Omicron case identified in New Zealand

Tom Peters

On Thursday, the New Zealand government confirmed that a case of the extremely infectious Omicron variant of COVID-19 has been identified in a traveler staying at a managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) hotel in Christchurch. The traveler arrived from Germany, via Dubai, on December 10.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield speaks to reporters about the Omicron case discovered in New Zealand on December 16. (Source: Ministry of Health YouTube)

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield told the media yesterday that New Zealand was “very well-prepared” and “we have every intention of keeping Omicron out of the country for as long as possible.”

In fact, the Labour Party-led government has been dismantling New Zealand’s public health defences in recent months, ignoring scientists’ advice and bowing to the demands of big business for an end to all impediments on profit-making.

In October, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the government would abandon its previous elimination policy, which had limited COVID-19 deaths to 26 until August this year. Since then, another 22 people have died.

On December 3, the government ended what remained of the lockdown in Auckland, the country’s largest city and centre of the outbreak. This week, the boundary around the city was lifted, allowing Aucklanders to travel around the country over the holiday period. Government ministers have admitted that this means Delta will spread everywhere.

According to the Ministry of Health, as of yesterday there had been 2,194 people infected in the last 21 days in the community, and 24 cases among overseas arrivals in MIQ. There are roughly 100 cases being recorded each day. Only symptomatic people are encouraged to get a test, meaning the real numbers are likely much higher.

Restrictions at the border have been significantly eased. In mid-November, the mandatory period that returnees must stay in MIQ was halved from 14 to 7 days. Bloomfield said the person with Omicron and others who travelled on the same flight would have their MIQ period extended to 10 days.

The current plan is that from January 17, double-vaccinated New Zealanders entering the country will be allowed to skip MIQ and “self-isolate” at home. On Monday, Ardern said this plan would be reviewed in January in light of the Omicron variant, which is spreading at a much faster pace than Delta internationally and is likely to become the dominant variant.

Ardern emphasised, however: “We haven’t changed our plans. We haven’t changed the timelines we’ve set out.”

In neighbouring Australia, where state and federal governments have removed most public health restrictions, Omicron is contributing to a surge in cases and severe illnesses.

Asked if he would recommend that the government impose lockdowns if Omicron is detected outside of MIQ, Bloomfield said yesterday: “We’d just have to see what the situation was.” He declared that New Zealand’s vaccination rate was much higher compared with August, when the Delta outbreak began.

Such reassurances are entirely misleading. Data from South Africa has found that two shots of the Pfizer vaccine—which the New Zealand government refers to as “fully vaccinated”—provided only 33 percent efficacy against symptomatic infections and only 70 percent protection against hospitalization, substantial drops from all previous variants.

So far, about 90 percent of eligible New Zealanders have received two vaccine doses, which is 75 percent of the whole population. As of yesterday, 184,377 people had received a third “booster” shot, less than 4 percent of the population.

Children under 12 are still ineligible for the vaccine, and schools and early childhood centres are a major source of transmission. The Ministry of Education falsely claims that children are at low risk from Delta. The situation in South Africa indicates that children are more likely to need hospitalisation if they contract Omicron.

Experts, including vaccinologist Dr Helen Petousis-Harris and epidemiologist Michael Baker, have called on the government to shorten the period of time people need to wait between the second and third doses, which is currently set at 6 months.

Speaking to Radio NZ, Professor Baker also warned that under the current plan to lift MIQ requirements in mid-January, “Omicron would get in very, very rapidly.” He said the government should “use all the tools available to decrease the risk or minimise the risk of this variant getting loose in New Zealand.”

As in other countries, the government, media and business representatives have encouraged complacency about both Delta and Omicron. The lifting of the Auckland boundary was greeted with celebratory headlines like “Travelers rejoice as they resume work, reunite with family” and “Freedom! Thousands fleeing Auckland as border lifts.”

A New Zealand Herald editorial said Auckland had “shown its resilience and residents collectively rolled up their sleeves and got on with protecting themselves and the community.” It brushed aside concerns about the new variant, saying “it’s already known that booster shots [which hardly anyone has received] are effective against Omicron infections.”

In fact, Dr Fran Priddy, executive director of Vaccine Alliance Aotearoa New Zealand, told the Science Media Centre (SMC) yesterday that a third Pfizer dose could improve vaccine effectiveness to about 75 percent against Omicron, according to early data from the UK. Some experts believe an Omicron-specific vaccine may be needed to prevent widespread infection, hospitalisation and deaths.

The World Health Organization and experts internationally have criticised the attempts to claim, without any evidence, that Omicron may be “milder.” Professor Mike Bunce from the NZ Institute of Environmental Science and Research told the SMC: “Even if Omicron (or another variant) results in half the hospitalisation rate, twice as many infections will place the same net demand on the hospital system.”

COVID-19 modeler Professor Michael Plank has estimated that if Omicron enters the community, assuming minimal public health measures such as masking, and 93 percent of over-12s vaccinated with just two doses, New Zealand could see a peak of about 50,000 cases per day. This would drop to 30,000 if everyone aged over 45 received a third dose. Plank told Stuff this was an “optimistic” scenario; if the variant turned out to be even more resistant to vaccines, the daily cases could reach 80,000.

