College football season in doubt after Big Ten and Pac-12 postpone fall sports

Andy Thompson

The Big Ten and Pac-12 announced Tuesday afternoon that they would cancel all fall 2020 games due to the coronavirus, in a major reversal which places this fall’s college football season in doubt.

Until this week all signals pointed to most major college football programs going forward with plans to play at least abbreviated schedules this season, in some cases in front of large audiences. While hundreds of smaller schools had already cancelled all fall sports, the University of Connecticut had been the only school at the sport’s highest level, the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, to cancel its season.

The Big Ten, which had already released its 2020 fall football schedule, said it would postpone to the spring when another attempt at the season will be made.

The immediate context for the decision to postpone the season were signs of rapidly growing opposition among college players. Significantly, this found its most organized expression among players in the Big Ten and Pac-12, indicating that this was likely a major, if not decisive, reason behind the conferences’ sudden reversals.

Players from both conferences have circulated a list of demands for the season. This includes the ability to opt-out without fear of losing their scholarships or other reprisals from coaches; regular testing, including before and after games; hazard pay; and the right to form a union, effectively ending their bogus “student-athlete” status, which has allowed universities to make billions of dollars through their uncompensated labor. Over the weekend, several of sport’s top stars met online to discuss a list of demands for the entire “Power Five,” which largely coincide with these demands.

The other three of the so-called Power Five conferences which dominate the sport have yet to announce if they will follow the Big Ten and Pac-12 and cancel their games. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) remains persistent in its plans to begin games in September.

On Tuesday Dr. Cameron Wolfe, the chair of the ACC medical advisory group, told reporters the conference believes it can “mitigate the risk of bringing COVID onto the football field or into the training room at a level that’s no different than living as a student on campus.”

This outrageous statement from an infectious disease researcher is hardly reassuring, given the high potential for infection in cramped university dormitories and shared living spaces. The risks associated with opening universities in the fall semester are immense.

Moreover, Dr. Wolfe’s impartiality is suspect. According to his Duke University bio page, Wolfe was the lead investigator in clinical trials of Remdesivir in COVID-19 patients, for which he received grant money from pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences. Remdesivir is the “miracle drug” falsely promoted by Trump in late April as a breakthrough as the president escalated his campaign against state lockdowns.

Duke has two current biochemistry professors who are Nobel Laureates, and the ACC contains several of the most prestigious medical schools in the country aside from Duke. The fact that Wolfe, a relatively young associate professor with ties to a drug promoted by Trump, chairs the ACC’s medical advisory group suggests the group has been engineered by the ACC to rubber-stamp the conference’s return to play this fall.

By Monday morning it was already being widely reported that the Big Ten and the Pac-12 would postpone their seasons. This sparked a wave of indignation from several politicians, including President Trump, who denounced it on Fox Sports Radio as a “tragic mistake.”

On Monday, Trump tweeted, “The student-athletes have been working too hard for their season to be cancelled. #WeWantToPlay” and later, “Play College Football!” Florida Governor Ron Desantis joined the president in calling for the season to continue, saying that if the Southeastern Conference decides to have a fall season that, “I’m happy to help out with the effort.”

One of the more despicable comments came from ESPN commentator and former Notre Dame head coach Lou Holtz, who implied in a Fox News interview that it was the players’ patriotic duty to risk infection and death by playing football: “Let’s move on with our life! When they stormed Normandy, they knew there were going to be casualties, [that] there were going to be risks.”

The move is a political blow to the back-to-school drive spearheaded by Trump but backed by both major parties. If major college football programs, which until last week were preparing to sacrifice the safety of players and students to preserve the billions of dollars of revenues generated by college football, now acknowledge that conditions are too dangerous to play, then clearly they are too dangerous to reopen universities and public schools.

After these statements and other high-profile opposition to canceling football were raised, the Big Ten and Pac-12 were quick to clarify that they had not yet officially canceled the season but only postponed it to the spring. There are doubtless financial considerations behind this, for example, the possibility that in-person attendance will be more viable early next year.

However, it remains to be seen what the conditions of the pandemic will be like in the spring. If there is no season at all, losses to the schools’ revenues will be in the billions of dollars.

Armed forces and fascist gangs mobilized against blockades in Bolivia

Tomas Castanheira

The blockades of main roads by Bolivian workers and peasants in protest against the postponement of presidential elections are now in their 10th day as the country’s political crisis and social conflicts steadily escalate.

The widespread opposition to Jeanine Áñez’s de facto government is expressed in the growth of the blockades, erected at more than 100 points around Bolivia, with new social sectors joining in the cities and in the countryside. The demand for the immediate fall of Áñez and the regime brought to power in a US-backed coup in November of last year is gaining increasing popular support.

The growing anger of the population is linked to the government’s response to the protests, on the one hand cynically exempting itself from all political responsibility, and, on the other, promoting an escalation of threats, provocations and orders for violent repression.

In an interview with CNN on Monday night, Government Minister Arturo Murillo threatened to drown the protests in blood and to persecute his political opponents.

Mass protest against postponement of Bolivian election (Credit: ANRed)

Responding to journalist Fernando Del Rincon, who asked why he didn’t carry out an immediate military intervention against the blockades, the minister said: “We are trying to avoid a civil war in the country ... You’re not just going to shoot everybody [although] that would be politically correct.”

“If we do not reach an agreement with all those who have created this national disaster in the next few hours, then there will be no other way than to strike with the strongest hand,” he concluded.

These threats are not rhetorical. Murillo lies only when he says he wants to avoid a civil war. The path being taken by the hated government in its attempt to remain in power is precisely that of violent repression against the population.

On Monday, the main Bolivian cities were militarized, with troops sent to the streets of the capital La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. According to the government they are “guarding public institutions of strategic infrastructure, like airports and gas plants” and waiting for orders for a direct intervention against the blockades.

An ostensive military operation was mobilized to escort trucks carrying medical oxygen by land to different points in Bolivia. A convoy of trucks escorted by soldiers and army helicopters left on Monday to provocatively cross various blockades, even as protesters said they wouldn’t block medical supplies.

However, the military is not acting alone. Since the weekend, the so-called “shock groups” organized by fascists, who intervened during the November coup, have been mobilized again in Cochabamba, Santa Cruz and La Paz to brutally attack the protesters.

