Death of Secular And Democratic India

Swapna Gopinath

Ayodhya Verdict unravels a new sensibility and a distinctly different social reality, in several diverse ways. One aspect to be mentioned here is the extraordinary rush of appeals for peace in the country. With large battalions of police force deployed throughout the nation, the government and mass media and the social media sent out appeals again and again. The verdict was pronounced and of course, peace prevailed. But the sense of dread has grown phenomenally. The silences are scary especially when the prime minister himself responds to the verdict, when he had remained silent on numerous occasions of national importance.

India has always been walking on thin ice: a fragile democracy kept in place by several institutions intended to help each other uphold the values of democracy. The challenges were manifold: the plurality of religious identities being a prominent one. The economic backwardness faced by every colonial nation added to the woe. Another major hurdle was the widespread illiteracy; of course, democracy requires a basic civil sense and understanding of human rights about which the illiterate Indian had little knowledge. Yet the country stayed strong, though the period of Emergency did unsettle it slightly, the voices of resistance were strong and powerful. Indian Express dared to carry a blank editorial page as a protest against the gagging of press. Leaders were jailed but the protests gained in momentum and Indira Gandhi had to bite dust in the next elections. As the country moved towards adopting a neoliberal economy, shifts in paradigms, social and cultural, were bound to happen. As the waves of globalization swept through the nation, and the markets got crowded with commodities, social sensibilities too began to evolve. The new India was slowly gaining traction and the old India died a natural death.

The new India is a scary one: neoliberal norms have eased the new Indian into a world where the individual is of supreme importance, her identity is defined by the market: collectives and communities no longer matter. The fiercely competitive society demands from the individual huge sacrifices, and in return gets pulled into the affective world of commodities and desires. This individual finds herself increasingly isolated, yet competing with others, on an imaginary journey towards success. The thought processes of this individual are quite complex, and the losing significance of communities, and the nation as a welfare-state add to the woe of the post-global Indian. She sees the inequality, she lives through the frustration of unfulfilled desires and provides the perfect ground for forces of Hindutva to grow undeterred.

For the millions of middleclass, urban Indians, Hindutva is the magic potion, that can change their world. From the feeling of helplessness to a state of being powerful and arrogant, the Hindu happily devours the stories of othering and marginalization where the Muslim and the Dalit emerge as targets. Hate works well in the mind of the person who feels she is a loser in the world of the superrich whose visibility is extremely high, with the media capturing their moments of glory and luxury.  For the rural poor, Hindutva again proves to be a powerful tool, empowering them through the violent power over the Others. Mob lynching and moral policing is hailed by the rightwing forces, the criminals involved in these extreme acts of violence are honored, thus validating such acts of violence.

The recent verdict sealed the deal in favor of Hindutva, a militant political Hindu identity that is distinctly different from Hinduism as a religion. The verdict was not a surprise for many, since the country has been witnessing partisan rulings and verdicts at all levels of administrative and judicial interventions.

Why is this a death knell for democracy in India?

1. The silence of the majority in issues of grave importance, especially when te victims are Muslims or Dalits or other minorities. The secular principles upheld in the constitution is no longer a viable option by a large section of Indian society as is witnessed through the terrifying silence.
2. The acceptance of the verdict by the Muslims has been very stoic. In a democracy that carefully considered the minorities through constitutional provisions thought out and executed so brilliantly, this stance of the Muslim community is a sign of the fear and insecurity that threatens them as a community.
3. The many voices, arrogant and powerful that are plain threats against the minorities. When political leaders speak with such wantonness the atmosphere of fear and suspicion gets stronger day by day.
4. Kashmir and now this verdict, along with the national registry, the target is quite clear. Such targeting of minorities cuts the very lifeline of democratic principles so carefully enshrined in the constitution. While the first term of office of BJP did not witness such major revamp of the nation’s identity, the second term threatens to turn the nation into a totalitarian regime with minorities silenced and voices of dissent attacked or ignored.
5. Aiding the forces of Hindutva is the media that thrives on money and corporate support. Media, unlike in the times of crisis during Emergency, prefers to support the forces of divisiveness and hatred. Since the autonomy of the mass media is severely curtailed through the processes of production that require huge investments, we see them as lapdogs to the powers of authority and arrogance.

India is in a crisis; and Indians, a huge majority of them, refuse to comprehend this reality. The mass mediated images of an invincible leader who can lead the nation to great heights have percolated into the society and offers the illusion of hope to millions who feel abandoned and helpless against the onslaught of the neoliberal market; as consumers and as producers. This sense of impotency acts as the fertile ground to a toxic masculine Hindutva agenda that is set to destroy the secular and democratic structure of India.

Social inequality in Early Bronze Age Europe

Philip Guelpa

The causes of and processes whereby egalitarian societies based on a hunting and gathering economy, which characterized the overwhelming majority of human existence, were transformed into stratified, class societies based on agriculture constitute one of the fundamental questions to be addressed in the study of human cultural evolution.

Bronze Age Tools: Bronze pins, an awl, a knife, a chisel and an axe - The City of Prague Museum (Credit: Zdenek Kratochvil)

Agriculture was developed independently in a number of separate locations around the world (e.g., the Near East, Southeast Asia, Mesoamerica, the Andean region) almost simultaneously (in geologic terms) at the end of the last Ice Age (the Pleistocene), roughly 10-12,000 years ago. At first, farming communities remained small and the social structure relatively egalitarian, as it had been during the preceding hundreds of thousands of years when humans relied on hunting and gathering. However, over the next few thousand years, the economies of these societies changed—agriculture became more productive, technology more complex, interregional trade expanded, and populations grew in size. Some villages became towns, and some towns became cities.

As part of this process, the division of labor within society became more complex. Individuals could no longer undertake all of the productive and social tasks required to carry out normal life, as had been the case previously. Administrative control over land and productive forces gradually became alienated to a small segment of the population. And, due to this control, the elite was able to arrogate a disproportionate share of society’s wealth to itself. In short, classes with different roles and interests emerged. By the period known as the Bronze Age in Europe and the Near East, beginning around 3300 BC, highly developed civilizations were emerging in a number of locations, including Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Egypt.

There is still much to be learned about this process of social differentiation and class formation. How did hierarchical relationships develop out of pre-existing egalitarian social structures based on kinship? Did wealth disparities grow within families or between families, or both? Was the gradual weakening of kinship ties between members of the same social group, which had entailed obligations of reciprocal support, the only mechanism of class formation?