Meanwhile, business organisations, such as Hospitality New Zealand and the Auckland Business Chamber, as well as the opposition National and ACT Parties, have called for the government to move faster to lift the minimal restrictions that remain. Recently-installed National Party leader Chris Luxon is also demanding the immediate removal of MIQ requirements for double-vaccinated New Zealanders returning from so-called low-risk countries.

Protests against all restrictions and vaccine mandates are also continuing, with 2,000 people rallying outside parliament yesterday, led by the far-right Destiny Church.

The Labour government is moving to appease these forces. Under the “traffic light” framework that has replaced lockdowns, Auckland is currently in “red,” which limits indoor gatherings to 100 people. Ardern says the city will move to “orange” on December 31, meaning this limit will then be scrapped on New Year’s eve.

Scientists warn of looming catastrophe as Omicron spreads globally

Evan Blake

The immense global threat of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is becoming clearer each day, as cases and hospitalizations surge internationally. Worldwide, average official daily new cases now stand at 620,106, a more than 50 percent increase in just the past month. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates that in reality, nearly 3.3 million people are likely infected each day, with most not detected due to inadequate testing globally. The vast majority of these cases are from the Delta variant, but Omicron is threatening to become dominant globally or surge in tandem in the coming weeks.

Dr. Rafik Abdou and respiratory therapist Babu Paramban check on a COVID-19 patient at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center, LA, Nov. 19, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File]

Across Europe, which has been the global epicenter of the pandemic since October, there were a combined 430,968 official new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday. The United Kingdom (a record 78,339 new cases), France (65,713), Germany (55,650), Russia (28,363), Spain (27,140) and Italy (23,190) accounted for a combined roughly 250,000 new cases. Hospitals across Europe, and indeed globally, are strained to the breaking point after nearly two years of continuous mass infections and deaths.

The direst situation is now in the UK, where Omicron cases are doubling every two days and forecasts predict that potentially one million people could become infected each day by Christmas. The fall semester has decimated schools throughout the country, as the total absence of mitigation measures has allowed COVID-19 to run rampant and infect masses of students and educators. In response, the Johnson administration is actively recruiting elderly, retired educators as substitutes in under-staffed schools, setting the stage for a spike in breakthrough infections and deaths in this section of retirees.

In Denmark, which has one of the strongest variant surveillance programs, Omicron has caused a major spike in reinfections among previously infected individuals. Overall, the number of reinfections has increased more than ten-fold in just the past month. In neighboring Norway, forecasts project that more than 100,000 people will be infected with Omicron each day within weeks if there are no changes in behavior.

In the United States, the surge of the Delta variant is deepening throughout much of the country, with the Northeast and Midwest regions hit particularly hard. An average of 121,585 people are officially infected each day, and an average of 1,170 people are dying daily across the country.

In New York and New Jersey, the Omicron variant now accounts for at least 13 percent of all new COVID-19 cases, which are surging dramatically overall. The state of New York reported 18,276 official new cases on Wednesday, a more than 40 percent increase in one day and the highest daily total since January 14. In New York City, the test positivity rate doubled in just three days recently, rising from 3.9 percent to 7.8 percent between December 9-12.

Florida, among the hardest hit states in the US which has undergone three major surges since the start of the pandemic, is beginning its fourth surge amid the rapid spread of the Omicron variant. A study on wastewater in Orange County, Florida, home to Walt Disney World, found that Omicron accounts for nearly 100 percent of all COVID-19 strains found in the samples.

The most serious and principled scientists are issuing increasingly stark warnings of the looming tidal wave of infections, hospitalizations and deaths as winter approaches in the Northern Hemisphere.

In his weekly podcast update on the pandemic, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota Dr. Michael Osterholm warned, “I think we are going to see a viral blizzard literally descend upon the world with Omicron.” He noted that Omicron threatens to combine with the ongoing surge of the Delta variant to wreak havoc, particularly among the unvaccinated.

On Thursday, T-cell immunologist Dr. Anthony Leonardi tweeted about the potential long-term damage that the Omicron surge could cause, writing, “This coming wave with Omicron will probably infect at least half the world’s population. If 10 percent get Long Covid, we are looking at a #MassDisablingEvent.” Dr. Leonardi had repeatedly sounded the alarm about the impact of Long COVID, which can result in neurodegeneration, autoimmune disorders and damage to other organ systems.

In a recent interview with the World Socialist Web Site, Dr. Leonardi stressed the immense dangers of the Omicron variant, particularly to unvaccinated children under five years old who have experienced among the highest rates of hospitalization of any age group with Omicron. He also warned that the extraordinary transmissibility of Omicron creates the conditions whereby a new and potentially more dangerous variant could evolve more rapidly than previous variants.

On Wednesday, physician Denise Dewald, who has been an outspoken critic of the pandemic policies implemented by the Trump and Biden administrations, tweeted, “I expect our hospitals will look like Wuhan 2020 in 1-3 weeks,” adding, “But our healthcare workers won’t be wearing good PPE.”

