Whole Foods worker describes dangers of COVID-19 for US grocery workers

Jessica Goldstein

The results of a Harvard study, released last Thursday by the medical journal BMJ, has confirmed the widely-held belief that US grocery store workers have a serious risk of contracting COVID-19 infections in their workplaces. At least 15,854 grocery store workers had been infected and 105 workers died over the first eight months of 2020, according to a conservative estimate by the United Food and Commercial Workers union in late August.

The Harvard study, entitled “Association between SARS-CoV-2 infection, exposure risk and mental health among a cohort of essential retail workers in the USA,” relied on secondary data collected in May as part of a city-wide mandated testing program in Boston, Massachusetts. It reported the results from one Boston, Massachusetts, area grocery store, where 21 out of 104 tested workers—or 20 percent—showed positive results for COVID-19. It also found that a large majority, 76 percent, of the participants who tested positive in the city-wide program were asymptomatic.

A worker without a mask sanitizes shopping carts before they are reused by waiting patrons outside the 365 Whole Foods Market in Los Angeles Tuesday, March 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

It is the first study to date to examine the mental health effects of the pandemic on grocery store workers in the US. Twenty-four percent experienced mental health concerns ranging from mild anxiety to depression, with eight percent with at least mild depression.

According to the results, “workers who screened positive for depression … were less likely to practice social distancing consistently at work and more likely to commute by public transportation or shared rides, compared with those without depression.”

Researchers also found that workers in customer-facing positions were five times more likely to test positive for SARS-CoV-2 than those without direct customer exposures. This likelihood did not seem to be affected by the individual workers’ use of personal protective equipment or attempt to observe social distancing guidelines while on the job.

The study also debunked the efforts of employers to blame outside personal activities, not working conditions, for the spread of the contagion. “The SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among these retail employees was significantly higher than of the local community around similar time period, which was 0.9%–1.3%,” the researchers wrote, adding, “we did not observe a difference in SARS-CoV-2 community prevalence among those tested positive versus negative employees, indicating the possibility of a true work-related SARS-CoV-2 exposure.”

A Whole Foods worker at a store in Florida, a major epicenter for the spread of the virus, was not surprised that the results of the study showed reasonable proof that the grocery workers contracted COVID-19 from the workplace given the conditions she and her coworkers experience daily.

She spoke to the World Socialist Web Site under terms of anonymity to protect her job. Whole Foods is owned by Amazon, a corporation notorious for violating international workers’ democratic rights and imposing impossible production demands. It requires all workers to sign a waiver with a draconian clause stating that they will not speak negatively of the company in any way or risk firing.

“We’re so physically close to customers and have such a high volume of people in the store. In some departments, like produce, people are working elbow-to-elbow with one another. You can require customers to wear a mask on entry, but you can’t force them to keep it on. A lot of people have no choice but to get caught in a crowded situation.”

She described the measures, which amount to the purely cosmetic, that the company has implemented to keep profits flowing.

“The first thing we have to do when we come to work is to get our temperature taken. The machines are not always working though, so they have other equipment. We’re then offered a surgical or cloth mask depending on preference.

“They offer extra protection for the front-end baggers, who have face shields. But people who work in produce and grocery departments are stuck jam-packed with customers on top of them without protection.”

Because of the various initiatives that Amazon has pursued to satisfy its major shareholders’ profit demands, there are virtually no opportunities for workers to safely social distance. “In my store there are a lot of Amazon [personal] shoppers, sometimes as many as 15 to 20. They really congest the store and cause overcrowding, both in front where the customers are and in back where workers are.

“They’ve starting ‘flexing’ with the cashiers,” she continued. Whole Foods uses a scheme to work around social distancing guidelines to ensure the maximum productivity at its cash registers. “They have one cashier in a pod, and one ‘on flex.’ If it’s busy, you go in the pod if you’re on flex and ring for ten minutes, then step away for one minute, and then start your clock again. It can go on for hours but on paper it looks like you were only in the pod working next to someone for ten minutes at a time.”

“They tried to map out the break area for us to be six feet apart, but there’s too many of us. People have to sit on the stairs. Also, we’re no longer allowed to sit outside because they are using that space just for customers.”

Amazon is engaged in an ongoing cover-up of the number of actual cases at its warehouses and Whole Foods stores, against the demands of rank-and-file workers for transparency. In an October blog post management quietly revealed that nearly 20,000 US Amazon and Whole Foods workers had been infected. These numbers had been kept out of sight since the beginning of the pandemic.

“When someone tests positive, we get notified, but not what department or where they are in the store. We get anywhere from 1–5 of these notifications every month.”

As the virus is allowed to run rampant throughout the workforce, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos, the world’s wealthiest oligarch, has increased his own personal wealth more than $87 billion since the beginning of the year.

“We’re supposed to have only a certain number of customers in the store but based on payroll for the day we may not have enough to monitor that number. It’s like the budget is more important than safety of staff and customers.

“I was upset that they took away our hazard pay. They suspended the time and attendance policy, but then reinstated it and made it retroactive, so that any absences taken before the suspension were calculated back in. They never made any announcement about it, I found out through the grapevine. When I asked a supervisor if they’d be posting the news, they shrugged their shoulders and said no.”

Amazon’s brutal time and attendance policy for Whole Foods workers guarantees that workers will be penalized for staying home sick. “You can have one absence per month, and three absences in three months before being written up. You’re terminated if you have more than three absences in three months.

“When Amazon took over, they took away sick days. People are still losing their jobs. They gave a leave of absence of up to six months for workers who were at high risk, but that is ending soon, and they’ll have to make a decision of whether to come back and risk it or stop working here.”

She said that most workers are very careful to abide by public health measures in their personal lives. “We just go to work and our family. We’re not going out into the world and socializing. The college-age kids get a bad reputation in the media, but in my store the young workers are taking it seriously. The positive test results are most likely [from transmission] in the store.

“Amazon is all about trimming everyone to the bone, always one person doing the job of two or more people. Full timers only get up to 36 hours per week and part timers get up to 30 hours per week. The turnover is still high and when new people are being hired, they come in as part timers with no benefits.