Recent research into Bronze Age populations in Germany provides some insight into a certain aspect of class formation, which may be more broadly relevant. In Europe, aside from the Aegean area, such civilizations did not develop in the same manner as in the territories to the east, with their high degree of urbanization and intensive, often irrigation-based, agriculture. Nevertheless, the process of social differentiation and class formation was under way.

Archaeological and biological indicators of social stratification in agricultural societies are evident in Bronze Age Europe dating from roughly 3200 to 600 BC.

Evidence of class differences between a wealthy elite, exemplified by “princely” burials with lavish grave goods, and a large peasant population was already clear. Marked social stratification has been documented in the central German Unetice Culture (2200-1600 BC), located in a region of especially fertile soil, which was characterized by near-state-level social organization with established armies. However, the peasantry, which constituted the bulk of the population, has generally been viewed as an undifferentiated class of small farmers, in which kinship ties remained the basis of social organization within a single class.

New research reveals that social differentiation existed within the peasantry during this period, at least in one region of Germany, with some members of the population occupying roles based on other than familial ties, such as servants or even slaves. Such “small-scale” stratification may provide clues to an understanding of the origins of the larger-scale class structure.

An article recently published in the journal Science, “Kinship-based social inequality in Bronze Age Europe” (Mittnik et al., 10 October 2019), presents a detailed analysis of genetic and archaeological data from the German Lech River valley derived from sites spanning a 700-year period during the Early Bronze Age, marking the economic and social transition from the Late Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age period (from roughly 2750 BC to 1300 BC).

Based on assessment of genetic relatedness between 104 individuals buried in 45 local farmstead cemeteries plus additional data, the study finds that in a set of nearby farming communities there existed core groups of families centered on resident male-based lineages (patrilocality), with women from other communities marrying in (female exogamy).

Individuals buried at the same site were more closely related genetically than those buried at different sites, indicating both long-term residential stability of families (more residential mobility would result in greater genetic diversity) and a stable subsistence system that could reliably sustain these communities through time.

Archaeological evidence in the form of grave goods indicates the relative wealth of the resident “core” family, based on the quantity and quality of burial offerings. The more numerous (presumably more prosperous) families tended to have the richer grave furniture.

A correlation in wealth and status was also seen in genetically identified parent/child relationships, indicating a pattern of inheritance. Perhaps most tellingly, this holds true for subadults, demonstrating that wealth and status were ascribed by inheritance rather than being achieved by the individual’s actions in life. Closely related individuals tended to be buried in proximity to each other, further emphasizing status differentiation. At one site, the high-status individuals were interred in burial mounds.

It is notable, however, that both males and females in these core family groups were interred with significant quantities of grave goods, suggesting a degree of social equality between the sexes.

Significantly, two components of the burial populations in these communities do not conform to this model of stratified, kin-based social organization. The first consists of burials of female individuals unrelated to the local families and with indications of having grown up outside the region who, nevertheless, were interred with significant quantities of grave goods, indicating relatively high social status. Their role in the community is unexplained, but their presence suggests some sort of specialization.

The other group consists of individuals also unrelated to the local families, though not of different general ancestry, but this time interred with only poor grave goods. The authors conclude, “Considering both grave furnishing and kinship, people of different status and biological relatedness likely lived together in the same household, which should therefore be seen as complex and socially stratified institutions.” Again, the specific roles of these individuals are unknown, but their position outside of the kinship structure and their low social status, marked by a paucity of grave goods, suggest a subservient position, resembling a domestic servant or farm hand.

In effect, such individuals would represent, in incipient form, a kind of servant or slave class, distinct from the landed peasantry. Their labor would have contributed to the wealth of the core family, with little or no benefit to themselves, at least as indicated in the archaeological record. The use of “supplemental” labor beyond the members of the kin group suggests that new forms of more labor-intensive agriculture, such as use of the plow, may have been introduced during the Early Bronze Age, necessitating an augmentation of the labor force.

How these “outsiders” came to be functionally part of these households, but yet remained distinct, as revealed by treatment at death, is unknown and worthy of further research. Possibly they were war captives (evidence of warfare exists during this period) or they were members of other families that had fallen on hard times, causing their kin group to dissolve, leaving these individuals homeless and without support.

Notably, weapons were found with significantly higher frequency in the graves of males belonging to the core family than in those of the outsiders, suggesting differential socially sanctioned use of force.

The Science authors conclude that “The EBA [Early Bronze Age] households in the Lech valley…seem similar to the later historically known oikos, the household sphere of classic Greece, as well as the Roman familia, both comprising the kin-related family and their slaves.” This suggests that social differentiation and inequality had deep historical roots in early European farming communities.

This study is impressive in its use of detailed genetic analysis to reconstruct multi-generational family trees, which can then support comparisons between distinct family-based social units drawn from a sufficiently large sample size. This, in conjunction with the analysis of grave goods and the spatial positioning of the interments, provides a fine-grained reconstruction of the social and biological structure at a time when these farming communities were approaching a period of dramatic change.

The ability to conduct such studies relies on the collaborative efforts of a variety of specialists. This would not be possible, however, without the collection of data from numerous sites that form the basis for comparative studies, emphasizing the need for the excavation of such sites before they are destroyed by development.

Germany: Berlin rent cap—a deceptive manoeuvre

Tino Jacobson & Markus Salzmann

At the end of October, the Berlin Senate (state executive), consisting of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Left Party and Greens, agreed on a law to regulate rent limits, the so-called rent cap. It is set to be passed at the beginning of next year by the House of Representatives (state legislature), where the three government parties have a majority, and will be valid for five years after comes into force.

While it is still largely unclear whether the rent cap will actually be implemented in practice, as some lawsuits are pending, it cannot conceal three things:

Firstly, in recent years, rents in almost all major German cities have skyrocketed, leading, on the one hand, to poverty and homelessness, and on the other, to the shameless enrichment of greedy real estate speculators. The frontrunner is Berlin, where rents have risen by more than 106 percent in 10 years.

Secondly, the responsibility for this lies with the SPD and the Left Party in the federal capital, who, like the Greens, the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) in the other states, have created the political conditions for this development.

Thirdly, the rent cap eliminates neither the acute housing shortage nor the horrendous profits of the real estate companies. For example, the real estate giant Vonovia, which owns and manages almost half a million apartments, 10 percent of which are in Berlin, expects its total rental income to fall by less than 1 percent as a result of the “cap.”

