Prominent lawyers and legal associations demand Assange’s freedom

Oscar Grenfell

A group of 152 eminent legal experts from around the world, along with 15 lawyers’ associations, this morning issued an open letter to the British government documenting a litany of abuses perpetrated against Julian Assange by the country’s judiciary and all the governments that have pursued the WikiLeaks founder for the past decade.

The 10-page document is a meticulous review of Assange’s case, including the current attempt to extradite him from Britain to the US where he faces life imprisonment for publishing evidence of war crimes and global diplomatic conspiracies.

Its conclusion, backed by extensive citations of relevant legislation, is unambiguous: the campaign against Assange has been based upon gross violations of domestic and international law, and the WikiLeaks founder must be immediately released from prison.

The signatories write that the recipients of the letter—British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and Home Secretary Priti Patel—are legally obligated to grant “Mr. Assange his long overdue freedom—freedom from torture, arbitrary detention and deprivation of liberty, and political persecution.”

Julian Assange

The letter was publicly released just days after Assange’s last British court appearance on Friday which took the Kafkaesque character of previous proceedings to new heights. As has been the case throughout the coronavirus crisis, the press was effectively excluded from the hearing by means of a faulty dial-in connection. The US prosecutors did not show up, and Assange was only brought in by video conference at the eleventh hour.

Most egregiously, US prosecutors submitted to the British authorities a new indictment of Assange two days before the hearing began and a new extradition request the day before it was held. This is more than a year after the deadline expired for the US to submit its final charge sheet, and just weeks out from Assange’s scheduled extradition hearing in September.

Assange has not yet been re-arrested on the basis of the new indictment. To all intents and purposes he is in a legal limbo, being detained on the basis of a previous indictment that has been superseded. As the WSWS commented on Saturday, the new indictment, which contains no new charges or evidence, confronts Assange’s lawyers with an impossible dilemma: either they accept that the September hearing will proceed despite the filling of an indictment after the defence had finalised its case, or they appeal for a delay, prolonging Assange’s detention.

Today’s letter demonstrates that this unprecedented situation is the culmination of ten years of legal abuses.

The opening sections of the document outline the blatant illegality of the attempt to extradite Assange to the US. If handed over to his American persecutors, Assange “faces a show trial at the infamous ‘Espionage court’ of the Eastern District of Virginia before which no national security defendant has ever succeeded.” He would be denied the right to a trial before a jury of his peers, instead being judged by a handpicked collection of intelligence agents and government patsies.

Assange’s rights to legal privilege in such a proceeding, the letter writers note, has already been violated by the well-documented surveillance conducted against him as a political refugee in Ecuador’s London embassy by the US Central Intelligence Agency.

This included unlawful recordings of his discussions with attorneys, constituting an “irremediable breach of Mr. Assange’s fundamental rights to a fair trial under Art. 6 of the ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights] and due process under the US Constitution.” The protection of legal privilege contained in the ECHR, has, the letter states, long been recognised in English common law, while the inalienable right to a fair trial is enshrined in the United Nations Model Treaty on Extradition.

The dispatch of Assange to the US would be unlawful under the existing treaty arrangements between the US and Britain, which explicitly prohibit extraditions for political offences. Assange has been charged on the basis of explicitly political legislation, the US Espionage Act.

The political character of the prosecution has been further demonstrated by the “essence of the 18 charges” against him, which are all based on his “alleged intention to obtain or disclose US state ‘secrets’ in a manner that was damaging to the strategic and national security interests of the US state, to the capability of its armed forces, the work of the security and intelligence services of the US, and to the interests of the US abroad.”

The signatories cite the warnings of United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer that Assange would inevitably face “torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” if extradited. He would be imprisoned under “Special Administrative Measures,” to which many convicted terrorists are subject in the US, involving total isolation and conditions described by rights organisations as a “living death.”

This would breach international law prohibitions on the refoulement of political refugees to those responsible for their persecution. Assange’s status as a political asylee was repeatedly upheld by the UN, and its abrogation was carried out by the Ecuadorian and British authorities last year in violation of international law.

The letter writers point to the broader implications of Assange’s case. A successful US prosecution would overturn the principles of press freedom, undermining not only the American Constitution, but the legal protections of journalists in Europe and internationally.

The latter half of the letter details the abuses that have been perpetrated against Assange by the British judiciary, acting under the direction of the country’s government. These are almost too numerous to detail at any length. They include, however, the fact that the British authorities have done nothing to address UN official Melzer’s finding that Assange is already being subjected to “psychological torture,” including as a result of the conditions of his detention and the blithe dismissal of warnings that his health has deteriorated to the point he may die in prison.

Violations of the WikiLeaks founder’s right to a fair trial include the fact that the Chief Magistrate, Emma Arbuthnot, has a clear judicial conflict of interest as a result of her close connections to the security and intelligence apparatus; the “inequality of arms” expressed in Assange’s inability to prepare his own case and the denial of his ability to direct his legal team or even to properly follow the proceedings against him.

The signatories, to their credit, do not blunt their weapons. They “condemn the denial of Mr. Assange’s right to a fair trial before the UK courts” and conclude by insisting that the “the UK government bring an end to the US extradition proceedings against Mr. Assange and ensure his immediate release from custody.”

Those who have initiated and supported the letter carry significant weight. The legal associations that have endorsed it include national lawyers' and jurists' associations from countries as diverse as the United States, India, the Ukraine and Brazil. Among them are bodies that represent legal professionals across entire continents including the African Bar Association and the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights.

Two of them, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) and the Association of American Lawyers (AAL), have consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the highest UN status granted to NGOs.

Individual signatories hail from around the world, and include such distinguished legal experts as the British Lord Hendy QC and Australian barrister and human rights advocate Julian Burnside.

The letter is further proof, if any were needed, that Assange’s persecution is a travesty of justice threatening legal and democratic norms that, at least on paper, protect the rights of millions, if not billions of people around the world. It is no exaggeration to state that the lawlessness of his treatment by the British authorities recalls nothing so much as the actions of the dictatorial regimes that came to power in western Europe amid the last period of capitalist breakdown in the 1930s and 40s.

Significantly, the signatories have formally constituted themselves as “Lawyers for Assange.” This follows the establishment last year of “Doctors for Assange,” a group of more than 200 medical experts, and “Journalists speak up for Assange,” which has been endorsed by 1,498 reporters in 99 countries. In July, dozens of privacy, human rights and press freedom organisations issued an open letter to the British government demanding Assange’s immediate release.

