Canadian Detroit Big Three autoworkers give strong strike mandate for upcoming contract fight

Carl Bronski

The 17,000 workers employed at the Canadian operations of the Detroit Big Three automakers have voted overwhelmingly to authorize Unifor to launch strike action should a negotiated settlement not be reached by the September 21st contract expiry deadline.

At Ford Canada, workers voted by 96.4 percent to give Unifor a strike mandate. At Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) 98.4 percent of those participating in the online ballot voted in favour, while at General Motors (GM) there was a 95.3 percent “yes” vote.

The massive strike votes underscore that autoworkers are ready to wage a militant struggle to defend their jobs, wages, and working conditions, and overturn the decades of concessions imposed by the corporations with Unifor’s support.

The Detroit Big Three bosses, for their part, are preparing for another round of sweeping attacks, with a number of Canadian plants facing the threat of possible shutdown or job cuts. Ford has announced that there will be no new products for its Oakville assembly plant after the Edge SUV is phased out in 2023. At Fiat-Chrysler’s Brampton assembly facility, Unifor says major investments are needed to retain jobs. Two vehicle models would need to be added at FCA’s Windsor Assembly to rehire the third shift workers, who were laid off earlier this year. Also under threat is FCA’s Etobicoke aluminum casting plant and half of the 1,300 jobs at GM’s St. Catharine’s propulsion and engine facility.

Even before COVID-19 triggered the economic collapse, the Detroit Big Three and the other transnational automakers had launched a major restructuring of auto production worldwide, announcing job cuts and plant closures. They did so with the double aim of boosting their profit margins and outperforming their rivals, above all, in investor returns in order to attract the capital needed to take the lead in the transition to electric and autonomous vehicles.

Now they intend to invoke the pandemic-related sales and profit plunge to intensify their push for speedup and concessions, while slashing hundreds of thousands of auto jobs in North America, Europe, and Asia.

In response, Unifor’s has been to double down on its nationalist-corporatist program. Predicated on the subordination of workers’ interests to investor-profit, this consists of ensuring the Detroit Big Three’s Canadian operations are pumping out profits equal to or greater than those the automakers earn elsewhere, by offering up further concessions and by appealing to the Ontario and Canadian governments to provide them with corporate handouts.

In a statement to the press following last weekend’s strike votes, Unifor President Jerry Dias said the union’s priorities in the contract talks were “job security, product commitments and economic gains for all members.” He continued, “We will continue to push our agenda at the bargaining table but remind government that they have an active role to play in securing our auto industry’s future. A future made in Canada.”

Dias’s stress on a “Made in Canada” solution to the threatened jobs massacre and fresh concession demands is a continuation of the union’s ruinous nationalist strategy, which has pitted autoworkers in Canada, the US and Mexico against each other in competing for “product.” The result has been the destruction of tens of thousands of auto jobs just in Canada alone over the past three decades, and round after round of concessions, including wage and benefit cuts and the creation of a multitiered workforce.

The overriding concerns of Dias and the other Unifor bureaucrats is not worker “job security” and “economic gains,” but the retention of a highly-exploited, dues-paying base from which to fund the bureaucracy’s lavish salaries and of a close working relationship between Unifor, the automakers, and the federal and provincial governments.

The fact that Unifor and the auto bosses share a common goal of ratcheting up the exploitation of autoworkers to ensure “corporate competitiveness” was underlined by Unifor’s latest bargaining update. Writing like corporate executives plotting to gain market share and boost profits at the expense of their competitors, the union declared, “Despite notable challenges facing the Canadian auto sector, the union believes each of the facilities is viable and, with strategic investments, well equipped for growth in the coming years. The union also signaled its intent to discuss investments in vehicle electrification, to capture a meaningful share of what will be a significant growth market in the years ahead.”

The decades of givebacks and job losses presided over by Unifor and its forerunner, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), reveal the failure of this nationalist, corporatist strategy. The CAW bureaucrats split from the United Auto Workers (UAW) in 1985, hoping that they could cut separate deals with GM, Ford and Chrysler based on the lower labour costs the automakers enjoyed in Canada due to the cheaper Canadian dollar and the government-funded health care system (Medicare).

The pursuit of this “Canadian advantage” proved disastrous as the UAW imposed deep wage cuts on US autoworkers, and the Detroit-based automakers expanded to Mexico for even cheaper labour. The auto bosses, with the unions’ unyielding support, were then able to use these nationalist divisions to whipsaw jobs and wages across borders in a never-ending race to the bottom. In the process, CAW/Unifor, like the UAW and all the procapitalist trade unions, was transformed into nothing more than junior partners of the corporations and the state.

Whenever the union bureaucrats have persuaded governments to subsidize the “Canadian footprint” of the Detroit Big Three, this financial support has been bound up with sweeping attacks on workers’ wages and working conditions.

Following the 2008 financial crash, the federal Conservative and Ontario Liberal governments handed $13.7 billion over to the auto bosses at General Motors and Chrysler, while extorting wage and benefit concessions from autoworkers. This included the slashing of wages and benefits by 20 percent and the introduction of the notorious two-tier wage system. Since the bailout cash was handed out, thousands more jobs have been cut with entire plants being shuttered in Oshawa, Windsor, and St. Thomas, Ontario.

The current concessions contracts, which were grudgingly ratified by workers in 2016, expire at 11:59 p.m. on Monday, September 21. Early next week Dias is expected to announce which of the three automakers the union has selected as its “target” for negotiating a so-called pattern-settlement. After Monday’s announcement of the results of the strike vote, Unifor Local 444 President Dave Cassidy in Windsor, Ontario told reporters that he is lobbying Dias to select FCA.

Irrespective of which company Dias chooses to begin negotiations with, it is clear that if the Unifor bureaucracy remains in control, there will be nothing adversarial about them. Rather, the bargaining process will develop as a conspiracy against the 17,000 autoworkers. In a May interview with Automotive News Canada previewing the contract negotiations, Dias all but ruled out strike action, declaring that if “after months and months and months of reduced volume based on the pandemic” things are “starting to get back to a resemblance of where they were pre-crisis, no one is going to want a disruption. And I mean nobody, both the workers and the automakers.”