“The attitude is ‘hurry up and work faster.’ If I knew Amazon was in the throes of buying Whole Foods, I probably would not have applied. We’re being timed, we have to meet productivity standards, or they will fire us and hire someone else.”

The International Amazon Workers Voice is calling on Whole Foods and other grocery workers to build rank-and-file safety committees, independent of the unions, to demand the release of information on outbreaks and to enforce health and safety and prepare collective action, including strikes, against unsafe conditions.

In June, the Network for Public Health Law issued a study titled, “Workplace Disparities: Gaps in COVID-19 Protections for Grocery Workers.” It noted that “Nearly six percent of grocery employees are older than 65 while almost 15 percent are between the ages of 55 and 64” and that workers with disabilities, many of whom are at a higher risk for contracting COVID-19, are more likely to be employed in retail trade than in other industries.

The report also pointed to the fact that in 2019, grocery store cashiers made average annual wages of just $24,990 per year—well below the US Federal Poverty Threshold of $25,750 per year for a family of four. Only 51 percent of retail workers were eligible to receive health insurance benefits from their employers. Only 64 percent had paid sick leave and just 15 percent had access to paid family leave in 2019, according to the report.

Grocery store jobs for all workers in the US average $35,329 per year, according to the job website ZipRecruiter. This amounts to an average poverty wage of only $17 per hour. The conditions of poverty and lack of health care place many grocery store workers in the life-and-death position of whether to quarantine at home and receive treatment for COVID-19 symptoms without pay or to go to work and come in contact with the virus.

The New School lays off 122 staff, sparking community protest

Elliott Murtagh

On October 2, The New School (TNS) in New York City announced the layoff of 122 members, or 13 percent, of its administrative staff, citing financial pressures. The private university, which was founded on the need to “solve the most pressing social issues of our time,” gave fired staff just one week’s notice before their positions were terminated. This action coincided with the elimination of 80 open positions and follows course reductions, pay cuts, a suspension of retirement contributions, and a freezing of research funds done earlier this year.

In response to these austerity measures, students, faculty and staff have demanded that the layoffs be rescinded and have organized protest rallies, teach-ins, and e-mail campaigns in support of those laid off, who the community say are essential.

TNS has pointed to a revenue shortfall of $130 million due to decreased enrollment, but according to a finance note released by the university the layoffs are only projected to save $5 million this fiscal year. Confronted with these figures, many have pointed to and critiqued TNS President Dwight McBride’s over $1 million salary and his living in a $15 million townhouse owned by the school. An open letter sent to the administration by students in the Economics Department stated that the worth of the president’s residence would pay the salary of their department’s recently fired administrator for 340 years.

The New School in New York City (Credit: Wikimedia)

In August, TNS announced the hiring of Huron Consulting—a corporate consultancy firm with direct ties to the Enron scandal and a track record of implementing large-scale layoffs at universities—to help the school undergo extensive “reimagining.” Less than two months later, the content of this reimagining has become clear.

In a “Workforce Reductions FAQ” released after the layoff announcement, TNS administration stated, “Unless we address our financial challenges—and address them now in this way—it will be harder, if not impossible, to protect and ultimately extend our core academic mission.” According to this logic, the ramming through of mass layoffs and austerity is necessary to carry out TNS’s mission of confronting dire social problems.

Opposition to these actions has been widespread, including an outpouring of letters in support of terminated staff, an open letter by the University Student Senate with more than 600 signatures, the creation of an umbrella organization of all employee unions on campus, and a protest rally organized by economics students outside TNS that drew roughly 100 attendees, including students from CUNY and Columbia University.

Silvina, a senior secretary in the Economics Department who was fired in the wave of layoffs, wrote a public letter to the TNS community emphasizing the need for unified opposition, writing, “In order to survive what is coming, you must stand united, and include the undergraduates too. … Remember, the easy way to defeat you is to divide you. So don’t allow it.”

The World Socialist Web Site spoke with students from TNS about the current situation.

Alyssa, a New School student whose name was changed to protect her anonymity, said that these layoffs “go directly against the New School principles of solving the most pressing social issues of our time.”

Alyssa commented that in addition to the layoffs, “the administration is abruptly cutting positions that, although little in number, are nonetheless made for students, such as Teaching Fellowships. Entire courses have been ‘cancelled’ in a random selection that directly affect the students’ capacity of making ends meet in one of the most expensive cities in the world.”

In relation to this recent austerity, Alyssa also brought up that in the spring, “when the pandemic numbers in New York City were beginning to grow in massive numbers of deaths per day, the administration decided to furlough the Health Services staff, leaving students with no place to go, not even in case of needing counseling. This Health Services, which does not exist anymore, is still being charged to students that must pay out of pocket. Furthermore, as an international student, we are required to hold a health insurance policy so very expensive for the very small number of conditions that it covers.”

Alyssa added that TNS community is being brought together and unifying in struggle against these actions by the administration, but emphasized that “All of these restructuring measures have only created despair and anxiety among the student community.”

Marc, a graduate student at TNS in the Economics Department, knows and has worked with two of the staff members who were laid off—one in Student Life and the other in the Economics Department—describing both as “integral to the functioning of their departments.”

Marc added, “It just shows how little the administration either knows or cares to know about how the department functions. It’s going to have a really adverse impact not only on these workers—who lose their salary, their pension, and their health care during a pandemic—but also for the faculty because they won’t have any help with their administrative duties, which means that they won’t be able to focus as much on their own research or helping students with their research, or teaching, and this will cause the students to suffer as well.

“The administration’s decision sends this message that they don’t really give a damn about social justice, because what’s more unjust than firing 122 people amidst a pandemic? Especially when there were so many other avenues for them to make up for a budget shortfall, like selling some real estate. It just seems like this administration just doesn’t really care about workers or faculty or students.”

Marc was one of the organizers of the protest rally outside TNS and commented on this demonstration, saying, “We felt like we needed to make a statement, especially as students who weren’t necessarily workers, and we feel very strongly that there needs to be a mobilization effort around these issues. We felt like students needed an outlet with everything going on to vent their frustration and their outrage at the University’s hypocrisy.”