Taken together, these initiatives provide a glimpse of the real global public opinion on the Assange case, which is usually suppressed by a pliant corporate media. For those who defend democratic rights, the actions of the US and British governments are those of “rogue” states, with no respect for the rule of law. Assange is a heroic journalist being persecuted for publishing the truth.

The determination of the major powers to proceed with the prosecution of Assange demonstrates how much is at stake in the case. It underscores the fact that to free the WikiLeaks founder requires nothing less than the mobilisation of the working class internationally, the objective basis for which exists in the resurgence of the class struggle and the immense social and political disaffection everywhere.

Harambe Entrepreneur Alliance 2021/2022

Application Deadline: 16th November, 2020 at 23:59

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: African countries

About the Award: Harambe Entrepreneur Alliance is a platform for highly educated young African social, business and political entrepreneurs, attending leading universities in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Our mission is to capture, inform and engage Africa’s global intellectual capital in the development of Africa.

Type: MBA


Eligibility: 

• Born in Africa and current passport holders of an African country
• Exhibited entrepreneurial leadership in their field of interest
• Two or more years of work experience
• Hold a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent
• Candidates must arrange to have official university transcripts, letters of recommendation and standardized test scores arrive at Yale School of Management by the appropriate application deadline

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: 

• Fellowships and Grants from our partners
• Scholarships (Fletcher / Oxford Skoll / Yale / Oxford Pershing Square)
• Mentors
• Venture Capital
• The Harambean Network

How to Apply: 

• Candidates must complete online HEA Application by November 16, 2020 HERE

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

The Pandemic and Withering Away of the Working Classes in India

Bhabani Shankar Nayak

The ordeals of the migrants and other working classes are not going to end if they survive from the COVID-19. The central and state governments are making sweeping changes to the labour laws to lure capital investments. There is no ideological difference between the BJP and Congress party when it comes to assault on rights of labourers. Both these national parties consider that capital and its interests are sacred whereas workers are disposables. The nationalism and patriotism are new drugs found in Indian politics, where ruling classes are addicted to uphold the interests of capitalist classes. The evil regimes of central government in New Delhi and state governments in Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan Karnataka, Punjab and Odisha are leading in labour laws reform processes in response to worsening economic situation during the pandemic. The economic situation was battered by the wrong economic policies and misplaced priorities of Modi government before the outbreak of the Coronavirus. The unplanned lockdowns have further accelerated the grave economic downturn. Instead of finding sustainable alternative policies and programmes for economic revival, the governments are on overdrive to please capitalist classes at the cost of workers lives and livelihoods. The pandemic gives an undemocratic legitimacy to the governments to enforce legislative changes with ordinances, which are detrimental to working class people.

The Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat governments have suspended thirty-eight labour laws in support of industries for next three years.  The Madhya Pradesh and Odisha governments have reformed the Factories Act-1948, which provides various protective measure to the workers. The labour reforms are not only diluting the laws but also suspending it and exempting companies from following laws that safeguard workers’ health, safety and wellbeing in industrial workplace. Several other state governments are also amending their labour laws to increase working hours and overtime work limit policies. Hire and fire is the sole motto of these labour reform policies. Such regressive and reactionary labour reforms are branded as untapped opportunities for employment generation and economic growth while it violates the ILO conventions and international commitments on protection of labour. The labour market reforms in India sends a strong and wrong signal to the working classes that the states and governments are is going to stand with capital and not with people. The lives and livelihoods of working classes are less significant than the mobility of capital in India.

The labour market deregulation is a deference to consolidation of capital by corporate power. It renunciates the idea of welfare state and redistributive government by accelerating the orthodoxies of neoliberal disposition in the name of reforms, which disempowers the masses. The consequences of comprehensive labour reforms are going to defeat its twin purposes; increase productivity and mobility of capital. It is empirically well established that the productive power of labour diminishes with the weakening of workers protection, low wages, reduction of other entitlements and incentives of labour. The low labour morale creates low productivity trap which weakens the mobility of labour. So, the short-term luring of capital is neither in the best interests of capital nor in the interests of labour in the long run. So, the pandemic led labour reforms are thoughtless, nasty, illusionary and myopic. The economic framework of labour market reform is based on false economic promises to both labour and capital. These labour reforms are not only weakening labour but also slumping the economy.  It weakens the republic too. Capital is attracted to productive and skilled labour market and not to the unemployed army of cheap and unskilled labourers. In a bid to avoid such a situation, the states and governments must reassert its protective and welfare responsibilities in the interests of the country and its people by reversing the unwanted labour reforms.  It is the duty of every democratic and welfare states and governments to stand with its most vulnerable population during the global health crisis triggered by the Coronavirus pandemic. But the pandemic infused crisis is an opportunity for the ruling and non-ruling classes to further disenfranchised the working classes in India.

It is workers sweat that transformed into capitalist profit in the excel sheets of their bank accounts and immovable assets. The labour is central to production process and economic growth. But the labour market reform framework is repositioning the working classes as secondary to capital. Such ideological praxis is the hallmark of right-wing political economy dating back to early 19th century. It is a great leap backward in terms of its objectives, analysis and outcomes. The economic and political logic behind these reforms lack social and economic rationales due to lack of historical understanding of labour and capital relationships even within capitalism and the declining relevance of illiberal laissez-faire political economy. The formidable resistance to right wing political and economic onslaughts on working class is unavoidable for the sake of India and Indian workers. The organised struggle against the anarchy of capitalist loot is the only alternative for the survival of the working people in India.

The security to wages, work with dignity, and secure workplace is a fundamental right of workers and precondition to egalitarian economic growth and civilised development in India. History is the witness to the fall of civilisations due to adverse economic conditions, social and political breakdowns. India is at a critical crossroads today due to directionless economic governance, arrogant politics, ignorant government, and majoritarian dominance of society by the Hindutva forces. It is time for the labour movement to fight and ensure security of work in a secure workplace and move beyond the politics of wage bargain. It needs to engage with broader realities of India, where the divisive Hindutva politics is destroying working class unity. Unless this broader agenda is not undertaken urgently and seriously, the failure to represent inclusive working-class interests creates the conditions for the rise of reactionary politics of Hindutva with its capitalist spirit and actions. The labour market is a serious warning sign for the future of working class lives and livelihoods. The future of the country depends on halting the forward march of such a reform with united struggles in defence of working people in India.