There is widespread rank-and-file opposition to the corporatist, nationalist strategy advanced by Dias and his fellow bureaucrats. Some 1,400 workers at auto plants across Ontario have signed a petition demanding that the union release any agreement in full, well in advance of ratification votes. This expresses the deep distrust felt by the rank and file towards the bureaucracy, which is well-practiced at smuggling major concessions into contracts behind the backs of workers by leaving them out of the self-serving “highlights” brochures handed out at ratification votes.

The task facing autoworkers is to transform this latent opposition into an organized rebellion against Unifor and its reactionary procorporate policy. To do this, autoworkers must organize rank-and-file action committees to seize control of the contract struggle from the union and mount a worker-led counteroffensive to overturn concessions, and guarantee decent-paying and secure jobs for all.

Such a struggle must be based on an international strategy aimed at mobilizing autoworkers across North America and around the globe in a common struggle in defence of all workers’ jobs and against all concessions.

Without a doubt, an appeal from Canadian autoworkers for a joint struggle would win immediate support from autoworkers in Mexico, who last year mounted a wave of wildcat strikes in opposition to the pro-company unions, and in the United States, where a network of rank-and-file safety committees has been organized in opposition to the corrupt UAW. Autoworkers set up these committees to combat the life-threatening conditions in the plants produced by the reckless back-to-work drive mounted by the companies, with the UAW’s support, amid the ongoing pandemic.

With over 2,600 COVID-19 cases at more than 750 US colleges, campus opposition erupts

Chase Lawrence

A catastrophe is unfolding at colleges and universities across the US as millions of students, teachers, and staff are being forced to return to campuses for in-person learning amid the raging COVID-19 pandemic. According to real-time information gathered by the New York Times at least 26,000 COVID-19 cases have been reported at over 750 campuses, with at least 64 deaths since they began reopening for the fall semester.

As many experts had warned, the reckless reopening of colleges and universities has led to a spike in cases on campuses and in college towns. The majority of these new cases have occurred within the past month alone.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham, which has a student population of 22,000, has the most cases recorded of any college campus, with 972 cases recorded, amounting to roughly four percent of the student population. Before opening, the university had claimed that an expansion of “in-house” university-owned testing, combined with rudimentary tracking and mask wearing would prevent an outbreak. The outcome of the Alabama “experiment” has proven to be a complete disaster for the university and for the state as a whole, which is now one of the leading coronavirus hot spots.

Beardshear Hall at Iowa State University (Credit: Wikipedia)

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which reopened on August 14, held in-person classes for a week before being forced to go online. It currently has the second most cases, with 835 recorded. UNCCH reopened residence halls at full capacity, which the CDC warned was the “highest risk” model for dorm reopening. This is following outbreaks during summer sports practices, where 37 players and staff tested positive for the virus.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has seen 448 new cases.

The University of Arkansas now has 151 new confirmed cases, following the reopening of in-person classes on August 24. In late July, the university announced that a mere 28 percent of classes would be held online, with the vast majority being in-person.

Adrian College, a small private liberal arts college south of Detroit, reported Monday that a staggering 6.5 percent of its 2,235 students and staff have tested positive for the virus after reopening on August 24 with face-to-face classes.

Despite major outbreaks, many of these schools are still resisting pressure from students, parents, and workers to switch to online learning.

Iowa State University in Ames, according to the NYT data, has the highest transmission rate in the country, with a 28 percent positive test rate. Despite this staggering fact, the university president sent an email to staff and students, on the heels of the NYT report, reassuring everyone that the disease is “under control,” adding that the “appearance” of spread is just due to a large portion of those tested being positive. This explanation ignores completely the simple fact that there are now 500 more cases at the university than there were a week ago. The president also stated that there is no plan to close the university or move to entirely online classes.

Kent State is following a similar model. The university announced Monday that all university-sponsored events, meetings, and gatherings of more than 10 people on campus would now be required to be held virtually. This announcement comes after 12 new coronavirus cases were reported for the week beginning August 24. However, the university says this development will not affect in-person classes, which will continue as planned.

As startling as these statistics are, in all likelihood the reported figures on campus outbreaks represent a fraction of the actual number of cases. Many universities are not required to publicly report their confirmed cases. Furthermore, the majority of schools do not possess the capacity to adequately test students, staff, and faculty on a regular basis.

In addition to the deliberate efforts by the White House to tamper with numbers by decreasing testing, there have also been efforts on the state level to conceal confirmed COVID-19 cases on college campuses.

Bridge, a Michigan nonprofit, nonpartisan news site, reported Tuesday that Michigan is concealing information related to new infections. In mid-August, the state acknowledged that only 14 COVID-19 outbreaks had occurred or were ongoing at schools and universities. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has refused calls to release details, such as the names of schools where the coronavirus has spread. The only details released were on the “region,” which fails to name schools. She has also deliberately concealed information on outbreaks in longterm care facilities, only releasing the names of facilities after immense pressure following hundreds of nursing home deaths.

Resistance to these reckless policies is growing by the day among students, faculty, and workers. Students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham staged a mass “die-in” protest against the reopening before the beginning of classes. Students at the University of Georgia, University of Arizona, and other campuses have held similar protests. There are countless student petitions circulating with tens of thousands of signatures on the internet against in-person teaching. And there have been numerous petitions, such as at Texas A&M University, where faculty and staff have signed open letters protesting the administration’s handling of the pandemic.

Last month, the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee was formed as a national network to unify the struggles of teachers, school employees, parents, and students independently of the unions and to prepare for a national strike to halt the unsafe opening of schools. A local rank-and-file committee has been established in Duval County, Florida, and more are being set up in a growing number of states and districts across the country. The Socialist Equality Party and its youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, urge students, faculty, parents, and others to join this committee and take up the fight to stop the reckless drive to reopen schools.