In Cochabamba, a gang of the Cochala Youth Resistance (RJC) gathered in the neighborhood of Cala Cala and left riding motorcycles and armed with homemade firearms and sticks to clash with blockades at nine different points in the city. Fascists were joined in their actions by the police, who attacked the blockades simultaneously with tear gas grenades.

In Santa Cruz, the Crucenista Youth Union (UJC), linked to the extreme-right politician Luis Fernando Camacho, launched a brutal attack against protesters, leaving at least 23 wounded, three of them with serious gunshot wounds.

The Bolivian Public Defender’s Office issued a statement condemning “a kind of complicity and permissiveness on the part of the state with the violent actions of paramilitary groups that took place over the weekend.”

A report published in July by Harvard’s International Human Rights Clinic, reporting human rights violations by the Bolivian state during and after the November coup, points to the role of such shock groups.

It states: “Resistencia Juvenil Cochala (RJC) and its motoqueros appear to be the most structured and capable of violent mobilization. The RJC self-defines as a policing and control entity ready to respond to ‘threats and vandalism.’ ... The RJC had roughly 150 members around the time of the October election, but by December 2020 they were believed to have over 20,000 members nationally ... They have reportedly armed themselves with clubs, homemade cannons, bazookas, Molotov cocktails, pellet guns, and firearms. Several interviewees perceived a ‘very clear link and coordination’ between the motoqueros and the police force.”

Over the weekend, Áñez farcically called for a “national dialogue” meeting to “ confirm the election calendar and suspend the blockades that are impinging on the passage of oxygen to COVID-19 patients [emphasis added].”

Absolving herself of responsibility for the successive postponements of the elections, in which she intervened actively and with the declared support of US President Donald Trump, Áñez refused to discuss the matter and hypocritically criticized the Electoral Court, saying, “Be serious and stop moving the date.”

Although the main political actors did not attend, including the presidential candidates of Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS, the party of ousted president Evo Morales) and Corriente Ciudadana (CC), which poll the highest support, Áñez succeeded in using the event as a means of promoting her violent preparations against social opposition, with the participation of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the European Union (EU) as international overseers.

The OAS, which played a central role in preparing the November coup, is supporting the de facto government’s fraudulent campaign, accusing the blockades of causing a deadly crisis in relation to oxygen supplies in the hospitals.

The OAS General Secretariat charged that the demonstrators “block the passage of trucks with health supplies to combat COVID-19, at a time when the pandemic has reached its peak in the South American country.”

It also condemned the struggle of the Bolivian population against the hated regime that the OAS itself helped impose as a pursuit of “miserable and petty interests” that violate “human rights and public order.”

These hypocritical statements cover up the real criminals who should answer for the public health catastrophe in Bolivia: not the protesters, but the government itself.

So far, more than 90,000 Bolivians have tested positive for the coronavirus, with more than 3,700 having died from COVID-19. The country’s testing rate is, however, one of the lowest in the world.

The lack of testing not only makes these numbers a gross underestimate, it also prevents any real fight against the disease. This is exacerbated by the lack of the most basic supplies in hospitals.

The weak infrastructure is a result not only of the lack of resources in the poorest country in Latin America. The de facto government has been indicted for the fraudulent purchase of overpriced ventilators that were, moreover, useless for the treatment of COVID-19.

The precarious situation in the hospitals has been denounced by health professionals in protests that have erupted in different cities across Bolivia. They have denounced the government for not providing personal protection equipment (PPE), forcing them to buy it with their own money or to improvise with plastic bags.

These conditions have led to extremely high rates of contamination and death among health care workers, possibly the highest in the world. According to Health Minister Eidy Roca, at least 100 doctors and 100 other health care workers have died of COVID-19 in the past five months.

However, this shocking number was considered a serious underestimate by the president of the Medical Health Branches Union (Sirmes), Fernando Romero. “We believe that at least 400 doctors and 400 other health care workers died nationwide. In La Paz alone we lost 100 health professionals including doctors, nurses and others,” he said.

The widespread contamination of employees has led to temporary closures for decontamination of more than half of the country’s hospitals, accelerating the overcrowding of the health care system and causing incalculable numbers of deaths.

After months of a policy that allowed Bolivians to die in the middle of the streets without assistance, to be treated in precarious health centers with medicines that have no scientific validity for use against COVID-19 and to be forced to starve in the midst of inefficient lockdowns in the absence of necessary testing, the criminal government of Áñez, supported by US and European imperialism, blames the deaths on the social opposition that has emerged against these disastrous conditions.

On Monday, 12 people were indicted by the government as allegedly responsible for the blockades. Among the accused are Evo Morales and the presidential and vice-presidential candidates of the MAS and Bolivian Workers Federation (COB) leader Carlos Huarachi. They are accused of crimes of “terrorism and genocide.”

These absurd accusations aim to criminalize all political opposition to the regime, strengthening its dictatorial power. The attack is particularly directed against the MAS with the aim of outlawing the party.

From Argentina, where he is in exile, Morales is intervening in the Bolivian political crisis in an attempt to sew up a new bourgeois alliance, which involves the actors in the November coup and their international sponsors.

Faced with the growing willingness of the masses of the population to directly confront the regime, Morales is urging the protesters to retreat and accept the terms imposed by the government and its Electoral Court.

Through Twitter, he has insistently rejected the popular demand for the fall of the regime, affirming: “The leaders and the mobilized social ranks must make a responsible choice between the resignation of Áñez, which will further delay our return to democracy, and early elections guaranteed by the United Nations.”

And he affirmed that the “only possible way to solve the tension in Bolivia” is a dialogue between “The Legislative Assembly, the Supreme Electoral Court and the social movements.”

The path suggested by Morales is the demoralization and disarmament of the masses in the face of the fascistic threat. It would pave the way for the consolidation of a dictatorship based on the repression of the growing class conflicts under the jackboots of the military.

Unlike Morales, the workers and peasants will not be able to escape by plane; they will be forced to live the consequences of state terror, paying the price with their own blood.

The struggle that the Bolivian workers and peasants are courageously waging can find a way forward only by drawing the necessary political conclusions from the process that led to the reactionary coup in November 2019.

While it is true that the right-wing forces triumphed with the decisive support of imperialism, their path to power was paved by the deep crisis of Morales’ bourgeois national policies, implementing unpopular measures and attacks against the working class.

