The Mask of Tyranny

August 1, 2020 / redfireonline / Leave a comment

DnStyles

The Mask of Tyranny

01-08-2020: Residents of Melbourne and neighbouring Mitchell Shire are now being forced to wear facemasks when leaving home, ostensibly to help “stop the spread” of a coronavirus. These directions come with a litany of laughable petty rules and guidelines, such as a stipulation that one must carry a facemask while exercising.[1] This should be material for cutting satire and comedy, but unfortunately it is all too real. “Dictator Dan” Andrews, the Premier of Victoria, speaks down to those who elected him with nightly sermons chock full of arrogant and demeaning verbiage about “saving lives”. He, along with bought and paid for medical bureaucrats, offer not one shred of scientific or medical justification for the threatened use of state violence against those who do not wear facemasks. The tyranny of mandatory facemask orders, like the entire Covid-19 psy-op, is not in the least about a virus or healthcare. It is about preparations for fascism and imperialist war.

Facemasks of dubious value

“Stop the spread” is capitalist propaganda which turns reality on its head. A respiratory virus must be allowed to spread in order to reach herd immunity as quickly as possible, so that the virus exhausts itself in the fastest possible time. There is a case for the temporary isolation of the elderly and immune compromised during this process but forced lockdowns and social-distancing for the healthy actively prevent the development of herd immunity – and therefore endanger those who are vulnerable. However, even if the goal is – mistakenly – to prevent viral infection of the healthy, a facemask or a piece of cloth will simply not do it. A virus such as Covid-19 is transmitted through airborne particles. A facemask cannot cut off air to the nose and mouth completely, otherwise it would choke the user to death. Air can get around the sides and the top of the facemask to allow breathing. Therefore, a facemask cannot prevent the airborne Covid-19 particles from going in or out of the wearer. Those who have been terrorised by politicians into wearing facemasks are not protecting themselves or others from the transmission of Covid-19.[2]

Even the thoroughly compromised World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US, released a study less than two months ago which again proves that there is no evidence that wearing facemasks in public prevents the spread of flu-like viruses.[3] This is after the WHO has gone up and down like a yo-yo over the last six months, from not recommending facemasks for Covid-19, to advising their use, and back again. People are of course welcome to do their own research and come to their own conclusions. Those who wish to wear facemasks can do so, but the forcing of facemasks on healthy people by the state cannot be tolerated by working people. Mandatory facemask orders, like mandatory lockdowns and mandatory social distancing, is little more than psychological terrorism[4] aimed at eliminating that which makes us human. Common humanity must be eliminated by the politicians and the corporate media, to prevent resistance to the obliteration of civil and democratic rights under the rubric of “Covid-19”.

Fake pandemic

There is no “pandemic”. There is only a pandemic of fear, lies, bullying and intimidation. The origins of SARS-CoV-2, later renamed Covid-19 by the WHO, remain unclear. What is clear is that the ruling classes of the Anglo/US Empire have used Covid-19 as a convenient excuse to unleash a monstrous assault on workers the world over, so that they can save their precious capitalism. Given the precipitous decline of the for-profit economies since 2008, big capital can only preserve the political conditions for its survival by inflicting mass pain and misery on the working class. The ideological cover for this broadside is “saving lives”, which is perhaps the most gargantuan of all the Covid-19 lies. Lockdowns kill and kill remorselessly, through mass unemployment, the delay of vital medical care, forced economic collapse felt first by workers, skyrocketing suicides, increased domestic violence, anxiety, depression and much more. Mandatory facemasks are just one part of the plethora of absurd and frivolous rules people must follow on pain of prosecution by the state.

State and national border shutdowns, to say nothing of actual lockdowns, are not backed by any scientific or medical studies. The politicians do not even attempt to supply one wit of evidence for any of their logic-defying edicts, such as banning standing or dancing in clubs or entertainment venues. Mandatory facemask decrees deliberately target the dissenter or the non-conformist who dares question the descent of society into collective insanity. They are crafted to determine who is with the lawless power of authority, and who dares to question the faceless bureaucrats. In other words, facemask wearers either endorse lockdown fascism, or fear the consequences of resisting.

Throughout history, any form of fascism which has appeared is closely followed by imperialist war. The Covid-19 imperialist war target is most likely the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Wave after wave of false and lying anti-China propaganda is being pumped into workers by the same corporate media which endlessly retails Coronavirus deceit. The nationalist caste ruling the PRC has also played its part in fuelling Covid-19 hysteria, but this does nothing to stem the dire war provocations against China. Despite the degree of free enterprise permitted by the PRC, China’s economy remains predominantly collectively owned, as a result of its ground-breaking revolution in 1949.

Workers must resist the drift to fascism and imperialist war before it is too late. We need not fear the politicians, craven Union officials and liberals who attempt to bully workers into blind submission. Working people united just need to say no to the torrent of lies and build an anti-lockdown movement which contests the Corona delusion head on. This is the only way to escape “the new normal”. Marxists have the difficult task of working within the anti-lockdown movement, and winning the best elements to socialism, despite the huge misconceptions about this concept from those striving for freedom from fear. Clear working-class leadership at this time could result in not only a lifting of facemask orders, but the roll back and containment of fascism and imperialist war.

WORKERS LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

PO Box 66 NUNDAH QLD 4012

[1] https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/face-coverings-covid-19 (28-07-2020)

[2] https://www.sott.net/article/438352-Dr-Mercola-Interviews-Denis-Rancourt-There-is-no-Scientific-Evidence-That-Facemasks-Inhibit-Viral-Spread (28-07-2020)

[3] https://www.spreaker.com/user/bitcoinpodcasts/new-cdc-and-who-study-proves-no-evidence?utm_medium=widget&utm_source=user%3A11210105&utm_term=episode_title (28-07-2020)

[4] https://off-guardian.org/2020/07/27/the-ultimate-divide-and-conquer/ (28-07-2020)

270 Billion Reasons To Oppose A New War

July 8, 2020 / redfireonline / Leave a comment

The USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier, conducting military “exercises” in the South China Sea. Image from Al Jazeera

270 Billion Reasons To Oppose A New War

06-07-2020: 270 billion dollars. That’s how much the Australian government pledged to spend on “defence” over the next ten years. The first purchase will be an $800 million dollar spend on the AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, obtained from the US Navy.[1] These billions are apparently lying around just waiting to be spent on insuring “inter-operability” with the US war machine while workers in Australia and elsewhere are still reeling from the enforced Covid-19 economic “re-set” the Western ruling classes gleefully imposed. Millions of workers were deliberately thrown out of work, small and medium sized businesses were shut down, and basic civil and democratic rights were abolished on the flimsy pretext of an allegedly dangerous coronavirus. In reality, the fake Covid-19 narrative was merely a convenient cover for the largest assault on the workers of the world since the 1930s.[2]

Template for war on Red China

This announcement comes hot on the heels of yet another fabricated claim that Australia was subject to cyber attacks from a “state-based actor” on its government systems and major companies. The Prime Minister did not explicitly name the People’s Republic of China (PRC),[3] but official statements point the finger only at the world’s most populous country. As has become the usual practice, neither the PM nor any government official provided a shred of evidence for this wild claim. The PRC government swiftly and expressly condemned the statements as “baseless”. The Australian ruling class is obviously not acting alone in launching repeated provocations against the PRC. The US ruling class is simply directing its allies to lead the charge, in an attempt to give the impression that it is not itself leading the war against China. This is not to say the Australian ruling class is not a willing provocateur, and ditto for the ruling classes of Europe.

Needless to say, if Washington does begin a war on China, it will be a catastrophic world war. As the PRC is heavily armed with nuclear weapons, Washington and their allies should be assumed to be insane to even broker the thought. Yet as the war on Syria and the manufactured Covid-19 panic demonstrates, the Western ruling classes are willing to go to ANY lengths to save the capitalist profit system. Indeed, they would rather perish themselves and take the globe down with them, rather than be eclipsed economically, scientifically and diplomatically by socialist China. And this is despite the conservative political leadership of the PRC doing everything possible to co-operate with them. In fact, the PRC’s co-operation with the US even to the extent of joint biological warfare research at Wuhan, along with that produced at the notorious Fort Detrick in the US, may have actually produced Covid-19 itself.[4] Regardless of whether this is the case, Washington (backed by Canberra) is using the cover of Covid-19 to rapidly escalate war preparations. No amount of co-operation and practical collaboration will dissuade imperialism – it must be dismantled from within.

Coronavirus façade for imperialist war

While the PRC remains a deformed workers’ state which operates a predominantly socialist economy, its political leadership is a major barrier to the advance of the struggle for socialism internationally. The Communist Party of China (CPC) distorts both “Marxism” and “Leninism” beyond recognition, and its practice would be disowned by Marx and Lenin if they were with us today. Despite this, workers in the PRC and internationally have a vital interest in defending the PRC workers state against internal and external counter-revolution. External counter-revolution – in the form of imperialist war launched against it by Washington and backed by Canberra – is unfortunately getting closer by the day. Each new slander against the PRC in the Western media, each new fabricated story about Hong Kong “fighting for democracy” and Muslims in Xinjiang “resisting government control”, are veiled preparations for imperialist war. Working people have no interest in any diplomatic, political or military conflict with Red China. The PRC is Australia’s largest trading partner, and a cut off of these ties would lead to an Australian economic recession much, much worse than that of the self-inflicted “coronavirus” economic shutdown. A military conflict with the PRC, sparked by US and AUS belligerence, would be so disastrous that its consequences cannot be rationally calculated.

Canberra’s US backed provocations against the PRC have once again demonstrated one of the real reasons for the contrived fraud of the coronavirus gambit – it was a smokescreen for imperialist war. For ten years, Washington has been stretching all fibres straining for war with any or all of its supposed enemies – the PRC, Russia, Iran, the DPRK (“North Korea”), Venezuela and so on. A major war is perhaps the ONLY way to restart the faltering world capitalist economy, as horrendous as it would be for the working masses of the east and west. The dire economic woes of the world profit system mean that imperialism cannot tolerate the political leadership of any country making decisions of their own, regardless of the interests of Wall Street. It certainly cannot tolerate any rival coming close to challenging it – yet the rise of Red China does precisely that.

Working people need to grasp the fact that the PRC is challenging the global rule of the US Empire because it operates a largely collectively owned and planned economy, which does NOT primarily function on the basis of production for private profit. The PRC’s socialism, however distorted, is exposing the glaring failures of the “free market” capitalism of the West. To this extent, workers should side with the PRC in the event of the eruption of war with the US and its allies. This does not imply even a molecule of political support for the CPC, which vulgarises the very notion of Marxism. In fact, only the replacement of the rule of the CPC with elected workers’ and soldiers’ councils, with participation permitted for all pro-worker political tendencies who defend the heritage of 1949, has the possibility of offering some leadership to a world proletariat disoriented by the Covid-19 plot. Out of the struggle to ward off imperialist war, it is vital that vanguard parties based on genuine Leninism be forged by the workers of all countries. NO TO WAR IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC! HANDS OFF CHINA!

WORKERS LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

PO Box 66 NUNDAH QLD 4012

[1] https://news.defence.gov.au/capability/270-billion-boost-defence-capability (04-07-2020)

[2] https://redfireonline.com/2020/04/18/covid-19-savage-assault-under-the-guise-of-health/ (04-07-2020)

[3] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/australia-all-but-accuses-china-cyberattack-government-companies-2020-6?r=US&IR=T (04-07-2020)

[4] https://www.sott.net/article/437083-Compelling-Evidence-That-SARS-CoV-2-Was-Man-Made (04-07-2020)

Repeal the “Foreign Interference Laws”!

July 1, 2020 / redfireonline / Leave a comment

ASIO raid on the Labor Party MP’s home, for mild pro-China comments. Image from Yahoo News.

Repeal the “Foreign Interference Laws”!

30-06-2020: In a disturbing precedent, New South Wales (NSW) Labor Party MP Shaoquett Moselmane has had Federal Police and ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation – the equivalent of the FBI in the US) officers raid his home in Rockdale, Sydney on June 26.[1] It is the first investigation to take place using the “Foreign Interference” laws passed by the Federal Parliament in 2018. Mr Moselmane’s “crime” is to make very minor pro-China (People’s Republic of China or PRC) comments praising the response of the PRC government’s response to the alleged Covid-19 “pandemic”. Apparently Mr Moselmane had also made a few previous trips to the Chinese mainland – along with literally millions of other humans, and thousands of other Australians. Allegations that Mr Moselmane is working for the Communist Party of China (CPC) or the government of the PRC, or is attempting to subvert the Australian government on behalf of “China” are so absurd it would barely be worth commenting on, unless the ramifications were dire. Yet on unproven and farcical allegations Mr Moselmane has had his NSW Labor Party membership suspended, has been removed from the Labor parliamentary caucus, and faces being expelled from parliament altogether.

