Anarchy of capitalist food production exposed as dairy farmers ordered to dump milk

Jacob Crosse

In scenes reminiscent of the Great Depression, dairy farmers across the US have been ordered to dump perfectly good milk into their fields and lagoons where it will seep into the earth. The inability of the capitalist system to scientifically plan and coordinate production has left producers no choice but to dump millions of gallons of milk, with no end in sight.

Images of farmers dumping their milk has provoked outrage among workers, as grocery stores across the country are still limiting purchases of essential dairy products. While being told to shelter in place, millions of people are obliged to make return trips to the grocery store in order to purchase perishables such as milk, putting their families and essential workers at risk.

This comes at a time of mass layoffs, with millions of families being thrown into food insecurity and compelled to rely on food banks for sustenance. In an interview with the GuardianJerry Brown, media spokesman for St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance, a coalition of 700 food banks, reflected on the unprecedented demand for their services in the US, “The 2008 recession doesn’t touch this. It’s a different ballgame.”

Cow Stock (Stock image Envato)

The implementation of social distancing guidelines has collapsed several traditional milk markets such as schools and restaurants. US public schools were the number one consumer of liquid milk according to Pam Jahnke, editor of the Midwest Farm Report. Unable or willing to make the socially beneficial investments to freeze and store the milk for later use or distribution, the market demands it be discarded in order to keep prices artificially inflated.

The capitalist system has no answer for the crisis of “overproduction.” In her editorial Jahnke advised readers who wanted to help farmers to “Pray that COVID-19 dissipates. Pray that life begins to return to somewhat normal patterns. Pray that this milk dumping situation is just a temporary story. Pray for all the farm families that are trying to make their way through this.”

While the almighty hasn’t yet intervened, travel restrictions and tariffs have crippled supply chains and slowed trade, especially between China and the US. Before the restrictions were implemented, China was the number one importer of dairy products in the world. Even though this pandemic was foreseen for months, food and dairy processors took no steps to prepare for possible disruptions.

Instead of preparing their facilities to switch from wholesale to retail production by ordering the necessary equipment and packaging materials, processors have been scrambling to shift workers from wholesale plants towards retail plants, laying off workers in the process.

These shifts have ensured the continued spread of COVID-19 among the workforce. In Greely, Colorado an estimated 900 workers called off work on Monday after several COVID-19 cases were confirmed at the JBS USA meat processing plant.

The plant, deemed an essential facility, operates 24 hours a day and has three shifts employing some 4,500 workers, members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. The UFCW has worked with company management to keep the line moving during the pandemic and done nothing to make sure workers are protected on the job.

Kim Cordova, president of UFCW Local 7, speaking to the Denver Post, grudgingly conceded “maybe folks are sick,” adding she didn’t, “want to speculate until we get the information.”

Unwilling to provide a safe work environment, processors have meanwhile had a difficult time keeping up with the increased demand from farmers looking to dispose of their products as restaurants and schools turn away deliveries.

In addition to workers falling ill at plants, causing slowdowns, the increased retail demand has resulted in shipping delays. Long-haul truck drivers who transport the bulk of consumer goods in the US have either been unable to pick them up or forced to wait hours for their deliveries due to increased traffic congestion at the plants. Because of this and a shortage of drivers, agriculture groups have been lobbying states to increase truck weight limits on highways, increasing the danger of accidents or rollovers.

Speaking in a radio interview with Farm Report, Ryan Elbe, a dairy farmer in West Bend, Wisconsin, confirmed that his family farm had already dumped 250 million pounds of milk by April 1 and would continue dumping for at least another week. Elbe told reporters he expected his family would be compensated for their milk, however he did not know by whom or when.

Elbe confirmed that his family received a phone call from the Dairy Farmers Alliance (DFA) on March 31, instructing Golden E Dairy that due to an “oversupply” of milk in the market they would have to begin the dumping process. The DFA is a dairy cooperative in which concentrated animal feeding operations, that is farms that have a minimum of 1,000 animal units as defined by the US Department of Agriculture, are organized under the umbrella of the DFA.

Billed as “grassroots cooperatives,” farmers have no input or say in how their milk is produced or where they can sell it. Instead the DFA operates as a cartel in which “farmer-leaders” are elected and overseen by a 49-member board of directors. The DFA has been the defendant in several class action lawsuits brought by farmers alleging everything from price-fixing to monopolization of the market.

In 2013 and 2014 the DFA settled two lawsuits out of court, while admitting no fault. The settlements required the DFA to pay farmers $140 million in one case and $50 million in the other.

The DFA claims it serves more than 14,500 dairy farmer-members representing 8,500 dairy farms in 48 states. It is unclear if all of its farmers are going to dump their milk. However, Elbe was able to confirm that every farmer-member in the co-op that he spoke to had received the same call his father had. The same day, March 31, that the DFA ordered its membership to begin dumping milk a Federal Bankruptcy court in Kansas City, Kansas, where the DFA is headquartered, signaled its approval for a DFA bid to buy out Dean Food Company assets for $433 million.

Dean Food had declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November in 2019. Shortly thereafter DFA submitted several bids to purchase a majority of the assets of the company, the largest dairy processor in the US. The purchase would include the “assets and properties” related to 44 fluid and frozen dairy facilities. For the bid to be approved it will need to be signed off on by the US Department of Justice, as it would mean the largest dairy cooperative in the US would also become the largest milk processor in the country.

It is not just the US dairy industry that is facing a crisis of overproduction, an absurd situation given the chronic hunger suffered by millions in the United States and globally. This crying contradiction is a product of the capitalist profit system, which subordinates any consideration of human need to the drive for profit.

This same absurd situation is being replicated globally. After the shuttering of restaurants in the Netherlands the potato crop is at risk of going to rot as storage tanks remain full from last year's harvest. Speaking to Reuters , Dutch potato farmer Dirk De Heer said he had hoped he would be able to sell his crop at 18 euro cents per kilogram. After finding no other buyers De Heer has been left with no choice but to sell his crop to a dairy farmer at 0.01 euro per kilogram.