Report highlights super-exploited conditions of Australia’s casual university staff

John Harris

A report entitled “Over-worked and worked over: Casual Academics Bear the Costs of COVID-19,” released by the University of Sydney (USyd) Casuals Network last month, provides further evidence of the increasing exploitation of casual workers in Australia’s universities.

The report was based on a survey of 159 casual workers in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) at USyd. It focused on employment and financial insecurity due to the coronavirus pandemic. The results point to the broader experiences of workers throughout tertiary education institutions across the country and internationally.

Over the past three decades, Australian universities have seen a dramatic expansion in the levels of casual employment—part of a wider corporate-government drive to decimate full-time permanent work. Approximately 70 percent of the university workers, both academic and professional, are now on insecure or casual contracts.

This is the result of the worsening under-funding of universities and their transformation into business entities serving the needs of the financial elite, facilitated by successive enterprise bargaining agreements (EBAs) foisted on university staff by the main trade unions covering university staff, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU).

Casual workers have been increasingly denied any possibility of securing permanent work. Across the tertiary education sector, the report said approximately 62.9 percent of casuals had remained in a casual job between 3 to 10 years, with 12.6 percent in a casual position for over 10 years.

Casual staff often fill critical teaching positions, including course coordination (27 percent), tutoring (91.2 percent) and lecturing (40.9 percent), conduct research and provide professional support functions.

The report highlights growing underpayment. Before the pandemic, 40.5 percent of the FASS casual workers reported that they tended to work between “0-3 hours” of unpaid work per week. Another 35.6 percent workers indicated between “4-7 hours:” Some 11.1 percent worked between “7–10 hours;” 6.3 percent selected “11–14 hours;” 1.6 percent selected “15–18 hours” and 2.4 percent selected “22+ hours.”

In Semester 1 this year, unpaid work hours increased substantially. Of all the respondents, 18.3 percent selected “0–3 hours;” 31.3 percent selected “4–7 hours;” 24.5 percent selected “7–10 hours;” 10.7 percent selected “11–14 hours;” 6.1 percent selected “15–18 hours;” 4.6 percent selected “19–21 hours” and 4.6 percent selected “22+ hours.”

On average, FASS casuals were contracted for 12 hours per week, or 156 hours for a 13-week semester. The average number of unpaid hours for Semester 1 was 50.58, equivalent to nearly a third of the contracted hours. Some casuals worked over 280 unpaid hours during the semester.

Similar trends were identified at other universities. At the University of New South Wales (UNSW), a UNSW Casuals Network survey recorded that 42.9 percent of its respondents completed 4–10 hours of unpaid work per week during the first trimester of 2020.

USyd casuals said most unpaid work came under categories of increased work with administration, and communication, particularly with students, compounded by the shift to online courses.

One USyd worker reported: “The transition to online learning has meant that I have had to put in significantly more time and effort without compensation… I’ve earned about $8 per hour.”

One casual tutor commented: “I’ve had to reply to significantly more emails… because students felt so much more overwhelmed, and unsupported, because they were at home in isolation.”

Another said that they “had significantly more zoom consults with students too, outside of our tutorial hours, because I think students just wanted a more human connection when talking about things like writing essays.”

One casual said: “The time to prepare almost doubled to adjust to online teaching and class management.” Others said online learning presented unique pedagogical challenges.

Even before the impact of the Victorian COVID-19 disaster, Universities Australia predicted that 30,000 jobs would be destroyed in the next three years. Thousands of these have already gone, especially the jobs of casuals.

Over 76 percent of respondents reported being highly stressed about the possibility of losing their jobs. Furthermore, 59 percent said they would likely leave academia permanently if they lost their jobs.

Australian governments, like their counterparts internationally, have seized upon the pandemic to accelerate major workplace restructuring, including in the university sector. University workers and their students are bearing the brunt of this.

The USyd Casuals Network report covers up the role of the NTEU in enforcing this assault. It merely says that “the current EBA limits the university’s capacity to convert casuals to permanent staff when they have been originally contracted as a HDR [Higher Development Research] candidate.”

In fact, the agreement that the NTEU pushed through at USyd in 2017 ensured that casuals would continue to be denied sick leave, parental leave and 17 percent superannuation, and would make up an increasing proportion of the workforce. The EBA—imposed despite considerable rank-and-file anger and bewilderment—also allowed management to inflict forced redundancies when implementing its restructuring plans.

The NTEU national executive praised the deal as a “breakthrough” and a model for such agreements at other universities. At the time, the USyd Casuals Network issued a leaflet saying: “The NTEU should not give up the fight for casuals’ rights before it has truly begun.” The truth was, as the WSWS warned, the NTEU had no intention of mounting a struggle for the rights of casuals, having agreed to successive EBAs for years that have helped managements casualise the workforce.

These EBAs have straitjacketed university workers while every government beginning with the Greens-backed Gillard Labor government of 2010–13 has cut billions of dollars from university funding. To fight this assault requires an opposed political perspective—that is, the struggle for a socialist program against the existing economic order based on corporate profit and the accumulation of private fortunes.

Journalists in Malaysia persecuted for exposing treatment of migrant workers

Owen Howell

The Malaysian government is continuing its persecution of broadcaster Al Jazeera for producing a short documentary film that exposed the brutal treatment of migrant workers by authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has come after a series of government attacks on journalists and activists in recent months.

Al Jazeera, a Qatar-based news network, reported a police raid on their offices in capital city Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday last week. Malaysian police, as part of an ongoing investigation into seven journalists from the network, seized two computers from the offices. Criminal Investigation Chief Huzir Mohamed revealed that police had also raided two local TV stations, Astro and Unifitv, which aired the documentary.

The 25-minute program, titled “Locked Up in Malaysia’s Lockdown,” was broadcast on July 3. It shone a light on the mass arrest and mistreatment of thousands of undocumented migrants in Malaysia, carried out under the pretext of containing the virus and protecting public health.

Shortly after the program aired in Malaysia and internationally, the government announced an investigation of Al Jazeera for sedition, defamation, and transmitting offensive content, supposedly in violation of the country’s Communications and Multimedia Act. Officials criticised the film as being inaccurate, misleading, and unfair.