Bolivian workers must fight for their political independence from the MAS, the COB and the unions that seek to subject them to factions of the bourgeoisie. They can count only on themselves and on the alliance with the rural masses to defend themselves from the state forces and fascist provocateurs.

Above all, it is necessary to build a revolutionary leadership based on unity with the working class in Latin America and around the world, and with a true socialist and internationalist perspective advanced today only by the International Committee of the Fourth International.

Over a million jobs lost in Spain amid coronavirus pandemic

Alice Summers

Around 1.35 million jobs have been destroyed in Spain since the start of the coronavirus crisis six months ago. Millions of lives are being shattered as the ruling class escalates its assault on jobs, wages and conditions.

According to the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE), 1,074,000 of these jobs were lost in the second quarter of 2020 alone, between April and June. This is the largest quarterly fall in employment in Spain since records began in 1976, far exceeding the 770,899 jobs lost in the first three months of 2009, after the global financial crash. In April to June this year, 11,800 jobs were lost on average every single day in Spain.

This employment massacre comes after around 285,000 workers lost their jobs in the first quarter of 2020, as the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak began to make itself felt in Europe and lock-down measures were initially put in place. Spain went into lock-down on March 16 and ended all its coronavirus restrictions on June 22 with its declaration of the “new normal”, before re-imposing some local confinement measures in July as COVID-19 cases spiked.

A further 1 million workers are still furloughed under the Podemos-Socialist Party (PSOE) government’s ERTE scheme, with these workers officially considered “employed”. With this scheme set to come to an end in September, and many of these jobs now existing only on paper, the unemployment rate will likely rocket up again in the autumn.

The services sector has been by far the worst hit, losing 816,900 jobs in the second quarter. Industry lost 127,000, with construction (-108,700) and agriculture (-21,400) also severely impacted.

Catalonia—the region worst affected by the coronavirus pandemic in terms of total cases, and second worst in terms of total number of COVID-19 deaths, after Madrid—lost the greatest number of jobs, at 223,700. At least a further 25,000 jobs are known to be at stake in Catalonia, with car-maker Nissan planning on closing its Barcelona auto-factory. Andalusia, one of Spain’s poorest regions, saw a decrease of 198,100 jobs, with the Madrid region also losing 184,000.

Spain now has the highest official unemployment rate in the European Union (EU) according to statistics agency Eurostat, at 15.6 percent, followed by Greece (15.5 percent), Latvia (10.1), Cyprus (9.8) and Sweden (9.3). Across all of the EU’s 27 member states, Eurostat estimates that over 15 million people are now jobless, with a total unemployment rate of 7.1 percent.

Youth unemployment (for workers under 25) in Spain is also the highest in the European Union, standing at a staggering 40.8 percent in June, far more than double the EU’s average (16.8 percent). This is again followed by Greece on 33.6 percent, Sweden (28.7), Italy (27.6) and Luxembourg (26.7).

Globally, 16 percent of young people were out of work between February and May due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO). Young people who were “lucky” enough to keep their jobs saw their working hours fall 23 percent. Young people in employment were also more likely work in jobs that leave them vulnerable, such as low-paid occupations, informal sector work or as migrant workers, said the ILO.

The pandemic has dealt a devastating blow to workers in Spain, whose pay and working conditions had already been degraded by decades of relentless attacks. Short-term contracts, low pay and underemployment proliferated in Spain even before the outbreak of coronavirus. According to the ILO, from 2009 to 2017, real wages fell by around €3,200 per person per year.

In 2019, 5.2 million workers in Spain were underemployed and wanted to be working more hours than they were currently contracted to do—22.2 percent of the working population. Many other workers had only short term contracts, with only six percent of the contracts signed in 2019 being indefinite. More than one in three short-term contracts was for a duration of less than a week. Nearly one in three people (28.27 percent) were working three or more contracts at a time.

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic has further accelerated these trends towards poverty-pay, precariousness and unemployment. Intermón Oxfam estimates that 700,000 people will fall into poverty this year in Spain. There are now 1.15 million families in Spain in which all of the members are unemployed, an increase of 7 per cent on the first quarter of this year and the largest increase in familial unemployment since 2012.

Official unemployment figures are themselves highly misleading. While millions of jobs have been destroyed and hundreds of thousands are falling into poverty, the Spanish government reported a rise in unemployment of ‘only’ 55,000 in the last quarter, bringing the official number of unemployed in Spain to 3.4 million.

Not only are workers furloughed under the ERTE scheme counted as “employed”, but workers who lose their jobs are required to be actively looking for work to be classified as “unemployed.” But due to confinement measures during the pandemic and widespread closures of businesses, over 1.6 million Spaniards were unable to look for work for months. They were therefore classified as “inactive,” not unemployed.

In fact, according to the INE, only a third (35 percent) of the working-age population were actually working in the second quarter, or 13.9 million people, pointing to the scale of the social catastrophe hitting the working class. In this period, the Spanish government registered 18.6 million people as being “employed”. This means around 4.7 million fell under the radar and were unable to work for other reasons—being on ERTE, being absent due to sickness or being self-employed workers who had to close their businesses. This brings the true number of jobless workers to over 8 million.

In July, Spain’s labour minister, Podemos member Yolanda Díaz, stated that the government intended to extend the ERTE furlough scheme beyond its current September cut-off date for the sectors worst hit by the pandemic: tourism, aviation, maritime, leisure and culture. “It would not make sense to undertake this gigantic, unprecedented effort in the Spanish economy [to preserve jobs],” she said, “and then just let things fall away.”

Diaz has reportedly also asked Brussels for a €20 billion funding package from the EU’s SURE (Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency) programme to help finance the ERTE scheme.

Diaz’s pormises are worse than meaningless. Already the Spanish government has laid out plans to steadily cut back on furlough payments from 70 percent of workers’ wages to 35 percent by September, or to 25 percent for workers in companies with more than 50 employees. Any proposed extension to this scheme would still leave vast swathes of the working class with almost nothing.

In an indication of the cynicism of the PSOE-Podemos government’s supposedly “unprecedented” effort to save jobs, in March Diaz claimed that Madrid would enact legislation to keep companies from “taking advantage of the health crisis to lay off [their employees].” Four months later, over a million jobs have been lost—something Diaz declared “impossible” under her plans.

