Will hospitals be able to cope with all the expected patients during the Covid-19 pandemic? New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo doesn’t think so. He told NBC’s Today Show on March 19 that “the health care system is going to be overwhelmed.”

What the governor didn’t talk about is whether elderly people will be left to die like roadkill. That may already be happening in Italy.

As of March 12, there were only 737 intensive care unit (ICU) beds available in Italy’s Lombardy region, which has 10 million people. Over 16,000 people there have the coronavirus. 

The Italian College of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care declared that “it may become necessary to establish an age limit for access to intensive care.” That’s a death sentence for the aged. It won’t be any different in the United States.

Italy asked for assistance from its NATO allies France and Germany. The wealthy ruling classes of those countries refused to help.

China, Cuba and Venezuela sent Italy doctors and supplies. That’s what socialist solidarity looks like. 

Italy’s catastrophe was years in the making. Between 2000 and 2017, the number of hospital beds there fell by 28 percent. In the same period, the number of beds in Britain declined 30 percent. That’s what capitalist austerity looks like.  

The U.S. medical-industrial complex got rid of 89,000 beds, a 9 percent cut. Twenty thousand of the hospital beds thrown away were in New York state, according to the New York State Nurses Association.

Socialist China built temporary hospitals in a few days, but the best President Trump can do is to promise to send a military hospital ship to New York City in a couple of weeks. The U.S. now has just 2.8 hospital beds per thousand people. Despite 60 years of being economically blockaded by the capitalist U.S., socialist Cuba has almost twice that number. 

It’s not just a shortage of hospital beds. There’s also not enough ventilators, the life-saving machines that pump oxygen into a person’s lungs. New York needs 18,000 of them. Nor can capitalism supply doctors and other front line medical workers with sufficient masks, gowns and eye gear. 

Even the Washington Post, owned by Amazon’s billionaire boss Jeff Bezos, calls this “a nightmare scenario.” President Trump’s response to governors requesting help was “respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves.” 

Profits before people

Just as capitalism has shut down thousands of factories in the U.S., so has it closed hundreds of hospitals. “Since 2010, 121 rural hospitals have closed. The National Rural Health Association says more than one-third of all rural U.S. hospitals are at serious risk of shutting down.” 

For over 40 years, the capitalist class in New York City has been on a hospital-closing binge. Twenty-one hospitals in the city were shut just between 2000 and 2013. 

The biggest victims were the Asian, Black and Latinx communities. In Brooklyn, there are just two hospital beds per thousand people.

Brooklyn’s Long Island College Hospital, which closed in 2014, once had 500 beds. Peninsula General Hospital was shut down in 2012, leaving only one hospital to serve the Far Rockaway section of Queens. 

St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village, with over 700 beds, closed in 2010, resulting in 3,000 workers fired. Probably even more beds were lost when Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan’s Lower East Side was downsized to just 70 beds.

Two hundred beds were lost when Harlem’s North General Hospital closed in 2010. Four hundred ninety beds were lost when Cabrini Medical Center on Manhattan’s East 19th Street closed in 2008. Two hundred fifty-five beds were lost and 850 workers were fired when French Hospital, located near Penn Station, was shut down in 1977. 

Some hospitals were turned into expensive apartments. That’s what happened to Caledonian Hospital on Brooklyn’s Parkside Avenue, which closed in 2003. One-bedroom apartments there were renting for $2,300 per month in 2014. Eight hundred eighty-six beds were lost when Brooklyn Jewish Hospital on Classon Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant was closed in 1983 and converted into apartments.

Doctors Hospital in Manhattan’s Yorkville neighborhood had 210 beds and employed 850 workers. It closed in 2004 and was replaced by a new 19-story building containing 110 condominiums. St. John’s Hospital in the Elmhurst section of Queens closed in 2009 and was turned into “150 luxury apartments.”  

The late communist leader Vince Copeland helped lead efforts in the 1980s to keep the Jersey City Medical Center open. It once had 1,800 beds, but the buildings were turned into a luxury complex called the Beacon. The replacement facility has just 308 beds.

The lure of real estate profits also led to last year’s closing of Philadelphia’s Hahnemann University Hospital with 496 beds. 

Never forget Sydenham

The capitalist class wants to get rid of or privatize all public hospitals. That includes veterans’ hospitals.

New York City Mayor Abe Beame fired 50,000 municipal workers in 1975, including thousands of hospital workers. The next year, Beame shut down Fordham Hospital in the Bronx with 387 beds. 

Mayor Ed Koch, who succeeded Beame, wanted to close Metropolitan Hospital in El Barrio (East Harlem), which is still in operation.

The biggest struggle was to keep Harlem’s Sydenham Hospital open. It was the first municipal hospital to hire Black doctors and it trained many Black nurses.

Among them was the late Baltimore activist Leola Brooks, who was a board member of the local NAACP chapter. When she was going to school, neither Johns Hopkins nor the University of Maryland would admit any African American students. So Leola Brooks came to Sydenham Hospital instead.

Five thousand people marched down Harlem’s 125th Street on March 25, 1976, to keep it open. Among the speakers was Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton, who had been Malcolm X’s lawyer and friend.

Struggle kept Sydenham open for several years, but Koch was determined to shut it down. A sit-in was viciously attacked by police on Sept. 19, 1980, injuring 30 people.

The Rev. Wyatt T. Walker, who had been a co-worker of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., called the police brutality as bad as anything that occured in Birmingham or Selma, Ala.

Although Sydenham was closed, the fierce struggle probably kept the other municipal hospitals open.

The $4 trillion capitalist health care system is incapable of dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. We have to organize ourselves just to survive. A socialist revolution is more necessary than ever.

Wall Street has been on an unprecedented roller coaster ride, with big swings in both directions every day for more than a week, a volatility not seen since November 1929. The stock market had the largest one-day point drop in history on March 16, 2020, nearly a 13 percent drop.

The fall hits not just the big investors — big banks, corporations and hedge funds — it also hits 401(k) retirement plans and savings tied to the market.

Businesses have started laying off workers or cutting work hours. “Some 18 percent of adults reported that they had been laid off or that their work hours had been cut,” the Los Angeles Times reported on March 17.

Oil prices plummeted to nearly $20 per barrel on March 18, down from about $60 only three months ago.

The Covid-19 pandemic is being blamed. Thousands of people have lost their lives and hundreds of thousands have been infected. 

But the pandemic is an event that revealed the crisis in the capitalist system — it didn’t cause the crisis. From the point of view of the economy, the virus exposed the underlying economic instability.

