the past year.

Jeff Bezos in 2019 (Image Credit: AP Photo/John Locher, File)

According to Politico, an anonymous administration official stated that the Biden White House was eying the prospect of “public, private and non-profit sectors working together to provide the solutions we need at the scale that we need them.” Nancy Foster, vice president of quality and patient safety at the American Hospital Association, stated in the same article that “[w]e welcome announcements like this from Amazon that will help get more shots into arms across the country,” and its “expertise in managing significant logistical challenges.”

Amazon and other corporate behemoths have responded to the United States government’s disastrous efforts to deliver vaccines. The Biden administration is making plans to purchase over 300 million doses of the various vaccines which have recently come on line. According to CNBC, only half of the country’s nearly 49 million vaccine doses have been successfully administered since their initial approval by the Food and Drug Administration in mid-December.

In statements earlier this week, Biden declared that delivery of the vaccine “is going to be a logistical challenge that exceeds anything we’ve ever tried in this country,” adding that the country would achieve “herd immunity” by summer.

In addition to Amazon, other major retailers have also made offers to the Biden administration to assist in the vaccination program. Walmart, whose online retail sales have more than doubled during the pandemic, announced late last month that it was offering to have its “qualified, trained pharmacists and pharmacy staff to partner with community organizations to provide vaccination services at third party locations like churches, stadiums and youth centers.” Starbucks and others have also weighed in, seeking opportunities to partner with the US government in the vaccination program.

In addition to aiding the US government’s drive to return workers to job sites so that profits can once again begin flowing, Amazon and others are undoubtedly seeking to boost their brand and gain access to the lucrative healthcare and pharmaceutical markets. The deluge of offers from massive tech and retail businesses follows the efforts of logistics giants such as the United Parcel Service and FedEx, who have already been tapped by the Trump administration to help in the distribution of the vaccine countrywide.

The announcement also comes after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ love letter to then-president-elect Biden in November, after the latter had begun forming a transition team packed with corporate representatives, including some from Amazon itself. Amazon’s stock has increased by 11 percent since November.

The potential exists for the massive logistical and technical capacity expertise of the retail giant to be used for rapidly distributing vaccines and other public health necessities. However, there are doubts that such gestures will produce significant results. Aside from Amazon proposing that it transform its on-location testing sites into vaccination centers, retailers have offered few details about plans to assist the United States government.

Despite Amazon’s efforts to present itself as a caring corporation, driven solely by concerns for public safety, its owners have raked in enormous profits during the last year, primarily at the expense of working people. After months of refusing to report the level of infections at its warehouses, the company admitted in October that nearly 20,000 of its workers had contracted COVID-19, an undoubted understatement.

Similar “offers” for help were made last spring by the auto industry, when the automakers were straining to beat back a rebellion of autoworkers which had shut down the industry for two months. The diversion of a tiny portion of the auto industry’s manufacturing capacity to build a small number of ventilators and face shields, far below what was necessary to ramp up capacity in the nation’s network to treat the seriously ill, was part of a PR push to get workers back into the plant and producing highly profitable pickup trucks and SUVs.

Many Amazon workers suspect that the company’s offer to help with vaccine distributions is part of a similar ploy, a leader of the Amazon BWI2 Rank-and-File Safety Committee said in a public meeting hosted by the World Socialist Web Site this weekend.

As with the US government’s pitiful response to the first wave last spring, which saw a criminal lack of everything from personal protective equipment (PPE) to breathing devices, the current vaccine rollout has all the markings of a similar botched effort. “[I]t is clear the United States has not learned from its fractured pandemic response and risks repeating some of the same errors,” said the Washington Post in a lengthy article describing the current vaccine rollout last month.

In a comment to Politico, Alex Harman of Public Citizen stated the job of vaccination delivery “is a governmental function… It might require partnerships here and there, it might entail commandeering of private resources occasionally, but the actual doing of logistics, and figuring out logistics, that’s what government is for.”

What Amazon and other retailers’ gestures amount to is an admittance of American capitalism’s inability to respond to any social crisis in a scientifically rational manner. Rather, the ruling class has seized on the pandemic in order to accelerate parasitic financial practices which have led to mass infection and death.

Macron dictates “Charter of principles” to the French Islamic Council

Jacques Valentin & Alex Lantier

Last month, the French Council of Islam ( Conseil français du culte musulman —CFCM) adopted the “Charter of Principles” of Islam imposed by the French government. The charter commits Muslim religious officials to respect the principles dictated by the French government, which since the end of 2019 has presented Muslims as being driven by “separatism.”

While hypocritically claiming to defend religious rights, the government’s measure aims to transform Muslims into de facto second-class citizens. Though the legal position of religions is supposed to be governed by the 1905 secularism law, the Macron government has sought to impose on Muslims a humiliating pledge of loyalty to the state. Nothing comparable is being asked of other religions.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin revealed the content of the anti-Muslim campaign with his declaration to Le Figaro last December that, “up until now, the government has been interested in radicalization and terrorism. Now, we will also attack the terrain of terrorism, where can be found those people who create the intellectual and cultural space to secede and impose their values.”

French President Emmanuel Macron [Sebastien Nogier, Pool via AP]

Thus, the police will target people who have not been guilty of any criminal act. They will be able to target thoughts and statements on the basis of their claims that they supposedly might encourage “separatism.” The so-called “breeding ground” is so vaguely defined that it includes places of worship, Muslim religious and cultural associations, and their defenders. To be a “separatist” in the end means to have thoughts or habits that the police disapprove of.

By instituting thought-crime as a pseudo-legal category and a presumption of guilt aimed primarily at Muslims, the state is threatening the democratic rights of the entire population. In this situation, the defence of Muslims is an essential task of the working class. Opposing attempts to divide the workers along religious and ethnic lines is essential for the working class to unite in struggle.