US-China conflict over TikTok intensifies as Trump’s forced divestiture deadline approaches

Kevin Reed

The aggressive move by the US to force the Chinese firm ByteDance to sell the video sharing app TikTok to an American company is intensifying as the September 15 deadline imposed by President Donald Trump for divestiture approaches.

Before boarding Air Force One for a trip to Kenosha, Wisconsin on Tuesday, the president reiterated to reporters the two conditions required for TikTok—which claims 100 million active users in the country—to continue to operate in the US.

“I told them they have until September 15 to make a deal—after that we close it up in this country,” Trump asserted, adding, “I said the United States has to be compensated, well compensated.”

While the forced divestiture of TikTok is contained in his executive order of August 6, Trump has not specified under what authority he has issued the compensation requirement. As reported by Bloomberg, government fee assessments on transactions of this type normally do not amount to more than $300,000, which “appear to fall short of what Trump has demanded.”

The imposition of massive fees to be paid to the US government for brokering the sale of the highly valued Chinese tech firm’s assets to an American owner—at bargain basement prices—is unprecedented and amounts to a White House-orchestrated fencing operation with TikTok as the loot.

This aspect of the Trump administration’s bullying of ByteDance has not been lost on the Chinese government, which has referred to the September 15 deadline as “a forced fire sale.”

Late Friday, China’s Commerce Ministry retaliated and imposed a new set of export controls on the country’s businesses, stating that artificial intelligence (AI) interface technologies such as speech and text recognition software and algorithms that analyze data and make personalized content recommendations are matters of national security.

It just so happens that AI and content recommendation tools are a core part of TikTok’s platform and success. In a June 18 blog post, TikTok explained some details of how these sophisticated technologies work: “When you open TikTok and land in your For You feed, you’re presented with a stream of videos curated to your interests, making it easy to find content and creators you love. This feed is powered by a recommendation system that delivers content to each user that is likely to be of interest to that particular user. Part of the magic of TikTok is that there’s no one For You feed—while different people may come upon some of the same standout videos, each person’s feed is unique and tailored to that specific individual.”

The core capability—and value—of the TikTok recommendation engine is not just its ability to analyze the previous behavior of users and serve up content that is specific to their interests. It is TikTok’s ability to predict future behavior that is the “holy grail” of social media advertising revenue because its compelling individualized content keeps users viewing their feed for longer and longer periods of time.

According to Eugene Wei, a tech startup investor from San Francisco, it is TikTok’s mastery of AI and “deep learning” that has made the platform a success. As Wei told the Wall Street Journal, “When you gaze into TikTok, TikTok gazes into you. To see it as merely a novelty meme video app for kids is to miss what is its much greater disruptive potential.”

The possibility that American companies can acquire these advanced systems at a fraction of their market value and without having to develop them from the ground up makes the acquisition of TikTok an especially attractive proposition. Facebook, for example—with its nearly 3 billion worldwide users and present stock market value of $850 billion—has only recently implemented a service called Reels on Instagram that emulates the capabilities of TikTok that have been in place for more than two years.

This fact is also clearly understood by the Chinese government and is the reason why Beijing has intervened with export rules to hold back this capability from a possible sale of the assets of the platform. According to the Journal, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a regular media briefing on Monday, that the US is using “economic-bullying and political-manipulation tactics against non-U.S. companies.”

The Trump administration’s emergency order threatening to shut down TikTok in the US is based on completely bogus and unproven national security claims that the Chinese-based company has been gathering the private information of American citizens and turning it over to Beijing state intelligence. The campaign is entirely motivated by the domestic and international political needs of the Trump administration for whipping up anti-Chinese sentiments within the US and prosecuting aggressive geostrategic goals aimed at suppressing the emergence of a major threat to American global hegemony.

The campaign against TikTok—along with the China-based WeChat mobile application—was initiated by Democratic Party leaders in Congress who began demanding in late 2019 along with their Republican counterparts that the app be banned among Transportation Safety Administration employees and US military personnel as a threat to national security.

The unity between the Democrats and Republicans on Trump’s xenophobic anti-Chinese economic measures is most clearly expressed by the New York Times, which has published a steady stream of articles that have applauded the forced sale of TikTok. In an article published on Monday, the Times takes a notably supportive position in relationship to the actions of the White House, noting, “If China does move to block TikTok’s sale, that could goad Mr. Trump into taking harsher action, further escalating tensions between the United States and China.”

On Monday, rumors that a sale of TikTok was imminent were being widely reported in the corporate business media. According to CNBC, the bidders for the platform included the software companies Microsoft and Oracle and the retailer Walmart. The report said, “Walmart emerged as a surprise contender last week, saying the social media app would augment its e-commerce efforts.”

However, unnamed individuals who are familiar with the negotiations said that the US government demanded that a tech company lead the offering and Walmart then entered into a consortium that included Alphabet (parent of Google and YouTube) and Softbank. When these two latter firms dropped out of the negotiations, Walmart teamed up with Microsoft.

The CNBC report said that a buyer had been selected to purchase TikTok’s US, New Zealand and Australian operations, and “Microsoft, in partnership with Walmart, and Oracle are the two top contenders. The sale price is expected to be in the range of $20 billion to $30 billion.”

Greek-Turkish standoff escalates war danger in eastern Mediterranean

Alex Lantier

The escalating confrontation in the eastern Mediterranean between Turkey and Greece has reached a new and dangerous stage. Top officials of NATO member states are openly threatening to wage war against one another in conflicts that could set the Mediterranean and the world ablaze.

Last Thursday, Turkish F-16 jets blocked Greek F-16s off Crete from overflying disputed zones of the eastern Mediterranean where Turkey is drilling for oil and gas. In July, Greek and Turkish naval flotillas steamed directly towards each other, avoiding a clash only at the last minute when Berlin intervened, calling Ankara and ordering the Turkish ships to change course. Tensions escalated in August, when France dispatched two warships and Rafale jets to back Greece.

The European Union (EU) foreign ministers meeting on Friday in Berlin marked a further shift to a more aggressive stance, backing Greece against Turkey. After the meeting, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borell said: “We are clear and determined in defending European Union interests and solidarity with Greece and Cyprus. Turkey has to refrain from unilateral actions.”