The ruling class in Spain and internationally is sitting atop a social powder keg, as protests and strikes grow against these historic attacks on workers’ living conditions and jobs. Having advocated a criminal, anti-scientific policy of “herd immunity”, forcing workers back into factories and offices to die in the service of their profit-making, the financial aristocracy is slashing jobs with just as little concern for workers’ lives.

The most explosive situation is emerging in America, where support payments for workers are being suspended this month, threatening tens of millions with hunger and eviction. Already this year protests against police violence that began in the United States spread like wildfire across Europe and worldwide, indicating the explosive social conditions internationally.

Germany deports Roma family to Moldova despite life-threatening conditions

Carola Kleinert

On 2 August, the International Day of Remembrance, the European political establishment commemorates the murder of between 500,000 and 600,000 Sinti and Roma by the Nazis. However, discrimination against Sinti and Roma in Germany continues to this day.

On July 15, in the run-up to this year’s International Day of Remembrance, the Berlin state government, a coalition of the Social Democrats, the Left Party and the Greens, deported over 200 members of the Roma minority to Moldova, where COVID-19 is running rampant.

The Berlin Refugee Council complained that those targeted were seized by police officers in the dead of night, at 3 a.m., before being placed on a chartered flight to Moldova. A further night-time deportation occurred on 30 July.

The deportees include several families with young children as well as people with chronic illnesses (including a woman with cancer) and disabled people. As the Refugee Council noted in its press statement, “The deportations were planned and carried out under the sole authority of the SPD/Left Party/Green state government.”

The state government, led by Mayor Michael Müller (SPD), Interior Senator Andreas Geisel (SPD) and Social Affairs Senator Elke Breitenbach (Left Party), provided a powerful demonstration of its ruthlessness towards people without a German passport or residency permit, even under conditions of the coronavirus pandemic.

Müller hypocritically claimed to be outraged by federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer’s ban on Berlin accepting 300 refugees from Greek refugee camps, claiming that the decision “outraged everyone in the Senate.” Yet officers under the control of his party ally Geisel were at the same time forcing entry into the living quarters of “hundreds of especially vulnerable members of the Roma minority” and deporting them.

“The outrage over the opposition (by the federal government) to the state refugee acceptance programme appears to have been so much hypocrisy at the expense of refugees,” commented Georg Classen, spokesman for the Refugee Council.

Refugees who had signed a voluntary departure order at the State Office for Refugee Affairs and who planned to return soon to their home countries were also forcibly deported. Nora Brezger from the Refugee Council Berlin attacked the government, declaring her doubts about “whether the voluntary return programme can be taken seriously if forcible deportations are carried out in violation of promises made.”

As the World Socialist Web Site has warned since the coming to power in Berlin of the SPD/Left Party/Green coalition, the Left Party and Greens implement the federal government’s ruthless refugee policy wherever they are in government. Forcible deportations carried out at night are part of their standard operating procedure.

Moldova is one of the poorest countries bordering the European Union. One in five of its 3.5 million inhabitants is estimated to live below the poverty line.

The Roma minority there is exposed to state-organised exclusion and discrimination. Bitter poverty due to a disproportionately high unemployment rate, housing problems and homelessness, and extreme difficulty in accessing education, are all part of daily life for the Roma minority. Over half of them have no access to state medical insurance, meaning they can be refused health care treatment.

However, in the view of the Federal Office for Immigration and Refugees (BAMF), the “discrimination and marginalization” in their homeland does not amount “generally speaking to anything that is relevant for refugee law,” remarked Martina Mauer from the Refugee Council Berlin to the Berliner Morgenpost in December of 2019.

Only 80 of the 10,500 Moldovans who applied for asylum to the BAMF between 2015 and 2019 obtained a (temporary) residency permit. Applicants were overwhelmingly members of the Roma community.

The further impoverishment and deaths of Roma are seen by the SPD, the Left Party and the Greens as a price worth paying. Their deportation to Moldova, which, according to the Robert Koch Institute and Germany’s Foreign Ministry, is a coronavirus risk area, amounts to a death sentence.

Even prior to the pandemic, it would have been totally unclear how the woman with cancer, who has an artificial anus and was in the middle of a course of chemotherapy, could have continued her treatment or even had her stoma bag changed. “The police ought to have abandoned the repatriation at the point of the deportation at the latest,” wrote the Refugee Council. With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the woman is now part of a high-risk group.

The health care system in Moldova has been on the verge of collapse since May. The government extended a state of emergency for the health care system until the end of August. According to the Refugee Council, around 2,000 new infections are registered each week. The World Health Organisation reported last week a rate of new infections of 400 per day, but added that a much higher number of unreported cases was likely. According to official figures, around 27,000 Moldovans have been infected by the virus.

“While solidarity is always pledged in Berlin during the coronavirus pandemic,” the SPD/Left Party/Green government “could not wait to get going with deportations again,” complained Nora Brezger of the Refugee Council. Two mass deportations had already been carried out in June, one to Georgia and the other to Serbia.

According to the 6 August edition of the Berliner Zeitung, 300 people were deported during the first six months of the year in spite of the pandemic. The Berlin Interior Affairs Department reported that the Federal Office for Immigration and Refugees began issuing asylum rejections again in mid-May, and repatriations have been “carried out on an unrestricted basis and regardless of the pandemic since mid-June.” A total of 188 people have been deported from Schönefeld airport, including to Georgia, Moldova and Serbia.

Irrespective of the hypocritical lip service they pay to the need to protect refugees and oppose discrimination, neither the Left Party nor the Greens have condemned the deportations, let alone done anything to prevent them.

Roma and Sinti are among the minorities facing the worst forms of discrimination in Europe. This is also the case in Germany, according to the latest report from the Central Council of Roma and Sinti “On the equal treatment of Sinti and Roma and the fight against anti-gypsy sentiment.”

While job centres, the Office for Work, Department for Foreigners, social services and youth support providers practice systematic discrimination, according to the report, there has also been a persistent manifestation of “anti-gypsy sentiments in the speeches of far-right, conservative and social democratic politicians, in articles and reports... and in hate speech online.”

Four years ago, when the SPD governed in Berlin in coalition with the Christian Democrats (CDU), Interior Senator Frank Henkel (CDU) ordered a brutal crackdown by a unit of police officers against Roma families protesting at the Memorial to the Murdered Sinti and Roma of Europe against their threatened deportation.