“Foreign Interference” laws prepare for war

As we wrote at the time of its introduction, the National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill 2018 potentially outlaws political opinion, political activity and journalism.[2] In the case of Mr Moselmane, it has outlawed the ability of an MP to praise the PRC for anything. It also threatens years or decades in jail for the “crime” of politically criticising foreign policy, or not being sufficiently “onside” with far-fetched New Cold War hysteria. The Prime Minister at the time stressed that the bill was not just about China, but about other states that interfere, including Russia, Iran and North Korea!! The reality is of course the opposite. It is the US Empire which is enacting a wicked crusade against these independent states, for the “crime” of being able to make their own political decisions independent of Washington. With Canberra’s assent, the “Foreign Interference” laws seek to normalise the preparations of the US Empire for a catastrophic World War III. Needless to say, sanity resides with those who question the march towards a global conflagration.

However, the international political situation in 2020 is different to that which existed when the “Foreign Interference” Bill was passed by Canberra politicians in 2018. Now, there is an unbridled attack on the working class which has taken place under the cover of a fake and pre-manufactured Coronavirus “pandemic”, which distorts science beyond recognition.[3] The Covid-19 fraud was not only a capitalist attack on the living standards of working people, it was a pretext for a previously unimaginable increase of state power as well as a dress rehearsal for the launching of imperialist war. To enable this, Washington, London, Paris and Berlin joined forces to eliminate basic civil and political rights.

Lockdown left offers its services

Unfortunately, instead of launching a counter-response to a new phase of capital’s class war against the downtrodden, almost all Australian left parties signed up as volunteers on the wrong side of the barricades.[4] Taking their cue from overpaid Union officials, the “lockdown left” accepted the corporate politicians’ Covid-19 subterfuge as good coin, and enthusiastically deputised themselves as un-uniformed lieutenants barking out orders to the great unwashed. They shepherded everyone into inhumane lockdowns and policed absurd “social-distancing” rules – which have no basis in medicine. That is to say, the lockdown left and the sell-out Union officials today act as paramilitary contractors to the capitalist state. They offer their dastardly misdeeds to the imperialists – free of charge.

Raising the alarm about the ASIO raids on Mr Moselmane’s home, Trotskyist Platform correctly point out that these acts are a dramatic attack on democratic rights.[5] About this there is no disagreement. Yet who is it that has enabled this attack on democratic rights by assisting the capitalist state in its’ Covid-19 panic mongering? The lockdown left – of which Trotskyist Platform is a card-carrying member. As the Workers League repeatedly warned, swallowing the “coronavirus” narrative of the ruling class of the Western world has extremely dangerous political consequences. To endorse the sham Covid-19 chronicles of the billionaire media and the marionette politicians who serve them not only fans the flames of baseless fear. Crucially, it hands even more political power to the capitalist state than it had previously. And as soon as this state is handed more political authority than it is usually afforded in “normal” times, it will use this power for diabolical ends.

In their naivete, the lockdown left imagined that the capitalist state could be trusted in the area of “health”, while it could be opposed on all other planes. Of course, this flies in the face of basic politics in a class divided society. While it is true that workers must be treated in a hospital if they suffer serious illness, it does not at all follow that the health bureaucrats salaried by the state will follow medical science regardless of their pay-slips. It does not at all follow that a police officer enforcing medically risible lockdowns will also therefore protect democratic and political rights. If the capitalist state is afforded political backing by workers, especially by mistake, it will use this political power against the basic human, political and civil rights it hypocritically “upholds”. In other words, the regurgitation of the Covid-19 pork pie by the liberal lockdown left is precisely what has empowered ALL arms of the capitalist state – up to and including ASIO operatives.

All of this is beyond the comprehension of the lockdown left. Thankfully, there are those who reject the overblown Covid-19 mania and suspect there is an unstated agenda. It is the task of the genuine left to link up with these workers, many of whom have been active in the anti-lockdown movement. Advanced workers must be forged into a political force which can lead the masses away from a totalitarian nightmare and imperialist war towards an egalitarian and harmonious socialist order.

WORKERS LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E:workersleague@redfireonline.com

[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-australian-politicians-home-and-parliamentary-office-raided-in/ (28-06-2020)

[2] https://redfireonline.com/2018/07/15/repeal-the-espionage-and-interference-act-no-war-on-china/ (28-06-2020)

[3] https://redfireonline.com/2020/06/06/covid-19-the-corruption-of-science/ (28-06-2020)

[4] https://redfireonline.com/2020/04/25/the-left-and-the-coronavirus/ (28-06-2020)

[5] https://www.facebook.com/TrotskyistPlatform/?epa=SEARCH_BOX (28-06-2020)

No Fees for Degrees!

June 28, 2020 / redfireonline / Leave a comment

Image : Noosa News

No Fees for Degrees!

26-06-2020: Not content with running Universities into the ground through decades of funding cuts, the Federal Government is now blatantly embarking on another multi-pronged attack on the higher education sector. In a speech to the National Press Club, Liberal National Party (LNP) Minister for Education Dan Tehan announced massive fee hikes for Arts, Law and Commerce degrees alongside large fee reductions for degrees in Maths and Agriculture (by 62%). Teaching, nursing, clinical psychology, English and languages fees will drop by 46%. In an obviously targeted blast, tuition fees for Humanities degrees will more than double (by 113%). Fees for Law and Commerce degrees will increase by 28%, while fees for medical, dentistry and veterinary science will not change. Science, health, architecture, environmental science, IT and Engineering degrees will cost 20% less than what they were previously.[1]

Falling behind Red China

Some have commented that conservative governments routinely denigrate faculties such as the Humanities as “useless”, and favour University studies for “real” work like Engineering, and this latest move is a continuation of that trend. Though there is much in this critique that is true, it is also the case that the booming socialist economy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)– despite being saddled with a conservative and nationalist political leadership – is leaving the flailing economies of the capitalist West in the dust. This is particularly apparent in the stupendous advances in science and technology that the PRC is demonstrating on a regular basis. For example, no country has been able to attempt, let alone effect, a soft landing on the dark side of the moon – apart from the PRC. In early January 2019 the China National Space Administration (CNSA) successfully landed the lunar rover Chang’e-4 on the far side of the moon,[2] where the USA and the USSR never managed to tread. The PRC is now a scientific power, accompanying its rise as an economic and, therefore, political power.

The PRC aims to become a global innovator by 2050, and its largely collectivised and planned economy enables billions of yuan (China’s currency) to be fed into state backed science and technology research and development. The results are plain to see. It is estimated that by 2017, some 8 million students had graduated from Chinese universities, which was a ten-fold increase over the previous 20-year period, and doubled the number graduating from US universities. China’s share of global scientific papers virtually tripled from 6.4% in 2003 to 18.2% in 2013 – second only to the US at 18.8%.[3] A glance at such stats reveals some of the real basis for Western anti-China hysteria.

Australia’s lack of student performance in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) is largely a result of the dire lack of tertiary education funding, for which both Labor and Liberal governments have been to blame. This crisis has alarmed sections of the Australian ruling class itself, as it was glaring. As far back as 2015, the Australian Industry Group explicitly called for the implementation of strategies to increase the number of undergraduates in the STEM disciplines.[4]

Coronavirus used as a false pretext

Covid-19 manufactured hysteria is clearly being used as a cover for the most severe attack on working class people since the Great Depression of the 1930s.[5] Inhumane and life-taking lockdowns, economic shutdowns, and wave after wave of job cuts have been blamed on a “virus”. It is nothing of the sort. Covid-19 is, at worst, a mild illness which may possibly contribute to a slightly increased danger for those with very advanced age and/or chronic adverse health conditions. In reality, the ruling elites of the West have been gunning for imperialist war against China, Russia, Iran and others for at least ten years. Having been blocked in this quest by Russia, Syria, Iran and the DPRK, the billionaire class used the opportunity of a coronavirus to instead wage war against “their own” workers. The current assault by Canberra on the right of working people to tertiary education should be seen in this context.

This is the main reason why all those who stand in opposition to the latest funding cuts to higher education must at the same time shed any allegiance to the fake “pandemic” narrative. The very same politicians that are now ripping more taxpayer dollars from Universities are the very same ones which have enacted a totalitarian nightmare against the masses from one end of the country to another. These very same politicians who are now attempting to discourage students from studying the Humanities are the very same ones who have effectively abolished freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association and freedom of movement under the truthless slogan of “staying safe”. Infatuated with the amount of power handed to them, these politicians have attempted to enforce blind and unthinking submission to authority on a disoriented populace.

Without exception, and without asking, the corporate politicians have received willing assistance in the waging of a vicious attack on working people by treacherous Union officials and the clueless parties of the “lockdown left”. Abandoning even a display of token defiance to the capitalism they claim to oppose, these charlatans have been the most enthusiastic enforcers of the absurd and logic-defying Covid-19 rules such as isolation of the healthy and “social-distancing”. That is, they did not hesitate to act as state troopers against workers who so much as questioned the coronavirus fairytales.

Education is a right which must be fought for. It must be free, from kindergarten to the most advanced University tuition. Students should not be burdened with onerous debts while the 600 largest corporations in Australia pay little or no tax. If capitalism in the 21^st century cannot provide free education, then let it perish. What is required is a working-class fightback against every manifestation of the onslaught waged under the cover of a pathogen, from lockdowns to job cuts, to university fee hikes, to imperialist war. Socialism offers the only salvation from a world in crisis, but it must be built by workers who are free from those who would force them to wear face masks – the mark of a slave. NO FEES FOR DEGREES! FOR FREE EDUCATION!

WORKERS LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

PO Box 66 NUNDAH QLD 4012

[1] https://au.news.yahoo.com/uni-degree-fees-shakeup-012452222.html (24-06-2020)

[2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/01/china-change-4-historic-landing-moon-far-side-explained/ (24-06-2020)

[3] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0195347 (24-06-2020)

[4] (Australian Industry Group – Progressing STEM Skills in Australia (2015))

[5] https://redfireonline.com/2020/04/18/covid-19-savage-assault-under-the-guise-of-health/ (25-06-2020)

Covid-19: The Corruption of Science

June 6, 2020 / redfireonline / Leave a comment

Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing for Covid-19 can result in an 80% false positive rate. The test was never designed to be used for diagnosis. Image from http://www.livescience.com

Covid-19: The Corruption of Science

25-05-2020: Covid-19 is a nothing-burger. On the scale of emergent threats to human civilisation, SARS-CoV-2 (renamed Covid-19) does not even rate a mention. Compared to ecological collapse, of which global warming is just one part, it’s a fizzer. Compared to the threat of nuclear war launched by Washington in a last-ditch effort to restore a fast-declining empire, Covid-19 is barely a footnote. Even the very Western politicians most responsible for fanning the flames of false coronavirus hysteria publicly admit that this particular virus is extremely unlikely to be of any danger to vast swathes of humanity. At the same time, they put on the Covid-19 act.

In a talk given on April 30, the United Kingdom’s (UK) Chief Medical Officer again outlined that the majority of the population will not be infected with Covid-19. Of those who are infected, a significant proportion will experience NO symptoms. Of those who are infected who actually have symptoms, around 80% of them will only have a mild to moderate experience with the disease. Maybe a few days in bed, but that’s it. A minority of those with the disease will need to go to hospital, but only for some oxygen, before most of them are released. A minority of those will need critical care, and unfortunately some of them may pass away – possibly 1%, possibly less. Even amongst those in the highest risk groups – the elderly, the immune compromised, those with chronic underlying health conditions – a majority of these people will not die.[1] In other words, Covid-19, like most viruses actually, is utterly harmless to the overwhelming majority of humanity.