Marc anticipates more of these demonstrations if the administration continues to ignore the demands of students, faculty, and workers. He stated, “Students came here because of the school’s vision and aspirations, but when you compare that to what the Board of Trustees and administration are doing in practice, it feels like you’re participating in a sham. We [the students] are funding the whole operation and we want to have a voice.”

Addressing the broader situation, he said, “You see this austerity in higher education all across the US right now, and this is a clear example that under capitalism everything is subordinated to the profit imperatives. Under this kind of logic, education will become less about providing people with tools that promote human flourishing, because ultimately it’s all about the money. And it really doesn’t have to be that way. These are all political choices, and I think that we can organize to change things.”

Marc spoke on the way forward, declaring, “I think it’s going to require building coalitions across universities because I think that it would be very easy to isolate a single university facing ‘restructuring.’ But if there is a broader movement across higher education, across workers, students, and faculty—even in the NYC area—I think that that could be really powerful.”

“At the rally, we connected with all these folks—CUNY and Columbia students, and even security guards at TNS—who are going through something similar. I think that it can be discouraging to see this happening everywhere, but at the same time it gives me a lot of hope because there’s all these people who have this shared oppression and I think that that can be this real force for unification and helping people to see that they’re not alone in this.”

Marc concluded by saying, “This whole scenario is just another example of how capitalism corrupts everything and how everything is corrupted by the imperative to make profits.” The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), the youth movement of the Socialist Equality Party, fully supports the demand to rescind all layoffs at TNS and for students, faculty, educators, and staff to link up across campuses, nationally and internationally, to firmly oppose the wave of austerity in education and higher education.

The unsafe reopening of schools and colleges amid a raging global pandemic, paired with mass layoffs and austerity measures, sharply illustrates that under capitalism academic institutions operate based on financial interests above all. Only through the overthrow of capitalism and the implementation of a socialist economy to provide for the social needs of the working class will the universal right to free, high-quality education be secured.

Three dead in terrorist attack near Vienna’s main synagogue

Clara Weiss

On Monday at 8 pm local time, just hours before a second lockdown went into effect in Austria amid a catastrophically fast rise in coronavirus cases, a major terrorist attack occurred in the center of Vienna near the capital’s main synagogue. According to the police, six shooters opened fire at six different locations. At least three people were killed. One of them was a suspect who was shot by the police.

15 people were hospitalized, and one died later in the evening. Six of them are still in serious condition. The number of fatalities is expected to rise.

A police officer in position at the scene after gunshots were heard, in Vienna, Monday, Nov. 2, 2020.(Photo/Ronald Zak)

The shooters were armed with automatic rifles. Reports, according to which at least one of the assailants had a belt with explosives, have not been confirmed. As of this writing, at least one of the assailants is still at large, according to the Vienna police.

The Austrian president Sebastian Kurz from the right-wing Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) said Monday evening that it was “definitely a terror attack” which was still “ongoing” and had been “prepared in a very professional manner.” The Austrian government has deployed massive police and special forces to Vienna, and has also mobilized the military.

The attack occurred in an area of the city center which is popular for its many bars and restaurants. The streets were particularly crowded as many tried to enjoy the nice weather on the eve of the lockdown. The attack began with one of the assailants shooting at passersby in the vicinity of the Seitenstettengasse synagogue. Soon thereafter, the shooting spread to least five other locations in the city center. The opera and one theater were evacuated.

The mayor of Vienna said that “people in bars were shot at randomly” and that an anti-Semitic motivation for the terror attack could not be excluded. Eye witnesses and media reports described scenes of chaos and panic across the city center.

According to Oskar Deutsch, the president of the Jewish Community Vienna, the synagogue had just closed at the time of the attack. While it remains unclear whether the synagogue was a target of the attack, all Jewish schools, synagogues, kosher restaurants and supermarkets will be closed on Tuesday.

In a press conference Monday night, the Austrian minister of the interior, Karl Nehammer, called upon people in Vienna to stay at home unless they had to go to work. He indicated that children did not have to go to school on Tuesday but that schools would be open for those who couldn’t stay at home. Nehammer urged residents to stay away from the city center.

The exact motivations for the attack remain unclear.

The attack occurred under conditions of a profound social and economic crisis. The coronavirus pandemic has now entered its second wave in Europe, with case numbers exploding in France, Germany, across Eastern Europe, the UK, as well as Austria. With a population of under 9 million, Austria has been reporting over 4,000 infections every day for the past week, a rate similar to that of the UK and Italy. On Friday, the number of infections reached 5,627. The government has indicated that hospitals won’t be able to cope once daily new cases reach over 6,000.

The government has long opposed a necessary shutdown. Now, much like Germany and France, it has only implemented a partial lockdown. Schools, kindergartens, shops and factories, the main sources of infection, remain open, while cultural institutions and restaurants have to shut down. The economic fallout of the pandemic has been severe. Unemployment has risen by 20 percent compared to last year. In early October, 409,000 people were looking for work—the equivalent of almost 2 percent of the working age population—the highest number since May 1946.

Political tensions are also running high. Over the past years, the Austrian government has stood at the forefront of the shift to the far right of European politics, bearing direct responsibility for the growth of neo-fascist forces. Under Sebastian Kurz, the far right Freedom Party (FPÖ) was integrated into the government and received control over the interior ministry until the government collapsed in 2019.

When the ÖVP entered a coalition with the Greens and Social Democrats, the right-wing policies of the FPÖ-ÖVP government were essentially continued. Much like in neighboring Germany, where the establishment parties deliberately encouraged the rise of the neo-fascist Alternative für Deutschland, while neo-Nazi networks flourish within the state, the Austrian far right has been fostered by the existing parties and the state apparatus. The FPÖ has particularly close ties to the far right Identitarian movement (Identitäre Bewegung). In 2019, it emerged that the neo-Nazi terrorist Brenton Tarrant, who perpetrated the horrific massacre of Christchurch in New Zealand, had donated 1,500 Euros to the Austrian Identitarian movement.

