Thousands of furloughed US aviation workers see no relief from US Congress

Steve Filips

As of the beginning of October, over 40,000 aviation industry workers out of a total workforce of 775,000 in the US were on furlough. The largest proportion of job losses were at United and American Airlines, which had a combined 32,000 on furlough.

This is despite futile lobbying efforts by the airline unions and air carriers for the US Congress to enact a further payroll support bill. However, federal legislators have shown no interest in further aid to the airlines even as the COVID-19 pandemic surges and millions remain out of work.

To reinforce the idea that furloughs and further concessions are inevitable, the airlines have reported huge third quarter losses and predicted no early return to conditions before the pandemic.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, whose company had third quarter losses of $1.8 billion, predicted the airline would return to profitability next year. However, Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly is predicting the recovery will take much longer and said on CNBC, “it may be 10 years before business travel recovers. I don't know." The airlines have had the more lucrative business travel segment collapse and have been cutting fares to attract leisure travelers combined with reduction of non-stop routes to further bolster profits.

United Airlines flight on March 11, 2020 (Anna Zvereva / Wikimedia Commons)

Disregarding the surge in the coronavirus pandemic, Southwest said this week that is joining other airlines in scrapping safety precautions and planning on removing middle row seat restrictions on December 1 in order to compete with the other major airlines that have been filling their planes at close to capacity.

American Airlines saw a net loss of $2.8 billion for the last quarter. CEO Doug Parker commented on the adjustment the company has made after the massive furlough of 19,000 workers noted that new passengers were, “somewhat different from our normal clientele,” in that they are now, “leisure customers traveling to leisure destinations.”

The catastrophe facing tens of thousands of airline workers, who face the loss of their jobs and health insurance, has evoked no response from union officials except more lobbying. Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) union continues these fruitless efforts, joining with other trade union bureaucrats throughout the industry in alliance with airline executives, and industry trade groups, to call for passage of a second payroll support bill.

Nelson continues to exhort her membership to write and call their Congressional representatives to explain the hardship they are experiencing. “People are losing their homes right now; falling ill and unable to get another job without access to routine medical care that keeps chronic illness at bay and allows them to otherwise live a normal life; moving their children and all the belongings they can fit into their cars and trying to survive as single parents or two parents out of work,” she pleaded. As though the millionaires in Congress, who recently voted unanimously to hand trillions to Wall Street, were the least bit interested in the hardship facing working class families.

The major airlines are reporting that third quarter passenger service is still down over 80 percent from last year. The brunt of this crisis is being borne by rank-and-file airline workers, as it appears that there have been no pay cuts or staff reductions imposed on well-heeled union bureaucrats.

A young American Airlines machinist from the company's main hub at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, near American’s headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, spoke to the World Socialist Web Site about the challenges facing younger workers considering going into the airline industry.

“Some were going to go into aviation but decided against it because it’s not a stable field anymore. Others, like myself, chose being a machinist because it opens more doors than just aviation.”

Speaking about the collaboration of the unions in enforcing concessions on workers, “It’s not the pandemic that has done this, it’s American’s reputation of not being stable, of making promises that are not kept. It’s having a union that doesn’t care.”

Speaking to the lack of action by the unions on the mass furloughs he said, “No response from the union or company. It’s as if they have left them out to dry per se. An example occurred when a furloughed employee was trying to fly somewhere, but were stripped of their flight benefits. That individual tried contacting both union and company to no avail. They posted on Facebook and it seems they were not the only one with the issue or issues.

“This is occurring while airline companies have been utilizing fewer planes and filling the remaining planes to fullest capacity with hardly any restrictions or precautions against the spread of the coronavirus.”

Of the union officials he said, “Don’t hardly see them on the floor. They used to come around and ask how things were going, or if we needed anything. I believe that the last time I saw a member in our area was when they handed out face wraps.”

Speaking on the upcoming US elections, he commented, “Politically, it doesn’t matter who wins. The damage has been done and I am sure it isn’t over. Four rounds of furloughed employees, and with a net loss of $2.8 billion, there are bound to be more furloughs coming.”

Catastrophic increase of coronavirus infections in Germany

Gregor Link

The coronavirus policies of Germany’s federal and state governments have set the stage for a catastrophic development, threatening the lives and health of millions. According to figures from the Johns Hopkins University, new coronavirus infections in Germany yesterday reached a new record of over 12,500, with the death toll rising by 40 to 10,084. Across Europe, the total number of new coronavirus infections reached almost 8 million.

The virus is spreading faster and faster worldwide. Since January, over 380,000 people in Germany have been infected with COVID-19, more than one in ten of those within the last seven days. According to the current Robert Koch Institute (RKI) management report, this applies to almost every federal state—in Bremen, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Hesse, almost one in five of total cases developed last week.

The fact that many politicians and federal officials have tested positive in recent days also highlights the dynamics of the pandemic. Besides Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn, who yesterday went into domestic quarantine with “cold symptoms,” the entire leadership of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (as the secret service is called) is affected. Labour Minister Hubertus Heil and Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier are in quarantine due to contact with infected persons. There have been a total of 37 cases of infection among members and employees of the Bundestag (federal parliament) since March.

When the pandemic spread rapidly for the first time in the spring, due to the inaction of European governments, there were dramatic scenes in many regions of Europe. In the northern Italian region of Bergamo, for example, the military had to move in at night to remove coffins that could no longer be buried by the regional crematoria despite operating round the clock. In Spain, corpses had to be temporarily stored in Olympic ice sports arenas, while hospitals—similar to those in France and other countries—increasingly developed into infection clusters because nursing staff were denied any adequate protection.