General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon Turkish (Image Credit: Robert Sullivan/Wikipedia)

Borell indicated the EU could adopt economic sanctions to strangle the Turkish economy later this month. While thanking “the efforts deployed by Germany in this attempt to look for solutions through dialogue between Turkey and Greece and Cyprus,” he expressed the EU’s “growing frustration” with Turkey and proposed sanctions against Turkish officials. He added that broader “restrictive measures could be discussed at the European Council on 24-25 September.”

In follow-up questions, Borell explained that the EU could target industries “in which the Turkish economy is more interrelated with the European economy.”

The same day, President Emmanuel Macron issued an extraordinary threat, comparing French deployments in Greece to the “red line” policy that saw France, Britain and the United States bomb Syria. This 2018 bombing, based on fraudulent allegations that the Syrian regime had used chemical weapons, led Moscow to accelerate its build-up of Syrian air defences.

Macron said his policy is based on the view that aggressive military action is the only way forward. “When it comes to Mediterranean sovereignty, I must be consistent in deeds and word,” he said. “I can tell you that the Turks only consider and respect that. If you say words that are not followed by acts ... What France did this summer was important: it’s a red line policy. I did it in Syria.”

Turkish officials responded this weekend by warning that the Greek policy backed by the EU could provoke war. They cited Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ threats to expand Greece’s exclusive economic zone from six to 12 miles—including around Greek islands directly off the coast of Turkey—and reports that Greece is strengthening its ground forces on these islands.

“This would be grounds for war, a casus belli,” declared Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, while Vice President Fuat Oktay said: “If it is not grounds for war, what is it?”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, “Their aim is to imprison our country, which has the longest coastline in the Mediterranean, into a coastal strip from which you can only catch fish with a rod.” Ankara has already staked out extensive maritime claims, blocking projected gas pipelines from Israel, via Cyprus and Greece, to Italy and the European mainland.

The eastern Mediterranean conflict is the outcome of decades of imperialist wars, particularly the NATO wars in Libya, Syria and Iraq since 2011. These wars plunged Libya into a decade-long civil war and triggered a devastating proxy war between NATO-backed militias and the Russian-, Chinese- and Iranian-backed regime in Syria. Now rivalries over undersea oil and gas have lit the fuse in a region that, as when World War I began in 1914, threatens to erupt into a regional and global war.

Both the Turkish and Greek governments, devastated by a decade of EU austerity, are unpopular and seeking to prop themselves up by inciting war fever. This policy unfolds, however, amid a swirling morass of global conflicts over markets and strategic advantage, similar to the economic rivalries that plunged Europe into World War I, that are relentlessly fueling the Mediterranean stand-off.

Geopolitically, the region is not only critical to efforts by the US and Europe to reassert their positions in the Middle East and Africa after their Syrian defeat, but also to Europe’s energy supply, and China’s attempts to build up trade ties to Europe via the Middle East in its Belt and Road Initiative.

It is widely acknowledged that the disintegration of US imperialism’s former hegemonic position is fueling the conflict. In an editorial board statement, “There’s a New Game of Thrones in the Mediterranean,” the New York Times pointed to the far-reaching implications of the collapse of US influence.

Stating that “only Germany seems to have the sway to mediate a return to sanity” in a “new and dangerous crisis,” it added: “In an earlier era, the United States would have stepped in to separate feuding NATO partners, as it did when Greece and Turkey almost went to war in 1996. President Trump did make a call to Mr. Erdogan urging him to negotiate, but that had no effect—the United States under the Trump administration is not regarded as a viable go-between...”

The Libyan war has, moreover, divided both Middle Eastern and European countries between backers of the Islamist regime in Tripoli, including Turkey, and those of warlord Khalifa Haftar in eastern Turkey along the Egyptian border.

In its article “How Europe is getting entangled in the big Middle East conflict,” the Turkish website Ahval notes: “On the one hand, there is the ‘revolutionary alliance’ of Turkey, Qatar, the Muslim Brothers, a regional movement, and Iran. On the other hand, we see the ‘status-quo entente’ of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel. … France, Greece, and Cyprus support the status-quo entente, while Spain and Malta seem more ready to support the revolutionary alliance, while Italy is jaywalking between the two, depending on the file.”

Riven by insoluble conflicts, the EU is apparently trying to unify itself around the most aggressive policy against Turkey. This weekend, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian invited his German counterpart, Heiko Maas, to address a meeting of French ambassadors held to prepare France’s EU presidency, which starts in 2022. Le Drian stated that France’s plans “would obviously be formulated to continue and complement the German presidency.”

Maas made clear that the critical question for the EU is to develop an aggressive, independent global policy amid the US war drive against China. “The United States looks at the rest of the world ever more directly through the lens of its rivalry with China,” he said. “In parallel, since Trump’s election, American readiness to play the role of a global power ensuring stability has fallen. We also know China is forcibly pressing its way into the geopolitical vacuum this has left behind, making facts on the ground and using methods that cannot be ours.”

On Turkey, Maas added, the EU foreign ministers meeting “made very clear that its destabilizing policy in Libya and the eastern Mediterranean cannot be further tolerated. European sovereignty protects the sovereignty of all member states, including Greece and Cyprus.”

Those arguing that German or European imperialism will peacefully adjudicate the Mediterranean conflicts are, however, placing heavy bets against history. Amid growing strikes and protests around the world against imperialist wars and official mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the critical question is the unification of the working class in a socialist, anti-war movement.

COVID-19 pandemic leads to huge spike in global hunger

Kevin Martinez

The COVID-19 pandemic is causing a world hunger crisis of historic proportions. Despite advances in agriculture and global food surpluses, an additional 132 million more people will go hungry than previously predicted this year. According to some projections, before the year’s end, more people will die every day from starvation brought about by the pandemic than from the disease itself.

As a result of the pandemic, immense amounts of food are being destroyed because of the breakdown in global food supply chains while workers and peasants have less money to purchase food with as a result of the global economic collapse. Though the pandemic has severely exacerbated the crisis, it should be noted that global hunger was already rising in the years before it struck. Now, every region of the world is experiencing mass hunger, including countries that were thought to be relatively secure such as in Europe and the United States.

