How Coronavirus Exposed the Flaws of the Childcare Economy

Sonali Kolhatkar

The U.S. government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that childcare workers in the nation have a median salary of just over $24,000 a year—below the poverty line for a family of four. The segment of our nation’s workforce that attends to the basic needs of our children is shockingly underpaid, and now during the coronavirus pandemic, left even farther behind as childcare centers are forced to downsize or close. At the same time, billionaires have minted money during our time of national crisis. The fortunes of the wealthiest have increased by a quarter over the past several months, proving once more that the economy is rigged to benefit the already-rich.

It is no coincidence that an industry dominated by women, particularly women of color (40 percent of childcare workers are women of color—twice their population representation) is in dire straits. The vast majority of childcare workers do not have health insurance. Many are self-employed and, even before the pandemic, operated on razor-thin margins to stay financially afloat. While the cost of operating a childcare center is fixed, children age out quickly, making revenues extremely unstable. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The businesses have little in the way of collateral. Banks are rarely interested in lending to them, beyond costly credit cards, making it difficult to ride out rough patches.”

In other words, childcare is not a lucrative business in spite of its crucial nature, and while the cost of childcare for parents is often far too high, the cost of operating even a bare-bones childcare business is also too high.

Once the pandemic hit, many childcare providers simply lost clients as lockdowns required families to remain at home. According to one survey conducted in April 2020, “60% of programs [were] fully closed and not providing care to any children” at that time. While some workplaces were able to transition to remote environments, by its nature, childcare work was not able to adapt to this “new normal.” While many workers like grocery store employees, nurses, and delivery drivers were deemed “essential” to society and continued working, they needed care for their out-of-school children. Suddenly American women providing childcare found themselves out of work, while women in other industries had no access to the care their children required.

Millions of parents, mostly mothers, have already left the workforce to care for their children during the pandemic. The U.S. Census Bureau in August 2020 found that nearly 20 percent of “working-age adults said the reason they were not working was because COVID-19 disrupted their childcare arrangements.” Additionally, “women ages 25-44 [were] almost three times as likely as men to not be working due to childcare demands.”

Melissa Boteach of the National Women’s Law Center told Politico, “the parents who are not going to be able to go back to work or who are going to have to give up their careers or jobs for less pay—because they can’t find the child care to cover the hours that they need—are disproportionately going to be women and women of color.” In other words, women of color are disproportionately impacted on both ends of the childcare equation—both as providers and as customers who rely on these services.

As I prepared for an interview with Wendoly Marte, director of economic justice at Community Change Action, about the crisis of childcare, I fielded texts from my seven-year-old son who could not find an extension cord for the tablet that he uses for school. My child was in the room next to the home-studio that I work out of and knows never to disturb me during interviews. But he was desperate to turn his device on so he wouldn’t miss his next lesson. I found myself for the umpteenth time wishing I didn’t have to work so I could be more present for my children during a time of deep uncertainty. But I also remembered how much I loved my job and continued to speak with Marte, who explained that I was not alone. “I think a lot of parents have had to make really hard choices over the last few months as they tried to balance working from home and caring for their children,” said Marte, who helps to organize childcare workers and amplify their voices in government.

Like millions of American women, I find myself constantly worrying about the state of my children’s mental health during the pandemic. Isolated from their peers and forced to learn through screens and Zoom chats, they are coping as best as they can. I am terrified of the long-term impacts on them and yet unable to leave a job on which my family depends to help pay the mortgage and purchase necessities, and at the same time resenting the fact that I have to even consider leaving a job that I love and that I have invested years of my life in.

The pandemic has highlighted, in Marte’s words, the need for “a system that is truly universal and equitable and that takes into account the perspective of parents, the children, and the childcare providers.” She articulated that “we’re going to need a serious public investment in a bold solution that actually matches the scale of the crisis.”

There was a crisis in childcare even before the pandemic. More than a year ago, the Center for American Progress explained that “Whether due to high cost, limited availability, or inconvenient program hours, child care challenges are driving parents out of the workforce at an alarming rate,” and that, “in 2016 alone, an estimated 2 million parents made career sacrifices due to problems with child care.” Add to that a public health crisis that has no end in sight, and the U.S.’s childcare industry could collapse entirely under the weight of multiple pressures.

While the federal government made available small business loans through the Paycheck Protection Program earlier this year, the Bipartisan Policy Center concluded that the program did not work for childcare businesses and only about half of applicants ever received the government-backed loans. While the federal government’s “Childcare and Development Fund” provides some measure of support through block grants, according to Marte it is not nearly enough and “the money ran out very quickly.”

In late July, House Democrats passed the Childcare Is Essential Act, which Marte’s group has supported. The bill creates a $50 billion fund to buttress the reeling industry. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has made clear that he is far more interested in remaking the judicial system to benefit conservatives than ushering in financial aid bills for ordinary Americans.

President Donald Trump and his allies have expressed an eagerness to return to normal that is not couched in reality as a third wave of coronavirus infections threatens to derail the economy once more. Without direct federal government intervention to save the childcare industry, the future is frighteningly precarious for women, and especially women of color.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has shrewdly outlined a plan for what his campaign calls a “caregiving economy,” promising to “[e]nsure access to high-quality, affordable child care and offer universal preschool to three-and four-year olds through greater investment, expanded tax credits, and sliding-scale subsidies.” The ambitious $775 billion plan is a start, and Biden will need to be held to his promises if he wins the White House.

When the coronavirus upended the economy, the crisis of childcare that had been brewing for years exploded and revealed the truly barbaric nature of a society that leaves human needs to the whims of “market forces.” There is no better symbol of a society’s future potential than the well-being of its children, and judging by that, we are in deep trouble.

Cuba Responds to Pandemic, Blockade and New Economic Troubles

W.T. Whitney Jr.

Buffeted for six decades by the U. S. economic blockade and recently having had to cope with restrictions on daily life and work due to COVID 19, Cuba’s already shaky economy is deteriorating. Government leaders recently outlined remedial steps leading to what they call a “new normal.”

The UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) reported in October that the region “is experiencing its worst economic crisis in a century” and that Cuba’s GDP this year will be down at least eight percent. Tourist income, remittances, foreign trade, and tax collections have fallen. Oil and gasoline shortages, the result of U.S. sanctions against Venezuela, have stressed the economy.