The Left Party and the Greens, who were in opposition at the time, appealed to the protesters to end their demonstration at the memorial. Less than a year later, the newly installed SPD/Left Party/Green coalition has enforced the inhumane asylum and deportation policy of the federal government, including against the severely persecuted Roma minority.

Seventy-five years after the downfall of Hitlerite fascism, the ruling elite’s nationalism is once again rearing its ugly head. State-sponsored racism and xenophobia are the inevitable products of this development. Under conditions of deepening crisis, all of the established parties, the Left Party and Greens included, defend the repressive state apparatus and the property interests of the ruling class.

The deportation of defenceless sick, disabled and aged Roma, and the systemic discrimination against minorities, is just as much a part of this class policy as the brutal reopening of worksites and schools amid a raging pandemic.

Protests, crackdown follow Belarus elections

Jason Melanovski & Andrea Peters

Protests have broken out in Belarus after state officials declared incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko the winner in Sunday’s election with 80 percent of the vote. In cities around the country, thousands of mostly young demonstrators have gathered to denounce the results as fraudulent and demand Lukashenko’s removal. The government has cracked down with tear gas and arrests, with 3,000 jailed and one demonstrator killed.

Lukashenko is a Stalinist turned post-Soviet autocrat who has ruled over Belarus for 26 years and amassed, according to one 2009 estimate, a personal fortune of $9 billion. He has described coronavirus as a “psychosis” and counseled the population to drink vodka as a preventive measure. Lukashenko was challenged by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the 37-year-old wife of an opposition blogger who was arrested and prevented from running in the elections. State officials report that she received 10.9 percent of the vote.

Tikhanovskaya, portrayed as a devoted wife speaking out in defense of her husband and “the people,” ran a campaign with no political demands other than “free and fair elections” and “democracy.” She was backed by two other oppositionists—Viktar Babaryka and Valery Tsepkalo—wealthy champions of private property and the free market. Up until recently, they had long held positions in wings of the Belarusian state.

After lodging a complaint on Monday with the Central Election Commission to contest the outcome, Tikhanovskaya disappeared from public view for several hours, possibly detained by government authorities, although what happened remains unclear.

Police use truncheons on protesters during a mass protest following presidential election in Minsk, Belarus, August 10, 2020. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

Tikhanovskaya then recorded video appeals expressing personal disillusionment in the campaign and calling on people not to protest and to accept the election results. She then fled to Lithuania, the neighboring country to which she had previously sent her children for their safety. Tikhanovskaya’s video statements were released shortly after.

The Lukashenko government’s police crackdown has been coupled with other authoritarian measures intended to prevent people from using social media to organize further protests. Twitter has been censored and the internet throttled, as the president works to contain widespread disillusionment with his rule, which in recent months has been exacerbated by his criminal refusal to take any measures against the spread of COVID-19.

Tikhanovskaya, promoted by Belarus’ pro-Western and right-wing opposition, has predictably been supported by the EU and the United States. Both are hostile to Lukashenko, a longtime ally of Moscow, and have been seeking to pull Minsk into their orbit in order to intensify Russia’s political isolation.

Following the crackdown on the election protests, the Trump administration—which has been busy jailing, beating and kidnapping protesters on US streets for the past three months—condemned the actions of the Lukashenko government.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the United States was “deeply concerned” over the “severe restrictions on ballot access for candidates, prohibition of local independent observers at polling stations, intimidation tactics employed against opposition candidates, and the detentions of peaceful protesters and journalists.” Pompeo speaks on behalf of a president who has made clear that he is unlikely to recognize the results of the upcoming elections in the US should the vote not go in his favor and is prepared to resort to violence to crush popular opposition.

German government spokesperson Steffen Seibert likewise criticized the elections and government violence, stating that Germany “condemns the many arrests and violence against peaceful protesters.”

The Western imperialist countries have long labeled Lukashenko “Europe’s last dictator,” not because of his authoritarian policies, but because of his close ties to Russia and failure to “liberalize” Belarus’ economy—in other words, open it up for extreme exploitation by foreign capital. By some estimates, 70 percent of the Belarusian economy is state-owned. According to the EU, 49.2 percent of the country’s foreign trade is with Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was the first head of state to congratulate Lukashenko on his win and stated that he hoped for “mutually beneficial Russian-Belarusian relations in all areas.” Putin also called for Belarus to continue efforts to create a political-economic union with Russia, which, despite a 1997 agreement between the two countries, has failed to come to fruition.

The relationship between Moscow and Minsk has been under extreme strain in the recent period, with conflicts erupting over energy supplies coming from Russia and, most recently, alleged Kremlin interference in Belarusian politics. Just prior to Sunday’s election, the Lukashenko government arrested 33 Russian military contractors and accused them of plotting terrorist activities within the country.

At the center of the growing tensions with Moscow is Washington’s increasing political presence in Minsk. After making the first official visit to Belarus by an American diplomat in more than 25 years, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared in February that the United States would be happy to supply Belarus with “all the oil it needs.”

While Lukashenko has signaled that he is open to a closer relationship with Washington, he also fears a Western-backed “Maidan revolution,” similar to what took place in Ukraine in 2014.

At that time, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, deemed by Washington and Brussels as insufficiently anti-Russian, was removed through the mobilization of far-right groups that initially sought to cover themselves under the banner of popular opposition. A NATO-friendly, nationalist government was installed in Kiev, which promptly initiated a civil war against pro-Russian breakaway regions in Ukraine’s east, resulting in a mass refugee crisis and the deaths of thousands. Ukraine’s economy, under the control of the International Monetary Fund, Western financiers, and local oligarchs, is in tatters. The population is impoverished.

Following the outbreak of protests on Sunday, Lukashenko stated, “I warned that there will be no Maidan, no matter how much someone wants it.” He warned the population, “for the third time, I am telling parents to check where their child is, so it won’t hurt later.”

Western imperialism hopes to use the protests in Belarus and the candidacy of Tikhanovskaya for reactionary purposes—above all, undermining the economic and geopolitical position of Russia in preparation for an open conflict with Moscow. There will be no “democracy,” no “free and fair elections,” and no prosperity for the Belarusian working class coming from the country’s so-called “opposition,” aided by these forces.