Teachers strike across France against first day of deadly school reopenings

Will Morrow

As schools reopened across France yesterday after the holidays, mass opposition among students and teachers at the Macron administration’s deadly school reopening policy is growing. Assemblies of teachers met at schools yesterday morning and resolved to strike against the lack of safe conditions to prevent the spread of the virus. Images are being widely shared online showing students crammed like sardines into hallways, classes and cafeterias.

The government is reopening schools despite a second wave of the pandemic that its own scientific council has warned will likely be larger than the first, which killed more than 30,000 people in France and 200,000 across Europe. More than 37,000 people have now died from the virus in France, with another 416 deaths reported on Monday.

Students gather outside on the first day of the return to school

Despite the government’s cynical claims that it is determined to protect students’ psychological well-being, the school reopening is driven by entirely different concerns: to ensure that parents can continue to work, and that the corporations can continue to obtain profits throughout the pandemic, regardless of how many lives are lost as a result.

A Twitter account reporting on opposition among teachers to the Macron government reported dozens of local strikes by teachers organised in assemblies at schools across France on Monday morning.

At the Balzac de Mitry-Mory school, 24 teachers organised to strike at 8 a.m. yesterday. At the Romain Rolland school in Clichy-sous-Bois near Paris, another 22 teachers voted to strike. In the Feyder school in Epinay-sur-Seine near Paris, 47 teachers voted by 100 percent to strike at 8 a.m. Classes were held for 60 students out of 1,600 enrolled. At the Berthelot school in Pantin, north of Paris, 28 teachers resolved to strike against the demand that they return to classes “as though nothing was happening.”

At Bachelard school in Chelles, 20 staff lodged their “right to strike” with the direction due to unsafe conditions caused by the pandemic and “non-respect of the health protocol.”

At the Jean Jaurès school in Clichy, teachers walked out, and the administration told families that the school may be forced to close. At Von Donghen school in Lagny, classes were cancelled after teachers threatened to strike. At the Flora Tristan school north of Paris, half of teachers supported a strike at 8:30 a.m. At the Joliot-Curie school in Nanterre, teachers voted 53-3 for a strike at midday. At the Olympe de Gouges school in Noisy-le-Sec, over 30 teachers voted to strike in the morning. At the Eugène Hénaff school in Bagnolet, 18 teachers voted to strike.

At the Alice Guy school in Lyon, the student body reportedly refused to enter classes, and there were reports of further strike action by teachers in Montpellier and Marseille, as well.

Students of the Pantheon university wearing face masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus attend a class in Paris, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

Safety protocols inside schools are essentially non-existent. One teacher writing into Le Monde stated: “I feel humiliated. While in the media there are grandiloquent statements to support our teachers, in reality there is nothing. … The health protocol is the same as before the holidays! The students continue to change between classes, with 30 crammed into a class. We have not received disposable masks since the beginning of the confinement! We have the right to only two masks on Sundays!”

Existing protocols state that social distancing must be respected “to the extent that it is possible.” Given the overcrowding of schools, this simply means they do not apply anywhere. Parents are advised to “take the temperature of their children before they go to school” and to “keep them home” if they have a temperature of over 38 degrees. Since it is well known that many cases are asymptomatic or exhibit symptoms after they have already been contagious, this will do nothing to prevent the spread of the virus in schools.

The protocols state that “social distancing is not required for students in the same group (class or year level) either in closed spaces or the exterior.”

Students aged over six are being made to wear masks, contradicting the government’s earlier lies that young students were neither contagious nor in danger from the virus.

“It will be very difficult for them to stay six hours a day with a mask, while on the street, they don’t have to wear one,” Haydée Leblanc, a primary teacher in Abbeville, told France3. “Then they will spend their time touching the mask! Before, we were told that wearing the mask for young children was counter-productive, because they could actually spread the virus faster with their hands. Apparently the doctrine has changed.” Noting that it was a public relations stunt, she stated, “it’s above all to add something to the health protocol to reassure families.”

The Macron administration is pursuing a policy that it knows will cause thousands of additional cases and deaths. Schools will act as vectors for the transmission of the virus, countless children will become infected, and will infect their family members and friends.

The school reopening takes place as reports by the government’s own scientific advisory bodies make clear that the partial confinement of the population, while keeping non-essential business and schools, will not significantly cut the spread of the virus. The Pasteur Institute estimated that the partial confinement would bring the rate of reproduction of the virus to 0.9, with the “pessimistic scenario” that it would be brought down to only 1.2 by the government’s measures, meaning a continuing exponential spread of the virus.

Inside a school corridor

Children will also fall sick and die. Official claims that youth are not in danger from the virus are lies. French health authorities report that 170 people aged under 19 are currently hospitalised with COVID-19, of which 23 are in urgent reanimation care. The long-term health impacts of the virus on youth are still unknown.

France’s corrupt union bureaucracies are hostile to a struggle against school reopenings. They have been in continuous discussions with the Macron administration on its reopening policy, and have done nothing to mobilize the mass opposition among teachers and students. On October 30, the unions cynically published a notice authorising strike action between November 2 and 7. But its aim was only to provide some means of maintaining control over the growing opposition among teachers.

The growing strike movement among teachers and students must be unified and organized. For that, teachers need their own organizations, rank-and-file school safety committees, independent from the trade unions.

The struggle to close non-essential industries and let workers and youth safely confine at home requires the mobilization of teachers and broader layers of workers in mass strike action. The best allies of teachers and students in France are their counterparts in Germany, Britain, and across Europe and beyond. These forces can fight to prepare and mobilize workers for a European general strike and a struggle for the working class to take state power and impose a scientific policy against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Europe’s COVID-19 pandemic spirals out of control

Alex Lantier

Yesterday, teachers walked out from classes in dozens of schools across France as students returned from holidays to the first classes since President Emmanuel Macron announced a new lockdown. It has not taken long for the political fraud of the lockdowns now being declared by governments across Europe to become apparent to broad layers of youth and working people.

Announcing the lockdown last week, Macron said elementary and middle school students would continue attending school so their parents could continue working. As the health ministry estimated that two-thirds of transmission clusters are at school or work, Macron pledged that reinforced security protocols would limit the spread of the virus. This pledge was worthless. Current security protocols insist that social distancing be implemented only “to the extent that it is possible” and that it is “not required for students in the same class or year level.”