What does the “Charter of Principles” dictate?

The charter is pervaded by a grotesque fraud, which presents the capitalist state as a defender of the principle of equality against Muslims, even as it attempts to take away their freedom of expression. The police dictate the opinions of Muslims and forbid them to express themselves politically.

The Charter states: “From a religious and ethical point of view, Muslims, whether nationals or foreign residents, are bound to France by a pact. This compels them to respect national cohesion, public order and the laws of the Republic.” This duty to the state outweighs their own beliefs: “No religious conviction can be invoked to evade the obligations of citizens.”

What does it mean for Macron to demand that Muslims respect “national cohesion?” In France as throughout Europe, the government is imposing austerity that is exacerbating social inequality, and a policy of herd immunity against the coronavirus that has been denounced by scientists. More than 600,000 people have already died across the continent as a result. The “yellow vest” movement and numerous strikes throughout France and Europe have testified to the explosive anger in the working class provoked by these policies.

Since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, which removed the major obstacle to the use of military force by the NATO powers, France has regularly invaded Muslim-majority countries among its former colonies. The wars in Côte d’Ivoire, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Mali have provoked opposition and mistrust among workers. This is particularly the case among Muslim workers.

The “Charter of Principles” prohibits them from any political discussion in places of worship, stating: “We refuse to allow places of worship to be used to disseminate political discourse or to import conflicts occurring elsewhere in the world. Our mosques and places of worship are reserved for prayer and the transmission of values. They are not erected for the dissemination of nationalist speeches defending foreign regimes and supporting foreign policies hostile to France, our country, and our French compatriots.”

The new law does not cover terrorist acts, which were already punishable by law before Macron dictated the charter. It prohibits political discussions that would be critical of the foreign or domestic policies of the French state.

The continuous government inroads into the private lives of Muslims, including the ban on veil or facial coverings in schools and all public places since 2004 and 2010, has created a hysterical Islamophobic atmosphere. Reactionary incidents, such as the expulsion of Muslim high school girls for wearing overly long skirts, and the beating of husbands of veiled women by police, have contributed to a sense among Muslim workers that state-sanctioned racism is aimed at them.

The “Charter of Principles” therefore prohibits any mention of state racism. Islamophobic acts, it asserts, “are the work of an extremist minority that should not be confused with either the state or the French people. Consequently, denunciations of alleged State racism, like all posturing about victimhood, are defamation.”

The “Charter” adds that Islamic officials are to remind followers “that certain allegedly Muslim cultural practices do not fall under Islam.” This vague and incoherent statement requires the CFCM to defend government policies, such as the law against banning headscarves in schools.

This reveals the reactionary and discriminatory content of the “charter.” The French state is creating for Muslims a status as a special minority for whom any collective criticism of the state is prohibited. Indeed, treating Muslims’ reference to state racism as “defamation” is tantamount to criminalizing the discussion of French political and religious life that is informed by French and European history.

French imperialism has a long and bloody tradition of more-or-less overt state racism. Between the conquest of Algeria in the 1830s and the end of World War II, it imposed a discriminatory Indigenous Code on Muslims in the colonies. The abolition of this Code in 1946 came only after a workers’ uprising against the Vichy collaborationist regime, which had pursued a policy of deporting Jews to death camps in Europe.

In the present context, these facts are not merely academic historical references. Neo-fascist partisans of “French Algeria,” who are also apologists for Nazi collaborationism, play a major role in contemporary politics. Their defenders, like far-right pundit Eric Zemmour, who was convicted of inciting racial hatred, have extensive connections in the media and business.

The attempt to cast a pall of silence on the history of the 20th century takes place in a definite international context. The pandemic has not only triggered the most severe economic crisis since the 1930s. It has discredited the ruling class. The financial aristocracy, exposed by its policy of “herd immunity,” and terrified of working-class opposition, is turning toward far-right dictatorship.

Trump’s attempted coup, led by neo-Nazi forces in Washington on January 6, revealed the fascist rot eating away at the heart of world imperialism. The aftershocks of this political earthquake are only beginning to spread across Europe, where, long before Trump’s coup attempt, neo-fascist parties were already being encouraged by broad sections of the ruling elite.

It is impossible to evaluate the Muslim charter outside this international context. In Germany, the extreme right is again in parliament, and far-right professors protected by the ruling Grand Coalition declare that Hitler was “not vicious.” In Spain, officers who boast they are fascists have reacted to strikes by Spanish workers by declaring that “26 million” people should be shot.

[subheading]Fascistic policies under the guise of defending the Republic[/subheading]

The peculiarity of the fascistic attack on democratic rights in France is that it is carried out in the name of the defence of the Republic.

The “Charter of Principles” was adopted in the context of the bill against Islamist “separatism,” renamed the “Bill Confirming Respect for the Principles of the Republic.” The law has been discussed in committee in the National Assembly since Monday, January 18. Since the end of last year, the entire political establishment has been united behind the slogan for a struggle against “Islamist separatism.”

It united in a multiparty senatorial commission of inquiry, led by the right-wing Republicans (LR), entitled: “Islamist Radicalization: Facing and Fighting Together.” The commission was composed of representatives of all political groups in the Senate, including the Stalinist French Communist Party.

The pandemic and the political crisis linked to the reopening campaign accelerated this offensive. Dozens of mosques and Muslim educational institutions were closed and the humanitarian association Barakacity and the Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France (CCIF), a human rights association, were dissolved. These established associations operated within a completely legal framework.