The stimulus packages being offered up almost daily by President Donald Trump and Congress as well as the Federal Reserve Bank are meant to keep the economy afloat. But the effects of these measures will be limited without a public health response that could contain the virus.

Large parts of the service sector — restaurants, bars, movie theaters — as well as hotels and airlines — are all severely hit as people stay away from places of public gatherings and stop travel. Normal life is grinding to a halt, with schools and places of worship closing, concerts and conferences being canceled and sports leagues suspending their seasons.

The so-called casual workforce, service workers and the gig workforce have been hit especially hard, with no paid time off, no health care coverage, no guarantee of a job, food or housing.

The coronavirus pandemic’s economic devastation will continue until the coronavirus is contained. But containment has been slow to nonexistent in the U.S. after decades of cuts to the health care systems. In May 2018, then-National Security Adviser John Bolton fired the entire U.S. Pandemic Response Team and at the same time President Trump cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control’s global disease outbreak prevention efforts. 

In fact, the coronavirus crisis in Europe and the U.S. is now worse than at the worst period in China. Indeed, the failure of the capitalist countries to contain the virus has produced a disaster. In proportion to the population, the speed of spread of the virus in Europe is now faster than at any period in China. The number of new daily cases in Germany was three times as high as the peak in China, in France five times as high, in Spain 12 times as high and in Italy 21 times as high. 

The true rate in the U.S. is unknown as testing is still mostly unavailable or limited. Yet testing is the only way to start the measures needed to control the spread of the virus.

Trump reportedly had testing limited as much as possible “because more testing might have led to more cases being discovered of coronavirus outbreak, and the president had made clear — the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for the president, the better for his potential re-election this fall.” 

No economic crisis in China

In terms of the global situation, sharp declines in the number of new coronavirus cases in China confirm that the coronavirus outbreak there, while not over, has been brought under control. Therefore, production and supply chains both in China, and from China to the global economy, will begin to improve.

The virus first hit China very hard in December. China responded with a social mobilization of the people, as in a war, to fight the virus. Now Covid-19 has largely been contained in China itself, thanks to the mobilization that was made possible by China’s socialist base.

It’s instructive to look at a timeline of China’s response (drawn up by journalist Godfree Roberts):

November 2002: After its experience with the SARS outbreak in Guangdong Province in 2002, China implemented a rapid response protocol for infectious diseases. The protocol empowered the Health Ministry to assemble professional and managerial help from across the country; established an emergency response coordinating team; prepared funding and authorization for supplies, equipment and emergency health care facilities, anticipating that existing hospitals would be overwhelmed.

July-December 2019: Chinese researchers informed China’s Health Ministry of a novel Coronavirus outbreak, triggering a readiness alert nationwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) describes what happened next: “In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history. … China’s bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic.”

Dec. 26, 2019: Jixian Zhang detects four anomalous pneumonia infections in Wuhan and reports them to the provincial CDC the next day. The provincial authorities immediately inform the national CDC, which prepares to implement the pandemic response protocols.

Dec. 30, 2019: China’s national CDC notifies the WHO, which reports Zhang’s discovery to the world.

Dec. 31, 2019: WHO reports Zhang’s discovery to the world.

Jan. 7, 2020: China identifies the virus as 2019-nCov and confirms it five days later. President Xi tells officials that the country is on “a war footing.”

Jan. 13, 2020: China makes the first 2019-nCov test kits available.

Jan. 25, 2020: Construction begins on a 1,000 bed intensive care hospital in Wuhan.

Jan. 26, 2020: China extends the New Year holiday to contain the outbreak.

Feb. 5, 2020: First patients moved into a new 1,000 bed intensive care hospital.

March 4, 2020: February rail freight loadings resume, rising 4.5 percent.

March 5, 2020: Shipments to foreign customers upgraded; government subsidizes upgrades from sea to rail delivery and from rail to air delivery.

March 10, 2020: Government organizes and subsidizes bus, rail and air transport for 200 million migrant workers to return to urban jobs.

March 16, 2020: Ninety percent of businesses expected to resume full operations. All Apple stores open.

No layoffs. No evictions. Yes, the economy slowed down, as it must when production is shut down, but there was no crisis involving loss of jobs, of homes, of food.

Yet in the U.S., already 1 in 5 have been laid off. Many, many workers may lose their jobs — perhaps millions — all supposedly because of the coronavirus. But if that didn’t happen in China, then we have to look at other factors that are pulling down the economy.

Capitalist crises of overproduction

In the period before the present Wall Street crash, the U.S. economy was stagnating, economic growth had come to a virtual halt, and the appearance of global overproduction of vital commodities stood out. In particular, were the reports since 2018 of an oversupply of oil, with barrel prices sliding downward.

After World War II, the U.S. was the world center of industrial production and the top economy based on that. Today, industrial production has moved to China, India, Bangladesh and Vietnam. Imperialist capitalism continues to extract profits from the rapidly expanding industrial working class of the Asian countries, the lion’s share of which goes into the pockets of the capitalists of the U.S.

Meanwhile the U.S. has become an economy based on services and “information,” that is, computer software and operations. The U.S. economy has gone through a steady de-industrialization over the last few decades.

The response has been an attempt to make the U.S. the world’s leading carbon-based energy producer through the development of North America’s vast reserves of fossil fuel. In effect, the old U.S. industrial monopoly would be replaced by a new energy monopoly based on carbon-based fuel extracted through shale-rock fracking. 

The U.S. and its Canadian satellite have become the chief suppliers of fossil fuel — oil, coal and natural gas — in the world. That has been the basis for the economic rise since the 2008 Great Recession.

An article titled “U.S. Is Overtaking Russia as Largest Oil-and-Gas Producer” in the Oct. 3, 2013, Wall Street Journal reported: “U.S. energy output has been surging in recent years, a comeback fueled by shale-rock formations of oil and natural gas that was unimaginable a decade ago. A Wall Street Journal analysis of global data shows that the U.S. is on track to pass Russia as the world’s largest producer of oil and gas combined this year — if it hasn’t already.”

The U.S. produced 18 percent of the world’s oil last year, compared with Saudi Arabia’s 12 percent, Russia’s 11 percent and Canada’s 5 percent. 

As far as natural gas alone is concerned, the U.S. and Russia are the dominant producers, with Russia’s flow of natural gas to Europe going through Ukraine. A cutoff in Ukraine would force Europe to depend on oil or U.S.-produced natural gas transported in liquid form by ship. Is there any wonder Trump and Biden are contending in Ukraine?

