What lies behind the war in Tigray?

FFWP shares this article from the Conversation for our readers interest.

Ethiopian soldiers in 2005 on a hilltop outpost overlooking the northern town of Badme, in the Tigray region. Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images

Asafa Jalata, University of Tennessee

At the core of the current war between the Ethiopian central government and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front is the realignment of politics and the contest for political hegemony. In my view, it is about Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed allying with the Amhara to destroy Tigrayan power. This is an attempt to consolidate his position and that of his Amhara supporters.

Abiy declared war on the Regional Government of Tigray in early November 2020. The region is led by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front. He accused the regional government of attacking and looting the armaments of the Northern Ethiopian Military Camp.

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front controlled and dominated Ethiopian politics for 27 years through the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front coalition. The coalition included the Amhara National Democratic Movement, the Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation, and the Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement. The Tigrayans were the dominant force in the coalition.

The Tigrayan elites squandered their political opportunities by attacking the Oromo Liberation Front. They violated the human rights of the Oromo and others. This is what gradually led to the demise of their power in Addis Ababa (Finfinnee).

Ethiopia has about 80 ethno-national groups. The major ones are the Oromo (the largest), the Amhara and the Tigrayans. Emperor Menelik, the architect of the Ethiopian Empire, was from the Amhara. His rule resulted in the Amhara elites and Amhara culture and language dominating the empire for more than a century. These elites now claim that they are the rightful group to shape Ethiopia today in their own image.

The other most powerful groups are the Oromo and Tigrayans who have been fighting their own corners, often through liberation armies. Abiy, a political chameleon, has been manipulating ethnic divisions among the Amhara, the Oromo, and the Tigrayans.

Tigray’s dominance of Ethiopian politics

For nearly three decades – from 1991 to 2018 – the Tigray People’s Liberation Front dominated the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. The democratic front controlled Ethiopian politics and economics.

Throughout this period, the Tigray front and its collaborators were accused of gross human rights violations against Ethiopians of different ethnicities. In Oromia, the Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation was a partner in the looting of Oromo resources such as land and in committing heinous crimes.

Meles Zenawi , a Tigrayan by birth, was the master of coalition politics. His deputy, His Haile Mariam Desalegn, became prime minister when Zenawi died in 2012.

After years of protest led by the Oromo Youth Movement Desalegn resigned in February 2018. With his resignation the Tigray front began to lose its political hegemony in the central government.

In response to pressures for reform, and to placate the Oromo Youth Movement, the then-coalition replaced Desalegn with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

Abiy used his affiliation with the Oromo people to come to power. He promised to address issues such as the right to self-determination, political and cultural freedoms, sovereignty (Abbaa Biyyummaa), democracy, making the Oromo language a federal language, and enabling the Oromo to repossess their lands. After coming to power, Abiy ignored all these Oromo demands.

Abiy’s father is Oromo. But he was raised by his Amhara mother, a fact that he has used extensively. Considering his cruelty against the Oromo who embraced him at the beginning, most Oromos now think that his close affinity with his mother shaped his values, philosophy, ideology, and culture.

Abiy’s leadership triggered a realignment within the coalition. One of the consequences was the Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation becoming an ally of the Amhara party. For its part, the Tigrayan front retreated to its home state to reorganise.

Reform agenda gone wrong

On coming to power Abiy launched a reform agenda. It included releasing political prisoners and allowing exiled and banned political leaders to return to Ethiopia.

He also promised to expand the political space, respect human rights, build independent institutions such as an elections board and independent judiciary, and to institute economic reforms.

Based on these promises – and because he initiated peace with Eritrea – he was awarded the 2019 Noble Peace Prize.

But since then, things have gone downhill. Abiy started to implement his political objectives by using the empire’s economic resources and the army. He ignored most stakeholders demanding the collective formulation of a political road-map for the transition to democracy. He began to attack and delegitimise the Oromo movement that had propelled him to power.

He even went as far as deploying the military in the Oromia regions of Wallaga, Guji, and Borana. Civilians have been killed extra-judicially. There has also been widespread killing and imprisonment of Oromo political opposition activists, sympathisers, and journalists. And elections have been postponed.

Abiy claims that it it is necessary to establish command posts in many Oromia regions to fight and defeat the Oromo Liberation Army.

Abiy also spearheaded the disbanding of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. He replaced it with the new Prosperity Party. Since the launching of the party on 1 December 2019, Abiy has dramatically shifted his focus from a democratic transition to consolidating power through violence and terror.

Four-pronged approaches

Abiy has introduced four interrelated political initiatives that consolidate his personal and party power. A combination of these factors has led to the current crisis and war in Tigray.

His first approach was the medemer philosopy. Medemer means “coming together” in Amharic. Abiy has co-opted political organisations, activists and politicians by appointing them to state positions. He has also tried to bring ethno-national groups together but without addressing historical and existing collective grievances and contradictions. These include unequal access to political power and economic resources as well as the denial of the right to self-determination and democracy.