Across Europe, the pandemic has already cost more than 247,000 lives—a loss of life surpassing anything that has occurred on the continent since the Second World War. Now, mass mortality is threatened on a scale that will go far beyond the previous catastrophe if no drastic measures are taken to contain the virus.

Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Regional Director for Europe, said at a press conference on Thursday that COVID-19 is currently “the fifth leading cause of death and the point of 1,000 deaths per day has now been exceeded.” In Belgium, infected nurses are already being forced back to work because otherwise, health care would collapse.

The same “work until you die” policy is increasingly being imposed by the authorities on people in non-essential industries and businesses that should have been closed long ago. For example, workers at the Weidemark slaughterhouse in Sögel, Lower Saxony, were sent back to work this week, even though at least 112 of their colleagues had already been infected with the coronavirus in the unfiltered, cold and recirculating factory air. Instead, the district authorities ordered a so-called “work quarantine” in order not to further reduce “slaughter capacities.” The theory is that workers “move only between work and home” and otherwise are “isolated.” In other words, workers live only to produce surplus value.

Carola Reimann (Social Democratic Party, SPD), Lower Saxony’s Minister of Social Affairs, spoke of a “good solution” that would “protect against infection” and “address the serious problems of farmers.” Regional spokespersons of the German Trade Union Federation (DGB) and the Union of Food and Catering Workers (NGG) declared that there was “no legal basis” to end this slave-owner policy.

The RKI’s status report makes an urgent appeal for “the entire population to commit itself to infection control,” without mentioning the government’s policy of opening up the economy. According to the Institute, “case clusters” and “outbreaks” are observed especially “in old people’s homes and nursing homes” and “in companies.”

The report documents a sharp increase in the proportion of old people among the newly infected since the beginning of September. In the “70 years or older” age group, there has been a 75 percent increase in the number of new infections in the last two weeks, from 2,032 to 3,521. In mid-August—after the reopening of schools—two-thirds of the new infections were still accounted for by the under-40s.

Despite this deadly danger for the 700,000 people over 70 years of age who are in care homes throughout Germany, the federal and state governments’ latest “Decision to combat the coronavirus pandemic” states that “the respective regulations must not lead to the complete social isolation of those affected.” This must “always be taken into account.”

The media propaganda that young people and other “irresponsible” private individuals are responsible for the renewed ballooning of the pandemic has now been strikingly refuted by empirical surveys.

For example, the latest youth study conducted by the Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB) and the TUI Foundation revealed that 52 percent of those surveyed considered the protective measures currently still in place to be appropriate, and a further 23 percent considered them “insufficient.” According to the survey carried out by the YouGov opinion research institute, 83 percent of young people also adhere to the measures and do so predominantly to “protect others” and to “protect their own health”—not so much because of possible penalties for disregarding them.

These were “similar figures to those we know from adult surveys,” WZB analyst Marcus Spittler noted on Thursday on broadcaster ZDF’s Morgenmagazin .

The results of the study once again make clear that the main cause of the dramatic increase in infections is not the private behaviour of young people and workers, but the opening up of businesses and schools. This is an international phenomenon and affects all age groups. As Michael Wagner, Professor of Microbiology in Vienna and Aalborg (Denmark) explained on Twitter: “SARS-CoV-2 infections now occur in most elementary schools in Malmö.”

On Wednesday, the administrative court in Neustadt/Weinstraße rejected the urgent injunction sought for an asthmatic boarding school student from Kaiserslautern and declared that the boy was not entitled to be exempted from attending classes and recourse to distance learning because of the coronavirus pandemic. A “certain risk of infection with the novel coronavirus” was currently “part of the general life risk for the entire population,” the court declared, referring to “the case-law of the Federal Constitutional Court.”

With a 7-day incidence of more than 120 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, there are now 15 districts in the worst-affected areas, including, as before, the Berchtesgadener district, the city districts of Delmenhorst, Berlin Neukölln and Mitte and the district of Sankt Wendel. But as news weekly Der Spiegel reports, even these ominous figures from the districts could be far below the actual case numbers.

According to the newsmagazine, the RKI has “in many cases given the central number of the pandemic … incorrectly.” “At least 30 percent of all 7-day incidences published by the Institute between August 31 and October 12 were incomplete and therefore incorrect. The data of at least one day was completely missing.”

The Institute thus provided “a distorted picture of the infection situation in Germany.” Sometimes, according to the RKI, a place “bobs below the 50 mark for weeks, although in reality, it has long since passed it.” For example, on Oct. 8, the RKI reported an incidence in the district of Cloppenburg in which “almost three-quarters of the infections were missing.”

According to Der Spiegel, the 7-day incidence is on average “ten percent too low” nationwide—a frightening difference since each individual case is a multiplier of the exponential spread of the pandemic. In Hamburg, the figures were always 25 percent too low, in Saxony 19 percent too low. Under these conditions, a comparison of districts across federal state borders is “hardly possible,” concludes Der Spiegel. In other words, it may not be possible to determine in time whether a district is developing into a European hotspot.

As the RKI itself states, the currently reported death figures are misleadingly low, although these figures also suggest the beginning of an exponentially rising trend. The RKI report cites as “reasons” for the current pattern of deaths the still low average age of those infected, on the one hand, and the government’s “broad testing strategy,” which “increasingly includes mild cases as well.”

Susanne Johna, the chairwoman of the doctors’ association Marburger Bund, noted on the Maybrit Illner talk show that in the course of the so-called “ban on staying in accommodation away from home”—which Chancellor Angela Merkel and the state premiers had fought over in negotiations lasting several hours—people are being tested who have no symptoms. In this way, tests were being “wasted that we need elsewhere.” This means that the official numbers of infections are also rising less than the real level of infections because testing resources have not been sufficiently expanded.