Dr. Malgorzata Gasperowicz, who has continuously advocated for the elimination of SARS-CoV-2 since the start of the pandemic, retweeted a post noting that South Korea has ended its policy of “living with COVID-19.” She added the sharp comment that they did so “[B]ecause ‘living with COVID-19’ doesn’t work. The only policy that worked and keeps working is elimination strategy. High time that every region on the planet starts aiming to stop the spread. #EndThePandemic.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) echoed these warnings. In an interview with Sky News, Special Envoy on COVID-19 for the WHO Dr. David Nabarro declared, “I’ve been watching and working on this pandemic since January 2020, and I’ve never been more concerned than I am tonight, not just about the UK but about the world.”

When asked whether social gatherings should be limited, he replied bluntly, “It’s doubling every two days. Do you know what that means? It means it will be eight times more serious in one week, 40 times more serious in two weeks, 300-400 times in three weeks. Over 1,000 times more serious in four weeks.”

In response to this impending catastrophe, capitalist governments throughout the world adamantly refuse to implement the necessary public health measures to stop the spread of COVID-19. Above all, they reject the use of emergency lockdowns involving the switch to remote learning at all schools and the closure of nonessential workplaces with income protection for affected workers and small business people.

At a press briefing Wednesday, a reporter asked Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeffrey Zients, “Do you think, overall, that we need to be, in essence, locking down a little bit again? Should employers, should schools be taking the precautions that we’re seeing, or are they overreacting?”

Dr. Walensky sidestepped the question by promoting vaccines and limited mitigation measures while not commenting on lockdowns. Zients, a multi-millionaire with no experience in public health, emphatically opposed lockdowns and advanced the vaccine-only approach, saying, “We’re in a very different and stronger place than we were a year ago. And there’s no need to lock down.” He added, “We know how to keep our kids in school and our businesses open, and we’re not going to shut down our economy in any way. We’re going to keep our schools and our businesses open. Next question.”

Similarly, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Dr. Anthony Fauci acknowledged Thursday that Omicron will likely be dominant in “a few weeks” and that it would soon overwhelm hospitals. Like Walensky, he advanced the vaccine-only approach and paid lip service to mitigation measures, saying, “If we do that, I don't believe we'll have to be doing any kind of shutdown with regard to businesses in your community.” Dr. Fauci also endorsed family gatherings over the holidays as long as people are vaccinated, despite the immense dangers of air travel and the well-known risks of breakthrough infections that can lead to Long COVID, hospitalization and even death.

The corporate media has dutifully played its part in chloroforming the public and stunting awareness of the dangers confronting society. On ABC News Thursday night, following a segment which detailed the rapid spread of Omicron and the increasingly dire conditions in hospitals, Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, gave his stamp of approval to holiday travel plans.

Jha stated, “I think Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, it’s possible to gather with family safely. The key in my mind is making sure everybody who can be vaccinated is vaccinated, people are boosted. And if they’re high-risk people, elderly, others, getting everybody a rapid test can make it that much safer.”

Jha is a close associate of Brown University economist Emily Oster, who has been one of the foremost advocates of unsafe school reopenings since fall 2020, before the vaccines were even approved. On Thursday, Oster tweeted cynically, “Most people are going to get Omicron regardless of vax status. Contagion is just that high.”

The stark contrast between the warnings of principled scientists like Drs. Leonardi, Dewald, Gasperowicz and others, and the pronouncements of scientists and public health officials connected to the Biden administration and the corporate media, is sharpening each day.

The principles of science and public health are incompatible with the interests of the financial oligarchy, which refuses to implement the basic measures necessary to eliminate COVID-19 and stop the needless infections, suffering and deaths of millions worldwide.

Jailing Former Immigration Ministers: Denmark’s Inger Støjberg

Binoy Kampmark

It’s not the sort of thing you encounter regularly.  A member of a government cabinet, responsible for arguably one of the country’s most important portfolios, found both wanting and culpable for their actions after leaving their post.  But this is what former Danish immigration minister Inger Støjberg found when she was convicted for illegally separating asylum seeking couples arriving in the country.

A Danish court of impeachment, in finding the former minister guilty for intentionally neglecting her duties under the Ministerial Responsibility Act, sentenced her to 60 days in prison.  Of the 26 members of the court, only one found for the ex-minister.

It was only the third time since 1910 that a politician has been referred to the impeachment court. The last was in 1993, when former Conservative justice minister Erik Ninn-Hansen faced proceedings for illegally halting the family reunification of Tamil refugees in 1987 and 1988.

Interest in the proceedings centred on an order the ex-minister issued in 2016, which directed that if a member of a married couple were underage, they should be separated and housed in separate centres.  This was irrespective of whether they had children.  At the time, Støjberg argued that the measure was necessary to protect “child brides”.  “They have to be separated,” the then minister told the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, “because I will not accept that in my system there could be examples of coercion.”

Some 23 couples were mandatorily separated by the Danish Immigration Service without an individual examination of their circumstances.  One couple, a 17-year-old pregnant woman and her 26-year-old husband, filed a complaint with the Danish Parliament’s ombudsman, who found the separation to be illegal.

The impeachment court also found the policy to be unlawful and a breach of European human rights law as the arrangement did not include exceptions and individual assessments by the immigration service.