Secondly, his use of the Prosperity Party to centralise political power under his leadership has led to Abiy’s critics characterising his government as a modern version of the authoritarian and colonial models of previous Ethiopian leaders, namely Menelik II and Haile Selassie.

His third initiative was to gradually diminish the power of the Tigray ruling elites. He removed them from the central government and important political positions.

The fourth initiative has been to suppress and dismantle the Oromo Liberation Front and the Oromo Federalist Congress, the most popular and influential parties in Oromia.

Federal units

Some scholars argue that the central government is uneasy with the autonomy of Ethiopia’s federal units. Others say the conflict is about unresolved ethnic tensions and the underlying battle for control of the state.

Either way, the Abiy government and its supporters are keen to dismantle the Tigray region’s autonomy. It’s a paradox of history that Tigrayan elites used their control over central government to suppress and exploit other ethno-nations, only to lose control of central government and return home.

Abiy’s main aim is to replace Tigray’s leadership with a government that is subordinate to the central state. Abiy’s position as premier would be stronger without pressure from the Tigrayans and the Oromo. These two groups have been most aggrieved by his reforms.

To his advantage, the war is fully supported by key federal allies. These include the Amhara regional state, former Oromo Democratic Party members, and political parties such as the Amhara National Movement, the Ethiopian Citizens for Social Justice, and the Baldars party. All are dominated by the Amhara elites.

Using the Abiy government and the Ethiopian army, the Amhara elites want to recover from Tigray the land they claim belongs to them and to demolish Tigrayan power in order to dominate the empire.

But I believe that Abiy and the Amhara are naive in their belief that they can subjugate ethno-nations such as that of Tigray and Oromo by war.

An immediate ceasefire is needed. And an independent, neutral, and internationally endorsed body should be established to investigate major crimes committed over the last three decades to facilitate a national reconciliation. Also, the transition that has been derailed must be resuscitated and negotiations must begin on how to establish a transitional government that will prepare Ethiopia to become a true democracy. Otherwise, Abiy and his supporters are leading the empire in the wrong direction, one that may result in the collapse of the state, more humanitarian disasters, and the end of the empire as we know it.

Asafa Jalata, Professor of Sociology and Global and Africana Studies, University of Tennessee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Dilemma For Social Dilemma: No Solution to the Problem.

 By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Streamable on Netflix

The documentary Social Dilemma is scary to say the least. It’s meant to be scary of course. The folks behind it are former tech industry employees who have come to their senses and now fear the horrific global effects the smart phone craze and the technology associated with it, is having on society and human behavior, particularly the youth.

 

Technically, workers in factories in Cambodia China and Vietnam are tech industry employees but the documentary is not their creation. Former CEO’s coders, marketers, computer scientists and others who have made lots of money working for Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter and co are now warning us of the dangers humanity faces as this technology has the ability to manipulate behavior like no other.

 

“It’s a marketplace that trades exclusively in human futures” one expert warns. Numerous others warn of a dystopian future if the social media giants are not reigned in.  “If something is a tool, it genuinely is just sitting there, waiting patiently. If something is not a tool it's demanding things from you….” says a former Google employee and, “….It's seducing you, it’s manipulating you, it wants things from you. We've moved away from a tools based technology environment, to an addiction and manipulation used technology environment. Social media isn't a tool waiting to be used. It has its own goals, and it has its own means of pursuing them by using your psychology against you.”

 

The addictive nature of social media and the algorithms or whatever it is that we are manipulated by runs throughout the commentary. But there doesn’t appear to be much self reflection from these people that have only now realized the dangers of their activity that made them very wealthy individuals. They never intended this they claim.

 

At one point one of them asks if it should always be that we defer to the wealthy and powerful in society: Yes it be, is the answer to that one. This is always the case in class society whether the wealthy and powerful are feudal lords, slaveowners or in our case, the owners of capital and the means of producing and distributing society’s needs.

 

Throughout the documentary it is stressed that these companies have to make money. Technology is not the existential one expert says, but technology brings out the worst in society and the worst of society is the existential threat. But why this technology brings this out and why, is not really asked or answered. Though this touches on it:

 

“Algorithms are optimized to some definition of success. So if you can imagine, if a commercial enterprise builds an algorithm, to their definition of success, it’s a commercial interest. It’s usually profit.” Says one of the data scientists in the documentary.

 

There you have it. The goal of the investors and major players in the social media business, just like any other business is to make money, to make a profit. “You have to grow revenue and usage” says another expert.