Russian court extends prison sentence for Russian historian of Stalinist terror to 13 years

Clara Weiss

On September 29, the Supreme Court of Karelia, a region in the Russian Federation, overturned an earlier ruling against historian Yuri Dmitriev, extending his sentence from three and a half years to a total of thirteen years in penal colonies. The ruling is a travesty of justice and amounts to a death sentence for the 64-year-old, who is at heightened risk of dying from the coronavirus which is running rampant in Russia, and has been ripping through the prison population for months.

The sentence was handed down in the absence of Dmitriev’s lawyer, who was ill. It was the culmination of a four-year-long vendetta by the Russian state against Dmitriev, in which he had been accused – and acquitted – multiple times of charges relating to child pornography and pedophilia.

Yuri Dmitriev

The trial against Dmitriev has proceeded behind closed doors for years. It is a politically motivated attack not just on Dmitriev, but the right of free speech and historical truth more broadly. The state campaign of filthy denunciations of Dmitriev and his brutal sentence are meant to intimidate everyone who seeks to uncover the historical truth about the crimes of Stalinism.

The only “evidence” against Dmitriev are images that he took from his foster daughter while she was ill, which showed her intimate parts, as well as a “testimony” by the girl. According to one of Dmitriev’s colleagues who saw the video testimony, it was pieced together from multiple sessions, all of which occurred after the initial acquittal of Dmitriev in April 2016. The girl, who is eight years old today, was crying and had to be brought home and back in multiple times. Dmitriev has consistently maintained his innocence, insisting that he took the pictures while the girl was ill to facilitate her medical treatment. All his testimonies were confirmed by the local hospital where she was treated.

In July, a court found Dmitriev “guilty” of sexually abusing a minor. However, his sentence of three and half years in prison amounted to a concession that the charge, which usually carries a minimum sentence of 12 years, was unsustainable. In a clear attempt to prepare public opinion for the verdict, three days before the new court verdict on September 29, the state television channel Rossiya aired a feature on Dmitriev, in which the images of his foster daughter were shown.

Dmitriev, himself a deeply religious man and anti-Communist, has done important work in recovering the names of victims of mass shootings and deportations that took place in Karelia, a region bordering Finland, during the Stalinist Great Terror in the 1930s. He and his team have established the site of mass graves of thousands of victims of the terror, including dozens of Old Bolsheviks and supporters of the Left Opposition of Leon Trotsky, the socialist opponents of Stalinism.

While Dmitriev’s political focus has been on the many victims of the so called “national operations” of the Stalinist secret police, NKVD, his work has proven immensely important for establishing the historical record about both the victims and the executioners of the Stalinist terror.

The Sandarmokh shooting site is now one of very few mass shooting sites from the Great Terror that are known and have public memorials. Historians estimate that dozens more such sites exist on the territory of the Russian Federation, with the remains of dozens of thousands of victims of the terror. However, their locations—which have been kept secret both by the Stalinist regime and the capitalist governments of Yeltsin and Putin that emerged out of the restoration of capitalism by the Stalinist bureaucracy—remain unknown.

Memorials in Sandarmokh

The vendetta against Dmitriev is above all motivated by the Russian state’s fear of the growing interest in the historical truth about the October revolution and the Stalinist terror.

It has provoked widespread shock and anger. An open letter to the Supreme Court of Karelia from September 27, opposing the persecution of Dmitriev, was signed by 250 public intellectuals, artists, historians, journalists and residents of Karelia. Among them were Oleg Khlevniuk, a well-known historian, director Andrei Zvyagentsev, and writer Liudmila Ulitskaya.

On October 17, a film about Dmitriev by Kirill Safronov, a young documentary film maker, was released on Youtube. It was based on discussions with young historians and artists that had been influenced by Dmitriev’s work and his commitment to holding on to it, no matter what.

Another Youtube documentary from July 23, entitled “What is behind the case of Dmitriev?,” discussed his work and the charges of sexual abuse of a minor against him. The film has been watched by over 1.2 million people as of this writing. In the documentary, a historian of the Gulag Museum in Moscow points out that the number of visitors to the museum is growing every year. A neighbor interviewed for the documentary stressed that she and the majority of Dmitriev’s neighbors were firmly convinced of his innocence and impressed with the tenacity with which he pursued his work even in the face of political persecution.

The interviews in these films starkly underline the fact that the Stalinist terror remains an open wound in society even as over 80 years have now passed since the height of the Great Terror in 1937-1938. While virtually every family has been affected by the campaign of mass murder, and the population of entire regions and cities is often composed, in large measure, of descendants of those who were deported, exiled and imprisoned in camps, there is often no understanding of both what happened and, most importantly, why it happened.

This historical lack of understanding is itself the product of the Stalinist counter-revolution against the October revolution of 1917. During late perestroika, while the Stalinist bureaucracy was already pushing ahead with the restoration of capitalism, a substantial number of documents were published that had previously been inaccessible. They provided, for the first time since the 1930s, an inkling of both the scope of the terror and its dynamics. The documents published at the time formed the basis for the study of the Left Opposition by Vadim Rogovin. It was also at this time that Dmitriev and others began their work on the terror in Karelia.

However, the impact of the crimes of Stalinism on the socialist and historical consciousness of the working class proved so profound that the bureaucracy was able to resolve its profound crisis in its own interests: it moved to destroy the Soviet Union in 1991 and fully restored capitalism.

The fact that the Stalinist bureaucracy was able to liquidate all the gains of the October temporarily delayed a full historical and political reckoning with Stalinism.