Politicians’ spin distorting science

Western politicians inflict devastating lockdowns and economic shutdowns, remove elementary civil and political rights, drive the most vulnerable into even deeper poverty – but the science (when not obscured) indicates almost no danger. In the United States of America (US), the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which on the one hand feeds panic over Covid-19, on the other hand does not hide the position which appears to confirm the science. On its own website, the CDC states that the highest percentage of severe outcomes for those who contract the Covid-19 disease (as opposed to being infected only) occurs in people who are 85 years or older. They admit that those with serious underlying medical conditions – chronic heart issues, extensive lung conditions, diabetes and so on, face the highest risk of developing a severe case of the illness.[2] Even in these cases, whether the Covid-19 illness actually presents a danger to the life of the individual depends on a whole range of other factors.

The possibility of any previously healthy individual developing a critical case of the Covid-19 disease, while not zero, is extremely low.[3] Despite this, the reaction of Western politicians to the coronavirus (which is actually just one of 39 known coronaviruses) is out of proportion to such a degree, that there is a danger that people will begin to mistrust science itself. In Germany, an 84-year-old resident of a nursing home initially tested positive to Covid-19, sparking the shutdown and evacuation of the entire facility. Four days later, it was actually confirmed that the resident was only infected with an older and harmless variant of the coronavirus, which caused something like a common cold.[4] One can imagine the disruption with having to move everyone back into the nursing home after being shoved out for four days. This is despite publicly available evidence which keeps finding, over and over again, that the infection fatality rate (IFR) for Covid-19 is estimated to be between 0.1% and 0.41%. The Centre for Evidence Based Medicine in the UK even found that the IFR for those over 70, and without underlying pre-existing adverse health conditions will likely not exceed 1%. The mortality rate for children is close enough to zero as to be negligible.[5] Even the flu poses a tiny risk to children.

Testing fiasco

The conspicuous corruption of science by Western politicians is nowhere more evident than in the calls for more testing. The inventor of the “test” for Coronavirus, however, stresses repeatedly that it is not meant to be used as a diagnostic tool.[6] The PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) test was created by Dr Kary Mullis, for which he won a chemistry Nobel Prize in 1993. It is primarily a laboratory technique, which can detect traces of a virus in nucleic acid within the body. It is not a binary test, i.e., it does not give a positive or negative result per se. What happens is that the relevant medical authorities in the area decide a number above which is “positive”, and below which is “negative”. Yet no-one really knows what “tested positive” actually means. Does it mean that you have had the virus, and have developed immunity to it? Does it mean the virus is present in your body, but you are not experiencing any symptoms? Does it mean you will become sick? The results have to be professionally analysed in a laboratory, and even the conclusion from that may not be totally accurate.

The PCR text can only detect traces of viral activity in DNA, whereas Covid-19 is only present in RNA. So, a Reverse-Transcription PCR (RT-PCR) test has to be carried out. If a nasal or blood sample contains a tiny fragment of Covid-19, the RT-PCR test can detect it. However, a positive RT-PCR test for Covid-19 only means that a person has been exposed to the virus. It does not necessarily mean that the full and intact Covid-19 virus is present. The virus has to be complete to be transmitted and to cause illness.[7] So while the corporate media deliberately and repeatedly intones the phrase “tested positive”, this is only used to induce more panic and fear about the coronavirus. It does not explain the science behind the testing, and it is not meant to. For if it was, the game would be exposed.

The Covid-19 test can deliver a rate of 80% false positives. It may detect one of the four other coronaviruses which have been circulating in the human community for 60 years. It may detect a cold or a flu. The President of Tanzania, John Magafuli, was suspicious about the test kits they were sent from overseas, so he ordered some of his own tests to be done. It turned out that a goat and a paw-paw tested positive![8] Mr Magafuli also stated that some people were testing positive without even being infected. The African countries have good reason to be suspicious of the Coronavirus hysteria, which has triggered draconian lockdowns and absurd social-distancing rules in the wealthy industrialised West. In densely populated parts of Africa, “social distancing” is just not possible.

Separating healthy humans is nonsensical

The Western politicians’ inhumane imposition of tyrannical lockdowns and farcical social distancing has unfortunately been mimicked even by the politicians of some independent states targeted by imperialism, e.g. China, Russia, Iran and Venezuela. This is despite this risible policy flying in the face of basic science. Locking healthy people indoors, away from sunlight, is possibly the worst thing that can be done for a respiratory illness.[9] While workers keep getting threatened with an alleged “second wave” of Covid-19, it is very likely that if people were NOT subjected to house arrest and were allowed to continue circulating in schools, workplaces and social life, natural or herd immunity would have already been reached. The irrational separation of otherwise healthy people has thus created the likelihood of a “second wave”. It has also lowered immune systems which then makes everyone more susceptible to other viruses which may come in future, and which may represent a significant danger.

Despite this, corporate social media giants, acting as defacto arms of Western deep states, are actively censoring anti-lockdown speech and activity, and most especially those most qualified to question the corruption of science by Western politicians. YouTube has directly censored epidemiologist and biostatistician Knutt Wittkowski, who had the temerity to state openly what his decades of experience has taught him. Amongst other things, he stated that will all respiratory diseases, the only thing which actually ends it is herd immunity. Around 80% of people need to have contact with the virus, and the vast majority of them will not even notice that they have been infected.[10] This advice, which makes self-evident sense, was contained in a video which was then deleted by YouTube. Vulgarising science to the point of non-recognition, Western politicians – backed by overpaid Union officials and the liberal left – aggressively enforce lockdowns and social-distancing which in fact foster conditions for the sustainability of Covid-19 and other pathogens which actually are harmful. The working class, and science itself, is thus the main victim of political subservience to private capital.

PRC bureaucrats fuel Covid-19 hysteria

The conservative bureaucratic caste which leads the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is also aiding the West’s Covid-19 plot, despite simultaneously demonstrating the advantages for public health under its own deformed workers’ state. While the PRC did not use the coronavirus as an excuse to wage a frontal attack on their own workers as in the West, the top levels of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has used Covid-19 to reinforce its ultimate loyalty to imperialism – even at the same time as remaining its target. President Xi Jinping delivered an address to the virtual meeting of the World Health Assembly on the 18^th of May. In it, he lavished praise on the World Health Organisation (WHO) and called for it to lead the global response to the coronavirus. He groveled before WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom, and whipped up panic about the virus still “raging”.[11] Under the guise of seemingly innocuous calls for “international cooperation”, the speech was a political maneuver which sought an unholy alliance with Western imperialism via the WHO, and against the interests of workers in China and internationally.

The WHO is a front for imperialism, with ongoing corruption allegations standing against it. Tedros Adhanom is a bourgeois politician from Ethiopia and is the first WHO Director-General who is NOT a medical doctor. The WHO’s largest funder is now Bill Gates, the merciless computer software capitalist who masquerades as a philanthropist. The PRC leadership should be politically steering workers away from the WHO, and away from the unscrupulous Western governments who are imposing remorseless lockdowns on workers in the First World. If they were genuine socialists, they would be publicising their scientific findings which show that Covid-19 is generally a weak virus which poses little danger. Yet, there are indications they have done the opposite. China based researchers published some results from carrying out PCR tests on asymptomatic infected individuals who had been in close contact with Covid-19 patients. They found that these tests returned an 80.33% false positive rate.[12] In other words, the testing for Covid-19 is more or less useless, and normal medical processes should be followed if someone feels sick, i.e. seek medical help. Yet this study was withdrawn for reasons which were not given. This suggests that the PRC leadership is attempting to distort scientific findings which grate against their political line which mimics that of the West.

For scientific facts

It is not difficult to see why the science of the coronavirus has been corrupted by Western politicians and is echoed by the bureaucrats at the head of the deformed workers’ states. The real science must be corrupted so as to enable lockdown terror – the current phase of economic and political war against the working class. While the political leaderships of China, Vietnam, the DPRK (“North Korea”) and Cuba have not used the coronavirus to wage economic and political war against “their own” working people, they have no qualms about adding to the intense repression meted out by Western ruling classes against “their own” workers. Instead of speaking out and trying to assist working people in the West suffering from Covid-19 state oppression, the “national-socialists” heading the deformed workers’ states act as accomplices in it, in order to win the favour of imperialism.

Paraphrasing Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, the Coronavirus plot is the crisis of democracy as the main form of bourgeois rule. As the West falters and Eurasia rises, the Anglo/EU/US ruling classes see democracy, even the truncated version they currently sustain at home, as more and more of an impediment to their goals. Most pointedly, Washington and their acolytes will find it much easier to wage imperialist war against Eurasia with their own population in lockdown, and already trained to accept, with barely a murmur, the removal of elementary democratic and civil rights, up to and including house arrest. The near total lack of working-class leadership to ward off such terror only exacerbates the tendency for 21^st century capitalism to slide into fascism.

The anti-lockdown movement has begun heroic resistance, and workers must assist it by building it in the name of the protection of science. It must demand an immediate end to the lockdowns, the cancellation of absurd social-distancing rules, and the re-opening of the economy. It must firmly oppose pointless testing, invasive contact tracing, immunity passports and mandatory vaccinations. State and national borders must be re-opened, to give those without work a chance to regain employment. The much-needed revolution begins with a total break from bourgeois ideology.

WORKERS LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

[1] https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/15/watch-uk-chief-medic-confirms-again-covid19-harmless-to-vast-majority/ (27-05-2020)

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/summary.html#severity (27-05-2020)

[3] https://patient.info/news-and-features/coronavirus-what-are-moderate-severe-and-critical-covid-19 (27-05-2020)

[4] https://www.schwerin.de/news/4a3e5560-78c9-11ea-b543-1967de695b51/ (27-05-2020)

[5] https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/ (27-05-2020)

[6] https://uncoverdc.com/2020/04/07/was-the-covid-19-test-meant-to-detect-a-virus/ (30-05-2020)

[7] https://vaxxter.com/covid19-testing-what-are-we-doing-what-does-it-mean/ (30-05-2020)

[8] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/coronavirus-tanzania-test-kits-suspicion-goat-pawpaw-positive-a9501291.html (30-05-2020)

[9] https://www.aier.org/article/stand-up-for-your-rights-says-bio-statistican-knut-m-wittkowski/ (31-05-2020)

[10] https://nypost.com/2020/05/16/youtube-censors-epidemiologist-knut-wittkowski-for-opposing-lockdown/amp/ (31-05-2020)

[11] https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1188716.shtml (31-05-2020)

[12] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32133832/ (31-05-2020)

End Corona Tyranny!

May 16, 2020 / redfireonline / 3 Comments

Police arrest Fanos Panayides, a speaker at the May 10 Melbourne protest against the coronavirus lockdowns. Image from Malay Mail.

End Corona Tyranny!

17-05-2020: Coronavirus tyranny continues to impose its will on workers worldwide. This is despite many now openly questioning the logic and reasoning behind the dumping into unemployment of millions, the draconian lockdowns and absurd “social distancing” rules. Desperately needed protests against lockdowns are still happening in the United States,[1] while the largest demonstrations regularly occur in Germany, attended by thousands in Berlin, Munich and Stuttgart.[2] After months of hesitation, the dire circumstances have eventually led to anti-lockdown protests in Australia.[3] In one of the most gut-wrenching scenes, police in Sydney traumatised a young child by tearing him away from his mother, who was peacefully protesting for basic rights outside the New South Wales parliament.[4] This young child could suffer permanent psychological damage, and the memory of this appalling incident should send a shiver down the spine of anyone who retains a glimmer of humanity.

Dissociative denial

The intense propaganda barrage from Western politicians and its compliant corporate media has arguably reached a stage which leaves many in a dissociative psychological state. Many know and feel instinctively that Covid-19 (renamed from SARS-CoV-2) is not the Black Plague that it is made out to be, and certainly nothing that has the potential to kill millions of innocent people. Yet they are acting as if that is precisely what it is, seemingly just to avoid being ex-communicated from family, friends, workplaces, and society in general. As CJ Hopkins wrote, everyone knew that in 2003 Iraq did not possess “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. There were huge demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq, but after the US invaded, occupied and destroyed the lives of millions, people were seemingly no longer able to point out or argue that what was being done was wrong. The “War on Terror” narrative was in full swing, so everyone had to at least pretend to be against “terrorism”, even though they knew the Iraqis were not terrorists.[5]

Working people are bombarded each day with death figures and are told this is because of the coronavirus. This corporate media spin is a transparent subterfuge. Not a shred of context or a comparison with other causes of death or other explanation is offered. Yet a few keystrokes on a keyboard connected to the internet will reveal a dramatic false alarm. In Australia, approximately 438 people pass away each day from all causes.[6] This means that the 132 days so far this year have resulted in 57 816 deaths. Of these, if the figures can indeed be trusted, only 97 of these are due to Covid-19.[7] That is, 0.17% of the total deaths so far in Australia this year can be attributed to the coronavirus. Obviously, such a miniscule percentage cannot justify a “pandemic”.