Already by 2019, the number of severely undernourished people was close to 750 million, or almost one in ten people on the planet, the majority living in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. If one considers the number of “moderately” undernourished people as well in this figure, the total number of hungry in the world last year approached 2 billion people.

Children at an orphanage in Haiti (Image credit FMSC/Flickr)

Even without taking the pandemic into account, if previous world hunger trends continued, by 2030 the number of severely hungry, those who have run out of food, and have gone a day (or days) without eating, would have risen to 840 million people. If the current forecasts are supplemented with the impact of COVID-19, an additional 83 to 132 million people will go hungry in 2020 depending on the economic situation.

Should there be an economic upturn in 2021, the number of hungry would go down somewhat, but would be still above what was originally predicted without the virus.

Mariana Chilton, director of the Center for Hunger-Free Communities at Drexel University, told Bloomberg, “We’ll see the scars of this crisis for generations. In 2120, we’ll still be talking about this crisis.” Early United Nations forecasts predicted that around one in ten people on earth will not have enough to eat this year.

The charity Oxfam International estimated that by the end of 2020, some 12,000 people will die every day from hunger linked to COVID-19. This figure is based on a more than 80 percent increase in those experiencing crisis-level hunger. So far, more than 860,000 people worldwide have died directly from the novel coronavirus.

Even the mildest forms of food insecurity, experts warn, can have an immense toll on the human body. Lack of nutrition leads to a weak immune system and lower mobility and brain functioning. Hunger in children can lead to physical ailments that last for the rest of their lives.

COVID-19, in addition to triggering economic depression conditions for many workers around the world, has also disrupted global food supply chains. Restaurants that used to account for many food distributors’ business are no longer in operation, forcing farmers to dump valuable food crops or simply let them rot in the field. With no adequate infrastructure in many parts of the world, there are no readily available means by which this food can be redirected to those in need.

Don Cameron, a cabbage farmer from California, told Bloomberg, “We know other parts of the country need what we have here. But the infrastructure has not been set up, as far as I’m aware, to allow that. There are times when there is food available and it’s because of logistics that it doesn’t find a home.” Cameron ended up throwing away about 50,000 tons of his crop since local food banks “can only take so much cabbage.”

Even before the pandemic, the UN predicted hunger rising to 841 million people by 2030. With COVID-19, the number of undernourished will be closer to 909 million. Despite unprecedented wealth concentrated at the heights of society, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) requires $13 billion to deliver food in 83 countries but has a shortfall of $4.9 billion for the rest of the year.

Those living in the major food-producing regions of the world have not been spared hunger either. Latin America, which exports agriculture all over the world, is leading the surge in hunger this year based on the WFP’s analysis.

Despite the UN’s findings that there exists more than enough food to satisfy every person’s need, social inequality prevents many from eating well. In the US, the richest country in the world, some 2 percent of the population, more than 5 million people, cannot afford a healthy diet.

Another 3 million Americans are unable afford basic energy costs. The situation is even worse in India, where 78 percent of the population, more than 1 billion humans, cannot afford a healthy diet. These figures, of course, existed well before the onset of COVID-19.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization observed that the rate of hunger began to level off in recent decades but began to steadily climb in 2015 as a result of climate change and ongoing wars stoked by imperialism. However, the forecast now will see hunger rise in 2020 at a rate higher than the last five years combined.

In 2015, the UN committed itself to work toward a hunger-free world by 2030. Despite advances in food agriculture, distribution, and a slight downward shift in the number of undernourished throughout the world in the last few decades, the goal of a hunger-free world in less than 10 years is more remote than ever under the present circumstances.

The figures cited by Oxfam and the UN are a vindication of the analysis provided by the World Socialist Web Site that the pandemic was a “trigger event” that metastasized all the irrational and reactionary tendencies that already existed under world capitalism. Or as the UN’s report put it, “Economic conditions, structural imbalances and the inclusiveness of the policy framework interact with natural and man-made causes to trigger persisting poverty and hunger.”

The resources already exist to provide a global system of food logistics that guarantees everyone with an adequate amount of nutritious food every day, but they are being squandered on war and fattening up the stock portfolios of the rich. Only a planned economy built on socialist principles can eliminate the main cause of hunger in the world today, capitalism. This can only be achieved by expropriating the wealth of the ruling class and redirecting it toward providing for everyone’s needs, not private profit.

The profits of August

Nick Beams

Over 30,000 people died in the US last month from the COVID-19 pandemic, while corporations carried out mass layoffs amid soaring unemployment, hunger and poverty.

At the same time, the US stock market recorded its biggest increase for the month since 1986. All three major American stock indexes have risen for five consecutive months since plunging in mid-March. The benchmark S&P 500 index has risen 65 percent, its biggest five-month gain since 1938.

Last month saw the wealth of Amazon chief Jeff Bezos climb to $200 billion. Tesla became the world’s biggest car company by share value, as its market capitalization rose to $465 billion, taking the personal fortune of its chief executive, Elon Musk, to more than $100 billion. Apple became the first company in the world with a market capitalization of more than $2 trillion.

Since the Federal Reserve’s bailout of major corporations in March, Apple’s stock has more than doubled, while Tesla’s stock has risen more than six-fold.

These figures underscore the nature of the Wall Street bonanza. It is taking the form of what has been called a “K-shaped recovery,” in which a group of corporate giants enjoy massive profits, driven by the run-up in stock prices, while most of the economy stagnates.

In 1914, the rolling out of the guns of August at the outbreak of World War I marked the start of a process that saw arms manufacturers rake in millions in profits amid death and destruction, the like of which had never been seen.

Likewise, the COVID-19 pandemic, which has brought devastation to the working masses in the US and around the world, has served as the occasion for all arms of the capitalist state to be mobilised to organise the greatest-ever redistribution of wealth to the heights of society.

There are two immediate causes for the massive stock run-up in August. First, the Federal Reserve carried out a far-reaching change in how it evaluates the risk of inflation, with the aim of ensuring ultra-low interest rates in perpetuity.

