New York yellow cab drivers block bridges to demand debt relief

Shuvu Batta

In the late morning and early afternoon Thursday, caravans of taxis blocked the Brooklyn Bridge and Queensboro Bridge in New York City, bringing traffic to a halt on two of the major entrances to Manhattan. Taxi drivers staged the protest to demand a lightening of their immense debt burdens.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened the financial catastrophe facing these drivers. As of June, 75 percent of drivers were off the job due to a lack of demand for taxis. Since then, ridership has remained low, with business districts still nearly empty, many Manhattan residents departing for other locales and tourism non-existent.

NY taxi drivers protesting on the Brooklyn Bridge [Credit: Twitter/@NYTWA]

Yellow cab drivers in New York City operate under a system based on medallions, expensive vehicle permits, which had also served as a means for financial speculation. The cost of a medallion had grown to $1.3 million in 2014, before dropping precipitously with the explosion of rideshare services in the city. Medallions now go for under $100,000.

Across the industry, drivers are locked into massive loans, with no way to generate enough income to pay off their debt. Tragically, this has led to a wave of suicides. One case was that of Doug Shifter, a 61-year-old limousine driver who wrote in a Facebook post shortly before his suicide, “I worked 100-120 consecutive hours almost every week for the past fourteen-plus years. When the industry started in 1981, I averaged 40-50 hours. I cannot survive any longer with working 120 hours!...This is SLAVERY NOW. … I don’t know how else to try to make a difference other than a public display of a most private affair.”

The pandemic has worsened an already dire situation, leaving drivers wholly reliant on government support to pay off their loans and meet living expenses. On July 25, the $600 weekly supplement to unemployment benefits from the federal government ended, putting drivers in an impossible situation.

Bill de Blasio, New York’s Democratic mayor, had early on indicated that his administration would do nothing to help workers unable to pay their bills. “Before this pandemic, we were dealing with a really profound problem for yellow-cab drivers, green cab drivers, for-hire vehicles, everyone had gone through so much…Everything got stopped because of the coronavirus and obviously we, the city of New York, do not have resources for any kind of direct bailout,” he said in a morning press conference in late June.

The New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA), which covers over 21,000 taxi and rideshare drivers, including Uber and Lyft drivers in New York City, launched the protest action to continue their “Medallion Debt Forgiveness Campaign” that started July 5. Facing growing militancy and a determination to fight on the part of rank-and-file drivers, the union is attempting to divert this energy towards “pressuring” the city and Congress to restructure the drivers’ debts.

The parasites responsible for the unbearable debt burdens of drivers are the financial oligarchy, who have made a fortune off of restructuring the transportation industry by the super exploitation of rideshare drivers. They are also moving to extract whatever profits they can from the collapsing yellow cab sector.

Marblegate Asset Management became the largest holder of taxi loans in February of this year, purchasing 3,500 medallion loans for $350 million at an auction. Despite a raging pandemic that has killed over 200,000 US residents and crippled the world economy, the finance firm has required at least 2,000 medallions owners to pay $1,500 per month on their debt. The firm, alongside the entire capitalist class, has the full backing of local, state and federal governments, staffed by Democratic Party and Republican Party politicians that are loyal to their interests.

Deeply concerned with the rising fighting spirit of the working class, more than 150 leaders of New York City’s corporate and financial chiefs sent a letter to Mayor de Blasio last Thursday, insisting on ruthless measures to defend the interests of big business.

The protest action by yellow cab drivers is occurring in the context of growing militancy in the working class. Massive opposition has emerged among educators to the reckless reopening of schools, including in New York City, where the mayor has twice delayed the start of in-person classes. Workers at universities have gone on strike in Michigan and Illinois. Rank-and-file safety committees of autoworkers, teachers and other workers have formed over the past few months to organize a fight for safe working conditions.

Instead of pushing to broaden the struggle of yellow cab drivers, the NYTWA has isolated these workers. The union has separate campaigns for Uber, Lyft and yellow cab drivers even though these workers serve in the same industry and perform the same essential task. The sole focus of these campaigns has been to promote the illusion that Democratic Party politicians will fight for workers’ interests.

This ignores the fact that the Democratic Party is an arm of the corporate and financial elite that is responsible for attacking workers. As tens of millions of unemployed and underpaid workers have been starved of unemployment benefits and left unable to pay their debts and bills, the Federal Reserve has provided over $3 trillion to the financial markets to stave off a collapse. In effect, the government and its appendages have no shortage of funds when it comes to helping companies like Marblegate Asset Management, but meanwhile leave workers like yellow-cab drivers to starve.

The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party urge yellow cab drivers, Uber and Lyft drivers to organize themselves in rank-and-file committees independent of the unions and the two corporate-controlled political parties, following the lead of teachers and autoworkers, to wage a united struggle against their common enemy, the corporations and Wall Street banks. We encourage all workers to contact the WSWS for more information about forming rank-and-file committees.

Wildfires threaten drinking water and further desertification of US West Coast

Linda Rios

Over 5 million acres have burned through the fire-ravaged states of the West Coast of the United States over the last month. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, 21 major fires are still burning in California, 12 in Oregon and 8 in Washington state.

Thousands of homes and other buildings have been burned to the ground, with estimates of the dead between 33 to 35, and many more missing as hundreds of thousands have been forced to evacuate their homes from Washington to California.

A firefighter lost his life on Thursday, battling the fires in Yucaipa, California, bringing the total deaths in the state to 26. An older couple was also found dead amid the remains of their home in Butte County. The couple decided not to evacuate after hearing that the fire blazing near their home was 51 percent contained. In total, over 3.4 million acres have burned, and over 6,200 structures have been destroyed in the state.

The Oregon wildfires have killed at least 10 people, and 22 remain missing. One million acres have burned and 1,145 homes and 579 other buildings are destroyed. One person has been confirmed dead in Washington state. Over 800,000 acres have burned, and 195 homes and 223 buildings have been destroyed.

A thick layer of toxic smoke and ash continues to blanket the Pacific Northwest in what is considered by IQAir as the worst air quality in the world, with the poisonous air now having made its way across the country to Washington D.C. and New York and even across the Atlantic Ocean, with smoke visible in Europe.