Warning of food riots, Rome sends 20,000 troops to patrol southern Italy

Allison Smith

In recent weeks, there has been a massive deployment of 20,000 army soldiers to the southern Italian regions of Campania, Puglia and Sicily to guard commercial centres and streets, as the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown enters its second full month and citizens run out of money to buy food and other basic necessities.

After an incident in Palermo, Sicily, where a group of residents ran out of a grocer shouting that they could not pay, the media and the state sought to paint a picture of disorderly citizens looting stores and threatening the public good. Media headlines blared that without military intervention, the Mafia would take control. But there is no evidence the Mafia is taking over. The Mafia, just like the state, has left southern Italians in distress. Workers blame state corruption and political apathy for their plight.

“There are no riots,” a grocer near Bari told the WSWS. She continued, “Clients at my store are orderly and everyone wears masks and gloves when they come to the store. There have been robberies of closed restaurants, people stealing anything they can sell to get money. Many people work in the black [economy], and they can’t find normal, regular work.”

Coffins with the bodies of victims of coronavirus are stored waiting for burial or cremation at the Collserola morgue in Barcelona, Spain (Image Credit: AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Rather than providing financial support and provisions for food, however, Italy’s regional councils are calling for increased military and police presence.

The Council of Sicily recently invoked Article 31 of the Sicilian Statute that provides the region with the power to “take over the direction of the public security services (including military and police) to deal effectively and promptly with any state emergency situations that affect public order, health, and safety in the territory of the Sicilian Region or any part of it.”

Article 31, which has never been applied until now, puts the police and army at the regional president’s disposal for use in suppressing any form of protest or class struggle that emerges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy.

In describing the developments in Sicily, Giornale di Sicilia writer Giacinto Pipitone said, “[Sicilian President Nello] Musumeci has, for weeks, been moving as if we were at war.”

The constant drumbeat of criminal accusations of the Italian population is overbearing and reactionary. Both the media and the ruling class are seeking to divert public attention away from the government’s inability to deal with the pandemic, in order to shift the blame for the state’s unpreparedness from top officials to the people who are living in quarantine and no longer have the financial means to buy food and other necessities.

The same grocery worker told the WSWS that 10 to 20 percent of her customers are receiving government support to buy their groceries, and that many small business owners now find themselves without any income because of the pandemic. One of her friends owns a travel agency, and all of her bookings are cancelled this year, leaving her with no income virtually overnight. She passes through police and army checkpoints, however, carrying with her a self-declaration that she is going to work.

The diversion aims at concealing the criminal responsibilities of the ruling class, from a delayed response to a completely inadequate plan for fighting the virus. At the same time, after mass wildcat strikes broke out across Italy and internationally to protest the official COVID-19 policy and demand the right to shelter at home, the government is clearly attempting to strengthen its position against the working class.

Governments, in Italy as elsewhere, have sought for decades to divert social resources to the financial oligarchy instead of utilizing them for a rational, scientific plan to strengthen health care, halt infectious diseases and ensure the survival of society. This has led to a situation where governments instead bring the army out onto the streets.

In early March, when the government could no longer ignore mounting deaths and spreading contagion, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte called in the army—the only force in Italian society with enough funding and instruments—to construct coronavirus field hospitals, distribute medical materials to local hospitals on the frontlines of the battle against the deadly pathogen, and to cart off the dead for mass burials.

By mid-March, the government imposed a nationwide lockdown, asking residents to shelter in place for an unspecified time. However, the government leaked news of the lockdown the night before the official announcement, causing panic and sending thousands of Italians scrambling to get home for fear of being trapped away from their families, especially southern Italians who work in the industrial north.

This reckless breach of public trust sent the media into overdrive to blame southern Italians for the spread of the contagion and give authorities cover to deploy thousands of soldiers to control the population, under the army’s “Secure Streets” (Strade Sicure) program. This policy is now receiving support from capitalist politicians of all political colorations.

Lombardy’s governor, Atillo Fontana, sought to dismiss worries that the use of army patrols is a breach of citizens’ democratic rights, saying that his call for the army was supported by Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella. “I reiterated in a phone conversation with the president the need to use the army to support police forces and reinforce the network of controls aimed at applying the rules,” Fontana said, then added: “I can say that Mattarella has shared my request, which is aimed at guaranteeing the collective good.”

Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese boasted, “At the moment the contingent of 7,300 soldiers already in the streets will be used, but if they are not enough there are at least another 13,000 soldiers available. They have already arrived in Campania and Sicily … they will respond to [the request by] Governor Fontana and in the next days to the Mayor of Rome.”

For his part, Minister of Defence Lorenzo Guerini threatened, “The army is ready to do more checks. We will guarantee security on the ground,” adding, “The armed forces are ready to do their part, as they are already doing both on the health front and in the control of the territory. Let’s help the Civil Protection and watch over the ‘misery’ in the South.”

Luigi Di Maio, leader of the Five Star Movement, suggested the government include a provision in the next national government emergency decree that explicitly provides for domestic military intervention, thus giving the government the immediate and unequivocal power to deploy the army against the civilian population as and when they want during, and especially after, the pandemic.

Doctors in Germany will soon have to decide on life and death

Peter Schwarz

Doctors in Germany will soon have to decide which COVID-19 patients will receive intensive care and which will be at the mercy of death, as is already the case in Italy, France, the United States and other countries.

On Wednesday, seven professional medical societies adopted a paper with treatment recommendations, which states, “According to the current state of knowledge on the COVID-19 pandemic, it is likely that in Germany, too, in a short time, and despite the capacity increases that have already been made, there will no longer be sufficient intensive care medical resources available for all patients who need them.”

If this happens, the paper states, “it is inevitable that decisions will have to be made about which patients requiring intensive care should be treated acutely/intensively and which should not (or no longer) be treated acutely/intensively.” Over a total of eleven pages, the criteria are then developed for doctors who have to make this decision.

Above all, the elderly, sick and infirm with lower chances of recovery would be rejected for intensive care. The “prioritisation of patients” is based “on the criterion of the clinical prospect of success,” which means that those “for whom there is no or very little chance of success” should be refused treatment. This is the case, for example, with serious illnesses—including neurological and cancer—a severe immune deficiency, multimorbidity and increased frailty.