For its part, the Lukashenko government is willing to reach a deal with Washington and Brussels if it would allow it to continue its rule and its enrichment off of the exploitation of the Belarusian working class. Relying on violence to stay in power, it will resort to more if necessary, as it tacks this way and that in an effort to survive within the context of the conflict between Russia and the United States.

Only a revolutionary movement of the working class within Belarus, united with its class brothers and sisters to the east and west, can challenge both imperialism and the post-Soviet oligarchy.

Hospital fire in southern India kills 10 COVID-19 patients

Arun Kumar

A massive fire at a hotel-turned hospital in Vijayawada, a major city in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, last Sunday morning has killed 10 COVID-19 patients and injured 30.

The tragedy follows the August 6 fire that killed eight people in the intensive care unit of a private COVID-19 designated hospital in Ahmedabad, the largest city of the western state of Gujarat. With the pandemic spreading rapidly in the country, the circumstances of the fire point to criminal negligence on the part of governments and hotel and hospital authorities.

Last Sunday around 5 am, a fire broke out on the ground floor of the Swarna Palace hotel COVID-19 facility and quickly spread to the upper floors of the five-storeyed building. When the fire erupted, around 30 patients and 10 medical staff were on the premises.

As reported by Indian Express, the victims of the fire are: Dokku Siva Brahmaiah (58) of Machilipatnam, Potluri Poornachandra Rao (78) of Ghantasala mandal, Krishna district,

Majji Gopi (54) of Machilipatnam, Sunkara Babu Rao (68) of Vijayawada, Kosaraju Suvarnalatha (42) of Ponnur, Guntur district, Maddali Ramesh (57) of Vijayawada, Sabbithi Ratna Abraham (48) of Jaggaiahpet and his wife S Rajakumari (40), Duddu Venkata Narasimha Pavan Kumar (30) and his mother Duddu Venkata Jayalaxmi (48) from Kandukur of Prakasam district.

Post-mortems confirmed that eight out of the ten victims had recovered from COVID-19 and tested negative. They would have been discharged in a couple of days and been with their families again.

Fire department officials told the Week they received a call at 5.09 am informing them about the fire raging inside the hotel. The officials estimated that the fire must have started at around 4.30 am on the ground floor. By the time fire engines arrived at the hotel, the flames had spread to the first and second floors.

Six fire engines were pressed into service to douse the flames. The firemen found that most of the people on the first two floors were still in their beds and had passed away due to suffocation.

The fire was brought under control within 45 minutes. Those occupying rooms on the fourth and fifth floor and those who escaped to the upper floors managed to save their lives. At least seven patients jumped from the terrace as the flames spread to the upper floors. Two others were asphyxiated as thick fumes enveloped the hotel, the Indian Express reported.

Fire officials told the media that the cause of the blaze was an electrical short circuit. The wooden flooring, waste dump and electronic items on the ground and other floors fuelled the spread.

According to Fire Safety Director Jairam Naik, the makeshift hospital had “violated” safety rules. The fire department confirmed that hospital management did not obtain an NOC (No Objection Certificate) before converting the hotel into a COVID facility.

The police complaint filed by revenue officials claimed that hotel management knew about electrical defects in the premises but failed to rectify them as it would have involved large expenses. The same officials charged that Ramesh Hospitals, which leased the hotel, used the facility despite knowing this safety risk.

Within 24 hours of the fire, the local police arrested three Ramesh Hospitals officials, including the Chief Operating Officer, for allegedly neglecting the need for electrical repairs that could have averted the disaster.

The evidence, however, indicates that the officials who were meant to check the fire safety requirements at such buildings looked the other way while hospital management breached basic safety norms.

In an obvious attempt to contain popular anger over the resulting loss of lives, the state and central government authorities responded as they usually do. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy announced an ex-gratia payment of 5 million rupees to the next of kin of victims. Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted his “anguish” about the incident and offered “all support.”

The Indian Express reported that the National Disaster Response Force, the State Disaster Response Force, fire service and police personnel who participated in the rescue operation urged their higher officials to send them to special quarantine as they had been exposed to COVID-19.

“When we requested our higher-ups in this regard, they told us to undergo home isolation,” one officer said. “This won’t help in preventing the virus from spreading to our families if we are affected.”

The callous attitude of higher officials toward personnel who were exposed to the coronavirus flows from the class response of the Indian ruling elite as a whole to the pandemic.

Having ignored the danger of COVID-19 for more than a month, Modi’s government was finally forced to implement a nationwide lockdown on March 24. However, that lockdown proved an utter failure. This was due to its ill-prepared nature, particularly the government’s refusal to provide for the basic necessities of the people who were forced to stay in, and to take other vital measures such as mass testing, contact tracing and proper quarantine.

Moreover, in line with its policy of placing the profit interests of big business over the lives of workers and the rural poor, Modi’s government reopened the economy by “unlocking” its lockdown from late April, leading to a rapid spread of the pandemic throughout the country. Now, according to even substantially under-reported official figures, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in India is over 2.3 million, with more than 46,000 deaths.

Andhra Pradesh, the only southern state to record 10,000-plus daily cases on more than one occasion, witnessed a new single-day high of 10,820 infections last Sunday, propelling the state’s overall tally to 227,000. With 97 new deaths, the loss of lives in the state rose to 2,039.

Canada’s military launched operation to “shape” opinion amid pandemic

Roger Jordan

Based explicitly on methods that it had used during the neocolonial occupation of Afghanistan, Canada’s military developed and began to implement an “information operations” plan as part of its initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The plan, according to a leaked Canadian Armed Forces’ document, was aimed at “shaping” and “exploiting information,” with the aim of deterring civil unrest. It included plans for military personnel to broadcast government-approved propaganda over loudspeakers and by establishing temporary radio stations; to carry out “village assessments” across the country of the potential for unrest; and meet with community leaders and religious officials.

The “information operations” plan was activated by the military’s Canadian Joint Operations Command, which is a unified command centre for army, air force, and naval operations within Canada, on April 8. This was just two weeks after the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance, had announced the deployment of some 24,000 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel and reservists in response to the pandemic.

