French government rejects lockdown as UK variant becomes dominant strain

Samuel Tissot

In a joint televised address on Thursday evening, French Prime Minister Jean Castex and Health Minister Olivier Véran admitted that more recent and more contagious variants now make up the majority of cases in France. Nonetheless, Castex rejected calls by scientists for a nationwide lockdown, declaring that “we have to push it back as far as we can.”

Citing Wednesday’s figures of over 32,500 new infections, Castex admitted that this was “a figure we haven’t seen since November.” The virus “has been gaining ground again in the last week,” he stated.

Emmanuel Macron [Sebastien Nogier, Pool via AP]

The recent spike in infections has been primarily driven by the spread of the more infectious and more deadly variants. Health Minister Olivier Véran revealed that in the last week, the UK variant accounted for nearly half of the cases throughout the country. He added that a “further five to six” percent of new infections were cases of the Brazilian and South African variants.

The spread of these variants will worsen an already catastrophic situation in France. Early this week France surpassed 85,000 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, including over 20,000 since January 1. The seven-day average for daily deaths is 313 and more than 20,000 for new cases. France’s positive test percentage is nearly seven percent, suggesting that the true number of cases is much larger.

Directly contradicting scientists and the majority of the French population who support new lockdown measures, Castex went on to claim, “Some people are calling for strict containment, to get rid of COVID-19 once and for all. This is not possible, given the nature of the variants.”

Such statements do not reflect scientific reality but the interests of the superrich. The virus can be controlled and eventually eliminated internationally on the basis of careful scientific management. A lockdown would dramatically bring down the number of cases and prevent tens of thousands of deaths while vaccines are distributed throughout the population. An effective test and trace system would be able to prevent mass outbreaks.

In reality, the Macron government neglects these measures because they cut into the flow of corporate profits into the pockets of the superrich. This is why all schools and all non-essential workplaces must remain open, despite being massive vectors for the spread of the disease. As far as Castex, Véran and Macron are concerned, if thousands of individuals’ lives are cut short as a result of this policy, then so be it.

In response to the increased spread of the variants, Castex only announced the “reinforced surveillance” of 20 departments, including the capital region of Ile-de-France. Each day of this wait-and-see approach will result in hundreds if not thousands of preventable deaths. He hinted that a new partial lockdown may be ordered, which would involve the maintenance of open schools and non-essential workplaces, as was the case in November.

This is only the latest in a set of ineffectual measures implemented by the government since the new year. This includes the nationwide 6:00 p.m. curfew and non-EU travel ban introduced after the variants were already well established in the country. Dunkirk and Nice have been placed under weekend lockdowns that will start March 6.

Crucially, however, schools and non-essential workplaces have been left open throughout the week.

Since the end of the pseudo-lockdown in November, the Macron government has steadily shed any pretense of fighting the virus. In October, he insisted that the population needed to learn to “live with the virus.” Following comments from Jean-Francois Delfraissy, the head of the government’s scientific council, calling for a new lockdown in January, Macron denounced the “interventions of scientists” and “incessant tracking of errors” in the government’s handling of COVID-19.

While refusing to take the steps necessary to combat the virus, Véran used the public address to promote further illusions in the government’s faltering vaccination campaign. He stated, “We will see the end of this epidemic. The progress of the vaccination campaign allows us to set a course for the end of spring.”

In fact, France’s vaccination campaign has been a debacle. So far only five percent of adults have received their first dose. Earlier on Thursday, UK-based vaccine producer AstraZeneca confirmed it would only be able to provide 50 percent of its second-quarter dose quota to the EU, threatening to reignite nationalist tensions with the Johnson government over vaccine access.

Workers must reject this murderous policy and demand an immediate full lockdown! Schools and non-essential workplaces must be closed. A comfortable living income must be provided to everyone in the population throughout a lockdown, including access to housing, food and other essential services. Full compensation must be provided to small businesses.

The strict March lockdown was only implemented by governments across Europe following a wave of wildcat strikes beginning in Italy and Spain. This experience underlines the fact that the only way that thousands of lives can be saved is through the mobilization of the working class in a general strike against the herd immunity policy of capitalist governments. The answer to the capitalist elite’s policy of mass death is the expropriation of the financial elite and the reorganization of society’s wealth in order to meet social need.

Michigan boy, 10, loses both hands, both legs to COVID-related MIS-C syndrome

Zac Corrigan

Dae’Shun Jamison, age 10, of Shelby, Michigan, contracted COVID-19 in early December. Like most kids his age who catch the disease, he was initially asymptomatic. But after two weeks he developed headaches and a fever. His mother took him to the hospital on December 21.

Dae'Shun Jamison (Photo credit: Brittney Autman)

He has yet to return home. For more than two months, Dae’Shun has undergone an unimaginable battery of surgeries and other procedures, including, tragically the amputation of both hands and both legs.

The diagnosis is Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children, or MIS-C, a life-threatening condition observed only in children with COVID-19. As their heart, kidneys and other organs become inflamed and dysfunctional, children with MIS-C suffer symptoms like gut pain, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, bloodshot eyes and fatigue. As of February 8, 2,060 children in the US have been diagnosed with MIS-C, and 30 of them have died as a result, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC).

In a harrowing series of updates on the family’s GoFundMe page, Brittney Autman tells the story of her son’s experience with MIS-C. Dae’Shun was initially put on a ventilator and dialysis machine, she writes, with “two tubes in each side of his lungs to release fluid from his body.” Another “tube inserted into his pelvis led to his heart, filtering his blood.”