If passed, the law would apply to around 1.5 million apartments that were ready for occupancy for the first time before 2014. This means that all new buildings constructed after 2014 will already fall out of the rent cap. Furthermore, apartments “in publicly subsidised housing construction and living space in a residential facility” are excluded.

The rent cap is intended to freeze the net monthly rents paid up to the cut-off date of June 18, 2019. This regulation also applies to graduated and index-linked rents. In the case of the first letting of an apartment built before 2014, the upper rent limit may not be exceeded, and in the case of a new letting, the net rent of the previous tenant may not be exceeded.

Under the new law, the rent ceilings, or the so-called rent table, are regulated depending on the fittings and age of the dwelling. From 2022, rents may then be increased by up to 1.3 percent annually as compensation for inflation, up to a maximum of the upper rent limit. Also, when dwellings are modernised, the net rent may rise by €1 per square meter. Particularly high rents, also known as “usurious rents,” which are 20 percent or more above the upper rent limit, may then be capped at 120 percent of the upper rent limit. However, this cap on usurious rents will not come into force until the end of 2020.

The CDU, FDP and far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which form the opposition in the Berlin House of Representatives, protested vehemently against the rent cap and threatened to sue. CDU Member of Parliament Jan-Marco Luczak raved against the alleged “planned economy” and called the rent cap a “massive and unconstitutional encroachment on private property.” The AfD faction denounced it as a “socialist rental policy,” and FDP Deputy Christoph Meyer called it a “debate of envy.” CDU faction leader Burkhard Dregger declared, “We will sue in any case.”

Of course, there was also an outcry from the real estate industry. The greedy real estate companies, which have been able to realise fabulous profits in Berlin and other large cities in recent years, see even the smallest restrictions as an inadmissible curtailment of their profit interests. Twenty-three landlord associations appealed to the Senate in a joint open letter, warning of “massive negative effects on the economy”—i.e., on their profits.

The open letter points out that only 55,000 new apartments were built in Berlin between 2012 and 2017, despite an influx of 287,000 new residents. “With the rent cap, however, the housing industry will drastically reduce its investments in existing housing by up to 90 percent,” the letter says.

The problem of unaffordable rents will not disappear with the rent cap—should it come into force—even if the “red-red-green” (SPD-Left Party-Green Party) Senate says so. The SPD and the Left Party in particular, which together formed the Senate from 2002 to 2011, bear the responsibility for this with their devastating policies.

The red-red Senate has sold 150,000 of 400,000 state-owned apartments to real estate sharks for the purpose of “debt reduction.” This left only 250,000 apartments in state ownership in 2009. For the most part, the apartments were sold off to real estate companies for less than 25 percent of the market value at the time. Since then, the average value of Berlin apartments has more than doubled. The then governing mayor, Klaus Wowereit (SPD), declared in 2011 that “calling rising rents a malaise” was “an old reflex.”

The red-red Senate made €21.6 billion available to rescue the banks in the state of Berlin and pursued brutal austerity measures, which negatively affected all areas of life and caused poverty in the capital to rise sharply. In 2003, Berlin withdrew from the federal and state governments’ employers’ association in order to reduce wages in the public sector by up to 12 percent and cut the number of employees by one third.

While the red-red Senate sold off publicly owned flats, its housing policy permitted the building of more and more expensive luxury flats, especially in the city centre, and led to sharply increased rents. The consequence of this policy was the displacement of tenants into the suburbs. Unaffordable rents meant many apartments were forcibly vacated, leading to increasing homelessness.

According to the estimates of the Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Wohnungslosenhilfe e.V. (Federal Association for the Assistance of the Homeless, BAGW), there were 650,000 people without housing in Germany in 2017. In Berlin, about 40,000 people are homeless and about 10,000 of them are forced to live on the streets. Especially now, with the cold weather returning, warm emergency shelters are a vital necessity. The city of Berlin spends around €5.6 million on helping the homeless, €1.4 million more than in 2010. However, the number of homeless people has more than tripled since then.

This year and last, there were mass protests in Berlin against constantly rising rents. In April 2018, 25,000 people demonstrated against exorbitant rents, although the organisers had expected only about 4,000 participants. One year later, 40,000 people demonstrated in Berlin under the motto “Expropriate German housing companies.” In 19 other cities, almost 60,000 people took to the streets.

The Left Party and its pseudo-left appendages officially supported the justified demand for expropriation of the real estate companies. In reality, they never intended to stop the speculators’ orgy of enrichment. As Left Party leader Bernd Riexinger stressed at the time, it was “not about expropriation without compensation.” The party wanted to buy back the apartments, which it had sold to the speculators for a song between 2001 and 2011, for around €7 billion, almost 17 times as much.

In view of the massive protests and disastrous election results for the SPD and the Left Party, the rent cap is to serve as a fig leaf for an anti-social housing policy. But it will not stop the enrichment of the rent sharks, provide affordable housing for all, or hide the right-wing and anti-social policies of the parties controlling the Berlin Senate.

Australian aged care report: “A shocking tale of neglect”

Cheryl Crisp

The recent Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety interim report was titled “Neglect.” The report states: “Left out of sight and out of mind, these important services (aged care) are floundering. They are fragmented, unsupported and underfunded. With some admirable exceptions, they are poorly managed. All too often, they are unsafe and seemingly uncaring. This must change.”

Yet the report’s “urgent” recommendations do nothing to address the underlying reasons for these appalling conditions, which governments, Liberal-National Coalition and Labor, municipal councils, corporations and trade unions have known about and presided over for decades.

The three recommendations are “to provide more Home Care Packages to reduce the waiting list for higher level care, to respond to the significant over-reliance on chemical restrain in aged care and to stop the flow of younger people with a disability going into aged care.”

No numbers or time frames are given for these recommendations. There is no indication how they will be implemented without a significant influx of funds by governments or the corporations that run most aged care facilities. In short, the recommendations are a sop, which the royal commission has no intention or means of enforcing.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the inquiry in September 2018 to head off the public outrage over media revelations of abuse, malnourishment and neglect of many elderly residents of nursing homes. It was a calculated attempt to defuse this anger while avoiding any commitment to increase funding after years of budget cuts by Coalition and Labor governments alike.