Under the cover of protecting the Republic, Macron is seeking to overturn the 1905 secularism law. The law was passed under the influence of the socialist movement following the Dreyfus Affair—the defeat of the anti-Semitic forces in the Army and the Church that sought to frame and imprison the Jewish captain Alfred Dreyfus. By targeting the 1905 law, Macron is threatening the legal framework of freedom of expression and the relations between the church and state that have held in France for more than a century, outside of the period of the occupation during World War II.

Macron compelled the CFCM to draft major documents within a few weeks, with content largely dictated by the authorities. He wants a binding and accelerated timetable to create the National Council of Imams, which is to “certify” officials who will be compelled to commit to the charter.

To find a point of comparison, several media pundits referred to the beginning of the 19th century, and the creation by Napoleon I of an official representation of French Judaism, after the French Revolution of 1789.

Under the Empire, from 1806 to 1808, Napoleon reorganized Judaism in the wake of the Emancipation Act of September 27, 1791 in the Constituent Assembly, which granted Jews access to French citizenship. Napoleon I’s reforms led to the creation of the Central Jewish Consistory of France to organize and legalize Jewish worship.

In reality, there can be no comparison between the action of Napoleon’s work and that of Macron. Despite his authoritarianism and his prejudices against the Jews, Napoleon allowed the organization of the religion and the integration of the Jewish populations. In this, he pursued the trajectory, spurred on by the Revolution, of destroying the vestiges of feudalism.

In contrast, one cannot but recognize the malicious intent of the measures prepared by Macron, aimed at legitimizing the persecution of Muslims.

The precedents of Macron’s action are not in the 1789 French Revolution, but its opponents. Before welcoming the neo-fascist vote on the night of his election, Macron had already criticized the execution of Louis XVI in 1793 and declared that France lacked a king. His government tried to have the works of the leader of the Action Française, the anti-Semitic monarchist and Nazi collaborationist Charles Maurras, re-released, and he called Pétain a “great soldier” as he unleashed riot police on the “yellow vests.”

It is no coincidence that in 2019 the government supported the media campaign against J’Accuse, Roman Polanski’s film about the Dreyfus Affair. The film opposes the influence of the anti-Dreyfusards, of Maurassian racism, and of Maurras, who called the French defeat, Pétain’s coming to power, and the Nazi collaboration in 1940 “divine surprise.”

The anti-Muslim campaign of the French state goes hand in hand with the policy of “herd immunity,” imperialist war, and a violent assault on the working class and its social rights, including to strike and protest.

The “anti-separatist” law is being accompanied by the “global security law,” which would prohibit publication of videos of the police. As revealed by the beating by the police in Paris of a music producer, Georges Zecler, in his studio, this would allow the police to attack anyone and claim that they were acting in self-defence. The United Nations has warned that the law contravenes human rights. It aims to consolidate a fascistic police state against the working class.

A political struggle is required for the working class. The history of the 20th century and the fascist genocide of the Jews in Europe are a permanent warning of the horrible price the working class pays if it allows forces of the extreme right to incite racial and religious hatreds and divisions. It is necessary to unify the working class internationally, independently of the trade union apparatuses, in a struggle against the policy of “herd immunity” and the fascist drift of the ruling class, and for the transfer of power to the working class on a socialist perspective.

Nearly 40,000 Australians still stranded overseas because of government indifference

John Harris

A year after the COVID-19 crisis commenced, almost 40,000 Australian citizens are still registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) seeking assistance to return home from overseas.

They have experienced extortionate airline ticket prices, endless delays and cancellations. Many face personal destitution and impoverishment, with the heightened risk of infection in countries severely affected by the pandemic. Among them, 4,800 have been classified as vulnerable.

For purely financial reasons—the refusal of Australian federal, state and territory governments to provide adequate quarantine facilities—these citizens are being denied their basic legal, constitutional and democratic right to enter and live in the country. They are also being offered little financial assistance.

Perth Airport in Western Australia [Wikimedia Commons]

Government caps limiting the number of returning passengers have resulted in airlines routinely favouring first class and business class tickets over economy passengers. A first-class air ticket from London to Sydney can be priced as high as $36,895 and a business-class flight from Paris to Melbourne $25,352. However, even these enormous prices do not guarantee a seat on a flight. Many people whose flights are cancelled have to wait 30 days for a refund so they can book a new ticket.

This situation has been exacerbated by the announcement on January 8, that the governments leaders, meeting as the bipartisan “national cabinet,” had further reduced the number of international arrivals. New South Wales (NSW), Queensland and Western Australia halved their numbers of arrivals until at least February 15. The number of people allowed to enter the country dropped from 6,700 a week to just 4,200.

There is no lack of air transport capacity. According to a Senate COVID-19 inquiry, the number of empty airline seats coming into the country stood at 30,000 per week last November.

The governments cited the threat of the new highly contagious UK and South African variants of COVID-19 and fear that their quarantine systems would not cope with the levels of infectiousness. The UK strain, which is up to 70 percent more transmissible and possibly more lethal, was detected earlier this month in Australia, after a cleaner working in a quarantine hotel in Queensland’s capital, Brisbane, tested positive.

The decision to cut the caps was based on budgetary calculations, not the health and wellbeing of travelers. Upgrading the capacity of the quarantine system and providing the facilities free of charge would allow citizens to return from overseas. At present the governments charge $3,000 per person for quarantining, further impeding the ability of ordinary people to return.

By contrast, in order to stage a highly profitable corporate event, the Victorian state Labor government has flown charter flights—with more than 1,200 international tennis players, their support staff and media crews—into Melbourne to participate in the Australian Open tennis tournament, scheduled to start on February 8.

Most of the tennis and broadcasting contingents arriving in Australia are from countries suffering large outbreaks of COVID-19, including the US and UK. Underlining the disregard for public health, nine passengers tested positive and 72 had to go into stricter quarantine after being identified as close contacts.