On December 30, she writes that her son “will have to get his fingertips and toes amputated.” Dr. Rosemary Olivero, a pediatrician at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids where Dae’Shun is being treated, explained to Newsweek that severe heart dysfunction occurs in some children with MIS-C, obstructing the flow of blood through the limbs and necessitating amputation.

On January 2, Autman notes that Dae’Shun “has had 6 units [pints] of blood after his procedures yesterday.” She describes how “they cut his hands and legs to release pressure from the fluid in his body” and to “get some circulation going in his legs and hands.” Soon, Dae’Shun’s condition improved to the point where he was able to be taken off his ventilator and could answer yes/no questions by shaking his head.

But the improvements were not long lasting. By January 12, Autman had been informed that her son would need to have both legs amputated. Even worse, “because of his autism,” she writes, Dae’Shun had “no clue of what’s going to happen.”

On January 15, his right leg was removed. By the time his second leg amputation was scheduled, he had also developed clots obstructing the flow of blood to both of his hands. His left leg and both hands were amputated on February 22. The next day, his mother wrote that the surgery went well and “they are trying to get his pain under control. Dae’Shun is very emotional about his amputations, and it breaks my heart.”

Dae’Shun Jamison is one of the more than three million children in the United States who have contracted COVID-19. He and over 2,000 others have suffered MIS-C as a result, including 79 children in Michigan, according to the state’s Department of Health and Human Services. Twenty-four Michigan children under the age of five have developed MIS-C, in addition to 31 children between five and 10 years old, like Dae’Shun, and 24 children age 11 or older, like Honestie Hodges, 14, of Grand Rapids, who died of MIS-C on November 22.

The actual prevalence of COVID among children—who, according to the CDC, account for some 13 percent of infections in the US—as well as the emergence of new and horrific conditions in children like MIS-C expose the two big lies that are being used by the Biden administration to force schools back open for in-person learning across the country: (1) children do not contract and spread COVID in large numbers, and (2) if they do, they will not suffer horribly.

On February 16, while Dae’Shun was preparing for his triple amputation, President Biden held a town hall meeting dedicated to justifying the reopening of schools and businesses. On live television, the president smiled in the face of an eight-year-old girl named Layla and assured her and her mother that children were safe from the virus.

“My children often ask if they will catch COVID, and if they do, will they die,” said Layla’s mother as they stood together, maskless, in front of a microphone in the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee.

Biden’s response was, “First of all, kids don’t get COVID very often. It’s unusual for that to happen.

“Number two,” the president said, addressing Layla directly, “you’re not likely to be able to be exposed to something and spread it to mommy or daddy, and it’s not likely mommy and daddy are able to spread it to you either. So, I wouldn’t worry about it, baby. I promise you.”

These were the very lies used to keep schools open in Michigan during the time when Dae’Shun Jamison contracted COVID. As cases surged statewide, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, issued an executive order closing all high schools for in-person learning from November 18 through December 8, but allowed K-8 schools and day care centers to remain open.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) of Michigan union immediately endorsed the move and repeated the lie in a statement on their website: “Given lower transmission rates and greater need among younger students, whether or not K-8 education is face-to-face, virtual or a hybrid remains the decision of local districts.”

This was at a time when, by the state’s own count, there were 108 ongoing COVID outbreaks at K-8 schools in Michigan.

Dae’Shun Jamison’s case makes it all the more painfully clear that children can and do contract, transmit, develop symptoms, suffer horribly and die from COVID-19. But the entire political establishment—from the Biden administration, to state and local officials, to the pro-capitalist unions like the AFT—continue to propagate the lie that schools can be reopened safely while the pandemic is still raging. And they are dedicated to making this happen no matter the body count.

Stacked behind these lies, of course, are billions of dollars that stand to be made. The rich demand the return to in-person learning because they need it to ensure the continuous flow of profits into their bank accounts. If parents are to be kept in factories and other workplaces, their children must be at school.

How many more children will develop MIS-C and suffer a fate like that of Dae’Shun Jamison and his family? This depends entirely on the political mobilization of the working class, independent of and in opposition to the Democrats and the trade unions, to close schools and nonessential workplaces and stop the spread of COVID-19.

Delays to Big Three auto companies’ vaccination program highlight profit motive driving pandemic response

Jessica Goldstein

All three Detroit-based automakers—Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler)—have announced that plans to roll out distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to workers are delayed due to vaccine shortages, according to a report published in the Detroit Free Press last week.

Workers at the FCA Warren Truck Plant in Warren, Michigan (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

General Motors had plans to inform workers in December when they would be able to receive the vaccine and how the company planned to administer it on a voluntary basis. Ford had bought 12 ultra-cold storage freezers to keep doses of the Pfizer vaccine, freezers which still remain empty. Thus far, neither company has made their vaccination plans public.

Stellantis is the only company of the Big Three automakers that has administered first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to any of its employees. It was only able to secure 1,200 first-dose shots through the Boone County Health Department to administer to just over one-third of the workforce of 3,580 at its Belvidere Assembly Plant in Belvidere, Illinois. Stellantis has no plans in place for getting vaccines to the rest of its global workforce.

Two questions arise from the situation. First: Why has the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine been farmed out to private corporations like GM in the first place for the exclusive use of their employees?

Second: Why are autoworkers, manifestly nonessential workers, being given priority while many health care workers, grocery store workers, logistics workers, the elderly and medically vulnerable have yet to receive vaccines?

Vaccine distribution, like the overall response to the pandemic, has exposed the criminal incompetence and indifference of the ruling class to the preservation of human life. The vaccination effort has been marked by a lack of systemization and planning, with the result that only a small percentage of the US population has been immunized.