Ministers tend to find such intrusions of the law into their discretion disconcerting.  Were executive power to be curtailed by such legal actions, firm, tearless decisions would be hard to make.  When the trial commenced, Støjberg was confident that the Court members would see good sense.  “I know exactly what I said and did.  That is why we are seeking an acquittal.”  So confident was she of the outcome that the conviction came as something of a shock.  “It’s the only scenario I had not prepared for because I thought it was completely unrealistic.”

Støjberg was quick on the draw regarding the principles which she followed in making her decision.  “I think it wasn’t just me that lost today, it was Danish values that lost today.”  (Every political figure found fouling the law is bound to hide behind a set of values.)  If, she said, she “had had to live with the fact that I had not protected these girls – that would actually have been worse than this.”

The values game is always precarious and immigration ministers claiming to protect the vulnerable are rarely trustworthy sorts.  Scratch the surface, and you are bound to find a sadistic reactionary.  For Støjberg, it meant adopting a line against the swarthy hordes seeking sanctuary in Europa’s bosom populist, anti-immigration figures found attractive.  Between 2015 and 2019, she served in a centre-right government bolstered by the support of the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party and presided over 110 amendments restricting the rights of foreigners.  Memorably crass, she celebrated the passage of the fiftieth restriction on immigration with a cake.

Amongst those measures was the “Jewellery law”, a stipulation that asylum seekers surrender their jewellery and cash above 10,000 kroner to help fund their stay in Denmark.  The Ministry of Immigration guidelines made modest concessions: wedding rings or engagement rings were to be left untouched, though individual officers could determine what sentimental value was attached to others.

Like her counterparts in other countries, Støjberg sought to place unwanted and undesirable arrivals on a remote island – Lindholm – a plan that raised eyebrows in the United Nations.  While the facility was intended to detain foreign nationals convicted of crimes and set for deportation, UN Human Rights chief Michelle Bachelet warned about “the negative impact of such policies in isolation, and (they) should not replicate these policies.  Because depriving them of their liberty, isolating them, and stigmatising them will only increase their vulnerability.”

Støjberg, self-proclaimed protector of child brides, was merely contemptuous of such concerns.  “I’m quite impressed that you can sit in New York and comment on a deportation centre when not a single shovel has yet touched the ground, and when we have clearly said that we will stay within the conventions we are signed up to.”

The modern immigration minister has become a plain clothes member of the country’s police force.  Suspicion is preferable over charity.  Judgment comes before understanding.  Separating families, tormenting parents and children, are not infrequent things.  But in all fairness to Støjberg, her measures did not lack parliamentary approval and degrees of public support.  Not only was she encouraging cruelty, she also being encouraged to be cruel.

Indeed, Denmark’s harsh refugee policy is being further developed under the guidance of the centre-left Social Democrats, who have adopted some of the world’s harshest refugee policies.  Recently, an agreement barring foreigners with suspended sentences from ever becoming Danish citizens was struck by the government with right-wing parties.

In June, Parliament gave the government a mandate to establish an internment camp system outside European borders to process asylum-seeker claims.  “If you apply for asylum in Denmark, you know that you will be sent back to a country outside Europe, and therefore we hope that people stop seeking asylum in Denmark,” warned government spokesman Rasmus Stoklund.

The smug view expressed by such papers as Politiken, that no minister is above the law, ignores the point that Støjberg became a post girl for reaction, a model emulated rather than dismissed.  Had she tinkered more with her “child brides” order, conditioning it with less severity, she may never have faced the impeachment court.

Immigration ministers in other countries should take note but the lessons of this case are unlikely to be learned in Australia.  Down under, immigration officials act with brutal impunity confident that their callous decisions are unlikely to ever face stern judicial eyes.  No Australian immigration minister has faced proceedings for culpability in returning people to lands they have fled, only to endure torture, persecution and disappearance.  Or for ruining the mental health of asylum seekers locked in indefinite captivity in a subsided Pacific concentration camp system.  They have set the standard, and countries like Denmark have been inspired.  Støjberg might well count herself unlucky.

Breaking-Up Big Tech: Will History Repeat Itself?

David Rosen

Congress, the media and, increasingly, the American public are concerned about the ever-growing power of Big Tech. The recent revelations about Facebook made by whistleblower Frances Haugen, a data scientist, give insight into just how insidious Big Tech can be in its effort to manipulate market power to maximize profit. Many are calling for the break-up of Big Tech companies.

Over the last century, the U.S. has witnessed repeated efforts to break-up, if not outlaw, monopolies, cartels and trusts. The classic effort occurred in the fin de siècle era, from the adoption of the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) and the Clayton Antitrust Act (1914), with the breakup of Standard Oil and other companies. Nearly a century later, a similar spirit led to the break-up of American Telegraph and Telephone (AT&T, the old Ma Bell) in 1984. While those promoting the current anti-monopoly efforts share much with earlier advocates, today’s efforts face a very different economic situation.