The shocking revelations outlined in the interim report are based on evidence presented in over 6,000 submissions from residents, families, staff and service providers, 12 public hearings, nine community forums and roundtable consultations with nursing home operators. However the report concedes that the commissioners heard nothing different from the previous 18 inquiries held since 1997—almost one a year for more than two decades. The commissioners found that many of the previously identified failings remained widespread.

What is revealed is that virtually no aspect of the aged care system is uniformly accessible, transparent and affordable, let alone safe, caring and adequately funded or staffed. The report notes that the first step in seeking aged care services is via a telephone- and internet-based system called My Aged Care that “many people in their eighties and nineties find frightening, confronting and confusing.” The report states: “Unfortunately, useful information is the exception, not the rule.”

The average waiting time for a Home Care Package, which provides funding for people to stay in their home, is between one and three years. Many people die while waiting.

Payments for residential aged care services consume 85 percent of the aged pension plus hundreds of thousands of dollars as a security bond, often derived from the sale of the family home. Only a portion of this bond is refunded to the estate on death.

Once deemed eligible for an aged care service, the old and frail are subject to a cost-cutting, budget-driven framework in what is now a multi-billion dollar a year industry.

According to the report, as at June 2018 more than 1.2 million people in Australia received some form of aged care service—847,534 had home support, 116,843 received home care and 241,723 were in permanent residential aged care. Half the residents in permanent residential care had been diagnosed with dementia.

Increasingly, governments have relinquished their responsibility to provide for older people, handing over this task to the corporate and “not-for-profit” charitable, community-based and religious organisations. Only 9 percent of aged care facilities are managed by governments, with 58 percent by the not-for-profit sector and 33 percent by companies.

The privatisation of this rapidly expanding industry has led to staff reductions and casualisation, the rationing of basic necessities and a precipitous decline in standards. The three largest companies running aged care facilities—BUPA, Opal and Allity—collectively made $15.8 billion, after tax, in 2017.

The chronic under-staffing levels condemn nurses, carers and residents to a system where the physical, psychological and medical needs of the residents are sacrificed for profit. The consequences are clear, predictable and damning.

Up to half the residents in aged care facilities suffer from malnutrition as a result of inedible and non-nutritious food or the lack of enough staff to assist residents who cannot feed themselves. Testimony was presented of some providers budgeting less than $7 per day per resident for food.

More than three quarters of residents suffer incontinence, with the majority in the most dependent category. Daily restrictions on the number of incontinence pads and nappies per resident result in distressed and agitated people sitting for hours in wet and soiled nappies.

Evidence was presented of the widespread use of “chemical restraints” to control residents suffering multiple forms of behavioural problems. “[R]esearch involving 150 residential aged care facilities found that 61 percent of residents were regularly taking psychotropic agents, with 41 percent prescribed antidepressants, 22 percent prescribed antipsychotics, and 22 percent prescribed benzodiazepines,” the report states.

“An Australian Department of Health expert clinical advisory panel estimated that psychotropic medication is only clearly justified in about 10 percent of cases in which they are prescribed in residential aged care.”

The use of such drugs, which are known to cause increased falls and injuries, is a direct product of under-staffing. A 2017 Medical Journal of Australia study found that preventable deaths in nursing homes had increased fourfold over a decade. The study reported 3,291 premature deaths, from potentially preventable causes, between 2000 and 2013.

The situation facing staff tasked with caring for the most vulnerable, defenseless and ailing members of society is almost impossible. Despite the growing number of people entering aged care and the increased complexity of their health conditions, the proportion of registered nurses has decreased from approximately 21 percent in 2003 to 14.9 percent of aged care staff. In their place, unskilled or poorly trained personal carers are hired at a rate of around $21.50 per hour.

Aged care nurses are paid, on average, 10 percent lower than their counterparts throughout the health industry, and personal carers are paid 15 percent less. Surveys were presented of unsustainable workloads. One Assistant in Nursing said she had 15 minutes each morning allocated to each high-care dementia patient to shower, dress and attend to their needs.

The interim report in no way challenges the basis on which the aged care industry is run. On the contrary, it blames the population as a whole, stating: “As a nation, Australia has drifted into an ageist mindset that undervalues older people and limits their possibilities.” The budget cutting of Coalition and Labor governments alike, which has created this dire situation, is not indicted. Promises by Prime Minister Morrison that funding will increase are belied by the government’s budget statements that spending will be restricted to the slowest growth in 50 years.

The government projects it can slow growth in health funding, after inflation, to just 0.7 percent a year over the next four years despite an aging population and a broken private health insurance system.

Increasingly, the elderly are regarded by capitalism as a burden, an encumbrance and a cost for which governments are not willing to pay. Despite working their entire lives, contributing to society and providing for and raising families, the retired workers are treated as if they should die to save the cost to society.

The royal commission is continuing. But the outcome is already clear. It will follow the previous 18 inquiries and act as a cover for those responsible for the disgraceful conditions faced by those who are forced to live and work in the aged care industry.

The US-backed coup in Bolivia

Bill Van Auken

Bolivia, South America’s most impoverished nation, teeters on the brink of a civil war in the wake of a US-backed coup that led to the resignation Sunday of President Evo Morales, Vice President Álvaro García Linera and various ministers, state governors and government officials.

While Morales, García Linera and others have fled the country for asylum in Mexico, the Bolivian workers, peasants and indigenous majority that they purported to represent have been left behind to confront heavily armed troops and fascist gangs in the streets.

The bitter lesson that the Latin American working class can advance its interests not by means of “left” bourgeois nationalist regimes, but only through its own independent revolutionary struggle, is once again being written in blood.

Police block supporters of former President Evo Morales from entering the area of Congress in La Paz, Bolivia, Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Thousands of workers and youth have responded with courageous resistance to the coup, taking to the streets of La Paz and the neighboring working-class district of El Alto, where they burned down police stations and confronted security forces. Elsewhere, miners and peasants have blocked highways, and anti-coup protesters have confronted heavily armed troops firing live ammunition and tear gas grenades. In Cochabamba, the military brought in a helicopter to fire on crowds. The toll of dead and wounded has steadily risen.

The military-police violence has been accompanied by a reign of terror by the fascistic opponents of Morales, who have burned down homes of those linked to the government, kidnapped family members of officials and carried out violent assaults against those linked to Morales’s Movement toward Socialism (MAS) party, as well as targeting indigenous people, especially women, for attacks. Headquarters of social organizations have been attacked, and radio stations invaded and taken off the air.