Public spending on health care, unemployment compensation, and pensions is up; I50 000 state workers and 250,000 private sector workers have been idle. Effects of the U.S economic blockade compound matters with restrictions affecting the tourist industry, foreign imports, and access to foreign currency and loans.

Responding to the pandemic, Cuban officials excluded foreign visitors (tourism resumed in July) and instituted vigorous case-finding, strict isolation of the infected and their contacts, and hospitalization for people infected with COVID 19 who have symptoms. The Cuban public has received comprehensive informational updates regularly. Vaccines and treatment products are being developed. Health workers have treated pandemic victims in 39 countries.

Data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center show that, as of October 21, COVID 19 has infected 6305 Cubans; 127 of them died. Deaths per 100,000 persons for the United States, Cuba, China, and Vietnam are, respectively: 67.28 (11^th highest), 1.12, 0.34, and 0.03.

Cuban leaders appearing on national television in October outlined plans for managing the multi-faceted crisis. Summarizing, Alejandro Gil Fernández, Minister of Economy and Planning, pointed out that “We’ve never had this dilemma between health and the economy. Obviously the restrictive measures we’ve adopted … have had an economic impact but there’s no room for doubt that health comes first.”

Health Crisis

The officials reported that the intensity of viral transmission was down, that fewer new cases were being diagnosed, and that more COVID 19 patients were leaving hospitals than being admitted. Outbreaks have cropped up recently in Havana, Ciego de Avila, Pinar del Río and Sancti Spíritus provinces, while no new cases have appeared in Cuba’s 11 other provinces

President Miguel Díaz-Canel told Cubans that from now on isolation and distancing requirements would be less strict. He advised them to “learn to live with the disease, resume economic and social activities, strengthen prevention and treatment protocols, and aspire to a new normality with a minimum of risk.”

Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz on October 9 presented elaborate protocols for transitioning to a “new normal.” Efforts to prevent virus transmission would be accompanied by “mitigation of both the social and economic impact of COVID 19 and the [U.S.] blockade.” New cases would trigger local measures for countering spread of the infection but community activities would continue as before.

Stages and phases of the pandemic’s evolution figure into how the intensity and reach of preventative measures are determined. Local authorities will participate in decision-making. Under new isolation protocols, infected persons with only minor symptoms will be monitored in the community and no longer in hospitals. The seriously ill will enter specially designated hospitals, allowing other hospitals to be able to resume full care of illnesses other than COVID 19.

Cubans are being asked to take personal responsibility for preventing infection. Many will continue working at home via computer or telephone. Students have been attending school throughout Cuba since September, except in Havana, where schools open on November 2, and except for temporary closings elsewhere due to local clusters of infection.

The impression here is that, without question, explanations provided by multiple officials and the protocols presented by Prime Minister Marrero Cruz testify to a process of planning and analysis marked by rigor, comprehensiveness, and respect for human life.

Economic crisis

For more than 10 years, the government has been working to transform Cuba’s economy. Land-tenure arrangements changed in 2008. The Communist Party’s “Economic, Political, and Social Guidelines,” approved by the Party’s Sixth Congress in 2011, established the framework for change that has been evolving since. The current crisis is a jolt demanding recalibration.

Priority areas include: production and distribution of food products, enhanced export capabilities, overhaul of state-owned businesses, support for self-employed workers, and monetary reform – in other words, unification of Cuba’s dual currency and exchange rates.

Steps along the way are many. Newly efficient “productive chains” will extend from raw materials, to processing and manufacture, to sales. They will involve state and non-state enterprises and affect both foreign and domestic trade. State businesses will receive incentives for good management. State-owned agricultural marketing enterprises will receive new support.

Cubans will lose subsidies but some goods and services will be available cost-free. Consumers will have access to more Cuban-produced goods and fewer imported items. Export sales are prioritized. Monetary reform will entail price regulation, currency devaluation, elevated wholesale prices, savings and salary uncertainties, and risk of inflation.

“[E]limination of the dual currency and exchange rate … constitutes the process that is most decisive to the updating of the Cuban economic model.” That was former President Raúl Castro speaking in 2017. Now that change process, anticipated for many years, is in the hands of “14 working subgroups.”

Cuba’s two currencies are the “Cubano peso nacional” (CUP) and the “peso convertible Cubano” (CUC), which is set for elimination. As regards institutions, businesses, and wholesalers, the two are assigned the same value – one US dollar. In retail situations or in transactions among individuals one CUC is also valued at one U.S. dollar, but in those settings it’s worth 25 CUPs.

To illustrate the problem: a Cuban milk producer selling directly to Cubans receives 4.50 CUP ($4.50) per liter, which equals 450 centavos per liter. But milk produced abroad and sold to a Cuban purchaser yields $3000 (or 3000 CUC) per ton. To cover that cost, the selling price to Cuban consumers need only be 30 centavos per liter. Pity the plight of the Cuban dairy farmer.

There is good news. The Paris Club is a group of European and U.S bank officials who try to ease poor countries’ difficulties with debt-repayment. On October 15 they agreed to suspend Cuba’s obligation to make a payment by November 1 on debt worth $5.2 billion. How long the delay would be is unknown.

Speaking to the Cuban people on October 8, President Díaz-Canel pointed out that, “Our socialism excludes the political maneuver of applying shock therapy to the workers. Here, therefore, no one is going to be left helpless. It’s preordained that if someone ends up in a vulnerable situation with the reorganization project, he or she will be helped and supported. We are responsible and promise that the fundamental conquests of the Revolution such as health and free education will be preserved.”

The Muslim World denounces French President’s remarks against Islam, its prophet

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

The General Secretariat of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has condemned continued attacks and incitement against Muslim sentiment and insults of Prophet Muhammad, Anadolu Agency (AA) reported.

A statement by the 57-member pan-Islamic OIC criticized the “discourse from certain French politicians, which it deems to be harmful to the Muslim-French relations, hate-mongering and only serving partisan political interests.”

It said the OIC “will always condemn practices of blasphemy and of insulting Prophets of Islam, Christianity and Judaism” as it condemned any crime committed in the name of religion.