The forces driving Big Tech are just the tip of an economic restructuring that’s been brewing for years. “Since 2008 American firms have engaged in one of the largest rounds of mergers in their country’s history, worth $10 trillion,” The Economist noted in a 2016 study. “Unlike earlier acquisitions aimed at building global empires, these mergers were largely aimed at consolidating in America, allowing the merged companies to increase their market shares and cut their costs.” Consolidation is occurring in all sectors as diverse as airlines, retail, telecom, hospitals & health care, food and even eyeglasses.

A careful consideration of the break-up of Standard Oil and AT&T suggests how the current effort to break-up Big Tech may play out — with unanticipated consequences that could make things worse.

Standard Oil Trust

In 1863, John D. Rockefeller and his partners founded the Standard Oil Company in Cleveland, OH, not to refine gasoline but kerosene.  By the early ‘80s, it controlled the refining of 90 to 95 percent of all oil produced in the U.S. “The price of refined petroleum dropped during the 1870s from about 25 cents per gallon to less than 10 cents,” reports Yale economist, Naomi R. Lamoreaux, “much faster than the general price level, and it remained essentially flat in real terms into the twentieth century.” In 1882, the Standard Oil Trust and founded, in 1892, they lost a case in Ohio under the Sherman Act. They then reincorporated in New Jersey as a holding company with 34 subsidiaries.

Concerns were raised not only about the company’s use of secret discounts for railroads to force rivals to sell out, but its power to influence legislators. Ida Tarbell, in her classic 1904 study, The History of the Standard Oil Company, characterized Rockefeller as a “living mummy,” warning, “our national life is on every side distinctly poorer, uglier, meaner, for the kind of influence he exercises.”

During the fin de siècle and the early-20^th century, the U.S. suffered through what Mark Twain dubbed “the Gilded Age.” This was the age of the Robber Barons like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie; it was also an era marked by deepening poverty, growing unemployment and wide-spread corruption. Between 1897 and 1904, over 4,000 companies were consolidated down into 257 corporate firms. For example, U.S. Steel was formed by the merger of nine of the largest steel companies. By 1904, some 318 companies controlled nearly 40 percent of the nation’s manufacturing output. One estimate claims that a single firm produced over half the output in 78 industries. These corporations became known as “trusts” or “cartels” – and they ruled with a vengeance. One of them was Standard Oil and it was not alone in using predatory pricing, exclusivity deals and other anti-competitive practices to undercut smaller local businesses.

The Dept. of Justice filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against Standard Oil in 1909; two years later, it won the case. As a result, Standard Oil was broken-up into 34 companies. The reformed Standard Oil became a cartel with Standard Oil of New Jersey becoming Exxon and Standard Oil of New York became Mobil (and they became ExxonMobil), Standard Oil of Indiana became Amoco, and Standard Oil of California became Chevron. However, while each company was overseen by an individual board of directors, Rockefeller and other owners controlled the investment equity for the separate companies.

During the Progressive era, other trusts were broken up, including:

Northern Securities (1904), with backing from Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, it held majority control of Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy (CB&Q) along with the Great Northern along with smaller railroads; Swift & Co. (1905), a leading beef-packing firm that coordinated with other leading meatpackers to fix prices; and American Tobacco (1911), acquiring more than 250 brands and growers, including Lucky Strike, and controlled 90 percent of all cigarettes in 1890.

Now, a century-plus after Standard Oil was formally broken up, the environmental crisis deepens, driven my emissions from the fossil fuel industry.

AT&T Monopoly

On June 2, 1875, while experimenting with his “harmonic telegraph,” Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, discovered that sound could be transmitted over a wire. Bell, not unlike Samuel Morse, is remembered for one famous line – “Mr. Watson – Come here – I want to see you” – considered the first words spoken over the telephone.

A century later, AT&T was, according to Steve Coll, author of classic tale, The Deal of the Century: The Breakup of AT&T, “the largest corporation in the world.” It had over 1 million employees, controlled almost all U.S. local and long distance telephone service as well as the equipment in most homes and networks; and its Bellcore was the nation’s leading research organization.

The Bell Telephone Company was formally organized on July 9, 1877, with Brazil’s Emperor Dom Pedro II the first person to buy shares in the new tech company. During the early-20^th century, AT&T became a “monopoly,” controlling over four-fifths (83%) of all American telephone service. The Bell companies consisted of two dozen companies that provided local telephone service throughout the country. In the wake of Great Depression, concerns rose in Congress and the media that the communications companies – and AT&T in particular — were plagued with financial abuses. As one observer noted, AT&T “operated free of effective regulation, particularly at the interstate level.”

This concern contributed to the drafting of the Communications Act of 1934 and the establishment of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The Act called to “make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, a rapid, efficient, nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communications service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges.”

For decades AT&T operated as was a legal – if moderately regulated — monopoly. In 1974, the Justice Department filed an antitrust case against AT&T to break up the Bell system and, a decade later, U.S. District Judge Harold Greene oversaw what was formally known as the Modification of Final Judgment (MFJ) that broke-up AT&T. “What the Bell System did was illegal,” Greene noted. “It abused its monopoly in local service to keep out competitors in other areas. Competition will give this country the most advanced, best, cheapest telephone network.”

The MFJ consolidated AT&T’s 22 subsidiary companies into seven Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs or “Baby Bells”). The new AT&T kept its long-line business and Yellow Pages, but it was prohibited from providing “information services” (e.g., cable television) or manufacture equipment. In addition, it had to provide all interexchange carriers — MCI, Sprint, etc. — equal access to its networks.