After three weeks of protests over the disputed October 20 presidential election, the coup was consummated Sunday with a televised address by Gen. Williams Kaliman, the chief of the armed forces, surrounded by the entire military command, in which they “suggested” that “the president resign his presidential mandate and allow the pacification and reestablishment of stability for the good of Bolivia.”

Morales and García Linera took the “suggestion,” saying that they were doing so to “avoid bloodshed” and “guarantee peace.” If that was their objective, their capitulation to the military and the Bolivian right has failed miserably.

US President Donald Trump celebrated the overthrow of Morales as a “significant moment for democracy in the Western Hemisphere,” warning that Venezuela and Nicaragua are next.

But it wasn’t only Trump. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post published editorials Tuesday supporting the coup and suggesting that it was a blow for “democracy,” and that the role of the military in forcing Morales out was merely incidental.

This reflects the fundamental continuity in Washington’s imperialist policy in Latin America under Democrats and Republicans alike, from the abortive 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela under George W. Bush (prematurely celebrated by the Times), to the 2009 US-backed overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras under Barack Obama, to today’s ouster of Morales under Trump.

Underlying this continuity is the drive by US imperialism to reverse the decline of its global economic hegemony by means of military force and violence, particularly in the region that it has so long regarded as its “own backyard.” This is driven both by the desire of US transnationals to lay unfettered claim on Latin America’s resources and markets—not least Bolivia’s vast energy and mineral reserves, including 70 percent of the world’s lithium—and by the strategic confrontation between US imperialism and China, whose trade with the region rose to $306 billon last year.

Morales’s government was part of the so-called “Pink Tide” of left-posturing bourgeois nationalist governments that came to power in Latin America, beginning with that of Hugo Chavez in 1998.

Like Chavez, Morales declared himself an adherent of the “Bolivarian Revolution” and socialism. He and the MAS were swept into office on the wave of revolutionary upheavals that shook Bolivia and brought down successive governments during the so-called water and gas “wars”—against water privatization and for the nationalization of gas—between 2000 and 2005.

The leader of the coca growers’ union and the first Bolivian president from the country’s long-oppressed indigenous population, Morales won broad popular support for a government that served as the vehicle for containing the revolutionary struggles of the Bolivian masses.

This government, however, soon allowed that its aim was not really socialism, but rather “Andean-Amazonian capitalism,” which consisted of “nationalizations” that imposed new taxes on transnational corporations that were guaranteed even greater access to the exploitation of Bolivia’s gas and other natural resources.

In addition to its alliance with transnational capital, the Morales government cemented a pact with the agricultural oligarchy. Both were granted rights to exploit lands that had previously been declared national parks to protect their indigenous populations.

The government also relied upon what it described as the “military-peasant alliance,” through which it sought to solidify support in the military command by offering it control over sections of the economy, resources for creating its own businesses and generous benefits. It created an “Anti-imperialist Military School” and had soldiers salute their officers with the Guevarist slogan of “Hasta la victoria siempre.” In the end, the bourgeois army, which Morales never disbanded, proved loyal to its roots in the fascist-military dictatorships of Generals Hugo Banzer and Luis García Meza and the national security state doctrine of the Pentagon’s School of the Americas.

The right-wing policies of the Morales government led to continuous confrontations with the working class and peasantry and steadily eroded its support. Its right-wing opponents in Bolivia’s traditional ruling oligarchy were able to exploit Morales’s attempt to secure himself another term as president—in violation of the constitution and the results of a 2016 referendum—to win a popular base for its counterrevolutionary objectives.

Morales and the MAS leadership bear criminal responsibility for the coup which they condemn. Its principal victims will be not Morales and his fellow politicians, but the masses of Bolivian workers, peasants and oppressed.

Also sharing blame for the acute dangers now confronting the masses of workers and oppressed in Bolivia are the various pseudo-left groups that promoted the Bolivarian revolutionary pretensions of the Morales government and demanded that the working class subordinate itself to the leadership of the bourgeois nationalists. Chief among them are various revisionist tendencies that split from the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), rejecting its struggle for the international unity and political independence of the working class based upon a revolutionary socialist program in order to adapt themselves to Stalinism and various forms of bourgeois nationalism, chief among them, Castroism.

The period in which these parties have been able to help suppress the class struggle is coming to an end, not only in Latin America, but internationally. The events in Bolivia, along with the mass uprisings of workers and youth in Chile and elsewhere on the Latin American continent, are demonstrating that the ruling class is no longer able to rule in the old way, and it has become impossible for the working class to live in the old way, creating the conditions for a new period of revolutionary upheavals.

The most urgent political task is the formation of a new revolutionary leadership in the working class based on an assimilation of the long struggle of Trotskyism against revisionism. This means building sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International throughout Latin America.

Tens of thousands in Russia face medicine shortages as a result of Western sanctions

David Levine

The past years have seen an increasingly severe shortage of medicine in Russia, especially for the treatment of cancer and other life-threatening conditions. Russians requiring treatment have been compelled to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to Moscow to obtain treatment because the medicines they need are unavailable in their regions.

The main reason for these shortages has been the combined effect of economic sanctions imposed by Western imperialist governments since 2014 as well as the Russian government’s reactive policies of import substitution. The financial sanctions imposed by the United States, affecting financial operations between the two countries, have had practical effects on the availability of medicines in Russia.

Contrary to official propaganda in the Western mainstream press, which highlights sanctions targeting individuals around Putin, these sanctions are harming Russian workers and their children first and foremost. The growing shortages in medicine are a particularly stark demonstration of this fact. Since wealthy Russians have opportunities to travel outside of Russia for medical treatment, the primary victims of the sanctions consist of the poor, the disabled, and the working class as a whole.

The last few months have seen a series of scandals over the arrest of mothers in Russia for trying to get hold of unregistered medicine for their sick children.

Between April and August 2019, two women from Moscow and one from Yekaterinburg were temporarily arrested and charged for illegally obtaining unregistered medicine. In April, Darya Belyayeva of Yekaterinburg came under criminal prosecution for buying online an antidepressant called Elontril for her child. In July, Yelena Bogolyubova of Moscow was also arrested for purchasing online medications that were to be delivered to her by mail. After the incident received substantial public attention, she was released without charges. A Moscow woman who chose to remain unnamed likewise came under criminal charges in August for obtaining a medicine called Frisium, also for her epileptic child. The charges were once again dropped after several days. At least 3,000 children in Russia are estimated to be currently in need of Frisium treatment.