 

All of these characters warning us of impending doom stress that it’s OK to make money. They accept that the capitalist mode of production is the only form of social organization; there is no alternative, TINA Margaret Thatcher called it. And making money as they mean it, is not the same as earning money through wage labor; they mean profits. So after warning us all of the dangers and how we’re losing our children and that many of the people like them that have created and designed this process don’t allow their children to use social media or strongly restrict it, their solution is taxation, regulations and appealing to the political representatives of the very class that owns and directs the use of the technology we’re taking about.

 

This is why these sort of exposés, warning us of the dangers we are facing but offering no serious solutions, end up fueling further helplessness and despair. When have regulations or tax increases changed anything substantially? Didn’t Teddy Roosevelt make efforts to curb monopoly which is a natural development in the capitalist mode of production and that was over a century ago. The 1986 tax overhaul just like all the others, has not stopped or curbed the massive accumulation of capital in the hands of a super elite. They will not tax themselves out of business.

 

The taking in to public ownership of the tech industry and all the dominant industries that provide the needs of a modern society is not on the cards for these people. The working class as a social force doesn’t exist for them. People are just consumers. One can’t blame them in a way as for the most part the working class is absent in a major way. Certainly we have no political party that speaks for us. But it would not be difficult for anything thinking person to recognize that the recent social explosions in the US and globally that have arisen in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, have produced some changes that would never have occurred through the courts or legislation introduced by either of the two capitalist parties. Mass movements change things.

In a society based on the capitalist mode of production, technology, just like the product at the end of an auto assembly line, is not owned by those that whose labor power produces it. It is owned by the capitalists that own the means of production and the labor process. They set production in motion not in order to produce a social need but for profit. In the hands of the ruling class, technology is a tool to increase the exploitation of the worker and increase capital accumulation for the capitalist. Technology, just like any other form of labor saving tool has the ability to decrease labor time to the point when we are working two day weeks. Technology can liberate us, can allow us time to participate in the organization of society and the organization of work. It can literally save the planet. We are not Luddites; we should not reject or abandon technology, our goal is to own it and direct its use.

 

So Social dilemma while an interesting look in to the deep dark world of today’s technological jungle, is just another plea for the most ruthless ruling class ever to walk this planet to be a little kinder. I might be more sympathetic to these guys were they to be a little more humble and took responsibility for their role in all of this.  The documentary won’t cheer you up that’s for sure. It’s not meant to empower you.

Defend Frontline Nurses: Bring Back Cliff Willmeng.

Above: Cliff Willmeng talks to media after termination.

“During the opening months of the COVID 19 pandemic, frontline healthcare workers at St Paul's United Hospital began to take measures to protect themselves, their families and the public they serve. The efforts were opposed by management, who among other positions they took, also insisted workers use their personal scrubs instead of the scrubs available at the hospital used by doctors, physician assistants and some nurses. 

​

This meant that nurses would have to bring the scrubs they worked in all day home to be washed, adding a potential source of infection to their families. Dozens of nurses refused to do this. Management responded with disciplinary measures, violation of union rights, and intimidation of the frontline workforce. Cliff Willmeng, a union steward, husband, father of two, and nurse of 13 years was fired during these efforts for workplace and patient safety. 

​

These battles played out in local and national media. Cliff's termination is the subject of a union grievance set to go to arbitration on January 7th and 8th of 2020 and a whistleblower lawsuit against Allina Health, the parent company of United Hospital.”  

 

To our readers. Below is the text of a petition I hope you will sign and share with your contacts. The petition is at this link. The link below will also take you to a page with more information. Despite having no patient care or attendance issues, Cliff has also been reported to the Minnesota Board of Nursing, a development that potentially threatens his RN license and which requires him to hire legal council now at the cost of $250/hour. 

 

You can also donate  to Cliff Willmeng’s legal defense through a go-fund me page fund at this link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/cliff-willmeng-legal-defense-fund

 

If you belong to a union, a church group, a DSA Chapter or any social organization at all, get your organization to support Cliff’s campaign to get his job back.  Since his termination, Cliff was elected to the Minnesota Nurses Association’s Board of Directors. The president of the Minnesota Nurses Association is Mary Turner and she can be contacted at: Mary.Turner@mnnurses.org

 

During the early months of the COVID 19 pandemic, nurses and other frontline workers fought for patient and workplace safety at Allina Health’s United Hospital in St. Paul, MN. United responded by firing RN and union steward Cliff Willmeng, provoking a whistle blower lawsuit and union arbitration that is set to be heard January 7th and 8th, 2021. Help bring Cliff back to his job at United and defend frontline workers everywhere! 