The US has taken a decentralized approach to vaccine distribution, leaving it up to the resources of local and state-level health departments to secure and distribute the temperature-sensitive Moderna and Pfizer vaccines to hospitals, commercial pharmacies and health centers. Members of the public have been largely left to fend for themselves in scheduling appointments, finding vaccination sites that have supplies available, and making and transporting themselves to get the shots.

The systematic defunding of public health by capitalist governments has contributed to this debacle both in the US and globally. The companies that produce the COVID-19 vaccines currently administered in the US, Pfizer and Moderna, rely on special equipment and supplies to produce the vaccine. The companies are facing a bottleneck as they compete against one another to buy up scare components, such as lipids, that are needed for vaccine production.

A shortage of the syringes needed to administer the vaccine is also creating administration delays, according to a February 13 report by the Madison, Wisconsin journal Capital Times. The winter storm that devastated much of the US with relentless ice and snow over the past several weeks has also delayed shipments of the vaccines to and from major transport hubs in the US, exacerbating and prolonging existing shortages.

Speaking to the Free Press, Stellantis spokeswoman Jodi Tinson said, “We have no control. Like everyone else, it’s the state and local governments that are determining when and how many. ... We’re working with Boone County on getting a second dose for the 1,200 people who got the first shot. When they’ll have more for the rest of the plant, that’s for them to determine. We wait.”

The continuation of auto production, involving massive factories that serve as vectors of COVID-19 transmission while the pandemic continues unchecked, cuts across any rational plan to contain the pandemic. The same is the case for the drive by the Biden administration to reopen face-to-face instruction in schools based on the false claim that schools are not sources of the spread of the virus.

Democratic and Republican officials have supported the designation of auto manufacturing as critical industries, giving an official cover to the crude prioritization of profits over human lives. This has been abetted by the United Auto Workers, which has supported to the hilt the restart of auto production by providing a smokescreen of inadequate safety measures while helping management cover up the spread of the coronavirus in the auto plants.

But autoworkers know that ,unlike health care workers, food production and distribution workers, and transportation and logistics workers, their jobs building cars that will sit for months in lots are not truly essential to the functioning of society during a pandemic. They are only essential to the handful of wealthy elites who make a profit from the vehicles they produce.

As one worker at the Stellantis Sterling Heights Assembly Plant told the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter, “It doesn’t make sense to be building $60,000-80,000 vehicles during a pandemic and making record profits. How are they even doing that? To get through a pandemic and not miss a beat? The companies are being propped up by the government and the upper echelons are profiting.”

The United Auto Workers accepts uncritically that all considerations of health and safety are to be subordinated to the profit requirements of the auto companies “The UAW continues to work with the Biden administration, the Detroit Three and all of our employers on vaccine distribution plans,” UAW spokesman Brian Rothenberg told the Free Press. “Those plans will be implemented when the vaccine is available, how much is available at a given time and other distribution variables by state.”

In 2020 GM made a pretax profit of $9.7 billion, up from $8.4 billion in 2019 despite a drop in auto US sales from 2.9 million to 2.5 million vehicles and the outbreak of the deadly pandemic. Ford did not beat its 2019 profits, but still accumulated a substantial $2.8 billion in earnings before interest and taxes for 2020, a huge sum considering the global fall in vehicle sales.

These vast profits were sweated out of the labor of workers, who were forced back to work in unsafe factories globally, beginning in the US in May 2020. The resumption in production followed wildcat work stoppages by rank-and-file workers across the globe, in defiance of the United Auto Workers (UAW) and other trade unions, that forced plants across North America and in Europe to shut down in March 2020 as the pandemic began to spread rapidly.

The US-based auto corporations began herding workers back into unsafe plants in May with the help of the UAW and Democratic lawmakers like Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker and Michigan State Representative Debbie Dingell, whose district includes the area where Ford’s Dearborn Truck Plant is located.

Workers have reported that no stepped-up safety precautions are being taken as new, more infectious variants are on the rise throughout the US. Early on, workers were given flimsy masks while cleaning supplies, hand sanitizers and gloves ran out regularly, and social distancing was impossible as thousands of workers per shift were called back.

As cases among autoworkers mounted and workers died of COVID-19, the UAW worked with the corporations and the media to systematically black out information on workers who tested positive in the plant and who may have died. As a result, countless numbers of autoworkers continue to fall ill with COVID-19 and die all for the sake of corporate profits.

A Stellantis worker from Kokomo, Indiana voiced frustration with the distribution of the vaccines: “They asked us on our log-in questionnaire if we were interested in getting a vaccine. This was on our entry questions about COVID-19.

“There has never been a real plan on how to roll out the vaccine. There's no excuse for the lack of organization. It’s chaos! All these same situations seem to repeat themselves. Empty promises. It’s more of the same. All talk and no action. There needs to be a plan for every issue, a problem with a solution. [Biden] put so many experts in place, he needs to make use of them. [The Democrats] can only make promises they can’t keep. They talk a good game, but never follow through.”

Several programmatic demands necessarily flow from these realities:

• All nonessential businesses must be shut down and all workers and small businesses must be provided full compensation.

• Workers must demand an end to the anarchic free-for-all of the rollout and insist on a science-based and centralized effort to distribute vaccines, beginning with the most vulnerable sections of the population, as quickly and widely as possible. A portion of the massive sums of wealth that have driven up the stock markets must be expropriated from the corporations to implement and carry out these efforts.

• Finally, this must be an international effort. The pandemic itself respects no national boundaries and no national program is sufficient to solve it. The working class must demand a stop to the disproportionate buying up of quantities of vaccines and treatments by wealthier countries in order for it to be distributed equally worldwide.