The film documented the increased military presence across Kuala Lumpur throughout the lockdown. Poor migrant neighbourhoods, in particular, were locked in by barbed wire and barricades, patrolled by armed troops. Mobile phone footage showed that testing for COVID-19 in these areas was utilised to identify illegal foreign workers and transport them to other locations; operations which the film described as “raids.”

More than 2,000 migrant workers have so far been arrested and sent to detention centres, that are fast becoming hotspots for the virus. A Pakistani man tells the film’s presenter about the physical abuse he suffered from Malaysian security forces when he was arrested with his wife and two children. Large groups of migrants, including children and the elderly, were forced to sit on the ground under the sun for hours, handcuffed and chained together, waiting for their documents to be verified.

Malaysia’s economy relies substantially on a workforce of 2.2 million migrant labourers, while 4 million more are estimated to reside there illegally, accepting the most exploited and dangerous jobs to eke out a living. Defence Minister Ismail Saabri Yaakob is shown replying to a suggestion that the government’s treatment is unjust: “Cruel? Not true… They have no rights to be in our country because they entered illegally.”

In a statement defending the journalists, Al Jazeera noted that its “101 East” series, an Asia-Pacific current affairs show that presented the film, “has a reputation for producing in-depth journalism of the highest quality. Many of its programs have been internationally recognised with prestigious awards from across the globe.”

On July 10, however, the seven staff members responsible for the film were summoned to Bukit Aman Police Headquarters in Kuala Lumpur for interrogation. National Police Chief Abdul Hamid Bador told reporters that the journalists were called in as “witnesses, not suspects” pertaining to the investigation, according to Reuters.

After the police questioning, Al Jazeera expressed “grave concerns” that its staff and the individuals interviewed in the program had faced abuse, death threats, and the disclosure of their personal details on social media.

A Bangladeshi worker named Mohamad Rayhan Kabir, 25, who appears throughout the film, was arrested on July 24 and has been denied access to his lawyers. In the film, Rayhan expresses disgust at Malaysia’s handling of migrants: “This is not the way to treat a human… This is a total, a clear act of racism… A clear act of humiliating people.”

Having issued a search notice for Rayhan just four days after the program aired, the Immigration Department then revoked his work permit. Its director-general Khairul Dzaimee Daud said that Rayhan “will be deported and blacklisted from entering Malaysia forever,” without specifying whether he had committed a crime.

Last week’s police raid was condemned by Al Jazeera as a “troubling escalation” in the Malaysian government’s crackdown on press freedom. Giles Trendle, managing director of Al Jazeera English, called on authorities to “cease this criminal investigation into our journalists… Our staff did their jobs and they’ve got nothing to answer for or apologise for. Journalism is not a crime.”

However, the police-state treatment of Al Jazeera is only the latest example of a broader clampdown on freedom of speech and media independence, which has been intensified under Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, who came to office in March.

In May, journalist Tashny Sukumaran, a correspondent from Hong Kong-based paper South China Morning Post, was questioned by police after reporting on the aggressive roundup of migrant workers during Malaysia’s lockdown. Refugee activist Wan Noor Hayati Wan Alias was also called in about a Facebook post on the government’s neglect of, and indifference towards, the living conditions facing migrants and refugees.

Satellite television provider Astro was recently fined by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission for broadcasting a 2015 Al Jazeera documentary about the notorious 2006 murder of a Mongolian woman, allegedly for containing “offensive content.” Former Prime Minister Najib Razak, whose party is allied with the ruling coalition, was implicated in the murder.

Meanwhile, popular online news portal Malaysiakini and its editor-in-chief Steven Gan are facing rare contempt of court charges from the attorney-general over remarks posted on the website’s comments section critical of the Malaysian judiciary.

The mounting campaign against media freedom has provoked international outrage among press organisations and civil liberties groups.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urged Muhyiddin’s government to “stop treating journalists as criminals.” Similarly, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) sent out a plea in a written statement last month: “It is urgent for Malaysia during the pandemic to prioritise the public’s right to know and for the media to be able to report freely and fairly without the threat of persecution.”

The coronavirus pandemic has provided the government an opportunity to limit reporters’ access to events and newsmakers. Zurairi AR, assistant editor of the Malay Mail, has said that media outlets which are not state-owned remain barred from regular briefings. “The PM and most of the ministers have largely avoided press conferences, choosing to instead hold ‘special addresses’ broadcast through TV, making conversation with the government largely one-way,” he remarked.

The assault on free speech in Malaysia is taking place within the context of an ongoing political crisis. Muhyiddin presides over a highly unstable governing alliance, Perikatan Nasional (PN), with the slimmest of parliamentary majorities. The suppression and intimidation of critical voices in the media, as well as political opponents, is aimed at silencing any political opposition.

Police have sent the findings of their Al Jazeera probe to the Attorney General’s Chambers, which will determine whether to bring charges against the network’s staff. Last Thursday, immigration authorities declined to renew the visas of the two Australian reporters, Drew Ambrose and Jenni Henderson, who directed the film.

Powerful windstorm leaves 4 dead, 1.5 million without power across US Midwest

Jessica Goldstein

On Monday, a large swath of the US Midwest, including portions of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska and Wisconsin, was hit with a powerful derecho storm that claimed four lives and left over 1.5 million residents without power in its aftermath.

A derecho is a long-lived, straight-line, widespread windstorm. The name of the storm is derived from the Spanish word for “straight,” which describes the direction of its wind path, in contrast to the spinning wind path of a tornado. However, the storm itself causes other destructive weather events in its orbit, including tornadoes, flash floods, and hurricane-force winds.

Derechos develop into mesoscale convective systems—similar to a small scale tropical storm—and excessive heat in an area especially fuels their formation due to the convective currents which are more likely to form under these conditions, measured as convective available potential energy (CAPE). According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, “Scientists have evidence that global warming should increase CAPE by warming the surface and putting more moisture in the air through evaporation.”

Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University, described Monday’s storm as “one of the worst weather events of 2020 for the US.” Wind gusts peaked at over 110 mph in parts of Iowa, higher than some Category 1 hurricanes, indicating that it could be one of the strongest such storms in recent history. A devastating derecho in 2012, which swept from Iowa to the East Coast of the US, reached peak wind gusts of 91 mph, leaving 22 dead, 4.2 million without power and causing $2.9 billion worth of damage.

From Nebraska to Indiana 1.5 million residents were left without power in the aftermath of Monday’s storm, including 360,000 in the Chicago metropolitan area, and thousands still may not have power restored until early next week. On Thursday, over 250,000 residents in Iowa still did not have power. Restoring power has been complicated by the extensive damage of the storm, which wiped out homes, flipped vehicles, and downed large trees in both rural and metropolitan areas in the storm’s path.