The information operation was temporarily suspended five days later, amid conflicts among military officials as to the role the armed forces should play in creating and disseminating state propaganda. However, only on May 1 did Vance order the operation scrapped. Despite Vance’s decision, “several” military sources were so troubled by the operation and its anti-democratic implications that they reached out to the Ottawa Citizen to express their concerns.

Military officials acknowledged in interviews with the Ottawa Citizen that the plan was about maintaining control over the population and preparing for civil unrest. Asked by the Citizen if the army expected riots or civil disobedience to occur, Rear Admiral Brian Santarpia, who was the Canadian Joint Operations Command’s chief of staff, at the time, declared, “That was our worst-case scenario…Our worst-case scenario for COVID was that the first wave would be so much worse and that some of the 24,000 people we had would have to be called out in aid to civil power.”

Several military officials said the plan drew on tactics used by the CAF in Afghanistan to convince villagers to back the US-led occupation rather than the Taliban. Canada’s military has officially denied this.

The planning document seen by the Citizen bluntly identified strengthening trust in the government and suppressing social opposition as key objectives. Desired outcomes included, “Canadian public is deterred from participating in Civil Disobedience,” and “Canadian public compliance with suppression measures is reinforced.”

Although Vance put a stop to the operation, Santarpia left no doubt that the military intends to mount similar propaganda and intelligence initiatives to “deter” and, if needed, suppress social unrest in the future. “We will develop and grow this capability over the coming years,” Santarpia told the Citizen, “as it’s really important at both home and abroad,”

These revelations, which have prompted an internal inquiry, fully confirm the analysis made by the World Socialist Web Site about the real reason for the Trudeau Liberal government’s commitment of about a quarter of the CAF’s total troop strength to its anti-COVID-19 deployment. Calling attention to Vance’s appeal to CAF personnel to be on a “war footing,” we warned in an article published May 8, “From the standpoint of the ruling class, the enemies the military will need to ‘fight’ are at home as well as abroad. Leading bourgeois publications, including Britain’s Financial Times, have raised the spectre of the pandemic producing social unrest on a vast scale, driven not least by the huge bailouts already given to big business and the devastating economic downturn that is accelerating internationally”.

Motivated by this fear, a small military unit associated with the troops that were deployed to long-term care facilities in Ontario in May was tasked with gathering intelligence on oppositional sentiment among the population. A Precision Intelligence Team (PIT) trolled through posts on social media about relevant news topics. Posts gathered by the team included expressions of concern over the catastrophic conditions in Ontario’s long-term care facilities. The team passed the information that it gathered to the right-wing provincial government of Doug Ford along with the warning that it represented a “negative reaction” from the public.

The CAF has also had to order an investigation into the PIT unit’s spying. But top CAF officials have defended it. “We don’t constrain that sort of initiative,” Santarpia told the Ottawa Citizen, because “the young folks who are doing it are going to surprise us every time with something that turns out to be more relevant than any of us thought it would be.”

The armed forces’ push to employ at home methods it developed while waging a counter-insurgency war amid a largely hostile Afghan population has been all but ignored by the mainstream media. The only substantial articles to appear are the three penned by the journalist who broke the story—the Ottawa Citizen’s well-connected defence correspondent, David Pugliese.

For its part, the Liberal government has sought to downplay the affair. The Defence Ministry claimed that Minister of Defence Harjit Sajjan was never briefed on the military’s “information operations,” which a spokesperson labeled “mistake.” Vance also claimed not to have known about the operation until he intervened to shut it down.

If these statements are true, they raise a host of questions, all of which are carefully avoided in the accounts of the military’s activities provided so far. Does the military have a free hand to conduct whatever operations it deems fit within Canada without government authorization? If the government had no idea about the military’s plan, who took the decision to deploy soldiers in accordance with the “information operations” plan? Did the “worst-case scenario” that purportedly informed the operation include plans for the military to assume any government functions in the event of the breakdown of “law and order,” and, if so, which ones and under whose authority?

In Canada, as in all the other major imperialist powers, the past two decades have seen a pronounced turn toward militarism, a vast expansion of the power and reach of the national-security apparatus, increasing criminalization of social opposition, and a turn toward authoritarian forms of rule.

Since it participated in the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, Canada has been engaged in almost perpetual war in alliance with Washington. This includes, the Canadian Armed Forces’ decade-long leading role in the Afghan counter-insurgency war, its participation in the 2004 overthrow of Haiti’s elected president and the 2011 “regime-change” war in Libya, and its operations, ongoing since 2014, in Iraq and Syria. Canada is also deeply integrated into the US military-strategic offensives against Russia and China.

Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper celebrated Canada as a “warrior nation.” Trudeau’s Liberals have dressed up Canada’s foreign policy in a more “humanitarian” guise. But the CAF’s foreign deployments have continued to expand and the defence budget to swell, with a more than 70 percent increase to be implemented between 2017 and 2026.

All this has boosted the political prominence of the military and nourished the idea within sections of the ruling elite and the national-security establishment in particular that military force provides a way to overcome mounting and increasingly intractable problems. In February, just before the pandemic erupted in Canada, the Conservatives, supported by much of big business, were baying for the military to be deployed to quell the railway blockades in support of the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs.

The most noxious expression of the ruling elite’s promotion of militarism and reaction is the growth of far-right and even fascistic forces within the military, as was revealed by the failed attempt of a CAF reservist to assassinate Prime Minster Justin Trudeau last month.

The rise of militarism and authoritarian forms of rule has occurred under conditions of a dramatic increase in social inequality. Based on data from 2016, the Parliamentary Budget Office recently revealed that the richest 1 percent of Canadians hold over one quarter of the country’s wealth—roughly equal to the share owned by the poorest 80 percent. Protecting the staggering levels of wealth held by Canada’s super-rich oligarchy under conditions of such glaring inequality is increasingly incompatible with democratic forms of rule.

The coronavirus pandemic has deepened the social chasm that separates the capitalist elite and the mass of working people, and accelerated the turn towards authoritarian forms of rule. Right-wing governments in Ontario and Alberta have passed emergency powers legislation that allows them to override collective agreements, ban protests, and punish workers who resist the reckless back-to-work campaign. These powers are all aimed at ratcheting up the exploitation of the working class to pay for the multi-billion dollar bailout of the large corporations, banks, and financial oligarchy organized by the Trudeau government in collaboration with the trade unions and NDP.

