The Growing China – Israel Conflict

Haider Abbas

The ‘annexation deal’ which is referred as ‘deal of the century’ under which Israel is to annex West Bank of Palestine and for which Donald Trump is being heavily coerced to make ‘it possible’ in exchange of Jewish and Christian Zionists votes in America does now surely stands debunked as China, for the first time has so openly come into the support of the stateless Palestinians that it has warned Israel on July 22, 2020, from any such misadventure. The Beijing envoy at UN Security Council in the same vein assured Palestinian people to always count on China’s support.  Thus, the idea to take forward the dream of Greater-Israel has to an extent come to a grinding halt.

The step of Beijing envoy was actually preceded by China President Xi Jinping making a phone call to Palestinian President Mehmud Abbas on the evening of July 20, 2020, in which he expressed his solidarity with the people of Palestine fighting the spread of COVID-19 for which China had sent multiple batches of medical supplies and a medical team to Palestine to help Palestine refugees fighting the virus.  Mehmud Abbas thanked  China ‘for upholding fairness and justice on the Palestinian question, and for safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of the Palestinian people. Facts have proven time and again that China is the most reliable friend of the Palestinian people’.  Mehmud Abbas assured full-support to China on its Hong Kong position and expressed to look forward to China playing a more important role in promoting a just settlement of the Palestinian question.  Did India engage to make even a namesake-move for the distressed Palestinians in some recent years?  No pun intended.

The UN Security Council meeting found Russia, another permanent member to echo the same positioning on Palestine , its envoy said that  “Russia is ready to undertake efforts in the interests of achieving a settlement within the internationally recognized parameters, UN resolutions, Madrid principles [and] the Arab Peace Initiative,” which provide for a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 parameters with east Jerusalem as its capital,”cutting Israel to size, to which he accused of promoting a one-sided approach. The German representative also warned Israel of its ‘annexation’ plan as that would harm the relations of the Jewish state with European Union.  India, on its side, is making hay with Israel as defense minister Rajnath Singh called his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Gantz to apprise him about the conflicting situation arising with China-on July 24, 2020 . India is right now into a buying-spree of weaponry to counter China, as Israel, which during the past decades or so, has come out to be the most ardent supporter and supplier of weapons to India.  ‘ India is looking at sourcing from Israel the Firefly loitering ammunition, Spike anti-tank guided missiles, Spice guidance kits that can be mounted on standard bombs to convert them into smart weapons and an operational surface-to-air missile system. A 2017 order worth $2 billion for such advanced systems to take down hostile aircraft and missiles has not translated into deliveries yet,’ said a newspaper report.

China, in fact, has set the ball rolling and tends to equally engage with India and Israel and with US-with which it is engaged into a duel for the world supremacy from quite sometime- as fissures are all around, since the outbreak of COVID-19 for which both accuse each-other to be the reason for its spread. Both are into closing consulates as a tit-for-tat as China is just trying to smart its way after it was disgraced on May 13, 2020, when US secretary of state Mike Pompeo warned Tel Aviv to shun any business-contract with Beijing and desist from making the communist nation becoming powerful and very ironically, Chinese ambassador to Tel Aviv Du Wei, was found dead on May 17, 2020,  four-days after Pompeo’s visit, giving rise to ‘wolf-warriors’ theories particularly in an age of COVID-19. Israel killed the contract given to Chinese firm on March 26, 2020. China, definitely had to cut a sorry figure as it had publically expressed that it trusts its Jewish friends, to match with Pompeo threats, but instead its contracts  got scrapped.

China in order to answer Israel in the same coin also bartered a 400 billion USD deal with Iran to send a strong message that China would stand with its partners in places they would need, as Iran has a history of support for the people of Palestine, and not surprisingly, this deal with China came on July 14, 2020 after India was paved out of it,  a move being considered as quite a debacle for India in diplomatic  parlance. What matters here is all Muslim nations are almost all silent or squeamish, on the Israel plan of ‘annexation’, with an exception of a very vocal Turkey, and only China apart from Russia have come out to solidly oppose it.  China, in fact, had got emboldened by the stance of Russia which had long denounced the ‘annexation’ plan as this is what Russian President Vladimir Putin who first conveyed it to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu in Sochi on September 12, 2019. China has just joined Iran after Russia has rallied with Iran over the way Iran has been embroiled in a war in Syria, for around the last ten years, as ‘Defying America’ is what makes to the policy to Russia.

China’s all out war with Israel also comes from a cue that the present banking system stems its way from Jewish banking system which has prevailed over whole of Europe etc in the last one century,  but China is all set to replace it , as it is heading to devise and invent a new banking system for the times ahead. China and Russia are both working together to bring down the USD as a 15-page report published by Brookings.Edu is an eye-opener as to how China plans to revolutionise the digital-payments. ‘China’s new system is built on digital wallets, QR codes (two-dimensional bar codes), and runs through their own big tech firms: Alipay running through Alibaba (China’s version of Amazon) and WeChat Pay running through Tencent (China’s version of Facebook)’. It is no wonder that the doom for USD is already being announced as ‘Dollar is about to collapse’ said the headline of Russian TV. China as a part to thwart USD has already launched digital Yuan on April  13 2020 and South Korea, an American ally is well into it, as millions of Chinese tourists visit South Korea and are successfully making their digital-payments in South Korea. This China sees at its first external adoption of Yuan.

As  battle-lines tend to become more harder between China and US in South China sea and with India in its Himalayan region, there is a report from World Economic Forum on July 20, 2020 which says that China  could overtake US as the world’s largest economy by 2024. How would India assimilate to the economic-burden, in case war comes, when it is so hard-pressed by millions of people rendered jobless in the wake of COVID-19, and more particularly, when our banking system is already showing signs of a crash-down as from 2.5 lac crore the NPA have increased to 10 lac crore! And, it is estimated that we are soon to join Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece Spain (PIIGS) or may be even go ahead of them. PIIGS are countries to have been worst hit by economic crisis.

Killing Democracy in America: The Military-Industrial Complex as a Cytokine Storm

William Astore

The phrase “thinking about the unthinkable” has always been associated with the unthinkable cataclysm of a nuclear war, and rightly so. Lately, though, I’ve been pondering another kind of unthinkable scenario, nearly as nightmarish (at least for a democracy) as a thermonuclear Armageddon, but one that’s been rolling out in far slower motion: that America’s war on terror never ends because it’s far more convenient for America’s leaders to keep it going — until, that is, it tears apart anything we ever imagined as democracy.