Some of those stuck overseas pointed to the double standard involved in helping the tennis event go ahead. Kym Bramley, who has been stranded in Mexico since March, told the New Daily: “They say ‘we don’t have enough spots’ but they seem to be able to create them for celebrities, cricket teams [and] tennis players… They are allowing tennis players from the same countries we can’t get home from.” She added, “for us,” it costs “$10,000 for a flight home—if you’re lucky.”

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews nakedly referred to the lucrative corporate and business interests at stake. He said other countries would lay claim to the billion-dollar tennis event if Melbourne failed to host it.

In a desperate attempt to quell the resulting public outrage, the federal Liberal-National Coalition government announced 20 charter flights to allow some stranded people back. That would only assist a fraction of those stranded.

Those returning on these repatriation flights are likely to be quarantined at the Howard Springs facility near Darwin in the Northern Territory and were expected to be charged commercial rates of up to $15,000 for their seat because of the high demand for the very few spots.

Meanwhile, the federal government has set aside the totally inadequate amount of $17 million to help those suffering financial hardship.

The hypocrisy of the 20-flight announcement is striking. The managing director of Melbourne-based travel company Gaura Travel, Abhishek Sonthalia, told the New Daily last week, he had sent multiple requests to the Department of Home Affairs since June asking if empty charter flights returning from India could be used to transport Australians stranded overseas.

“We have innumerable times applied for permission to do the same [for Australians, as for Indians] but have always been denied,” Sonthalia said. He added that the company could easily “convert our charters so that people can travel both ways.” He said there had been 35 charter flights back to India so far.

Prominent human rights barrister, Geoffrey Robertson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “7.30” television program “no one should be arbitrarily deprived of their right to enter their own country,” a right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), of the 440,000 citizens whom the federal government claims have returned to Australia during the pandemic, it has assisted only 38,800. Moreover, Australian Border Force’s figures of 280,560 returned travelers are significantly lower, throwing doubt over the government’s claims.

In contrast to the red-carpet treatment afforded to the professional tennis players and other tournament participants, those stranded abroad have had very different experiences. In one story, Justin Peck from Melbourne has been stranded in Thailand for 10 months. Peck told the SMH he had multiple flights cancelled. He was living off the small earnings of his girlfriend in Thailand and was running out of savings and superannuation funds.

Danushka Silva from Melbourne told the SMH he had been trying to get home from Britain before his and his partner’s visas and work contracts expired at the end of December. Silva said he was not surprised to see the harsh treatment of Australians abroad, saying it reflected the government’s approach toward asylum seekers. Both Silva and his partner had to register for emergency extensions to their visas with the British government after being bumped from their planned flight. They rebooked on a flight in February, but Silva said he feared they would be bumped also from that flight.

Amy Webster, and her fiancé who are also stuck in Britain, had their January 21 flight cancelled with Qatar airlines. She told the newspaper: “We feel abandoned. It feels like we aren’t wealthy or rich enough to get home, which I don’t think should be a factor in trying to get back to your own country.”

Trump fires team of defense lawyers in run-up to Senate trial

Patrick Martin

Former President Donald Trump announced Saturday that he had fired the five lawyers who had agreed to be his defense team in the upcoming Senate trial for inciting an insurrection on January 6. Late Sunday, Trump’s office in Florida announced that two new lawyers, David Schoen and Bruce L. Castor Jr., had agreed to take the case.

The abrupt change in the legal team was reportedly driven by Trump’s demand that his lawyers defend his actions on January 6 by claiming that the 2020 presidential election was stolen by the Democrats. The first legal team balked and pressed for Trump to confine his defense to arguments that the Senate trial of an ex-president, now a private citizen, would be unconstitutional.

According to the New York Times, “Mr. Trump had pushed for his defense team to focus on his baseless claim that the election was stolen from him, one person familiar with the situation said. A person close to Mr. Trump disputed that that was the case but acknowledged that there were differences in opinion about the defense strategy.”

Donald J. Trump [Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian]

CNN reported, “Trump wanted the attorneys to argue there was mass election fraud and it was stolen from him rather than focus on proposed arguments about constitutionality.”

It is not clear whether the divisions within the Trump camp on legal tactics have been resolved, or whether the new legal team has agreed to put forward Trump’s lies about a stolen election as part of the Senate trial.

The statement announcing their appointment referred only to the constitutional claim and made no reference to the 2020 election. “Schoen has already been working with the 45th President and other advisors to prepare for the upcoming trial, and both Schoen and Castor agree that this impeachment is unconstitutional—a fact 45 Senators voted in agreement with last week,” the press release says.

The two new lawyers are both well established litigators with close political ties to the Republican Party. Schoen has represented civil rights groups and victims of police violence, among his many clients, but recently represented Trump crony Roger Stone in his criminal trial for perjury. It is likely that Stone put Schoen in contact with Trump. Schoen is a board member of the Zionist Organization of America, one of the most right-wing pro-Israel lobbies.

The other lead attorney, Castor, was district attorney of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, for eight years (2000–2008), and has been active in state Republican Party politics for two decades. He is best known for a case he declined to prosecute, the sexual abuse and rape charges against comedian and actor Bill Cosby. The controversy over this decision contributed to Castor’s defeat in a 2015 election in which he sought to return to office as district attorney.

Four of the five lawyers who parted ways with Trump on Saturday were from South Carolina: Butch Bowers, Deborah Barbier, Greg Harris and Johnny Gasser. The fifth, Josh Howard, was from North Carolina.

The team from the Carolinas was assembled under the auspices of Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, after the attorneys who represented Trump in his first impeachment trial apparently declined to take his second one. These included then-White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, his deputies Patrick Philben and Eric Herschmann, and Jay Sekulow, a longtime legal activist for Christian fundamentalist groups.