The fight for these essential measures clashes with the profit requirements of the corporations. They raise the necessity for the adoption of a socialist program, ending the anarchy of capitalist production by placing the auto industry, pharmaceuticals and other giant industries under the democratic public ownership of the working class.

Rapper's arrest triggers mass protests over social conditions in Spain

Alejandro López

Protests continue against the incarceration of rapper Pablo Hasél by the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos. Hasél was jailed for insulting the state and the Bourbon monarchy in tweets and songs.

Anger is only mounting after another rapper, Elgio, received a six-month prison sentence on Tuesday. Like Hasél, his conviction is for a “crime of glorifying terrorism” for praising “in an almost systematic way” the long-defunct armed group GRAPO and its members. The High Court suspended his entry into prison, since the sentence is less than two years but reminded him that this decision is subject to not committing any crime over the next two years.

Demonstrators march during a protest condemning the arrest of rap singer Pablo Hasél in Barcelona, Spain, Friday, Feb. 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) condemning the arrest of rap singer Pablo Hasél in Barcelona, Spain, Friday, Feb. 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Hasél was jailed after he violated this condition by continuing to sing and tweet.

Over the past 10 days, tens of thousands of demonstrators have joined protests in cities throughout Spain, including Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao and Madrid. Most have concentrated in Catalonia, Hasél’s home region. Over the past four years, protests in the region have been violently repressed as part of the fascistic anti-Catalan campaign by successive Popular Party, PSOE and Podemos governments.

Most of the protesters are between 16 and 25 years old. They are organising through social media and Telegram channels, outside of the control of the official political parties and trade unions. Most are not affiliated with any parties, although members of the Catalan-nationalist Candidatures of Popular Unity (CUP) and other pseudo-left parties have attempted to coopt the protests to suppress social opposition to the PSOE-Podemos government.

Hasél himself is a Stalinist of the most repulsive kind, who has repeatedly proclaimed his support for the assassination of Leon Trotsky. Among the protesters there are many who are disgusted by Hasél's tributes to the murderer of the great revolutionary, whose memory is honored among broad sections of the Spanish and Catalan working class. However, the protesters are being animated beyond the Hasél issue and the attack on freedom of expression. This is a generation that has only witnessed austerity, mass unemployment, relentless media propaganda in favour of the fascistic Vox party and attacks on democratic rights, under both the right-wing Popular Party, the PSOE and Podemos.

Youth face terrible social conditions. Over 40 percent of them are currently unemployed. For those with a job, 49 percent face precarious, temporary contracts. As of 2019, a year before the pandemic, the average age most young people left their parents’ home was 29.5 years.

The COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated an already far advanced breakdown. The PSOE-Podemos government’s criminal “herd immunity” policy has left over 100,000, according to the latest National Institute of Statistics data, and over 2.5 million infected. Youth have faced the brunt of this policy, being forced to go back to schools so that profits can be extracted from their parents’ labour, work in precarious and unsafe jobs in supermarkets or as waiters and delivery staff, and take exams in person in universities.

On top of this, they are targeted and blamed each time the incidence rate of the virus hikes due to the criminal policies of the ruling class. The population is bombarded with the idea that illegal youth parties and poor mask usage are to blame for the spread of the virus, not the reopening of schools, job places and overcrowded public transport.

Alex Cantón from Valencia, 24, working as a food delivery rider for Just Eat, told El País , “There’s a lot of rage and an accumulation of injustices and problems that youth are facing that have spread to the rest of society. We cannot enter the labour market or we have very precarious jobs, although I don’t think that this is an easy thing to do for a 50 year old either.”

Laura said, “We came to the protest, but Hasél is just another excuse.” She said, “We are protesting against evictions, in defense of people without protection, for the years of repression that we have had to endure. The jailing [of Hasél] was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Anthony Corey, a 23-year-old history student born in Honduras, said, “There are jailed political prisoners, activists, rappers. ... On the other hand, nobody says anything about the ex-military men who said in a WhatsApp chat that they want to shoot millions of people or the barbarities that journalists like Federico Jiménez Losantos say every day,” in reference to the right-wing pundit and radio host.

El País had to acknowledge the vast hostility it faced from protesters. It noted, “In Barcelona, many protesters decline to speak to El País .” It blames the influence of the Catalan nationalists, claiming that hostility towards the media has “penetrated deep down, which, protest after protest, reflecting a proclamation that is repeated: … ‘Manipulative Spanish press.’ Of those who speak, almost none give their surname. All justify this search for anonymity by citing the ‘fear’ that the Mossos [regional police] could identify them with the riots.”

The fact that many protesters view El País as a conduit of the Spanish state and refuse to provide their surnames, fearing they will be handed over to the police, says volumes about the journal. Many protesters view El País, not as a guarantor of freedom of expression, but one of its chief attackers on behalf of the PSOE-Podemos government.

Carme, 20-year-old philosophy student, told El Periódico, “I don't care about Pablo Hasél. He has said many things that I don't like, but that's not why he has to go to prison. I come out more for criticizing the abuses of the police and how young people are criminalized for protesting than for Hasél.”

Another protester, Marc, 23, said, "We want things to change. Those in power smell like Francoism,” referring to the fascist regime set up by General Francisco Franco at the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939 and that fell only in 1978.

Joan, 21 years old, said, "We are protesting Hasél's imprisonment because it’s unjust and because we young people suffer unemployment. We are already seeing what our future will look like."

Reis, 25, told Reuters, "I am not here only for [Hasél], but for the right to express ourselves, and because there is a lot of discontent for a lot of things that must change.”