Health care workers transport a COVID-19 patient from an intensive care unit (ICU) at a hospital in Kyjov to hospital in Brno, Czech Republic, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

And so, as a quarter million new cases of COVID-19 are found each day in Europe—with 52,518 in France, 22,253 in Italy, 21,926 in Switzerland, 18,950 in Britain, 18,340 in Spain, 15,578 in Poland, and 13,125 in Germany—teachers and students are still crammed thirty to a classroom in schools.

As students in France join high school students in Greece and in Poland who have launched mass school occupations and protests, youth across Europe face a political struggle. Governments across Europe are acting with contempt for the lives of the population. Even after Macron said that 400,000 Frenchmen could die of COVID-19 if emergency measures were not taken, Paris, London and Berlin all implemented lockdowns which, unlike lockdowns this spring, demand that children and non-essential workers keep going to school and work to be infected.

France’s Scientific Council estimated Friday that such lockdowns cut COVID-19’s reproduction rate (R0) to only between 0.9 and 1.2, meaning the number of daily new cases will only fall very slowly or even keep growing exponentially. “There is great uncertainty on the effectiveness of the new, less stringent measures,” warned Scientific Council member Simon Cauchemez. With France’s ventilator beds already half full with COVID-19 patients, Spain’s a quarter full, and the rest of Europe only a few weeks behind, a breakdown of the health system is looming.

European governments’ pretensions to have handled the pandemic more intelligently than the Trump administration have been exposed as a cynical and deadly fraud. European heads of state did not, perhaps, act with quite the same crass arrogance of America’s billionaire real estate speculator president. They did not refuse to wear masks, compare COVID-19 to the flu, or boast after catching the virus of the exceptional quality of the medical care they received compared to that available to the overwhelming majority of workers in their countries.

Behind the appearance of competence, however, there was lying on a massive scale. Sweden’s “herd immunity” policy—letting the virus rip through the country, hoping the population would eventually become immune—led to a death rate nine times higher than neighboring Finland. Yet this policy was was adopted by all the European governments.

Like officials across Europe, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell denied he was pursuing a herd immunity policy. Yet in a subsequently declassified March 14 email he sent to Finnish officials, Tegnell argued for “keeping schools open to reach herd immunity more quickly.” That is, like the Macron government today, he was advocating keeping schools open so that the virus would spread among teachers, students, and then the broader working population.

While Britain’s chief scientific advisor Sir Patrick Vallance said, “It’s not possible to stop everyone getting it, and it’s also not desirable,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Interior Ministry secretly reported that the unchecked spread of the virus could cost 1 million German lives in 2020. Yet “Mommy Merkel,” as the press markets her to the German people, went before the public and blandly predicted that 70 percent of the German population would become infected.

The crisis of the pandemic cannot be resolved simply by removing Trump, or another individual capitalist politician, from office. The European governments all pursued essentially the same policy as Trump, but paid somewhat more attention to skillful political deceit. And today, around 2,500 people across Europe die of COVID-19 each day—1,000 more than in North America.

What compelled the adoption of lockdowns in Europe was the intervention of the working class. In March, a wave of wildcat strikes demanding a shelter-at-home policy in auto, steel, and engineering plants across Italy, initially the worst-hit country, spread to Spain, France, Britain and beyond. Europe’s capitalist governments, on the other hand, tried to encourage as much complacency as possible, pushing for a premature return to work and to school even before the number of new cases had fallen to zero. The disastrous consequences of this policy are now apparent.

Workers and youth entering into struggle against Europe’s murderous COVID-19 policy should reject with contempt the argument that there is no money for a shelter-at-home policy, the only way to contain the virus and avert a meltdown of the hospital system. The European Union (EU) adopted a €2 trillion bank and corporate bailout scheme, and Britain a £645 billion bank bailout. There is, in fact, plenty of money to spend on ensuring that workers, the self-employed and small business owners can shelter at home, while maintaining their incomes and livelihoods.

The inability of governments in Europe, as in America, to act decisively to stop the pandemic reflects the bankruptcy of capitalism: such action would cut across the material interests of the ruling class. The EU governments, like Trump and the Democrats, intend for these resources to go to bail out the stock portfolios of the billionaires and boost the profits of big businesses, not to save lives.

A slice of these funds were filtered through countless corporate works councils and foundations to union officials and their political allies so they would help implement back-to-work policies. And this fall, as the number of cases surged, public anger mounted, and pressure grew on governments to implement lock-downs, the unions and their allies organized no action. Even yesterday, Spain’s “left populist” Podemos party, in a coalition government with the social democrats, rejected calls from Asturias regional authorities for a shelter-at-home policy.

The way forward for workers and youth against the pandemic is to form their own rank-and-file security committees in workplaces and schools, independent of the union bureaucracies, to monitor health and safety at work and prepare a broader struggle. Fighting a global failure of the capitalist system that threatens a catastrophic loss of life requires the mobilization of the collective industrial and social strength of the working class. The European sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International have advanced the call for a European and international general strike.

To prepare such an action, however, means to take up a political struggle for socialism. Only the impounding of the ill-gotten wealth of the super-rich and the struggle of the working class to take power and organize economic life on the basis of social need, rather than private profit can avert a health catastrophe. In Europe, this means supporting the struggle of the working class to bring down the EU, take state power, and build the United Socialist States of Europe.

Beware of CIA Threats

Ron Ridenour

Chileans and Bolivians are turning the tide away from coup governments imposed on them by right-wing national militarists and the US State Department/CIA.

Within the past week, we have witnessed an overwhelming Chilean victory to rewrite the constitution forced upon them by General Augusto Pinochet, in 1980, and Bolivia’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal confirmation that former President Evo Morales’ political party, Movement for Socialism (MAS), won the election on October 18.

The new Bolivian president, Luis Arce, and vice-president, David Choquehuanca, beat right-winger coup-makers Carlos Mesa (a former president) and Luis Fernando Camacho: 55% to 29% and 14%.
Both houses of parliament will also have a MAS majority.

Meanwhile, just days earlier, seventy-eight percent (78%) of Chileans voting said yes to a new constitution; opposed 22%. While the ayes were expected to win, such huge support was unforeseen.