I fear that it either can’t or won’t end because, as Martin Luther King, Jr., pointed out in 1967 during the Vietnam War, the United States remains the world’s greatest purveyor of violence — and nothing in this century, the one he didn’t live to see, has faintly proved him wrong. Considered another way, Washington should be classified as the planet’s most committed arsonist, regularly setting or fanning the flames of fires globally from Libya to Iraq, Somalia to Afghanistan, Syria to — dare I say it — in some quite imaginable future Iran, even as our leaders invariably boast of having the world’s greatest firefighters (also known as the U.S. military).

Scenarios of perpetual war haunt my thoughts. For a healthy democracy, there should be few things more unthinkable than never-ending conflict, that steady drip-drip of death and destruction that drives militarism, reinforces authoritarianism, and facilitates disaster capitalism. In 1795, James Madison warned Americans that war of that sort would presage the slow death of freedom and representative government. His prediction seems all too relevant in a world in which, year after year, this country continues to engage in needless wars that have nothing to do with national defense.

You Wage War Long, You Wage It Wrong

To cite one example of needless war from the last century, consider America’s horrendous years of fighting in Vietnam and a critical lesson drawn firsthand from that conflict by reporter Jonathan Schell. “In Vietnam,” he noted, “I learned about the capacity of the human mind to build a model of experience that screens out even very dramatic and obvious realities.” As a young journalist covering the war, Schell saw that the U.S. was losing, even as its military was destroying startlingly large areas of South Vietnam in the name of saving it from communism. Yet America’s leaders, the “best and brightest” of the era, almost to a man refused to see that all of what passed for realism in their world, when it came to that war, was nothing short of a first-class lie.

Why? Because believing is seeing and they desperately wanted to believe that they were the good guys, as well as the most powerful guys on the planet. America was winning, it practically went without saying, because it had to be. They were infected by their own version of an all-American victory culture, blinded by a sense of this country’s obvious destiny: to be the most exceptional and exceptionally triumphant nation on this planet.

As it happened, it was far more difficult for grunts on the ground to deny the reality of what was happening — that they were fighting and dying in a senseless war. As a result, especially after the shock of the enemy’s Tet Offensive early in 1968, escalating protests within the military (and among veterans at home) together with massive antiwar demonstrations finally helped put the brakes on that war. Not before, however, more than 58,000 American troops died, along with millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians.

In the end, the war in Indochina was arguably too costly, messy, and futile to continue. But never underestimate the military-industrial complex, especially when it comes to editing or denying reality, while being eternally over-funded for that very reality. It’s a trait the complex has shared with politicians of both parties. Don’t forget, for instance, the way President Ronald Reagan reedited that disastrous conflict into a “noble cause” in the 1980s. And give him credit! That was no small thing to sell to an American public that had already lived through such a war. By the way, tell me something about that Reaganesque moment doesn’t sound vaguely familiar almost four decades later when our very own “wartime president” long ago declared victory in the “war” on Covid-19, even as the death toll from that virus approaches 150,000 in the homeland.

In the meantime, the military-industrial complex has mastered the long con of the no-win forever war in a genuinely impressive fashion. Consider the war in Afghanistan. In 2021 it will enter its third decade without an end in sight. Even when President Trump makes noises about withdrawing troops from that country, Congress approves an amendment to another massive, record-setting military budget with broad bipartisan support that effectively obstructs any efforts to do so (while the Pentagon continues to bargain Trump down on the subject).

The Vietnam War, which was destroying the U.S. military, finally ended in an ignominious withdrawal. Almost two decades later, after the 2001 invasion, the war in Afghanistan can now be — the dream of the Vietnam era — fought in a “limited” fashion, at least from the point of view of Congress, the Pentagon, and most Americans (who ignore it), even if not the Afghans. The number of American troops being killed is, at this point, acceptably low, almost imperceptible in fact (even if not to Americans who have lost loved ones over there).

More and more, the U.S. military is relying on air power, unmanned drones, mercenaries, local militias, paramilitaries, and private contractors. Minimizing American casualties is an effective way of minimizing negative media coverage here; so, too, are efforts by the Trump administration to classify nearly everything related to that war while denying or downplaying “collateral damage” — that is, dead civilians — from it.

Their efforts boil down to a harsh truth: America just plain lies about its forever wars, so that it can keep on killing in lands far from home.

When we as Americans refuse to take in the destruction we cause, we come to passively accept the belief system of the ruling class that what’s still bizarrely called “defense” is a “must have” and that we collectively must spend significantly more than a trillion dollars a year on the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, and a sprawling network of intelligence agencies, all justified as necessary defenders of America’s freedom. Rarely does the public put much thought into the dangers inherent in a sprawling “defense” network that increasingly invades and dominates our lives.

Meanwhile, it’s clear that low-cost wars, at least in terms of U.S. troops killed and wounded in action, can essentially be prolonged indefinitely, even when they never result in anything faintly like victory or fulfill any faintly useful American goal. The Afghan War remains the case in point. “Progress” is a concept that only ever fits the enemy — the Taliban continues to gain ground — yet, in these years, figures like retired general and former CIA director David Petraeus have continued to call for a “generational” commitment of troops and resources there, akin to U.S. support for South Korea.

Who says the Pentagon leadership learned nothing from Vietnam? They learned how to wage open-ended wars basically forever, which has proved useful indeed when it comes to justifying and sustaining epic military budgets and the political authority that goes with them. But here’s the thing: in a democracy, if you wage war long, you wage it wrong. Athens and the historian Thucydides learned this the hard way in the struggle against Sparta more than two millennia ago. Why do we insist on forgetting such an obvious lesson?

“We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us”

World War II was arguably the last war Americans truly had to fight. My Uncle Freddie was in the Army and stationed at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked on December 7, 1941. The country then came together and won a global conflict (with lots of help) in 44 months, emerging as the planetary superpower to boot. Now, that superpower is very much on the wane, as Donald Trump recognized in running successfully as a declinist candidate for president in 2016. (Make America Great Again!) And yet, though he ran against this country’s forever wars and is now president, we’re approaching the third decade of a war on terror that has yielded little, spread radical Islamic terror outfits across an expanse of the planet, and still seemingly has no end.