Today, however, these historical issues are reemerging with full force: as world capitalism is engulfed in the greatest crisis since the 1930s, with social inequality reaching record levels and an ever-growing danger of war, the question of the October revolution – and the Stalinist counterrevolution against it – are on the order of the day. These objective processes are underlying both the growing interest in these historical issues, and the Russian oligarchy’s hysterical response to Dmitriev’s work, as politically limited as it has been, and the relentless promotion and justification of the crimes of Stalin in the media and by pseudo-historians. The pandemic, to which the Russian oligarchy—like the ruling classes internationally—has responded with the policy of “herd immunity,” has only further intensified and accelerated these dynamics.

The critical question for workers, intellectuals and youth is to understand that Stalinism did not represent the continuation, but the reaction against the October revolution. The continuity of 1917 and Marxism was represented not by Stalin, but by his main opponent Leon Trotsky, who founded the Left Opposition in 1923 and the Fourth International in 1938, before he himself was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in 1940. The Great Terror was, above all, a political genocide of all those who had participated in and led the revolution, who remembered its leading figures – Lenin and Trotsky – and who had dedicated their lives to the fight for socialism. The assimilation of these historical experiences remains critical to the political orientation of the working class in Russia and internationally.

As Trotsky noted in 1937, writing on the Moscow Trials from his exile in Mexico:

“No one, not excluding Hitler, has dealt socialism such deadly blows as Stalin. This is hardly astonishing since Hitler has attacked the working class organizations from without, while Stalin does it from within. Hitler assaults Marxism. Stalin not only assaults but prostitutes it. Not a single principle has remained unpolluted, not a single idea unsullied. The very names of socialism and communism have been cruelly compromised, from the day when uncontrolled policemen making their livelihood by “communist” passport, gave the name socialism to their police regime. … The memory of mankind is magnanimous as regards the application of harsh measures in the service of great historical goals. But history will not pardon a single drop of blood shed in sacrifice to the new Moloch of self-will and privilege. Moral sensibility finds its highest satisfaction in the immutable conviction that historical retribution will correspond to the scope of the crime. Revolution will unlock all the secret compartments, review all the trials, rehabilitate all the slandered, raise memorials to the victims of wantonness and cover with eternal infamy the names of the executioners. Stalin will depart from the scene laden with all the crimes which he has committed—not only as the gravedigger of the revolution but as the most sinister figure in the history of mankind.”

Mounting evidence of systemic Australian war crimes in Afghanistan

Mike Head

Revelations of atrocities committed by Australian units in Afghanistan are escalating, in the lead-up to the release of a sanitised official inquiry report into the war crimes, which have been covered-up for many years.

Increasingly, it is clear that the illegal killings and other abuses were systemic, not isolated incidents, and all those responsible should be placed on trial, not just the individual soldiers involved and the superiors who supported and protected them.

An Australian light armored vehicle in Afghanistan

Above all, it should be the governments—both Liberal-National and Labor Party—that dispatched the troops to participate in the criminal US-led invasion and occupation of the impoverished country, and sent Special Forces units back repeatedly to pursue their murderous activities.

The cold-blooded executions of prisoners, and massacres of innocent civilians, cannot be explained away as the work of “bad apples” or a poor “culture” in the commando units that spearheaded the military operations in Afghan villages.

Special Forces soldiers were deployed to Afghanistan as many as 16 times, often despite known mental health and addiction problems, precisely because their task was to terrorise and intimidate the population. Their conduct flowed inevitably from the nature of the war—a brutal operation to crush all resistance to the imposition of US control over the country.

Two more damning reports emerged this week. First, video footage published by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) showed members of an Australian Special Air Services (SAS) patrol in Afghanistan talking about the execution of a “totally compliant” prisoner by one of their patrol members.

The metadata of the footage, taken from the helmet camera of one of the SAS soldiers, revealed that the conversation took place a day after an operation in the village of Shina, in Uruzgan Province, in mid-May 2012.

During that raid, by members of 3 Squadron SAS, three Afghans were killed. The footage showed the soldiers declaring that a patrol member shot dead a detainee, referred to as a “PUC” (Person Under Confinement). The patrol commander said: “One of the engineers went, ‘Yeah it happened, he just took him around the corner and f***ing shot him’.”

Referring to SAS soldiers as “operators,” one patrol member commented: “You can’t do it in front of anyone but a f***ing operator.” The patrol commander replied: “You can’t do it in front of anyone. You don’t do it in front of anyone, it’s so wrong on so many levels.”

The exchange indicates that such killings were not unusual, but that care had to be taken to hide them from view.

In the second report, also aired on the ABC, a United States Marine Corps helicopter crew chief said Australian special forces shot and killed a bound Afghan prisoner in 2012, after being told he would not fit on the US aircraft coming to pick them up.

“So it was pretty apparent to everybody involved in that mission that they had just killed a prisoner that we had just watched them catch and hogtie,” he said.

The helicopter pilot indicated that this was not a one-off event. He said the Australian Special Forces were notorious among his fellow Marines for arbitrarily shooting Afghan civilians.

On another mission, one of his colleagues saw Australian commandos shoot someone as soon as they landed in a village. “They go down for a landing. As soon as the Aussies exit, there was somebody just sitting on a wall watching them land. They got off and popped the guy a few times in the chest.”

Recent months have seen growing numbers of such damning reports. In July, the ABC released leaked evidence that SAS military rotations in 2012 and early 2013 planted weapons on the bodies of civilians they had murdered, in an attempt to cover their tracks.

Earlier this year, the ABC broadcast video evidence clearly showing the point blank execution of unarmed Afghan farmer Dad Mohammad in May 2012, and then another murder of a disabled Afghan farmer in March 2012.

These reports add to mounting evidence of a protracted cover-up by the military chiefs and successive governments. That includes the Rudd Labor government and Greens-backed Gillard Labor governments, which were in office from 2007 to 2013, when the latest reported war crimes were committed.