Last year, in June 2018, Yekaterina Konnova of Moscow had come under criminal prosecution for buying online diazepam rectal solution for her child, who suffers from both cerebral palsy and epilepsy, and then reselling some of the leftover surplus to the parents of other children with epilepsy. The charges were eventually dropped. At least 3,000 children in Russia are estimated to be currently in need of Frisium treatment.

The public outcry over these arrests and charges compelled the minister of health, Veronika Skvortsova, to announce the free distribution of Frisium—still lacking official government registration—to 540 children whose parents had made applications to the government. The Russian government is also reviewing a bill which would grant free medication for critical conditions, including heart failure, and the ministry of health has also announced plans to distribute unregistered forms of diazepam, midazolam, and phenobarbital this month.

However, regardless of these limited measures, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of adults who suffer from these same conditions, as well as countless children and adults who need medicines which have yet to come under any such exceptional policies, will remain without legal means of obtaining the needed treatments in Russia.

The Russian first deputy minister of industry and trade, Sergey Tsyb, told Deutsche Welle in November 2018, “They [the West] try to reassure us by saying that there has been no historical precedent for an embargo of medicine, but I have clarified that there has been an embargo [against Russia] in a number of countries, at least in an indirect way. That is, yes, they don’t directly prohibit companies from selling medicines [to Russia], but the economic chain has been paralyzed, as a result of which producers have been afraid or deprived of the possibility of selling pharmaceuticals to countries affected by sanctions.”

The effect of the sanctions has been compounded by the desperate efforts of the Kremlin to accommodate the sanctions regime by a nationalist program of import substitution. Products previously imported from abroad are to be replaced by products produced in Russia and its allies in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), which includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

One of the Russian bans on foreign imports has resulted in preventing government agencies from purchasing medicines from producers outside the EAEU in all cases where there are at least two bids from EAEU-based companies. In 2017, this led to the withdrawal from the Russian market of Medac, the primary world producer of asparaginase, which is used to treat acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), acute myeloid leukemia, (AML) and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

In an interview with Novaya Gazeta dated October 30, 2019 , Aleksey Maschan, Director of the Institute of Hematology, Immunology, and Cell Technologies at the Dmitry Rogachev National Medical Research Center, warned that thousands of children and adults will die of curable cancers if the government’s import substitution policies affecting chemotherapy drugs are not changed soon.

Maschan told the newspaper that, cytarabine, also used for the treatment of ALL, AML, chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is currently available in Russia only because foreign exporters have volunteered to sell it to Russia at a loss.

According to the liberal Novaya Gazeta, Oncaspar, which serves as an alternative to asparaginase for the treatment of ALL and certain lymphomas, has recently disappeared entirely from the Russian market. There are approximately 2000 cases of ALL in Russia each year, most of which are children. The charity Podari zhizn’ has been importing Oncaspar for use in large federal clinics, but the drug has become unavailable in many Russian regions.

Charities such as Podari zhizn’ continue to import medicines to Russia at the expense of private donors. However, such stopgap and patchwork measures are entirely inadequate to serve the needs of the entire population, which exceeds 140 million.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has a Model List of Essential Medicines, which includes a “core list,” consisting of “minimum medicine needs for a basic health-care system, listing the most efficacious, safe and cost–effective medicines for priority conditions.” Some of the medications on the core list are not regularly available in Russia because they have not been registered. This includes diazepam rectal solution, commonly used to treat epilepsy in children. Because it has not been registered with the Russian government, it therefore cannot be legally bought or sold in Russia, regardless of doctors’ prescriptions.

According to the Dom s mayakom (“Lighthouse”) youth hospice and the Vera (“Faith”) hospice support fund, at least 23,000 Russian children are in need of diazepam and similar medications. In an open letter they addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin in August 2018, they noted, “The absence of medicines or their pediatric forms for the treatment of pain and convulsions causes children to suffer, superfluous calls to emergency medical teams, superfluous intensive care unit hospitalizations, and child deaths resulting from untimely medical treatment (in the case of a seizure lasting over five minutes, the medicine must be administered urgently).”

US-backed Colombian military kills eight children in bombing, attempts cover-up

Andrea Lobo

The Colombian defense minister, Guillermo Botero, resigned after the release of a report indicating eight children were killed in a bombing in the southern department of Caquetá, whose execution and cover-up implicate President Iván Duque as well as the Colombian military and its main ally and sponsor, the Pentagon.

Seven other bodies were found, several “so mangled that technical analyses could only determine they were younger than 20,” as described by Senator Roy Barreras of the right-wing Social Party of National Unity, who made the reports public.

Botero had lied to Congress in September that “14 delinquents” had been killed by the bombing, which was carried out on August 29 against a dissident faction of the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) that had announced hours earlier it had taken up arms again.

Duque himself said the following day, “Last night, I authorized the Special Operations Joint Command (CCOES) to carry out an offensive operation,” which he described as “strategic, meticulous, impeccable and rigorous, killing ‘Gildardo Lucho,’ leader of the organization.”

According to an international criminal law expert from the Grenada University in Spain, Anibal García, contacted by the Anadolu Agency, “Especially since he has a military body with its own dimensions to verify such situations, an alleged war crime would have been perpetrated.” Opposition senators in Colombia have proposed requesting an investigation by the International Criminal Court on Duque’s role.

However, beyond its “own” capacity, as indicated by the Joint Special Operations Command (CCOES) chief Major General Jorge Arturo Salgado in the latest edition of the military journal Dialogue, “With the US, we have a daily and personal relationship. We have a permanent and constant relationship with the special forces of the US Army in every component of capacity, since we have their men within our organizations, who accompany us in every process, from doctrine, organization, training, personnel, sustainability and logistics.”

And beyond the capacity to “verify,” a municipal official at Caquetá, Herner Evelio Carreño, had warned in letters dated June 20, June 23, July 23 and August 26 that the guerrillas were “forcibly recruiting our children, girls and adolescents.” TeleSur confirmed subsequently with the parents of two of the victims, 12-year-old Ángela Gaitán and 16-year-old Diana Medina, that they had been forcibly recruited.

Amid the wave of mass protests sweeping Ecuador, Chile and the region, the response of the Colombian ruling class to the revelations has been marked by authoritarian threats and alarm, while Washington has remained silent. In recent months, strikes by teachers, transportation workers and others and mass student and indigenous demonstrations have been on the rise in Colombia.