Trump’s switching of legal teams on the eve of the Senate trial is clearly a sign of crisis. The new lawyers must prepare a rebuttal brief against the charges brought in the House impeachment and submit it by Tuesday morning, one week before the scheduled beginning of the Senate trial on February 9.

While the press announcement claims that 45 Senate Republicans have embraced the view that it is unconstitutional for the Senate to try an ex-president, that is technically not accurate. Senator Rand Paul brought a constitutional point of order on that issue, and Senate Democrats moved to table it. The 45 Republicans voted against tabling, not directly to uphold the substance of Paul’s motion. At least two of the 45 claim they are still open to convicting Trump, although that would still leave the number of votes for conviction at 57, 10 fewer than required.

Nevertheless, the overwhelming vote of Senate Republicans to quash the Senate trial is a clear demonstration of support for Trump and makes an acquittal in next week’s impeachment trial all but certain.

There are well established precedents for trying Trump after he leaves office. The US Senate has done so in the past, for cabinet officials and judges if not presidents. The most famous case of impeachment, well known to the Founding Fathers at the time they wrote the Constitution, was against Warren Hastings, British governor-general in India, who was impeached two years after leaving office and acquitted seven years later.

Trump’s demand that his defense should argue that the 2020 election was stolen is extraordinary, since it means embracing the claim that was the driving force of the insurrection of January 6, for which Trump was impeached. But Trump is not playing by the rules set by the US Constitution or conventional politics. Even before the election, his orientation was to inciting his supporters against the political system as a whole and building a fascist movement centered on his role as an authoritarian leader.

He knows that he has the support of the bulk of the Republican Party, which has become an incubator for fascist politics and the integration of far-right forces into the political establishment. And he knows that he has nothing to fear from the Biden White House or the Democratic Party, both of which continue to plead for “unity” and “bipartisanship” despite the GOP’s uniting behind the architect of the attempted seizure and likely murder of Democratic lawmakers and overturn of the results of the 2020 election.

Just as significant as Trump’s firing of his attorneys is his demonstrative support for Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the fascist from Georgia, who has been widely condemned for social media postings calling for the assassination of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the execution of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

In addition to advocating for the fascist QAnon conspiracy theory, Greene has claimed that the massacres at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida were staged, and that the 2019 massacre at a New Zealand mosque was a “false flag” operation rather than a fascist atrocity motivated by anti-Muslim bigotry. She is also a 9/11 “truther,” claiming that no airliner crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and that the US government and military covered up an alleged missile strike for incomprehensible reasons.

Several House Democrats are putting forward a resolution to expel Greene, which under parliamentary rules must be voted on this week. In advance of that vote, which requires a two-thirds majority to pass, or a lesser action like censure, which requires only a majority, Greene tweeted that she had a telephone conversation with Trump in which the former president backed her to the hilt.

Greene posted on Saturday: “I’m so grateful for his support and more importantly the people of this country are absolutely 100 percent loyal to him because he is 100 percent loyal to the people and America First.”

UN human rights commissioner calls for probe into Sri Lanka’s war crimes

K. Ratnayake

UN Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet’s recent report on Sri Lanka has recommended war crime probes and targeted sanctions, including asset freezes and travel bans, on those “credibly accused of human rights violations.”

The 17-page report was prepared for the upcoming 46th session of UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and made public on January 27. The next session of the UNHRC is scheduled to begin at the end of February and continue until March 19.

Bachelet’s report contains proposed “options” for member states to “advance criminal accountability” of Sri Lanka and refer it to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Member states, it says, “can actively pursue investigation and criminal prosecution committed by all parties in Sri Lanka” before their own national courts.

Police arrest a protestor during June, 2020 protest against George Floyd killing [Credit: WSWS]

The report refers to the militarisation of the Sri Lankan state apparatus noting the appointment of serving and former senior officers to key government positions; the removal of constitutional safeguards; harassment of journalists and human rights activists; and the forcible cremation of all who have died from COVID-19. The UNHCR report describes these actions as curbs on civilian affairs and human rights by President Rajapakse’s government.

The war crimes cited in the report relate to the Sri Lankan military attacks during the final months of the bloody conflict against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The separatist organisation was defeated in May 2009.

UN experts have estimated that at least 40,000 civilians died in brutal indiscriminate attacks by the army. A number of LTTE leaders who surrendered were killed in cold blood, while hundreds of youth who gave themselves up to the army have been disappeared.

President Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who was defence secretary under Mahinda Rajapakse, his older brother and then president, oversaw these military operations.

Successive Sri Lankan governments committed numerous war crimes during the 30-year communal conflict which began in July 1983. The final years of the war, which were re-launched in 2006 by the Mahinda Rajapakse regime with the backing of imperialist powers, including the US and India, saw an intensification of atrocities committed against the Tamils.

The brutal repression not only occurred in the war zones in Sri Lanka’s north and east but in the south where journalists and others who criticised the government were abducted, “disappeared” or killed.

Like all its predecessors, the current Rajapakse regime vehemently denies all war crime allegations and calls for legal immunity for all military officers. Colombo attempts to cover up its own crimes by pointing to the anti-democratic and terror methods used by the LTTE against Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims.

The chief responsibility for the war, however, lies with the Sri Lankan ruling elite and its successive governments since 1948 which have consistently used anti-Tamil chauvinism to prop up bourgeois rule by dividing and weakening the working class along ethnic lines.

Bachelet’s report comes amid US moves to present a new human rights resolution on Sri Lanka in order to pressure the Rajapakse regime remain within Washington’s geostrategic orbit. The US has insisted since Rajapakse was elected president in November 2019 that Colombo remains integrated into its anti-China war push. This agenda was carried forward during President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minster Ranil Wickremesinghe’s administration.