Students and young workers must assimilate the lessons of the past. It is now 10 years since mass youth protests erupted throughout Spain after the Egyptian Revolution in January 2011 over hardship, savage austerity measures and the PSOE-led government.

The so-called indignados movement, or 15-M movement, was characterised by a rejection of all major parties, the PSOE, above all, which has implemented cuts amid unemployment levels reaching 50 percent among 18 to 25 year olds. There was also enormous anger against the trade unions like the Stalinist Workers Commissions (CCOO) and the social democratic General Union of Labor (UGT) that have been the main vehicles in imposing these measures.

Pseudo-left groups like Anticapitalistas promoted diffuse assemblies and opposed calls to build a new political leadership, instead promoting “autonomy,” “democratic self-organisation” and “no-politics”—blocking any genuine debate and political challenge to the PSOE and the union bureaucracy.

Having suppressed the social opposition, Anticapitalistas along with a group of Stalinist professors and spokespersons for this movement then founded the Podemos party three years later. The party is now showering corporations and banks with billions of euros, implementing austerity, and clamping down on democratic rights, including the jailing of musicians.

Tokyo gives coast guard authorization to fire on foreign vessels

Ben McGrath

In a decision that will only further escalate tensions in the Indo-Pacific region, members of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) announced Thursday that the government had confirmed a “reinterpretation” of a law to allow Japan’s coast guard to fire upon foreign vessels attempting to land on disputed islands, namely the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. The move is aimed at China as Tokyo, Washington, and their allies in the region increase their efforts to militarily and economically subordinate Beijing to their interests.

Japan Coast Guard vessel Yashima (Source: Wikimedia)

The meeting between government officials and the LDP members was held by the party’s National Defense Division. Previously, Japan’s coast guard was authorized to fire on foreign vessels only in self-defense, as attacking another country’s ships is in violation of Article 9 of the constitution, which explicitly bars Japan from waging war or using other forms of military aggression. This change significantly increases the chances of an armed clash with China over the disputed territories in the East China Sea.

Tokyo’s immediate justification for the change is China’s own new law allowing its coast guard to use their weaponry against vessels in territories it claims. Beijing’s legislation took effect on February 1, but was drawn up towards the end of 2020, after four years of increasingly belligerent provocations by the Trump administration in Washington.

Trump, backed by the Democrats and Republicans, repeatedly antagonized China by calling into question the status of Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province. The US supplied Taipei with large amounts of weaponry and increased official state visits to the island. Beijing has stated that any recognition of or attempt by Taipei to declare independence would trigger a Chinese military response.

Japan claims that last year Chinese ships sailed into the waters around the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands approximately twice per month and with the passage of the Beijing’s law, twice per week. Tokyo also claimed that Beijing sent more than 1,100 ships over the course of 333 days, both record highs, in 2020 into the so-called contiguous zone near the islands.

Parroting Washington’s line, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said on Thursday, “I firmly believe that it is a free and open order based on the rule of law, not force or coercion, that will bring peace and prosperity to the region and the world.”

Tokyo and Washington have both deliberately inflamed what were once minor regional territorial disputes in order to put pressure on China. This included Japan’s “nationalization” of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in 2012.

The Biden administration in the US is deepening its confrontational approach to China. During a press conference last Tuesday, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby stated, “We hold with the international community about the Senkakus and the sovereignty of the Senkakus, and we support Japan obviously in that sovereignty.” This is a shift from Washington’s previous public position to not take a side in the territorial dispute.

When Biden took office in January, his administration quickly assured Tokyo that the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands fell under the US-Japan security treaty, meaning Washington would support Japan in a military clash with China over the uninhabited islands. This position was first put forward in 2014 under the Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice president.

There is also deepening military cooperation between Tokyo and Washington. Last year Japan increased the number of Self-Defense Forces’ (SDF) missions providing protection to US ships on military exercises in the Indo-Pacific region to 25—up from 14 in 2019. This included spy missions during which US naval vessels collected intelligence on ballistic missiles and other military activities of countries that almost certainly included China. Tokyo did not disclose where the operations took place just that they “contributed to the defense of Japan.”

Japan’s 2014 constitutional “reinterpretation” under former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and related military legislation passed the following year have allowed Japan to engage in so-called “collective self-defense,” or to conduct military operations overseas in the aid of an ally, primarily the US. Were the US to stage a provocation against China, for example, during one of these joint missions, Japan’s SDF would be given the green light to join the attack.

Such US provocations against China include so-called “freedom of navigation” operations in and around Chinese controlled islands, where the US sends naval ships into these waters claimed by Beijing. At the same time, however, Washington and Tokyo both denounce China for sailing in or flying over international waters near Japanese controlled islands, or those with ties like Taiwan.

Tokyo hopes to use claims of “Chinese aggression” against Taiwan to also further its own imperialist interests. Masahisa Sato, who leads the LDP’s Foreign Affairs Division, announced in early February the creation of a “Taiwan project team” to explore how to deepen relations with Taipei. Following in Washington’s footsteps, LDP lawmakers called for a law similar to Washington’s Taiwan Relations Act. Under the 1979 act, Washington does not officially recognize Taiwan, but continues to provide the island with military support.

Since 1979, the US has given de facto support to the “one China” policy, which states that Beijing is the legitimate government and that Taiwan is a part of China. However, Washington stated in August that it was making significant changes to its Taiwan policy and the meaning of “one China.” A similar law in Tokyo would almost certainly further challenge Beijing’s claims to Taiwan—a former Japanese colony.