With the rise in noxious smoke particles infiltrating the air, hospitals on the West Coast are starting to see a significant increase in the number of conditions related to respiratory and heart conditions. A report by the Hill yesterday confirms that the Stanford Health Care system, based in northern California, has seen a 12 percent increase in hospital admissions. Forty-three percent of these hospitalizations were due to an increase in strokes, as well as other cerebrovascular incidents, triggered by the levels of toxins in the air, quite possibly increasing levels of inflammation in the body. There has been a 14 percent increase in the number of heart patients being seen for aggravated conditions, 18 percent increase for kidney conditions, and 17 percent increase in asthma conditions, according to the Guardian.

Oregon’s air quality is still one of the worst in the world, with the state’s Air Quality Index noting that several cities in the state have a level well above the 500 mark, with 301 to 500 considered hazardous to human health. The smoke emitted from the fires compromises the immune systems of those with preexisting health conditions, as well as healthy individuals, compounding their risk for contracting and succumbing to COVID-19.

In addition to having to inhale the noxious smoke-filled air while simultaneously attempting to dodge contracting the deadly coronavirus at every turn, residents will have another challenge to contend with long after the fires have been put out: the erosion of scorched land which, in turn, will have a dangerous impact on the quality of drinking water and threaten soil fertility—conditions which can create a second dust bowl.

Fires which burn close to the ground at high temperatures leave the ground in a nitrogen-depleted state and have the potential to destroy microorganisms vital to the chemical composition and bioavailability in the soil. These organisms, known as nitrogen-fixing bacteria, are responsible for capturing nitrogen in the atmosphere into a form of “fixed” nitrogen that is pulled into the ground and is easily utilized by plants.

Ecological scientists explain that it can take years for the soil’s microbiome to be restored after a major fire, with the full regeneration of lost trees and vegetation taking decades to centuries. However, the warmer temperatures associated with climate change and lack of shade—usually provided by trees and other vegetation, cooling the ground—can prevent vegetation from growing back without human intervention, drying out the land permanently, a process which is known among ecologists as desertification.

The destruction and erosion of forest lands and other ecosystems in the wake of wildfires also pose the threat to humans and the environment in the form of landslides and run-off, which also have the potential to pollute drinking water. Additionally, valuable infrastructure used to distribute water can be damaged or destroyed.

Water contamination due to run-off after wildfires can significantly slow down the production of treated water, impacting the rate at which drinking water can be made available. Stuart Khan, a professor at the University of New South Wales, whose background is in Environmental Engineering, told Inside Climate News (ICN), “If we have a lot of sediment come through, then we spend lots of time backwashing and less time providing drinking water, which can lead to shortages.”

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) reports that approximately 80 percent of the US’s freshwater comes from forestland watersheds. In the US, at least 3,400 communities rely on public drinking water that is produced by these watersheds.

When these source water supplies become contaminated due to chemical run-off or damage sustained to the water delivery system, many water-supplying agencies are forced to turn to their stored water supplies, which is not only of lower quality, and requires pretreatment, but is also costly. The USGS points out, “Unfortunately, the unpredictable nature of wildfire makes it challenging to develop treatment-plant-specific strategies for treating source water degraded by the effects of wildfire.”

Dr. Monica Emelko, director of the Water Science, Technology and Policy group at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, told ICN, “Wildfire is going to affect water. And it’s going to cost, and it’s going to be bad,” adding, “We can make water safe to drink in the Space Station, so it’s possible to make safe drinking water. The question is: how much do you want to pay for it?” As ICN indicates, “it’s difficult and expensive for many communities whose water treatment systems were not built for such emergencies.”

Capitalism, which plunders and pollutes the globe for immediate gains and the pursuit of profits, has created and exacerbated climate change which has set the Americas ablaze from the Pacific Northwest to Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.

Capitalist profit interests have undermined efforts to prepare for wildfire disasters which are only growing worse under the influence of human-induced climate change. Similarly, nothing has been done to implement the necessary water disaster preparedness plans to protect the sources which supply millions of people. The only way to stop the damaging effects of climate change and its catastrophic consequences is through an international struggle for socialism, and the expropriation of the world’s wealthy elite, to meet the needs of society and to restore the health of the global ecosystem.

Political crisis in the Philippines intensifies

John Malvar

The political crisis in the Philippines has reached a very advanced stage. Mass anger over catastrophic social conditions, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is emerging alongside machinations within rival sections of the elite for the removal of President Rodrigo Duterte. The possibility of a constitutional coup against Duterte, through the withdrawal of military support for his presidency and the installation of Vice President Leni Robredo in his place, is being openly discussed.

Duterte took office in 2016, with more support from the wealthiest layers of Philippines society than any other candidate. A substantial majority of the middle, upper middle, and upper class voted for Duterte according to exit polls. These social layers were enthusiastic about Duterte’s law-and-order agenda, including his promise to violently suppress the poor through a “war on drugs.” His right-wing, fascistic rhetoric appealed to them as a means of preventing the emergence of social unrest, which would jeopardize their property interests.

US soldiers training Philippines troops in “counter-terror” tactics [Credit: US embassy of the Philippines]

While Duterte’s own party held very little clout in the legislature after the election, by the time of his inauguration, he was backed by a legislative super-majority of unprecedented size, comprising nearly every elite party in the country.

Duterte also received the enthusiastic backing of the national democratic movement, the wide range of parties and sectoral organizations that follow the political line of the Stalinist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). The Makabayan Coalition, the legislative umbrella organization of the national democratic movement, pledged support for Duterte and contributed to his super-majority.

That a substantial portion of the ruling elite is now turning against Duterte is a result of two basic developments.

First, in an attempt to develop the notoriously poor conditions of Philippine infrastructure, which have long stunted the expansion of capital investment, Duterte has turned to China for loans to fund his “Build Build Build” program. However, Washington’s aggressive moves against Beijing in the South China Sea and throughout the region, have made it impossible to placate US imperialism and improve ties with China. Duterte has thus downplayed the Philippine claim to the disputed waters in the South China Sea, and ended involvement in some of the most aggressive US war games in the region.

The Philippines was a colony of US imperialism for fifty years, and the political and economic power of the elite has been built around the economic interests of its former colonial master. As Duterte reoriented the alignment of Philippine foreign policy away from Washington, layers of the elite most closely tied to Washington became increasingly displeased.

Second, despite his fascistic war on drugs and the imposition of martial law in the southern island of Mindanao, Duterte has proven incapable of stemming the mounting tide of social unrest. Mass anger at inequality, and the callous indifference of the state to the immense suffering of the population, under conditions of the pandemic, have produced a social powder keg. The ruling-class opposition is looking to shore up the power of the state, under a semblance of competent leadership, by removing the increasingly despised Duterte.