 The facts:

• On May 8, 2020, RN Cliff Willmeng was fired without a single patient care or attendance issue.
• Prior to his termination, Willmeng was part of a growing number of nurses fighting to protect their patients, their coworkers, and their families from the increasingly dangerous working conditions and medical protocol driven by the COVID 19 pandemic.
• United frontline medical staff communicated their concerns to senior hospital administrators, filed OSHA workplace safety complaints, initiated their own safety protocols, and drove local and national media attention.  
• After nurses’ attempts to compel Allina Health to address workplace and patient safety, Allina Health fired Cliff Willmeng for violating hospital uniform policy. 
• Following his termination, it appears that Allina also reported Willmeng to the Minnesota Board of Nursing, threatening his nursing license and his livelihood.
• Cliff is a husband and father of two, a registered nurse for 13 years, and a union steward in the Minnesota Nurses Association. Allina used his termination to intimidate all frontline workers taking a stand for coworkers and the safety of the public they serve. 

 

We the undersigned call on the Allina Health’s CEO Penny Wheeler, its Board of Directors, and United Hospital management to immediately reinstate Cliff Willmeng to his position in the emergency room of United Hospital. We further call for an end to the intimidation of and retaliation against frontline workers risking their health and their lives during a deadly pandemic. 

 

Thank you in advance for your support

Richard Mellor, for Facts For Working People

Michael Roberts: A credit crash ahead?

by Michael Roberts

The pandemic global slump of 2020 is different from previous slumps in capitalism.  The boom and slump cycle in capitalist production and investment is often triggered by a financial crash, either in the banking system (as in the Great Recession of 2008-9) or in the ‘fictitious capital’ world of stocks and bonds (as in 1929 or 2001).  Of course, the underlying cause of regular and recurring slumps lies in the movements in the profitability of capital, as has been discussed ad nauseam in this blog.  This is the ‘ultimate’ cause.  But ‘proximate’ causes can differ.  And they are not always ‘financial’ in origin.  The first simultaneous international post-war global slump of 1974-5 was triggered by a sharp rise in oil prices following the Arab-Israeli war; and the double-dip recession of 1980-2 had similar origins.  Again, the 1991-2 recession followed the ‘Gulf War’ of 1990.

The pandemic slump also has a different ‘proximate’ cause.  In a sense, this unprecedented global slump, affecting 97% of the world’s nations, kicked off because of an ‘exogenous event’ – the spread of a deadly virus.  But, as has been argued by ecologists and in this blog, the rapacious drive for profits by capitalist companies in fossil fuel exploration, timber logging, mining and urban expansion without regard for nature, created the conditions for the emergence of a succession of pathogens deadly to the human body to which it lacked immunity.  In that sense, the slump was not ‘exogenous’.

But the ensuing slump in world production, trade, investment and employment did not start with a financial or stock market crash, which then led to a collapse in investment, production and employment.  It was the opposite.  There was a collapse in production and trade, forced or imposed by pandemic lockdowns, which then led to a huge fall in incomes, spending and trade. So the slump kicked off with an ‘exogenous shock’, then the lockdowns led to a ‘supply shock’ and then a ‘demand shock’.

But so far, there has not been a ‘financial shock’.  On the contrary, the stock and bond markets of the major countries are at record highs.  The reason is clear.  The response of the key national monetary institutions and governments was to inject trillions of money/credit into their economies to bolster up the banks, major companies and smaller ones; as well as pay checks for millions of unemployed and/or laid off workers.  The size of this ‘largesse’, financed by the ‘printing’ of money by central banks, is unprecedented in the history of modern capitalism.

This has meant, contrary to the situation at the start of the Great Recession, the banks and major financial institutions are not close to meltdown at all.  Bank balance sheets are stronger than before the pandemic.  Financial profits are up.  Bank deposits have rocketed as central banks increase commercial bank reserves and companies and households hoard cash; given that investment has stopped and households are spending less.

According to the OECD, household savings rates have risen between 10-20% points during the pandemic.  Household deposits at the banks have soared.  Similarly, non-financial corporation cash holdings have increased as companies take out cheap or interest-free government-guaranteed loans, or larger companies issue yet more bonds, all encouraged and financed by government-sponsored programs.  Taxes have also been deferred as companies go into lockdown or purdah, again building up yet more cash.  Tax deferrals are equivalent to 13% of GDP in Italy and 5% of GDP in Japan, according to the OECD.

Indeed, the latest corporate profit figures (Q3 2020) in the US showed a sharp rise in profits, almost entirely due government loans and grants that have boosted cash flow along with a fall in sales and production taxes as companies stopped trading.  Corporate profits increased $495 billion in the third quarter, in contrast to a decrease of $209 billion in the second quarter.  The government statistical office explains “Corporate profits and proprietors’ income were in part bolstered by provisions from federal government pandemic response programs, such as the Paycheck Protection Program and tax credits for employee retention and paid sick leave, which provided financial support to businesses impacted by the pandemic in both the second and third quarters.”  Around $1.5trn of US government grants and loans went into subsidising US companies during the pandemic.  So corporate profits have been sustained by government intervention – at the cost of unprecedented levels of government budget deficits and rises in public sector debt.