Corporate media worldwide blew the coronavirus situation in Italy into something resembling Armageddon. The reality was again more deceptive coverage. It turns out that 99% of Italy’s coronavirus victims had other adverse and underlying health conditions. The average age of Italy’s Covid-19 fatalities (again assuming accurate figures) was 79.5 years. All of Italy’s victims under 40 have had serious co-morbid health conditions.[8] This scenario is replicated worldwide. Unless you are aged in your 70s, 80s or 90s, or you have a significant health condition which debilitates your immune system, Covid-19 is not a dangerous virus. There is a case for attempting to shield the elderly and the immune compromised from exposure to the virus in the first several weeks of its peak – while allowing the rest of the healthy population to continue to circulate. Yet there is no case for the lockdown and isolation of those who are not sick and who do not display any symptoms.

Covid-19 needs to exhaust itself

In fact, the separation and isolation of the otherwise healthy population will do two things which increases the danger. Firstly, it will prevent natural or herd immunity from being reached in ideal timeframe – five to six weeks. The virus will then hang around for longer in the community, endangering, and even contributing to more deaths of, the elderly and the immune compromised. Secondly, preventing the healthy population from being able to contract Covid-19 means that they will not develop the antibodies to fight the virus naturally, and will thus be more vulnerable to the virus as well as other viruses that will inevitably arrive.

This is where the bourgeois ideology of “stop the spread” and “social distancing” is revealed to be the dastardly sting for which it has been deviously designed. There are only two ways to deal with a virus. One is a vaccine, and the other is natural, or herd, immunity. A vaccine for Covid-19 may not be possible, or if it is, it could be two years away. There is also a strong case for not using vaccines at all, given the domination of vaccine production by Big Pharma. Natural or herd immunity, on the other hand, is the way that humanity deals with flu viruses (admittedly Covid-19 is not a flu virus per se) every single year. Some people get a flu shot, but most people deal with it through herd immunity. We know that if you catch the flu, you isolate yourself from others (and especially elderly relatives) for a week or so, until it has passed. This is practiced by everyone without even thinking about it, through collective experience.

Through intense propaganda, people are being conditioned to do anything to help “stop the spread”, that is to attempt to contain it completely. Yet this is the opposite of what will actually “stop the spread”. With a virus, the healthy population (those who are not elderly or have chronic health conditions) needs to contract it and develop the necessary anti-bodies. They then become immune to it, and they can no longer pass it on to anyone else.[9] It seems ironic, but this is what happens every single year, every single flu season. A virus needs to spread first, so that herd immunity can be reached, and then the virus burns itself out and no longer bothers humans. As much as it is the opposite of what the self-serving politicians tell us, if you are generally healthy and aged under 70, being infected with Covid-19 is not only a good thing, it is necessary to protect the immune-compromised, and to strengthen the immune systems of the community in general. It must be remembered that around 80% of those who contract the virus recover (i.e. develop natural immunity) without the need to go to hospital.[10] In other words, in order to reach its own stage of self-exhaustion, the virus must first be allowed to spread amongst those with healthy immune systems. The fact that the politicians have wilfully lied about this process strongly indicates an ulterior motive, and another agenda entirely.

Lockdowns kill

It is self-evident that lockdowns and the deliberate destruction of the economy will kill innocent human beings, in numbers that are difficult to quantify. In the US, one report has already predicted that there will be 75 000 “deaths of despair” related to the government response to Covid-19. Factors contributing to “deaths of despair” include loneliness, months long compulsory isolation and skyrocketing unemployment.[11] The lockdowns, police enforced social distancing, the crashing of the economy – this understandably leads many to excess deaths due to drug and alcohol abuse, as well as suicide. A report prepared for the Australian parliament described some of the devastating effects unemployment has, from entrenched poverty in retirement, negative generational effects on whole families, up to and including significantly higher mortality rates.[12] Today’s unemployment is not due a “virus”, but a premeditated shutdown of whole industries by politicians, with no conclusive scientific or medical evidence that such an act will save even one life.

In the United Kingdom (UK), 5% of the working age population have applied for unemployment benefits, while in the US 10% of the entire population have filed for social security.[13] None of this is due to a relatively weak virus – it is due to brutal lockdowns and an economic freeze ordered by their respective governments. Disallowing people to work obviously puts them and their families in a perilous situation, as many will not be able to afford to pay the rent or put food on the table. All this happens while much needed health care is cancelled or postponed, to make way in hospitals for Covid-19 patients who are all but mythical. In the UK, 40% of the beds in the public health system remain empty[14], in what is allegedly a “health crisis”. These beds could be taken up by those who have chronic health conditions, the treatment of which could prolong or save their lives. Needless to say, depriving people of the need to work, the need for human contact, and the need for healthcare is plainly not about “saving lives”. Lockdown mania is the wanton taking of lives, for political ends.

Working class political leadership is critical

Corona tyranny is evidently not about medicine, science, or the protection of anyone. As we have indicated previously, the real agenda is a preparation for fascism and imperialist war. This is why the Union bureaucracy – the spine of imperialism – has been used to politically suppress workers. The ultra-conservative and overpaid Union officials impose the false virus scaremongering on their own members, and the working class as a whole. Of course, they have done so under the facile rhetoric of “staying safe”. Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) President Michele O’Neil released an eight-point program which is a barely social-democratic wish list, with no intention to organise Union members to achieve it. The real aim of the elite ACTU officials was contained in the comments: “We look forward to working with governments, employers and communities (emphasis added) to develop the programs Australia needs to rebuild and make jobs more secure.”[15] That is, Union officials (as opposed to rank-and-file members) at all levels will co-operate with the very forces enabling the onerous state repression against workers, under the guise of “rebuilding Australia”. In reality, the Union tops are very well aware that the ruling classes of the Anglo-US Empire are pushing for a catastrophic war against China, Russia, Iran and others, and are stepping up the deceit so that no Union member or worker steps out of line by questioning such insanity. Nor are workers meant to question the effective cancellation of rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly or freedom of association – despite these being crucial even just for the existence of Unions.

What is arguably worse is the fact that many parties of the so-called left have barely quibbled with the treacherous Union officials in the task of spreading obviously fake coronavirus hysteria, while pleading for a shopping list of reformist “demands”. Incredibly, these parties which call themselves socialist line up to oppose workers returning to work, while the conservative Liberal government is urging a restart. They appear to believe the world is an incredibly dangerous place now, while the Liberal government knew all along it was all for show. Toeing the coronavirus line we find: Socialist Alliance[16], Socialist Alternative[17], Solidarity[18], Trotskyist Platform[19], Communist Party of Australia[20], Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)[21], Australian Communist Party[22], and the Socialist Equality Party[23]. All of them, to one degree or another, fan the flames of corona hysteria while making derisory pleas for more funding for healthcare. In practice, all of them have run into the arms of the bourgeois class while acting as their lieutenants enforcing a police state.

Before the working class can take one step forward against the ideological onslaught, it must help organise and lead resistance to the monstrous lockdowns and inane social distancing. The left must combat the epic betrayal of the Union officials and the so-called left parties who currently seem unable to question corporate politicians and its servile media. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of association are not abstract rights. Capital has used a fake pandemic to remove these rights and will not return them unless workers take them back using their own power. We seek to fill the vacuum of leadership by taking the first steps towards a Marxist vanguard party. Join us!

WORKERS LEAGUE
www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

PO Box 66 NUNDAH QLD 4012

[1] https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article242129761.html (12-05-2020)

[2] https://www.dw.com/en/germany-thousands-of-protesters-slam-isolation-measures/a-53382891 (12-05-2020)

[3] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8299429/Anti-vaxxers-5G-conspiracy-theorists-protest-coronavirus-lockdown-Victoria-Mothers-Day (12-05-2020)

[4] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8303083/Dramatic-moment-mother-protesting-rights-arrested-son-Sydney (12-05-2020)

[5] https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/05/virus-of-mass-destruction/ (12-05-2020)

[6] https://realnewsaustralia.com/2020/04/18/covid-19-that-is-the-question/ (12-05-2020)

[7] https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert/coronavirus-covid-19-current-situation-and-case-numbers (12-05-2020)

[8] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says (12-05-2020)

[9] https://lovebreedsaccountability.com/2020/05/01/your-mask-is-making-you-meaner-dumber-more-afraid-less-safe/ (12-05-2020)

[10] https://www2.hse.ie/conditions/coronavirus/managing-coronavirus-at-home/treat-symptoms-at-home.html (13-05-2020)

[11] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-deaths-suicides-drugs-alcohol-pandemic-75000/ (13-05-2020)

[12] www.aphref.aph.gov.au_house_committee_ewr_owk_report_chapter2.pdf (13-05-2020)

[13] https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/12/opposing-lockdown-is-not-profits-before-people/ (13-05-2020)

[14] https://www.hsj.co.uk/acute-care/nhs-hospitals-have-four-times-more-empty-beds-than-normal/7027392.article (13-05-2020)

[15] https://www.actu.org.au/actu-media/media-releases/2020/australian-unions-call-for-2-million-new-secure-jobs-and-halving-of-job-insecurity-to-rebuild-economy (14-05-2020)

[16] https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/workers-must-fight-back-10-demands-make-sure-no-worker-left-behind (14-05-2020)

[17] https://redflag.org.au/node/7179 (14-05-2020)

[18] https://www.solidarity.net.au/highlights/may-1-convoy-protest-says-no-to-job-cuts-and-attacks-on-wages/ (14-05-2020)

[19] https://www.trotskyistplatform.com/no-job-cuts-no-unpaid-stand-downs/ (14-05-2020)

[20] https://cpa.org.au/guardian/2020/1914/01-profit.html (14-05-2020)

[21] https://www.cpaml.org/post4.php?id=1589275276&catitem1=People%27s%20Issues&catid1=19 (14-05-2020)

[22] https://www.auscp.org.au/militant-monthly/2020/4/23/covid19-and-the-dark-heart-of-capitalism (14-05-2020)

[23] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/12/viru-m12.html (14-05-2020)

Covid-19: The Looming Shadow of War

May 3, 2020 / redfireonline / 1 Comment

Australian warship HMAS Parramatta joins the US in hostile sweeps of the South China Sea. Image from The Maritime Executive

Covid-19: The Looming Shadow of War

02-05-2020: As the coronavirus chicanery of the Western ruling classes begins to unravel, the real agenda behind the “pandemic” emerges from the shadows. Some restrictions enforcing the lockdown mania slowly begin to be lifted in some countries, giving working people across the planet some breathing space. The partial easing of some restrictions is NOT because manic lockdowns are “working” or “stopping the spread”. This is laughable. As Rob Slane demonstrates, there is NO correlation between the demand for soul destroying nation-wide lockdowns and a reduction in total deaths. Assuming all the reported “Covid-19 deaths” are correct (a huge IF), Sweden – with no lockdowns save very large gatherings – is actually doing a better job of reducing deaths than other European countries which have imposed lockdowns.[1] The lockdowns are beginning to be lifted by US and European countries for two main reasons. One is that there have been important protests against lockdowns and economic shutdowns. The other is that their legitimacy is falling apart at the seams and is being openly questioned by swathes of medical professionals and other workers.

The game is being exposed

A hot microphone in the US White House press briefing room caught an exchange between Fox News reporter John Roberts and a technician during set up. He jokes to the technician to take of his face mask, because a recent study in Los Angeles had confirmed a Covid-19 mortality rate of only 0.1% to 0.3%. To his credit, John Roberts asked the health official about this study in the press conference – who promptly dodged the question.[2] This may not have been reported if the people there had known that the microphone was on. Think about the significance of this – White House press reporters are joking about the real mortality rate of Covid-19 being “like the flu”, while millions across the globe have been thrown on the unemployment scrapheap AND placed under effective house arrest, on the spurious grounds that a deadly plague is trawling the globe.