These concerns are doubtless shared by sections of the top military brass. The Philippine military was built from the ground up by Washington, and many of its leadership graduated from West Point, or received training in Annapolis. Their loyalty is ultimately to Washington. Sections of the officer corps have demonstrated repeatedly over the past three decades that they will attempt to carry out a coup d’état, if they disagree with the policies of the civilian government.

The political crisis centers around Vice President Leni Robredo, a leading member of the opposition Liberal Party. The Philippine constitution mandates the selection of the President and Vice President, not through a party slate, but on the basis of the highest vote-getter for each office. The vice president almost invariably winds up as the political rival of the president and, in times of unrest, the focus of elite opposition turns to the removal of the president and installation of the vice president, via a constitutional coup.

Duterte has gone on the offensive. He has shut down ABS-CBN, the largest media company in the country, which operated television and radio networks, and has refused to renew its franchise. The network, which was associated with the political opposition, was issued with cease-and-desist orders in late May, and compelled to end all broadcasts.

The pro-Robredo faction is seeking to build on the historical precedent established in 2001, when the former president, Joseph Estrada, was removed. Mobilized against the president on the basis of corruption charges, a largely middle-class protest movement demanded Estrada’s ouster. The most influential sections of the business community had issued statements calling for his removal.

The tide turned against Estrada when his Defense Secretary and the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, along with various heads of the military and police, announced that they were withdrawing support from the president and backing the installation of the vice president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. A mass resignation of cabinet secretaries followed. Estrada abdicated and Arroyo took up the reins of power.

This was a constitutional coup and its center was the shifting support of the military. There are strong indications that the elite opposition is now angling to repeat this pattern by inducing the military to withdraw its support for Duterte and arrange the installation of Robredo.

At the center of these machinations is the Stalinist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the range of organizations that follow its political line, in the national democratic movement. The CPP played a critical role in whipping up support for the removal of Estrada and in stabilizing the newly installed Arroyo administration, denouncing attacks on Arroyo during the first year of her presidency.

The CPP is a nationalist organization founded on the program of Stalinism. It insists that the tasks of the revolution in the Philippines are not yet socialist in character, but national and democratic only. A section of the capitalist class will therefore, they argue, play a progressive role. Unsurprisingly, the party’s history has consisted in an uninterrupted series of attempted alliances with different factions of the elite. The enthusiastic support that the party extended to Duterte in 2016 was an expression of this program.

The founder and ideological leader of the CPP, Jose Maria Sison, has issued repeated statements over the past half year, ruminating on how to remove Duterte from office. In a talk delivered to the International League of People’s Struggles (ILPS) on September 11, Sison outlined the scenario: a military coup.

Sison declared that a majority of military officers were either “patriotic or pro-US,” and that these two factions constituted the basis for the withdrawal of military support from Duterte. The role of a mass movement of workers and youth in this schema would be to encourage the military to withdraw its support.

In a statement written in February, Sison claimed that certain police and military officers, whom he referred to as “patriotic elements,” and his “comrades,” had informed him that they believed that “a broad united front of mass actions” was needed before the military would move. Sison stated that “the anti-Duterte groups in the military and police will not act against Duterte unless they see protest mass actions, with hundreds of thousands of participants in the national capital region.”

The CPP’s long-standing pretext for the concessions and support that it provides to its elite allies is that these are a necessary component of peace negotiations. Julie de Lima, interim chair of the peace panel of the National Democratic Front of the CPP, announced on September 18 that the party would begin engaging in peace talks, not with the president, but with Robredo and the Liberal Party.

She called on all “democratic forces to build the broadest united front” behind these arrangements with Robredo, and held out the possibility of the “ouster” of Duterte.

The role of Stalinism is to attempt to bring about an alignment between the emerging struggles of workers, young people and the oppressed masses of the Philippines, on the one hand, and a section of the elite, on the other. This constitutes a fundamental betrayal and subordinates the interests of the working class to its enemy, the bourgeoisie.

There is no section of the elite in the Philippines interested in defending democracy or advancing the interests of the working masses. The Liberal Party opposition, currently being promoted by the CPP, was allied to Duterte in 2013. The CPP itself backed Duterte in 2016.

The only means for workers, young people and the oppressed masses of the Philippines to fight against dictatorship and defend themselves against the attacks on their lives by the fascistic Duterte, is by breaking from the CPP and its Stalinist politics. Workers have their own interests, independent of every section of the capitalist class. The fight to defend these interests requires the struggle for socialism and internationalism.

US, Colombia stage war games as Pompeo threatens Venezuela

Bill Van Auken

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began a three-day tour of Latin America Thursday, visiting all of the countries bordering Venezuela—Colombia, Brazil and Guyana—along with neighboring Suriname. The trip has been organized to coincide with joint US-Colombian war on the Colombia’s northern Caribbean coast. These actions are clearly directed at escalating aggression against Venezuela in the run-up to the November elections in the US.

The thuggish US secretary of state is also using his tour to further a global crusade against China as military tensions between Washington and Beijing in the South China Sea and over Taiwan continue to escalate.

Pompeo’s trip began with stops in Suriname and Guyana, where he met not only with the newly elected presidents of the two countries, Chan Santokhi and Irfaan Ali, respectively, but also the local representatives of US energy conglomerates and mining companies.

US and Colombian paratroopers [Credit: Sgt. Andrea Salgado-Rivera]

Both countries’ economies have grown as the result of the discovery of large off-shore oil reserves. ExxonMobil, which found the reserves off the coast of Guyana in 2015, began production in December of last year under an arrangement that grants the country only 50 percent of the proceeds, an exploitative arrangement that has been widely criticized by Guyanese.

Speaking in Suriname’s capital of Paramaribo, Pompeo declared it an “exciting time” for the economy, referring to the oil reserves, while arguing that the country should align its interests with the US rather than China.

“We’ve watched the Chinese Communist Party invest in countries, and it all seems great at the front end and then it all comes falling down when the political costs connected to that becomes [sic] clear,” he said.

Both Suriname and Guyana have been invited by Beijing to join its global Belt and Road trade and infrastructure initiative, and both have significant amounts of Chinese investment. The presidents of both countries were circumspect in addressing Pompeo’s anti-China campaign. “It was not a topic of discussion, so it is not a question of making choices,” Santokhi said.