This shows how much Chileans want a different nation than that forced upon them by the bloody coup d’état, September 11, 1973, which was guided by then Richard Nixon’s hatchet man, Henry Kissinger. They murdered at least three thousand people the first days of the military coup. Thousands more “disappeared” or arrested died in prisons, tortured by the fascist Pinochet government. Over 100,000 people are known to have been arrested for political motivations.

Spanish National Court judge Baltasar Garzón sought to arrest and prosecute Pinochet for crimes against humanity. 

A new constitution will be written by a Constitutional Convention with new representatives elected by the people, on April 11, 2021. A year later, there will be an “exit” ratification plebiscite to repeal the Pinochet constitution.

This popular victory comes on the heels of grassroots protests and resistance movements last year, during what was called the “Chilean Spring.” For months, tens of thousands protested nearly daily. One day there were over one million in the streets. After two months of actions, the government estimated that a fourth of the nation’s nearly 13 million people were protesting hikes in public transportation costs, and, generally, economic inequality and “elitism”.

The government of Sebastián Piñera declared a state of emergency and police killed three dozen protestors, wounded hundreds, and imprisoned 30,000. Piñera was forced by the people to make concessions. He fired several ministers, including the head of military and police, and allowed a referendum to keep or change the Pinochet-created constitution.

Not Forgotten: CIA’s Murder of Allende’s Commander-in-Chief

October 22, 1970, armed thugs working for the CIA intercepted and shot to death Chilean army commander-in-chief, General René Schneider, as he drove to the Ministry of Defense in Santiago, Chile.  “The next day, CIA Director Richard Helms convened his top aides to review the covert coup operations that had led to the attack. “[I]t was agreed that … a maximum effort has been achieved,” and that “the station has done excellent job of guiding Chileans to point today where a military solution is at least an option for them,” stated a SECRET cable of commendation transmitted that day to the CIA station in Chile. “COS [Chief of Station] … and Station [deleted] are commended for accomplishing this under extremely difficult and delicate circumstances.”

The National Security Archive (NSA) reposted declassified documentation about Kissinger and the CIA’s role in the assassination. The intent was to prevent the newly elected socialist Salvador Allende from assuming power. Here are excerpts from the article, “The CIA and Chile: Anatomy of an Assassination,” posted in recognition of the 50^th anniversary of the General’s murder.

“CBS ‘60 Minutes’ segment, ‘Schneider vs. Kissinger,’ drew on the declassified documents to report on a ‘wrongful death’ lawsuit filed in September 2001 by the Schneider family against Henry Kissinger for his role in the assassination. The ’60 Minutes’ broadcast aired on September 9, 2001, and has not been publicly accessible since then. In preparation for the 50^thanniversary of the Schneider assassination, CBS News graciously posted the broadcast as a “60 Minutes Rewind” on October 21, 2020.”

Henry Kissinger was secretly supervising the CIA’s coup operations, and had cajoled President Richard Nixon into letting him prepare for a violent overthrow of the popularly democratically elected Allende.

“In Chile, the assassination of General Schneider remains the historical equivalent of the assassination of John F. Kennedy: a cruel and shocking political crime that shook the nation. In the United States, the murder of Schneider has become one of the most renowned case studies of CIA efforts to ‘neutralize’ a foreign leader who stood in the way of U.S. objectives,” wrote NSA.

The CIA also murdered President Kennedy. 

The CIA’s murderous covert operations to, as CIA officials suggested, “effect the removal of Schneider,” were first revealed in a 1975 Senate report on Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders.  At the time, investigators for the special Senate committee led by Idaho Senator Frank Church were able to review the Top Secret CIA operational cables and memoranda relating to ‘Operation FUBELT’—the code name for CIA effort.”

General Schneider was targeted for his defense of Chile’s constitutional transfer of power.

As the commander-in-chief of the Chilean army, and the highest-ranking military officer in Chile, Schneider’s policy of non-intervention created a major obstacle for CIA efforts to implement President Nixon’s orders to foment a coup that would prevent the recently elected Socialist, Salvador Allende, from being inaugurated.

Brighter Future for Bolivia

Argentina’s President Albert Fernández announced that he would be traveling to Bolivia for the inaugural ceremony. “It will be a dream fulfilled,” he told national media.

Bolivian Senator Andrónico Rodríguez stated that Evo Morales will return to his country from exile in Argentina, on November 9, the day after the inaugural ceremony. That will be one year exactly since he was forced into exile (November 10, 2019) by the military generals and some police.

Judge Jorge Quino, head of Departmental Court of Justice in La Paz, dismissed coup government charges of “terrorism” and “sedition” against Evo Morales. The October 26 decision is expected to be finally approved by the Plurinational Constitutional Court on the day of Arce’s inauguration or the day following.

Bolivia’s President-elect has joined growing calls for the resignation of Organization of American State’s chief Luis Almagro. In an interview with “La Razon”, a Bolivian newspaper, Arce said that Almagro must go for “ethical and moral reasons”, because of the discredited 2019 OAS report that claimed there had been electoral fraud under the last Morales government.

Almagro is known for acting in favor of US interests. Arce said, “We do not agree that an important body be in the hands of people wearing the shirt of a political party or of a political ideology in the region. There should not be interference in the internal affairs of a country. If Almagro did that in Bolivia, imagine, he can do it with any other country, and we cannot allow that.”

President Donald Trump stated that he expected to work with the new government. A State Department spokesperson, Michael Kozak, even stated that the Bolivian election had been “peaceful” “free and just”. US American politicians are infamously known in Latin American (and elsewhere) for speaking with forked tongues.

Researcher-journalist Ramona Wadi, who covers Latin America, cautioned about Bolivia’s perilous future: “The electoral triumph may not spell the end of US intervention in the country. The US is known to have used diverse tactics to instigate violence and unrest in Latin America, biding its time until it strikes again. The military and the police have yet to completely prove their alliance to the new government and against US designs on Bolivia.”

It is imperative that the new government reform the military and police, and find or train leaders who are loyal to their country’s sovereignty and not to the interests of US world domination.