Sato stated that Tokyo would consider increased diplomatic contact between lawmakers from Japan and Taiwan. LDP members have suggested “2+2” dialogues between the Japanese foreign and defense ministers with their counterparts in Taipei, undoubtedly encouraged to do so by Washington’s own push to increase official diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Sato also stated, “We want to bolster our diplomatic prowess through a two-pronged approach, using our human rights and Taiwan project teams.” Like Washington and imperialist countries, Tokyo is seeking to exploit unproven claims of “genocide” in China’s Xinjiang region as well as Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong, to justify ramping up military tensions against China.

Australia cancels citizenship of woman labelled ISIS terrorist

Tom Peters

On February 16, Turkish authorities announced that a 26-year-old woman, Suhayra Aden, was captured with her two children while crossing the border from Syria. Turkey’s Defence Ministry said she was wanted as an alleged Islamic State (ISIS) “terrorist.” The three will likely be deported to New Zealand, where the woman has citizenship.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told the media: “This individual was clearly most appropriately dealt with by Australia… that is the place from which they departed for Syria.” She added: “New Zealand frankly is tired of having Australia export its problems.”

Aden travelled to the war-torn country in 2014 on an Australian passport. She was a dual New Zealand-Australian citizen, and had lived in Australia with her family since she was six years old. The Australian government cancelled her citizenship last year.

Responding to Ardern, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared that, under anti-democratic laws passed in 2015, any dual citizens who “engaged with terrorist activities” are “automatically” stripped of their Australian citizenship. Morrison made no comment on what this would mean for Aden’s children, aged five and under. He described Aden as an “enemy of our country” who had “fought with terrorist organisations.”

In fact, Aden has not been convicted of anything and the allegations against her remain unproven. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) pointed out: “The Turkish government has in the past labelled as terrorists people who merely lived under Islamic State and did not participate in fighting or actual acts of terrorism.”

Aden travelled to Syria as a teenager and lived there under ISIS during the brutal war aimed at overthrowing the regime of Bashar al-Assad. She reportedly married and had three children with two Swedish men, who were both killed in the war. One of her children died of pneumonia.

The growth of ISIS in Syria was the product of intervention by the United States and its allies, who provided weapons and other support to Islamist “rebels” who were fighting to topple Assad, including the Al Qaeda offshoot Al Nusra. Foreign fighters were allowed to flood into Syria, including from Libya, where they had been supported by the US and NATO in 2011 to overthrow the Gaddafi regime. The Syrian war has left at least 500,000 people dead and 6.5 million homeless.

Successive Australian and New Zealand governments, as minor imperialist allies of Washington, supported the war against Assad. They had previously sent troops to the illegal US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, aimed at securing US dominance over the resource-rich Middle East and central Asia. More than a million people have died in these wars and entire societies have been destroyed, with tens of millions made homeless.

Australia redeployed troops to Iraq in 2014 to support the US occupation of the country and military operations against ISIS fighters who had crossed into the country from Syria. New Zealand also sent troops to Iraq in 2015.

Aden and her children are among thousands of people, from many parts of the world, who have been detained after escaping from the horrors of war in Syria. Clark Jones, a criminologist at the Australian National University, told Radio NZ the detainees include 67 Australian women and children, including “around 34” children aged six years and under.

The Al-Hawl (or al-Hol) refugee camp in 2019 [Source: Wikipedia]

ABC reporter Dylan Welch, who spoke with Aden during a visit to the Al-Hawl refugee camp in northern Syria in 2019, said: “She explained how worried she was, not only for herself but mainly for the kids. She was terrified she was going to lose the baby.” Aden’s children were suffering from malnutrition and dysentery.

The refugee camp in the middle of the desert houses about 70,000 people, including 10,000 former ISIS supporters.

Australia’s ruling elite, which has some of the world’s most draconian anti-refugee policies, is now seeking to wash its hands of any responsibility for the fate of its citizens caught up in this humanitarian disaster. The decision to abrogate citizenship violates the basic democratic rights of Aden and her children.

New Zealand’s Ardern feigned sympathy for the children, telling Newshub: “If we are thinking about the wellbeing of the kids, then surely we’d think about making sure this person was repatriated to the place they had family, and that place is Australia.”

However, the Australian and New Zealand governments have known that the three joint citizens were in the Al-Hawl camp at least since 2019, when Ardern and Morrison first discussed the issue. Nothing was done by either government to assist them, despite the immense dangers facing people in the camp.

New Zealand has one of the lowest refugee intakes in the world, at just 1,500 people per year. Successive NZ governments have collaborated with Australia’s abusive system of offshore detention of asylum seekers.

Ardern’s decision to publicly denounce Canberra for “exporting its problems” has nothing to do with humanitarian concerns. Australia and New Zealand are close allies and trading partners, but the economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has produced conflicts between the two countries.

Significantly, Ardern’s rebuke follows comments by Morrison on February 1 criticising New Zealand’s close trading relationship with China, which has overtaken Australia as New Zealand’s number one trading partner. Morrison called for New Zealand to “stick together” with the US and Australia, which are increasingly preparing for war against China.

At the same time, as the latest episode shows, the ruling class in both countries is stoking nationalism to divert growing anger over attacks on workers’ jobs and living standards.

Ardern’s Labour Party government is seeking to channel opposition to the long-term erosion of the rights of about 600,000 New Zealanders living in Australia. Under changes made to Australian legislation in 2001, those who migrated to Australia after that date have few means to apply for citizenship. They can be deported easily and are ineligible for welfare payments and disability support, regardless of how long they have lived in Australia.

New Zealand’s government and opposition parties have hypocritically denounced Australia’s policy of deporting NZ citizens, many of whom grew up in Australia, for criminal offences, including minor crimes. More than 2,000 people have been sent back under the hardline policy since 2015. New Zealand’s media has blamed the deportees for the growth of criminal gangs.