The hope now is that as the vaccines are delivered and distributed during 2021 and the lockdowns are ended, the world economy will spring back and the build-up of household savings and corporate profits will be released, as ‘pent up’ demand flows back into the capitalist economy.  Consumer spending will return, people will resume international travel and tourism and go to mass events; while companies will launch an investment binge.

The OECD is less sanguine about this scenario.  It is concerned that much of the increase in personal savings is with the rich who tend to spend less as percentage of their incomes (because they just have too much!).  The average household in the major economies (and also in the less developed capitalist economies) has not accumulated savings – on the contrary, they have raised their levels of debt during the pandemic. Moreover, with the likely ending of government pay checks and other support during 2021, the situation for the average household could well deteriorate. These inequalities also apply to the corporate sector.  The OECD reckons that the bulk of government support in loans and grants has gone to the larger companies, particularly in the technology sector – a sector least hit by the slump.

So this is the likely place to look for the third leg of the pandemic slump – a credit crunch and financial crash when companies, particularly small to medium firms, go bust as government support evaporates, sales revenues remain weak and debt and wage costs rise.

The Institute of International Finance (IIF) recently reported that the ratio of global debt to gross domestic product will rise from 320 per cent in 2019 to a record 365 per cent in 2020. The IIF concludes starkly: “more debt, more trouble”. As Martin Wolf put it in the FT: “Financial markets have ignored these warnings. Global equities have reached new highs and credit spreads have been narrowing, almost as if extreme debt is a good, not a bad, economic development.”

As has been reported before, even before this pandemic corporate debt was at record highs, whether measured against annual GDP, or perhaps more relevant for potential bankruptcy, against the net worth of company assets.

The OECD reckons that if corporate profits were to fall sharply in 2021 as governments withdraw financial support, many companies could become “distressed”.

Already, the number of so-called ‘zombie companies’, those which are not making enough profits to cover the interest on their outstanding debts, has risen significantly. The OECD notes that one-fifth of firms in Belgium, for example, could not meet their financial liabilities for more than three months without taking out more debt or getting an equity injection.  That ratio was much higher in certain sectors like accommodation, events and leisure.

The OECD concludes that “financial stability concerns are likely to re-emerge”, as the rapid build-up in public sector and corporate sector debt could soon lead to “solvency concerns in a large number of companies.”  Corporate defaults on bonds of weaker companies could well double in 2021, says the OECD, particularly in “hard-hit sectors like airlines, hotels and the auto industry.”  Bankruptcies in small and medium size companies in the retail, leisure and commercial property sectors are particularly likely.

This scenario is even more so in the so-called emerging economies.  Indeed, even in China, where the economy at large is making the fastest recovery globally, a range of companies with heavy debts are starting to default on their bond payments, putting the government into a quandary.  Should it save these companies (some of which are local government-owned state enterprises) or should it let them go bust, in order to reduce the overall debt burden on the economy?  This won’t lead to a major financial crash or a collapse in the Chinese recovery because the government has massive reserves and can draw on the huge household savings of the Chinese people, mainly deposited in the state-owned banks – unlike in other major economies.  But the troubles of a range of Chinese over-indebted companies is a harbinger of what could be a ‘debt tsunami’ in many corporate sectors elsewhere during 2021.

Much depends on whether the corporate sector can stand on its own feet in 2021 as government subsidies disappear.  Even if interest costs on existing debt stay low, if corporate profits do not rise but instead take a dive in 2021, then the OECD reckons that upwards of 30% of companies globally could be ‘distressed’ and face bankruptcy.  And at the very least, companies will not raise their investments, but sit on their hands.  The OECD reckons that there is a risk of a ‘debt overhang’ which would cut business investment growth by 2% points compared to the long-term average before the pandemic.

So even if there is no debt tsunami and a financial crash caused by a wave of corporate bankruptcies, the recovery in most capitalist economies is likely to be very weak.  The OECD in its latest forecast for the world economy talks about a “brighter future” in 2021 as the COVID vaccines are distributed. But its forecast still expects most economies in the world will not recover the output losses suffered in 2020. By end 2021, only a few economies will have experienced some real GDP growth over the two years since end-2019.

The leading economy on that measure will be China – up nearly 10%; followed by South Korea and Indonesia. The rise in GDP in these countries delivers an average rise in world GDP over the two years. ButChina will contribute one-third of that real GDP growth up to end 2021. The G7 advanced capitalist economies will have had no real GDP growth at all (the US) or will have contracted by anything between 3-5% by end 2021 (Europe and Japan), with the UK performing the worst at -6.4%. And large G20 economies like India and Brazil will have had significant declines.

The OECD expects a ‘gradual but uneven recovery’. And that assumes the best possible news on the COVID vaccine impact. Even then, while the world economy GDP is expected to return to its pre-pandemic level by end 2021, it will still not catch up with where world GDP would have reached without the pandemic slump (leaving about a 6% of GDP gap). The ‘reverse square root’ trajectory of the Long Depression looks set to continue.