The paper states that priority should be given to patients who “thus have a higher probability of survival or a better overall prognosis.” Not only a “clinically relevant change in the condition of the patients” is decisive for the decision, but also the “changed relationship between need and available resources.” In other words, the fewer ventilators, intensive care beds and specialist staff are available, the lower the threshold above which patients are no longer treated.

The paper, which has also been signed by medical ethicists, does not say a word about how the current catastrophic situation came about. Nor does it contain any recommendations on how to prevent doctors from being put in the terrible position of having to decide on life and death. Instead, it uses an expression from war and disaster medicine to describe such a development as inevitable.

It says that “analogous to triage in disaster medicine, decisions must be made on the distribution of the limited resources available.” The term triage (from the French trier: to sort, select, pick out) goes back to Napoleon’s personal physician Dominique-Jean Larrey, who developed a catalogue of criteria under which soldiers are saved on the battlefield and which are not. It was established for situations in which a sudden and unpredictable catastrophe overwhelms the available medical resources.

However, the coronavirus crisis is not such an unforeseeable disaster. Experts have been warning of such a pandemic for years. A study by the public health body the Robert Koch Institute in 2012, for example, urged the German government and the Bundestag (federal parliament) that in the event of a virus pandemic, the necessary medical care for the population “exceeds existing capacities many times over.” But the government did nothing to prevent it. Instead, it continued the closure and privatisation of hospitals unchecked.

Even after the outbreak of the current pandemic, the German government continues to pursue a policy of criminal irresponsibility. While it has put together a 750-billion-euro package in no time at all, primarily to safeguard profits, large corporations and banks, nursing staff continue to work mostly unprotected. No vigorous initiatives are being taken to expand the necessary capacities for intensive care patients either.

In the meantime, thousands of doctors and nurses throughout Germany are infected with the coronavirus due to a lack of protective clothing, according to a survey by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and broadcasters NDR and WDR. But the federal and state governments do not even consider it necessary to collect figures on the numbers of infected medical staff, who are essential for the survival of thousands, let alone for their protection.

When asked, the Robert Koch Institute told the research team that 2,300 members of medical staff in hospitals are currently infected. Doctors’ surgeries, laboratories, retirement and nursing homes and outpatient care services are not included in this figure. Based on written inquiries to 400 health authorities, medical associations, state governments and other institutions, the research team concluded “that thousands are already affected throughout Germany.” However, it was not able to obtain complete figures. The Bavarian Ministry of Health even forbade the state’s health authorities from answering the journalists’ questions.

Meanwhile, the total number of confirmed infections in Germany continues to rise unabated. In the last two weeks, between 4,000 and 7,000 people in the country have become newly infected every day. With more than 100,000 infected people, Germany is now fourth ahead of China and France—and just behind the US, Spain and Italy. The number of fatalities has also risen to over 1,500.

The federal government’s attitude towards doctors and nurses is in line with its attitude towards the working class as a whole. Thousands of workers are being forced to work in non-critical companies without adequate protection. And even in indispensable sectors—such as the food trade, public transport, etc.—workers are often denied the most basic protection. For millions of poor, those precariously employed, single parents, workers, artists and small businesses, the crisis means the loss of their livelihoods without receiving the necessary aid.

In the meantime, numerous highly qualified ethics experts who have appeared on talk shows and in newspaper columns are informing the population that the most vulnerable to the coronavirus will be denied intensive treatment.

On Markus Lanz’s evening chat show, criminal lawyer Reinhard Merkel, who is a member of the German Ethics Council and advises Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (Christian Democratic Union, CDU), defended the triage of intensive care patients. He talked about “tragic conflicts for which there is no morally blameless solution” and described different scenarios for refusing or discontinuing the treatment of elderly patients. The most likely scenario was: “The doctors say to themselves, before I make the decision, I won’t put an 80-year-old on the ventilator because a 30-year-old is coming along soon.”

The obvious and only ethically justifiable solution—providing enough ventilators and intensive care beds and training personnel to treat everyone—is not even considered by such ethics “experts.” Yet this would easily be possible.

The German mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and automotive industries together comprise more than 12,000 companies, employ almost 3 million workers and achieve an annual turnover of 725 billion euros, more than half of which is exported. They manufacture complex, technically advanced products and could also build ventilators and intensive care beds—enough to supply the whole of Europe.

However, this would require an intervention into capitalist private property and the use of substantial sums of money. If the government were preparing for war, this would not be a problem. Production would be switched over in a very short time. Instead of engine blocks, shell casings would be cast, instead of trucks, tanks would be assembled and instead of machine controls, missile systems would be built.

But what applies to the instruments of death does not apply to those that can save lives. The old, sick and infirm are simply not worth the effort of the ruling class. Within a very short time, they have provided 600 billion euros to secure the profits of the banks and large corporations. For the weakest victims of the COVID-19 epidemic, the ruling class has only cynical “ethical” justifications for why they have to die.

French state covered up mass COVID-19 deaths in retirement homes

Jacques Valentin

Over the weekend, the reported number of daily COVID-19 deaths in France nearly tripled from the levels earlier in the week. According to initial data, it appears this increase was almost entirely due to the French government’s decision to acknowledge that COVID-19 has run rampant across the country’s retirement homes—leading to thousands of deaths that the government had not even bothered to acknowledge.

After a record high of 509 COVID-19 deaths announced on April 1, April 2 saw 1,355 deaths, followed by 1,120 on April 3 and 1,053 on April 4. These three days by themselves roughly doubled the overall death toll in France in the epidemic. With Sunday’s figures of 2,886 new cases and 518 new deaths from COVID-19, this brought the official national totals to 93,780 cases and 8,093 deaths so far.

Though the pandemic is the most serious global health crisis in a century, official data published by the French state is a farce. Only cases confirmed in hospitals are counted, while at the same time state policy is to demand that anyone suffering from COVID-19 monitor themselves and not come to hospital. As such, most COVID-19 patients in France who are resting or dying untreated in their own homes or in rest homes are not included in the official toll.