Sirisena became president in 2015 in a regime-change operation orchestrated by the US to replace the former President Mahinda Rajapakse. Washington was hostile to Mahinda Rajapakse regime’s close relations with Beijing for investment and military equipment supplies during the war.

The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe regime immediately shifted Sri Lanka’s foreign policy in favour of Washington and began strengthening ties and operations between Sri Lankan armed forces and the US military.

In return, Washington helped to pass a resolution in the UNHRC in October 2015 that assisted Colombo to suppress calls for an international war crimes investigation by agreeing to domestic inquiries into the human rights abuses through Sri Lankan tribunals. These tribunals were never established.

Washington and India, its regional strategic partner, are deeply concerned about the return of Gotabhaya Rajapakse and Mahinda Rajapakse to power. At the same time the COVID-19 pandemic has sharply impacted the heavily-indebted Sri Lankan economy forcing the Rajapakse regime to increasingly turn to China for investment and loans.

Over the last month, the core UN group on Sri Lanka—Britain, Canada, Germany, Macedonia and Montenegro—has announced that it plans to present a resolution in the UNHRC on human rights violations.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price tweeted last week that “we are carefully reviewing the significant report” on Sri Lanka from the UNHRC. Sri Lanka’s future, he said, “depends on respecting rights today and taking meaningful steps to deal with the past.”

US “concerns” about human rights and similar statements from other major powers, who have all engaged in numerous documented war crimes and other atrocities, are cynical and hypocritical.

US imperialism, which is at the centre of the global crisis accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, is aggressively pursuing its efforts to reassert its global hegemony. This is being continued and intensified under US President Biden’s administration.

Tamil parties in Sri Lanka, including the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) and the Tamil People’s Alliance, have rallied behind the latest US-led human rights charade.

US and UK diplomats have discussed the new human rights resolution with the TNA leadership, as well as leaders of the TPA and TNPF. Together with “civil society groups,” these parties have written to the UNHRC president calling for a war crimes probe in Sri Lanka and for it to be referred to the ICC.

In 2015, the TNA supported the US-led regime-change operation in Colombo and acted as a de facto partner of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government. The Tamil nationalist parties fully support the geo-political and military build-up against China. Their support for the “human rights concerns” of the “international community”—a euphemism for the US and other major powers—is an attempt to secure international backing for devolution of power to the Tamil bourgeoisie in the north and east.

Responding to the UNHRC report, Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary Admiral Jayanath Colambage told the Sunday Times that “nothing has been proven” against those accused of war crimes. “Sri Lanka is much more peaceful and stable than any of the countries trying to discredit us,” he declared.

Colambage admitted that the UNHCR report was “worse” than previous ones but insisted that “nearly all the commitments” to the earlier UNHCR resolution, apart from the establishment of a judicial mechanism, had been fulfilled by the previous administration. He then claimed that the report had been influenced by “shadow reporting from here and the Tamil diaspora.”

The Rajapakse regime rejects all the war crimes allegations and consistently accuses the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration of betraying the military. In March last year, President Rajapakse announced that Sri Lanka was withdrawing from the UNHRC resolution passed in October 2015.

The Rajapakse administration is acutely nervous about the intensifying US-led pressure and is anxious to avoid any war crime probe.

On January 22, Rajapakse appointed a new three-member Commission of Inquiry headed by a retired Supreme Court judge. Its task is to find out whether previous commissions revealed any human rights violations and examine whether their recommendations were carried out. This is another desperate manoeuvre to buy time. Two previous commissions were appointed by the former President Mahinda Rajapakse regime in response to previous US pressure.

On January 24, Colambage told the Sunday Observer: “We want to engage with the UNHRC [and] maintain cordial relations with the US. I think the US should engage with Sri Lanka constructively.”

The core group on Sri Lanka, he said, “proposed a consensual resolution that would give us another year to implement human rights commitments… [I]f we are to agree to that the text of the resolution should be drafted jointly. We are now waiting to see the text of the new resolution.”

The UN Human Rights High Commissioner’s report and all the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing make clear that Washington will stop at nothing—including another regime-change operation or dragging Sri Lanka to the ICC—to ensure Colombo remains in line with its war plans against China.

Population Problem Today

T. Vijayendra

ABSTRACT

Today no one is talking of controlling population any more. Fertility rates are falling all over the world and many governments are encouraging births; giving monetary support and withdrawing free contraceptives and free vasectomy operations. The new problem is that of ageing. No one is prepared to talk of decreasing the longevity. Increasing longevity has long been a marker of good health care. It may have been before World War II, but today it is irrational prolonging of death which is increasing longevity, at the cost of quality of life and benefitting only the medico industrial complex. We suggest replacing expensive and irrational geriatric care with rational palliative care where old people live in comfort with reduced suffering and die peacefully at home with their family.

Let me begin with a long quote (slightly edited) from a recent article in The Guardian, which is an excellent summary of the situation today:

For many years it seemed that overpopulation was the looming crisis of our age. Back in 1968, the Stanford biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich infamously predicted that millions would soon starve to death in their bestselling, doom-saying book The Population Bomb; since then, neo-Malthusian rumblings of imminent disaster have been a continual refrain in certain sections of the environmental movement.   At the time the Ehrlichs were publishing their dark prophecies, the world was at its peak of population growth, which at that point was increasing at a rate of 2.1% a year. Since then, the global population has ballooned from 3.5 billion to 7.67 billion.

But growth has slowed – and considerably. As women’s empowerment advances and access to contraception improves, birthrates around the world are stuttering and stalling, and in many countries now there are fewer than 2.1 children per woman – the minimum level required to maintain a stable population.