The statement rejected the incitement against Islam, its symbols and linking Islam and Muslims with terrorism.

According to AA, the OIC statement also denounced the killing of French teacher Samuel Paty, who was decapitated on October 16 in a Paris suburb.

French teacher Samuel Paty, who had shown students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed, was beheaded outside his school. The man suspected of the beheading was an 18-year-old Moscow-born Chechnyan. The assailant was shot by police and later died of his injuries.

Erdoğan says Macron needs ‘mental treatment’

President Macron’s anti-Islam rhetoric sparked a diplomatic crisis between France and Turkey when France recalled its ambassador from Ankara after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Saturday Macron needs “mental treatment” because of his hostility toward Islam.

“What is Macron’s problem with Islam and Muslims? He needs mental health treatment,” Erdoğan said at the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) congress in central Kayseri province. “What can be said to a head of state that treats millions of members of a religious minority in his country this way? First of all, (he needs) mental check,” Erdoğan added.

In response, a French presidential official told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Paris was recalling its envoy to Ankara for consultations. Ambassador Herve Magro would meet Macron to discuss the situation, the official said.

France recently launched an extensive witch hunt against the Muslim community following Macron calling Islam a problematic religion that needs to be contained. Many nongovernmental organizations and mosques have been shut down in recent weeks, while assaults against Muslims have peaked.

Macron this month described Islam as a religion “in crisis” worldwide and said the government would present a bill in December to strengthen a 1905 law that officially separated church and state in France. He announced stricter oversight of schooling and better control over foreign funding of mosques.

Tellingly, James McAuley of The Washington Post wrote on Oct 23: Instead of addressing the alienation of French Muslims, especially in France’s exurban ghettos, or banlieues — which experts broadly agree is the root cause that leaves some susceptible to radicalization and violence — the government aims to influence the practice of a 1,400-year-old faith, one with almost 2 billion peaceful followers around the world, including tens of millions in the West.

Days after beheaded teacher Samuel Paty’s killing, two female attackers stabbed two Muslim women in headscarves and called them “dirty Arabs” as they walked near the Eiffel Tower. “There is a hysterical climate,” according to Rachid Benzine, a French political scientist.

Arabs condemn Macron’s remarks about Islam

Several Arab countries have condemned the French incitement against the Islam and the Prophet of Islam, warning that these repeated insults fuel hatred among the peoples.

In a statement, the Secretary General of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Nayef al-Hajraf described Macron’s statements against Islam as “irresponsible” and “cause to spread the culture of hatred among the peoples”.

“Such [French statements] come out at a time when efforts are underway to enhance tolerance and dialogue between cultures and religions,” al-Hajraf said in a statement.

The GCC includes Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.

Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry also expressed resentment at the French republication of the anti-prophet cartoons. A ministry statement warned that these insults will “ignite the spirit of hatred, violence and enmity, and jeopardize the international community’s efforts to spread the culture of tolerance and peace among peoples of the world”.

Pakistan Premier denounces Macron’s ‘encouragement of Islamophobia’

Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan on Sunday denounced what he called was “encouragement of Islamophobia” by French President Emmanuel Macron, saying the European leader had chosen to “deliberately provoke” Muslims, including his own citizens.

In a series of tweets, the premier said that the sign of a leader was that he united people, like former South African president Nelson Mandela. “This is a time when President Macron could have put [a] healing touch and denied space to extremists rather than creating further polarization and marginalization that inevitably leads to radicalization,” he said.

The premier regretted that the French president had instead chosen to encourage Islamophobia by “attacking Islam rather than the terrorists who carry out violence, be it Muslims, White Supremacists or Nazi ideologists”.

Arab trade groups boycott French products over insults

Several Arab trade groups have announced their boycott of French products in response to incitements against the Islam and insulting statements against Prophet Muhammad, Turkish newspaper Yanishafak reported Monday.

Arab activists also launched several social media campaigns for the boycott of all French products, using several hashtags as (#boycottfrance #boycott_French_products #ProphetMuhammad).

In Kuwait, several trade groups such as Alnaeem Cooperative Society, the Suburb Afternoon Association, Eqaila Cooperative Society and Saad Al Abdallah City Cooperative Society. The three groups published photos showing French products being removed from their shelves.

In Qatar, Alwajba Dairy Company and Almeera Consumer Goods Company said they will boycott the French products and will provide other alternatives.

Qatar University also joined the boycott campaign, announcing that it decided to postpone the French Cultural Week in protest of the anti-Islam insults.

“Any denigration or violation of the Islamic beliefs, sanctities and symbols are absolutely rejected,” the university said in a statement. “These insults harm the universal human values and the high ethical principles of all societies,” it added on Twitter.

Not surprisingly, France called on Arab countries on Sunday to end calls to boycott French products. “These calls for boycott and attacks on our country pushed by a radical minority are without merit and must be stopped immediately,” French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Agnes von der Muhll said in a statement.

The 2020 youth uprising in Thailand

Junya Yimprasert

Thailand in brief

With a population of around 67 million, which includes some 40 ethnic groups and languages, the success of the decades long struggle for fully representative democracy in the Kingdom of Thailand is of vital importance to not only the health and aspirations of the peoples of Thailand itself, but also for the future of the ASEAN.

During the USA-Indochina War of 1950 – 1975 more-or-less the whole of Thailand was used by the USA as a military facility. From 1947 onwards the US military presence in Thailand functioned to bolster the Monarchy and Royal Thai Army, enhancing the ability of both to operate in tandem to successfully block the democratic process, as clearly evidenced by the succession of no less than 12 monarcho-military coups. The current wave of protest across Thailand is attempting to say that the time has come to end this succession.

After the most recent military coup in 2014, the leader of the coup and Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Army, General Prayuth Chan-o-cha, appointed himself Prime Minister, and continues today (mid-October 2020) as a pathetic royalist dictator attempting to cling to power by refusing to countenance in any meaningful way the reasons why he is being confronted with massive protest.

In October 2016, after the passing of old King Bhumibol (Rama 9, 1946 – 2016), Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn was enthroned as Thailand’s new King, as Rama 10, the tenth king of the Chakri Dynasty. The Chakri Dynasty came into existence in 1782, when Rama 1 terminated the Taksin Dynasty by executing King Taksin and most of his relatives and their families.