The state has acknowledged that its figures are wild underestimates. When the official toll in France was 16,018, Health Minister Olivier Véran said he believed the true total was 30,000 to 90,000. The lack of accurate information, while it serves to mask the depth of the crisis from working people, hampers scientific analysis of the epidemic and the implementation of necessary protective measures.

It is now emerging that President Emmanuel Macron’s government oversaw decisions that would block reporting of the disaster unfolding in the retirement homes, acting with barely disguised contempt for the homes’ roughly 700,000 elderly pensioners and their families. The government has made slashing social spending, including healthcare spending, a centerpiece of its plan to shovel hundreds of billions of euros into the pockets of the superrich and the army.

On April 2, after news of COVID-19 outbreaks in a few retirement homes made national news, Professor Jérôme Salomon, France’s chief medical officer, announced that at least 884 elderly people living in retirement homes had died in the country since the beginning of the pandemic. He added that 14,638 “confirmed or possible” cases had been noted in these homes. Salomon said that this data was incomplete, stating, “This is an initial partial estimate due to the great unevenness in reporting between regions, and critical work is being done to bring together all of the data.”

Salomon gave no estimated data for other social institutions for the elderly or for deaths of working age people in their homes.

The Macron government has claimed that it is desperately trying to set up an agency that would gather and analyze COVID-19 pandemic data. On March 25 LCI reported, “The General Health Directorate (DGS) informed us that an app allowing for daily reporting of the number of deaths that have occurred in medical-social establishments will be operational in the coming days.’’

This is an attempt to mislead the public. In fact, the DGS and the Health Ministry can already rely on the existing data collection program of the “Weekly Flu Bulletin” assembled to monitor and provide real-time data on the spread of acute respiratory infections and deaths, including among the elderly. It compiles data from the general population, hospitals and rest homes.

There is no benign explanation for the Macron government’s decision to ignore this existing agency, whose own rules specify that it should be compiling data on COVID-19.

In 2012, the High Council on Public Health laid out a “Code of Conduct for acute respiratory infections (IRA) in collectivities of elderly residents.” It specified that data collection should be launched and a national report sent if interhuman spread of an IRA led to a situation in which at least five IRA cases emerge among residents in a four-day time period, not including institutional staff. COVID-19, like the flu, is an acute respiratory infection that meets the criteria for reporting.

Indeed, the 11th “Weekly Flu Bulletin” posted on March 18, the last one available online, proposed creating a weekly report on the situation in elderly care institutions, noting that “655 episodes of grouped IRAs have been reported,” and that at least three of these were confirmed COVID-19 IRA outbreaks.

The bulletin added that given the relatively mild nature of the regular flu season this year, the new outbreak was “likely linked to the COVID-19 epidemic in France.” It also noted, however, that “it is difficult to know to what extent these are individuals with flu symptoms who more frequently resort to care, fearing a COVID-19 infection, and to what extent they are genuine COVID-19 patients.” This uncertainty stems from the fact that the state did not place COVID-19 test kits at the disposal of retirement homes.

Thus, contrary to the claims of the Health Ministry, the state administration not only had an established mechanism to monitor the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, but this mechanism was in fact producing statistics on the spread of the disease. However, a decision was taken at top levels of the state to ignore and hush up these reports.

As a result, thousands of people have been dying for weeks in retirement homes with virtually no public discussion and often with minimal response from authorities.

In one instance, at the Thise retirement home near Besançon, 10 residents were infected with COVID-19 by a nurse’s aide returning from Mulhouse, a center of the epidemic in France. On March 7, a local newspaper Ma Commune reported the outbreak and added: “Asked to comment, the Regional Health Authority (ARS) indicated that their situation was not cause for concern and that they would have been hospitalized if it had been such. Residents who have the virus are confined to their rooms to avoid infecting others in the retirement home.”

A month later, France3 television news reported on the now catastrophic situation at Thise: “Since the detection of the first COVID-19 cases at the home on March 5, 25 people have died, that is, more than a quarter of the 80 residents of the home, whose average age was 88.”

At the time of the initial infections, Macron and the government were repeating that the epidemic would be uncontrollable and that measures to block the spread of the disease could not be allowed to harm the economy. Some, echoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, made the fascistic argument that the population should be forced to acquire immunity by allowing the disease to spread—contained only by limited mitigation measures.

As Europe’s COVID-19 death toll nears 50,000, British PM Johnson admitted to hospital

Robert Stevens

In a dramatic turn of events, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was admitted to hospital in London Sunday night with persistent symptoms of COVID-19. He tested positive for the disease 10 days ago.

The Guardian reported that it was "told last week that Johnson was more seriously ill than either he or his officials were prepared to admit, and that he was being seen by doctors who were concerned about his breathing." The Times reported that Johnson “was given oxygen treatment" at St Thomas' hospital.

His pregnant fiancée Carrie Symonds also has the virus, as does his key adviser Dominic Cummings. Cummings’ uncle, retired senior judge Sir John Laws, died from the disease yesterday after being hospitalised for three weeks with other health problems.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson holds a news conference giving the government's response to the new COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, at Downing Street in London, Thursday March 12, 2020. (Simon Dawson/Pool via AP)

Thousands continue to die every day in Europe of COVID-19. On Saturday, a further nearly 3,000 people died across the continent. Deaths in Europe are approaching 50,000. By Sunday evening, overall deaths reached 49,096 as a further 2,902 people died.

Europe is reporting nearly 40 percent of all new COVID-19 cases globally, with Sunday’s 26,786 taking the European total to 645,295.

The reported death toll consists mainly of people who have died in hospital. Many countries are excluding those who die at home or in care/residential homes from their daily totals. There is mounting evidence that fatalities are much higher when deaths outside hospital are factored in.

On Saturday, one care home in Glasgow, Scotland, reported that 13 of its elderly residents had died. There are more than 410,000 people in care homes in the UK. This represents four percent of the over-65 UK population and 16 percent of those aged 85 or above.