The Caquetá revelations have increased calls for Duque’s resignation, which has become the main demand in a national strike announced for November 21, which the trade union confederations and the pseudo-left coalition Democratic Alternative Pole (PDA) hope to use to dissipate social anger against Duque’s austerity.

A national teachers’ strike in September and other demonstrations have condemned the killing of hundreds of social activists and other civilians by the state and paramilitary forces since the September 2016 “peace” accord with the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas.

In another warning, the weekly Semana wrote that November 21 could become a “transcendental date” since “one can’t discard the contagious effect” from Chile and Ecuador, adding, “There has not been a national strike in many years in the country.”

According to the Press Freedom Foundation (FLIP), when a journalist first asked Duque about the revelations on Wednesday “the president appeared to panic” and his guards beat up the reporter.

Afterward, Duque sought to bury the issue, praising Botero on Thursday for “serving with so much willingness and patriotism that he won respect and fondness,” and blaming the incident on “terrorist groups who use minors as human shields.” The new acting minister, Gen. Luis Fernando Navarro then claimed, “We didn’t know that there were minors in the camp.”

By Saturday, Duque moved to openly threaten the growing opposition, indicating, “unfortunately a series of lies is being used to convoke a strike that has lots of risks and whose examples are Chile and Ecuador,” where states of emergency were enforced through deadly military force.

Duque’s statement came amid growing calls for censorship from the ruling elite. An editorial that day in the “liberal” El Espectador denounced Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg for having an “ambivalent attitude” toward censorship of “fake news.” The editorial Friday applauded the resignation of Botero, while warning that the military’s “messages are not calming the country” and demanding that “the confidence be rebuilt between the Armed Forces and Colombians.”

This is a central concern for US imperialism, which has turned Colombia into its spearhead for economic and military pressure in the regime change operation against the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, especially since the failure of efforts to instigate factions of the Venezuelan military to oust Maduro and install a US puppet regime.

Business Insider indicated late last month that the US has been pressuring Colombia to buy 15 of the latest F-16 warplanes, but “budgetary restrictions and a lack of public support for major defense expenditures also make that purchase less likely.” The Caquetá revelations have only increased popular opposition to militarism.

For over a century, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have threatened and carried out military invasions and coups to impose US diktats through military regimes. The brazenness of military repression in Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Honduras and elsewhere to defend the highest levels of inequality in the world is the result of this entire period of imperialist oppression and looting.

In 1965, the year the Democratic administration of Lyndon B. Johnson intensified the US war in Vietnam and began a murderous US military occupation of the Dominican Republic, the Department of Defense wrote in a strategic document, that “in order to protect the sovereignty of their nations [the militaries must be ready] to remove government leaders from office whenever, in the judgement of the military, the conduct of these leaders is injurious to the welfare of the nation.”

At the time, the US military was training and directly controlling armies and death squads across the region, which were killing thousands. In Colombia, US diplomatic cables between 1959 and 1965 describe in detail the formation of “hunter/killer teams” against radicalized workers, youth and peasants.

“The [Colombian] Army has seemed to accent the death, rather than the often useless capture of violence leaders … whatever the long-term effect these bandit deaths will have on the Colombian violence situation, certainly these deaths have boosted the morale of the army,” indicates a US embassy cable from July 7, 1961.

The long-term effect was the longest armed conflict in the Western Hemisphere in which the vast majority of the 267,000 killed and 7 million displaced were civilians. In August 1997, Washington labeled the FARC and ELN Colombian guerrillas “foreign terrorist organizations” and shortly after launched Plan Colombia, which has injected over $10 billion into Colombia’s military forces. In 2009, William Brownfield, then Obama’s ambassador to Colombia, described it as “the most successful nation-building exercise that the United States has associated itself with perhaps in the last 25-30 years.”

According to the US Congressional Research Service, the 2019 budget request for aid to Colombia “would reduce post-conflict recovery programs and place greater emphasis on counternarcotics and security.”

Steel layoffs in US mount due to falling production and trade war

Samuel Davidson

Growing layoffs at major steel producers in the United States over the past three months point to a further slowdown in manufacturing and the impact of Trump’s trade war measures. All the major steel producers in the US have reduced production this year and this is now translating into a series of job cuts.

United States Steel (USS), the second largest steel producer in the US and once the symbol of US domination of industrial production, is facing a major crisis. The company’s stock has lost over 75 percent of its value since reaching a high of $45 per share in February 2018 when the Trump administration imposed a 25 percent tariff on steel imports. Today USS stock is trading at less than $11.

The company has announced that it will idle its tin mill in East Chicago, Indiana. The company claims that half of the 297 workers being laid off will be transferred to its other northwest Indiana steel mills, the Gary Works and the Midwest Plant in Portage. It gave no date for reopening the mill and most industry analysts expect it to permanently close because of falling demand for tin.

Earlier this year, USS shut down one of its blast furnaces at its Great Lakes Works near Detroit. Fifty workers were laid off at the time and another 200 lost their jobs at the end of September.

US Steel recently announced plans to buy a minority stake in Big River Steel for $700 million with the option to buy the rest of Arkansas-based steelmaker over the next four years. The buyout is part of USS’s cost-cutting measures. Big River uses an electric arc furnace to melt scrap metal instead of a blast furnace that produces new steel from iron ore.

Blast furnaces need to run at near peak capacity in order to be profitable while electric arc furnaces in so-called “mini-mills” can remain profitable at lower capacities. US Steel is also building new electric arc furnaces, but the decision to buy a competitor signals that the company needs to get into that market faster.

US Steel is not the only steelmaker slashing jobs. AK Steel has announced the closing of its mill in Ashland, Kentucky by the end of the year throwing all 260 employees out of work.

Earlier this year, TMK Ipsco Tubulars Inc. announced it was laying off 159 workers at its tubular plant in Wilder, Kentucky due to dropping demand from the oil and gas industry. Only 20 workers will remain, mainly for maintenance at the plant.

NLMK steel in Farrell, Pennsylvania laid off 100 workers over the summer citing the higher costs of steel imports. NLMK imported steel slabs from Russia and rolled them into finished products. The layoffs took place in the hot mill. About 300 workers are still working in other sections of the mill.

Last month, United Structures of America closed its plant in Portland, Tennessee, putting 45 employees out of work. The company blamed the layoffs on falling demand for steel from the construction industry.