Johnson government deploys armed forces against refugees making Channel crossings

Tony Robson

Under the political leadership of Home Secretary Priti Patel, British armed forces are being deployed against refugees crossing the Channel from France in rubber dinghies and small boats.

These inhumane, illegal, and xenophobic measures must be opposed. What is being legitimised is a further evisceration of the right to asylum and the use of the state to terrorise those displaced by hardship and persecution, including many who have fled wars in their homelands instigated or backed by the British ruling elite.

The Ministry of Defence has deployed RAF surveillance aircraft to assist the Border Patrol off the south coast. This has been described as an “initial offer of assistance.” A formal request has been made by the Home Secretary for the active intervention of the Royal Navy.

Patel has created a new position, the Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, whose role will be to work closely with the French state in policing the Channel against refugees. She has appointed Dan O’Mahoney, a former Royal Marine who served in Kosovo and Iraq. A government press release states that he “will have the primary responsibility of making the Channel route unviable for small boat crossings.”

The deployment of the Royal Navy to hound and drive back lightweight vessels, overcrowded, and unfit for sea crossing will result in disaster. It is a breach of maritime law, which stipulates that those at risk of drowning at sea must be rescued.

On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson stated that current law was too restrictive over deportations and described the Channel crossings made by desperate refugees as "very bad and stupid and dangerous and criminal." This is a more appropriate description of Johnson and his government.

There is a large element of political distraction involved in the revival of anti-refugee witch hunting. The resort once again to stoking anti-migrant sentiment and xenophobia is dictated by the fact that the government is backed into a corner, faced with rising social anger over its incompetent and criminal handling of COVID-19.

The biggest threat to the British people is not the arrival of a few hundred refugees on the shorelines of its southern coast, but the present occupant of Number 10 Downing Street. The Johnson government has been responsible for turning the UK into the epicentre of the pandemic in Europe in terms of excess deaths and is plunging society headlong into a resurgence of the virus through its return to work policy and reopening of schools.

The number of those undertaking the Channel crossings has risen, but from a low baseline. In the year up to August 7, 4,000 refugees made landings on the UK coast on 300 boats. Last Thursday 235 people landed.

The hysteria mounted against the refugees is not solely the preserve of the right- wing media such as the Express, Telegraph and Daily Mail. The Independent writes in terms of a “surge” and the BBC adopts a shrill tone, describing a couple of a hundred people as “record numbers”.

This serves to create the impression that managing the inflow of refugees is an impossible task, while desensitising public opinion over their plight. The claims that the clampdown is motivated by a desire to prevent refugees from drowning and falling foul to criminal gangs are rank hypocrisy. The barriers which governments around the world have erected against the right to asylum have forced refugees into taking desperate action.

The Channel is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, with strong currents which makes undertaking the 20-mile crossing particularly hazardous. Those who undertake the Channel crossing are from the most impoverished and war-torn parts of the globe. According to the BBC, recent arrivals have included entire families from Yemen, Eritrea, Chad, Eqypt, Sudan, and Iraq.

Based on the overall figures for immigration last year to the UK, the number of unauthorised Channel arrivals does not even represent a percentage point. The UK also receives far fewer asylum seekers than other European Union (EU) countries such as Germany, France, and Spain. In 2019, there were 49,000 asylum applications in the UK, a third or just over a half of those for the EU countries cited.

Earlier in the year the government launched Operation Sillath to speed up the deportations of refugees back to France. This is conducted under the terms of the Dublin regulations of the EU on asylum, which makes refugees the responsibility of the first country they reach. In May, the Guardian reported evidence compiled by human rights lawyers and campaigners that the government was denying asylum seekers the right to have their applications considered in the UK, deporting them back to France without any proof they had made an original claim here, or spent any time in the country.

Lily Parrott, a lawyer at Duncan Lewis solicitors stated, “We feel that this is being done illegally and on the basis of a conflation between the Dublin convention and a UK-France treaty about border management. This would be an egregious breach of European Law that allowed many asylum-seekers to be wrongly removed from the UK.”

Since 2019, the UK has deported 155 refugees back to France, around 3 percent of those that landed on the south coast.

The Johnson government takes its political cue from the far right of the political spectrum. For months, former Brexit leader Nigel Farage has mounted a media campaign vilifying the government for losing control of the UK’s borders. This has included video footage of his boat patrols around the Channel and tours of southern ports in which he has portrayed himself as the single-handed champion of the national interest against an “invasion”. Video footage has included Farage identifying a distressed light weight vessel in the Channel at risk of sinking. When they were rescued, he denounced the Border Patrol as “an illegal migrant taxi service.”

This virulent campaign is now being politically mainstreamed. The BBC primetime TV newscast Monday reported, “On land, at seas and in the air. Today the government sought to assure its citizens that it can control its borders.” The report cut to an aerial shot of the Home Secretary aboard a police patrol boat stating that Priti Patel’s involvement was “to underline her determination against the breaching of UK sovereignty.”

The harassment and vilification of refugees from the most oppressed and impoverished corners of the globe is in marked contrast to the Johnson government’s official open door policy extended to 2.9 million Hong Kong citizens. The right to asylum applies only to the extent that it provides a fig-leaf for the British ruling class in its alliance with the US against China, and for stepped-up measures of trade war and military confrontation.

In the face of this witchhunt, there has been no principled opposition mounted by the Labour Party. Apart from occasional handwringing about the plight of refugees, the Labour Party has focused on complaints that Brexit will endanger continued cooperation between the British and French governments over efforts to clampdown on asylum seekers. Dianne Abbott, former shadow Home Secretary under Jeremy Corbyn told the BBC, "These things were bound to get more difficult as we prepared to leave the EU. What I'm saying is in the medium term and the long term, there has to be better cooperation across the EU. That is the only solution, otherwise whenever the weather is better and the seas are calmer, you're going to have these desperate people trying to cross the Channel."

These comments were celebrated by the right-wing Express newspaper, which provided Abbott with prominent coverage.

The defence of open borders and the right to asylum is an integral part of the fight for democratic rights and against capitalism. The division of the world into rival nation states dominated by the most powerful imperialist powers who have driven millions from their homes through environmental disasters, famine and war is the main barrier to human progress. It is the irrationality of this system and its subordination of technological progress to the extraction of wealth by an oligarchy that has prevented a socially progressive response to the pandemic and resulted in a humanitarian disaster.