French health authorities have recorded an extraordinary surge in the number of cases and deaths in recent days, with the number of newly dead rising from several hundred to over a thousand. April 2 saw 2,116 cases and 1,355 deaths, April 3 saw 23,060 new cases and 1,120 deaths, and April 4 saw 7,788 new cases and 1,053 deaths—nearly doubling the overall death total over these three days alone.

With Sunday’s figures of 1,873 new cases and 518 new deaths, the total in France to date is 92,839 cases and 8,078 deaths.

The main reason for the extraordinary surge in the number of cases was evidently the sudden inclusion of contagion and mortality statistics from France’s rest homes.

A horrific outbreak is ravaging France’s elder care homes, amid shocking and malign neglect by the authorities. The French government deliberately chose not to use the nationwide reporting system established in rest homes to report on flu deaths. It did not receive real-time data and refused to provide more than three COVID-19 testing kits per rest home, even after reports emerged that dozens were dying of COVID-19 in rest homes across the country. Now it appears that tens of thousands, at the very least, have died.

In Italy, there have been nearly 16,000 deaths (15,887), representing almost a quarter of all global fatalities. Italy is one of many countries recording only hospital-based COVID-19 deaths. The 525 death total announced Sunday was the lowest figure since a record high 969 fatalities on March 27.

Coffins with the bodies of victims of coronavirus are stored waiting for burial or cremation at the Collserola morgue in Barcelona, Spain (Image Credit: AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

A huge number of people remain hospitalised (28,949), but for the first time this figure fell (by 61) between Saturday and Sunday. Despite this, the number of new infections increased by 2,972. While this was an increase of more than 3 percent in 24 hours, it is a drop of nearly 50 percent from the height of new cases on March 20.

Reuters reported the tragedy of one family. Silvia Bertuletti phoned health services for 11 days to try to get a doctor to see her 78-year-old father, Alessandro, who had a high fever and was struggling to breathe. Over the phone he was prescribed only a standard painkiller and a broad-spectrum antibiotic.

An on-call doctor finally went to see Alessandro on the evening of March 18, but it was too late. When an ambulance arrived, hours after it was called, Alessandro had already been pronounced dead 10 minutes earlier.

Reuters notes that “Interviews with families, doctors and nurses in Italy’s stricken Lombardy region” reveal that “scores are dying at home as symptoms go unchecked… In Bergamo province alone, according to a recent study of death records, the real death toll from the outbreak could be more than double the official tally of 2,060…”

According to one doctor, Riccardo Munda, the fear of infection and even death has led doctors to avoid making the required visits to patients at home who have symptoms. “And I can’t blame them,” he said, “because that’s how they saved their own skin.”

If prompt medical attention was given to people at home, he added, “many deaths could be avoided,” but “doctors were swamped, lacked enough masks and suits to protect themselves from infection, and were discouraged from making visits unless absolutely necessary.”

In the Bergamo area, 142 doctors were either sick or in quarantine, according to the state-run ATS health agency.

A further 674 died in Spain Sunday, as total deaths rose to 12,418. Total infections rose by more than 6,000 to 130,759.

Last Friday, a further 684 people perished in UK hospitals, as the number of people dead from COVID-19 rose five-fold in a week. An additional 708 deaths were announced Saturday, the biggest one-day rise since the outbreak began. Another 621 patients died Sunday, taking the total to 4,934. Despite talk of the cases plateauing in the UK, Sunday’s 5,903 new cases took the total to 47,806, the largest daily increase so far at 59 percent.

As in every European country, health workers in Britain are dying and suffering horrifically due to years of health service cuts and a lack of basic protective equipment. A tiny proportion of frontline National Health Service (NHS) staff has been tested for the virus, despite thousands self-isolating after being infected. Just 0.3 percent (195,524) of the entire UK’s population of 66 million had been tested by Sunday.

Last Friday, the death of two NHS nurses, Areema Nasreen, 36, and Aimee O’Rourke, 39, was announced. This was followed by the weekend’s news that a 24-year-old nursing assistant, John Alagos, looking after coronavirus patients at Watford General Hospital in Hertfordshire, had died and is being tested for COVID-19.

The Daily Mail reported that Alagos “collapsed and died at home after an exhausting 12-hour shift.” The young man “returned home on Friday following a night shift, after complaining of suffering a headache and high temperature throughout the night.”

His mother, Gina Gustilo, said, “I asked [John], ‘Why didn’t you come home?’ He said he had asked other staff, but they said they were short of staff and they did not let him go. I said, ‘OK, take some paracetamol.’ After a few minutes, I found him turning blue in his bed.”

Lack of adequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) was no doubt a factor in his death, with Gina revealing she had been told by her son’s co-workers that he was not wearing “proper” protective clothing. “They wear PPE, she said, “but not totally protective of the mouth. They wear the normal masks.”

Rinesh Parmar, chairman of the Doctors’ Association, said, “I worry that if we don’t sort out our issues with Personal Protection Equipment and testing of frontline staff in the coming days that we will start to follow a trend that’s very similar with Italy. I dread to think how high it could go… I worry it’s going to go in excess of 50.”

Warnings about the necessity for stockpiling ventilators, PPE and other essential resources were ignored by governments all over Europe, which adopted a slash and burn policy towards public health care in enforcing savage austerity over the past decade. In the UK, barely 5,000 ventilators were in operation when the pandemic began. Despite repeated promises to secure the required amount, Health Secretary Matt Hancock admitted to the BBC Sunday that there may be only 13,500 ventilators in hospitals by Easter, when the government claims COVID-19 is expected to peak.

In Germany, 132 new deaths were recorded Sunday, bringing deaths to 1,576. Previous days saw fatalities at around 140, meaning Sunday’s toll was an increase of around 1.5 percent.

Ten years since WikiLeaks published Collateral Murder

Oscar Grenfell

Yesterday marked 10 years since WikiLeaks published the Collateral Murder video, showing US soldiers in an Apache helicopter indiscriminately firing upon unarmed civilians and journalists in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

The footage, filmed by the US military on July 12, 2007, shows the gunship circling above a group of 10 men, going about their business in the suburb of Al-Amin al-Thaniyah. In increasingly exasperated tones, those on board ask whether they have been given permission to open fire on the individuals, who pose no conceivable threat.