Many tornadoes developed out of the storm, with 25 counted across the state of Illinois alone, including one which touched down at the far north end of the city of Chicago before turning into a waterspout in Lake Michigan.

A total of four deaths have been reported so far, and the total extent of injuries and deaths is emerging as residents have been trapped in vehicles and buildings damaged by the storm. In Iowa, two volunteer firefighters were killed, a 41-year-old man who was attempting to restore power and a 41-year-old woman who was struck by a tree. A 63-year-old cyclist was killed after a tree struck him during the storm. In Indiana, a 73-year-old woman died in Fort Wayne after the high winds destroyed her trailer home. She was found by firefighters under debris clinging to a five-year-old boy, who survived.

As with the notorious wildfires which swept through Northern California in recent years, residents were given very little warning by local officials that the massive storm was approaching, with many only hearing alerts just moments before the storm hit.

The state of Iowa suffered the worst damage. Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig estimates that 10 million acres of farmland have been damaged by the storm in the largest corn-producing state in the country. This accounts for nearly a third of the 31 million acres of land used for growing crops. Iowa Republican Governor Kim Reynolds issued disaster proclamations for 25 counties following the storm, and announced Friday that the state will submit a federal disaster declaration request on Monday, a full week after the end of the storm, in order to secure Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) disaster relief aid.

Former US President Barack Obama’s administration cut FEMA’s budget significantly over the course of his eight-year term. His last White House 2017 budget plan before leaving office proposed $600 million in cuts to the agency, or 35 percent of funding compared to 2016 levels, in spite of the widespread recognition of the need for more funding due to the effects of climate change.

In 2014, the Obama administration diverted funding from FEMA, which is under the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to provide $1.4 billion for the detention of an influx of immigrant children coming from Central America. This move set the precedent for US President Donald Trump to further cut FEMA to the bone and divert hundreds of millions of dollars from the agency’s disaster relief funds over the course of his presidency toward deportation hearings, increasing detention center beds and militarizing the US-Mexico border.

The ruling class’s criminal response to the storm and utter lack of preparation occurs as the US remains the world’s epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. The displacement of thousands from their homes due to power outages or storm damage and a flood of recovery workers into the region will ensure the spread of the virus through the Midwest and beyond.

In several impoverished smaller towns and suburbs across the Midwest, nearly 100 percent of residents lost power. In the working class Chicago suburb of Harvey, Illinois, 9,200 of 10,000 residents were without power; Linn County, Iowa saw 88,000 of 112,000 residents lose power; and in Tama County, Iowa 6,000 of 7,000 residents lost electricity due to the storm.

In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the second largest city in the state, city spokesman Greg Buelow told Fox News that “scores” of patients in need of oxygen tanks and nebulizers were rushed to hospitals, which are in danger of becoming overwhelmed by the influx of COVID-19 victims after the economic reopening across the US has driven an upsurge in cases in recent months. The city itself has been placed under an indefinite curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. since the storm ended.

Several other patients reported to hospitals after the storm due to chainsaw injuries from needing to remove debris themselves, pointing to the crippling of social and emergency support services for the working class as local, state and federal officials have carried out bipartisan budget cuts for decades.

Workers who have lost everything in the storm will be crowded into shelters and aid centers where social distancing will be impossible, putting thousands more at needless risk of contracting COVID-19. For many families who have lost businesses and jobs, in addition to the devastating financial impact of personal property loss due to the storm, there is little to no hope of receiving any substantial aid in the form or FEMA relief or unemployment benefits to help them start rebuilding their lives.

As with its response to the pandemic, the wildfires that have ravaged the West Coast and the hurricanes and floods that have devastated the country are due to the reckless disregard for human life and the environment by the American ruling class and its political parties. This is now nakedly on display in the era of the global pandemic and climate change.

Even as over 170,000 Americans have needlessly died during the pandemic, nine of the 10 wealthiest billionaires have increased their fortunes by 22 percent since March. Great resources and wealth created by the labor of the working class have been diverted to Wall Street, the banks and corporations, and the military-police apparatus in the name of preserving the wealth of a handful of elites at the expense of millions of lives.

Amid mounting political crisis, Colombia faces world’s highest COVID-19 death rate

Julian James

The political and social crises wracking Colombia entered a new phase in August, as the country’s most powerful political figure, current senator and former president Álvaro Uribe, was placed under house arrest and barred from participating in politics on charges of witness tampering.

The orders were issued by the Supreme Court in the course of an ongoing investigation centered on Uribe’s role in founding a far-right paramilitary group and ordering massacres of leftists during the country’s civil war in the 1990s. Uribe currently faces a host of other legal investigations, including into the illegal wiretapping of activists, journalists, politicians and the Supreme Court itself during his tenure as president (2002-2010). In January, the Supreme Court announced it would be inspecting its own premises after finding a listening device in the office of Cesar Reyes, the judge currently overseeing the witness tampering case.

The multiple allegations facing Uribe are of a piece with successive scandals that have dogged him throughout his political career, centering on his decades-long collaboration with paramilitary groups and drug cartels, including close ties with the now-deceased Pablo Escobar when Uribe was mayor of Medellin in 1982. Even given past investigations, the Supreme Court’s recent order for Uribe to be detained and banned from politics is without precedent, as the former president is considered the most powerful politician in the country and commands total loyalty from members of Centro Democrático (Democratic Center), the ruling party he founded and to which current President Iván Duque belongs.

Duque, a loyal political prótegé of Uribe, has also come under investigation by the Electoral Commission for campaign finance violations during the 2018 presidential election. A guilty verdict in this case would have major implications for the balance of power in Colombia. An August 11 Reuters article pointed out that “If irregularities are proven, the governing party could lose its legal status, preventing it from fielding candidates in future elections, in addition to fines and criminal penalties that may affect its leaders. In an extreme outcome, Congress could also declare Duque’s presidency invalid, according to procedures for investigating and trying political crimes.” Whether or not Duque and his political cronies would accept such an outcome is by no means clear. Like the United States, escalating conflicts between sections of the ruling class are calling into question the entire political framework of the country, which serves as a key base for US military and foreign policy machinations across South America.