Asked whether Suriname’s government would allow the US to use its territory to mount military operations against Venezuela, Santokhi again stated that the question was not discussed, and that “Suriname is of the view that the political leaders in Venezuela have to principally resolve their internal matters.”

Pompeo then flew on to a lightening three-and-a-half-hour stopover in Brazil’s Amazonian state of Roraima, participating in a photo-op at an intake center for Venezuelan refugees in the state capital of Boa Vista and then holding a meeting with his Brazilian counterpart, Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo.

The US secretary of state used the visit to feign concern for the millions of Venezuelans who have left their country. The overwhelming majority have done so because of the catastrophic decline of the Venezuelan economy under the impact of plummeting oil prices, a US sanctions regime tantamount to a state of war and the capitalist policies pursued by the so-called “Bolivarian Socialist” government of President Nicolas Maduro, which defends the interests of a parasitic financial oligarchy.

For Pompeo to posture as the savior of refugees goes beyond hypocrisy. Thousands of Venezuelans who have attempted to enter the US claiming asylum have been sent back across the border into the squalid tent camps and dangerous border cities of Mexico to wait indefinitely for their cases to be heard. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is attempting to deport some 400,000 refugees from countries like El Salvador and Haiti, admitted under the temporary protected status (TPS) program, many of whom have been living in the US for decades, with US born children. And a recent whistleblower complaint has revealed conditions resembling “an experimental concentration camp” at an immigrant detention center where women were subjected to forced sterilization through hysterectomies.

Appearing with Araujo at a press conference held at an airbase outside Boa Vista, Pompeo said “we’re going to throw him out of there,” referring to Maduro, and declared that it was Washington’s mission to “assure that Venezuela has a democracy.”

Araujo, who has described climate change an invention of “cultural Marxists” to undermine Western economies and boost China, is ideologically aligned with the Trump administration and the extreme right in the US. Both governments have pursued criminally negligent and homicidal policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with equally disastrous results. Brazil has recorded the second highest death toll—over 135,000—in the world, trailing only the US, and the third highest number of cases, after the US and India, some 4.5 million.

The ravages of the worldwide pandemic far from diminishing, have only intensified US imperialism’s drive toward military aggression in pursuit of global hegemony.

In Venezuela, the Trump administration continues to maintain the fiction that the self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó represents the legitimate government, despite his lack of any significant popular support and his repeated failures in bringing about the regime change demanded by his controllers in Washington.

Most of the country’s right-wing opposition has abandoned Guaidó and his corrupt clique, some of it announcing participation in parliamentary elections set for December, despite Washington having declared them illegitimate before the fact. This has only led the Maduro government to turn further to the right, pardoning last month over 100 rightists who engaged in attempted coups and terror plots, in hopes of forging some kind of national unity accord with the aid of the European Union and Turkey. Even while granting impunity to the rightists, the Maduro government has continued to ruthlessly repress strikes and social protest from below.

Washington has no interest in any such compromise, however. It continues to insist on regime change and maintain that military intervention is an option that remains “on the table.”

This crucial component of US policy was made clear in the last leg of Pompeo’s trip, with his arrival in Bogota, Colombia late Friday for talks with the country’s right-wing President Ivan Duque. The visit coincided with US-Colombian joint military exercises dubbed “Operation Poseidon,” involving joint air operations along with naval exercises simulating “the interdiction, interception and neutralization of illicit maritime targets.”

These exercises, like the US deployment of warships and other assets in the Caribbean ordered by the Trump administration last April, are being carried out under the pretense of combatting drug trafficking. Washington has ludicrously tried to paint Venezuela as the main source of the drug flow to the US, when its own agencies have long acknowledged that Colombia accounts for the bulk of the drug traffic, which flows not through the Caribbean, but up the Pacific coast and through Central American countries, also ruled by right-wing governments aligned with Washington.

The exercises have drawn widespread denunciations in Colombia, whose courts had ruled that Duque overstepped his constitutional authority in inviting US troops back into the country in June without the approval of the country’s Senate.

Colombia has been rocked by mass protests against a brutal police murder, resulting in the massacre of 15 civilians. As Pompeo arrived in Bogotá, police were carrying out raids and arrests against oppositionists in a bid to intimidate the population in advance of nationwide protests and strikes planned for Monday.

The threat of a war against Venezuela is intimately bound up with Washington’s simultaneous threats of military aggression against Iran, which like the South American country is suffering under the weight of a US “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign. This connection has been made explicit with the Trump administration’s naming of Elliott Abrams as the “Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela,” after the former US envoy on Iran, Brian Hook, quit his post last month.

In a press briefing Wednesday, Abrams said that Washington will unveil punishing new sanctions against both countries in the coming days. This includes the US pretense that it has the power to invoke the “snapback” provision of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, reinstating UN sanctions that were lifted when Tehran struck its deal with the major powers. The UN Security Council has rejected the US position, insisting that Washington, having unilaterally abrogated the accord, has no standing to reinstate UN sanctions, which include the indefinite reimposition of a ban on conventional weapons sales to Iran, which is set to expire next month.

The media has failed to note the irony of Abrams serving as the champion of such sanctions, having been charged with felonies in the 1980s for his role in the Iran-contra affair, which involved illegal US arms sales to Iran to fund the illicit CIA-backed contra war against Nicaragua.

In his press conference, Abrams denounced Venezuela for having “turned to another international pariah, Iran, shipping it gold to buy gasoline.” Iran has shipped both gasoline and condensate, a natural gas needed to turn Venezuela’s crude oil into gasoline. Last month, Washington claimed to have intercepted four ships carrying Iranian gasoline to Venezuela. The UAE, Oman and UK-based owners of the cargo shipped on Greek-owned tankers are suing the US government, insisting that the fuel was bound for Trinidad, destined for sale to Colombia and Peru.

Abrams told reporters Wednesday that the US is “watching what Iran is doing” in relation to fuel shipments to Venezuela. Washington’s stepped-up sanctions against both countries and the threat of a US military hijacking of Iranian vessels on the high seas poses the danger of a new and catastrophic war.

Johnson government opposes national lockdown despite exponential rise in UK coronavirus cases

Robert Stevens

A vast swathe of Britain is now under local lockdowns, as Boris Johnson’s government announced Friday that a 10pm curfew would come into operation over the entire North East of England. At least 10 million people are now under local lockdowns in northern England, the Midlands, Scotland and South Wales.

From next Tuesday, this will increase to around 13 million when further restrictions will be introduced across Lancashire, Merseyside, large parts of West Yorkshire and Cheshire. These will include curfews on pubs and restaurants, which will have to close by 10pm, and a ban on socialising outside of households.