New Zealand, however, has similarly brutal anti-immigrant policies. Last year, for example, the Ardern government deported a paralysed Tongan woman despite warnings from doctors that she could die. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government barred thousands of temporary migrants from accessing welfare payments for nearly a year, while New Zealand’s border closure—one of the harshest in the world—has resulted in thousands of work visa holders being stranded overseas and unable to return.

A wonderful year for the elite: Top 25 hedge fund managers earned record $32 billion in 2020 as millions plunged into misery

Kevin Reed

On February 22, the Institutional Investor (II) published its annual “Rich List” of the top twenty-five hedge managers and their earnings in 2020. During a year in which tens of millions of people lost their jobs and hundreds of thousands died from the coronavirus pandemic in the US, these super-wealthy individuals collectively increased their earnings 50 percent over 2019 to $32 billion.

In “The 20th Annual Rich List, the Definitive Ranking of What Hedge Fund Managers Earned in 2020,” Stephen Taub wrote, “A bad year for humanity was a wonderful year for the hedge fund elite.”

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange [Credit: AP Photo/Richard Drew]

To this the editors of the publication added, “when volatility increases and stock markets soar—regardless of their connection to the real economy—a select group of men (and yes, it is all men on II’s 2020 Rich List) stand to make bank. It may not be seemly, but it remains fact. And Steve Taub, alone among his peers, consistently gets it right.”

Topping the list was Israel (Izzy) Englander, the founder and CEO of Millennium Management , who earned $3.8 billion in 2020. Englander, 72, more than doubled his 2019 earnings of $1.5 billion and has a net worth of $7.2 billion and is 74th richest American according to the Forbes 400 2020 list.

Englander’s Millennium Management is characterized in investment circles as “the world’s largest alternative asset management firm with $39 billion assets under management” and it operates in America, Europe and Africa. The Millennium Management fund increased its value by 26 percent and earned “$10.2 billion in 2020, bringing the firm’s lifetime return for investors to $36 billion,” according to the II profile of Englander which noted, “Englander has been on the Rich List in 19 of 20 years, including last year’s tie for third place.”

To get a sense of the amount of money earned by Englander in 2020, his payout of $3.8 billion would cover the living expenses of 5,000 families of four for 10 years. The other 24 individuals on the “Rich List” earned between $1 billion and $2.6 billion and top 10 earned a collective $20 billion.

A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that engages in complex trading schemes on Wall Street. Short selling (betting that the value of a stock is going to fall), leverage (borrowing funds to purchase a financial asset) and derivatives (complex bundles of assets such as forwards, futures, options and swaps) are among the techniques used by hedge funds and these activities are available only to “institutional investors” and “high net worth individuals” who are part of the exclusive super-wealthy financial oligarchy.

One searches high and low online to find a single word of criticism or objection to the grotesque accumulation of wealth by the hedge fund managers hailed by the publishers and editors of II. It does not register in the capitalist press that there is any problem at all with a handful of billionaires raking in more billions while millions are without jobs, food, shelter and health care while the government and corporate America are demanding workers stay on the job and children go back to school to face the deadly pandemic.

All that could be mustered was the following from CNBC, “The big gains during the coronavirus pandemic, coupled with the public debate over hedge funds in the wake of the GameStop controversy, is likely to draw criticism from lawmakers and the public over hedge fund pay and fairness in financial markets.”

As analyzed on the World Socialist Web Site last week, the GameStop episode—which began as a “short squeeze” applied on hedge funds by a group of small retail investors—in the end resulted in many millions of dollars “pocketed by some of the most powerful sections of the financial oligarchy.”

The fact is that the bankrupting of small investors—some of whom mortgaged their homes to invest money amid the GameStop frenzy—was the inevitable outcome of a system dominated by the massive Wall Street firms.

Meanwhile, the GameStop experience as well as the 2020 hedge fund manager’s earnings barely raise an eyebrow in Washington D.C., where Congressional representatives and leading figures in the White House—both Democrats and Republicans—are themselves part of the financial feeding frenzy.

It should be recalled that leading figures of both parties—including Senators Richard Burr (Republican from North Carolina), Kelly Loeffler (Republican from Georgia), Diane Feinstein (Democrat from California) and James Inhofe (Republican from Oklahoma)—walked out of a secret briefing about COVID-19 in late January of last year and immediately made decisions to adjust their personal investment portfolios. They did not warn the public about what they had been told about the impact of the pandemic.

Additionally, it should be recalled that hedge funds brought on the Great Recession of 2007–2008 after an investment scheme in risky “mortgage-backed securities” failed and brought down the entire capitalist financial system. None among the financial oligarchy responsible for the meltdown—resulting in the worst economic and social crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s—was ever prosecuted or brought to justice for this criminal activity.

Far from it, the response of the US government—at the end of the administration of George W. Bush and the beginning of the administration of Barack Obama—was to pump hundreds of billions of dollars of government resources from the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank into the financial system to keep it from collapsing and ensuring the further enrichment of the billionaires on Wall Street.

The rise of the stock market over the past year that is behind the massive increase in the wealth of the hedge fund managers is likewise due to the ongoing purchase of trillions of dollars in financial assets by the US federal government which was massively increased with the passage of the USA CARES Act during the Trump administration. On the eve of the passage of the new $1.9 trillion stimulus package, there is no indication that this policy is going to change with Democratic President Joe Biden in the White House.