A decade after the MFJ, Pres. Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that was envisioned bringing telecom service into the 21^st century. Clinton argued that it would “promote competition as the key to opening new markets and new opportunities.” He insisted that deregulation “will protect consumers by regulating the remaining monopolies for a time and by providing a roadmap for deregulation in the future.” Well, that future never arrived.

The Act “deregulated” innovate telecom service and fostered a wave of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) leading to the restructuring of the telecom industry. Over the following few decades, the telecom industry was recast and four corporations – AT&T, Comcast, Charter Communications and Verizon — came to dominate, controlling wireline and wireless services as well as internet and streaming services, and moving to acquire media/content businesses and theme parks. In the wake of the break-up of AT&T and deregulation, the U.S. has become a second-tier telecom nation.

Does History Repeat Itself?

Today, history may be repeating itself – but with a postmodern twist. We are witnessing the reemergence of the old Robber Baron cartels. As Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft replaced Standard Oil and Ma Bell, so too have Rockefeller, Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, et al., been superseded by Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffet. These parallel developments – of companies and individuals – bespeaks the fundamental transformation of capitalism over the last century. Yet, it’s a transformation in which nothing fundamental really seems to have changed but only gotten worse.

Perdue University economist John Connor defines cartels as “voluntary associations of legally independent companies that manipulate market prices or industry output in order to increase their collective profits.” He distinguishes between “private” cartels (i.e., “not protected by national sovereignty or by treaties”) and “international” cartels (i.e., those that have participants from two or more nations”). He adds, “private cartels operate secretly to avoid detection.” This development underscores The Economist’s concern that the current round of “mergers were largely aimed at consolidating in America, allowing the merged companies to increase their market shares and cut their costs.”

“Big Tech is a cartel, and must be regulated,” declared an “Opinion Editorial” in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. It took offense at Apple and Google for stopping new users from downloading the Parler, a rightwing social networking app, and at Amazon for cutting the app from its web-hosting services. In the telecom sector, which enables Big Tech to operate, a cartel may dominate. The journalist David Cay Johnston, in a 2012 New York Times op-ed, linked the issue of cartels to the telecom crisis. He argued, “what we’ve witnessed instead is low-quality service and prices that are higher than a truly competitive market would bring.” He went on, noting, “after a brief fling with competition, ownership has reconcentrated into a stodgy duopoly of Bell Twins — AT&T and Verizon. Now, thanks to new government rules, each in effect has become the leader of its own cartel.” He added, “because AT&T’s and Verizon’s own land-based services operate mostly in discrete geographic markets, each cartel rules its domain as a near monopoly.”

One can only wonder if the process by which the old Standard Oil and AT&T were broken-up only to be reconstituted in an even-larger cartels will be the same fate of the current Congressional procedure with regard to Big Tech. Sadly, history seems to repeat itself but only with graver consequences.

UK government adds more draconian measures to Police Bill, aimed at suppression of working class opposition

Ioan Petrescu

The Johnson government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is in the final stages of its passage through Parliament, and set to become legislation early next year.

The Bill, which already included massive attacks on the right to protest, was updated on November 11 and in December with even more draconian measures in a series of post-debate amendments—aimed at suppressing all social opposition as the government goes ahead with its murderous pandemic policies and austerity agenda.

A further 18 pages were undemocratically added to the bill after it had passed through the Commons, and after the second reading in the House of Lords.

The bill was first introduced to Parliament in March 2021 and grants wide-ranging discretion and powers to police officers. It adds “noise” if it is deemed to cause “serious unease, alarm or distress” to bystanders to the list of intervenable offences under the Public Order Act 1986, which enables police to restrict a protest if they deem it risks “serious public disorder”.

The new amendments, inserted at the last minute while the bill is being scrutinised in the House of Lords, were spearheaded by Home Secretary Priti Patel. They follow the widespread disruption caused by environmental activists from Insulate Britain, who blockaded major motorways and roads, including in London, in the lead-up to the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Climate change protesters extracted and arrested in Trafalgar Square, London, October 10, 2019 [Credit: AP Photo/Alastair Grant]

One amendment to the legislation is a provision for Serious Disruption Prevention Order (SDPO). It represents one of the most egregious assaults on freedom of speech and assembly anywhere in the world.

An SDPO can be imposed by the courts on anyone convicted of a “protest-related offence”. This category is extremely broad. It includes “infractions” such as holding hands during a protest or possessing superglue near a demonstration.

Under Amendment 342M.2.iii of the new legislation, SDPOs can be imposed on people whose activities “were likely to result in serious disruption”. The chilling meaning of this is that one does not even have to have been previously convicted of a crime or to have ever caused “disruption” to be subject to a SDPOs. It’s enough that the state deems that someone’s activities might cause disruption.

Writing in the i, Ian Dunt noted, “Once the order is imposed, it eradicates your rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Those under an order can be forced to report to the authorities whenever the courts demand it, as often as they demand it. They must ‘present themselves to a particular person at a particular place at… particular times on particular days’”.