“Great nations do not fight endless wars,” Trump himself claimed only last year. Yet that’s exactly what this country has been doing, regardless of which party ruled the roost in Washington. And here’s where, to give him credit, Trump actually had a certain insight. America is no longer great precisely because of the endless wars we wage and all the largely hidden but associated costs that go with them, including the recently much publicized militarization of the police here at home. Yet, in promising to make America great again, President Trump has failed to end those wars, even as he’s fed the military-industrial complex with even greater piles of cash.

There’s a twisted logic to all this. As the leading purveyor of violence and terror, with its leaders committed to fighting Islamic terrorism across the planet until the phenomenon is vanquished, the U.S. inevitably becomes its own opponent, conducting a perpetual war on itself. Of course, in the process, Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians, Somalis, and Yemenis, among other peoples on this embattled planet of ours, pay big time, but Americans pay, too. (Have you even noticed that high-speed railroad that’s unbuilt, that dam in increasing disrepair, those bridges that need fixing, while money continues to pour into the national security state?) As the cartoon possum Pogo once so classically said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Early in the Iraq War, General Petraeus asked a question that was relevant indeed: “Tell me how this [war] ends.” The answer, obvious to so many who had protested in the global streets over the invasion to come in 2003, was “not well.” Today, another answer should be obvious: never, if the Pentagon and America’s political and national security elite have anything to do with it. In thermodynamics class, I learned that a perpetual motion machine is impossible to create due to entropy. The Pentagon never took that in and has instead been hard at work proving that a perpetual military machine is possible… until, that is, the empire it feeds off of collapses and takes us with it.

America’s Military Complex as a Cytokine Storm

In the era of Covid-19, as cases and deaths from the pandemic continue to soar in America, it’s astonishing that military spending is also soaring to record levels despite a medical emergency and a major recession.

The reality is that, in the summer of 2020, America faces two deadly viruses. The first is Covid-19. With hard work and some luck, scientists may be able to mass-produce an effective vaccine for it, perhaps by as early as next spring. In the meantime, scientists do have a sense of how to control it, contain it, even neutralize it, as countries from South Korea and New Zealand to Denmark have shown, even if some Americans, encouraged by our president, insist on throwing all caution to the winds in the name of living free. The second virus, however, could prove even more difficult to control, contain, and neutralize: forever war, a pandemic that U.S. military forces, with their global strike missions, continue to spread across the globe.

Sadly, it’s a reasonable bet that in the long run, even with Donald Trump as president, America has a better chance of defeating Covid-19 than the virus of forever war. At least, the first is generally seen as a serious threat (even if not by a president blind to anything but his chances for reelection); the second is, however, still largely seen as evidence of our strength and exceptionalism. Indeed, Americans tend to imagine “our” military not as a dangerous virus but as a set of benevolent antibodies, defending us from global evildoers.

When it comes to America’s many wars, perhaps there’s something to be learned from the way certain people’s immune systems respond to Covid-19. In some cases, the virus sparks an exaggerated immune response that drives the body into a severe inflammatory state known as a cytokine storm. That “storm” can lead to multiple organ failure followed by death, yet it occurs in the cause of defending the body from a viral attack.

In a similar fashion, America’s exaggerated response to 19 hijackers on 9/11 and then to perceived threats around the globe, especially the nebulous threat of terror, has led to an analogous (if little noticed) cytokine storm in the American system. Military (and militarized police) antibodies have been sapping our resources, inflaming our body politic, and slowly strangling the vital organs of democracy. Left unchecked, this “storm” of inflammatory militarism will be the death of democracy in America.

To put this country right, what’s needed is not only an effective vaccine for Covid-19 but a way to control the “antibodies” produced by America’s forever wars abroad and, as the years have gone by, at home — and the ways they’ve attacked and inflamed the collective U.S. political, social, and economic body. Only when we find ways to vaccinate ourselves against the destructive violence of those wars, whether on foreign streets or our own, can we begin to heal as a democratic society.

To survive, the human body needs a healthy immune system, so when it goes haywire, becomes wildly inflamed, and ends up attacking and degrading our vital organs, we’re in trouble deep. It’s a reasonable guess that, in analogous terms, American democracy is already on a ventilator and beginning to feel the effects of multiple organ failure.

Unlike a human patient, doctors can’t put our democracy into a medically induced coma. But collectively we should be working to suppress our overactive immune system before it kills us. In other words, it’s truly time to defund that military machine of ours, as well as the militarized version of the police, and rethink how actual threats can be neutralized without turning every response into an endless war.

So many years later, it’s time to think the unthinkable. For the U.S. government that means — gasp! — peace. Such a peace would start with imperial retrenchment (bring our troops home!), much reduced military (and police) budgets, and complete withdrawal from Afghanistan and any other place associated with that “generational” war on terror. The alternative is a cytokine storm that will, in the end, tear us apart from within.

Preventing another migrant-worker crisis

Faizan Farooq

Despite tremendous mechanical advancements, manual labour still remains the unflinching backbone of many cardinal industries in the modern world. No matter how ‘automated’ an industry becomes manual-labour would always be a critical resource particularly if the industry is functioning at primary or secondary (manufacturing) sector level. Although, the tertiary (services) sector contributes more than 50% to the GDP of India, but the fact that this sector absorbs much lesser work force than the other two sectors combined together speaks volumes about their importance from the point of view of employment generation.

The outbreak of Covid-19 brought havoc for all sectors of economy but to the labour sector, particularly to the migrant laborers, it ushered unprecedented disasters. Migrant laborers work mostly in informal sectors of the economy and constitute a large chunk of total workforce in India. The aleatory nature of lockdown announced on 25th march, 2020 enforced abrupt restrictions and didn’t allowed migrants to move back to their native places, soon they ran out of money and when they decided to move back transportation was already off the roads. With no worthwhile assistance from the government, police intimidations, hunger and starvation which forced large majority of them to walk back home on foot (many travelled hundreds of miles in scorching summer heat) which culminated at the tragic death of many workers making the migrant-laborers-homecoming the starkest humanitarian crisis to sprout out of the Covid-19 lockdown in India.