The situation in Birmingham, the UK’s second largest city, and neighbouring Sandwell and Solihull is under review—with further restrictions being considered as COVID infections increase in the area. Households were banned from mixing in Birmingham and the two other towns from September 15 after the seven-day infection rate rose to more than 70 cases per 100,000 people.

Large populations and conurbations are seeing even higher recorded daily increase of COVID-19 cases than at the height of the pandemic in the spring. On Thursday, Leeds, with a population or nearly 800,000, confirmed a further 117 infections. Its previous largest daily figure was recorded on April 22, when 109 cases were detected.

It is just 77 days since the Johnson government recklessly reopened the economy on July 1, in the middle of a pandemic, to restore the profits of the corporations. From August 11, the UK’s more than 20,000 schools began to reopen, with these decisions resulting in a predictable resurgence of the deadly virus.

The R (reproduction) number of the virus rose above 1 last week to between 1.0 and 1.2. The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) announced yesterday it had gone up again to between 1.1 and 1.4. SAGE said this level equated to a “widespread growth of the epidemic across the country.”

In the last week alone, officially recognised cases of COVID-19 have more than doubled—a daily average over the last days of between 3,000–4,000.

Friday saw 4,322 new lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19—an infection every 20 seconds and a rise of nearly 1,000 in 24 hours. Another 27 deaths were announced.

Given that many thousands of people with symptoms, and millions in “hotspots” nationwide, are unable to get tests, even this is an enormous under reporting by the Conservative government.

Yesterday, the Office for National Statistics, reported that an estimated average of 6,000 people per day in England alone were infected between September 4 to 10. This was an increase from 3,200 people per day for the period from August 30 to September 5. The Covid Symptom Study app, developed by King’s College London and ZOE, a health care data science group, which tracks the health of four million people in the UK, estimates there were around 7,500 new cases of COVID every day over the last two weeks.

On Thursday, Professor Anthony Costello, a former director at the World Health Organisation, who set up, along with other scientists, the Independent SAGE committee to challenge the governments misuse of scientific evidence, tweeted, “I’m hearing from a well-connected person that government now thinks, in absence of testing, there are 38,000 infections per day.

Noting that evidence showed that the virus was spreading widely across all age groups, Yvonnne Doyle, the medical director at Public Health England, said yesterday it was “a warning of far worse things to come.”

As the number of infections surges, the growth in COVID-19 cases requiring hospital admissions nearly doubled from 100 in the week from September 8, to 194. The government refuses to close-down the economy even as it is planning to reopen several Nightingale hospitals that were originally opened in the spring with National Health Service units massively under strain. One of the Nightingales based at Birmingham’s NEC arena is already on standby to begin treating patients within two to three days.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock admitted to Sky News yesterday that “The virus is clearly accelerating across the country,” before insisting, “The last line of defence is full national action and I don’t want to see that.”

What is being proposed instead are half-hearted national “circuit break” measures that would be in operation for just two weeks. This would involve schools and most workplaces staying open, while some pubs and restaurants could have their opening hours restricted.

To ensure that the mass return of teachers and pupils to school over the last weeks is not reversed, the Financial Times reported Thursday, “Experts on the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) and the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-m) have suggested a national lockdown that could coincide with the October school half-term.”

It added, “The government is keen to avoid the reclosure of schools, having shut them during the national lockdown in March and only fully reopening them this autumn.”

The article cited a scientist “member of Sage” saying, “As schools will be closed for one week at half-term, adding an extra week to that will have limited impact on education.” The half-term does not begin until October 22, by which time the spread of the virus will be catastrophically out of control as it was prior to March’s national lockdown.

As of Friday afternoon, 1,230 schools had been hit with coronavirus, an average of more than 32 a day since the August re-openings in Scotland—but with most cases developing in schools in England (933) since September. There are at least 147 schools with multiple infections confirmed across their school population. The Guardian reported yesterday that “more than four out of five schools in England have pupils stuck at home because they cannot get access to COVID-19 tests, according to a survey of headteachers.”

Johnson said on a visit to Oxfordshire yesterday, “We are now seeing a second wave coming in. We’ve seen it in France, in Spain, across Europe. It’s been absolutely inevitable, I’m afraid, that we would see it in this country.” But even as deaths mount in those countries—154 died in France yesterday and 557 in Spain in the previous 72 hours, Johnson insisted his homicidal agenda would continue: “We want to keep the schools open—that’s going to happen. And we’ll try and keep all parts of the economy open, as far as we possibly can. I don’t think anybody wants to go into a second lockdown.”

This horrific situation exposes the Tory governments lies, led by Johnson, who insisted that there was little chance of children being endangered by the virus and hardly any chance they could infect adults. Answering questions from a committee of MPs Wednesday, Johnson was forced to retreat on such lying claims, admitting that it is “a fact of the disease that it is readily transmissible between children and adults. And what we are now seeing is unfortunately the progression of the disease from younger groups, who as everybody knows are much less prone to its worst effects, up into the older groups.”

The response of Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer, who played a critical role in ensuring the reopening of the economy and schools, was to urge Friday that Johnson convene a meeting of the government’s emergency committee Cobra. Fearing mounting public anger, he declared, “I am deeply concerned about the sharp rise in coronavirus cases and the difficulties people across the country are facing getting a test… The British public want to know what the situation is and what the government is going to do about it.”

Yet again Starmer insisted that his party would continue to back Johnson’s government and not oppose its herd immunity policy, stating, “I want to make clear too that Labour will continue to act in the national interest.”

The mass endangering of life underscores the necessity of workers and young people fighting for an alternative perspective. The Socialist Equality Party is providing the only viable opposition to this deadly agenda through the formation of independent rank-and-file safety committees to protect lives. Today the national Educators Rank-and-File Committee is holding its second meeting to oppose the unsafe reopening of UK schools and universities.

Wall Street demands still more Fed money

Nick Beams

When Wall Street receives a major boost from the US Federal Reserve it can always be relied upon to come back and demand more. This phenomenon, one could say a law of political economy, has been on display again this week.

On Wednesday, the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) set out its new framework for monetary policy. It committed itself to maintaining interest rates at near zero levels, for as far as the eye can see. It would also maintain its purchases of financial assets, at least to the tune of $120 billion a month—nearly $1.5 trillion a year—and intervene even more aggressively should there be a return of financial turbulence.