The political crisis in Colombia is unfolding against the backdrop of a massive increase in coronavirus infections, fueled by low levels of testing, ineffective lockdowns and little if any contact tracing. Over the past few weeks, the country has been registering the highest per capita COVID-19 death rate in the world. According to Johns Hopkins University, over a seven-day period, Colombia saw 43.1 deaths per million people, compared to 32.9 per million for Brazil and 24.4 for the US. During the first week in August, 2,139 Colombians died from the virus.

Meanwhile, per capita testing levels as of August 12 were 40,000 per million, a low figure even compared to the 210,000 tests per million carried out in the United States, a country with over 170,000 COVID-19 deaths, accounting for 22 percent of all deaths resulting from the pandemic.

Figures compiled in mid-July in Colombia showed that nationwide, the health care system was either at capacity or in a state of collapse, with intensive care unit (ICU) occupancy rates in the high 80 and 90 percentage range in much of the country. In the capital city of Bogotá, population 7.5 million, 91 percent of ICU beds were occupied, while some mid-sized cities, including Riohacha and Quibdó, reported fewer than 10 units available on a daily basis. These figures have likely grown even more dire in the month since they were compiled, as total infections have continued to skyrocket.

While millions of citizens in different regions of Colombia have been subject to stay-at-home orders of one kind or another, cities and regions with lower infection rates have been allowing restaurants, theaters and gyms to reopen at the request of local mayors. In Bogotá, stay-at-home orders are being issued on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis, while in Medellin, a city of 2.5 million, citizens are told to remain at home on weekends and may leave their homes Monday through Thursday for essential purposes. However, these measures are increasingly ignored, as the impoverished masses, over half of whom work in the informal economy, are leaving their homes to seek a means of survival. A government assistance scheme known as “Solidarity Colombia” equaling payments of 160,000 COP (around US$42) is so inadequate that even those lucky enough to receive the money cannot sustain their families. Millions of others, including 1.5 million undocumented Venezuelan refugees, who are ineligible to receive any relief whatsoever, face the prospect of starvation.

As for the drive to reopen schools, Duque and Education Minister Maria Victoria Angulo announced on July 19 that schooling would resume on a rotating basis in 34 of the nation’s 96 districts. As is the case in the United States, this homicidal policy has been met with fierce resistance as thousands of educators and parents have declared they would engage in civil disobedience by refusing to return to the classroom. Many school districts have also declared they would not participate in the reopening, as the lack of additional funding, infrastructure, and in some cases running water has made implementing preventative health measures impossible.

In the face of this broad-based opposition of teachers and communities, the Colombian Federation of Education Workers (FECODE) called a 48-hour strike this past week.

Rising opposition from thousands of teachers comes on the heels of an unprecedented uprising of the working class that broke out in Central and South America in 2019. In Ecuador and Chile, austerity protests held in October of that year were so broad-based and militant, they took on the character of popular rebellions, while in Colombia, hundreds of thousands of workers launched a series of general strikes and protests demanding an end to the assassination of activists and organizers by government-aligned death squads, as well as a halt to the privatization of health and education, massive austerity packages, and efforts by the current regime to resume the long-running civil war with breakaway insurgent groups. Nine months later, none of these issues have been resolved, portending a further intensification of the class struggle.

Lebanon’s oligarchs and imperialist backers seek to exploit outrage over Beirut port blast

Jean Shaoul

Lebanon’s Christian, fascist, and Sunni parties grouped around former Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri have begun to call openly for the return to power of this corrupt billionaire.

The demand was first made public within hours of Prime Minister Hassan Diab announcing the resignation of his “technocratic” government on Monday evening, following antigovernment protests in the wake of the massive explosion at the port on August 4.

The disaster, whatever its precise cause, was the result of the criminal neglect and callous indifference displayed by successive governments and the ruling elite, which for years ignored repeated warnings about the dangers of storing ammonium nitrate without proper safety controls so near residential areas.

Much has been made of Diab having received a letter about the storage of the powerful chemical at the port on July 20, after which he called on the Supreme Defence Council for action. In his own defence, Diab responded, “The current cabinet received the file 14 days prior to the explosion and acted on it in a matter of days. Previous administrations had over six years and did nothing.”

Nevertheless, when it became clear that Diab’s government was going to be branded as the chief culprit, some of his cabinet colleagues resigned, precipitating Diab’s own resignation, although he remains in a caretaker role. As Ghada Shreim, minister for displaced people in Diab’s now-caretaker government, told Al Jazeera, “In the end, we felt that they wanted to make us the criminals, that they wanted to put this all on us, and it was a major reason for the [government's] resignation.”

On resigning, Diab laid the blame for the “earthquake” that had hit Lebanon on his government’s corrupt predecessors, although he kept silent on whom he meant or what exactly they had done.

At no point during the six months that he held the reins of power did Diab warn publicly about the machinations of the political elite, even as they made it impossible for him to carry out any measures to deal with the economic crisis much less alleviate the plight of working class families.

On Thursday, in its first action since the explosion, Parliament approved a state of emergency granting the military sweeping powers to curb freedom of speech, assembly and the press, as well as to enter homes and arrest anyone deemed a security threat and try people in military courts. The move is clearly aimed at suppressing opposition to economic hardship, corruption and distrust of the political elite.

Hariri’s Forward Movement, in alliance with the fascistic Lebanese Forces led by former militia leader Samir Geagea, and the Druze-based Progressive Socialist Party of Walid Jumblatt are working energetically to engineer a Hariri-led government.

This could prove difficult to sell to an enraged public that is fully aware that Hariri was in power for four of the six years that the ammonium nitrate was stored in the port and that is disgusted with the entire ruling elite.

The fallback position of these layers is a “national salvation” government, potentially headed by the military and made up of bankers and other business figures, to supposedly resolve the crisis and prepare the way for elections on the basis of a new electoral law. The discussions are that this unelected body would be in power for two to three years.

Washington’s preferred option is apparently a government of “independents” headed by Nawaf Salam, a diplomat-jurist and scion of one of Lebanon’s ruling dynasties, whose cousin Tammam Salam was prime minister between 2014 and 2016, and like Hariri was responsible for ignoring the dangers of storing the powerful chemical.

Hariri and company would be the driving force behind either a “salvation” or an “independent” government. Their aim is to reverse the setback they suffered last October, when mass social protests swept the country forcing the Hariri-led government to resign. They are determined to restore the direct rule of the plutocracy, in the service of imperialism, and limit or eradicate the influence of the “mobsters” in Lebanon and Syria, a term employed always as a euphemism for Hezbollah.