Oscar Wilde and Edward Carpenter. Pioneers for Gay Rights

This article celebrating the life and influence of Oscar Wilde both in the literary world and the struggle for gay rights is reprinted from the UK Socialist website, Left Horizons.

Wilde

By Ray Goodspeed, chair Leyton and Wanstead CLP, personal capacity
November 30, 2020

120 years ago today, 30^th November 1900, saw the death of a celebrated literary figure who was also one of the most ‘notorious’ – Oscar Wilde. His death in Paris, aged just 46, was almost certainly hastened by his two years in Reading prison (1895-7), in solitary confinement and with hard labour. His crime was “gross indecency” i.e. being homosexual, and his oppression was to become iconic both for pro- and anti-gay forces.

In 1895, Dublin-born Wilde was at the pinnacle of his career. His most recent play, The Importance of Being Earnest was on in the West End of London. He was rich and successful and hugely popular. But he was also hugely unpopular. For many years in his plays, novels, poems and essays and in his personal style he had delighted in puncturing the pompous moralising of late-Victorian society.

Source of shock and outrage

Even as a young man his foppish “aesthetic” fashion sense caused a scandal, and he went on to enjoy being the source of shock and outrage. His cynical and witty one-liners are still quoted today, but he created as many enemies as admirers. He was even politically radical and considered himself a libertarian socialist, though he was never an active campaigner. He wrote the well-known idealistic essay, “The Soul of Man under Socialism”, which is worth reading, and also signed a petition in 1886 calling for a pardon for the famous Haymarket anarchists in Chicago who faced the death penalty.

He thought himself untouchable, but the revenge of Victorian morality was just round the corner. Though married, with two children, Wilde was widely suspected of homosexuality. His works, such as the novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, hinted at homosexual relationships. His real-life relationship with the much younger Alfred, Lord Douglas, was a source of rumour and scandal. Unfortunately, Douglas’s father was a macho bigot, the Marquess of Queensbury (after whom the rules of boxing are named), who was incensed by his son’s relationship.

Libel case collapsed

He accused Wilde of “posing as a somdomite” (sic) and Wilde was deluded enough to sue him! The libel case collapsed when Queensbury threatened to bring a string of witnesses to court, whereupon Wilde was arrested, having ignored the sensible advice of many of his friends to flee to France. Two criminal trials followed. The first jury could not agree but the second one did.

A number of younger, working-class men were pressured to give evidence regarding having sex with Wilde and the money and gifts he lavished upon them. Wilde, in love with his own wit and intelligence, gave too-clever answers that damaged his defence and his letters and published works were used in evidence against him. He was found guilty of “gross indecency” and given the maximum possible sentence. Emerging a broken man, he lived abroad for the rest of his life, dying in Paris. Queensbury, his nemesis, died before him – of syphilis!

Criminal Law Amendment Act

The crime of gross indecency had only been on the statute book for ten years. It was the result of a last-minute amendment by a Liberal MP, Henry Labouchere, to the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. This Act intended to raise the age of consent for heterosexual sex from 13 to 16, but Labouchere’s amendment added a clause making it illegal to commit or procure to commit an act of gross indecency with another male of any age. But gross indecency was never actually defined! This meant that any sexual contact at all between men now became illegal and remained so until 1967.

The same law was used to convict Alan Turing, the code breaker and inventor of computing, and thousands of other men. “Buggery” itself had been illegal for centuries but it was too difficult to prove penetration had taken place, and the penalty (life imprisonment) were so severe that prosecutions had become rare. Before 1861, the punishment was death and 1835 saw the last two men to be hanged for it, a labourer and a groom. The new amendment introduced a draconian, catch-all offence that gave the UK some of the strictest laws against male homosexuality in Europe. There were no laws in the UK dealing with lesbianism. Incidentally, the Ottoman Empire, in contrast, had legalized homosexuality in 1858.

Cleveland Street Affair

London society had already been rocked by the Cleveland Street Affair (1889) concerning male prostitution, which involved teenaged telegraph messengers. That had threatened to reach into the higher elite and the establishment had needed to work hard to shut it down and limit the court case to a few scapegoats before royalty was implicated. But for someone of Wilde’s fame to be involved in three trials, all feverishly reported in the press, was an enormous scandal that had serious repercussions for gay men. One reaction was a freezing effect on the expression of gay attraction owing to the terror of being caught.