A particularly heart-wrenching incident occurred on 8th may when a freight train ran over a group of migrant laborers who were on their way back home and had stopped to sleep for a while on a railway track, killing 16 of them instantly. Besides this incident, a total of around 200 laborers have died while on their way back home due to starvation, intense-heat and infections. The plight of migrant-laborers outside India as well was and remains gloomy, particularly in the Middle-East.

The government drew huge flak over its handling of the crisis, which many experts suggest was avoidable. When a single person (actor Sonu Sood) could make arrangements for the return of hundreds of migrant-laborers, we can fairly imagine what could have been accomplished and how much hardships faced by the migrants could have been avoided if the government responded on time with appropriate arrangements for their return back home.  In this article, we will delve over the reasons why migrant laborers migrate at all, and what could be done so as to prevent the recurrence of the crisis.

Labour migration is a dominant feature of developing economies like India, wherein laborers migrate towards industrially thriving parts of a country for a specific period of time. Intertwined with this feature is an unemployment variant called ‘seasonal unemployment’ which emerges when migrants return back to their native villages. Estimates suggest that around 23 million laborers returned back to their native villages post the pandemic outbreak.

Uneven development of cities and regions in which one area is prioritized over the other can be cited as the prime reason for such migrations. Economically alluring metropolitan cities often attract workforce from far and wide regions leading to mass migrations. India being a geographically vast country is severely affected by this uneven development. We have cities as contrasting as Alirajpur (with over 70% poverty rate) and Goa (with mere five percent poverty rate).

If the government is serious about curbing this problem, it should initiate working towards ‘even development’ of major regions of all states so that the manual laborers do not have to leave behind their homes to find a better livelihood. Granted, it is a ‘long term solution’ and requires exhaustive planning but it is also an effective and sustainable way of avoiding the possible re-emergence of the crisis in future. Since all of the rural households do not own agricultural lands, government should work towards promoting cottage industries and reviving small scale local industrial setups. Easy credit and financial facilities also need to be provided to such people who are willing to take the initiative. The wages provided under governmental work-schemes as MNREGA also need to be raised and brought at par with that of any regular unorganized sector of metropolitan cities. In short, all such opportunities be provided to the rural and sub-urban workforce which makes them prioritize working in their native lands over migration.  But it is a long-term solution, as already stated, and demands myriad resources and intense planning to materialize. In the meanwhile, the government can turn its attention towards other problems as well which can be fixed in relatively shorter periods of time.

Another reason for the crisis is the lack of governmental-regulations pertaining to the informal sector of the economy. As a matter of fact, many reports were published where-in it was revealed that the employers were simply denying wages to the migrants citing pandemic outbreak as a reason and majority of the workmen accepted the excuse without any argument. As such, it became important for the government to allow certain factories and manufacturers to ‘work’ despite the lockdown-restrictions so that they can pay allowances to the hired workforce. Also, many positive changes were made by several state-governments to reduce the severity of the crisis like Madhya Pradesh government’s decision of eschewing certain provisions of the Factories Act 1948 or the ordinance of Uttar Pradesh government which exempted many businesses from a number of labour laws. All of these steps were taken so that manufacturing units can function hassle free and maintain their workforce as well. However, all these initiatives were helping manufacturing ‘businesses’ mostly and didn’t concerned the laborers directly. It was only recently that GOI turned its focus towards the migrant-laborers with the launch of ‘Rojgar Setu’ portal and registration processes was also initiated by many state governments.

Most of the migrant-laborers are uneducated, therefore unaware about the laws. Basic educative programs can be initiated by the government on rural and village levels where-in they should be enlightened about the legal provisions governing informal sectors. As such, they wouldn’t be bamboozled by the employers. The laws governing informal-sector also need to be made stringent so that the units hiring migrant laborers wont harbor this feeling that they can easily ‘get away’ even after deceiving the laborers.

Such comprehensive educative programs also need to be introduced for laborers who intend working oversees, where they have the higher probability of being exploited. According to an ILO report, there are around 200 million Indian laborers/employees working oversees with 9 million of them concentrated in the gulf-region alone. In total Arab World hosts more than 38 million foreign laborers. Recently, reports regarding non-payment of south-Asian laborers since months who were working on stadium-projects related to FIFA world cup scheduled to be held in Qatar, 2022 made rounds in the media proving it beyond doubt that laborers working oversees are also susceptible to severe exploitation.

There is also an immediate need to revive the labour-laws so as to make the legal provisions of the country compatible with the present realities which is characterized by large scale migrations. Laws such as the Inter-State-Migrant Workers Act, 1979 (which requires inter-state-migrants to find work through a contractor) act as impediments for migrant-laborers in finding work and needs to be revoked. Theoretically, that is from the purview of the labour law, it often remains obscure for governmental agencies as to who actually is a ‘laborer’ or a ‘worker’. As a result while formulating policies, many of the unregistered workers employed in informal sectors are left behind. That is the reason why policies were formulated for MSME setups while the workers employed in cottage industries were exempted. It is important that all workers, including the migrants, get not only registered but also recognized as constituting the workforce of the country. There should be no ambiguity, at least not on the part of the government, with regards to ‘who’ is a laborer. That is the only way to ensure that policy-benefits are disseminated to every segment of the workforce.

There also exists a dire need to rejuvenate the informal trade unions in the country so as to make them more inclusive. Since it is always beneficial to have a plan-B, labour unions should create a contingency fund by pooling in the miniscule contributions from the workers themselves which can be used in emergency situations as these. The current migrant labour force crisis should serve the function of an educator to us regarding the fragility to which our migrant-workforce is exposed. The economic-well being of a country is reflected not merely by the figures in its GDP GDP but by the trickling down of the benefits to the lowest strata of the economy.

Post-Brexit Agrochemical Apocalypse for the UK?

Colin Todhunter

The British government, regulators and global agrochemical corporations are colluding with each other and are thus engaging in criminal behaviour. That’s the message put forward in a new report written by environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason and sent to the UK Environment Agency. It follows her January 2019 open letter to Werner Baumann, CEO of Bayer CropScience, where she made it clear to him that she considers Bayer CropScience and Monsanto criminal corporations.

Her letter to Baumann outlined a cocktail of corporate duplicity, cover-ups and criminality which the public and the environment are paying the price for, not least in terms of the effects of glyphosate. Later in 2019, Mason wrote to Bayer Crop Science shareholders, appealing to them to put human health and nature ahead of profit and to stop funding Bayer.