These layers are vehemently opposed to Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, and with its allies forms the largest political bloc in parliament. Hezbollah is a bourgeois Islamist movement, politically and socially conservative and deeply hostile to any independent movement of the working class. It has for years been a member of the country’s coalition governments and played a key role in defending the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad against the far-right Islamists backed by the CIA, the Gulf monarchs, and Turkey.

The campaign against Hezbollah is bound up with the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions regime targeting Iran, which is tantamount to a state of war and aimed at overturning its government and installing a client regime.

Hariri’s campaign has been aided and abetted by the imperialist and regional powers and the international media, who have suggested that Hezbollah is to blame for the explosion and routinely singled it out as the “obstacle” to democratic reform and a break with sectarianism.

Diab, an engineering professor, was chosen by Aoun to head a “technocratic” and “independent” government in January as a sop to the popular demand for a break with the entire corrupt political setup.

Bassel Sallouk, an associate professor of political science at the Lebanese American University, told Al-Jazeera that the aim of Lebanon’s elite was “to defuse the momentum of the October 17 protests—and they did that very brilliantly. … We saw the momentum of the protest movement die down after Diab came to power.”

Diab’s cabinet, largely unaligned professional people, had the support of Hezbollah, President Aoun’s Christian Free Patriotic Movement, and the Shi’ite Amal Movement led by Nabih Berri, the parliament’s speaker.

While the Christian and Sunni oligarchs allied with Hariri’s Future Movement were bitterly opposed to the government, it suited them to blame Diab and Hezbollah for the growing economic crisis engulfing Lebanon, which had racked up debts of 170 percent of GDP as the Gulf countries withdrew their financial support.

Within weeks, as the currency’s value plummeted and inflation soared, Diab announced that Lebanon would default on its $30 billion foreign debts and turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a loan. But access to international loans and economic support pledged at the 2018 Cedre conference, policed by Washington and Paris, was always going to be dependent on the imperialists’ foreign and economic policy agenda.

The Trump administration has been applying pressure in support of its local stooges, intensifying its sanctions on Hezbollah and those organisations, including the banks, dealing with it, and imposing new sanctions on Syria, whose economy is closely linked to Lebanon’s.

The Diab government submitted a plan to the IMF that would have involved Lebanon’s banks, the country’s chief creditors, taking a substantial “haircut,” as well as a raft of austerity measures and privatisations. But the banks, owned by the Christian and Sunni plutocrats around Hariri’s Future Movement, rejected it.

The Future Movement refused to cooperate with the government, leading to the eruption of small but violent clashes between the two rival blocs. In June, Aoun warned that this could spark another civil war in a country that saw a bitter armed conflict from 1975 to 1990.

Even if the port blast had not occurred, the Diab government’s inability to provide a modicum of social support for Lebanese workers and their families hit by the coronavirus lockdowns imposed in March would have sealed its fate.

According to Social Affairs Minister Ramzi Musharrafieh, up to 75 percent of the people need aid, as people scrounge in garbage dumps for food and beg passers-by for something to eat. Hariri’s bloc, already preparing to move against Diab, seized the opportunity created by the devastation to blame Hezbollah, centred on claims that the warehouse was a Hezbollah explosives dump and that Hezbollah managed the port and was thus responsible for the failure to remove the ammonium nitrate.

Hariri and his allies refused to accept the investigation undertaken by the Diab government, which has placed around 20 officials under house arrest, frozen their bank accounts, and banned them from traveling. They demanded an international investigation, aimed at placing the blame on Hezbollah.

These were the forces that organised the welcome extended to French President Emmanuel Macron when he visited Beirut just two days after the blast. Speaking as the representative of Lebanon’s former colonial master, he called for an international investigation into the cause of the blast and insisted that financial aid would be conditional on “political reform.” Reuters cited a Lebanese government source as saying that Macron wanted Hariri to head a government of technocrats, but Aoun and the Christian parties were opposed to this.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas echoed this call during his visit to Beirut Wednesday, when he brought a cheque for a token €1 million for the Lebanese Red Cross, while insisting that aid would be conditioned on “economic reforms and good governance.”

On Thursday US Undersecretary of State David Hale called for an end to “dysfunctional governments and empty promises.” He added that the FBI along with French investigators would join Lebanon’s probe into the blast at the port, in an apparent reversal by Aoun of his earlier refusal to accept an international investigation.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is preparing to impose anti-corruption sanctions against prominent Lebanese politicians and businessmen in a bid to drive a wedge between Hezbollah and its allies.

A recent report by the Congressional Republican Study Committee (RSC), focused on containing Iranian power and influence in the Middle East, gives some indication of the thinking in Washington. It recommended legislation banning any IMF money from bailing out Lebanon, as it would “only reward Hezbollah,” and the extension of US sanctions to Hezbollah’s allies in Lebanon.

It cites a Lebanese-American analyst who wrote in 2017, “Lebanon’s stability, insofar as it means the stability of the Iranian order and forward missile base there, is not, in fact, a US interest,” indicating that as far as the US is concerned, a civil war in Lebanon might be welcomed as a useful way of undermining and targeting Iran.

Either of the Hariri bloc’s scenarios for a return to power—the outright reinstatement of Hariri or a military-dominated government of “national salvation”—presages escalating class struggle and threatens a turn to civil war.

The working class must understand that its demands for economic security and social equality are diametrically opposed to the interests of all factions of the kleptocracy that has ruled Lebanon for decades. Workers must be guided by a political and economic strategy based upon their own class interests that recognises that it is impossible to resolve the crisis confronting the working class without a direct challenge to capitalism and its state apparatus.

While the ruling elite which is mortally afraid of the working class turns to its international patrons in a position of weakness, the strength of the working class lies in its international nature. It needs an international perspective that focuses on building a political leadership to unify the working class across sectarian, ethnic, and national divisions—not just within Lebanon’s borders but throughout the region—in a struggle against capitalism and for socialism.

This means building sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International, with its perspective for a United Socialist States of the Middle East, as the leadership of such a struggle.

Brazilian teachers report 36 COVID-infected schools after one week of classes in Manaus

Tomas Castanheira

The first week of return to classes in public schools in Manaus, the first Brazilian capital to take the measure, was marked by disastrous episodes.