Falling fertility rates have been a problem in the world’s wealthiest nations – notably in Japan and Germany – for some time. In South Korea last year, birthrates fell to 0.84 per woman, a record low despite extensive government efforts to promote childbearing. From next year, cash bonuses of 2m won (£1,320) will be paid to every couple expecting a child, on top of existing child benefit payments. The fertility rate is also falling dramatically in England and Wales – from 1.9 children per woman in 2012 to just 1.65 in 2019. The problem is even more severe in Scotland, where the rate has fallen from 1.67 in 2012 to 1.37 in 2019.

Increasingly this is also the case in middle-income countries too, including Thailand and Brazil. In Iran, a birthrate of 1.7 children per woman has alarmed the government; it recently announced that state clinics would no longer hand out contraceptives or offer vasectomies.

Thanks to this worldwide pattern of falling fertility levels, the UN now believes that we will see an end to population growth within decades – before the slide begins in earnest. An influential study published in the Lancet last year predicted that the global population would come to a peak much earlier than expected – reaching 9.73 billion in 2064 – before dropping to 8.79 billion by 2100. Falling birthrates, noted the authors, were likely to have significant “economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical consequences” around the world.

Their model predicted that 23 countries would see their populations more than halve before the end of this century, including Spain, Italy and Ukraine. China, where a controversial one-child per couple policy – brought in to slow spiraling population growth – only ended in 2016, is now also expected to experience massive population declines in the coming years, by an estimated 48% by 2100.

It’s growing ever clearer that we are looking at a future very different from the one we had been expecting – and a crisis of a different kind, as ageing populations place shrinking economies under ever greater strain.

https://www.theguardian.com

What exactly is the Ageing Problem?

People above sixty years are considered old or senior citizens. It is the percentage of old people in the total population that is important and not the total number, and especially in relation to those in the 0-15 age group in the population. If we consider only total numbers then China and India will have the largest number of old people because of their high population. On the other hand as a proportion of the total population it is the Scandinavian countries, France and Japan that have very high percentage old people in their population. As the population of the old approaches that of the 0-15 group, the working population shrinks in proportion and the burden of taking care of the old and the young becomes very heavy. In such cases, societies experience a shortfall in its working population.

The population of the elderly rises because of a fall in fertility and not because of decrease in mortality and increase in life expectancy at birth. (Ansley J. Coale, ‘The Effects of Changes in Mortality and Fertility on Age Composition’, 1955). Reduction of mortality will definitely increase the total number of old people in the population. However, it is the fall in fertility that increases the proportion of old people in the population. A reduction in the number of new additions to the population increases the ratio of old people in the population, which as we said above is the real problem of old age for the society.

This is the ageing problem.

Old Age is a Human Phenomenon

Old age is a human phenomenon with all the complexity that entails one. In nature, that is, in plant and animal kingdom, there is no such comparable phenomenon. And contrary to popular understanding, among humans also it is relatively recent – starting roughly since mid 19th century when it became possible to control reproduction. The knowledge of controlling reproduction became popular in modern societies due to technology, which made the availability of these devices cheap and easy. Although the Catholic Church frowns upon it, it rapidly spread in the developed capitalist countries.

Prolonging Death

However, today old age is not healthy people naturally growing old. You may still see some such people, particularly those who used a bicycle all their life. Today by and large old people are from relatively affluent families. Majority of them are not in good health but are kept alive because of modern health care system. These old people and their families suffer a lot in terms of agonies, harassment of frequent hospitalisation and drain of money. The doctors have forgotten the wisdom of their seniors, like, ‘Any medical intervention is advised only if it improves the quality of life’. Today, saving life at any cost is the mantra. It would be alright if the patients were young but in the case of senior citizens the mantra should be reducing suffering.

Old Age Care

Historically, old people were cared for within the family. With the increase in their number and increase in wage employment, more and more old people are getting care through old age homes. The funding for this comes from the welfare state, charities and the pension of the old people themselves. However, these ‘homes’, of which there are not enough to take care of all the old people, suffer from many defects. To begin with, they are often inadequately furnished or maintained and lack adequate funds. Also, because old people are vulnerable, they are often exploited by the owners of these homes (or the individuals who run them) and the medical industrial complex.

Today, the burden of the care of the elderly on the government is so big that it often exceeds the pay check of the working people. In Kerala, for instance, the pension of government employees is more than the current wages of the employees. As a result, today’s governments desperately want to get out of it.

The fact is, care of old people is rapidly becoming an unsolvable problem, and only more so in the coming resource crunch due to peaking of non renewable resource and economic crisis.

Palliative Care

In such a situation Palliative Care offers a viable solution. Although it has evolved mainly for terminal illnesses like cancer, it has been used for normal care for old people also.

The state of Kerala has managed to develop an integrated health service delivery model with community participation in palliative care. Institute of Palliative Medicine, Thiruvananthapuram, has been playing a major role in shaping up this model. The evolving palliative care system in Kerala tries to address the problems of the incurably ill, bedridden and dying patients irrespective of the diagnosis, age or social class. The program in Kerala is also expanding to areas like community psychiatry and social rehabilitation of the chronically ill. Palliative care has been declared by Government of Kerala as part of primary health care. Combined efforts by Civil Society Organisations, Local Self Government and Government of Kerala have resulted in the best coverage anywhere in Low and Middle Countries for palliative care. The ‘Quality of Death’ study by Economist Intelligence Unit (2010) states that “Amid the lamentably poor access to palliative care across India, the state of Kerala stands out as a beacon of hope. While India ranks at the bottom of the Index in overall score, and performs badly on many indicators, Kerala, if measured on the same points, would buck the trend. With only 3% of India’s population, the tiny state provides two-thirds of India’s palliative care services.