Mason outlined with supporting evidence how the gradual onset of the global extinction of many species is largely the result of chemical-intensive industrial agriculture. She argued that Monsanto’s (now Bayer) glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide and Bayer’s clothianidin are largely responsible for the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef and that the use of glyphosate and neonicotinoid insecticides are wiping out wildlife species across the globe.

In February 2020, Mason wrote the report ‘Bayer Crop Science rules Britain after Brexit – the public and the press are being poisoned by pesticides’. She noted that PM Boris Johnson plans to do a trade deal with the US that could see the gutting of food and environment standards. In a speech setting out his goals for trade after Brexit, Johnson talked up the prospect of an agreement with Washington and downplayed the need for one with Brussels – if the EU insists the UK must stick to its regulatory regime. In other words, he wants to ditch EU regulations.

Mason pondered just who could be pulling Johnson’s strings. A big clue came in February 2019 at a Brexit meeting on the UK chemicals sector where UK regulators and senior officials from government departments listened to the priorities of Bayer Crop Science. During the meeting (Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum Keynote Seminar: Priorities for UK chemicals sector – challenges, opportunities and the future for regulation post-Brexit), Janet Williams, head of regulatory science at Bayer Crop Science Division, made the priorities for agricultural chemical manufacturers known.

Dave Bench was also a speaker. Bench is a senior scientist at the UK Chemicals, Health and Safety Executive and director of the agency’s EU exit plan and has previously stated that the regulatory system for pesticides is robust and balances the risks of pesticides against the benefits to society.

In an open letter to Bench, Mason responded:

“That statement is rubbish. It is for the benefit of the agrochemical industry. The industry (for it is the industry that does the testing, on behalf of regulators) only tests one pesticide at a time, whereas farmers spray a cocktail of pesticides, including over children and babies, without warning.”

It seems that post-Brexit the UK could authorise the continued use of glyphosate. Of course, with a US trade deal in the pipeline, there are major concerns about glyphosate-resistant GMOs and the lowering of food standards across the board.

Mason says that glyphosate causes epigenetic changes in humans and animals: diseases skip a generation. Washington State University researchers found a variety of diseases and other health problems in the second- and third-generation offspring of rats exposed to glyphosate. In the first study of its kind, the researchers saw descendants of exposed rats developing prostate, kidney and ovarian diseases, obesity and birth abnormalities.

Glyphosate has been the subject of numerous studies about its health effects. Robert F Kennedy Jr, one of the attorney’s fighting Bayer (which has bought Monsanto) in the US courts, has explained that for four decades Monsanto manoeuvred to conceal Roundup’s carcinogenicity by capturing regulatory agencies, corrupting public officials, bribing scientists and engaging in scientific fraud to delay its day of reckoning.

Kennedy says there is also cascading scientific evidence linking glyphosate to a constellation of other injuries that have become prevalent since its introduction, including obesity, depression, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, kidney disease, inflammatory bowel disease, brain, breast and prostate cancer, miscarriage, birth defects and declining sperm counts.

In her new document sent to the UK Environment Agency, Mason argues there is criminal collusion between the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Chemicals Regulation Division and Bayer over Brexit. She also claims the National Farmers Union has been lying about how much pesticides farmers use and have ignored the side effects of chlorpyrifos, chlorothalonil, glyphosate and neonicotinoids. The NFU says farmers couldn’t do without these inputs, even though they destroy human health and the environment.

Of course, farmers can and do go without using these chemicals. And the shift away from chemical-intensive agriculture is perfectly feasible. In a recent article on the AgWeb site, for instance, US farmer Adam Chappell describes how he made the shift on his 8,000-acre farm. Chappell was not some dyed-in-the-wool organic evangelist. He made the shift for financial and practical reasons and is glad he did. The article states:

“He was on the brink of bankruptcy and facing a go broke or go green proposition. Drowning in a whirlpool of input costs, Chappell cut bait from conventional agriculture and dove headfirst into a bootstrap version of innovative farming. Roughly 10 years later, his operation is transformed, and the 41-year-old grower doesn’t mince words: It was all about the money.”

Surely there is a lesson there for UK farmers who in 2016 used glyphosate on 2,634,573 ha of cropland. It is not just their bottom line that could improve but the health of the nation. Mason says that five peer-reviewed animal studies from the US and Argentina released in July 2020 have focused minds on the infertility crisis being caused by glyphosate-based herbicides. Researchers at The National University of Litoral in Sante Fe, Argentina, have published three concerning peer-reviewed papers including two studies on ewes and rats and one review. In one study, researchers concluded that glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides are endocrine disruptors. They also stated that glyphosate-based herbicides alter reproductive outcomes in females.

But such is the British government’s willingness to protect pesticide companies that it is handing agrochemical giants BASF and Bayer enormous pay-outs of Covid-19 support cash. The announcement came just weeks after Bayer shareholders voted to pay £2.75 billion in dividends. The fact that Bayer then went on to receive £600 million from the government speaks volumes of where the government’s priorities lie.

According to Mason, the new Agriculture Bill provides a real opportunity for the UK to adopt a paradigm shift which embraces non-chemical farming policy. However, Defra has stated that after Brexit Roundup Ready GA21 glyphosate tolerant crops could be introduced.

It is also concerning that a post-Brexit funding gap could further undermine the impartiality of university research. Mason refers to Greenpeace, which notes that Bayer and Syngenta, both sell neonicotinoid insecticides linked to harmful effects on bees, gave a combined total of £16.1m to 70 British universities over five years to fund a range of research. Such private funding could create a conflict of interest for academics and after Brexit a potential shortage of public money for science could force universities to seek more finance from the private sector.

Neonicotinoids were once thought to have little or no negative effects on the environment because they are used in low doses and as a seed coating, rather than being sprayed. But evidence has been mounting that the chemicals harm bees – important pollinators of food crops. As a result, neonicotinoids have been banned by the EU, although they can still be used under license.

According to Bayer’s website, academics who reviewed 15 years of research found “no adverse effects to bee colonies were ever observed in field studies”. Between 2011 and 2016, the figures obtained from the 70 universities – about half the total in the UK – show Bayer gave £9m to fund research, including more than £345,000 on plant sciences. Syngenta spent nearly £7.1m, including just under £2.3m on plant sciences and stated that many years of independent monitoring prove that when used properly neonicotinoids do not damage the health of bee populations.