The rubbery figures of Covid-19 “deaths” continue to be hyped by politicians and the compliant corporate media. Yet even their coverage sometimes cannot avoid revealing real howlers. The Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, Dr Ngozi Ezike, was emphatic in a recent interview that even “if you die of a clear alternative cause, it is still listed as a Covid death”.[3] In other words, there has been pressure by health authorities to vastly overinflate Covid-19 “death numbers”. The numbers are phony. While this is going on, critical health care is being halted, resulting in delayed treatment, prolonged suffering and even death from the foregoing of vital cancer screening, tumour biopsies and treatment for stroke and heart attack victims.[4] The reason? The clearing of entire wards of hospitals, and the suspension of “non-essential surgery” to make way for a supposed flood of Covid-19 patients – who never arrive.

Cover for war

It did not take long for one of the diabolical reasons for the over-hyped coronavirus neurosis to emerge. On April 19, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne publicly called for an independent investigation into the spread and origins of the coronavirus[5], with the strong implication that the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was lying. By “independent” she of course meant it should be conducted by anyone but China. The PRC immediately rejected these calls, which were a transparent provocation. This was followed days later by the news that the Australian frigate HMAS Parramatta had joined US warships in yet another incitement, sailing through the South China Sea.[6] If anything reveals the unwritten agenda of the Covid-19 hoodwinking, this is it.

As we have previously reported[7], Red China is also targeted by imperialism which hypocritically claims to defend the “human rights” of the Rohingya people in the Rakhine state of Myanmar. While US allies such as the Saudi Arabian monarchy fund and arm Rohingya separatists with open links to Al Qaeda, the Western “human rights” industry disingenuously accuse the Tatmadaw (the Myanmar military) of a genocidal attack on Rohingya in 2017. What actually happened were vicious attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on 30 police stations in pre-dawn raids, to which the Tatmadaw naturally had to respond. In the firefight, and also in fear of ultra-racist Buddhist “monks” bent on expelling Rohingya from Myanmar, many fled to neighbouring Bangladesh.

The US state has an intrinsic interest in fuelling murderous separatism in the Rakhine state, as it would supply the perfect pretext to send troops in to “protect” the Rohingya. In reality, it would be a beachhead to move US troops (or their proxy forces) close to the South Western border of the PRC. It would also potentially derail the China-Myanmar pipeline, which ends at the port of Kyauk Phyu in the middle of the Rakhine state. As if on cue, United Nations (UN) special rapporteur on human rights (don’t laugh!) claimed that the Tatmadaw is launching military attacks on the Rakhine and Chin states which MAY (they are sometimes careful not to lie too flagrantly) amount to “war crimes and crimes against humanity”.[8] In reality, with regard to the Chin state the Tatmadaw is responding to a long running armed anti-government insurgency by the Chin National Army (CNA) which works alongside US backed fronts such as the Free Burma Rangers.[9] Lest one imagine that the CNA is a “liberation” force backed by its people, even the US based Human Rights Watch has to admit that the CNA “extort money and commit other abuses against Chin civilians”.[10]

Washington (backed by Canberra) also targets the PRC via the Philippines. Recently the overwhelmingly popular President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte terminated the Visiting Forces Agreement with America[11], which gave US troops almost unfettered access to Filipino soil. This is part of a deliberate tilt away from the US and towards the PRC (and also Russia) which riles the Pentagon. It also marks the slow and steady decline of US hegemony in the Asia-Pacific, something Wall Street is desperate to reverse. Again, as if prompted, liberal Western media target President Duterte for….harsh coronavirus lockdowns!! Knock us down with a feather. In a classic case of projection, Australian state media cites the aforementioned Human Rights Watch to criticise Filipino authorities of “taking a step too far” in policing the rules.[12] Yet it is plain that Australian police arresting people for sitting down in public parks is the same thing, or worse. The article also criticises one Filipino policeman for locking curfew breakers in a dog cage, but then has to admit that the officer will face disciplinary charges for doing so.[13]

US still seeks the destruction of the Middle East

Washington has not given up its attempts at regime change in Syria, despite suffering a heavy defeat via its ISIS proxies in the years from 2011 to 2019. Russia, Syria, Iran and Hezbollah joined forces to defeat the deranged Al Qaeda mercenaries, which arguably led to the first defeat of the US in war since the liberation of Vietnam in 1975. This setback in turn fuelled desperate US attempts at regime change in Iran, Venezuela, Hong Kong, Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon and the DPRK – all of which went nowhere. This is one reason why the Western ruling classes decided to latch on to the opportunity presented by the discovery of a new (but essentially very weak) virus. They could not start the global war which MAY have saved Western capitalism, being stymied by a combination of the non and anti-imperialist states. Now, not only is patent coronavirus dishonesty being used to justify self-destruction of economies, it is also being used as a wafer-thin pretext for yet more imperialist war. Recently, a joint Russian and Syrian statement claimed the US was influencing the United Nations (UN) to accuse the Syrian Arab Republic of being unable to contain Covid-19,[14] over the issue of sending aid to the Rukban refugee camp. The implication being, of course, that US troops would be needed to “deliver aid” inside Syria, giving another faux justification for their continued (illegal) presence.

Nor has Washington’s 40-year long campaign for regime change in the Islamic Republic of Iran let up, even for a second. Not only had did the US government increase already crushing sanctions against Iran,[15] US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has even attempted to claim that the US still remains a participant state of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal – from which it unilaterally withdrew in May 2018. This would, at least in the head of Mr Pompeo, lead to a “snapback” of the UN enforced sanctions against Iran which were in place prior to the JCPOA. The Iranian ambassador to the UN, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, in response had little option but to label the attempt of the US to claim it was still a signatory to the JCPOA as “similar to a joke”.[16] This comes after the US blatantly assassinated leading Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq in January.

NATO to “fight coronavirus” ?

Once again NATO tries in vain to justify its existence, this time by jumping on the coronavirus bandwagon. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg absurdly claimed that Russian military exercises in western Russia was a reason for NATO to be on its guard during the coronavirus crisis.[17] That is, NATO threatens the world with a nuclear war because Russia is conducting military exercises – on its own soil. There is little else that exposes NATO as an anti-Russian Cold War relic. Meanwhile, hack anti-Russian journalists blame the Russian government for what appears in the Russian media, and conflates it with the position of the Russian government.[18] Yet what they are “accused” of in this case has some substance. Some in the Russian media speculate that the coronavirus was a US attempt to kneecap the Chinese economy, which certainly cannot be discounted. And in fact, the Chinese Ambassador to Russia made the announcement that the genome sequence of the coronavirus indicates that it was introduced to the Wuhan seafood market by an infected person – it was not the origin. Zhang Hanhui stated, after extensive research by five reputable Chinese scientific organisations, that the “grandpa” and “grandma” H13 and H38 haplotypes were never found in Wuhan, whereas the “father” H3 was found there, but not in the seafood market. Therefore, the H1 haplotype (Covid-19) had to have been introduced from elsewhere. The gene sequence cannot lie, stated Mr Zhang.[19]

Regardless of its origin, what is not in doubt is that the coronavirus could well be used by Washington and their allies in Canberra, Wellington, London, Paris and Berlin to launch a catastrophic global war against China, Russia, Iran, Syria, the DPRK, Venezuela and more. There was nothing spontaneous about the controlled demolition of parts of the national economies of the West – this was part of an ideological and political preparation in case the Western ruling classes found a (false) justification for launching civilisation threatening bloodshed. Hence the absurd dictums of “staying at home” and “social distancing”. Along with the openly illegal “temporary” elimination of civil and democratic rights, the imperialists were doing little else than testing the limits to which they could prevent political organising and social resistance by working people.

Of course, the imperialists did not do this themselves, but through their agents – which is how they constantly rule in the West. The number one agency they rely on for the political suppression of workers are the ultra-conservative Trade Union officials (not members) – who played their part in the Covid-19 buffoonery. Some of these careerist bureaucrats called on their own members to applaud the work of the frontline health workers – many of whom were themselves confronted with empty hospitals. The “crisis” was not Covid-19 – it was the clearing and vacating of hospital wards for coronavirus patients who never turned up. When it became obvious that the justification for lockdowns and a catastrophic shutdown of the economy was on shaky grounds, and was being questioned by many workers, the overpaid Union officials doubled down and sent out “reminders” to members about just how dangerous Covid-19 supposedly was. Like all claims based on fabrications, however, they fell flat.

Also assisting capitalist politicians and the corporate media were the centrist “left” parties, all of whom stridently defended the lockdowns and effective house arrest of entirely healthy people.[20] Many of these groups, who claim to be “revolutionary”, are already on board with the Anglo/US empire’s agenda of war against China, Russia, Iran and so on. However, so powerful is corporate state propaganda, it has even fooled some individuals amongst the usually anti-imperialist left. Needless to say, it defies logic that the same imperialists who annihilated Iraq and Afghanistan, who destroyed Green Libya, who waged atrocious proxy wars of regime change against Syria and Yemen, could then turn on their heels and – overnight – be overwhelmingly concerned with the public health of “their own” people. Workers must be clear: a Marxist vanguard party can only be forged from the most advanced sections of its class, i.e., those who remain consistent in their rejection of bourgeois ideology. Such a party is needed to lead working people out of the Covid-19 abyss and onward to the disarming of the ruling class which is planning World War III. AUST/US troops: get out of the South China Sea! No to the Coronavirus wars!

WORKERS LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

PO Box 66 NUNDAH QLD 4012

[1] http://www.theblogmire.com/the-undeniable-correlation-between-lockdown-and-the-unprecedented-destruction-of-economies-jobs-and-lives/ (29-04-2020)

[2] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/hoax-fox-news-john-roberts-caught-hot-mic-discussing-covid-19-mortality-rate-technician-like-flu-video/ (29-04-2020)

[3] https://nworeport.me/2020/04/26/if-you-die-of-a-clear-alternative-cause-its-still-listed-as-a-covid-death-dr-ngozi-ezike/ (29-04-2020)

[4] https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/494034-the-data-are-in-stop-the-panic-and-end-the-total-isolation? (29-04-2020)

[5] https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australia-and-china-clash-over-independent-inquiry-into-coronavirus-pandemic (30-04-2020)

[6] https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/04/22/australia-joins-us-ships-in-south-china-sea-amid-rising-tension.html (30-04-2020)

[7] https://redfireonline.com/2018/09/13/myanmar-rohingya-manipulated-for-the-wests-drive-to-war/ (30-04-2020)

[8] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/29/myanmar-military-may-be-repeating-crimes-against-humanity-un-rapporteur-warns (30-04-2020)

[9] https://www.freeburmarangers.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2018-FBR-Annual-Report-Web.pdf (30-04-2020)

[10] https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/01/27/we-are-forgotten-people/chin-people-burma-unsafe-burma-unprotected-india (30-04-2020)

[11] https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/manilas-defence-split-with-washington-will-be-dutertes-lasting-legacy/ (30-04-2020)

[12] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-29/philippines-social-volcano-threatening-to-erupt-amid-covid-19/12193188 (30-04-2020)

[13] https://www.philstar.com/nation/2020/03/21/2002637/barangay-captain-faces-raps-locking-curfew-violators-dog-cage (30-04-2020)

[14] https://nation.com.pk/22-Apr-2020/us-launches-campaign-to-accuse-syria-of-inability-to-curtail-coronavirus-claims-syrian-russian-joint-statement (02-05-2020)

[15] https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/iran/u-s-increases-iran-sanctions-seeks-release-of-americans-amid-coronavirus-outbreak-1.8685134 (02-05-2020)

[16] https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/05/02/624394/Iran-Majid-Takht-Ravanchi–arms-embargo (02-05-2020)

[17] https://www.rferl.org/a/with-eye-on-russia-nato-stresses-readiness-during-coronavirus-crisis/30523705.html (02-05-2020)

[18] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/14/russia-blame-america-coronavirus-conspiracy-theories-disinformation/ (02-05-2020)

[19] https://tass.com/world/1146127?utm_source=tass.com_internal&utm_medium=internal&utm_campaign=tass.com_internal&utm_content=33196922&utm_term=309113 (02-05-2020)

[20] https://redfireonline.com/2020/04/25/the-left-and-the-coronavirus/ (02-05-2020)

The Left and the Coronavirus

April 25, 2020April 25, 2020 / redfireonline / 2 Comments

The Conversation

The Left and the Coronavirus

25-04-2020: The Coronavirus circus will go down as arguably the largest ruse ever perpetrated in history. Is Covid-19 highly infectious? Yes. Is Covid-19 highly dangerous? To a very small minority it might be, depending on a whole heap of variables. Does it justify a controlled implosion of the economy, the sacking of millions of workers, the shredding of constitutions, the elimination (perhaps permanent) of elementary democratic rights, house arrest, a police state and the deliberate creation of poverty and despair? Nothing can justify this. Not only is this a case of the “cure” being worse than the disease, but the “cure” – if allowed to continue – may well cause many, many more premature deaths than ANY virus has done since the time of Cro-Magnon man. As more and more evidence questioning the Covid-19 plot emerges, the working class must burn into their memory the extent to which the authorities, and all of their agents, lied and lied and lied.