Palliative care is a relatively basic and relatively cheap healthcare provision. It requires simple facilities and by most healthcare standards basic nursing and medical care. With the present economic crisis and resource crunch, expensive and irrational geriatric health care should come down and be replaced by palliative care wherever possible. It will enable old people live in comfort with reduced suffering and die peacefully at home with their family. And in the end it will reduce the carbon foot print of the old people and reduce the population to manageable levels.

Livelihood Crisis Greatly Aggravated in Covid Times

Bharat Dogra & Kumar Gautam

While India had serious unemployment and livelihood protection problems even earlier, the Covid crisis accentuated these problems in unprecedented ways for some weeks, also leaving behind longer-term serious impacts. A report by Oxfam on Covid-time inequalities has highlighted this aspect of the crisis and recommended  shorter as well as longer term measures to provide relief and recovery on the livelihood front.

Drawing on a wide range of studies and research papers on this subject, the Oxfam report says that the economic fallout of the pandemic manifested in job losses and salary cuts for both informal and formal sector. The labour force participation rate fell to an all-time low from 43 percent to 35 percent from January to April 2020 and unemployment rose sharply since March 2020.  Eight in ten households saw decline in income during the lockdown. The job loss for the low-income households with no other alternative earnings and no social security has been the most troubling and they will find it extremely difficult to cope with and recover from the slowdown. Around 46 percent of the lower income group people have resorted to borrowing money to run their household. The economy is gradually opening up but the picture still remains grim for the many unemployed people. There are concerns that the impact would be beyond the temporary earning losses for unemployed work.

This report emphasizes that the pandemic had a staggering impact on India’s informal workers and small businesses. Out of a total 122 million who lost their jobs, 75 percent which accounts for 92 million jobs were lost in the informal sector. These workers are engaged in small businesses and casual labour and are at a high risk of being pushed into poverty. Informal workers also have relatively less opportunities to work from home and have suffered more job loss compared to the formal sector.

The plight of the informal workers as a result of the lockdown and loss of income got reflected in the panic exodus of migrant workers in their desperate attempt to get back to their homes in the hope of getting food and work in the harvesting season. India has about 40-50 million seasonal migrant workers working in construction sites, factory manufacturing units and services activities. According to a Stranded Workers Action Network  (SWAN) report in April, 2020, 50 percent of the respondents had no rations left even for a single day; while 96 percent had not received rations, 70 percent had not received cooked food from the government; and 78 percent of the respondents had less than INR 300 left.

With transportation system initially shut down, many had to walk hundreds of miles. Many migrant workers died due to the lockdown, with reasons ranging from starvation, suicides, exhaustion, road and rail accidents, police atrocity and denial of timely medical care. The Oxfam report says that they were exposed to inhuman conditions turning the pandemic into a humanitarian crisis. The National Human Rights Commission recorded over 2582 cases of human rights violation as early as in the month of April 2020.

It has been discussed that women are likely to bear the brunt of job losses the most because much of their work is invisible, and they are more likely to work in informal work arrangements. The Oxfam report says that as many as seventeen million women lost their job in April 2020.  Unemployment for women rose by 15 percent from a pre-lockdown level of 18 percent. This increase in unemployment of women can result in a loss to India’s GDP of about 8 percent or USD 218 billion. Women who were employed before the lockdown are also 23.5 percentage points less likely to be re-employed compared to men in the post-lockdown phase.

A survey by the Institute of Social Studies Trust found that among those who could retain their jobs, around 83 percent of women workers faced severe income drop. Sixty-six percent of the respondents also experienced an increase in unpaid care work and 36 per cent reported an increased burden of child and elderly care work during this period . Frontline health workers such as ASHAs experienced a big increase in their work but were not given adequate remuneration for this. The report presents estimates that if India’s top 11 billionaires are taxed at just 1 percent on their wealth, the government can pay the average wage of the nine lakh ASHA workers in the country for 5 years.

As many as ten states passed ordinances and regulations that would dilute the existing labour laws and their application. Changes have been brought in national labour laws, mainly in The Factories Act, 1948, The Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, and The Labour Laws (Exemption from Furnishing Returns and Maintaining Registers by Certain Establishments) Act, 1988.

The Oxfam report says that these changes in the labour laws violate the established standards of the International Labour Organisation and led to the filing of a number of Public Interest Litigations (PIL). For instance, the working hours were increased from eight to twelve hours in a day. The PILs eventually pressurised the Uttar Pradesh government to withdraw the 12-hour work shift. Many other states, however, have continued with the 12-hour work shift, six days a week which has transgressed the mandated 48-hour week as per global standards.

Many state governments have also brought changes that would allow workers to be hired at lower wages. There has also been evidence of workers being partially paid or not being paid at all. According to the Mobile Vaani survey, around 57 percent reported having pending wages and 20 percent had not received any support from their employers in the informal sector. As such, blue-collar workers who are mostly informal and daily wagers have to work longer hours with low wages in premises that will lack clean drinking water, toilet, medical and other occupational safety measures in the light of industrial inspection being suspended. India has 170 million blue-collar workers. Trade unions fear that 70 percent of factories  will fall outside the purview of labour laws exposing workers to exploitation with no legal safeguards while large private corporates gain from the dilution of the labour laws.

Drawing on a wide range of evidence, the Oxfam report argues that despite the adverse impact that the lockdown has had on informal, migrant workers and the economy, studies show that the relief packages have been miniscule. Additional expenditure of the government in the first relief package announced was only 0.5 percent of the GDP and the total additional public spending promised by all the relief measures announced by the end of May 2020 amounted to only around 1 percent of the GDP. Much of it has not reached the intended beneficiaries.

Keeping in view the deepening livelihood and unemployment crisis, this report makes a strong case for a recovery path led by reduction of inequalities and special concern for the needs of weaker sections.