This flood of evidence, after years of whitewash, is emerging on the eve of the current Liberal-National government’s scheduled release of a heavily-redacted inquiry report by Paul Brereton, a New South Wales Supreme Court Justice and army reserve Major General. Over the past four years, Brereton has reportedly conducted over 250 interviews, relating to at least 55 alleged war crimes incidents between 2005 and 2016.

However, despite all this evidence, not a single person has yet been charged.

In fact, the only charge is against ex-military lawyer David McBride, who faces a closed-door trial for allegedly leaking classified documents to the ABC in 2017. Known as the “Afghan Files,” they document at least 10 incidents of possible war crimes. The Federal Police also raided the ABC headquarters and two ABC journalists, Dan Oakes and Sam Clarke, were threatened with prosecution.

As far as the government and the military chiefs are concerned, the Brereton inquiry’s task is to conduct a superficial “clean up” of the Special Forces, on which the Australian ruling class relies heavily for fighting in US-led wars. Far from constraining the deadly and repressive capacities of the Special Forces, “reforms” are being drafted to enhance those capacities.

In August 2019, as the war crimes evidence grew, Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government announced a major funding boost to the Special Forces. Project GREYFIN, a $3 billion program over the next two decades, would start with “cutting-edge body armour, weapons, and parachuting and climbing systems.”

This is part of a massive expansion of military spending, with $575 billion allocated over a decade for new warplanes, vessels and hardware. The Special Forces are a critical spearhead of these plans for war, precisely because its members are highly trained and conditioned to kill.

At the August 2019 media conference, staged in front of masked soldiers from the 2nd Commando Regiment at Sydney’s Holsworthy military base, Morrison brushed aside a journalist’s question about the war crimes. The prime minister hailed the “wonderful” commandos and insisted they had “an impeccable record” that was “simply extraordinary” in “Afghanistan in particular.”

This effectively provided a preview of the intended outcome of Brereton’s closed-door inquiry.

The systematic abuses by the Australian military are inseparable from the decades-long imperialist wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, conducted to attempt to secure US hegemony over the strategic and resource-rich Middle East and Central Asia region.

Now the bolstering of the Special Forces is central to the ever-closer incorporation of the Australian ruling class into further US war planning, centrally directed against China. Yesterday, Defence Minister Linda Reynolds announced Australia would no longer send a warship to the Middle East every year, and would withdraw from the US-led naval coalition patrolling the Strait of Hormuz, menacing Iran.

After three decades of participation in the criminal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Reynolds confirmed that the military’s focus had shifted to the Asia-Pacific region, where Australia is on the frontline of the US confrontation with China.

The revamp of the Special Forces is also a preparation to deal with political and social discontent at home, amid rising economic inequality and preparations for war. In 2018, legislation was passed, with the opposition Labor Party’s backing, to give governments and military generals greater powers to call out troops to combat “domestic violence.”

There is only one way to end the violence and barbarism of Australia’s military. It is bound up with the struggle against the drive to war and the fight to put an end to the capitalist system, which bears full responsibilty for imperialist war and its crimes.

With a half-million COVID cases daily, WHO warns world is at a critical juncture

Benjamin Mateus

The fall and winter surge of COVID-19 cases, as predicted, has begun. The number of cases across North America and Europe is rising exponentially in some regions.

There have been more than 42.4 million cases of COVID-19 globally, with 1.14 million deaths thus far. On Friday, the number of daily new cases reached an unprecedented 500,000-plus new infections. Global deaths have consistently tracked above 6,000 four days running.

A COVID-19 patient is being tended to prior to being airlifted with the helicopter from FlevoZiekenhuis, or FlevoHospital, in Almere, Netherlands, Friday, Oct. 23, 2020.(AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

At the World Health Organization Friday press briefing on the COVID-19 pandemic, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus ominously warned, “We are at a critical juncture in this pandemic. Particularly in the Northern Hemisphere. The next few months will be very tough and some countries are on a dangerous track. Too many countries are seeing an exponential increase in cases and that is now leading to hospitals and ICUs close to or above capacity, and we are still only in October. We urge leaders to take immediate action to prevent further unnecessary deaths, essential health services from collapsing and schools shutting again. As I said it in February and I am repeating it today, ‘This is not a drill.’” He strongly urged that world leaders could still “turn this around.”

During the question and answer session, epidemiologist Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove noted that ICU capacity for many regions might reach their limits in the next few weeks across Europe and North America. In what amounted to a plea, she cautioned that countries need to take “an honest assessment” of the situation immediately, utilizing all the data available to make “course corrections and necessary changes” to achieve the goals of reducing transmission and saving lives.

Dr. Mike Ryan reinforced these warnings: “We don’t have to see deaths track back to the horrific levels they were as a proportion of all cases as in the springtime. Things have changed, we are better, we are better now. We must prevent transmission. But we also need to focus on reducing the toll, which will rise in the coming days, I have no doubt. But we need to also put more investment in ensuring that our frontline system does not collapse in the face of an ever-increasing caseload of sick patients.”

On Thursday, the United States reported 74,301 new cases. This was the fourth-highest total ever and the highest since July 24 when the number of daily cases peaked at 79,000. The seven-day moving average death rate has also edged upwards over 800. More problematic has been the rapid rise in hospitalized patients, which exceeded 41,000 across the country, a 33 percent increase in the last three weeks.

In their most recent projections for the US, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), based at Washington State University, stated that the situation would intensify in November and December before peaking in January. With current facemask usage at under 50 percent and state governments continuing to remove social distancing mandates, this will lead to nearly 500,000 preventable deaths by February 1, IHME said.