When the signal has been given, they let loose with 30 mm cannon fire. The viewer’s horror at the massacre is matched only by revulsion at the glee of the American soldiers.

As the 10 men lie catastrophically wounded or dead, a US soldier expresses his hope that one of them will pick up a non-existent weapon, so that the fusillade may be resumed. A van pulls up to give assistance to the wounded. It is fired upon, killing the driver and inflicting horrific wounds on his two young children.

At the end of the carnage, as many as 18 lie dead. They include Reuters journalists Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen. Congratulations and more blood lust are the response from within the Apache.

Collateral Murder, 17 minute version

The video has had an indelible impact on the consciousness of millions of people around the world. Its 39 minutes of footage exposed the real character of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq as an illegal, neo-colonial operation involving the perpetration of war crimes and an assault on the social and democratic rights of an entire population, unprecedented since the horrors of the Nazi regime.

A decade on and none of those responsible for the 2007 massacre depicted in the video, or for the illegal invasion which resulted in the deaths of over a million people, has been brought to justice.

Some, such as former US President George Bush and then Australian Prime Minister John Howard, are enjoying a quiet retirement. Others, including former British PM Tony Blair, remain politically influential and powerful figures, while still more are at the helm of the US and allied militaries as they continue to perpetrate crimes in the Middle East, and plot new wars, including against China and Russia.

The only individuals who have suffered any repercussions as a result of Collateral Murder are Chelsea Manning, the courageous US army private who leaked the video, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who published it.

Most recently, Manning was released from six months imprisonment last month, after refusing to give false testimony against Assange before a secret US Grand Jury. Behind bars without charge or conviction, she was again driven to attempt to take her own life.

Assange, after almost a decade of arbitrary detention, faces the prospect of extradition from Britain to the United States, where he would be hauled before a kangaroo court, convicted on espionage charges and sentenced to life in a supermax prison. Assange’s only “offence” is having exposed the war crimes, global diplomatic conspiracies and mass spying operations of the American and allied governments.

Even before he has been extradited, all of the WikiLeaks founder’s rights have been trampled upon by a corrupt British judiciary and political establishment. After years of abuse, his life is in imminent danger. The British government and the courts have refused to release him as the coronavirus pandemic hits British prisons, despite the fact that Assange is on remand and has been convicted of no crime.

The very individuals responsible for the crimes exposed in Collateral Murder are spearheading the attempt to destroy Assange. They include the US military and intelligence agencies, the American ruling elite’s political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, and their allies in the British Tory and Labour Parties and the Australian political establishment.

The video revealed, not only the crimes of individuals, but the systemic criminality of the entire occupation of Iraq, implicating the military commands, governments and a pliant corporate media.

On July 13, 2007, the US military issued a statement which declared that the Reuters employees Chmagh and Noor-Eldeen, had been “killed during a firefight with insurgents.” An August 2007 Freedom of Information request for the footage, lodged by Reuters, was denied by the US government and the military.

Perhaps most damningly, the publication of Collateral Murder exposed the corporate press as an adjunct of the military as it was wantonly committing war crimes. All of the major publications in the US, from the New York Times to the Washington Post, had promoted the lies about weapons of mass destruction used to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Manning had contacted those outlets, and others, but never received a reply, prompting her to turn to WikiLeaks.

At least some corporate journalists, however, were already intimately familiar with the crimes that politically radicalised Manning. During the invasion of Iraq they were “the embedded ones,” integrating themselves into the military and filing breathless reports hailing the decimation of Iraq’s civilian and military infrastructure and the catastrophe that befell its population.

In a 2009 book, David Finkel, a Washington Post journalist, described a scene that bore striking similarities to the 2007 Apache attack in Baghdad. His book was titled, unironically, The Good Soldiers. Finkel’s follow-up work was headlined Thank You for Your Service.

According to some sources, Finkel and the Washington Post had had access to the video since at least 2009. There are even allegations that the reporter showed it to friends and colleagues at dinner parties held in his plush Washington DC home.

The response of WikiLeaks, a tiny organisation with extremely limited resources, was very different.

Assange and a group of colleagues spent months decrypting the video, studying its contents and investigating the events it depicted. This alone should put paid to the claims of the corrupt corporate stenographers of the intelligence agencies that Assange is “not a journalist.”

Current WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hraffnson risked his life to track down the victims of the attack, travelling to Iraq two years after a secret US military document had outlined a strategy to destroy WikiLeaks.

Hraffnson met the widow of Matasher Tomal, the man who was killed while attempting to help those wounded in the first barrage of artillery fire. He spoke to Tomal’s children Sayad, who was 10 at the time of the attack, and Doaha who was just 5-years-old. Both suffered wounds that will affect them for life.

In an interview at the time, Hraffnson commented on the experience of speaking to Sayad: “When I was watching his eyes [I felt] I was looking into the eyes of my own son. I think I have never been as touched by anything I’ve seen. The sorrow of a child who loses his father is so deep, so devastating. I really wanted to get that to the public.”

Asked by the interviewer if it had not been dangerous for him to travel to Iraq, Hraffnson commented: “Yes, but journalism should be dangerous. Journalists are becoming, and have been, a part of the military propaganda machinery—easily manipulated.”

For his part, Assange unveiled the footage at the US National Press Club, despite the clear danger that he would be targeted by the CIA and the US military.

All of those credited on the Collateral Murder video, including those who ended their collaboration with WikiLeaks many years ago, have been subjected to harassment and surveillance by the military intelligence complex, including having their personal details and correspondence subpoenaed from major internet conglomerates.

The Collateral Murder video will be remembered for decades as testimony to the barbarity of imperialist war. Its contents are more significant than ever, amid stepped-up inter-imperialist tensions and preparations for new and catastrophic military conflicts.

Workers, students and young people must do everything they can to fight for Assange’s freedom and for the safety and security of all those involved in this historic exposure of militarism and war.

Fired aircraft carrier commander has COVID-19

Patrick Martin

The aircraft carrier commander who urged the evacuation of his ship because of widespread COVID-19 infection has himself tested positive for coronavirus, it was reported Sunday afternoon.