Since the market freeze in mid-March, the Fed has pumped in more than $3 trillion, sending the stock indexes back to their record highs in August. But this month, the markets have been on a steady decline. In the past three weeks, the S&P 500 index has lost 5.4 percent, and the tech-heavy NASDAQ has dropped by 7.7 percent—its biggest decline since March.

Market indexes have dropped over the past three days, with the Dow, the S&P 500 and the NASAQ all down by around 1 percent yesterday.

With expectations of lower profits in the third quarter—analysts have forecast a 22 percent decline in earnings, compared to the same period last year—and the prospect of further government corporate stimulus packages being tied up in Congress, Wall Street was looking for more action from the Fed in order to push shares prices higher.

The FOMC’s decisions last Wednesday were in line with Wall Street’s demands for “strong and powerful forward guidance,” to use Fed chair Jerome Powell’s words. But they were deemed to be insufficient.

James Athey, senior investment manager at Aberdeen Standard Investments, told the Wall Street Journal, following the FOMC meeting: “The Fed said it would keep rates low for ages. But that’s not enough. Not taking away is no longer sufficient for this market. You need to do more, more, more.”

Another hedge fund manager told the Journal, “you need fiscal policy to come through.” This is a demand that Congress pass legislation to extend the more than $3 trillion provided in corporate bailouts under the CARES Act.

The director of equity trading at KBW, R. J. Grant, said the Fed had acted swiftly and decisively, but now “people are kind of pivoting to see if Congress can step up to the plate here and get something done.”

The concern of the financial markets is not over the economic devastation being inflicted on millions of workers. It is that, with the deep recession in the economy set to continue for the foreseeable future, corporations must have still more support.

Dissatisfaction with the Fed’s pronouncements extends across the board. The Financial Times (FT) reported that when the Fed massively intervened in financial markets in mid-March, “investors took comfort from knowing that the Fed and its chairman Jay (Jerome) Powell had their back. But this week they were frustrated by his reluctance to promise more specific actions.”

The main cause of dissatisfaction is that, apart from saying that the Fed would maintain its asset purchases, at least at their current level, there was no indication of how it would adapt its balance sheet.

“That was something the market was hoping to get clarity on and they failed to deliver it,” Michael Kushma, chief investment officer of global fixed income investment at Morgan Stanley, told the FT.

According to the newspaper, one cohort of investors wants the Fed to shift the focus of its asset purchases of long-dated Treasuries, in order to ensure that borrowing costs remain low, “while another subset thought a larger program was warranted.”

Krishna Guha, vice-chairman at Evercore ISI, told the FT the Fed’s current approach to bond-buying was “weak.” He said the Fed had to “deploy all its instruments.”

In other words, the Fed’s massive expansion of its balance sheet from $4 trillion in March, to more than $7 trillion by June, is deemed to be insufficient. Still more money must be pumped in.

That is because of complete uncertainty about the direction of the economy. In its economic outlook, the FOMC’s median prediction for contraction this year was 3.7 percent, compared to its forecast of a 6.5 percent contraction in June. Its median jobless rate for the end of the year is now 7.6 percent, compared to 9.3 percent in June.

A Wall Street Journal editorial scathingly commented that “even discounting for the uncertainties of COVID-19 these are large misses” over the space of 90 days. The large variations underscore the fact that none of the official bodies, including the Fed, has any clear idea about the economic future.

Under these conditions, the demand is being made that whatever the state of the underlying economy, the Fed must expand its intervention so that money can continue to be raked in.

This week, the FT published a report revealing how the increase in corporate debt, made possible by the Fed’s ultra-low interest rate regime, is being used.

Private equity groups were “taking advantage of blockbuster demand for corporate debt by loading companies they own with fresh loans and using the cash to award themselves a bumper payday.”

So far this month, almost 24 percent of the money raised in the US loan market had been used to fund dividends paid to private equity owners. This was up from an average of less than 4 percent over the past two years.

The numbers involved are not small. The article reported that just over $4 billion of the $15 billion borrowed in the loan market so far this month would be paid out in dividends, with a further $2 billion to come in the next two weeks.

White House bans TikTok and WeChat: A major intensification of internet censorship

Kevin Reed

In a major escalation of the anti-China campaign ahead of the election, the Trump administration announced on Friday that it was following through on its executive orders of August 6 and banning the social media apps TikTok and WeChat from being downloaded from US app stores on Sunday.

The move is a frontal assault on the freedom of expression and an effort to consolidate control of the internet by a handful of massive corporations working in partnership with the American government. TikTok is used by millions of people every day to connect with friends and family, share ideas and communicate, and has been used to organize social protests. WeChat is a major link of communication between the United States and China.

An official statement released by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said downloads and new versions of the two mobile apps would be prohibited on Apple and Android app stores as of September 20.

With regard to WeChat, the Commerce Department statement prohibits all electronic payments and funds transfers as well as the hosting, transferring internet traffic or “utilization of the mobile application’s constituent code” within the US. WeChat, “for all practical purposes… will be shut down in the US, but only in the US, as of midnight Monday,” Ross said.

TikTok faces a similar US ban on November 12, unless the Trump administration approves the proposal made last weekend by the American software giant Oracle Corporation to become a “trusted tech partner” with ByteDance, the Chinese company that currently owns it.

The transfer of TikTok to US ownership would be aimed at creating conditions in which it can be subject to the same type of government-backed censorship that has already been implemented by Google, Facebook, Twitter and other US-based social media companies.

TikTok is the tenth most popular social media platform in the world, with 500 million users, 100 million of which are in the US.

WeChat is the fifth largest social media platform in the world, with 1.06 billion users, of which 3.3 million are in the US. Described as China’s “app for everything,” WeChat is a multipurpose instant messaging, social media and mobile payment app owned by Tencent Holdings.

The impact of this shutdown was explained by the WeChat Users Alliance, a non-profit group founded by five Chinese-American lawyers after Trump’s executive order was announced: “WeChat is a messaging app most commonly used by several million Chinese Americans in the U.S. Many other non-Chinese Americans also use it to communicate with their friends, clients, or business partners whose first language is Chinese. The complete ban of WeChat will severely affect the lives and the work of millions of people in the U.S. They will have a difficult time talking to family, relatives and friends back in China.”

Michael Bien, a San Francisco attorney representing the organization, said that WeChat is the primary way for many of its US users to communicate, organize social groups, run businesses and engage in political activities. Bien said, “It is our contention that [the ban] violates the Constitution, as you cannot censor such a fundamental part of communication, especially when it affects an insular group that has historically been a minority that’s been subject to discrimination in the US, by law or by practice.”