The announcement by the Fed last week that it was changing its basic monetary policy framework to aim for an “average” inflation rate of two percent meant that it could refrain from raising rates even if inflation hit and surpassed the two percent mark, allowing it to continue injecting money into the financial markets through asset purchases. In other words, as the Wall Street Journal put it, “Low Rates Forever.”

But even more important was the cutoff of the weekly $600 extended unemployment benefit provided to unemployed US workers under the CARES Act passed in March, which both the Democratic and Republican parties simply allowed to expire. Bypassing Congress’s exclusive constitutional power to tax and spend, Trump signed an executive order last month restoring, for a limited period, part of the weekly benefit; but the move was largely symbolic, with most workers getting no additional relief.

The Trump administration, backed by the Democrats, has provided some $2 trillion to bail out the corporations while cutting off what limited aid was provided to workers. At the same time, the Fed has funneled $4 trillion into the financial system, functioning as the backstop for every financial market.

These measures are being accompanied by a murderous assault on the working class. The policy of governments around the world, spearheaded by the Trump administration, is to force workers back to work, no matter what the dangers to their health and lives, in order that profit accumulation can continue.

The fate of millions of workers who face destitution, including the prospect of being evicted in the coming weeks, is ignored. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden did not even bother to mention the cutoff of emergency unemployment benefits it in a major speech he delivered this week.

This is because the cutting off of federal aid directly serves the interests of the corporations and the financial aristocracy, whom the Democrats and Republicans serve.

In the period leading up to the pandemic, concerns were growing that the labour market was becoming “tight.” The COVID-19 outbreak has been seized upon to solve that problem. It has opened up the way for corporations to proceed with restructuring operations, based on making permanent what were initially announced as temporary layoffs, as well as lowering wages for those who remain and intensifying their exploitation.

While the orgy of speculation on Wall Street is hailed by Trump as indicating the power and strength of US capitalism, the run-up of the markets is an indication not of strength, but weakness.

In the post-World War II period, American and world capitalism rested on the strength of the US dollar. But the American dollar is being undermined by the endless supply of cheap money by the Fed. At the end of July, Goldman Sachs warned there were “real concerns” about the longevity of the US dollar as the world reserve currency, as well as the stability of the entire international monetary system, as governments debased their fiat currencies. These warnings have proliferated in the month since.

US capitalism is confronted by the confluence of mounting social, economic and political crises and the growth of social opposition centred in the working class. Every measure taken by the ruling class to respond to the crisis, grounded in the class interests of a parasitic oligarchy, has the effect only of exacerbating the crisis.

Up to this point, the response to the pandemic has been dominated by the social prerogatives of the ruling class. But another social force is entering onto the scene: the working class, which is increasingly coming into struggle against the ruling elite’s back-to-work campaign.

Capitalism’s homicidal response to the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed this bankrupt social order before the eyes of the entire world. As workers enter into struggle, they will take up the demand for the expropriation of the capitalist class and the socialist reorganization of society.

COVID-19 and the Future of Autocrats

John Feffer

The outbreak of COVID-19 initially looked like a gift to autocrats around the world. What better pretext for a state of emergency than a pandemic?

It was a golden opportunity to close borders, suppress civil society, and issue decrees left and right (mostly right). Donald Trump in the United States, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and others took advantage of the crisis to advance their me-first agendas and consolidate power. Best of all, they could count on the fear of infection to keep protestors off the streets.

However, as the global death toll approaches a million and autocrats face heightened criticism of their COVID responses, the pandemic is looking less and less like a gift.

The news from Mali, Belarus, and the Philippines should put the fear of regime change in the hearts of autocrats from Washington to Moscow. Despite all the recent signs that democracy is on the wane, people are voting with their feet by massing on the streets to make their voices heard, particularly in places where voting with their hands has not been honored.

The pandemic is not the only factor behind growing public disaffection for these strongmen. But for men whose chief selling point is strong leadership, the failure to contain a microscopic virus is pretty damning.

Yet, as the case of Belarus demonstrates, dictators do not give up power easily. And even when they do, as in Mali, it’s often military power, not people power, that fills the vacuum.

Meanwhile, all eyes are fixed on what will happen in the United States. Will American citizens take inspiration from the people of Belarus and Mali to remove their own elected autocrat?

People Power in Mali

Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (IBK) won the presidential election in Mali in 2013 in a landslide with 78 percent of the vote.

One of his chief selling points was a promise of  “zero tolerance” for corruption. Easier said than done. The country was notoriously corrupt, and IBK had been in the thick of it during his tenure as prime minister in the 1990s. His return to power was also marked by corruption — a $40 million presidential jet, overpriced military imports, a son with expensive tastes — none of which goes over well in one of the poorest countries in the world.

Mali is not only poor, it’s conflict-prone. It has been subject to military coups at roughly 20-year intervals (1968, 1991, 2012). Several Islamist groups and a group of Tuareg separatists have battled the central government — and occasionally each other — over control of the country. French forces intervened at one point to suppress the Islamists, and France has been one of the strongest backers of IBK.

Mali held parliamentary elections in the spring, the first since 2013 after numerous delays. The turnout was low, due to coronavirus fears and sporadic violence as well as the sheer number of people displaced by conflict. Radical Islamists kidnapped the main opposition leader, Soumaila Cisse, three days before the first round. After the second round, IBK’s party, Rally for Mali, claimed a parliamentary majority, but only thanks to the Constitutional Court, which overturned the results for 31 seats and shifted the advantage to the ruling party.

This court decision sparked the initial protests. The main protest group, Movement of June 5 — Rally of Patriotic Force, eventually called for IBK’s resignation, the dissolution of parliament, and new elections. In July, government security forces tried to suppress the growing protests, killing more than a dozen people. International mediators were unable to resolve the stand-off. When IBK tried to pack the Constitutional Court with a new set of friends, protestors returned to the street.