As the U.S. and Canada developed their profitable fossil fuel industry, whether natural gas or shale oil, the U.S. economy has become increasingly dependent on selling carbon-based energy products. Is that not the reason the president of the U.S. is a climate change denier or that near-military force has been brought down on opponents to pipelines across Native lands in the U.S. and Canada?

The U.S. oil and gas production is done by the expensive and environmentally horrendous method of extraction known as fracking. The price of oil has to be kept pretty high to make fracking profitable.

Now oil has been hit by a crisis of overproduction and the oil industry is on the verge of collapsing.  

The overproduction crisis has plagued Big Oil since at least 2018 and is not related to the drop in demand during the coronavirus epidemic. Oil prices have been falling steadily since a high of about $75 a barrel in 2018. Three months ago, it was $60 a barrel. Today, it is near $20 a barrel. This is well below what it costs to produce oil from fracking. Shale oil can’t produce a profit when prices drop this low.

This is capitalist overproduction. More is being produced than can be sold for a profit.

The continuing fall of the stock market reflects the general instability in the capitalist mode of production for profit. The economy was already slowing, contracting in a cyclical capitalist crisis. Capitalists call it a profit crisis as the produced commodities cannot be sold at profit. That’s the crisis that triggers a major economic downturn, a full-on recession or even a depression.

The cruise ship MS Braemar, with five confirmed cases of Covid-19 and a thousand people on board, docked shortly before dawn this Wednesday in the Port of Mariel, 40 kilometers from Havana. The airport evacuation corridor to the runway of the José Martí International Terminal, from where four United Kingdom planes moved the evacuees, left with the precision of a clockwork.

While the world holds its breath and it is impossible to predict the consequences of the pandemic, Cuba was in the news yesterday because of the transfer of more than a thousand passengers and crew members of the Braemar who, since March 8, were confined to being a ghost ship in the Caribbean.

The odyssey began when the British company Fed Olsen’s cruise ship arrived in Cartagena, where a woman from the U.S. disembarked and was diagnosed shortly afterward with coronavirus. From that moment on, five Caribbean ports denied entry to the ship and the families of the cruise passengers turned to the media to express their fears for the fate of their loved ones and the possibility that they would be forced to make the long journey back to Europe, exposed to massive contagion and perhaps death on an industrial scale before the ship could reach Britain.

The scaremongering and media hype surrounding the new coronavirus turned the passengers and crew into a kind of plague. Anthea Guthrie, a passenger on the Braemar and a retired gardener, showed a video on her Facebook page of the time when the cruise ship was being supplied 25 miles from one of the ports where they were unable to dock. A ship towed a second rudimentary barge, without engine or crew, to bring sacks of rice and bunches of bananas to the Braemar, where members of the British crew came aboard in the middle of the night, like fugitives in a kind of pirate expedition.

The testimony of that moment was shared by Anthea after she heard the good news that Cuba would receive them. She published another video in which the passengers, relaxed on deck, thanked the island’s gesture of solidarity and raised glasses to the health of the Cubans. Like a veteran of the networks, she has not only been reporting from the ship but included the label #DunkirkSpirit, which alludes to the evacuation of 330,000 allied soldiers – mostly British – from the French coast in May 1940, at the beginning of World War II, when Adolf Hitler seemed invincible.

“For us, Dunkirk does not only speak of heroism, but of humanity. It means that there are solutions in the worst of circumstances, and this time we will have Cuba to thank for it”, said Anthea, relieved after the news that the cruise ship would dock on the island.

Havana’s decision to allow entry to MS Braemar, following a request from the governments of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, did not surprise the Cubans, who have a long tradition of medical and humanitarian collaboration. Since the beginning of the sixties, thousands of health workers have collaborated with almost all the poor countries in the world. Over 35,000 medical students from 138 countries have studied for free on the island. Following the devastating earthquakes in Pakistan (2005) and Haiti (2010) or during the Ebola fever in Western Africa, in 2014, Cuban doctors were the first to arrive in the territories marked by devastation.

Cuban collaboration in health with its unquestionable scientific results, particularly in the field of biotechnology, have provoked poisonous anger in the usual privileged people and sympathy and warmth in the usual unprivileged. But the truth of Cuba, a life vest for many during the Covid-19 pandemic, has tipped the balance toward expressions of affection directed at the army of white coats. The Latin American governments that, under pressure from Washington, expelled the doctors today live the double ordeal of the coronavirus and the claim of their people for such an act of arrogance and stupidity. A line of nations are calling for medical collaboration and the island’s drugs, which have proven their effectiveness in treating the sick.

The great paradox is that, while the ships with oil and food contracted by Cuba are harassed by the United States, the ships with the sick that nobody wants in their ports receive solidarity and respect in Cuba. The Trump regime, by the way, refused to receive the Braemar, according to an article published yesterday in The UK Independent.

The two most repeated words since yesterday on Twitter are Cuba Saves. This is no coincidence.

Source: Resumen

Four Palestinian prisoners in Megiddo prison are reportedly in isolation for potential infection with coronavirus (COVID-19) after exposure to an Israeli interrogator who has been confirmed to have COVID-19. While the four prisoners’ diagnosis is not yet confirmed, at least one of the four is reported to have shown signs of illness after he was interrogated by the infected Israeli interrogator at Petah Tikva detention center.

Their family members have not been informed of their location. Previous reports have indicated that Israeli officials are using solitary confinement cells to quarantine prisoners, despite the fact that these cells are known to be dirty and infested with vermin. Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network emphasizes the complete responsibility of the Israeli state and the Israel Prison Service for the lives and health of Palestinian prisoners and for their reckless and repeated exposure of Palestinian prisoners to Israeli guards and officials with coronavirus infections.

While Israeli occupation forces have barred Palestinian prisoners from purchasing at least 140 different items at the “canteen” or prison store, including cleaning and sanitation supplies, and prohibited family and legal visits to the prisoners, they have continued to put Palestinians ate severe risk by continuing interrogations, maintaining dirty and overcrowded conditions and pursuing transfers.  These policies place Palestinian prisoners at severe risk for exposure to COVID-19 from Israeli prison guards and interrogators. All of these policies apply equally to the 190 Palestinian child detainees in Israeli prisons.

Earlier, 19 Palestinian prisoners were placed in isolation in Ashkelon prison after an Israeli psychiatrist, later diagnosed with COVID-19, visited Section 3 of the prison, where he interviewed a prisoner. While Palestinians in Gaza are refraining from most public events in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus, which has not yet been detected within the besieged area, advocates for the prisoners protested outside the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross on Thursday, 19 March to demand protection and proper infection control inside Israeli jails.