“They can also be prohibited from being at a certain place, or possessing certain items, or participating in certain activities, or socialising with certain people, for up to two years. They can be blocked from using the internet to ‘encourage’ people to ‘carry out activities related to a protest’. Someone who used their social media account to promote a demonstration could be found in breach of the order.”

The Open Democracy campaigning web site noted that the amendments around “serious disruption” are actually “protest-banning orders, which can be imposed on people if they have previously been convicted of what the amendment calls a ‘protest-related offence’—or even if they have just been to two protests in the past five years in which they carried out activities that could have caused serious disruption.”

Further draconian measures inserted into the revised Bill are around stop and search. Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, police can use this power if they have “reasonable grounds for suspecting” someone is carrying certain items or something which could be used to violate certain laws, like burglary or theft. The bill proposes that police will be able to deploy a stop and search “without suspicion” if they claim it could avoid “serious disruption” or a “public nuisance”. They can be initiated “whether or not the constable has any grounds for suspecting that the person… is carrying a prohibited object”. It is a carte blanche for invasive police action.

Those who refuse to give themselves up to this intrusion face the full force of the law. Anyone found guilty of obstructing a police officer in the context of a stop and search during a protest faces a jail term “not exceeding 51 weeks”. This could also put at risk legal observers on protests carrying “bust cards”—cards with advice and information on what to do if a protester is arrested, usually including the names and numbers of solicitors who can help them.

Amendment 319A creates an offence of “locking on” or carrying equipment which might facilitate it. It targets anyone who attaches themselves to “a person, to an object or to land”. These all come with a potential 51-week prison sentence. There is no definition of the term “attach”, so it could equally be applied to protestors who link arms during a sit-down protest, or even hold hands. It could apply to someone found with superglue while walking past a protest, or to the disabled activists who chained their wheelchairs to traffic lights over benefits cuts.

While some of the amendments take immediate aim at the Insulate Britain protests, their main target is the working class.

As the legislation was sent to the House of Lords, the government told the second chamber, via a private letter, that it intends to “introduce a new offence of interfering with the operation of key infrastructure, such as the strategic road network, railways, sea ports, airports, oil refineries and printing presses, carrying a maximum penalty of 12 months’ imprisonment, an unlimited fine, or both”.

Amendment 319C criminalises “willful obstruction of a highway”. Amendment 319D criminalises the obstruction of “major transport works”, including roads, rail lines or airport runways. The ruling class will not hesitate to use these provisions in the case of a major strike that brings to a halt rail or road traffic. Just last month, anti-deportation activists managed to prevent deportation flight to Jamaica by blocking the road leading to the detention centre near Gatwick Airport. With the police bill such these tactics will be outlawed.

The attacks contained in the expanded bill are being forced through alongside a raft of other legislation curtailing democratic rights. These include the Nationality and Borders Bill, the Elections Bill and the Judicial Review and Courts Bill. Last month, the government quietly introducing new amendments into the Nationality and Borders Bill as it passes through report stage. Among these were measures further strengthening the state’s ability to revoke citizenship without even needing to give notice of their actions.

These assaults on democratic rights are part of a worldwide offensive by the ruling class, aimed at silencing any opposition from the working class. The bourgeoisie is seeking to stifle dissent under conditions of a worsening political and social crisis, deepened by the profit-driven and criminal reopening of workplaces and schools in the middle of a global pandemic.

The Police Bill is in line with similar profoundly anti-democratic moves in the US and Australia to effectively strip millions of working class, poor and vulnerable people of the right to vote. It follows the attacks on the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) by the German state, who have designated the Trotskyist party as a “left-wing extremist” organisation because of its opposition to capitalism. Ever-more staggering levels of social inequality, intensified by the pandemic, are incompatible with democratic forms of capitalist rule.

The Police Bill was met with demonstrations and protests in many cities when first introduced. By July, 600,000 people had signed a collective petition organised by civil liberty and human rights groups against it being legislated. This initiative was framed as an appeal to the government to change course. The Tories predictably ignored the objections raised by a swathe of the British public, hundreds of NGOs and academics, three UN Special Rapporteurs and even Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights. Instead, they have doubled down on their frenzied law-and-order agenda, to better impose the dictates of the big banks and corporations.

There is no constituency for democratic rights among the political representatives of the capitalist class. Despite their vast resources and millions of members, the Labour Party and trade unions have done nothing in opposition to the Police Bill. Labour even originally planned to abstain on the Bill and supports several of its provisions, particularly stiffer sentences for a number of crimes. It only reversed its support following the widespread protests at the police for the brutal attack on the vigil held on London’s Clapham Common following the murder of a young woman, Sarah Everhard, by a Metropolitan Police officer.

Tokyo considers boycott of Beijing Olympics

Ben McGrath

As Japan fully embraces the war drive being led by the United States against China, Tokyo is increasing pressure on Beijing on a number of fronts. These moves are highly provocative and can only push Northeast Asia further towards the brink of armed conflict. Tokyo’s manoeuvres are designed to lend credence to the bevy of lies coming out of Washington to demonize the Chinese.

Last Saturday, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported that the administration of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is likely to join the US-led diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February, by not sending a Cabinet-level official to the event, according to government sources. NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster, also confirmed the report.