Captain Brett Crozier was fired, at the insistence of President Trump, after his letter to the Navy high command, warning that sailors would die unless urgent action was taken, was made public in the San Francisco Chronicle .

Crozier’s own illness is a further demonstration of the deep inroads that the coronavirus has made within the military. At latest count, testing has been completed for nearly 1,600 of the sailors on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, and 155, or 10 percent, were found to be positive for COVID-19. At that level of contagion, and given the close quarters for working, eating and sleeping, it would have been only a matter of days before virtually everyone on the ship was infected.

Trump angrily defended the firing of Crozier at the White House coronavirus press briefing Saturday. “He wrote a letter. A five-page letter from a captain,” Trump fumed. “And the letter was all over the place. That’s not appropriate, I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

Making clear that his main concern was the political embarrassment for the White House, not the fate of the sailors, Trump continued, “It looked terrible what he did. To write a letter. I mean this isn’t a class on literature. This is the captain of a massive ship … he shouldn’t be talking that way in a letter.” The “commander-in-chief” expressed no concern that Navy seamen might suffer permanent impairment or death from the coronavirus.

Trump also suggested that Crozier was responsible for allowing sailors to be infected, because he was in command during a port call at Da Nang in Vietnam in early March where several sailors apparently contracted the disease. Such a visit would not be the commander’s decision, however, but part of the high-level Pentagon strategy, coordinated with the White House National Security Council, in which US warships “show the flag” at ports of Asian countries Washington is seeking to align with its preparations for war against China.

Besides the political repercussions—which have escalated considerably after Crozier’s removal—there were concerns that the evident disabling of the Theodore Roosevelt by coronavirus would weaken the US force posture in the western Pacific. The aircraft carrier was one of four deployed in the Pacific region to threaten China with nuclear annihilation in the event of an open military clash.

Subsequent press reports indicate a deep split in the Pentagon between uniformed officers, who largely sided with Crozier, and civilian appointees of Trump, who sought to carry out the president’s wishes without regard to such traditional procedures as military investigations.

The sequence of events is worth reviewing, as it suggests that there are deeper crosscurrents in the political infighting within the military and the Trump administration.

Crozier had voiced his concerns about the growing coronavirus infection aboard his ship through a series of messages up the chain of command that ultimately reached Thomas Modly, the acting secretary of the navy. Modly responded by sending Crozier his personal cellphone number—as he revealed in a radio interview Friday—an action that amounted to inviting the captain to bypass the chain of command and go directly to the top civilian authority.

When Crozier sent his five-page letter, dated Monday, March 30, he copied it to 10 or 20 correspondents within the Navy hierarchy, but not to his immediate superior, Rear Admiral Stuart Baker, commander of the carrier battle group that included the Theodore Roosevelt. One press account indicates that the officers on board the Roosevelt had discussed the matter among themselves and decided on this unusual procedure in order to force action by making the issue public. Within a few hours, the Chronicle had a copy of the letter and published it.

There was consternation in both the White House and the Pentagon after the plight of the sailors became public. Crozier’s stark message—“We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die”—was a direct slap in the face.

According to a column published in the April 5 issue of the Washington Post, written by David Ignatius, the top uniformed officers—Admiral Michael Gilday, the Chief of Naval Operations, and General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—favored beginning a formal investigation of the crisis on the Theodore Roosevelt, but opposed any immediate disciplinary action against Crozier. Gilday actually told the press, “We’re not looking to shoot the messenger here.”

They were overruled by Modly, who told one colleague, “Breaking news: Trump wants him fired.” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who had initially sided with Milley and Gilday, then acceded to Trump’s demand. Significantly, as one defense publication pointed out, Crozier was fired three days after his letter became public, while ship commanders whose negligence led to collisions in which 17 sailors died—on the USS Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain—were not fired until 24 and 41 days had passed, respectively, and then only after preliminary investigations had been conducted.

Ignatius, the son of a secretary of the navy and a fixture in the US foreign policy establishment, has a wide range of contacts within the military-intelligence apparatus, and is frequently a conduit for the views of the high command. His column reveals mounting conflicts between the top brass and the White House, already seen in the reported uproar in the Pentagon over Trump’s abrupt decision to send a flotilla of warships large and small in the direction of Venezuela, at a time when naval operations are already under great strain because of the coronavirus.

Former Navy commanders denounced the firing of Crozier in interviews with Ignatius, including retired Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said, “I think the firing was a really bad decision, because it undermines the authority of the military commanders who are trying to take care of their troops, and significantly negatively impacts the willingness of commanders to speak truth to power.”

Sean O’Keefe, Navy secretary for George H.W. Bush., said Crozier “was running up an SOS,” adding, “It’s a judgment call, but you have to support the action of a deployed commander.”

Richard Danzig, who served as Navy secretary during the Clinton administration, told Ignatius: “If Capt. Crozier carelessly or intentionally jumped abruptly outside of military channels, then the Navy had good cause for removing him. But I doubt it was good judgment to rush to do it at this time.”

Prominent Democrats and former military officers aligned with them have denounced the firing of Crozier. Former NATO commander Admiral James Stavridis wrote in a column published Wednesday—the day before the firing—“He made the right choice and the Navy will back him up.”

The Democratic leaders of the House Armed Services Committee issued a statement that condemned Crozier’s removal, but was critical of his conduct. “Captain Crozier was justifiably concerned about the health and safety of his crew, but he did not handle the immense pressure appropriately,” they wrote. “However, relieving him of his command is an overreaction.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee to oppose Trump in the November election, told ABC News the firing of Crozier was “close to criminal… I think the guy, he should have a commendation rather than be fired.”

Navy Secretary Modly, formerly a highly paid consultant at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, became acting secretary in November when Trump fired Richard Spencer after he tried to demote Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, accused of war crimes by members of his own unit but celebrated by Trump. Modly was recently passed over for the permanent appointment, but he may have regarded firing Crozier as a means to regain favor at the White House.

In a subsequent interview, Modly emphasized that there were broader national security considerations in the decision, saying that other US warships in the Pacific “are now perhaps on higher standard of alert because our adversaries in the region think that one of our warships might be crippled, which it’s not.”