Vaccine for Covid-19 may be impossible

Palpable evidence contradicting the politicians’ Covid-19 hysteria is now appearing directly in the mainstream corporate media. In a stunning interview with News.com, Immunologist Professor Ian Frazer outlined why it is extremely difficult to develop a vaccine for Covid-19, even though there are currently 100 attempts being made. Prof. Frazer stated that the coronavirus does not kill cells but makes them sick. Exactly how to eliminate a virus which does not itself eliminate other cells is the tricky part. The coronavirus, which is already very ineffective at making people sick, actually becomes less powerful as it moves from host to host.[1] In effect this means the intense propaganda about “stop the spread” is false even on its own terms. The most effective way to kill the virus, it would seem, is to allow it to spread. Prof. Frazer again reiterated what many other dissident doctors, who have been brave enough to tell the truth, have stated previously. He said for “99 per cent of people who got coronavirus it was a trivial illness, but that was not the case for those in the vulnerable categories”.[2]

Despite this, almost all points of authority in the capitalist West trumpet long and hard about how the coronavirus is a plague of biblical proportions, which, if left unchecked, will decimate the global population. How true is this? Not at all. The Johns Hopkins (private) University is usually cited as an authoritative source on the coronavirus and its effects. Joshua Michael carried out a daily check of the figures of reported infections and death rates during the first four months of this year. Assuming the figures from Johns Hopkins University are all correct, he found that at least 99% of the population of China, Italy, the USA, Spain, Germany, Iran, France, Switzerland, the UK, South Korea, Sweden and Australia remain uninfected. Furthermore, assuming World Factbook’s figure of 152 000 deaths per day is correct, 98.99% of people who died since the beginning of the ‘outbreak’ did not die from Covid-19.[3] This coronavirus “pandemic” has become a re-run of the swine flu “pandemic” of 2009 – a complete fizzer. Of all of the frauds perpetrated against workers in the West, this one takes the cake.

Lockdowns are self-defeating

It is becoming self-evident, if it wasn’t already, that the Covid-19 death toll per se is not really a Covid-19 death toll. What the coronavirus does is trigger organ and function failure in those with already existing morbidities. This includes, but is not limited to, advanced age, cancer, heart disease, obesity and so on. Data from New York, the supposed new epicentre of Covid-19, indicates that the mortality rate for those aged over 80 years is 222 times higher than for those under 50 years old.[4] No one is suggesting that there should not be some measures taken to protect, and maybe temporarily isolate, treat and assist the elderly and/or those with serious health conditions from Covid-19. But to lockdown entire societies, subject workers to effective house arrest, send police to raid children’s birthday parties and potentially kick-start the ruin of human civilisation over a relatively weak virus only makes sense once we realise that there is another agenda at play.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), which is constantly accused of high-level corruption, famously estimated the mortality rate of Covid-19 at 3.4%. Every study that has been done since then exposes this figure as pie-in-the-sky. Research from a group of blood donors in Denmark found 22 of the 1487 samples were positive for Covid-19. Extrapolating the estimated 127 000 Danes that have reportedly been infected with the known Covid-19 deaths in Denmark results in a mortality rate of only 0.16%.[5] In the US the MIT Tech Review covered the work of a recent Stanford University study which found that between 50 to 85 times more people are infected with the coronavirus than first thought. This means that the actual mortality rate of Covid-19 is astronomically lower than the WHO’s blustering. It is likely to be under 0.2% – about as “deadly” as the common flu.[6]

Dr John Lee, a recently retired professor of pathology, stated in an interview that the figures for Covid-19 themselves can be very unreliable, especially if they are from different countries and refer to deaths in isolation from other information. He said that as more and more data comes in, it actually strongly indicates that the coronavirus was not anywhere near as dangerous as first imagined. His opinion is that the case fatality rate could end up being as low as 0.1%. What is more, there is no scientific evidence that nation-wide lockdowns are actually doing anything that Western governments claim they are. The data from Sweden and other countries which are not carrying out full-scale lockdowns is roughly the same as those countries that are – such as the UK.[7]

Left parties chime in

The ramping up of racist attacks on Chinese/Asian citizens, the intense political repression, house arrest, the abolition of even a pretence of the right to free speech or freedom of association or freedom of assembly, mass unemployment for workers – all of this is the result of the actions of Western governments using Covid-19 as an excuse for a vicious assault on working people. This has been inflicted on the masses with blatant fearmongering and junk science. Again, this is not to discount the fact that some rational safety measures MAY be justified. However, one would expect that the first section of society that would stand up and speak out would be the left, you know, those militant revolutionaries who swear adherence to “Marxism”. If you thought this, unfortunately you would be wrong. The majority of Australian left parties have not only NOT defended workers from an indescribable attack on their lives, they have in fact served as ideological gendarmes of the capitalist state. Incredibly, some have even demanded MORE lockdowns and MORE shutdowns than even the corporate elite have managed to inflict so far.

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) have been the most enthusiastic about OPPOSING a return to work[8] – something millions of unemployed and employed workers are desperate to do. The SEP, who trumpet their bland internationalism, funnel their resources into an international campaign…. to shutdown all non-essential services. It’s as if they were employed by Western governments to act as wingmen to agitate for a position more outrageous than their own. The Socialist Alliance eclipses the SEP in the hysteria stakes, demanding a shutdown of schools in addition to non-essential industries, and a “regime” of tracing and quarantine.[9] As usual, it supplies a laundry list of reformist demands, topped by a radical call……for a parliamentary oversight committee![10]

To their credit, Solidarity do highlight the extreme attacks on workers and Unions that have been unleashed, using the coronavirus as a cover. They point out that the Retail Association has called for a 12-month wage freeze on the minimum wage, which is yet another real pay cut. They mention that the Australian Mines and Metals Association has written to the Federal Government demanding a suspension of all awards and enterprise agreements for six months – removing wages and conditions altogether.[11] At the same time, Solidarity in practice accept the premise for all of these attacks – that the world is facing a dire threat in the form of a coronavirus “pandemic”. Talk about fighting with one hand tied behind your back.

Socialist Alternative are perceptive enough to sense that the police state measures inflicted on working people are “going a bit far”, to say the least. They write that there is no proof that lockdowns and travel bans stop the spread of viruses and diseases, and that there is huge skepticism within the medical community about authoritarian quarantine measures.[12] While they correctly warn against accepting “inhumane authoritarian controls” as a sole means to deal with a crisis, they also fuel the panic-mongering initiated by the very governments they are criticising. For example, they even claim that 2000 people are dying daily from Covid-19.[13] If this was true, we might actually have a pandemic.

Socialist Action recognise that the vast majority (try something like 99.9999999%) will survive the coronavirus, but also claim that it is a catastrophe “ravaging the planet”. One cannot have it both ways. Like others on the left, they end up wistfully imploring the government and businesses to do a better job than they currently are.[14] The Trotskyist Platform correctly highlight the fact that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has reduced the number of community transmission of Covid-19 to almost zero. Undoubtedly, the PRC’s largely collectively owned and planned economy played a key role in this huge achievement. However, they also propel coronavirus paranoia by declaring the current period to be one of a “public health emergency”,[15] despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary.

The Communist Party of Australia (CPA) play into the contrived “pandemic” by condemning “neoliberalism”.[16] In other words, the CPA uses the opportunity to once again plead for minor reforms to the capitalist system. They appear oblivious that the Anglo/US Empire has used the coronavirus as cover for huge attacks on the working class. They see the “pandemic” as something separate from the government, which dovetails with the government’s ideological drive. That is, blame everything on a “virus”, so that anything will be accepted without question – even a police state.

The Australian Communist Party (ACP), an anti-China split from the CPA, do note that the government is using Covid-19 as a cover for mass surveillance, suspension of basic rights, and even proposing bans on protests and boycotts. However, their anti-socialist red baiting of the PRC is never far from the surface,[17] placing them in the company of the government they condemn. The Communist Party of Australia Marxist-Leninist (CPA-ML), through their ICOR international of “Marxist-Leninist” parties, also demand the shutdown of non-essential industries, combined with wage compensation for those who lose their jobs.[18] Like others on the left, they don’t seem to notice the irony of the demand – we want workers sacked with compensation!

End the insanity

“Staying at home saves lives….social-distancing….flatten the curve” – all of this is crystallised bourgeois propaganda. Yet much of the so-called left have imbibed the corporate media Kool-Aid, and thus play a simple role of finger wagging towards the capitalist robber barons they claim to oppose. “You should have done a better job with the (false) pandemic….you should fund health care….you should have made preparations”: and so on ad nauseam. This base liberalism contains not a skerrick of Marxism, which seeks to organise workers to establish their own state, administered by their own government. One can’t be the first in line to buy the “pandemic” fraud, and then claim to oppose the lockdowns, the police state, the house arrest, the abolition of democratic rights, the millions of job losses, the consequent poverty and more. Nor will you be armed to oppose the fascism or imperialist war that may very well follow in its path. For the “pandemic” is the pretext for all of this and more.

This “left” would have us believe, all of a sudden, that all politicians of Western governments, billionaire employers, the billionaire vaccinator-in-chief Bill Gates, the totally compromised WHO, NATO, the police, the capitalist state itself is – just this once – supremely concerned about the health and welfare of working people who at all other times they repress, hold in contempt, ruin, and drive into homelessness. Is this remotely plausible? To ask the question is to answer it. This “left” has swallowed the Covid-19 deception hook, line and sinker.

In August 1914, Lenin and the Bolsheviks in Russia were stunned to discover that almost every single social-democratic party at that time openly sided with the “Fatherland” instead of the workers, and signed on to the catastrophe of the inter-imperialist World War I. From that moment, on the basis of a final split with social-democrats and implacable opposition to the war, Leninism was born. It proceeded to lead the Russian proletariat in establishing the first workers’ state in history, beginning with the October Revolution in 1917. Today, the ostensible left repeat the crimes of the social democrats in August 1914. Not only do they not question the “pandemic”, they openly and willingly aid and assist “their own” capitalists in the process of installing a police state against workers. They even demand lockdowns spread further or remain in place for longer. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Lenin’s co-leader of the October Revolution, L. Trotsky, once wrote that the essence of Menshevism (the Mensheviks were the mortal “left” opponents of the Bolsheviks) was total submission to the political leadership of the bourgeoisie, combined with open hostility and restraint towards the impulsive revolutionary acts of the working class. For the “Menshevism” of that time, we can today substitute the arrant reformism of the “we are all going to die if we don’t self-isolate” left. One wonders how this “left” would fare today against the the famously acerbic polemics of Lenin and Trotsky towards left pretenders.

What is now required is the organising of defiant demonstrations demanding the lifting of all lockdowns, the abolition of all anti-democratic Covid-19 legislation, the overturning of anti-worker Covid-19 provisions in workplace collective agreements, and the dropping of all charges and waiving of all fines of all those apprehended under draconian social-distancing and stay-at-home orders. There will be a revolt against the lockdowns – they have already started. If the left does not lead them, the right certainly will. To fill the vacuum, there is a dire need for a vanguard party based on genuine Leninism, which can lead the oppressed masses against the Covid-19 swindle and on to the urgent struggle for an internationally planned and collectivised economy – where truth, and not lies, will reign.

WORKERS LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

PO Box 66 NUNDAH QLD 4012

[1] https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/no-vaccine-for-coronavirus-a-possibility/news-story/34e678ae205b50ea983cc64ab2943608 (21-04-2020)

[2] Ibid, 1.