However, in 2016, Ben Stewart of Greenpeace UK’s Brexit response team said that the decline in bee populations is a major environmental and food security concern – it’s causes need to be properly investigated.

He added:

“But for this research to command public confidence, it needs to be independent and impartial, which is why public funding is so crucial. You wouldn’t want lung cancer studies to be heavily reliant on funds from tobacco firms, nor research on pesticides to be dependent on the companies making them.”

Stewart concluded:

“As Brexit threatens to cut off vital public funds for this scientific field, our universities need a cast-iron guarantee from our government that EU money will not be replaced by corporate cash.”

But Mason notes that the government long ago showed its true colours by refusing to legislate on the EU Directive (2009/128/EC) on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides. The government merely stated that current statutory and voluntary controls related to pesticides and the protection of water, if followed, afford a high degree of protection and it would primarily seek to work with the pesticides industry to enhance voluntary measures.

Mason first questioned the government on this in January 2011. In an open letter to the Chemical Regulation Directorate. The government claimed that no compelling evidence was provided to justify further extending existing regulations and voluntary controls.

Lord Henley, the Under-Secretary of State for Defra, expanded further:

“By making a small number of changes to our existing approach we can continue to help feed a growing global population with high-quality food that’s affordable – while minimising the risks of using pesticides.”

In her numerous reports and open letters to officials, Mason has shown that far from having ‘high-quality food’, there is an ongoing public health crisis due to the pesticides being used.

She responded to Henley by stating:

“… instead of strengthening the legislation, the responses of the UK government and the CRD have considerably weakened it. In the case of aerial spraying, you have opted for derogation.”

Mason says that, recently, the day that Monsanto lost its appeal against Dewayne Lee Johnson the sprayers came around the Marina in Cardiff breaking all the rules that the EU had set for Roundup.

We can only wonder what could lie in store for the British public if a trade deal is done with the US. Despite the Conservative government pledging that it would not compromise on the UK’s food and environment standards, it now proposes that chlorine-washed chicken, beef treated with growth hormones, pork from animals treated with ractopamine and many other toxic foods produced in the US will be allowed into the UK. All for the bottom line of US agribusiness corporations. It is also worth mentioning at this point that there are around 2,000 untested chemicals in packaged foods in the US.

Ultimately, the situation comes down to a concentration of power played out within an interlocking directorate of state-corporate interests – in this case, global agrochemical conglomerates and the British government – and above the heads of ordinary people. It is clear, that these institutions value the health of powerful corporations at the expense of the health of the population and the state of the environment.

Readers can access Mason’s new paper ‘Criminal collusion between Defra, the Chemicals Regulation Division and Bayer over Brexit Agenda’ via academia.edu website (which cites relevant sources), where all her other documents can also be found.

Economics of the Pandemic

Malini Sharma

The Covid-19 spell has left governments, markets, and civil society wobbling through disruptions and damage. The ambiguity that envelops not only the evolution of the disease but also its impact makes it a challenging and complex task for policymakers to devise a suitable policy response. The pandemic has brought to the forefront some key ethical questions that we must explore. The ‘Human gene’ is thought of as the most skilled of making a choice based on ‘free will’, on ‘reason’ and ‘rationality’. From the study of human behavior, it is widely known that the current setting can be related to behaviour of people, the choices they make and human tendency for cognitive error, to be able to forecast patterns and design effective interventions. Today, the whole world stands on the edge, geopolitics at a cusp, policymakers in a dilemma to generate an appropriate policy response. This is the classic case for strategic thinking and can therefore draw on insights from the intersection of behavioral economics and game theory. The former is a field of social sciences that is a blend of economics and psychology and looks into human decision-making behaviors, whereas the latter is the study of models based on strategic interactions between players, on rational choice and on maximizing behaviour by the people. While initially developed for use within the purview of economics to understand choices that result from the behaviors of firms, consumers and markets, game theory is now used across a wide array of realms including political economy.

Game theory is the science of strategy that deals with outcomes that are produced by interactions, based on the behavior of the players. It is a tool to study interactions in the context of interdependencies. A game has two main forms: strategic games and extensive games. A strategic game is one in which players simultaneously choose actions and an extensive form game is one in which actions are chosen sequentially.

The novel Covid-19 pandemic seems like a real time situation that can be fitted well into the basic game theory model called the ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’. The prisoner’s dilemma is basically a state of affairs in which there is an incentive to make a choice that may not produce the best possible or optimal outcome for the group as a whole. Some aspects of this pandemic reflect the same premise, such as the decision to self-quarantine during a pandemic looks a lot like a move in a multiplayer form of this game. One can either cooperate, and do something that costs a little while helping those around, or deviate, and bring one, a small benefit but at a greater cost to those around oneself. Another example can be, vaccination which is in fact a positive externality. When an individual chooses to get vaccinated against the disease, this can help prevent the spread of this disease, thereby benefiting others in the process.

If one maintains social distancing, it is not necessary that he/she will not contract the virus as it also depends on what others are doing. Thus, it is a ‘game’-There are strategic interactions. Let us say, we have a two player Prisoner’s dilemma game. Both players ‘A’ and ‘B’ have two choices. Choice ‘C’, in which both choose to maintain social distancing and hence cooperate and choice ‘D’, where they both deflect and do not social distance. The payoff matrix is given below:

Player B
Player A	Strategies	C	D
	C	5,5 (C, C)	0,8 (C, D)
	D	8,0 (D, C)	1,1 (D, D)

The efficient outcome is (C, C) with respective payoffs (5,5). This occurs when they both agree to cooperate and maintain social distancing. This is the result of collective rationality. However, here both the players have a unilateral incentive to deflect and this outcome becomes unstable and fragile. Each player becomes vulnerable to the so- called ‘selfish gene’ inside of him and has an urge to cheat and deviate and thus get a higher payoff for oneself. If ‘A’ falls prey to this temptation, thinking that ‘B’ would have done the same and drops the precaution of social distancing, then he gets a small benefit (8,0) but at the cost to others in the society. If player ‘B’ is led off by the temptation to deviate assuming that ‘A’ would have reacted in the same way and decides not to distance himself, then likewise his payoff is (0,8). Individual Rationality leads them to settle at the ‘optimal’ outcome, where both them end up in deviating with lower payoffs for themselves at (1,1) and a higher risk of getting the virus. This in fact is what is called the ‘Nash equilibrium’. Cooperation gets destroyed by the ‘Art of War’ and paradoxically non-cooperation becomes the dominant strategy. Ironically, the biggest debate rattling the world is that which political power would emerge as the winner in this ‘Covid stirred race’ for dominance.  Questions that come to ground are, whether a country should cooperate with others and share the results of its innovative practices or not? What are the payoffs and the costs? What should be the geo-political policy response? Here lies the ‘tight-spot’ faced by policymakers today.