Saving Our Planet Is Our Responsibility

Graham Peebles

Destructive human behavior based on selfishness, greed and ignorance has created the interrelated environmental emergency. A global crisis of unprecedented scale that threatens the survival of over a million plant and animal species, the security of tens of millions of people and the health of the planet.

Unlimited irresponsible consumption of goods, services and animal food produce is the underlying cause; destructive unhealthy behavior encouraged by short-term political and business policies rooted in nationalism and the ideology of competition and greed.

Land sea and air are contaminated everywhere, more or less; the natural climatic rhythms have been radically disrupted, chaos created where order once held sway; the great rain forests of the world are being decimated, trees cut down, land turned over to cattle, or agriculture – principally to grow soya for animal feed – indigenous peoples displaced or killed, cultures shredded, ecosystems shattered, animal habitat destroyed, plant species crushed under the vile weight of corruption and money.

The scale and urgency of the crisis is impossible to overstate; with every new scientific paper that appears the reality becomes more and more overwhelming, the task of salvage more daunting, the need for action more urgent. Most people of course don’t read such texts or notice the rare piece of news coverage that they, or the natural world more broadly receive. And despite being the most pressing issue of this or indeed any other time, within government circles, corporate boardrooms, as well as far too many individual households, the environmental catastrophe remains a marginal matter within the relentless urge for profit, economic growth and personal pleasure; little more than an afterthought within the business plan, a political add-on to appeal to the green contingent or customer base.

In opposition to this crippling complacency there is a growing army of people ringing alarm bells, trying to instill a sense of urgency and wake people up. Loud voices, some well known, like Sir David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg and Prince Charles, who has been ‘banging on’ about environmental abuse for thirty years or more, together with movements like Extinction Rebellion and the Schools Strike for Climate, and a raft of environmental campaign groups such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund. All work tirelessly to share information about the scale and depth of the crisis and raise awareness.

And awareness is growing, behavior shifting; the details and scope of the emergency may not be known but there is a general awareness (in developed nations at least), however vague and inadequate, that the natural environment is in crisis, particularly among young people, who, in many cases are rightly appalled (and extremely worried) at the level of environmental vandalism perpetrated by previous generations. But the scale of change is nowhere near what is needed and it’s too slow; gradual changes over decades or generations will not cut it, neither will reliance solely on technology.

The response among corporations and governments is consistently inadequate, and the reaction of the mass of people is often indifference and/or a sense of individual inadequacy in the face of such massive issues. Most people live hard insecure lives, are physically tired, emotionally drained and mentally confused, overwhelmed by their own difficulties and trying, for the most part, simply to get by, to feed themselves and their families and find some lightness within what are often heavy days and dreary nights.

If, and it’s a large ominous if, humanity is to reverse the damage, education and widespread environmental/social responsibility are essential.

A global public information campaign is urgently needed. Coordinated by the UN Environment agency utilizing national media outlets and designed in conjunction with environmental groups to raise awareness not just of the scale of the emergency, but to encourage responsible ethical behavior among populations, corporations/businesses and Governments. Environmentally progressive policymaking can no longer be a series of ill conceived halfhearted add-ons within the manifestos of political parties and leaders running for office. Environmental responsibility must be fostered so that it becomes the central consideration in all decision making, for governments, businesses and individuals. It is part of a broader sense of social responsibility, which includes the recognition that we are responsible for one another, and requires the cultivation of a general attitude of positive communal living.

To be responsible is to respond. To respond to the need, whatever that may be, to the challenge or the urgency of the time. The nature and quality of the response is critical, what it is that we respond with. If the response is anchored in selfishness and conditioned by motive, if it is limited by ideology or constrained by considerations of personal gain, financial profit or economic growth for example, then the response, and this is what happens in most cases, will not only be inadequate to the demands of the moment, it will intensify the issue, or crises. Such actions are rooted in the past and cannot, therefore sufficiently meet the crisis; whatever it is, in this case, the environmental crisis, fully, because the crisis is taking place now.

Being responsible also means being “accountable for one’s actions”, which is a quality of living that is lacking in varying degrees, among politicians and corporations – where it is virtually totally absent, as well as large swathes of the world’s population. In place of social/environmental responsibility the dual poisons of complacency and irresponsibility habitually condition action, adding to an overall atmosphere of selfishness and social division. We have come to believe in separation, identifying ourselves with a nation, race or belief system, divided from, superior or inferior to another, ‘the other’, who may not look, pray or think like we do, and therefore cannot be trusted. The ideology of division, based as it is on fear and hate is anathema to responsibility.

If, and there again is that omnipresent if, there is to be an adequate response to the environmental emergency a new atmosphere of collective responsibility needs to be fostered and the nations of the world must unite; this call for united global action is a common-sense statement enunciated and agreed upon many times at various gatherings, but like world peace or equality its little more than a hollow ideal under which the pattern of competitive nationalism drones on, and on and on. International agreements are signed, no doubt in a spirit of optimism, and sincerity, but hypocrisy and duplicity are the worldwide hallmarks of politicians, and commitments are largely ignored, the business of corporate politics continues unhindered and little or nothing changes.

The greatest environmental impact, for good or ill, lies with governments and corporations, but the behavior or individuals is crucial; en-masse it is the neglect, greed and rampant consumerism of the people of the world (primarily the wealthier people of the world) that is the underlying cause of the interconnected environmental crisis. All of us are equally responsible – individuals, businesses and governments – particularly those of us living in the developed nations, and that responsibility demands a change in lifestyle: living simpler lives, consuming less, in many cases, much less, and making decisions based on environmental considerations first.

If we embrace this sense of individual responsibility for the whole, recognizing it to be not just true, but an opportunity to contribute in a positive manner, fully and deeply, then maybe, just maybe, the planet beautiful can be salvaged and with it social harmony and unity be realized.

In Defense of Confucius Institutes

Mel Gurtov

Readers may be surprised to learn that while disputes between the US and China over trade, human rights, and the pandemic are making headlines, educational exchange programs are Washington’s chief target these days.