Another columnist with close ties to the military, onetime Iraq War cheerleader Max Boot, wrote a scathing denunciation of the firing of Crozier from the standpoint of aggrieved military officers.

“The damage that was done to the military by Trump’s decision to pardon suspected war criminals will be compounded by Thursday’s decision to fire the skipper of the Theodore Roosevelt,” he wrote. “The message that the administration is sending to the armed forces is that committing war crimes is acceptable but telling the truth and protecting the personnel under your command is not.”

Strikes, protests continue against unsafe working conditions amid coronavirus pandemic

Marcus Day

With increasing forcefulness, workers around the world are demanding adequate workplace safety measures, an end to nonessential work and the resources needed to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Strikes and protests by those who are providing critical services with virtually no protection, including nurses and health care workers, Amazon and postal workers, and grocery, food processing and service workers, have continued to erupt in country after country.

At the same time, the Trump administration and its global counterparts are seeking to lay the groundwork to force a return to work, even if it means even more catastrophic death rates among workers and a further spread of the pandemic.

At his White House press conferences Saturday and Sunday, Trump warned that the coming week would see “a lot of death,” but nevertheless revived his demand for the US economy to be quickly “opened up.” Complaining that “we’re paying people not to go to work,” he said. “We have to get back to work.”

Amazon worker at Staten Island Facility JFK8 (Image Credit: @AngeMariaSolis)

While Trump and the world’s capitalist governments are preoccupied with planning how quickly they can restart production and renew the flow of profits to the corporations and banks, workers are increasingly asserting their own interests and demands through walkouts and protests, many of them wildcat actions:

• In Belgium, 10 supermarkets in the Carrefour chain were closed Friday after workers walked out over low pay and inadequate protection against the coronavirus. Workers at a Carrefour in southern France previously walked out in late March.
  
• Royal Mail workers at a sorting facility in Kent in the United Kingdom walked out last week to protest the lack of hand sanitizer and other safety measures. The Communication Workers Union called off a strike earlier in March despite Royal Mail’s intransigent opposition to implementing more safety precautions.
  
• Postal workers in the United States started an online petition last week to demand hazard pay. The petition, which had garnered nearly 500,000 signatures by Sunday night, denounced the postal workers union, stating: “The union is no help to employees during this time at all. They should be fighting for this hazard pay or threatening another shutdown. We have to get louder, post office!!”
  
• In the Bahamas, emergency medical workers staged a sickout late Friday to protest the lack of safety measures. In response, the country’s health minister promised a payment of up to $5,000 for frontline health care workers.
  
• In Massachusetts, over 10,000 construction workers, members of the North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters, plan to strike today over worksite safety concerns. The governor has thus far left the decision to local governments on whether to allow construction to continue, while issuing toothless guidelines for safety practices.
  
• Nearly 1,000 meatpacking workers at JBS, a major pork and beef processor, stopped work in Colorado last Monday. Much of the heavily immigrant workforce at the plant, who speaks 27 different languages, refused to report to work after as many as 10 workers tested positive for COVID-19. The job action was not organized by the UFCW, the local union president said.
  
• Amazon workers at a delivery facility in Chicago demonstrated Friday and Saturday after two of their coworkers tested positive. This followed strikes by Amazon workers in Detroit and New York earlier in the week.
  
• On Thursday, dozens of workers walked out at a Hershey’s food packing plant in Palmyra, Pennsylvania operated by logistics giant XPO. “We demand an explanation of why they did not close the factory since there was an infected person, and they kept it quiet,” a worker at the plant told the local press.
  
• Over two dozen poultry workers at a Pilgrim’s Pride plant in Timberville, Virginia walked out to protest the lack of information after a person at the plant tested positive for COVID-19. “They worked us all day. They didn’t tell us, and we didn’t know how long that they have known,” a worker told local news.
  
• In Louisville, Kentucky, baristas at the coffee shop chain Heine Brothers carried out a sickout Friday demanding better protective measures and hazard pay. Hannah Jones, a shift lead, told local media, “This entire COVID-19 outbreak [the company has been saying], ‘Wait and see, wait and see, wait and see. We hear you, we hear you. We’re nervous too.’” She added, “They aren’t coming into contact with 200 people a day.”

The Trump administration, after saying the economy needed to be “raring to go” by Easter, temporarily retreated in the face of widespread anger and mounting protests by workers, combined with an accelerating wave of infections and deaths. It is nonetheless seeking to develop a narrative, with support from a pliant corporate media, that it will be possible to safely restart economic activity and a large-scale return to work in the near future.

At Saturday’s press conference, Trump’s Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Stephen Hahn, said that antibody tests “will be a tool to help us get people back to work,” despite the lack of scientific evidence that the presence of antibodies guarantees immunity to the virus that causes COVID-19.

The automakers, which lobbied to be designated “essential critical infrastructure” by the Department of Homeland Security, remain largely shut down, primarily in response to the wave of wildcat strikes that erupted in late March. Although autoworkers continue to succumb to the pandemic, with at least 11 Fiat Chrysler workers and six Ford workers having died, the auto companies are nevertheless floating the possibility of a restart later in the month.

“General Motors stated that it would take the situation ‘day by day’ and would not reopen until April 14,” a veteran GM worker in Indiana told the WSWS. “But after that, what’s going to be different? Are we going to be tested for the virus and get our temperatures taken?

“At the very least, before we return everyone should be tested once and have their temperature taken at the gate before entering the plant. But if we have a stay-at-home order in the state that goes past April 14, I don’t see how they can legitimately open again. I understand that some jobs are essential, but not making new cars. This is getting out of control.”

The worker denounced the criminal lack of preparation by both the Republicans and the Democrats, saying it demonstrated the government’s hostility to workers. “This virus has really showed that both parties are incapable. If anything good has come out of it, it’s that most people will know that our government values profit over lives and thinks that we are expendable.”

Agreeing that the working class has to lead the fight against pandemic, he concluded, “If we don’t do it, no one else is going to. I believe in strength in numbers. For so many years we have been complacent. Now we need to stand up for the future generations.”