On the other hand, the homosexual underworld now had a celebrated hero and tragic martyr, and the case was so well-publicised that many gay men in different parts of the country who had no contact with any gay sub-culture, or who thought they were somehow unique, now had the knowledge that a gay world existed, and they had Wilde’s name. In the gay novel Maurice, written in 1910, the distressed young gentleman hero tries to shamefully explain to his doctor that he is “an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort!” Conventional, straight society could use Wilde’s case as a warning to show what fate awaited anyone who strayed. As a character in The Picture of Dorian Gray says “You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”

Damaging stereotypes remained

Another negative effect of both the Wilde case, and the Cleveland Street Affair, was to fix in the popular imagination the idea that homosexuality was merely a vice of rich men who then corrupted innocent, working-class young men. This damaging stereotype even lasted in some parts of the labour movement into the 1980s and beyond.

An interesting comparison with Wilde’s life is that of his contemporary, Edward Carpenter (1844-1929). Though an upper-middle-class gentleman from Brighton, he moved to the north of England and taught in University “extension lectures”, but he was disappointed that these were mainly attended by middle-class people. He became part of a strong personal and political network of socialists and trade unionists all over Yorkshire, Lancashire and the north midlands.

He joined the Social Democratic Federation, which claimed to be a Marxist party, in 1883, and tried to form a branch in Sheffield, but they opted instead to set up an independent “Sheffield Socialist Society”. Carpenter himself left the SDF in 1884 and joined with William Morris and Eleanor Marx in the Socialist League. He became an extremely popular socialist orator and would travel round the northern towns and cities, addressing the crowds, as well appearing at big rallies and marches in London. He also wrote articles for socialist papers and was a well-known literary figure in the late-Victorian socialist movement.

Hypocritical morality of Victorian Britain

Carpenter was homosexual, and, crucially, proud to be so. He was one of the very first theoreticians to try to integrate the economic and political ideas of socialism issues around sexuality. He had no toleration for the hypocritical morality of Victorian Britain, the oppression of women and the suffocatingly strict rules of behaviour, including sexual behaviour, for women AND men. He regarded his personal liberation as being tied up with the struggles of working people for freedom, justice and democracy, and he saw working class culture as a way of resisting the stuffy bourgeois morality of his own class. He set out these ideas in the long poem, Towards Democracy, which he edited and revised between 1883 and 1905. He was a vegetarian and campaigned against pollution and the appalling conditions of the working class-districts of Sheffield.

He moved to a house in the small village of Millthorpe, in Derbyshire, on the outskirts of Sheffield, and set up a small market garden and a sandal-making craft shop. The house is still preserved as a museum today by the “Friends of Edward Carpenter”. He was in contact with an independent working-class ‘gay’ subculture and formed successive relationships, generally with local working men, some of whom moved in with him at Millthorpe. In 1891, Carpenter met George Merrill, a working-class man from the slums of Sheffield, who had worked in an ironworks, a newspaper office and a hotel and they became lovers.

Celebrated literary figures

Merrill moved in with Carpenter 1898 and they lived together until Merrill died in 1928. Although Merrill was “officially” a handyman/servant, the real, more equal, nature of the relationship was widely recognised by local activists and by a succession of celebrated political and literary figures who used to stay at Millthorpe. The openness of the relationship was astonishing, given that Merrill moved in only three years after the Wilde trials. Their separation from London “high society” undoubtedly helped, but Carpenter’s writing and campaigning around homosexuality must have drawn suspicion.

The pair were often visited by DH Lawrence and EM Forster, who records being profoundly moved when George touched his bum! He used their relationship as source material for his gay novel Maurice, a story of a love affair between a gentleman and a gamekeeper. Lawrence read the manuscript of this novel (not published until after Forster’s death in 1971!) and is believed to have used the plot for his heterosexual novel Lady Chatterly’s Lover, which was banned in 1963!

Bolsheviks legalized homosexuality

Carpenter was never a systematic Marxist as such and was influenced by anarchism and Eastern spirituality. He often took a sectarian, ultra-left, approach: he took no part in the Labour Party, for example. After the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, he declared Russia to be state capitalist within months!  He did live to see the Bolsheviks legalise homosexuality in the Criminal Code of 1922, but died before the Stalinist reaction re-criminalised it in 1933, sending gay men to the gulag.

Being neither a reformist nor a Stalinist, his ideas faded from memory in the labour movement of the middle of the 20^th century and were only rediscovered in the 70s and 80s, with the rise of the lesbian and gay movement. Of course, some of Carpenter’s ideas are easy to mock now, but in other ways, he was a century ahead of his time, and I can’t help regarding him as a bit of a hero.

 

The COVID-19 vaccines: Whose Needs Come First, People’s or Profit’s

Source

 

By Jack Gerson

 

As the Covid-19 pandemic surges in the U.S., with hospital intensive care units already overloaded in some areas with many more fearing that they too will soon be overwhelmed, a turning point may be near. Three vaccines have been reported to be highly protective against the SARS-Cov2 coronavirus. According to Pfizer and its partner, the German biotech company BioNTech, their candidate vaccine has been 95% effective with no serious adverse effects. The U.S. biotech Moderna reports nearly identical results with its vaccine. The third vaccine, developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, reported an average effectiveness of 70%, but accidentally discovered a new dosing regimen that they report has been 90% effective. Oxford and AstraZeneca also report no serious adverse effects in those inoculated with their vaccine.