National Speed Skating Oval in China. (Arne Müseler/Wikimedia Commons)

However, Tokyo may try to offset any diplomatic fallout by sending Japanese athletic officials, such as Yasuhiro Yamashita, the president of the Japanese Olympic Committee, or Seiko Hashimoto, the president of the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. A final decision is expected by the end of the year.

Prior to the report, Prime Minister Kishida stated on December 9 in regards to a potential boycott, “I will decide the Japanese government’s response at an appropriate time in the light of national interests after comprehensively considering diplomatic and other factors.”

Washington announced hypocritically on December 6 that it would send no official delegation to the Beijing Olympics in order to ramp up pressure on China over “human rights.” Since then, a handful of other nations have joined the boycott, including Australia, Canada, and Britain.

One of the loudest voices in Tokyo seeking to push the Kishida government more openly into conflict with Beijing, including over the Olympics, is that of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. He told a meeting of his Hosoda faction within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on December 9, that Kishida’s government was “required to show a political attitude and send out a message about the human rights situation” in Xinjiang. “Isn’t it the time to express Japan’s will?” Abe added. Kishida is from the opposing Kochikai faction.

Abe in recent weeks has also inflamed the situation over Taiwan, which under the “One China” policy is considered a part of Chinese territory. On December 1, Abe made a statement tantamount to a threat of war, saying, “A Taiwan emergency is a Japanese emergency, and therefore an emergency for the Japan-US alliance. People in Beijing, President Xi Jinping in particular, should never have a misunderstanding in recognizing this.”

Under Japan’s so-called pacifist constitution, the country is supposedly barred from having military forces or waging war overseas. These constitutional limitations have been successively undermined, including under Abe, but Japan’s military forces still nominally require a justification of “self-defense” or “collective self-defense” of an ally like the US to justify their involvement in a war.

The comments drew anger from Beijing, with China’s assistant Foreign Minister Hua Chunying summoning Japanese ambassador Hideo Tarumi for a meeting. Hua reportedly stated that Beijing would “reconsider how it approaches bilateral relations and how it treats Japan” if Tokyo takes further action on Taiwan.

As Abe does not serve in the government in an official capacity, Tokyo has brushed aside his remarks as those made in a private capacity. However, despite resigning from office for health reasons in 2020, Abe still maintains a great deal of influence within the LDP.

Abe elaborated on what such a “Taiwan emergency” could look like on December 13, stating, “In the event of an attack on a US vessel, it could be a situation posing a threat to Japan’s survival, which would allow the exercise of collective self-defense.” In other words, a US-staged provocation in the Taiwan Strait could be seized upon as the rationale for Tokyo to go to war with China alongside Washington.

While claiming opposition to Beijing is based on false accusations of genocide against the ethnic Uyghur population in Xinjiang, other “human rights” abuses, and supposed threats against Taiwan, the countries participating in the Olympics boycott include those responsible for the destruction of entire societies throughout the Middle East and Afghanistan over the past thirty years. These countries—the US, UK and Australia in particular—are also those most actively engaged in military preparations aimed at China.

Japan’s participation would be highly provocative. It reflects the push to deepen Tokyo’s own involvement in the US-led war drive in an effort to cast of its constitutional restrictions and secure its imperialist interests on the Asian continent.

Prime Minister Kishida has also made provocative statements over Taiwan, including giving support to the island’s participation in the World Health Organization (WHO). Under the “One China” policy, with which Tokyo is formally in agreement, Taiwan is not an independent country, but a part of China. Beijing justifiably fears that if Taiwan declares independence, Washington and Tokyo will turn the island into a military base aimed at the mainland.

“We have consistently insisted at the WHO that there should not be a geographical void in dealing with international health issues and have consistently supported Taiwan's attendance as an observer,” the prime minister told the National Diet on December 9. “It is important to widely share information and knowledge of the countries and regions.”

Washington in particular has pushed for Taiwan’s inclusion in the WHO as a means of furthering the lie that China sought to cover up the COVID-19 pandemic or was directly responsible for creating the virus. In this regard, references to “sharing information” are meant to denigrate the efforts of Chinese scientists and doctors to deal with the pandemic while claiming Beijing is hiding information, as well as to promote Taipei as a democratic alternative to Beijing.

Amid this push to demonize Beijing, Tokyo has also pledged to deepen its alliances with the other G7 nations, which issued a threatening communiqué on December 12 directed at China and Russia, following a two-day foreign minister summit in Liverpool, Britain.

On the sidelines of the meeting, Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi met with his counterpart, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The two stated that it was “indispensable to bolster the deterrence and response capabilities of the alliance amid the increasingly harsh security environment.” They pledged to work closely with Australia and India, the four of which comprise the “Quad,” a quasi-military alliance of so-called democracies aimed against China.

The foreign ministers from Australia and India were also invited to the G-7 summit, as were those from South Korea and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), in a manoeuvre to increase pressure on Beijing. In talks with his Australian counterpart Marise Payne, Hayashi once more emphasized Tokyo’s commitment to the Quad. Tokyo is moving ever closer to a dangerous conflict with China that would engulf the region.