The Secretariat of Education and Sports (Seduc) of the state of Amazonas reported that 123 state schools reopened in Manaus on Monday. About 110,000 students returned to classrooms under a “hybrid system,” alternating days of attendance.

The Secretary of Education Luís Fabian Barbosa assured that the government was going to implement “a safe plan for resuming classroom activities, which included the participation of control agencies, unions representing the workforce, the students’ parents and the school community.”

This statement was backed up by a committee of deputies from the Amazonas Legislative Assembly that visited schools “at random” and proved that “all the measures are being taken.”

The commission was led by congressman Sinésio Campos, the state president of the Workers Party (PT), who said: “As a teacher I understand the concern of teachers. ... But I also understand that students need to resume educational activities.”

In contrast to the statements made by Seduc and the deputies, educators and students shared on social media images of crowded schools with extremely precarious infrastructure. The masks distributed by the government, unusable because of being oversized, became a meme among students.

Students shared pictures on social media denouncing the ridiculously large face masks offered by the government of Amazonas.

The day after the reopening, the government confirmed the COVID-19 infection of a teacher who, after giving a full day of classes on Monday, showed symptoms during the night.

Two days later, eight schools had already been closed for disinfection after reporting cases. They opened again the next day or the afternoon of the same day. Staff and students who came into contact with cases were not isolated and returned to their schools.

The government placed the responsibility for reporting cases and isolating contaminated teachers and staff on the schools themselves. Educators reported disputes over the closure of schools with school boards that tried to suppress cases.

A map drawn from complaints sent to unions showed, as of Friday, 36 schools that reported infections among students, teachers and other staff after reopening. This represents about 30 percent of schools in Manaus.

Map of Manaus showing the 36 infected schools

But the real scale of the disaster is certainly much greater. Workers, students and family members are being forced to go forward in the dark, with the secretary of education stating that mass testing of students and teachers is not a “recommended strategy” of the Health Surveillance of Amazonas.

The degree of recklessness of the policy being implemented in Manaus is shocking, if not surprising. A few months ago, the world was shocked by the scenes there of graves being dug by backhoes for thousands of COVID-19 victims after the collapse of the local health care system. The governor of Amazonas, Wilson Lima of the Christian Social Party (PSC), under investigation for corruption in connection with the purchase of ventilators, tested positive for coronavirus on Thursday.

The disaster of the reopening in Manaus was suppressed by the media, which reported only bits and pieces of what is happening there and mostly on local channels. The repercussions of these events threaten to undermine the policy being implemented by virtually all Brazilian states and capitals, which plan to reproduce the homicidal model of Manaus.

On Friday of last week, the governor of São Paulo, João Doria of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), who has also tested positive for the coronavirus, announced his agenda for reopening public schools.

Students crowding into a school in Manaus.

In a maneuver covered up by the media, the government declared that the return to schools had been postponed until early October. In practice, however, the government is maintaining the reopening in early September to “attend to students whose parents have started working and are having trouble taking care of their children...[offering] school tutoring and optional activities such as sports and conversation,” in the words of O Globo.

São Paulo is the state with the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide. On Thursday, after a change in the notification system, which now considers results of imaging exams, the state announced a single-day record of 455 new deaths and 19,274 new cases, bringing the total to 26,324 deaths and 674,455 cases. This is more than the number of cases in California, which has recorded the highest for any US state, topping 600,000 on Friday.

In Rio Grande do Sul, the reopening of schools, starting with kindergarten, was scheduled for August 31. The extremely unsetting situation of the pandemic in the state is shown in the occupation rate of hospital beds, which has remained for the last two weeks at 89 percent, even as new beds were created.

The imprudence of the decisions being taken by the Brazilian political establishment as a whole was expressed quite openly by the secretary of education of Rio Grande do Sul, Faisal Karam. Justifying the plainly precipitous back-to-school plan, opposed by 84 percent of families, he said:

“We can’t wait another five months for a vaccine or fully secure alternatives. ... There was no time to plan. There was no collective form among all the secretariats in the country, nor was there a federal government regulation to support the return to classes.”

In similar terms, the governor of the state of Bahia, Rui Costa of the PT, ridiculed teachers who demanded vaccines before returning to school. He attacked the workers, saying, “It is unreasonable that people think they can go to the mall and are not able to teach in a school. ... I haven’t seen anyone talking about genocide when we talked of reopening malls.”

None of the criteria upon which governments base their plans for school re-openings are based on scientific perspectives or any social interest in preserving lives.

They are based upon the claims of a) a supposed control of the pandemic, expressed in the color maps showing the rate of infection in a given territory; b) the capacity of the health care system to attend to new patients; and c) safe return protocols.

The first two arguments assume that the majority, or the entire population, should contract the virus. It is the so-called “herd immunity” policy, which has no scientific value and will result in an incalculable number of deaths that could be totally avoided.

As for the “safe protocols,” they were nakedly shown in the criminal episodes of last week in Manaus. But even if followed to the letter, the protocols have no effectiveness in the absence of a policy for the eradication of COVID-19, which involves massive testing of the population and a strict contact tracing.

Neither are true, and this overrides all the official rhetoric feigning concern for the welfare of children being adversely affected by distance learning.

Behind the moral crusade against the “incalculable losses” to the learning process are the same political parties that have been promoting the destruction of public education, scrapping classrooms and attacking the gains of teachers and school workers.

As the pandemic spreads, they have not bothered to ensure a minimally adequate infrastructure for families and teachers to effectively carry out distance learning.

The plans to reopen schools in Brazil, as in every other country in the world, are dictated solely by the interests of capitalist profit. The ruling class needs the schools opened so that workers have a place to leave their children while they are exploited at their jobs and themselves subjected to infection, and that is all.

The main issue being discussed by the bourgeoisie now is how to break the resistance of parents and educators to work or send their children to environments that are being described as “slaughterhouses.”

The working class, in an association between family members and education workers, must lead a joint struggle against the measures of the bourgeois governments to force schools to reopen. Both the false campaign of existence of safe conditions and the attempts to gain ground with partial reopenings must be fought.

Teachers and school staff need to advance their discussions of organizing a general strike of education. To overcome the efforts of the unions to isolate them locally and from the rest of the working class, they must organize themselves in rank-and-file committees in every school and neighborhood.

Through these committees, they will be able to appeal to their colleagues in every part of the country and to the working class as a whole, turning this struggle into a fight for safety in every working place and decent living conditions for all.