The Trump administration’s actions against TikTok and WeChat are an attack on the ability of the working class to both express itself politically and to freely communicate in daily life.

Every worker and young person in the US must reject the Trump administration’s attempt to whip up reactionary anti-Chinese sentiments on the basis of unsubstantiated claims of “national security” threats.

Not one shred of evidence has been presented to back up US government claims that TikTok or WeChat have been engaged in a “malicious collection of American citizens’ personal data” and are active participants in “China’s civil-military fusion” in mandatory “cooperation with the intelligence services” of the Chinese Communist Party, as claimed by Ross.

Any objective assessment of the two apps thoroughly contradicts the Trump administration’s attacks on TikTok and WeChat and shows that the emergence of the China-based social media platforms is part of the globalization and integration of the world economy that has been accelerating over the last four decades.

Social media platforms—such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube—emerged as a consequence of the convergence of smartphones and tablets with wireless broadband Internet services internationally in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The initial years of this global development—Facebook was launched in 2004, fourth generation wireless Internet access (4G) was first available in 2006 and the first model of the Apple iPhone was released in 2007—were dominated by US companies.

The adoption of these technologies spread rapidly throughout the world over the next decade. For example, in 2007 only 1 percent of the population of the developing world had mobile broadband subscriptions. Today this number is approaching 85 percent.

During this period, the integration of the US and China in the development and production of these technologies expanded dramatically. The relationship of Apple to the Taiwanese Foxconn and Pegatron—which both have facilities in Shenzhen, China where hundreds of millions of iPhones have been assembled by highly exploited Chinese factory workers—is but one example of this process.

Globalization has integrated the US and China on many levels, economically, scientifically, academically and culturally. The number of Chinese immigrants in the US has grown seven-fold since 1980, reaching 2.5 million people in 2018. The effort by the Trump administration to demonize China by attacking the immensely popular social media apps expresses a level of reckless desperation within the administration.

Amidst growing social and political opposition within the US, accelerated by the disaster sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, the ruling class is seeking to divert tensions outward by provoking an international conflict with China.

The central target of the economic attacks on China is just as much the working class at home as it is the external “enemy.” As demonstrated by the ban on TikTok and WeChat, the US-China conflict has already become the occasion for major inroads on the freedom of speech, and the escalation of the conflict would create a pretext of further attacks on democratic rights.

No one should have illusions that the Democrats are opposed to Trump’s anti-Chinese aggression. They have fully embraced the framework spelled out by the White House and have claimed that Trump is “soft” on China.

As Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Wall Street Journal on September 10, “Regardless of who wins, US policy toward China is going to be tougher over the next five years than the last five years. China has changed, and the US thinking on China has changed.”

Writing in the New York Times on Tuesday, economic historian Chris Miller wrote an op-ed column entitled “America Is Going to Decapitate Huawei,” where he warns that the US global lead in technology is waning. “Huawei’s digital decapitation is a shocking display of American power. At the whim of the American president, any other Chinese tech company could suffer such a fate. Imagine if a foreign power could do the same to Google or Amazon.”

The attacks on Huawei, TikTok and WeChat are all demonstrations of the criminality of American imperialism, but also ultimately an expression of the weakness and decline of the world hegemon that emerged after World War II. The US is using its geopolitical leverage to destroy the competitors to US-based social media companies.

Only the international working class has the ability to stop the descent into nationalist antagonisms that are leading from economic wars to military conflict and a new Third World War. The objective unity of the working class across national borders is the foundation of the struggle for socialism that must be taken up in the US, China and every country throughout the globe.

Balancing Solidarity & Individualism in the COVID-19 Era and Beyond: a View from Vietnam

 Mark A. Ashwill

A Vietnamese colleague recently asked me this timely and important question in the age of COVID-19 and beyond: Solidarity is sometimes called ‘collectivism’. I want to see in my own daughters and our younger generation, in general, both the spirit of individualism (a strong sense of self), balanced with a spirit of solidarity/collectivism. From your decades working with youth both in the US and Vietnam, how (if there is one such recipe) can a member of the older generation like me help the younger generation achieve that?

The reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic in both countries provides a partial answer to this question. Vietnam acted quickly and decisively to contain the coronavirus by closing the border with China, prohibiting flights from that and other countries, no longer issuing visas to foreign nationals, contact tracing, quarantines, and a short-lived nationwide shutdown. Government actions would have been diluted, however, if the people had not cooperated by wearing a face mask, observing social distancing and, at one point, only leaving their homes for essentials.

In contrast, the US, led by an incompetent, cruel, and narcissistic leader who politicized a public health issue and essentially did nothing, hoping and saying repeatedly that COVID-19 would magically disappear, and even egging on armed protestors who demanded that their states reopen their economies, all the while not wearing a mask and not following social distancing recommendations, failed to contain the coronavirus and is now paying the ultimate price, both human and economic, with no end in sight.

The Bitter Fruits of Hyperindividualism

The irrational and counterproductive opposition to wearing a face mask, for example, reflects the hyperindividualism that reigns supreme in the US, a country in which individual rights often trump those of the society, i.e., fellow citizens. This individualism on steroids is a perverted notion of freedom in which Freedom to takes precedence over freedom from, in this case, from COVID-19 infection and possible death – either directly or indirectly.

The widely reported coronavirus parties in the US are an especially appalling example of this twisted view of freedom and blatant disregard for human life. One of the many thousands of comments in response to an article in translation about young people in Alabama organizing these events came from a student at a talented and gifted school in Hanoi who remarked that “the level of stupidity is positively correlated with the development of the country.” An equally moronic and dangerous example is the US president organizing a political rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after which COVID-19 cases in that city spiked.

Strength in Social Solidarity

By contrast, Vietnam is well-positioned with a younger generation that is more individualistic than that of its parents because of their country’s integration into the global community, the Internet, and the fact that they are growing up in a time of peace with no (physical) external enemies, yet still possesses a strong sense of solidarity (“mutual support within a group”) and identification with the collective, which is heightened in times of crisis. COVID-19 was presented and understood as an invisible enemy against which the people had to unite. This solidarity ensures that most people will behave in an empathetic and compassionate manner when need be.