238 years under the Chakri has meant that Thailand remains one of the very few countries in the world that has been unable to liberate itself from the brutality of feudal monarchism.  Today Rama 10, King Maha Vajiralongkorn (68), Thailand’s Head of State, the richest monarch in the world, untouchable by law in Thailand, appears to have only one abiding interest: his own interest.

Alongside the fundamental, determined, violent rejection of the concept of equal rights, the survival of the Chakri Dynasty depends in part on ensuring that its diplomatic service is served exclusively by royalists that present, north, south, east and west, to Europe, the USA and China, a sweetly acquiescent impression of the good intentions of the good Kingdom.

Thai democracy in Brief

Stirrings to establish a constitution for Siam began some 120 years ago during the reign of Rama 5. The Palace was successful in suppressing this early attempt and 30 years were to pass before, at the hour of dawn on 24 June 1932, a lightning, bloodless coup d’état brought 150 years of absolute rule under Chakri monarchs to a sudden stop. The coup was led by a group of young scholars and military officers. Calling themselves Khana Ratsadon, the People’s Party, they did aim to open the road to democracy for Siam (Thailand), but the journey has been and remains painful.

Khana Ratsadon consisted of a rather elite group of civilians, government officials, aristocrats and military officers who had met and begun planning the coup as students in France in the 1920s. Pridi Phanomyong, a farmer’s son, led the political wing and Lieutenant-Colonel Phibunsongkhram the military wing. On that early morning in 1932, completely unknown to the people, within the space of a few hours, Siam was changed from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy.

The new Government of Siam was still dominated by the military but it did at least aim at some kind of democracy: the 1932 Constitution did state that the people of Siam (not yet Thailand) held sovereign power. Nonetheless the continuous, systematic refusal of the Palace, royalists and military elite to accept universal suffrage and the sovereign authority of an elected Parliament has meant that, still today, after 88 years, such a state has yet to be achieved.

Monarcho-militarism versus democracy

The first royalist coup against Thailand’s fledgling movement for democracy came in 1933. Despite being fed with money by Rama 7 it failed. The royalist elite made a second attempt in January 1939 against the government of Phibunsongkhram, now Prime Minister and also Field-Marshal. This attempted coup also failed and resulted, by order of Phibun, in the execution of 18 leaders, life imprisonment for several and long sentences for others

Prince Chainart, the uncle of King Ananda (and Prince Bhumibol), received a life sentence. The Palace placed PM Phibun under enormous pressure to release Chainart, but Phibun stuck to his guns. It was not until after the withdrawal of Japanese troops, when Field-Marshal Phibun was pushed from power, that Prince Chainart was pardoned, in September 1944. As the last remaining son of Rama 5, Prince Chainart returned to being the most influential person in Palace politics.

On 9 June 1946 King Ananda was found in bed with a bullet through his head. Prince Chainart stepped in as Regent on 16 June and took over the Chairmanship of the Supreme Council of State the following year. Prince Bhumibol, Ananda’s brother, having recently returned from Switzerland to permanent residence in the Palace, became King Bhumibol, Rama 9. Suspicion that he was somehow involved in his brother’s death still hangs in the air. His public coronation took place on 5 May 1950, a date that can be seen as marking the beginning of systematic efforts to re-establish the power of the monarchy.

Thai Democracy Monument, 14 October 2020

70 years of oppression and suppression

The roots of Thailand’s political chaos, and of the widespread discontent and massive protests of  today, are found in the last 70 years of extreme, royalist propaganda. For Thai children born after 1946  “Killing communists for nation, religion and King” was standard fare.

Below are just a few of the horrific happenings that punctuate the history of the Land of Smiles after Bhumibol became king.

• 25-28 April 1948. Hundreds of Royal Thai police and army in Narathivat Province surrounded the village of Dusongdor and murdered about 400 villagers.
• 28 Feb – 01 March 1949. By order of Field-Marshall Phibun, chief of the military junta, 5 members of the Pridi Alliance for Democracy were assassinated. After being arrested and handcuffed, four of them, all Members of Parliament, were riddled with bullets in the back of a van, and the fifth, the Chief of Police Intelligence, was shot dead in the street.
• 13 December By order of the Chief of the Royal Thai Police, the Leader of the Labour Party, Tieng Sirikhan, a former MP from Sakon Nakhon Province, was brutally murdered in Bangkok together with four friends. Their bodies were taken to be burnt in Kanchanaburi Province, 200 km from the scene of the crime.
• 1971-1973. During this period of ‘killing communists for nation and king’, in Pattalung Province alone around 3,000 villagers were brutally murdered by the Royal Thai Army. Some were burnt alive in drums of oil, some pushed into sacks to be dropped down the side of a mountain or pushed out of helicopters.
• 14-15 October 1973. Monarcho-military crackdown on students and working-class people protesting on the streets of Bangkok. 77 people were killed, most by military gunfire. 847 were wounded.
• 6 October 1976. Monarcho-military crackdown on student protest. According to official government records, 41 students were killed by a mixed-force of Royal Thai Army, Royal Thai Border Guard and para-military ‘Protect the Monarchy’ thugs. 30 bodies were identified, 10 were too damaged to identify. 26 male and 4 female bodies were returned to their families by the Police for cremation. Hundreds were injured. 3,154 students were arrested. Thousands of people went into hiding, most fleeing to the forest. In anger over the brutality of the oppression many did join the Communist Party of Thailand, and remained in hiding until granted immunity after the Communist Party was dissolved in 1980.
• 17 – 19 May 1992. Monarcho-military crackdown. This ‘Bloody May’ witnessed about 45 killed on the streets of Bangkok, about 38 by bullets from the Royal Thai Army. Reports indicate that about 70 people ‘disappeared’.
• April-May 2010. Monarcho-military crackdown under Prime Minister Abhisit (‘Democrat Party’), who declared a ‘Live firing zone’, in other words issued elite troops with license to kill Thai civilians. 99 people were killed on the streets of Bangkok, almost all by military snipers. About 2000 were wounded. 470 were arrested. When official records say ‘wounded’ or ‘died on the spot’ they forget to add ‘from a military bullet to the back of the head’.