Across the Sunbelt states, case counts and deaths are climbing again. Southern and Midwestern states—Kentucky, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming—have reported record high hospitalizations. Twelve states have seen the highest seven-day average of new cases, while six—Colorado, Indiana, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma and Utah—have hit their highest case counts to date.

According to a Coronavirus Task Force report suppressed by the White House and leaked to CNN, small household gatherings are driving the rise in cases. With the holiday seasons fast approaching, Centers for Disease Control Director Dr. Robert Redfield, speaking at a call of the nation’s governors, said, “We think it’s imperative to stress the vigilance of these continued mitigation steps in the household setting.”

Almost every local health department across the country—from Vermont to New Mexico—has been sounding the alarm. A lockdown is in effect at the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s reservation in South Dakota, where 391 active COVID-19 cases have been reported among 20,000 residents. Hospitals in northern Idaho are running out of space for patients and officials have planned to airlift them to Oregon or Washington. Florida public health officials have called for the public to stop holding birthday parties for children. Texas Governor Greg Abbott is redirecting El Paso resources as 3,750 new infections have afflicted the region this week, including 1,161 cases just on Thursday.

After a summer of much boasting and misplaced pride, Europe has surged past North America as the new epicenter of the global pandemic. The number of new COVID-19 cases is tenfold higher, with over 218,000 infections on Thursday accounting for 45 percent of all new cases worldwide.

Despite ample warnings that if nations did not build up their testing and contact tracing capacities, create programs to treat and care for quarantined cases adequately and make hospitals ready with appropriate material interventions and redundant staffing, the situation could quickly deteriorate to one in which lockdowns need to be imposed to bring the pandemic under control. Yet, despite ongoing counseling and warning, nations eager to get their economies back on firm footing quickly declared victory and let loose.

France reported over 42,000 cases yesterday, with almost 300 deaths. Along with Russia and Spain, it is distinguished as a nation with more than 1 million cases of COVID-19. Estimates indicate that by November daily cases will double their current levels. Though a curfew has been placed into effect from 9 p.m. until 6 a.m. for 46 million of France’s 67 million people, businesses and schools remain open. The latest count indicates 2,139 COVID-19 patients on ventilators, which account for one-third of the country’s capacity.

The United Kingdom has seen new cases exceed 20,000 for four consecutive days. Wales imposed a national shutdown on Friday, with stay-at-home orders for the population and all nonessential businesses, including pubs, to be shut. North Ireland is closing schools for two weeks with a review on November 2. Restaurants and cafes will operate on a limited basis for the next four weeks. Londoners are facing new restrictions again.

Nottingham University Hospital Trust told the BBC that “a full ward of people” with COVID-19 was being admitted each day. According to their patient census tracking, the Queen’s Medical Centre and City Hospital are averaging 14 admissions with seven people on mechanical ventilation per day.

The Czech Republic has been the hardest hit in the initial throes of the second wave. The rise in cases is proceeding at an exponential rate, with new cases reaching 15,000 per day and deaths exceeding over 100. Prime Minister Andrej Babis addressed the nation from Prague on Wednesday, saying, “We certainly made mistakes when we thought at the end of May, when we finished the reopening, that we had managed it.”

Poland saw 13,632 cases and 153 deaths Friday. The government is converting the National Stadium in Warsaw into a temporary field hospital to manage patients. The near 60,000 capacity stadium will make room for more than 500 patients to be equipped with oxygen therapy, according to Piotr Muller, a government spokesperson. Medical oxygen, an essential intervention in treating COVID patients, is once again in critical shortage.

Spain and Italy reported almost 20,000 new cases yesterday. Germany had 13,476 cases; Belgium reported 16,746. Europe accounts for almost one-third of all coronavirus deaths The Netherlands had nearly 10,000 cases. In the face of this massive surge of infections, the controversial Swedish state epidemiologist, Dr. Anders Tegnell, told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program, “Basically, we mean that we will send a message to elderly people, you don’t need to isolate anymore completely.”

These developments are a product of abject political failures that have placed the needs of financial markets above life. Adam Kamradt-Scott, a global health professor at the University of Sydney, told Vox, “It was understandable that countries imposed lockdowns in the initial weeks when countries first got hit and were quickly overwhelmed. But six months on, countries should have sufficient systems in place to undertake the necessary contact tracing and have a range of other measures they can use to limit the spread of the virus, rather than looking to hard lockdowns as the answer.”

Damiano Sandri, an IMF analyst who has been studying the impact of the virus on economic activity, noted that economic “damage is also done if you get a strong wave of infections and people start dying.”

Chicago officials plan to reopen schools for 20,000 students

Michael Walters

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) recently announced a proposal to return roughly 20,000 special education and pre-kindergarten students to in-person learning in the coming weeks. The plan to shift from online learning to a daily in-person schedule was announced last Friday as Illinois’ seven-day average COVID-19 testing positivity rate surpassed five percent for the first time since early June.

The push to reopen the third largest district in the US takes place as the coronavirus pandemic spreads uncontrollably across much of the country. The number of COVID-19 cases in Illinois now stands at 368,746, with 9,688 deaths and over 2,300 people currently hospitalized.

CPS could move forward with the reopening proposal in early November, giving parents and teachers little time to prepare. Other grades are slated to remain online until January 2021, but by sending 20,000 students back to classrooms the district aims to set a precedent for a full reopening.

Chicago Teachers Union president Jesse Sharkey (center) and AFT president Randi Weingarten (to his right) speaking at a press conference during the 2019 strike. (Credit: WSWS)

The district is exploiting the difficulties faced by special education and pre-K students with remote learning to press for school reopenings, while starving these and all other programs of the resources needed to provide high quality online learning.