Instead of protecting prisoners’ health, the Israeli policies – which have not been equally applied to Israeli civil and criminal prisoners but instead have been reserved for Palestinian political detainees – appear to be nothing more than a further attempt to undermine the severely limited rights of Palestinian prisoners. They reflect the ongoing mandate of Israeli Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan (who also runs Israel’s “anti-BDS ministry” and engages in international smear campaigns against human rights defenders) to “make conditions worse” for Palestinian prisoners.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society announced that prisoners plan to close their sections and return meals on Friday and Saturday, 20 and 21 March, in protest against the punitive measures carried out against them in the name of infection control while they are denied real resources to help prevent the spread of coronavirus. Palestinian prisoners are instead demanding full sterilization, disinfection and cleaning of the prisons as well as proper health treatment for all detainees, according to the guidelines of the World Health Organization.

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network emphasizes that this situation is not simply a humanitarian concern for the health of the prisoners, but it instead reflects a systematic and racist Israeli policy of targeting Palestinian prisoners with complete disregard for their lives and health. Medical neglect and insufficient health care pose a constant threat to the prisoners, especially those who are also most vulnerable for COVID-19.

***

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network emphasizes the urgency of a global response to COVID-19 that focuses on solidarity, mutual aid and public health, rather than capitalist values of exploitation, oppression and marginalization of the must vulnerable. We reiterate our long-standing call for the immediate release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, at severe risk in this time of pandemic, and especially administrative detainees, sick and elderly prisoners, and child prisoners. Defending public health must mean freedom for Palestinian prisoners, freedom for Palestine, and freedom for all oppressed peoples and nations.

Read our full statement on COVID-19 and Palestinian prisoners: https://samidoun.net/2020/03/israeli-apartheid-covid-19-and-palestinian-prisoners-freedom-now/

Source: Samidoun

Joint declaration of the Popular Front, Italian Communist Party and “La Città Futura” collective

Italy, like many other countries, is facing a severe health emergency in these weeks. Many people are in deadly danger and suffering from coronavirus infection. Others are in isolation in their homes, waiting for a complete recovery. There have been hundreds of deaths so far. We wish to express our warmth and closeness to the families and communities affected.

We address our sincerest thanks to all those who work in health care facilities as elsewhere. Every day, they expose themselves and commit themselves to protect public health and the functioning of services to the citizens. We extend our sincere solidarity to the many who continue to work in the current challenging conditions.

Our National Health System, our economy and our society face unprecedented pressure from the post-war period to the present. We shall not underestimate the commitment by the whole country to cope with the emergency: it is indeed a proof of the vitality of Italian society that we shall be proud of.

As communists, we carry now more than ever the responsibility to play a leading role, which means primarily to participate in the collective effort to face the emergency and overcome it.

Our militant community is at the forefront in helping to spread awareness of individual responsibility; in making the containment measures ordered by the authorities effective; and in carefully following the hygienic instructions necessary to avoid the further spread of the contagion. Each one of us feels the responsibility of participating in the prevention, and we must discourage any irrational behaviour. Noncompliance with the measures opens the way to dangerous mass psychosis that multiplies the infection.

In recent decades, communists have been among the very few to fight against cutbacks in public health care. We have called to fight against the model of “differentiated autonomy,” which promotes a de facto privatization by fostering “subsidiarity” with local and regional authorities. The events of these days dramatically show the validity of our concerns. Two dramatic examples are the institutional disorder created by regions-state overlapping competences, and the rush to mobilize the best energies of the country to recover the lost ground in the medical garrison of the territory.

Bringing back these questions today is an integral part of the responsibility we must assume in contributing to the management of the emergency. We must build the broadest awareness over the political and historical responsibilities of the ruling and elité classes. We must be vigilant, at the political and at the union level, on what is going on in these hours to fight the virus, resolutely supporting every measure that strengthens the operational capacity of the health and health-related structures.

We also strongly call for measures to be taken to protect health in prisons, which have been condemned to overcrowding by the well-established repressive logic of recent years. We call for alternative sentences for prisoners with minor sentences and a low level of social danger.

For us, these considerations must be framed in the broader perspective of restoring and strengthening the democratic model, the formal equality among citizens, the pursuit of substantive equality and the exercise of popular sovereignty. All this has been repeatedly undermined in recent decades by reactionary constitutional reforms and the neoliberal influence of the European Union. For this reason, in the same spirit that led us to take a stand against reduction of the number of members of Parliament, we radically oppose the proposal to appoint an extraordinary commissioner to manage the coronavirus emergency. The democratic institutions are perfectly capable of working to protect public health with the legal instruments at their disposal. We must therefore firmly reject any instrumental attempt to take advantage of the situation to endorse an authoritarian and dangerous logic.

In situations of crisis, it is always clear which social forces are able to take responsibility for not surrendering to adversity and making progress in the interests of all. This role today, once again, belongs to the workers. As communists, we are at their side in facing the dangers of the moment, with the perspective to open the way to the progress that Italy urgently needs.

Milan, March 12, 2020

In the face of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic, and the threat of the epidemic rapidly spreading among the Filipino people, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) calls on the Filipino people and all their revolutionary forces to mobilize, organize and act collectively to respond to the emerging public health emergency.

This response must be organized and be led by the organs of political power comprising the people’s democratic government (PDG), based primarily on the revolutionary village committees and mass organizations in the guerrilla zones, as well as by the revolutionary organizations under the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). The people’s collective response must be both widespread and comprehensive. All possible resources must be mobilized and directed at supporting the collective response of the people to the threat of a Covid-19 epidemic.

The Party calls on all agencies of the PDG and the NDFP to activate and strengthen existing village health committees and build thousands of other health committees in factories and communities. These committees, composed of local health workers and volunteers, must help organize the people’s collective response.

Health committees must lead in studying and raising awareness about Covid-19 in order to encourage a collective people’s response. They must exert efforts to mobilize the broad masses in campaigns to prevent the spread of the disease through sanitation and community cleanup drives, as well as encouraging personal hygiene. They can facilitate the free distribution of face masks, alcohol, soap and other cleaning agents. They can mobilize people to produce face masks using other possible alternative material. They can help spread the use of herbal medicine to help strengthen the people’s resistance to similar coronavirus strains.

In addition, the factory-based workers’ health committees must push for other practical health and safety measures such as free provision of medical and hygiene kits to workers, and other measures to improve working conditions and make them less vulnerable to the easy transmission of pathogens. Urban poor health committees must push for more efficient garbage collection, access to clean water, as well as free distribution of health kits and sanitation systems.