From the few records that are available, the death-toll from political oppression and extrajudicial killings since 1946 adds-up to somewhere over 13,000, but this figure in no way speaks of the actual number of people that have died as a result of political oppression and military crackdowns.

Coups and Kings

From the beginning, all of the Chakri Ramas have refused to respect or recognise the democratic aspirations of the peoples of Thailand.

Up until the last, King Bhumibol (Rama 9) argued that the people are not ready for democracy. He presented himself as a king god-sent to care for the people, with, naturally, the mercifully god-sent assistance of the commanders of the Royal Thai Army, the US military and 12 military coups.

All of the governments that came from the 28 general elections held during Bhumibol’s reign were prevented by one means or another from completing even one 4-year term, all except one, that of Thaksin Shinnawatra from 2004 to 2008.

The Thaksin governments were brought to office and power through land-slide elections and twice brought down by monarcho-military coups, in 2006 and 2014.

The 2014 coup was conducted for one purpose alone: to ensure the transition from Rama 9 to Rama 10 be kept under the control and management of a military commander trusted by the Palace, in other words to ensure yet again that the critical concerns and interests of the people could be flattened-out and kept harmless.

Dictator Prayuth

The leader of the 2014 coup, General Prayuth Chan-o-cha, Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Army, disbanded all elements of the elected government, tore-up the Constitution and set-up a military junta calling itself the National Council of Peace and Order (NCPO) and presented the country with a National Legislative Assembly (NLA). Half of the 220 seats of this ‘legislative assembly’ were filled with people hand-picked by the NCP and half were military officers. The function of the NLA was to rubber-stamp the dictates of the NCPO.

After slipping out of uniform and appointing himself Prime Minister in August 2014 and by heading-up both his NCPO and NLA set-ups, Prayuth, honouring his many predecessors, slid from Royal Army Commander-in-Chief to Thailand’s Royal Dictator-in-Chief, and proceeded, as did all his predecessors, to drafting yet another Constitution (Thailand’s 20th since 1932), and to employing all possible ways and means to delay the demand of the furious majority for a general election, in order to give his junta as much time as possible to consolidate power over the electorate.

After a full year allocated to the official, national mourning for King Bhumibol, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn was crowned in 2016. His very first move as Head of State was the issuance of orders to amend the junta’s 2017 Constitution even further in his favour: to increase his personal freedom, to greatly increase his personal military power and to massively increase his personal wealth. All of this passed, the public aghast, completely unopposed.

Nonetheless, with the world watching and public demand for a general election growing and EU sanctions causing Thailand humiliation if not pain, Prayuth could not delay a general election forever.

After several bluff start-ups for the purpose of generating further delay, the junta did eventually grant the population a General Election on 24 March 2019, but not without engaging all the tricks in the royalist playbook, all financed by the national budget, to ensure that the opposition could not win. The 2017 Constitution stipulated that it was to be the 250 members of the reconvened Senate, who were all junta-appointed, that voted in a new Prime Minister. Furthermore, the judges of the so-called Constitutional Court, which was a product of the 1997 People’s Constitution, were by now (after the coups of 2006 and 2014) all junta-appointed judges quite at ease with disqualifying and dissolving any opposition parties and parliamentary candidatures that they deemed unsuitable. In all ways the 2019 General Election was rigged to make it impossible for the opposition to win.

These royalist game-plays are well-understood and extremely wearisome for the majority of Thai people, because they know simultaneously that they have only two options: to submit or protest.

Protest began gaining momentum after the Constitutional Court had the temerity to dissolve the largest opposition party, the Future Forward Party, that had won 80 of the 220 seats of the NLA in the 2019 election.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn

Old King Bhumibol (1946 – 2019) was surely vaguely aware that his son Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn had an infamous reputation as a sex-addict with a mafia-like life-style, but he did not want to break with royal precedent. When Bhumibol passed away on 13 October 2016, Vajiralongkorn was named king. His 3-day public coronation was staged in May 2019 at a cost of around 32 million USD.

Thailand’s new king, now 68, abandoned and humiliated his first wife soon after they were married. In 1996 he banished his second wife and the four sons he had with her. In 2014 he placed his third wife under house arrest and imprisoned her parents, three brothers, a sister, her uncle and several other relatives. He married his fourth wife in 2019.

According to the 2014 Constitution, as amended by Vajiralongkorn himself, the Thai king’s status is now closer to that of an absolute monarch than to that of a constitutional monarch.

As noted above, before the people could blink, their new King had taken some major steps to strengthen his position, by increasing his direct personal command, by some tens of thousands, of the 80 000 strong Royal Guard, and by providing himself with direct personal access to the vast wealth of the Crown Property Bureau, to which his father had only limited access. As the wealthiest monarch in the world, with something in the region of  50 – 60 billion Euro at his disposal, he still demands a vast sum from Thai taxpayers, not less that one billion Euro, to finance his personal expenses, many palaces and the so-called ‘royal projects’.

The future of this king is already severely haunted by overwhelming evidence that, since 2016, nine democracy activists, who had sought refuge from the military junta outside Thailand, have been hunted-down and murdered by his agents – assassination squads.

In true medieval style, this King is also famous for casting anybody who displeases him into his own dungeons, to be tortured. The stories are many and bad. One place, the Thawee Watthana Prison in the grounds of the Thawee Watthana Palace in western Bangkok has a very dark reputation: those who don’t come out alive are reported as having died by suicide and so on.

At the present time Thailand’s Head of State has been spending by far the greater part of his time with his harem at the Grand Hotel Sonnenbichl in Bavaria, Germany, supported by 100 or so servants and body guards. There are women and servants in his entourage that exist solely as royal prisoners. It is said that even here those who displease the king are also abused and beaten, and made too afraid to approach the German police, terrified that their families in Thailand will face retribution.

In Thailand the King can do and does as he pleases with complete impunity. Nobody can bring charges against him, he lives completely above the law. Most Thais are to some extent aware that their new king is cruel and somehow criminal, but until now their thoughts and feelings have been silenced by the draconian laws of the military junta, in particular the laws of lès majesté and the so-called computer crime laws, which can cause anybody to find themselves in jail for many years for any indication or accusation of disrespect, true or false, towards His Majesty or his His Majesty’s relations, affairs, interests or projects.