Another example is, the widespread practice of hoarding of essential commodities which is being commonly observed amongst the panic-stricken people of almost every country affected by the ‘exogeneous Covid-19 shock’. Even though all may not voluntarily choose to hoard, but given these uncertain times of today, it is very natural for each of them to take all possible preventive measures. This situation fits into a two-player prisoner’s dilemma game where, the strategies available to both the players ‘A’ and ‘B’ range from, both engaging in hoarding, or only one of them is hoarding goods and finally none of them being involved with hoarding of necessities. In case, the first outcome is chosen by both ‘A’ and ‘B’, then this is a wobbly and unstable one, as it would lead to scarcities and a rise in the general level of prices. If ‘A’ is rational and decides to hoard as a safety measure given that he is not sure of the B’s choice and if he decides in the favor of not hoarding while ‘B’ chooses otherwise, then player ‘A’ may not be left with any commodities to buy. Likewise, for player ‘B’. So now the question arises that, are people acting rationally? At a collective level, hoarding leads to shortages of goods in the market. But if people behave rationally, then it actually becomes optimal to hoard if everyone else also does so. But hoarding creates the very supply problem, they are trying to avoid in the first place. Thus, this situation clearly coincides with the prisoner’s dilemma game.

In the current times, the main players are the citizens and the governments whose choices make a difference and to a large extent play a vital role in checking the pandemic, which had constructed the model in question in the first place. Let us say, all consumers are pessimistic hoarders and would go on purchasing essential goods, whatever be their price, then this would consequently raise prices, leading to inflation. In these cases, the governments could deliberately increase the prices of certain items such as surface disinfectants. People would opt to buy these in smaller volumes, leaving more stock on the shelf and increasing buyer confidence that there is no shortage. This is nothing but the government, a player trying to play the game of incentivization in the game theory model.

COVID-19 will reshape our world. We don’t yet know when the crisis will end. But we can be sure that by the time it does, our world will look very different. How different will depend on the choices we make today. Every stakeholder’s choice is an externality for others. Global pandemics need global solutions. ‘Radical scaling up of international cooperation among scientists, economists and policy-makers is the need of the hour’. A cooperative strategy by all the players in the ‘Covid-Game’ is the optimum one. It is the Nash equilibrium, in the ‘Covid-induced policy cogmaire’!  

Antarctic ice sheet melting could accelerate rapidly, leading to catastrophic rise in sea level

Philip Guelpa

The effects of a human-induced warming climate, driven by the accumulation of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, are accelerating across the globe. These are especially evident near the poles, where warming is progressing more rapidly than in the lower latitudes, because of so-called polar amplification caused by the greater reflection of solar energy by lighter-colored snow and ice as compared to darker bare ground and water. As snow and ice melt, the ratio of lighter to darker surface shifts toward the latter, creating a positive-feedback loop, increasing the rate of melting even further.

In the north, the heat wave in the Siberian Arctic is having devastating consequences for inhabitants of the area. There is also evidence suggesting that the melting of the region’s permafrost is releasing large quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas even more potent than carbon dioxide, which will accelerate global warming significantly.

In the south, recent research is revealing that the massive Antarctic ice sheets are melting at an ever-increasing rate, and this is likely to accelerate even more in the future. The consequent influx of water, previously sequestered as ice, into the world’s oceans will dramatically raise sea levels, with potentially catastrophic consequences for humanity.

The world if the ice on Greenland and Antarctica melted. Credit: Reddit user page_of_space

Already, between 2003 and 2019, a NASA study revealed that the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets combined had lost 118 gigatons (a gigaton is one billion metric tons) and 200 gigatons, respectively, of ice per year. The total is enough to fill Lake Michigan and has caused about half an inch rise in sea level. Greenland alone holds enough ice to raise global sea levels as much as 7 meters (23 feet). If all the Antarctic ice were to melt, that would raise sea levels by approximately an additional 60 meters (nearly 200 feet). If all the world’s glaciers and ice sheets were to melt, extensive areas of land would be inundated, causing massive displacement of human populations and incalculable economic disruption.

It is currently estimated that if present trends of melting continue, sea levels could rise between approximately 1 and 2.4 meters (3 to 8 feet) by the end of the century. The danger posed is not only in the quantity of land that would be submerged, but also the rate at which this would occur.

Recent research by scientists from the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, using geological data collected by remotely operated submersibles, has revealed that at the end of the last Ice Age (Pleistocene), roughly 12,000 years ago, Antarctic ice sheets retreated (i.e., melted back) at the rate of up to 50 meters (164 feet) per day, or 10 kilometers (6.2) miles per year. That is approximately 10 times faster than the maximum rate currently being observed and greatly exceeds the projections of potential melting that have previously been made.

The Cambridge researchers warn that if global temperature continues to rise, the much greater rate of late Pleistocene melting could be reached again. If this were to happen, or even be approached, the consequent acceleration in the rate of global sea level rise would be truly catastrophic. Hundreds of millions of people could be displaced, with little time for the necessary adjustments to be made in the receiving areas, vastly dwarfing the effects of the current refugee crisis.

Scientific research already indicates that the concentration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is at its highest level in the last 800,000 years, before the onset of the first major Pleistocene glacial advance. However, a recent finding, published in GeoScienceWorld, suggests that the current concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not only higher than at any time in human history or at any time during the warm intervals (interglacials) during the Pleistocene (spanning from 2.58 million years ago to 12,000 years ago), but the highest in at least 23 million years. In either case, the clear implication is that the melting of the world’s glaciers and ice sheet will continue and accelerate.