Cashing in on racialist politics: Black Lives Matter foundation raised $90 million in 2020

Trévon Austin

The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF) last week released for the first time a report outlining its financial position. The so-called “2020 Impact Report” states that the organization collected over $90 million last year.

The BLMGNF was founded in 2013 by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi in the wake of the killing of Trayvon Martin. It has since promoted and capitalized on the slogan “Black Lives Matter,” raising substantial sums of money, including from large corporate donors and private foundations like the Ford Foundation.

Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter [Wikimedia Commons]

According to the report, BLMGNF had approximately $8.4 million in expenses in 2020, which was distributed in the form of “staffing, operating and administrative expenses, civic engagement, programs and field expenses, rapid response, and crisis intervention.” This includes about $2 million spent on a “get out the vote” campaign to support the Democratic Party in the 2020 elections. There is no breakdown on how the other $6.4 million was spent.

The organization also reported that it has committed $21.7 million in funding to its official and unofficial chapters, in addition to 30 local organizations that received six-figure grants. These funds, it states, “will go toward the sustenance of Black communities and Black movement-building.” BLMGNF ended 2020 with more than $60 million in its coffers.

The BLMGNF has benefited from opposition to police violence which erupted in mass protests across the US and internationally following the police murder of George Floyd last summer. On June 2, seven days into the wave of protests, BLMGNF’s website drew 1.9 million visitors, with a total of 24 million visits in the second half of 2020.

BLMGNF’s report does not include any detail about who donated to the organization last year, and its leaders declined to name prominent donors. However, much of BLM’s funding in 2020 can be linked to the swelling of corporate support for racialist movements, when last year’s multi-ethnic and multi-racial protests shook the ruling class. Multiple corporations pledged substantial sums of money, usually over a period of years, to organizations ostensibly fighting for racial equality.

The BLMGNF is part of a broader group of organizations operating under the umbrella of the “Movement for Black Lives.” The latter includes, in addition to BLMGNF, the National Conference of Black Lawyers and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Cullors is also a board member of the Ella Baker Center, which was founded by Democratic Party member and former Obama advisor Van Jones.

Technology companies were some of the largest contributors to the Black Lives Matter movement. Google pledged $12 million to various groups, while Facebook and Amazon each donated $10 million. Apple pledged $100 million for a Racial Equity and Justice Initiative that will “challenge the systemic barriers to opportunity and dignity that exist for communities of color, and particularly for the black community.”

Walmart announced $100 million over five years will be dedicated to creating a new center for racial equality, and Target donated $10 million to a similar cause.

Before 2020, the Ford Foundation pledged $100 million over six years to several organizations associated with the “Movement for Black Lives.”

The swelling financial basis for BLMGNF has led to infighting over access to the resources. Multiple local branches have accused its leadership of lack of financial transparency and accountability. Ten chapters, dubbed #BLM10, claimed that local groups have received little to no financial assistance from their parent organization. Records BLM shared with the Associated Press say that local chapters received multiple rounds of funding ranging between $800 and $69,000 since 2016.

However, #BLM10 complained that the grants are not proportionate to how much the organization has raised over the years. Additionally, they questioned the decision to remain silent about prominent donors. In its early years, BLM disclosed receiving donations from wealthy celebrities such as Beyoncé, Jay-Z and Prince.

The BLMGNF foundation restructured its chapters into a separate entity called BLM Grassroots last summer. The chapters are eligible for $500,000 grants if they sign on to a multi-year agreement, including a series of demands from leadership. Only one BLM group in Denver met the demands and received funding in December.

In response to the allegations, BLMGNF co-founder Cullors, who now plays the leading role in the organization, claimed that there were misunderstandings about the organization’s finances and that it was often “scraping for money” in previous years.

The Black Lives Matter organizations have been promoted by a section of the American ruling class as part of an effort to promote racial divisions and obscure common class interests of all workers, including in the fight against police violence. The agenda of these organizations has nothing to do with the grievances of workers and youth of any race or ethnicity. Rather, they speak for privileged sections of the middle class seeking to cash in on the promotion of racial politics to advance their own positions within the state and corporate America.

Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue (BETD) Media Fellowship 2021

Application Deadline: 7th March 2021

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): Online

About the Award: The German Government invites the world to the annual inspiring dialogue on the global energy transition, the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue. Every year, high-level participants from politics, industry, science and civil society gather in Berlin for two days to discuss the shift to a sustainable energy system. This year’s focus will be on:
• shifting geopolitics,
• integrated energy transition,
• structural change
• and digitalisation and blockchain.  

Type: Workshop, Fellowship

Eligibility: The conference is open to aspiring journalists from all over the world, who are interested in the global energy transition.

Number of Awards: Limited

Value of Award: The BETD Media Fellowship allows young journalists from around the world to come to Berlin and 
• gain access to this exclusive conference,
• talk to high-level global energy stakeholders, 
• connect with the other BETD Media Fellows, 
• and experience the energy transition hands-on with exclusive guided tours and side events during the Berlin Energy Week.

This year, BETD Media Fellows – Connecting Journalists conference will have full virtual access to the exclusive events taking place during the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue 2021 and the Berlin Energy Week. To compensate for the loss of networking opportunities and chances to enjoy 1:1 chats with fellow journalists, high-level policymakers or representatives from green industries, this year’s BETD Media Fellows – Connecting Journalists conference will be organised as a virtual conference specifically for the BETD Fellows – alumni and present.

Duration of Programme: 15–19 March 2021

How to Apply: Just register by filling out this form and prepare for a day of exchange, debate and mutual learning. We look forward to meeting you there!

Download the flyer of the conference here.

• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage (see link below) before applying

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Award Provider: Germany Government