Nonetheless, the fact that, as Covid-19 exasperates existing destitution everywhere, this King chooses to live a life of luxury in Germany, abusing women, wasting vast sums of taxpayer’s money and sending out agents to kill popular dissidents, has finally stirred-up open expression of disgust in Thailand itself.

Does this King of Thailand also think himself above and beyond the laws of Germany and the European Union? Does he imagine that he is not subject to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that his kingship is beyond the reach of the International Criminal Court? Apparently he does, but increasing numbers of people. including most of the youth of Thailand, are starting to find him guilty on all counts.

2020 Youth Uprising

It was early in 2020 when students first started appearing on the streets of Bangkok in large numbers – to protest the dissolution, by the judges of the Constitutional Court, of the Future Forward Party, the main opposition to the Prayuth junta.

The arrival of Covid-19 gave Prayuth a defensible but also convenient reason to declare a State of Emergency and stifle protest. Nonetheless, by this time the majority of Thai people had become deeply tired of their Dictator and what he said or didn’t say or did or didn’t do began to feel somewhat irrelvant. Youthful Thailand was coming to a common understanding, a consensus, that it was time to inform General Prayuth that his illegitimate regime was illegal and his modus operandi impossible to tolerate any longer.

On 18 July the youth of Thailand, from secondary schools to universities – from all across Thailand, rose up in protest against the military-enforced status-quo. The broad, red-hot dynamism of the demands of the students, demands that range all the way from removing militant disciplinary codes in schools to radical reform of the Monarchy itself, began to electrify the whole country.

WHERE is JUSTICE?

Thailand has arrived at a long-predicted, dangerous but inescapable juncture. In facing the potentially ruthless, implacable monarcho-military establishment, youthful Thailand needs, right now, the understanding, support and solidarity of the International Community.

How can the logical, common-sense, standard, decent, normal and natural aims and demands of this youth-led uprising against autocratic rule be supported?

For many years there has been a broad convergence of analysis and common opinion and a gathering of momentum around recognition that there is no way for Thai people, for the population at large, to move from the past to the future, to be able to engage with full hearts, minds and full power with local, regional and global matters, issues and crises, while a patronising, monarcho-military alliance hovers over them, assuming right to own or disown their every thought, hope, wish, desire, invention, movement and action.

King Vajiralongkorn, Head of State, is a well-known abuser of human rights, an abuser of the privileges afforded to him by birth, a pathological abuser of women, a vile executioner, an owner of some 10 000 slaves, some of them trafficked, and, for the youth of Thailand and of the world, the worst possible example of a human-being, let alone Head of State.

Since people in Thailand have zero resort to meaningful justice – or appeal, at the start of 2020  ACT4DEM joined forces with PixelHELPER in Germany to bring the crimes of King Vajiralongkorn directly to courts of justice in Europe.

General Prayuth is a puppet of the Chakri monarchy and powerless without it, thus our work at present is focused on bringing the attention of the Germany Bundestag, European Union, United Nations and all people around the world who love Thailand, to the extreme degrees of corruption and cruelty exhibited by King Vajiralongkorn.

We aim to ensure that King Vajiralongkorn will be forevermore prevented from beating, torturing and murdering any more people, as well as being prevented from throwing any more desperately needed, hard-earned public money down the drain of his own selfish desires.

Together we can end this reign of fear before it gets worse.

Together we will ensure that justice prevails.

COVID’s deadly toll on people with Alzheimer’s and dementia

Benjamin Mateus

On October 23, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that excess deaths from late January through October 3 had reached close to 300,000 cases, of which 198,000 (66 percent) were attributed to COVID-19. There have been over 61,000 deaths in the US attributed to dementia from June to September, 11,000 more than usual in this timeframe, according to Politico.

One of the hidden tragedies of this preventable health crisis has been the deadly toll on the elderly who suffer from dementia, a general condition of the brain (and not a normal part of aging) that leads to a long-term and gradual decrease in the ability to think and remember. When the condition becomes severe enough—changes in mood, difficulty with speech and decline in motivation—it leads to the inability to conduct normal daily functions of life. Consciousness, however, is not affected.

Of deaths not directly attributed to COVID-19, heart disease and Alzheimer’s and dementia were the two leading causes that saw spikes initially in March and April, then again in June and July, as the pandemic shifted to the Sunbelt states.

The faces of dementia. Photo from welldoing.org

A Washington Post analysis of CDC data found that there were about 13,200 excess deaths attributed to Alzheimer’s and dementia from March until mid-August. Physicians treating these patients are reporting increased cases of falls (from lack of nursing home staffing), more pulmonary infections (some attributable to aspiration of food from swallowing difficulties), rapid onset of depression, and frailty among those that had been stable over several years.

Sharon O’Connor, who runs a program for dementia patients at Iona senior Services in DC, told the Post, “We have clients who have lost almost 30 pounds. Some just don’t have reason to get up anymore, so they stay in bed all day. Others sit by themselves in a dark room.” Patients that can still communicate explain they have a sense of foreboding from being cut off from everything they knew. Dining facilities are closed for nursing home residents. Music therapy, games and various forms of exercise have abruptly ended. Worse, families who were essential components of the care they received are no longer allowed to enter the premises.

This is, however, not a phenomenon limited to the United States. A recent editorial published in Lancet Neurology cited a report by the International Long-term Care Policy Network that focused on the high death rates among people with dementia worldwide during the COVID pandemic.

It wrote, “Deaths linked to SARS-CoV-2 infection in care homes, 29 to 75 percent occurred in people with dementia across Australia, Brazil, India, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Spain, the UK, and the USA. The disproportionate effect on people with dementia is being exacerbated by restricted access to health care services, removal of face-to-face support, and interruptions to diagnoses and research.” A critical aspect in the stark neglect of people with dementia has been the disproportionate lack of funding for much needed research in this field.

Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, contributing to 60 to 70 percent of people with the disease. Globally, there are almost 10 million cases diagnosed annually and the prevalence of the disease is around 50 million, up from 20 million in the 1990s. Life expectancy after a diagnosis of dementia is usually five to 10 years. Though associated with the elderly, 9 percent of cases affect those under the age of 65.