 

Although Pfizer and Moderna reported better results than did Oxford / AstraZeneca, the latter’s vaccine has some crucial advantages:

 

·      It is much cheaper: $3 to $4 per dose (compared to about $20 per dose for the Pfizer vaccine, and about $35 / dose for the Moderna vaccine.

·      It can be stored at temperatures of 36 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit; Pfizer’s must be stored in freezers at minus 103 degrees F, while Moderna’s requires freezing at minus 4-degree F.

·      It is much more stable: The Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine can be stored for up to six months, while once transferred from freezers to refrigerators Pfizer’s vaccine must be used within 5 days and Moderna’s within 30 days.

·      AstraZeneca has pledged to provide the vaccine on a not-for-profit basis at least until next July, and after that to provide it on a non-profit basis in perpetuity to low- and middle-income countries. Neither Moderna nor Pfizer has made any such commitments. AstraZeneca has pledged 300 million doses to the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations for distribution to 92 developing countries. Again, no such pledges have been made by Pfizer or Moderna.

Although the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines had greater effectiveness than did the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine in their clinical trials testing, those were done under ideal conditions for vaccine delivery and storage. Results would likely be far different under the conditions in which the vaccines need to be used – hundreds of millions, and soon billions of doses must be administered all around the world. Relatively few hospitals and clinics in developing countries – or, for that matter, in poor rural areas of the U.S. and other metropolitan countries – have or can provide the kind of freezer storage capacity that will be needed for the unstable Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Thus, in the real world, the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine’s average protection rate of 70% may well exceed that of either the Pfizer or the Moderna vaccines. Moreover, the 90% protectiveness from the alternate dosing regimen stumbled upon by AstraZeneca in the course of the clinical trial testing is likely to be validated in further testing.

 

Therefore, the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine is at this point the only realistic hope for much of the world’s population. Rural hospitals can’t afford the expensive freezers needed to store the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Nor can Third World countries. Indeed, the logistics of shipping those fragile vaccines alone raise enormous problems – add those storage problems and the cost of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and it’s clear that the hopes for a vaccine that treats the working and poor of the world must rest on the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine.

 

But the mass media, and much of the Big Pharma / biotech / academia / government apparatus has been making public comments highly critical of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine – some are even saying that it will never be authorized for use in the U.S. Why this trashing?

 

AstraZeneca is being criticized for releasing partial results that have not been rigorously tested, and which in any event were not adequately tested on a large representative sample. In particular, these criticisms are being leveled at announcements of results from a dose level that was administered accidentally and mistakenly. AstraZeneca’s designed clinical trial called for each patient in its dose group receiving two inoculations of equal strength given several weeks apart. But some participants were accidentally given only half the intended dose for the first inoculation (the second inoculation was at full dose). When researchers peeked at early results, they found that the results for the group who got the half dose followed by a full dose were better than those for the group that got two full doses.

 

The Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine has been bad-mouthed in the U.S. media, and by several in the U.S. scientific community, some of whom have told the media that this vaccine should never be authorized for use in the U.S.  While AstraZeneca’s initial press release was poorly worded if not deceptive, the company (and the leading Oxford researchers who developed the vaccine) almost immediately agreed that further testing was needed to validate the half dose / full dose results, and they are in the process of testing a randomized sample with an adequate distribution across age levels.

 

Let’s ask again: Why has the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine gotten such a hammering in the U.S.?  Hey, what comes first under capitalism: people or profits? Could this possibly have something to do with the profits that Pfizer and Moderna anticipate raking in from the hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine that they’re going to sell in the U.S. and the EU? Big Pharma has enormous clout with academics, government, and the media – many are on their payroll. Here’s a case in point: one of the main experts that the media has turned to here is the chief scientist of Operation Warp Speed, Moncef Slauoi. Slauoi, a venture capitalist and former Director of Global Research for the giant pharmaceutical corporation GlaxoSmithKline, was on the Board of Directors of Moderna until Trump appointed him to oversee Warp Speed in May. Slauoi is very concerned about the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine, but not at all concerned about the safety of the vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer using a technology far less established than that employed by the Oxford research group that designed the vaccine platform for AstraZeneca.

 

Moderna stock has soared over the past couple of weeks. AstraZeneca stock has stumbled. Do folks think it’s a coincidence that Slauoi is trashing the much cheaper and far easier to distribute and use Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine? When the choice is people or profits, we know which way the biopharmaceutical industry has gone. Looks like it’s going there again.