[3] https://www.sott.net/article/432806-Global-Madness-The-Official-Numbers-Prove-COVID-19-is-Benign (21-04-2020)

[4] www.informationclearinghouse.info/55069.htm (21-04-2020)

[5] https://www.rt.com/news/486017-denmark-covid19-mortality-study/ (21-04-2020)

[6] https://www.globalresearch.ca/mit-tech-review-smears-study-proving-covid-19-overhyped/5710088 (21-04-2020)

[7] https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/17/theres-no-direct-evidence-that-the-lockdowns-are-working/ (21-04-2020)

[8] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/18/stri-a18.html (22-04-2020)

[9] https://socialist-alliance.org/news/suppressing-spread-covid-19 (22-04-2020)

[10] https://socialist-alliance.org/news/covid-19-action-plan-confront-crisis (22-04-2020)

[11] https://www.solidarity.net.au/highlights/coronavirus-all-in-it-together/ (22-04-2020)

[12] https://redflag.org.au/node/7017 (22-04-2020)

[13] https://redflag.org.au/node/7140 (22-04-2020)

[14] https://thesocialist.org.au/capitalisms-covid-19-catastrophe/ (22-04-2020)

[15] https://www.trotskyistplatform.com/socialistic-china-is-overcoming-the-corona-virus-threat/ (22-04-2020)

[16] https://cpa.org.au/guardian/2020/1910/01-neoliberalism.html (22-04-2020)

[17] https://www.auscp.org.au/militant-monthly/2020/4/18/covid19-sledgehammer-attack-on-right-to-organise (22-04-2020)

[18] https://www.cpaml.org/post4.php?id=1585962975&catitem1=International&catid1=21 (22-04-2020)

Covid-19: Savage Assault Under the Guise of “Health”

April 18, 2020 / redfireonline / 2 Comments

http://www.foreignpolicy.com

Covid-19: Savage Assault Under the Guise of “Health”

18-04-2020: Across Australia, the US and Europe, working people are being subjected to the heaviest assault on their working conditions and their standard of living since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The difference is that this time, the assault is being carried out under the false pretext of “healthcare” and “saving lives”. This would be funny if it was not so serious. Some kind of coronavirus exists and is circulating throughout the globe. To some, it could represent some level of danger. Yet this is what occurs every year without fail. There are flu strains and other viruses that come and go every winter. Some of those with advanced age and/or other serious health conditions are very unfortunately tipped over the edge by such things and lose their lives. Yet there is NO imminent threat to the overwhelming majority of people, who otherwise enjoy good health.

Cure is far worse than the disease

There is a crisis, but it is not caused by a coronavirus. It is caused by the ruling elites of the West, who have seized on the opportunity Covid-19 presents, to push down the price of labour power (wages) by imposing extreme ideological and political control. This enables them to carry out a controlled partial implosion of the production for private profit economies, so that the corporate class profits while working people endure psychological terror, grinding poverty and despair. This also allows them to impose a semi-fascist police state, with (so far) little or no opposition. Constitutional, democratic and civil rights are being extinguished without even an attempt to justify such draconian measures. As exiled whistle-blower Edward Snowden warns, the coronavirus will be temporary, but the political loss of rights may well be permanent.[1]

As we reported earlier, the coronavirus may well have been an attempt by Washington to collapse the powerhouse socialist economy of Red China, which backfired spectacularly.[2] The “free enterprise” economies of the West are essentially unable to compete with the gargantuan Chinese economy, whose relentless growth and expansion is underwritten by state owned banks, industry, finance and critical infrastructure. These pillars remain a legacy of the 1949 revolution, which established the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Yet the US also no longer has the level of hegemonic control it once had. Non-socialist but non-imperialist powers such as Russia and Iran cannot be controlled by Washington militarily or economically and are free to choose their own path. Unable to provoke the non-imperialist powers into a global war which may save Western capitalism, the ruling classes of the West have turned against “their own” working class.

Hence the Covid-19 plot – a frame up of epic proportions. Ostensibly due to a mortal threat, we are supposed to step aside and allow Western governments to order the sacking of tens of millions of workers, shutdown substantial portions of the economy, lockdown entirely healthy people under effective house arrest, suspend parliaments and elections, abolish elementary rights and impose a police state with powers of restraint that extend far beyond those that even the most ambitious Nazis of the Third Reich could dream. There is another agenda at play here – but it is not about “health”.

Compare coronavirus to its competitors

How dangerous is SARS-CoV-2 (known as Covid-19) compared to other viruses? To be frank, it’s not even on the same scale. The Ebola virus was first noted in 1976, but there was an outbreak in West Africa in 2014. Some strains of Ebola have a mortality rate of around 50%. That is, the fatality rate of those who contract the virus, is around half. The Sudan strain has a mortality rate of 71% – clearly one of the most deadly viruses on earth.[3] MERS-CoV, or MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), of which there was an outbreak in Saudi Arabia in 2012, has a mortality rate of between 30 and 40%.[4]

Now assess the mortality rate of Covid-19. The World Health Organisation (WHO), which has a string of ongoing corruption allegations standing against it,[5] estimates the mortality rate of Covid-19 at 3.4%. Yet this figure is controversial, and according to some dissident epidemiologists, the actual overall mortality rate of Covid-19 may be as low as 0.95%. Stanford University researcher Dr John Ioannidis says that some aspects of Covid-19 are serious, but the estimates are exaggerated. While around 60 million people on the planet pass away each year from all causes, he is concerned that those with financial or other interests may try to exploit Covid-19, to “take over the entire agenda”, which could put many more lives at risk.[6]

The key to the real Covid-19 mortality rate is age. Dr Ioannidis co-authored a recent academic paper precisely on this topic. The conclusion? “People (less than) 65 years (of age) have very small risks of Covid-19 death even in the hotbeds of the pandemic, and deaths for people (less than) 65 years of age without underlying predisposing conditions are remarkably uncommon. Strategies focusing specifically on protecting high-risk elderly individuals should be considered in managing the pandemic.”[7] In other words, if you are less than 65 years old and are in relatively good health, the risk of perishing is extremely small. If you are more than 65 years old, and/or have other serious health conditions, the risk is such which could justify special measures – such as temporary isolation. But that’s it.

In addition, the vast majority of those who contract Covid-19 make a full recovery. What is more, huge proportions of people who actually are “infected” with Covid-19 experience no symptoms at all. In China, four-fifths of those who tested positive to Covid-19 experienced no symptoms, i.e., were relatively unaffected by it.[8] Iceland tested 10% of its population for Covid-19 at random, and found that of those who tested positive, 50% of them exhibited no symptoms.[9] That is, they had the virus without even realising it. Generally speaking, Covid-19 can be dangerous to certain demographics, and those with other serious and co-existing health conditions, but generally it is not an earth-shattering health and safety concern to the entire population.

What are the real coronavirus death numbers?

Lurid reports of escalating death counts allegedly from Covid-19 saturate the corporate media, with such intense repetition that it can be difficult to stop and think rationally. Thankfully, there are some who do question the “official” figures, which reveal wild distortions at the first sign of investigation. New York city is supposedly the new epicentre for the Coronavirus outbreak, yet authorities there recently dropped a howler. On the 4^th of April, it was reported that New York city officials had increased its death toll by 3700 after officials decided to “include people who had never tested positive for the virus but were presumed to have died from it (!!)”.[10] In practice this means that the number of “Covid-19 deaths” include Covid-19 fatalities – along with many other fatalities!

A Montana based physician recently blew the whistle on the way in which the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in the US was exaggerating the Covid-19 death toll by manipulating death certificates. Without performing a detailed autopsy, doctors do not always know the exact cause of death. Yet the CDC, from their own website and as of the 4^th of April, confirm that mortality data includes both confirmed and presumptive cases of Covid-19.[11] The assumption of Covid-19 death can be reported to the public as confirmed Covid-19 death. Then the statistical modelling of numbers of cases supposedly building up is done on what are wildly inaccurate figures.

Why does this happen? Senator Scott Jensen from Minnesota, who is also a doctor, reported that that the US Medicare system encourages doctors to overcount Covid-19 cases. What is more, Medicare in the US determines that a Covid-19 admission to a hospital will receive $13 000 in federal funding, whereas a Covid-19 admission which requires a ventilator will receive $39 000.[12] Further, he said he received a seven page document on how to fill out a death certificate with Covid-19 diagnosis, even when there is no lab test confirming the diagnosis.[13]

Many have made the basic point that there is a selection bias in the total number of coronavirus infections, let alone the death numbers. This is because only those who are sick enough to require hospitalisation will go to hospital. The overwhelming majority of those who contract Covid-19 experience no or mild symptoms, and they go on to a full recovery. In fact, the majority of the population will be infected, will survive, and will be unaware that they ever were a carrier of the virus.[14] But by only counting the number of people who are hospitalised with Covid-19, there is a gross overestimation of the percentage of infected people who die from Covid-19.

Here in Australia, the road toll (the number of fatalities on Australian roads from accidents, car crashes etc) over 2019 was 1182.[15] At the time of writing, the number of Covid-19 deaths so far this year in Australia is 63, out of 6447 cases.[16] And this is assuming these figures are accurate and reliable, for argument’s sake (which is extremely doubtful). So at the very most, Covid-19 deaths so far represent 5.3% of last year’s road toll. This is a pandemic? There is something else going on here.

Hospitals overwhelmed?

The corporate media bombards us with images of hospitals being overwhelmed with Covid-19 patients. But are they real? The CBS network in the US was forced to admit it used video footage from Italy while claiming to be reporting from New York, i.e., it was fake news.[17] In fact, hospitals in the US, UK, Spain and Italy are typically overrun each year with a regular winter blast of flu victims. In Lombardy in Italy, one of the world hotspots for Covid-19, their Intensive Care Units (ICUs) “…run at 85 to 90% capacity in the winter months”.[18] In Germany, some hospitals are in fact lacking patients[19], and others are applying for short-time work for their staff because they have too few patients.[20] What is occurring is that hospitals are clearing spaces, including in ICU units….for Covid-19 patients who never arrive. We are told that “bodies are piling up”, but then we come across some hospitals using their “flat to the boards” staff…. to film choreographed dance videos![21] If you think something is fishy about all of this, you are not the only one.

Resist before it is too late

In Germany, citizens of Berlin are publicly challenging the lockdowns, which have not been justified on scientific or medical grounds. Incredibly, lawyer Beate Bahner was committed to a psychiatric ward by force for publicly demonstrating that the lockdowns are blatantly unconstitutional and illegal.[22] Workers need to be clear – the cruel and sadistic lockdowns imposed on innocent men, women and children by Western governments on the fabricated grounds of “public health” are driven by politics, not by science and not by medicine. This is the anti-working class politics of fascism and imperialist war, for which the Covid-19 farce appears to be a dry run. Rank and file Union members know full well that if an employer is allowed to fragrantly break the law, they will keep doing it until they are stopped by collective resistance. In the same way, Covid-19 lockdowns must be openly and publicly defied, following the lead of the brave from Berlin.

The fact that the entire Union bureaucracy and almost the entire purported “left” have not only not questioned the lockdowns, but have actually helped enforce them, and/or, demanded even more extreme lockdowns – speaks volumes to their political bankruptcy. What is urgently required is a Marxist vanguard party, forged out of resistance to contrived Covid-19 terror.

WORKERS LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

PO Box 66 NUNDAH QLD 4012

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pcQFTzck_c (16-04-2020)

[2] https://redfireonline.com/2020/03/22/covid-19-natural-pathogen-or-biological-war/ (16-04-2020)

[3] https://www.livescience.com/56598-deadliest-viruses-on-earth.html (16-04-2020)

[4] Ibid, 3.

[5] https://www.globalresearch.ca/politics-corruption-who/5702045 (16-04-2020)

[6] https://www.straight.com/covid-19-pandemic/stanford-university-researcher-john-ioannidis-relies-on-data-to-puncture-some-of-myths-about (16-04-2020)

[7] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.05.20054361v1.full.pdf (16-04-2020)

[8] https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1375 (16-04-2020)

[9] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8210401/Iceland-finds-half-population-asymptomatic-infected-Covid-19.html (16-04-2020)

[10] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus-deaths.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR10ck4Te4nFP-x7xDNxXGcS6-l75qUNUGkiMnDQQfGVET1pwzuRRxyclik (17-04-2020)

[11] https://greatgameindia.com/whistleblower-how-cdc-is-manipulating-covid-19-death-toll/ (17-04-2020)

[12] https://subterrnews.blogspot.com/2020/04/doc-hospitals-getting-paid-more-to.html (17-04-2020)

[13] Ibid, 12.