Despite rising cases, Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady gave her support for the reopening plan, claiming that there have been low infection rates among schoolchildren in private and parochial schools that have already returned to classrooms. However, any claims that reopening can be done safely or that schools are not vectors for the spread of the virus are wholly unscientific.

If there have been a small number of cases in private and parochial schools, this is primarily due to inadequate testing and reporting policies. Until last week, the Illinois Department of Health was tracking cases but would not release the names of schools where an outbreak took place. Further, these schools are better funded and able to implement more safety measures than cash-strapped public schools.

On October 1, 58-year-old teacher Olga Quiroga, who taught in Chicago since 1991, died from COVID-19. Although her classes were taught virtually, Quiroga was forced to return to school for various preparatory events in which she had contact with parents. Following Quiroga’s death, her daughter condemned the district’s decision to reopen the schools, stating that for “my mom, it took one visit to that building to contract it.” She added, “According to them, they’re safe, they’re ready, and they’re clearly not.”

In the US, at least 67,422 students and educators have been infected since school began in the fall, sand at least 44 teachers, school nurses, bus drivers and other school workers have died. In New York, where schools reopened in September, the state recorded an 18 percent increase in cases over the last two weeks. Boston Public Schools announced on Wednesday that it would immediately suspend all in-person learning indefinitely, following an increase in the positivity rate in the city.

At a press conference last week, CEO of CPS Janice Jackson stated, “While we will begin the second quarter learning at home, our goal will be—and it must be—to reopen our school buildings for our most vulnerable students as soon as possible.” Jackson, Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) all align with the Biden-Harris campaign and the Democratic Party as a whole, which falsely claims that schools can reopen “safely” amid a raging pandemic.

Last week, Kamala Harris tweeted, “@JoeBiden and I want to get your kids back to school as quickly and safely as possible.” At Thursday’s presidential debate, Joe Biden proclaimed that schools simply “need a lot of money to open,” adding, “they need to deal with ventilation systems, smaller classes, more teachers, more pods.”

However, the push to reopen schools takes place as districts and states are imposing unprecedented austerity. On Wednesday, Mayor Lightfoot announced a proposed austerity budget and a $1.2 billion shortfall. Lightfoot’s budget shifts $54 million in pension obligations and other items, such as crossing guards, onto the CPS budget.

CPS and Mayor Lightfoot are following the lead of New York City and Los Angeles, the two largest school districts in the US. Illinois is ruled by the Democratic Party, claiming both houses of the General Assembly, the Governor and the mayor of Chicago. Nonetheless, the policies enacted are almost indistinguishable from cities and states run by Republicans.

The entire political establishment is justifying the disastrous reopening of schools in order to drive parents back to work. In pushing to open schools, CPS is citing historic declines in enrollment, which have decreased by reported 14,500 this school year, mainly among black and Latino preschool and kindergarteners. Enrollment fell among all racial groups, with CPS reporting the greatest enrollment drop among black students. Neither preschool nor kindergarten are mandatory in Illinois.

Jackson said parents “have to go to work, and unfortunately because of our decisions, we’ve put them in a position where they have to choose between giving their child access to early education or going to work.”

This is a false choice. There are plenty of resources available in the pockets of the state’s 18 billionaires, whose combined wealth is almost $60 billion. This includes Democratic Governor Pritzker, whose net worth exceeds $3.4 billion.

The district claims that if in-person learning resumes, families will have the option to continue with remote learning. However, for many families this is no option at all as they cannot afford to keep their children home.

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which has been in negotiations with CPS over reopening proposals, objected primarily to not being consulted in the latest proposal. CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates said, “We cannot experiment or take lightly the responsibility that we will need to see from our mayor and Chicago Public Schools as reopening plans are hatched.”

Davis Gates added, “In fact, you cannot put together a plan in the dark of the night with only a few people that excludes our parents, that excludes our families, that excludes our educators, our practitioners and excludes our union.”

Noting the lack of ventilation in school buildings, with many of the facilities almost 100 years old and having antiquated heating systems, the CTU tweeted, “The district has denied our request for building inspections. This is a violation of our contract, and we will be filing an unfair labor practice charge.” Such lawsuits are a diversionary tactic and meant to forestall any mobilization of educators to oppose the unsafe reopening of schools.

The CTU, as with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA), is doing everything in its power to channel teachers’ opposition behind the right-wing Biden campaign and the Democratic Party. During the 2019 Chicago teachers strike, the CTU hosted Democratic presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. CTU President Jessie Sharkey, a former member of the now defunct International Socialist Organization, appeared in a campaign ad for Joe Biden.

Now, in a literal life and death situation, the union is doing everything in its power to keep teachers from walking out. They seek to reach a deal they can sell to their members, whom they have kept on the job with inadequate technology and support for both teachers and their students.

There is enormous opposition to the policy of reopening schools, which must be unified across district, state and national lines. This requires a break from the Democratic Party and their backers, including the CTU and pseudo-left organizations like the DSA, all of whom support the drive to reopen schools and the ruling class policy of herd immunity, which signifies death on a massive scale.

Bolivia Unshackled

Ron Ridenour

A victory for the majority of Bolivians, a victory for the world’s poor, the indigenous, and supporters of equality, world peace, bread and land for all. October 19 exit polls show that the majority’s leader, Luis Arce, and running mate David Choquehuanca Céspedes, won the election.

With around a quarter of the votes counted, exit polls showed them ahead of rightest opponents with 52-53% of the vote. No runoff election will be necessary.

Opponents Carlos Mesa (a former president) and Luis Fernandez Camacho received around 30% and 14% of the voters. Both are right-wingers who aggravated a military-threatened coup last November. Mesa, and the self-appointed coup president Jeanine Añez, have admitted defeat.