Another key difference between the two countries that is a strength for Vietnam on so many levels is that there are more Vietnamese than US patriots as a percentage of the total population. (Most US Americans confuse patriotism with the toxic and dominant ideology of nationalism.) Patriotism is defined as “love for or devotion to one’s country,” including its people. It “puts country ahead of self,” as Adlai Stevenson once observed.

Individualism, defined as “the habit or principle of being independent and self-reliant,” and solidarity, defined as “unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest; mutual support within a group,” are by no means mutually exclusive. It’s all a matter of degree and balance. Ideally, individual rights should not supersede those of the collective and vice-versa. The US desperately needs to find a way to create this balance while Vietnam must strive to maintain it.

At its most basic level citizenship entails certain rights and responsibilities, including a sense of connectedness and belonging to the society in which one lives. It can also be defined as “the quality of an individual’s response to membership in a community.” In other words, no person is an island. Just as the world is interdependent, so too are societies, some blessed with more awareness of this reality than others.

By that measure, most US Americans have much to learn from the Vietnamese. Nationalism, defined as loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups, is a formidable barrier on that path to enlightenment.

How to Achieve a Balance Between Individualism and Social Solidarity

If there is a recipe, Vietnam already has some of the essential ingredients. It simply needs to maintain the existing balance between individualism and social solidarity. This includes giving young people the necessary encouragement and space to constructively criticize their country in order to improve it. US Senator J. William Fulbright once stated that “to criticize one’s country is to do it a service and pay it a compliment. It is a service because it may spur the country to do better than it is doing; it is a compliment because it evidences a belief that the country can do better than it is doing,” a brilliant distillation of the essence of patriotism. (Most US Americans would do well to revisit and follow Fulbright’s timeless advice.)

A British Council New Generation Vietnam survey revealed that 72% of respondents believe their country will be better off in 15 years than it was before 2019, which reflects the well-documented optimism of the Vietnamese people. Their concerns and suggestions focus on corruption, political engagement, environmental protection, gender equality, and improving the economy and entrepreneurship.

One of the complaints is that young people “feel disconnected from broader, national issues.”

Everyday youth see themselves as having little power to influence society, except, perhaps, through social media and their close friends. They crave the ability to speak openly about issues seen in society: they want to have a voice. Moreover, they want to see tangible actions made in response. They want to be heard.

The desire to speak openly about societal issues is an example of a healthy balance between individualism and social solidarity, which is in fact patriotism.

Based on what I have seen during a decade and a half of living in Vietnam, the openness and willingness to learn from other countries as positive and negative role models reflects a natural predisposition to global citizenship, which means that one’s intellectual landscape, moral compass, sense of connectedness, and belonging extend to all of humanity.

Loyalty and devotion to one’s country are not mutually exclusive with global citizens’ rights and responsibilities as members of the global community. In this humane and just reality, “national interests” are not paramount but rather subjugated to and measured against the interests of fellow human beings in other countries.

In a globalized world, this mindset is yet another reason to be optimistic about Vietnam’s future at home and abroad. Meanwhile, to its detriment and that of the international community, most of the US remains mired in a debilitating mixture of nationalism and nativism.

Poisonous Gas Not Tear Gas

Thomas C. Mountain

For many decades governments around the world, especially in the USA, have fired tens of thousands of rounds of CS gas at their own people in an attempt to control “civil unrest”. The media falsely labels CS gas as “tear gas” rather than calling it what it is, poisonous gas. The original tear gas was relatively benign, irritating the eyes and mucus tissues but was not poisonous. CS gas, on the other hand, will kill you if you are exposed to enough of it.

CS gas is so toxic that it has been banned under international conventions governing the laws of war. In other words the USA, or any government signitory to these pacts, is not permitted to use CS gas in wartime against soldiers or civilians. To do so would be a War Crime or Crime Against Humanity. Yet these same governments commit Crimes Against Humanity almost every day, not hesitating to use poisonous CS gas against their own people.

In war or peace CS gas, or any poisonous gas, is mainly a weapon of terror, to inflict fear on your “enemies”. It is used by governments to punish their populations for opposing government policies and daring to take to the streets in protest. By using poisonous gas on their people the powers that be are trying to terrorise you, to hurt you enough that you will cease and desist, that you will stop resisting their control and kneel down in submission. This is a form of state terrorism and must be identified as such.

I live in Eritrea, a country that is vociferously labelled a dictatorial police state, a supporter of “terrorism” even, by the human rights mob. Yet in almost 30 years of independence the Eritrean government has never once used poisonous CS gas against the Eritrean people. Not once. Eritrea is the only country in Africa, one of a few in the world even, to have never done so.

The use of poisonous gas on the field of battle against soldiers and civilians alike has been outlawed as a barbaric, inhumane act by international treaty yet so called “democratic governments” use it against their own people at the drop of a hat.

Recently a few brave souls in the USA have raised calls for the abolition of the use of poisonous CS gas, “tear gas” as the media falaciously calls it, by the police and \ army against the American people taking to the streets to demand an end to police murders. As expected even the so called “liberal” politicians are not willing to support these efforts to end this inhumane, illegal practice. Under the rules of “population control”, maintaining “law and order”, the use of poisonous CS gas must and will be continued.

It’s all about “protecting private property” as the hysterical ravings of the media and politicians so aptly demonstrate. The militarized police forces can kill with impunity, commit Crimes Against Humanity by using poisonous gas on the people with little protest for years but let a few protesters break windows or loot stores and their howls go off the charts.

Back in 1990 a fearless journalist named Doug Valentine published what is one of, if not the most, authoritative sources on the Central Intelligence Agency. At the end of his book, entitled “The Phoenix Program” which details how the CIA tried to use “population control” in Vietnam to prevent a national liberation struggle from succeeding, he predicted that one day the USA would see militarized police using armored vehicles to suppress dissent just like the CIA has directed around the world. Today that prediction has become an everyday reality in the streets of America, with rubber bullets, batons and poisonous gas backed by armored vehicles being used against protesters on an almost daily basis. These day just by looking you cant tell Bogota, Columbia from Portland, Oregon.

When people ask me if I ever think about relocating from here in Eritrea back to the USA all I have to do is turn on the TV and see what the National Security Establishment has done in the USA, with brutality and state terror in action across the country. No matter the economic damage done to Eritrea by UNjust Sanctions or the damage done by western industrial instigated global climate disaster the choice for us is easy. We prefer to live in a humane country where our leaders put the needs of the people, with the poorest coming first, at the head of their agenda. No state terrorism in the form of poisonous gas used against our people, not once.