The Party calls for a humanitarian united front of all democratic forces to help mobilize all possible resources in order to extend the broadest support for people’s actions against the threat of a Covid-19 epidemic. The Party calls on all enterprises, from big capitalists to small businessmen, as well as international humanitarian agencies and organizations, to extend all forms of support — including supply of face masks, alcohol and testing kits — to help people’s health committees and local people’s organizations to ensure the success of the collective response of the people.

The Party calls for strengthening the democratic organizations of nurses and doctors, and medical professionals and health practitioners, to ensure their welfare amid serious threats to their lives as they stand at the front line in the fight against the Covid-19 epidemic. They seek an increase in allocations for public health to help ensure funds both for raising salaries, improvement of medical facilities and scientific research. They must counter state policy support for health service-for-profit and medical tourism. They must demand the strengthening of public hospitals and stop the policy of commercialization where generating profits is placed at the center of their operations.

The Party also calls for further strengthening scientific research in order to develop testing kits and vaccines and antivirals. At the same time, there must be deeper study and understanding of the links between the emergence of Covid-19 and other recent viral outbreaks and the practices of big capitalist agriculture.

The Party directs all units of the New People’s Army (NPA), its medical officers and red fighters, to assist the people and their health committees in the campaign of mass mobilization against Covid-19. Units of the NPA can guide the local health committees in efforts to come up with a plan of collective response. Its red fighters can help in sanitation drives and cleanup campaigns in villages around the areas of operations of NPA units.

Criticism of response of Duterte regime

Instead of coming up with an organized response to the Covid-19 threat, the Duterte regime has resorted to a lockdown which is causing further grave economic hardships on the people, without any provision for financial insurance during the one-month period. The measures have already caused widespread disruptions in economic and commercial activity. Many people observe that if the lockdown stubbornly persists for one month, it is likely that there will be more people who will die because of hunger than the disease.

The military and police checkpoints across the National Capital Region and other provinces where people’s temperatures are taken and which have prevented people from going to their place of work, or to look for work, border on the stupid. Not only is it useless, it is resulting in chaos and creates conditions for the easy transmission of diseases. What the people need are testing centers, not checkpoints.

The lockdown and checkpoints are part of the standard solution of Duterte’s martial law mindset. It covers up the government’s failure to even ensure basic supplies of face masks, alcohol and sufficient numbers of test kits. Knowing the gravity of the disease, Filipinos are easy to convince to have themselves tested whenever they notice symptoms. Duterte, however, is obsessed with imposing his will, even on the matter of public health, even if this causes large scale dislocations.

The lockdown also covers up how the Duterte regime cut by half the 2020 budget for the Epidemiology and Surveillance Program (from P262.9 million to P115.5 million), which severely limits the capacity of the Department of Health to handle the outbreak of diseases. It obscures the grave state of the country’s public health infrastructure marked by dilapidated facilities and severe lack of state funding for public hospitals. The inability of the Duterte regime to provide a correct response to the emerging public health crisis (through the provision of medical and social and not military and police measures) thoroughly exposes the rotten fundamentals of the Philippine ruling economic system.

The threat of the Covid-19 epidemic has added to the grave public health conditions of the Filipino people. Last year, there were more than 150,000 cases of dengue fever where at least 650 died. There is also the grave problem of tuberculosis and other controllable and treatable diseases. These manifest the consequence of the miserable social conditions and state abandonment of the people’s health.

March 17, 2020

Source: Philippine Revolution Web Central

President Trump said on March 16 that a recession is likely, maybe the only factually correct statement he made that day.

But what is a recession? 

Wikipedia says a recession is a business cycle contraction when there is a general decline in economic activity. Huh?

Capitalist economists use unemployment numbers as the real measure of a recession. Put simply, a recession is when there is a significant rise in unemployment — layoffs, cutbacks, reduced hours, cuts in pay. 

The Washington Post reported on March 11, “The first U.S. layoffs from the coronavirus are here.” Layoffs have started already at airlines, hotels and on the docks. 

The airlines have asked for a $50 billion federal bailout. Airlines employ 750,000 people, and air travel helps support another 10 million jobs across the country. 

President Trump told reporters that the airlines will get some federal assistance. Trump said, “We’re going to be in a position to help the airlines very much. We’ve told the airlines we’re going to help them.” 

What does that assistance mean? Does it mean no layoffs? An income for those laid off? 

No. No assistance goes to the workers — it’s all going to the owners. And the airlines won’t promise no layoffs if they get the $50 billion.

CNBC reported on March 16, “Millions of Americans could lose their jobs in a coronavirus recession. Many won’t get severance pay.”

Using the economists’ rule of thumb, CNBC notes that “the typical post-World War II recession has seen the U.S. unemployment rate increase about 2 to 2.5 percentage points. That would translate to about 3.5 million jobs being lost in today’s environment.” 

The Federal Reserve announced on March 13 that it would inject as much as $1.5 trillion into Wall Street. President Trump announced an $850 billion bailout. They call these actions an economic stimulus, but it’s really a giveaway to the rich. Making the rich richer has never helped anyone but the rich.

What’s needed is a job protection plan. Stop all layoffs! Guarantee employment! That’d be the beginning of what’s needed to end a recession.

Declaración de la Unión del Barrio

La emergencia de salud del coronavirus (COVID-19) se está desarrollando en una escala que nos ha impactado a todos como especie. Este momento representa una nueva conciencia global que se está extendiendo por todo el mundo a raíz de la pandemia de COVID-19, y las personas se están dando cuenta rápidamente de que solo como especie podemos esperar enfrentar esta crisis. Dentro de los EE.UU., esta pandemia ha desenmascarado la bancarrota moral e institucional del sistema de salud con fines de lucro más avanzado del mundo como uno diseñado principalmente para maximizar las ganancias, mientras que resulta en gran medida inútil para abordar la previsible emergencia de salud COVID-19.

Las parasitarias aseguradoras privadas de EE. UU. Y el complejo industrial de la salud repiten el plato descaradamente para aumentar sus ya exagerados márgenes de beneficio. Se gastaron casi $4 mil millones de dólares en atención médica en 2019, lo que convirtió al modelo de EE.UU. en el sistema de atención médica más costoso y menos efectivo del mundo capitalista. Los ejecutivos corporativos y los inversionistas argumentan que esta increíble suma de dinero nunca tuvo la intención de proporcionar una red de seguridad de salud viable para toda la población de los EE.UU., y mucho menos en un momento de crisis. A medida que el sistema de salud con fines de lucro ahora se enfrenta a una crisis nacional de salud, los intereses médicos privados una vez más recurren al público para pagar la factura y aceptan felizmente $8,3 mil millones de dólares de fondos públicos asignados por el gobierno federal (6 de marzo de 2020 H.R. 6074 – Ley de Asignaciones Suplementarias de Preparación y Respuesta de Coronavirus, 2020). Además, las compañías médicas privadas y las HMO están listas para acceder a otros $50 mil millones en fondos públicos con la declaración de emergencia nacional del 13 de marzo de 2020.