Barber Steel Foundry in Rothbury, Michigan is closing this month, laying off all 61 employees. The foundry is part of Pittsburgh-based Wabtec Corporation, which manufactures locomotives and freight cars. Wabtec (Westinghouse Air Brakes Technology Corporation), which merged with GE Transportation, provoked a strike by 1,700 locomotive workers in Erie, Pennsylvania earlier this year that was isolated and betrayed by the United Electrical (UE) union.

Bayou Steel in Louisiana filed for bankruptcy October 1 and announced it was closing, putting 367 people out of work. Another 72 workers at its Harriman, Tennessee operations were also laid off. Bayou executives said they only had $50,000 in cash and were unable to secure credit.

Charlotte, North Carolina-based Nucor Corporation, the largest steelmaker in the United States, and Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal, the largest steelmaker in the world, have both seen their stocks fall drastically this year and are under pressure to cut costs and jobs.

Nucor, which is also the largest mini mill operator, has seen its share value fall by nearly 25 percent since its high in 2018. ArcelorMittal’s stock has fallen nearly 60 percent, from a high of $36 in January 2018 to just $15.00. Like US Steel, ArcelorMittal relies primarily on blast furnaces to produce steel from iron ore.

During his election campaign, Trump repeatedly promised he would revive the steel industry through trade war measures primarily aimed at imports from China and Europe. The expectation of the tariffs and the tariffs themselves sent stock prices up in anticipation of huge profits. However, the protectionist measures have had the opposite effect.

US Steel, Nucor and ArcelorMittal all brought additional capacity online in anticipation of greater demand. While demand rose modestly, the additional capacity put online quickly led to a crisis of overproduction in the US market and falling steel prices. While there is a vast need for steel to repair and improve the infrastructure in the US and around the world, under the capitalist system of production for profit and the division of the world into rival nation-states workers now face the irrational prospect of being thrown into poverty because they have produced “too much” steel.

While most analyses point to tariffs as the cause of the crisis for steel producers, the general slowdown in production in the US and world economy is a major factor. US manufacturing has declined for the past three months while world demand is also down.

China’s growth rate has fallen to 6 percent and the country is not importing as much steel as it did. Manufacturing in Europe has also been falling, which means they both import less steel and have more steel for export.

The United Steelworkers union which covers a shrinking but still substantial portion of steelworkers is working with the steel companies and the Trump administration to prevent steelworkers from launching a fight against the destruction of jobs and living standards.

In an effort to divert anger away from the corporations, the USW is once again promoting the poison of national chauvinism and militarism. It is the greatest cheerleader for Trump’s trade war measures and seeks to pit steelworkers in the US against their class brothers and sisters in Asia, Europe and South America and line up workers for a catastrophic war.

At the same time, the USW has deliberately isolated every struggle of workers in the United States and throughout the world against attacks on workers and social inequality.

Last year, the USW blocked strikes at both US Steel and ArcelorMittal despite overwhelming votes by its members for strike action. Currently, the USW is isolating the month-long strike by 2,000 copper miners in Arizona and New Mexico against one of the world’s largest copper conglomerates, Grupo Mexico.

The Socialist Equality Party urges steelworkers to form rank-and-file factory committees to take the conduct of the struggle out of the hands of the USW, which is nothing but a tool of corporate management and the government. These committees should reach out to autoworkers, copper miners, teachers and other sections of workers to prepare a common counter-offensive against the corporate and financial elite.

The industrial mobilization of the working class must be combined with a new political strategy in opposition to both big-business parties and based on the international unity of the working class and the fight for socialism. The only way to oppose the relentless job- and wage-cutting demands of the transnational corporations is to unite the entire working class to transform the steel industry into a public enterprise under the democratic control and collective ownership of the working class.

Eleven thousand scientists warn of climate emergency

Daniel de Vries

“Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat and ‘tell it like it is.’ We declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency,” a remarkable paper published last week in the scientific journal BioScience began.

The assertion of a planetary emergency, endorsed by scientists in 153 countries, came on the anniversary of the first official government-sponsored international climate change conference in 1979 in Geneva, Switzerland. “Despite 40 years of global climate negotiations,” the paper noted, “with few exceptions, we have generally conducted business as usual and have largely failed to address this predicament.”

“The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected,” the report warned. “It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity.”

“Especially worrisome, are potential irreversible climate tipping points and nature’s reinforcing feedbacks that could lead to a catastrophic ‘hothouse Earth,’ well beyond the control of humans. These climate chain reactions could cause significant disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies, potentially making large areas of Earth uninhabitable.”

This is far from the first time scientists have warned of the dangers of climate change. In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which emerged from the process begun in Geneva, has issued five comprehensive global assessments documenting severe impacts already occurring and projections of potentially catastrophic ones to come.

The latest warning was championed by lead author Bill Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University, and collaborators from the University of Sydney, University of Cape Town and Tufts University, under the auspices of the newly formed Alliance of World Scientists.

Its language and urgency are a significant departure from previous assessments. It marks the first time broad sections of scientists have endorsed a straightforward declaration of emergency, moving beyond the sometimes cautious language and emphasis on characterizing uncertainty in previous discourse.

The shift is reflection of the growing disconnect between the scientific understanding of the consequences of climate change and a political and economic system proving itself unwilling and unable to address it. A wide consensus of scientists has concluded not only that climate change is real, but that the world is on a path towards catastrophe. At this point, nothing short of “transformative change” will do.

After decades of negotiations, the international response to the climate crisis has failed to go beyond the series of voluntary pledges memorialized in the Paris Agreement of 2015, which, even if achieved, would fail to avert a planetary disaster. Yet even these voluntary targets from Paris went too far for the leaders of the world’s largest economy. A day before the emergency declaration of scientists, the Trump administration formally announced its withdrawal from the Paris accords.

The BioScience paper identifies metrics, utilizing data over the past 40 years, that are intended to clearly communicate the interaction between humanity and climate change. These metrics go beyond traditional emphasis on rising surface temperatures, tracking in addition the worrying trends in extreme weather, land use changes, wildfire burn area, ocean heat content and chemistry changes, along with population and economic indicators.

The authors outline several areas for immediate action, including a rapid shift to renewable energy, protection of the earth’s ecosystems, prioritizing economic equality over growth, and addressing population growth through comprehensive access to family planning services and universal primary and secondary education.

As the past 40 years has demonstrated, no amount of warning, however dire, will be enough to implement these changes, even in the face of impending disaster, without a struggle to overturn the capitalist economic and social basis upon which all the key decisions are made.