[14] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/we-could-be-vastly-overestimating-the-death-rate-for-covid-19-heres-why/ (17-04-2020)

[15] https://www.motoring.com.au/australian-road-toll-up-in-2019-122316/ (17-04-2020)

[16] https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert/coronavirus-covid-19-current-situation-and-case-numbers (17-04-2020)

[17] https://nypost.com/2020/04/01/cbs-admits-to-using-footage-from-italy-in-report-about-nyc/ (17-04-2020)

[18] https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/02/coronavirus-fact-check-1-flu-doesnt-overwhelm-our-hospitals/ (17-04-2020)

[19] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/trotz-corona-pandemie-warum-kliniken-jetzt-kurzarbeit-anmelden-a-3dc61bc9-fb12-4298-8022-bb4c2be39d7d (17-04-2020)

[20] https://www.20min.ch/schweiz/news/story/Spitaeler-28949526 (17-04-2020)

[21] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQP5wRAJVnI&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR2hMU_RLvlwakbVi8uqLQdZ_Zz0SMp-N1mphP_haPhiL4VZrfR0n8zTlA0&app=desktop (17-04-2020)

[22] https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/coronavirus-lockdown-german-lawyer-detained-opposition?fbclid=IwAR0o7vw-G6vTFGX-W9GXe13IJuc1MozHySy6zUV6Ynwk1NTwlI7_jnS633o (17-04-2020)

Lift the Lockdowns! No to a Police State!

April 5, 2020 / redfireonline / Leave a comment

Police patrol Coogee Beach in Sydney. Image from Reddit

Lift the Lockdowns! No to a Police State!

04-04-2020 – The rhetoric is health and safety; the reality is potential fascism and war. Under the pretext of “public health”, Australia’s elites are installing measures which – under any other circumstance – would be denounced as those of a totalitarian dictatorship. This is not to say that the Coronavirus (Covid-19) is not, at some level, a health concern. Yet the measures the Western ruling classes are implementing are likely to create health conditions far more dangerous than the virus itself. It appears the Coronavirus is being used as an excuse to exert extreme ideological and political control of working people, in order to wage economic and perhaps military war against those states who have the temerity to say no to imperialism. A police state, or a state of semi-fascism, would for the capitalist class provide the ideal conditions for the launching of a pre-emptive war against those countries they cannot control.

Lockdown the healthy?

Lockdowns and orders to stay at home are in place across Australia and other nations. Sweden, however, has not gone into lockdown mania. Life largely goes on as normal, with only gatherings of more than 500 people prohibited. Neighbouring Norway has a similar amount of cases (around 3000), and entered lockdowns weeks ago, which meant unemployment quadrupled.[1] Absurdly, the Australian government has banned gatherings of more than 2 (!) people, inside or outside. “Stage 3” lockdowns have been in place, with threats of “Stage 4”.[2] Fines worth thousands of dollars are to be wielded by the police against those found violating the 2 person gathering limit or the “social distancing” measures.[3] Isolation of those infected with Coronavirus is rational advice, but an attempt to stop any form of social interaction amongst the healthy is deeply suspicious.

Some doctors are publicly questioning the lockdowns, which appear to be driven by a combination of government and corporate media fueled hysteria. Swedish doctor Anders Tegnell stated that older people and people with significant health concerns should be isolated, as well as anyone with slight cold symptoms, but that is all.[4] Indian doctor Anurag Agarwal claimed that physical distancing (rather than social distancing) is necessary, but lockdowns have dire effects not just in health terms.[5] It appears no timeframes are being given for the lockdowns, leaving some to wonder whether they will be semi-permanent. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison says six months will be needed. The political establishment and their staffers have no need to be concerned about changing their lifestyle very much at all within that time period. Workers and the now estimated 1 million unemployed workers in Australia, on the other hand, will have a much more difficult time dealing with the many restrictions.

The real dangers of the Coronavirus have been seriously exaggerated, as if there was an intention to frighten people. Television pictures from Italy appear to be serious, but what are the facts? A scientific paper published on the 17^th of March reported that 87% of deaths in Italy have been patients over 70 years of age – the same as what happens every flu season.[6] The chief of Italy’s Superior Institute of Health reported that the majority of deaths from the Coronavirus have been among the very old – the average age being 80.3 years. The majority of deaths had three or more serious simultaneous health issues. Just two people under 40 perished, both were 39. But one had cancer, and the other had diabetes, obesity and other health problems prior to being infected.[7]

Even in the United States of America, where the Coronavirus appears to have spread significantly, the actual chance of losing your life is very low. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the US noted that of those who contract the Coronavirus, the death rate for those over 80 years of age is 10.4%, 5.35% for over 70s, 1.51% for over 60s, and 0.37% in the over 50s. There are lower rates for those younger, dropping to zero for those under 29.[8] Prudent advice would be for those in a vulnerable demographic to exercise more care, and perhaps avoid huge crowds. Usual health measures of eating well and exercising apply as at all times. Yet there is no serious threat to humanity from Covid-19.

Pandemic?

In an interview with Bonnie Faulkner, Professor Michel Chossudovsky relayed the fact that the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” (PHEIC) on January 30, in relation to the Covid-19 events in Wuhan in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). At the time, there were only 150 confirmed cases of Covid-19 outside of China. The world’s population is 7.8 billion, take away China of 1.4 billion, leaves us with 6.4 billion. So only 150 cases out of 6.4 billion was declared a PHEIC[9], and later a “pandemic”. Under any description, 150 out of 6.4 billion cannot be a “pandemic”. There is another agenda at work here, and it reeks of imperial geopolitics.

As we have previously mentioned, there is a distinct possibility that the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan was actually an act of biological war launched by the Pentagon against the PRC.[10] The PRC government has not stated in official terms that it was, but some experts within China urged the US to release the health status of the US military athletes who visited Wuhan in October last year for the World Military Games[11], to help locate the original source. The Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp of Iran publicly stated that the coronavirus may well be a US biological weapon, first aimed at China, then Iran and other states.[12] The Russian government, like the PRC government, has restrained itself from publicly speculating whether Covid-19 was a US based attempt to attack China and/or Russia. Yet some Russian politicians and some Russian media outlets have published articles which claim exactly that.[13] It is speculation, but it is all in one direction.

Union officials, left parties act as arms of the state

Australia’s top Union officials (not members) have openly sided with the government and the state against “their own” workers. Australian Council of Trade Union (ACTU) secretary Sally McManus reportedly has had daily briefings with PM Scott Morrison. Incredibly, at the joint request of Union officials and employers, the Orwellian named Fair Work Commission ruled that worker’s hours can be reduced, and normal time hours be extended, at any time during the alleged Coronavirus crisis. The unaccountable officials of the Australian Services Union agreed with major employers that hours where penalty rates should not apply extend from 6am to 11pm.[14] The officials of the United Workers Union of hospitality staff agreed with large employers that they should be allowed to reduce full-time hours to as little as 22.8 hours per week.[15] No doubt these officials did not even bother to even consult their members about this before openly offering to abolish working conditions won over decades of struggle.

Workers know, from their own experience, that employers will use ANY excuse to reduce wages or abolish conditions. The alleged Coronavirus “pandemic” produces a golden opportunity for large, medium and small business owners to once again push down the price of labour power – workers’ wages. Yet some Australian left parties cripple the ability of workers to resist this drive by agreeing with the capitalist class that there is a “public health emergency”, and even call for more workers to be stood down – albeit with pay. The danger is that if workers agree with the employers’ (fake) excuse for a stand down, they are scarcely able to bargain about the terms of the stand down.

Some left parties assist the scaremongering. Solidarity does highlight instances of workers and Unions fighting back, while spreading hysteria that “150 000 could die in a worst-case scenario”.[16] Socialist Alternative has correctly called out Union officials for working with the government to reduce workers conditions. Yet they have also organised the “Workers Organising Resistance in the Pandemic” group – which agitates for workplaces to be shut down![17] The Communist Party of Australia explicitly called for a 2 week shutdown,[18] to which the government immediately agreed – and effectively made it six months. The Socialist Alliance calls for an even “wider shutdown than what is being proposed now”, (!) albeit one without the “draconian police measures currently being deployed”.[19] (!!)

Shredding of elementary rights

Yet here is the rub – once you call for intervention of any sort by the capitalist state, workers cannot control how the ruling class will carry out such action. The government is not “ours”, and therefore its state cannot be used in the interests of working people. It is not only fruitless to call on the capitalist state to act on your behalf – to do so vastly strengthens and emboldens it. It has other aims it needs to implement in its interests. In this case the “draconian police measures” are vastly understated. Never in their wildest dreams did the fascists of Nazi Germany have the power to restrict indoor and outdoor gatherings to two people! Yet this is precisely what the Australian government has done today, along with the potential total closure of public beaches, public parks, gyms, pubs, clubs and so on. At a stroke, a police state has been implemented which severely curtails, if not abolishes, freedom of movement. In addition, under the (false) guise of “public health”, almost all political activity has been eliminated – something which could not be achieved without a global war – or a (fake) “pandemic”.

Some can see the immense danger this proposes. It is the descent into a police state which is far more frightening than any virus. Michael Bradley wrote that the situation is such that citizens now have to prove their innocence before they are arrested. He noted that people walking or being stationery now have to give a “reasonable excuse” to police why they are outside.[20] Former British diplomat Craig Murray noted that dictatorship usually begins with emergency measures to combat a threat. Once these measures are in place, a new threat is found to continue the “emergency” measures.[21] Lawyers advocate Greg Barns correctly noted that laws created in a crisis (e.g. September 11, 2001, the “anti-terror” laws) are very rarely, if ever, lifted or rolled back.[22] Here lies the outcome of calls by some on the left for shutdowns and lockdowns!

There is another agenda being driven here, but it is not “public health”. Russia, China, Iran, the DPRK, Venezuela, Cuba – all took swift measures to contain the virus, which is a health issue to some extent. But, as far as we know, in these states which are relentlessly targeted by imperialism there were no workers thrown out of a job, no overblown hysteria, and no implementation of a police state. Ironically, all of these states are falsely accused by liberals in the West of “authoritarianism”, and even “tyranny”. Now, the boot is well and truly on the other foot, as the governments of Australia, the US and Europe emerge as even more authoritarian and tyrannical than those they accuse. Workers should be aware that the real agenda could be imperialist war launched by the Pentagon against the non-imperialist states, or any ally of China and Russia. Witness the fact that the US government, at the height of the coronavirus hysteria, has acted to tighten the murderous sanctions on Iran, and has indicted Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro on baseless and evidence free charges of “narco-terrorism”.[23]

What is required is a united front of action of all those forces opposed to lockdowns which have little or no medical basis, those opposed to the imposition of a police state, and those opposed to needless job cuts and the willful crashing of the economy. This may mean a temporary alliance with non-working class forces, but leftists should not at all discard the Marxist program. On the contrary, the forging of a vanguard party remains more critical than ever, as does the struggle for the socialisation of the major means of production, energy, transport and banking. Then, a truly public health care system can be established, free from all interference from agents of the corporate elite.

WORKERS LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com
E: workersleague@redfireonline.com
PO Box 66 NUNDAH QLD 4012

[1] https://news.yahoo.com/swedens-resistance-lockdown-raises-questions-155335578.html (01-04-2020)

[2] https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/coronavirus-australia-what-would-stage-four-lockdown-mean/news-story/eeb4e4b4a6c77ba8475aba9c5448e561 (01-04-2020)

[3] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-31/how-australian-states-are-enforcing-coronavirus-measures/12106774 (01-04-2020)

[4] https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/28/10-more-experts-criticising-the-coronavirus-panic/

[5] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/now-is-not-the-time-for-lockdown-says-doctor-as-india-fights-coronavirus-outbreak/story-G71Cdbo3YJR9dGsikh8nfO.html (01-04-2020)

[6] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2763401?guestAccessKey=72f61225-c3fd-4fb1-81fd-09b6a1666aaa&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=031720 (01-04-2020)

[7] https://www.sott.net/article/431559-First-Do-No-Harm-If-Primary-Healthcare-Remains-Shut-Down-Toll-on-Elderly-Will-be-Worse-Than-COVID-19 (01-04-2020)

[8] https://journal-neo.org/2020/03/27/covid-19-hysteria-vs-your-actual-very-low-chance-of-dying/ (01-04-2020)

[9] https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-coronavirus-crisis/5706741 (02-04-2020)

[10] https://redfireonline.com/2020/03/22/covid-19-natural-pathogen-or-biological-war/ (02-04-2020)