Este ha sido un acto de fraude del seguro nacional aprobado públicamente y sancionado políticamente. Este fraude está siendo perpetrado y celebrado por Donald Trump y sus secuaces, quienes convocan a conferencias de prensa y aplauden a los directores ejecutivos corporativos y las “asociaciones público-privadas” que nos salvarán del coronavirus. Lejos de las cámaras, los banqueros centrales han inundado las industrias privadas con dinero “gratis” por una suma de $1.5 trillones de dólares para apuntalar el colapso del mercado de valores. Muy pronto, el gobierno federal de EE.UU. anunciará rescates masivos de aerolíneas privadas, compañías petroleras y la industria de cruceros. Estas agresivas intervenciones económicas deben entenderse como centradas exclusivamente en la salud del sistema capitalista – lo que equivale al acaparamiento de papel higiénico y al individualismo destructivo que actualmente exhiben tantas personas comunes en nuestra sociedad, y nada de eso tiene como objetivo apoyar las necesidades sanitarias urgentes de esta sociedad.

De hecho, cuando nos tomamos un minuto para mirar más allá de la jactanciosa e incompetencia trumpiana, la verdadera naturaleza del sistema capitalista se hace evidente en tiempos de crisis. El núcleo podrido de la cultura de consumo individualista está expuesto y, al final, lo único de lo que podemos estar seguros es que este sistema grotesco de caos monetario e inequidad social probablemente condenará a muchas de nuestras comunidades a niveles elevados de exposición viral.

No tenemos dudas de que a medida que esta crisis de salud se intensifique, no habrá un nivel suficiente de disciplina política o moral demostrada por los funcionarios electos para abogar por las comunidades Latinas y Afroamericanas dentro de los Estados Unidos. También debemos reconocer la falta de motivación institucional y la capacidad organizativa necesaria para proporcionar los servicios médicos necesarios a nuestros barrios. Mucho antes de que el fascismo trumpista se apoderara de este país, históricamente a nuestras comunidades se les ha negado el apoyo institucional y los recursos en tiempos de crisis (durante incendios masivos, terremotos y epidemias anteriores). No tenemos otra opción que asumir que el fascismo trumpista, especialmente cuando está operando bajo la escasez de recursos de atención médica, negará intencionalmente el apoyo institucional a muchas de nuestras comunidades durante esta emergencia de salud pública.

Por lo tanto, la tarea principal para Unión del Barrio en las próximas semanas y meses es implementar un conjunto de procedimientos de emergencia de lo más robusto que podamos reunir. Debemos prepararnos para brindar solidaridad activa a nuestros miembros, nuestras familias extendidas, nuestros aliados políticos y los vecindarios donde tenemos una presencia organizativa en terreno. En la medida en que podamos ser disciplinados para maximizar la solidaridad entre las personas más cercanas a nosotros, será la medida de cómo podemos desafiar la histeria y el individualismo neoliberal promovido por los principales medios de comunicación capitalistas. Toda nuestra capacidad organizativa debe canalizarse hacia la construcción de centros comunitarios de solidaridad social. Unión del Barrio debe hacer nuestra parte para abogar por la salud y la seguridad de nuestros barrios.

Pautas de Unión del Barrio para la comunidad de cómo abordar la pandemia 2020 COVID-19

Asegurar el bienestar de los miembros de la UdB:

1. Cada miembro de UdB (y la comunidad solidaria) debe asegurar los siguientes consumibles y almacenarlos en sus hogares para prepararse para un posible “encierro” general de cuarentena en el hogar. Cualquier persona que no pueda recopilar estos materiales, informe a su liderazgo local de UdB para solicitar orientación y/o apoyo para asegurar estos materiales:
   • 30 días de comida no perecedera. Por ejemplo, reúna artículos como productos enlatados, alimentos congelados, etc. que se pueden almacenar durante un mes.
   • 2 semanas de cualquier medicamento requerido, si es necesario.
   • Agua potable de emergencia para por lo menos 5 días.
   • Llene los tanques de gasolina de todos los vehículos a los que tenga acceso.
   • Tenga dinero en efectivo, tanto como sea posible hasta $500 por persona.
2. Identifique y consulte con los personas que son inusualmente vulnerables, por ejemplo, aquellos miembros que no tienen acceso a los servicios médicos.
3. Si usted es un miembro que se siente enfermo, informe a su liderazgo local y no salga. No asista a ninguna reunión o evento al menos hasta que reciba algún tipo de consejo médico y haya hablado con su liderazgo local.
4. Todos los eventos públicos dirigidos por UdB (reuniones comunitarias, actividades juveniles, manifestaciones, protestas, etc.) programados durante el mes de marzo se deben posponer de inmediato. Estos aplazamientos pueden tener que ser cancelaciones, y también pueden extenderse a actividades planificadas para abril. Todas las actualizaciones nuevas relacionadas con este punto estarán disponibles a través de este sitio web: <http://uniondelbarrio.org/main/?page_id=4368>.

Asegurar el bienestar de los aliados y simpatizantes de UdB:

1. Los miembros y aliados de Unión del Barrio deben comenzar de inmediato a centralizar una lista de organizaciones y colectivos aliados (así como información de contacto para su liderazgo) que potencialmente pueda movilizarse en caso de la necesidad de entregar una respuesta comunitaria organizada basada en las masas a esta crisis de salud. Enviar esta información por correo electrónico a <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>.
2. Los miembros y aliados de Unión del Barrio deberían comenzar a centralizar una lista de apoyo de trabajadores médicos y servicios institucionales (así como información de contacto). Enviar esta información por correo electrónico a <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>.