On August 18, the military detained IBK and that night he stepped down. The coup was led by Assimi Goita, who’d worked closely with the U.S. military on counterinsurgency campaigns. Instead of acceding to demands for early elections, however, the new ruling junta says that Malians won’t go to the polls before 2023.

The people of Mali showed tremendous courage to stand up to their autocrat. Unfortunately, given the history of coups and various insurgencies, the military has gotten used to playing a dominant role in the country. The United States and France are also partly to blame for lavishing money, arms, and training on the army on behalf of their “war on terrorism” rather than rebuilding Mali’s economy and strengthening its political infrastructure.

Mali is a potent reminder that one alternative to autocrats is a military junta with little interest in democracy.

Democracy in Action in Belarus

Alexander Lukashenko is the longest serving leader in Europe. He’s been the president of Belarus since 1994, having risen to power like IBK on an anti-corruption platform. He’s never before faced much of a political challenge in the country’s tightly controlled elections.

Until these last elections.

In the August 9 elections, Lukashenko was seeking his sixth term in office. He expected smooth sailing since, after all, he’d jailed the country’s most prominent dissidents, he presided over loyal security forces, and he controlled the media.

But he didn’t control Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. The wife of jailed oppositionist Sergei Tikhanovsky managed to unite the opposition prior to the election and brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets for campaign rallies.

Nevertheless, Lukashenko declared victory in the election with 80 percent of the vote (even though he enjoyed, depending on which poll you consult, either a 33 percent or a 3 percent approval rating). Tikhanovskaya fled to Lithuania. And that seemed to be that.

Except that the citizens of Belarus are not accepting the results of the election.

As many as 200,000 people rallied in Minsk this Sunday to demand that Lukashenko step down. In U.S. terms, that would be as if 6 million Americans gathered in Washington to demand Trump’s resignation. So far, Lukashenko is ignoring the crowd’s demand. He has tried to send a signal of defiance by arriving at the presidential palace in a flak jacket and carrying an automatic weapon. More recently, he has resorted to quiet detentions and vague promises of reform.

Just like the Republicans who appeared as speakers at the Democratic convention, key people are abandoning Lukashenko’s side. The workers at the Minsk Tractor Factory are on an anti-Lukashenko strike, and many other workers at state-controlled enterprises have walked off the job. Police are quitting. The ambassador to Slovakia resigned. The state theaters have turned against the autocrat for the first time in 26 years.

Despite COVID-19, Belarus doesn’t have any prohibitions against mass gathering. That’s because Lukashenko has been a prominent COVID-19 denialist, refusing to shut down the country or adopt any significant medical precautions. His recommendations: take a sauna and drink vodka. Like Boris Johnson and Jair Bolsonaro, Lukashenko subsequently contracted the disease, though he claims that he was asymptomatic. The country has around 70,000 infections and about 650 deaths, but the numbers have started to rise again in recent days.

There are plenty of oppositionists ready to usher in democratic elections once Lukashenko is out of the way. A new coordinating council launched this month includes former culture minister Pavel Latushko as well as prominent dissidents like Olga Kovalkova and Maria Kolesnikova.

Even strong backing from Russia won’t help Lukashenko if the whole country turns against him. But beware the autocrat who can still count on support from a state apparatus and a militant minority.

The End of Duterte? 

Nothing Rodrigo Duterte could do seemed to diminish his popularity in the Philippines. He insulted people left and right. He launched a war on drugs that left 27,000 alleged drug dealers dead from extrajudicial murders. Another 250 human rights defenders have also been killed.

Still, his approval ratings remained high, near 70 percent as recently as May.

But Duterte’s failure to deal with the coronavirus and the resulting economic dislocation may finally unseat him, if not from office then at least from the political imagination of Filipinos.

The Philippines now has around 200,000 infections and 3,000 deaths. Compared to the United States or Brazil, that might not sound like much. But surrounding the Philippines are countries that have dealt much more successfully with the pandemic: Thailand (58 deaths), Vietnam (27 deaths), Taiwan (7 deaths). Meanwhile, because of a strict lockdown that didn’t effectively contain the virus, the economy has crashed, and the country has entered its first recession in 29 years.

Like Trump, Duterte has blamed everyone but himself for the country’s failings, even unleashing a recent tirade against medical professionals. But Duterte’s insult politics is no longer working. As sociologist and former member of the Philippines parliament Walden Bello observes at Foreign Policy In Focus, “The hundreds of thousands blinded by his gangster charisma in the last 4 years have had the scales fall from their eyes and are now asking themselves how they could possibly have fallen in love with a person whose only skill was mass murder.”

In the Philippines, presidents serve one six-year term, and Duterte is four years into his. He may well attempt to hold on for two more years. He might even pull a Putin and change the constitution so that he can run again. A group of Duterte supporters recently held a press conference to call for a “revolutionary government” and a new constitution. Another possibility, in the wake of recent bombings in southern Philippines, might be a declaration of martial law to fight Abu Sayyaf, which is linked to the Islamic State.

But the combination of the pandemic, the economic crash, and a pro-China foreign policy may turn the population against Duterte so dramatically that he might view resignation as the only way out.

Democracy in the Balance

Plenty of autocrats still look pretty comfortable in their positions. Vladimir Putin — or forces loyal to him — just engineered the poisoning of one of his chief rivals, Alexei Navalny. Xi Jinping has just about turned Chinese politics into a one-man show. Viktor Orbán has consolidated his grip on power in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has suppressed or co-opted the opposition parties in Turkey, and Bashar al-Assad has seemingly weathered the civil war in Syria.

Even Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, despite an atrocious record on both the pandemic and the economy, has somehow managed to regain some popularity, with his approval rating nudging above his disapproval rating recently for the first time since April.

The U.S. presidential elections might tip the balance one way or the other. Although America still represents a democratic ideal for some around the world, that’s not the reason why the November elections matter. Donald Trump has so undermined democratic norms and institutions that democrats around the world are aghast that he hasn’t had to pay a political price. He escaped impeachment. His party still stands behind him. Plenty of his associates have gone to jail, but he has not (yet) been taken down by the courts.