Fig 1 US weekly excess deaths from Alzheimers and Dementia 2020

Factors known to mitigate and reduce the risk of dementia include regular exercise, a healthy diet, abstaining from smoking and drinking alcohol, and controlling blood pressure, blood sugar levels and cholesterol levels. Risk factors for dementia that have been heightened by the pandemic include depression, social isolation and cognitive inactivity. Additionally, poverty plays a significant factor in exacerbating risks for dementia.

A longitudinal study conducted in England with 6,200 subjects across the span of 12 years noted that the risk of dementia was 50 percent higher among the poorest as compared to the richest people. According to the author, Dr. Dorian Cadar, “We found a positive association between lower wealth and dementia incidence that was independent of education, area-level deprivation. … This suggests a higher risk for individuals with fewer financial resources.” Wealth provides access to adequate nutrition, cultural outlets and increased social networks of which the working class is deprived.

The social impact of the condition cannot be overstated. Even among health care providers, there is a lack of awareness and appreciation for dementia which leads to stigmatization and delay in diagnosis and necessary referrals and care. Its emotional, physical and financial pressures and stresses on families and caregivers is considerable. To place this in economic terms, the direct medical and social care costs worldwide has been estimated at $818 billion, or 1.1 percent of gross domestic product.

The response by governments in protecting and caring for nursing home residents has been nothing short of disastrous. Despite all the promises made, shortage of testing, staff and personal protective equipment has turned nursing homes into solitary confinement prisons for the elderly who have been left to rot in their beds completely forgotten.

The pandemic in the United States is seeing daily cases surge passed their summer highs as the death rate is beginning to uptick. The policy of “focused protection” has been exposed for the fraud it is. The idea that somehow the most vulnerable will be protected is leading to their deaths. Either COVID-19 will kill them, or the isolation will.

Fig 2 Dementia in the elderly. Stock photo fromGetty images

Beth Kallmyer, vice president of care and support for the Alzheimer’s Association, told Politico, “Protecting these vulnerable people has not been a priority. We’ve been through two waves and we haven’t made any real changes. Why has this not been sped up in long-term care?”

Fundamentally, the rational and sane public health measures to mitigate, contain, trace and quarantine clusters of infection and drive infection rates down until the disease is eradicated is not a far-fetched concept and would allow the necessary breathing room to address these critical immediate medical concerns being raised as trials on vaccines are allowed to be completed.

The World Health Organization has even reasserted that the world still has time to turn this around. However, it requires placing the social well-being of all people ahead of the narcissistic needs of a financial system that can only thrive on the acquisition of ever more surplus value.

Because this layer of the population that has contributed their entire lives to maintaining the present financial infrastructure is no longer productive, they matter little in the policies being adopted to confront the pandemic. And, in fact, the culling of this layer has significant rewards for a ruling class bent on curtailing all expenditures that do not contribute to their future dividends.

Continuing wage dispute at the Berlin’s Charité hospital

Markus Salzmann

A wage dispute at Charité Facility Management (CFM) in Berlin, Germany, which has been smoldering for years, has flared up in recent weeks. The employees of the subsidiary of Berlin’s Charité hospital find themselves confronted by an alliance of the city’s “red-red-green” coalition government (Left Party, Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens) and the Verdi Union.

Several strikes this year, the last occurring in August, were ended by the union without achieving tangible results. The CFM workers are demanding wage adjustments to match the wages paid in the parent company, as well as better working conditions.

Fourteen years ago, CFM was spun-off of Charité by the Berlin Senate—at that time a coalition of the SPD and the Left Party—to reduce employment costs and diminish working conditions. Although the 2016 red-red-green coalition agreement promised wage matching with other public servants, the monthly salary of CFM members remains up to €800 below that of their peers. Moreover, Charité has continued outsourcing non-medical staff, continuing the pernicious downward spiral.

A warning strike a the Berlin Charié, 2015

Until 2018, Charité owned a 51 percent stake in CFM, which provides services such as cleaning, transport and catering for the hospital, the remaining 49 percent belonged to VDH Health Care Services GbR, owned by the companies Vamed, Dussmann and Hellmann. Charité bought back the 49 percent stake in 2019, giving it 100 percent control.

This buy-back was preceded by a long Senate and union campaign promising better pay and conditions. What in fact occurred confirmed the prediction of the WSWS in March 2017, that the buy-back would “not improve the precarious working conditions of the 2800 employees,” but rather, “establish low wages and diminished working conditions for the entire Charité.”

In these 14 years there has been no lack of anger and willingness to fight on the part of CFM workers, protesting wages that all but preclude a decent life. The majority of Charité workers likewise demand re-incorporation of spin-offs and wage equalization. Yet over the years, the Verdi union has worked hand-in-glove with the Senate parties to implement austerity policies at the workers’ expense.

The current wage dispute is no different. The Greens and the Left Party sent declarations of solidarity to striking CFM employees while at the same time strictly opposing wage equalization in the Senate. Verdi has secretly negotiated with the Senate for over four weeks.

At the beginning of October, the governing mayor Michael Müller (SPD) introduced conciliatory procedures, cynically affirming the necessity of an increase in income for CFM employees, only to immediately backtrack, saying any wage agreement must be brought into line with the company’s profitability. This same argument was used to spin-off the CFM in 2006 and to justify the low wage regime ever since.

As reported by the Left Party-associated publication Junge Welt, the mediator requested by Verdi is none other than Gregor Gysi, the long-time head of the Left Party’s predecessor, the PDS, and who acted as deputy mayor and Senator for Economics in Berlin in 2002. This would be the height of audacity and a threat to the employees of CFM and Cherité. Gysi was one of the architects of the radical austerity policies that largely destroyed the capital’s social infrastructure.

Gysi took on this office to “carry through hard cuts,” as he told the Tagesspiegel at the time. He wished to make the city “more interesting for serious investors” and to make the administration “leaner, less bureaucratic and more transparent.” Hardly was he in office before the SPD and PDS passed a double budget for 2002/03 that far overshadowed the anti-social austerity measures the black-red (conservative Christian Democratic Union and SPD) coalition senate had implemented in the previous ten years, establishing the framework for the cuts at Charité and all other municipal hospitals.