Asegurar el bienestar de nuestras comunidades:

1. Los miembros de Unión del Barrio, nuestros aliados y los miembros de la comunidad en general deben de informar, a una ubicación centralizada, cualquier “amenaza de seguridad” potencial percibida en nuestros barrios y que represente un riesgo para las familias o la comunidad. Esto incluye movimientos inusuales de la policía local, estatal y / o federal, ICE u otras agencias gubernamentales, así como la presencia de individuos y / o grupos supremacistas / fascistas blancos. Enviar esta información por correo electrónico a <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>.
2. Los miembros de Unión del Barrio, los aliados y los miembros de la comunidad en general deben informar, a una ubicación centralizada, una lista de los siguientes servicios comunitarios ofrecidos por los distritos escolares y / o agencias locales que proporcionan distribución de alimentos y servicios médicos de bajo costo. Enviar esta información por correo electrónico a <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>.
3. Los miembros de Unión del Barrio, los aliados y los miembros de la comunidad en general deben informar, a una ubicación centralizada, una lista de los siguientes “puntos críticos” relacionados con la salud comunitaria de las personas vulnerables dentro de nuestras comunidades. Esta lista debe estar centralizada como mínimo para las áreas de Los Ángeles y San Diego, y servirá como guía para que prioricemos todo nuestro trabajo político y de defensa pública. Por supuesto, todos los sectores de nuestras comunidades son vulnerables, pero debemos esperar que estos sectores sean marginados intencionalmente (y potencialmente reprimidos) por las autoridades locales, estatales y federales. Envíe esta información por correo electrónico a <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>. Debemos permanecer atentos si surge la necesidad de que UdB y sus aliados intervengan como una fuerza organizada en nombre de estos sectores:
   • Grandes concentraciones de estudiantes vulnerables.
   • Grandes concentraciones de personas mayores.
   • Grandes concentraciones de personas sin hogar, especialmente cuando estas poblaciones están dentro de nuestros barrios.
   • Grandes concentraciones de trabajadores agrícolas e industriales.
   • Cárceles, prisiones y centros de detención de inmigrantes locales.

Unión del Barrio hace un llamado a nuestros miembros, camaradas y aliados para implementar de inmediato este plan hasta nuevo aviso. Debemos demostrar los mejores atributos de la organización revolucionaria de un pueblo para proteger la salud de nuestros miembros, aliados y nuestras comunidades de clase trabajadora. Nos guiamos por los principios fundamentales de la solidaridad humana y el rechazo activo de las tendencias burguesas de acaparamiento, egoísmo e individualismo neoliberal.

Email all questions, updates, or pertinent information to <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>.

Número de teléfono nacional de UdB es el 619/398-6648.

Todas las actualizaciones nuevas relacionadas con este punto estarán disponibles a través de este sitio web: <http://uniondelbarrio.org/main/?page_id=4368>.

Statement from Unión del Barrio

The coronavirus (COVID-19) health emergency is unfolding on a scale that has impacted all of us as a species. This moment represents a new global consciousness that is spreading across the world in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, with people quickly coming to the realization that only as a species can we hope to deal with this crisis. Within the U.S. this pandemic has unmasked the moral and institutional bankruptcy of the most advanced for-profit healthcare system in the world as one that is designed primarily to maximize profit, while proving largely useless for addressing the foreseeable COVID-19 health emergency.

Parasitic U.S. private insurers and the healthcare industrial complex shamelessly double dip to grow their already overblown profit margins. Nearly $4 trillion was spent on healthcare in 2019, making the U.S. model the most expensive, and least effective healthcare system in the capitalist world. Corporate executives and investors argue that this incredible sum of money was never intended to provide a viable health safety net for the entire U.S. population – much less so in a time of crisis. As the for-profit healthcare system is now faced with a national healthcare crisis, private medical interests once again turn to the public to pay the bill, and happily accept $8.3 billion of public funds allocated by the federal government (March 6, 2020 H.R.6074 – Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2020). Furthermore, private medical companies and HMOs are ready to access another $50 billion in public funds with the March 13, 2020 national emergency declaration.

This has been a publically enacted and politically sanctioned act of national insurance fraud. This fraud is being perpetrated and celebrated by Donald Trump and his minions, who convene press conferences and applaud the corporate C.E.O.s and the “public-private partnerships” that will save us from the coronavirus. Away from the cameras, central bankers have flooded private industries with “free” money to the tune of $1.5 trillion dollars in order to prop up the collapsed stock market. Very soon the U.S. federal government will announce massive bailouts of private airlines, oil companies, and the cruise industry. These aggressive economic interventions need to be understood as focused entirely on the health of the capitalist system only – equivalent to the toilet paper hoarding and destructive individualism currently being displayed by so many regular people in our society, and none of it is intended to support the urgent healthcare needs of this society.

Indeed, when we take a minute to look past the buffoonish trumpian boasting and incompetence, the true nature of the capitalist system becomes apparent in times of crisis. The rotten core of individualist consumer culture is exposed and in the end the only thing we can be sure of is that this grotesque system of monetized chaos and social inequity will likely condemn many of our communities to elevated levels of viral exposure.

We have no doubt that as this health crisis escalates, there will not be a sufficient level of political nor moral discipline demonstrated by elected officials to advocate for brown and black communities within the U.S. We must also recognize the lack of institutional motivation and organizational capacity needed to provide the necessary medical services to our barrios. Long before trumpista fascism took hold of this country, our communities have historically been denied institutional support and resources in times of crisis (during massive fires, earthquakes, and previous epidemics). We have no other option than to assume that trumpista fascism, especially when it is operating under a scarcity of healthcare resources, will intentionally deny institutional support to many of our communities during this healthcare emergency.

Therefore, the primary task for Unión del Barrio in the coming weeks and months is to implement as robust a set of emergency procedures we can muster. We must prepare ourselves to provide active solidarity to our members, our extended families, our political allies, and the neighborhoods where we have an on-the-ground organizational presence. To the degree that we can be disciplined in maximizing solidarity among those closest to us, will be the measure of how we can challenge the hysteria and neoliberal individualism promoted by the mainstream capitalist media. All of our organizational capacity must be channeled towards building community-based hubs of social solidarity. Unión del Barrio must do our part to advocate for the health and security of our barrios.

Unión del Barrio Community Guidelines for Addressing the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic

Securing the wellbeing of UdB membership:

1. Each member of UdB (and solidarity-minded people in general) should secure the following consumables and store them in our homes to prepare for a general quarantine-household “lockdown.” Any person that is not able to gather these materials, please inform your local leadership in order to request guidance and/or support for securing these materials:
   • 30-days of non-perishable food. For example, gather items such as canned goods, frozen foods, etc. that can be stored for a month.
   • 2 weeks of any required medications, if any.
   • 5 days of emergency drinking water.
   • Fill the gas tanks of all vehicles to which you have access.
   • Gather cash in hand, as much as possible up to $500 per person.
2. Identify and check in with comrades who are unusually vulnerable, for example those members do not have access to medical services.
3. If you are a member that feels ill, inform your local leadership and self-isolate. Do not attend any meetings or events at least until you receive some form of medical advice and have spoken to your local leadership.
4. All UdB-led public events (community meetings, youth activities, rallies, protests, etc.) scheduled during the month of March should be immediately postponed. These postponements may have to be cancellations, and may also have to be extended to activities planned for April. All new updates that relate to this point will be available via this website: <http://uniondelbarrio.org/main/?page_id=4368>.