Vulnerability to Sea Level Rise in the continental US. Credit: USGS

Overall, melting of ice on land from all sources is adding 750 gigatons of water to the world’s oceans annually. This causes both slow permanent inundation of coastal areas and temporary inundation during storms and tidal cycles (so called “sunny day flooding”). These effects are already noticeable in many parts of the world. In the southeastern United States, the entire Atlantic and Gulf coasts are vulnerable to varying degrees of inundation. A number of areas on the Pacific coast are moderately to highly vulnerable as well.

A new study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that high-tide flooding (more than half a meter or 20 inches above normal high tide) has increased five-fold in some cities along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts since 2000, causing damage to buildings and infrastructure, such as water and sewer systems. By 2030, NOAA estimates the number of such incidents could double or triple. Overall, sea levels were approximately 13 inches (33 centimeters) higher in 2019 than in 1920.

In New York City alone, which has 520 miles (837 kilometers) of coastline, mitigation of annual flooding due to potential sea level rise would, by some estimates, run to $25 billion. So far, only a very limited number of flood protection projects, covering a fraction of the city’s coastline, have even reached the planning stage. One event, Superstorm Sandy, back in 2012, resulting in extensive flooding of low-lying areas, caused around $19 billion in damage to the city alone and $70 billion overall.

As with the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change constitutes an existential crisis for humanity which can only be countered by a unified, coordinated, scientifically directed effort marshaling all the world’s resources. Only the working class has the power to counter this catastrophic situation. Workers, faced with the devastation being wrought by capitalism, are already rising up against the homicidal policies of the ruling class. What is needed is for this movement to adopt a socialist program that will prioritize the health, safety, and well-being of people over the profits of the ruling elite.

Hurricane Hanna hits regions of Texas and Mexico devastated by COVID-19

Trévon Austin

Hurricane Hanna, the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, made landfall on Padre Island late Saturday afternoon, according to the National Hurricane Center. Weakening rapidly after it hit land, now Tropic Storm Hannah continues to batter southern Texas and northeast Mexico with high winds and heavy rain, regions already devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prior to Hanna’s landfall, the National Hurricane Center issued a storm surge warning for a section of the Texas coast ranging from Port Mansfield to Mesquite Bay. Widespread flooding was reported along the coast with an average of 4-6 inches of rainfall, but some areas have seen as much as a foot of rain. The energy provider in the region reported more than 90,000 homes were without power in the region at the time of this writing.

Areas across southern Texas expected an additional 5-10 inches of rainfall throughout Sunday morning, although some localized areas saw up to 18 inches of water. Meteorologists warned that the Rio Grande Valley was especially susceptible to severe flooding. Texas Governor Greg Abbot said flooding in the region was expected to be “life-threatening.” Abbot issued a disaster declaration for 32 counties directly in the path of Hanna and has requested federal aid.

Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, Mexico’s most northeastern states took a significant hit from the storm as well. Francisco Cabeza de Vaca, Tamaulipas’ governor, tweeted that the state had prepared shelters and implemented disinfecting measures to avoid spreading the coronavirus. Additionally, Mexico’s civil protection department sent rescue boats and other equipment to Nuevo Leon in anticipation of heavy rains.

In Matamoros, Mexico, just across the border from Brownsville, Texas, immigrant advocates worried about the hurricane’s impact on a makeshift migrant camp near the Rio Grande where approximately 1,300 asylum seekers lived. The migrants, including newborns and elderly, have been forced to wait in Mexico under the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy.

Before Hurricane Hanna landed, Abbot reminded Texans of the dismal state of the COVID-19 outbreak. The situation could worsen in the face of a natural disaster displacing people from their homes.

“Any hurricane is an enormous challenge,” Abbot said in a Saturday news conference. “This challenge is complicated and made even more severe seeing that it is sweeping through an area that is the most challenged area in the state for COVID-19.”

Abbot mustered seventeen COVID-19 mobile response teams and 1,000 medical personnel from the Texas National Guard to send to the area. Emergency resources were dispatched to the Rio Grande Valley and Coastal Bend region. These two areas are among those most devastated by COVID-19.

South Texas has been of particular concern to medical officials. During the first two weeks of July, the area recorded more than 2,000 new coronavirus infections each week. In Nueces County, home to Corpus Christi, at least 2 percent of the population was infected prior to the storm. As people cramp into shelters to stay safe from flooding, experts expect a rise in cases in the region.

The virus did not always have such a staggering presence in the region. Before April 30, when Texas’ stay-at-home order was allowed to expire, Nueces County only reported fewer than 100 cases and three deaths. However, Memorial Day celebrations, encouraged by Donald Trump, saw droves of people gather in the popular beachfront communities on Texas’ coast. Now, the region is experiencing a spike in cases.

Just last Friday, an infant less than six months old tested positive for COVID-19 and died soon after. Earlier this week, an intubated COVID-19 patient had to be flown some 700 miles, from Harlingen to Amarillo, due to a severe lack of ICU beds in the area.

The South Texas Health System, already inundated with a surge of sick and dying patients, tried to send the patient to closer facilities but the Northwest Texas Healthcare System was the closest hospital system that had the capacity to take the patient. The fact that no other Texas facility within 700 miles could take the patient exposes the severity of the crisis throughout the state.

Sections of South Texas, particularly the Coastal Bend and the Rio Grande Valley, have seen infections spread so quickly that local hospitals have been pushed to the limit. Four counties near the southernmost tip of the state have a total of just 21 ICU beds available for a population of approximately 1.4 million people. Ambulance drivers have reported wait times of up to 10 hours to deliver patients to overwhelmed emergency rooms. Some hospitals have begun turning away patients with a predicted low survival rate.

Areas that were relatively unaffected in the first few months of the pandemic are slowly moving towards crisis. Experts say they are seeing increases in community spread in urban and rural areas, leading to dozens of hot spots that will be difficult to contain.

The northeastern region of Mexico houses one of the main concentrations of maquiladoras— sweatshops run by transnational corporations—in the country. The region is a hotspot for infections and deaths in Mexico as thousands of workers are forced to work in unsafe conditions for the sake of profit.

The full impact of the storm on the region’s COVID-19 outbreaks has yet to be seen. However, the natural disaster reveals the impotency of the ruling in elites in the United States and Mexico which have been proven entirely unwilling to take the necessary measures to suppress the spread of the coronavirus. In combination with the devastation wrought by a natural disaster, the pandemic will continue to ravage the population under the malign neglect of the bourgeoisie.