For years, only a small number of employees have taken part in the toothless protests organized by Verdi. Often only a few dozen union bureaucrats and their pseudo-left-wing supporters showed up. The unions have cheated and lied to the workforce for too long.

The unions and establishment parties are far more concerned by the growing anger in the hospital workforce than by the toothless protests of Verdi. They fear broader, uncontrollable strikes threatening the capitalist system. The last years have seen an increase in strikes and protests against low wages and miserable working conditions. The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated social tensions.

Just last week, nurses from Charité and Vivantes stopped work for several days in the course labor negotiations. Clinics in other German states also struck.

For 16 months now, employees of the Asklepios clinic in the city of Seesen have been on strike for better pay and better working conditions. The private clinic owner, known for poor working conditions, has long cooperated with Verdi to stifle the strikes. As the taz newspaper commented, “many employees appear willing, if necessary, to continue striking indefinitely.” An assembly of strikers recently declared itself unanimously in favor of continuing the labor dispute.

During the pandemic, strikes of nurses, doctors and hospital staff for occupational safety and better conditions have broken out internationally. In France, Spain and the US, among others, thousands have stopped work to demand better protections.

A successful struggle by CFM workers can only be waged independently of the unions. It depends on the establishment of independent action committees and requires an international and socialist perspective.

ICE uses torture to pressure African asylum seekers to agree to deportation

Meenakshi Jagadeesan

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in a privately run detention center in Mississippi have been accused of torturing asylum seekers from Africa in an effort to get them to sign their own deportation papers. This latest saga in the on-going grotesque war on immigrants carried out by the Trump administration was revealed last week by the Guardian, which followed up on an October 8 complaint filed by groups including the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Freedom for Immigrants (FFI) on behalf of eight asylum seekers.

The report details a horrific situation in which ICE officials have engaged in an “brutal scramble” to get the asylum seekers out of the country before the presidential election on November 3. Detainees spoke of being choked, beaten, pepper sprayed, and threatened with even further violence unless they consented to being placed on charter flights back to their home countries.

The asylum seekers from various African countries—particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon—have been unwilling to sign off on their own deportations, which is not surprising since the very reason for their coming to the US is to escape persecution in their own countries. Many of them in fact have asylum hearings pending. However, ICE has shrugged away even the pretense of respect for basic human rights and due process.

The West Texas Detention Facility in Sierra Blanca, Texas, in February, 2017 (WSWS Photo)

The disgraceful treatment of African asylum seekers was brought to light this past year in part because of organized protests, including hunger strikes, by 40 Cameroonians detained in ICE’s Pine Prairie Facility in Louisiana.

The detainees have spoken up about the appalling conditions in the detention center, the lack of protection against COVID-19, and the bullying and frankly illegal behavior of various immigration officials including a systematic attempt to dismiss identification documents or evidence and pressure asylum seekers to give up on their cases even before an appeal is heard. It is also now known that ICE has retaliated against the detainees for protesting by using force and subjecting them to long stretches of solitary confinement.

The latest revelations are even more horrifying. One of the detainees, identified as DF in the complaint, said that on being asked by an ICE agent to sign his deportation order on September 28: “I refused... He pressed my neck into the floor. I said, ‘Please, I can’t breathe.’ I lost my blood circulation. Then they took me inside with my hands at my back where there were no cameras.”

The place that DF was taken to is a punitive wing known as “Zulu” in the Adams county center, where reports indicate torture is carried out regularly without any restraints. Describing his experience in Zulu, DF stated: “They put me on my knees where they were torturing me and they said they were going to kill me. They took my arm and twisted it. They were putting their feet on my neck. While in Zulu, they did get my fingerprint on my deportation document and took my picture.”

Another detainee, CA, said he was forced to the ground, sat on, handcuffed and pepper sprayed. “I was crying, ‘I can’t breathe,’ because they were forcefully on top of me pressing their body weight on top of me. My eyes were so hot ... I was dragged across the ground...The officers told me to open my eyes. I couldn’t. My legs and hands were handcuffed. They forcefully opened my palm. Some of my fingers were broken. They forced my fingerprint on to the paper.”

On October 13, approximately 100 asylum seekers were put on a charter flight that took off from Fort Worth Alliance Airport in Texas. There was no flight plan filed, but the immigration rights group Witness at the Border, which tracked the flight said it stopped in Senegal, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and then Kenya before flying back to Texas. DF was one of the people on the flight. His fate is unknown. CA, who was supposed to be on the flight, was pulled out at the last minute because of the intervention of human rights advocates. However, ICE officials have assured him and others that have remained that this was merely a temporary reprieve from certain deportation.

Reports of gratuitous cruelty and general inhumanity of the Trump administration’s attitude towards immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers have been a nearly daily occurrence. But this latest exposure merits a special place in the annals of criminal behavior.

The US Senate recently passed a resolution that acknowledged the Cameroonian government’s human rights abuses including torture, imprisonment and extra-judicial killings directed particularly at the Anglophone community, to which most of the asylum seekers belong. Even the Trump administration—not known for its respect for common decency—revoked Cameroon’s trade privileges because of its abuses.

It is a grim irony that those who fled their country to escape torture are now being tortured by US state officials in order to force them to return. What makes this particularly ugly is the fact that the illegal torture is being carried out to give this process the gloss of legality—as in, the asylum seekers voluntarily signed off on their deportation, which in many cases is the same as claiming that they willingly signed their own death sentences.

In response to the complaints, Sarah Lociano, an ICE spokeswoman declared: “ICE is firmly committed to the safety and welfare of all those in its custody. ICE provides safe, humane, and appropriate conditions of confinement for individuals detained in its custody.” Lociano’s claims mirror those of Trump, who callously declared during the last Presidential debate that the 545 immigrant children who are yet to be reunited with their parents are “in facilities that are so clean, they’re so well taken care of.” This will no doubt come as a surprise to those who have experienced the dubious hospitality of the various ICE-run detention camps and the children who have been torn from their parents.

It should be noted that two of the women who had given testimony about forced sterilizations at the Irwin detention center in Georgia were put on the October 13 deportation flight to Africa. This suggests that the flights were not just part of a desperate effort to remove asylum seekers, but also get rid of any possible witnesses who might provide evidence of the rampant criminality of the current administration’s anti-immigrant policies.