Mesa was ousted from power in 2005 following large demonstrations against privatized natural gas companies. Camacho is known as the “Bolivian Bolsonaro” in reference to Brazil’s extreme right-wing president. Camacho’s hometown, Santa Cruz, is the stronghold of the separatist movement. He led protests that culminated in the coup against Morales.

Arce and Choquehuanca are leading members of MAS (Movement for Socialism), whose founding leader was Evo Morales, president 2006-17. They embrace the indigenous political tradition of Suma Qamaña, emphasizing reciprocity, collectiveness, and balance with Mother Nature (Pachamama).

(See also the excellent background article by Jeremy Kuzmarov, Covert Action Magazine managing editor. )

“We have recovered democracy,” Arce said in a public speech following the cited exit polls. “We promise to respond to our pledge to work and bring our program to fruition. We are going to govern for all Bolivians and construct a government of national unity.”

Luis Arce served as Morales’ minister of economy and public finance. David Choquehuanca served as the foreign minister from January 2006 to January 2017. A couple months later, he became secretary general of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA).

Jeanine Añez supported Mesa’s candidacy after she dropped out of the election race. She received little support due to corruption scandals; abuse of civil liberties; backing police murders of three dozen indigenous people; a 30% decline in exports; eliminating the Ministry of Culture; reversing an EU-backed program allowing farmers to cultivate coca leaves for non-narcotic purposes; for allowing foreign corporations to control lithium resources; and poor response to the Covid-19 crisis, which has claimed 8,000 Bolivian lives and 130,000 infected out of a population of 12 million.

Twice postponed due to the corona virus, the October 18 election was the culmination of last year’s October election. In order to prevent a bloody civil war, Morales resigned under force and went into exile, first to Mexico and then to Argentina where he is today.

Morales received more votes than Carlos Mesa, who ran against him last year. Mesa, however, called Morales’ claimed victory a “fraud”, contesting the president’s assertion that he had won more than 50% of the votes, which meant there would be no runoff election. The US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) claimed that Mesa was right.

The fraud allegation is discredited by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) commissioned by a liberal research group based in Washington, D.C. They found that the OAS had overstated the significance of voting discrepancies from before and after a pause in the vote count.

“The OAS allegations were indeed the main political foundation of the coup that followed the October 20 [2019] election three weeks later,” wrote Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research last month. “But they provided no evidence to support these allegations—because there wasn’t any. This has since been established repeatedly by a slew of expert statistical studies.”

Military Threaten Coup

Perhaps the greatest error Morales made during his generally successful presidency was not to have reformed the military and police, placing anti-racists and pro-socialists in leadership. A year before his attempt to win a fourth term in office, Morales appointed General Williams Kaliman Romero to head the armed forces. Kaliman is one of six key Bolivian coup plotters who had been trained at the US military School of the Americas (SOA was renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). (1)

General Kaliman led the call for Morales removal. He publically stated, “We suggest the President of the State renounce his presidential mandate, allowing peace to be restored and stability maintained for the good of our Bolivia.”

Hours later, Morales said, “I am resigning”, adding it was his “obligation as indigenous president and president of all Bolivians to seek peace.” Vice President Álvaro García Linera also resigned.

Shortly thereafter, Camacho said, “Today we won a battle.” He then entered the government palace with a Catholic priest to “return God” to the palace. Camacho is a multi-millionaire who had spent years leading an overtly fascist separatist organization called the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista.

As soon as Morales stepped down, police  ordered his arrest and vandals ransacked his house. Right-wingers happily burned the banner of Bolivia’s indigenous people, showing them that the white elite intended to put them back in their place.

President Donald Trump applauded the coup-makers. “The resignation yesterday of Bolivian President Evo Morales is a significant moment for democracy in the Western Hemisphere.” So much for democracy.

Morales-MAS Improved Living Standards

Arce and Choquehuanca ran a campaign based on MAS’s program without much discussion concerning Evo Morales. They have no quarrel, however, with the achievements made under his leadership. (See my piece on this site)

Poverty 2006=60%; 2018=34%; Extreme poverty 2006=38%; 2018=15%

Life expectancy 2006=62; 2015=69; Infant mortality 2006=46 per 1000 live births; 2018=28.8

Bolivia’s economy underwent structural transformation with nationalization of major resources. GDP= 5% to 5.5% annual growth for the last several years. Real (inflation-adjusted) per capita GDP grew by more than 50 percent over 13 years, twice the rate of growth for the Latin American and Caribbean region.

Unemployment 2006=5%; 2017=3.4%

Gender equality 2006=4% women in municipal assembly posts; 2015=50% in municipal posts, 53% in the parliament.

During Morales presidency, all persons 60 years old+ received state pensions, and hundreds of thousands affordable social housing units were built.

Nevertheless, Morales made serious mistakes that alienated many followers. In later years of his presidency, Morales focused power around his personality, reneged on promises, and made contradictory accommodations with some elite interests. He lost a referendum seeking a fourth term for presidency, but maneuvered around that decision. These errors immersed the country in political crises, and split leftists, including some indigenous peoples.

Conclusion

Much of the international “real left”, as opposed to liberal/progressives catering to capitalism, ignore left-wing government errors and corruptions—not just those of Comrade Stalin and Chairman Mao, but also of the new 21st century socialist-oriented governments, including in the ALBA countries.

I believe that we must put an end to patriarchal patterns of top-down leadership. Those of us living in countries where there is no current hope of electing people-oriented governments, and who support revolutions or major progressive shifts of power elsewhere, need to stop glorifying everything they do. To be true solidarity workers, to be true comrades, we need to point out major errors and “sins” where they exist. In that way, we offer real solidarity, and we prevent delusion amongst ourselves and those we wish to encourage and support.

El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido! The People United Will Never Be Defeated!