Securing the wellbeing of UdB allies and supporters:

1. Unión del Barrio members and allies should immediately begin to centralize a list of allied organizations and collectives (as well as contact information for their leadership) that can be potentially mobilized if there is a need to bring together an organized mass-based community response to this health crisis. Email this information to <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>.
2. Unión del Barrio members and allies should begin to centralize a list of supportive medical workers and institutional services (as well as contact information). Email this information to <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>.

Securing the wellbeing of our broader communities:

1. Unión del Barrio members, allies and general community members should report to a centralized location any potential “security threat” perceived in our barrios that represent a risk to families or communities. This includes unusual movements of local, state, and/or federal police, ICE, or other governments agencies, as well as the presence of white supremacist/ fascist individuals and/or groups. Email this information to <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>.
2. Unión del Barrio members, allies and general community members should report to a centralized location a list of the following community services offered by school districts and/or local agencies that provide food distribution and no/low cost medical services. Email this information to <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>.
3. Unión del Barrio members, allies and general community members should report to a centralized location a list of the following community health related “hot-spots” of vulnerable people within our communities. This list should be centralized at minimum for the Los Angeles and San Diego areas, and will serve as a guide for us to prioritize all of our public political and advocacy work. Of course all sectors of our communities are vulnerable, but we should expect these sectors will be intentionally marginalized (and potentially repressed) by local, state, and federal authorities. Email this information to <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>. We must remain vigilant if a need arises for UdB and allies to intervene as an organized force on behalf of these sectors:
   • Large concentrations of undocumented gente.
   • Large concentrations of vulnerable students.
   • Large concentrations of older people.
   • Large concentrations of homeless people, especially when these populations are within our barrios.
   • Large concentrations of agricultural and industrial workers.
   • Local jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers.

Unión del Barrio calls on our members, comrades, and allies to immediately implement this plan until further notice. We must demonstrate the best attributes of a people’s revolutionary organization to protect the health of our members, allies, and our working-class communities. We are guided by the fundamental principles of human solidarity and active rejection of bourgeois tendencies of hoarding, selfishness, and neoliberal individualism.

Email all questions, updates, or pertinent information to <uniondelbarriocc@gmail.com>.

UdB national phone number is 619/398-6648.

The primary UdB COVID-19 webpage for updates is: <http://uniondelbarrio.org/main/?page_id=4368>.

Few tears were shed in Schenectady, N.Y., when former General Electric CEO Jack Welch croaked on March 1. Why should there have been? Welch destroyed 22,000 jobs in GE’s hometown in the 1980s.

Welch got rid of 7,000 jobs in Lynn, Mass. and 8,000 jobs in Pittsfield, Mass. Six thousand jobs were axed in Erie, Pa., while 4,000 jobs were eliminated in Fort Wayne, Ind. 

Thousands of workers were also fired at Louisville’s 900-acre Appliance Park Complex, now owned by Haier. Around 112,000 workers were fired during Welch’s 20-year reign of economic terrorism from 1980 to 2000, according to Thomas F. O’Boyle, author of “At Any Cost: Jack Welch, General Electric, and the Pursuit of Profit.”  

GE workers called Welch “Neutron Jack” because he destroyed people’s jobs while leaving the factories intact. That’s what the neutron bomb was supposed to do: kill people with radiation while leaving the buildings standing.

Welch argued that, “ideally you’d have every plant you own on a barge.” He wanted factories that could be moved to wherever the lowest wages and the least environmental regulations could be found.

Welch fought against cleaning up the Hudson River after GE poured 1.3 million pounds of cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into it. On Earth Day in 1998, Welch declared to stockholders that “PCBs do not pose adverse health risks.” 

Like his friend Donald Trump, Jack Welch was a sexist pig.  According to O’Boyle, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, Welch asked a woman being interviewed for a job at GE Plastics in 1973, “Would you f — k a customer for a million-dollar order?”

Instead of being prosecuted, Welch in retirement had a $750 million fortune. (Boston Magazine, May 15, 2006) His corpse should be sharing a jail cell with Harvey Weinstein.

Welch’s viciousness made him a role model for other executives like “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap, who fired 11,000 workers in 1995 at Scott Paper and then attempted to get rid of half of the workers at Sunbeam. 

Fortune magazine named Jack Welch “manager of the century.” Welch got a $7 million advance for his memoirs, which were elegantly titled “Jack, Straight From the Gut.” 

Donald Trump was a big admirer of Jack Welch, who had a crib in Manhattan’s Trump Tower. Both thought that capitalist climate change was a hoax. Welch called global warming “a mass neurosis” that was “an attack on capitalism” on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program. (July 2, 2008.)

After Jack Welch departed for the big electric toaster in the sky, his best buddy in the White House said “there was no corporate leader like ‘Neutron Jack.’” 

Welch the gravedigger

The same year that Jack Welch became GE’s CEO, Ronald Reagan was selected U.S. president. Both criminals waged war against the world working class.   

Reagan busted the PATCO union of air traffic controllers, slashed social services, waged a dirty war against Nicaragua and invaded Grenada. Welch fired over 100,000 workers and super exploited at least as many in Asia and Latin America.

Welch strove to reap monopoly profits by GE remaining only in those industries where it held the first or second position. Any other product lines — and the workers employed there — were ruthlessly discarded.

Welch also turned GE into a bank. By 2007, 55 percent of GE’s profit came from its loan sharking arm, GE Capital. (Fortune, May 24, 2018) But none of these methods could save GE from the anarchy of the capitalist marketplace.

Chickens came home to roost during the 2008 capitalist economic crisis. GE was bailed out by the Federal Reserve with a $139 billion cheap loan.

Five million homeowners who were foreclosed weren’t so lucky.

Two years ago, GE was kicked off the Dow Jones Industrial Average. From trading at $60 per share in 2000, GE’s stock fell to $8.21 on March 11. 

Many stock speculators now consider GE to be toast. From being called “the manager of the century,” Jack Welch became another fallen idol to study in the business schools. But it was workers and their families who paid for Welch’s crimes.