These programs are easy marks for an administration that wants to demonstrate toughness with Beijing.  It is arousing suspicion about several categories of Chinese visitors—scholars, students, journalists, and scientists among them—on the basis that they might commit espionage, stifle academic freedom, spread propaganda, steal intellectual property, and undermine American values.  Members of Congress and Congressional committees, US intelligence agencies, the State Department, think tanks, journalists, professors on the left and right, and US educational organizations have all weighed in to warn of the dangers of association with individual Chinese and China-financed organizations.

Victims of China Bashing

A focal point of the attacks is Confucius Institutes (CIs), a global network of Chinese-funded offices, mostly based at US universities, that seek to promote Chinese language and cultural learning—or, as some insist, China’s “soft power.”  The institutes’ funding agency is Hanban, the Office of Chinese Language Council under the Chinese education ministry. It provides teachers and textbooks free of charge to university students and K-12 schools, where they are known as Confucius Classrooms.

In the US, there were once more than 100 CIs; now there are fewer than 60, and if Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has his way—he has accused the CIs, without evidence, of seeking to recruit “spies and collaborators,” and in August had them designated as “foreign missions”—there soon will be none. Where once Confucius Institutes were welcomed as part of a thriving US-China people-to-people exchange program, now they are viewed in the context of a bipartisan consensus to treat China as a “strategic competitor.”

Pompeo has been the stalking horse, touring the world with a Cold War message on China that extends well beyond CIs. Working through various US agencies as well as his department, Pompeo seeks to limit visas for Chinese (and other international) students, scholars, even doctors and begin sending home those already here on the basis of “national security.”

Imagine: Last year there were nearly 370,000 of Chinese students in the US.  Those who would normally be eligible for work under the government’s Optional Practical Training program will no longer have that option. Visa requirements are being tightened with the obvious aim of preventing Chinese language teachers, as well as students and visiting scholars, from entering or returning to the US.  A proposed law passed in the Senate would require interrogation of every Chinese in the US to assess whether or not they pose a security risk.  Another bill (S.939), introduced in the Senate by Republican John Kennedy and Democrat Doug Jones, would deny federal funds to universities that fail to meet new ground rules on Confucius Institutes they host, such as that CIs must agree to be governed by both Chinese and US law; that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) must approve all CI events and speakers; and that CI teachers cannot teach CCP versions of “Chinese history, culture and current events.”

None of the rules is fact-based, but if they become law, they will be one way to force CIs to close.  There are still other ways, such as preventing CI teachers from obtaining a US visa, and using the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2019 to force universities to choose between continuing to receive defense department money and hosting a CI—a choice with a predictable outcome.

Unwarranted Charges

CIs are closing not because of poor performance or political intrigue but because of political pressure, sometimes from Washington and sometimes from academia. The pressure reflects ideological passion, however, not an investigation of actual circumstances.  In the context of my work I have participated in nearly 100 interviews of CI and university officers and staff, and American teachers in communities with Confucius Classrooms.  No one mentioned Chinese political interference.  Academic freedom was not violated, financial dependence on China was not created, and China was not presented one-sidedly by its teachers.  To the contrary, CIs performed exactly as promised. Besides promoting Chinese language and cultural learning in communities small and large across the country, each CI has taken on some additional or more specialized role, such as partnering with other community organizations on cultural themes, teaching noncredit on-line classes in addition to K-12 classes, or providing study abroad opportunities.  The American interviewees uniformly expressed gratitude for their CI’s contributions to the community’s cultural awareness and students’ international competency.

Virtually all the accusations against CIs are based on isolated Chinese statements extolling China’s soft power, the opaque relationship between Hanban and China’s education ministry, or a rare charge of bias against Taiwan or Tibet.  Behind the charges is the presumption that money and teachers coming from China give the Chinese Communist Party access to young American minds—in short, guilt by association, as in Senator Chuck Grassley’s advice to 74 universities and colleges which at that time (March 2020) were home to CIs, to seek an FBI briefing on “the threats posed by the Chinese Government” generally, and CIs specifically. “Based upon information gathered from unclassified briefings,” said Grassley, “we know that Confucius Institutes are an arm of the Chinese Government . . . The activities of Confucius Institutes are inherently political in nature and intended to influence U.S. policy and public opinion.”

Such warnings not only ignore the benefits of educational exchanges with China.  They also confuse CIs with other Chinese activities that may be nefarious if proven.  FBI and Justice Department officials have testified about threats posed to research labs and universities by researchers with “undisclosed ties to Chinese institutions and conflicted loyalties.” Other US officials are demanding highly detailed reporting from universities about foreign donations, with China especially in mind, in the belief they are sources of political influence. So far, however, the only “threats” concern undisclosed arrangements that some US biomedical professors with National Institutes of Health grants made with Chinese entities.  Several of those professors have been punished. But as the president of MIT has said, the wide net cast by the US government in search of disloyal people has made anyone of Chinese ethnicity “feel unfairly scrutinized, stigmatized and on edge.”

Opportunity Costs

What the administration is doing, in our name, is cutting off our nose to spite our face—denying communities, schools, and laboratories the opportunities for cultural enrichment, people-to-people interaction, and mutual understanding precisely at a moment when these are desperately needed. In past years China was accepted as an economic partner despite its communist system. Now we are back to McCarthyism.  No wonder Beijing accuses the Trump administration of inciting a new Cold War—and is responding with its own exaggeration of the US threat.  It’s a dangerous and unnecessary escalation that will be difficult for a new US leadership to get beyond, assuming it is so inclined.

Strange to have to make an argument about the value of learning a foreign language and knowing more about another country’s culture. Just a few decades ago that debate seemed to end with calls for “internationalizing” curricula in recognition of how our insular educational system was making students uncompetitive in the global marketplace.  Now a huge backward leap is taking place with, of all countries, China.  And it is being accompanied by an equally narrow-minded attempt by Betsy Vos’s education department to limit all foreign students’ time to pursue degrees and work in technical fields not being filled by Americans.

The Chinese educational authorities see the handwriting on the wall and in July reorganized their approach in the US, creating two new organizations to take the place of Hanban and CIs.  But that step will not resolve the political issue: Whether or not a US entity may accept Chinese money for language and cultural learning without coming under official scrutiny.