That leaves the court of public opinion. If voters return Trump to office for a second term, it sends a strong signal that there are no penalties for ruining a democracy. Trump operates according to his own Pottery Barn rule: he broke a democracy and he believes that he now owns it. If voters agree, it will gladden the hearts of ruling autocrats and authoritarians-to-be all over the world.

Voting out Trump may not simply resuscitate American democracy. It may send a hopeful message to all those who oppose the Trump-like leaders in their lands.

Those leaders may have broken democracy, but we the people still own it.

UAE Geopolitical Gamble Keeps Palestinian Peace Prospects on Life Support

James M. Dorsey

The decision by the UAE to establish diplomatic relations with Israel keeps a negotiated solution with Palestine on life support. There is no indication that forging relations with Israel will be more successful in nudging the Jewish state towards peace with Palestine on mutually acceptable terms than the failed formula of offering Arab recognition in exchange for peace was.

Like it or not, the United Arab Emirates may have done the Palestinians a favor by forging diplomatic ties with Israel. On the face of it, the agreement deprives the Palestinians of a perceived trump card: Arab recognition in return for Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied during the 1967 Middle East war even if it has not proven to be much of an asset.

Historically, forging diplomatic relations with the Jewish state has not been a magic wand to resolve a seemingly intractable dispute.

The carrot of recognition has not helped solve the Palestinians’ problem 72 years after they were first displaced by Israeli occupation and independence and despite the conclusion of peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan—two states that, unlike the UAE, had and still have a direct stake in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Nor did it stop US President Donald J. Trump from accepting the legitimacy of annexation of occupied Palestinian land.

Nevertheless, the UAE move contributes to salvaging options for a peace settlement that could be acceptable to both Palestinians and Israelis.

Most importantly, it has helped take immediate Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank off the table by giving Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu the opportunity to temporarily set aside his pledge to incorporate Palestinian land before the November US presidential election without being seen as caving in to American pressure.

To be sure, Mr. Netanyahu has suspended not cancelled plans for annexation in exchange for UAE recognition.

The reality is, however, that Mr. Netanyahu or whoever will eventually succeed him will unlikely get a US green light in the foreseeable future irrespective of who wins the American presidential election.

Neither Mr. Trump nor his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, will want to jeopardize evolving relations between Israel and Arab states that annexation no doubt would disrupt.

What that does is keep options open; it does not open doors, nor does it create the basis for renewed peace negotiations. The UAE has all but officially embraced Mr. Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan that explicitly endorses the principle of annexation – a non-negotiable non-starter for Palestinians.

In other words, Israelis and Palestinians will have to resolve their dispute themselves. External powers cannot do it for them. However, external powers can help ensure that Israelis and Palestinians have options and shape an environment that would be conducive to a peace process.

And that is where the problems start. Four decades of primarily US-led mediation efforts, often involving non-starters, have produced at best a seemingly intractable stalemate in which Israel has the upper hand.

Blame for the failure goes round.

Successive US administrations have favored Israel and been reluctant to sufficiently pressure it to enable a viable solution.

Israeli governments diverged in their sincerity in adopting a two-state solution, with Mr. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving head of government, making it clear that he does not want a truly independent Palestinian state to emerge. In fact, he has redefined the concept as one perceived by Palestinians as a Bantustan at best.

Similarly, Palestinians proved to be their own worst enemies. A corrupt Palestine Authority prioritized its own vested interests.

Palestinians, moreover, were divided between Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas’ Fatah movement — that clings to the hope of some miracle that will get decades of peace talks back on track — and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip.

Stripped of its rhetoric, Hamas essentially argues that the Palestine Authority’s strategy of surrendering its trump cards – recognition of Israel and abandonment of the legitimacy of political violence – has not persuaded Israel to make the minimal concessions needed.

Those include an end to Israeli settlement policy in the West Bank, a Palestinian administrative stake in East Jerusalem, and an agreement on the final borders between Israel and Palestine based on the pre-1967 war frontiers, albeit modified by land swaps that recognize facts on the ground.

The UAE’s halting annexation for now and keeping the door to negotiations open constitutes a gamble. The primary risk is grey swans or predictable disruptions, not black swans or unpredictable events.

The biggest risk beyond an Israeli decision at some point to move forward with annexation is West Bank protest against Israeli policy to which Israel responds with a heavy hand and military escalation in Gaza.

Palestinian protest is almost a given in a world that has just ended a decade of defiance and dissent, with the 2011 and 2019/2020 popular Arab revolts as its centerpiece and the prospect of global social unrest in the 2020s as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the worst worldwide economic downturn since World War Two. Add to this the worldwide awareness of entrenched social injustice and racial inequality.

Protest is likely whatever happens. With hope for a two-state solution fading, the alternatives are a one-state solution or continued occupation. Both are potential drivers of social unrest.

Israeli warplanes pounded Gaza, one of the world’s most densely populated regions blockaded by Israel as well as Egypt, on a nightly basis as Israeli and Emirati diplomats finalized terms of their establishment of diplomatic relations. The bombings were in response to the firing of rockets and flying of balloon bombs from Gaza into Israel.

Potentially, heavy-handed Israeli responses to Palestinian protest and Gaza attacks could put the UAE in an uncomfortable position.

With freedom of expression in the UAE and much of the Gulf severely repressed and in the absence of credible public opinion polls, it is hard to assess public empathy for the Palestinians.

A rare poll in Saudi Arabia by a credible non-Saudi polling company showed that the Palestinian issue ranked second after Iran among foreign policy concerns of the kingdom’s public. It is fair to assume that the UAE would not be much different.

While UAE-based tweeters overwhelmingly welcomed the UAE’s outreach to Israel, it was left to Emiratis abroad to be more critical.

“The dustbin of history accommodates all traitors, whatever their names and the names of their families,” tweeted an Emirati activist in exile.

The UAE may hope that diplomatic relations will enable it to nudge Israel towards credible peace negotiations with the Palestinians, in part by empowering Palestinian leaders beholden to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed.

It is a strategy that the United States adopted for much of the past four decades with little result. It’s not clear why the UAE would succeed where others have failed.