US coronavirus hospitalizations hit new peak

Bryan Dyne

The number of hospitalizations from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States reached 61,964 as of Tuesday evening, according to the COVID Tracking Project. Also on Monday, the seven-day average of daily deaths in the US surpassed 1,000 for the first time since August 22. Both statistics demonstrate that the coronavirus is rampaging uncontrolled across the country, while the US ruling elite continues to send workers back to infected factories, offices and schools.

The current hospitalization rate is now higher than the previous all-time high recorded in April, while the number of known new cases is more than three times what it was seven months ago. The number of coronavirus tests returning a positive result has also risen to 7.7 percent, up from 4.0 percent at the start of October, indicating that current testing measures are not fully capturing the true extent of the pandemic.

Still higher numbers loom. In contrast to April, there are not even token measures in place to contain the pandemic, such as the national lockdown that covered most of that month. The policy is instead one of herd immunity, that is, the unchecked spread of the pandemic through the entire population.

This was spelled out explicitly by White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in an interview on CNN last month, when he admitted, “We’re not going to control the pandemic.”

Hospital staff members enter an elevator with the body of a COVID-19 victim on a gurney at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

Overall, there have been more than 10.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States, including 3.6 million that are currently active. Of those who became infected, more than 245,000 have died.

One of the most severe outbreaks in the country continues in El Paso, Texas. According to the city’s coronavirus dashboard, 1,292 new cases were reported Tuesday, and nine new deaths. There are currently 27,895 active cases in the county, more than eight times the number of active cases a month ago.

The number of people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in the county is 1,076, with 319 patients under intensive care. Dozens have been airlifted to other places in Texas and New Mexico, as the hospitals in El Paso itself are at capacity and emergency field hospitals that have been set up are already strained.

Across the US-Mexico border in Ciudad Juarez, a new mobile hospital that can house 20 COVID-19 patients has been opened to handle the surge in the city. Ciudad Juarez has faced a similar situation to that in El Paso, where a sharp increase in cases in the multinational metropolitan area has forced Mexico’s federal government to send additional aid to the city and the state of Chihuahua as a whole. Ciudad Juarez has suffered 16,641 coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, and 1,525 deaths.

To handle the surge in the past month, El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego ordered restaurants, bars and salons to close, in a two-week lockdown of the county. It is slated to end Wednesday night, although it may be extended. One factor is the sharp rise in deaths in the past month. Six refrigerated temporary morgues are already full and 10 more are en route. Samaniego has requested that a further four be provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to be sent to local funeral homes as needed.

These procedures, however, are not sustainable indefinitely, as hospitalizations continue to rise elsewhere across the country. The number of field hospitals, available beds, intensive care units and ventilators available to treat coronavirus patients, or patients with any other ailment, are rapidly shrinking. Transferring patients is all the more difficult in the United States, where Medicaid and insurance vary from state to state, meaning that even if beds are available, a given patient still might not be able to move and receive treatment because of the retrograde state of health care in the country.

In one particularly harrowing account, Dr. Emily Porter, a physician in Texas, shared a Twitter appeal for COVID beds from a Texas doctor. The appeal, to the Emergency Physician Forum group on Facebook, reads: “Does anyone who works in Texas have open corvid beds at your hospitals accepting transfers? Getting desperate here in my little town in panhandle. No beds at our hospital and anywhere within 200 miles isn’t accepting. I’ve been calling dozens of hospitals for my 5 patients in my 8 bed ER who need to be transferred out.”

As Dr. Porter noted, “emergency physicians are literally crowdsourcing COVID beds on social media while hospital administrators are home sleeping.”

Similar new lockdown measures are being prepared in California. The number of hospitalizations has increased in the state by 32 percent over the past two weeks, according to Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s secretary of health and human services. As a result, San Diego, Sacramento and Stanislaus counties—home to 5.5 million people—are going to re-enter the most restrictive phase of their lockdowns starting this week.

Ghaly warned that “if things stay the way they are…over half of California counties will have moved into a more restrictive tier.” This will involve closing down in-person restaurant dining in much of the state, along with gyms and a variety of other nonessential indoor venues. California currently has more than 990,000 cases and 18,000 deaths, with an average of nearly 6,000 daily cases and more than 40 deaths.

Other states are taking similar large-scale measures. Utah Governor Gary Herbert has announced a universal mask mandate while in public for the entire state. There are at least 137,000 cases and 672 logged deaths in the state, with a rate of new cases four times what it was at its peak in late July.

The state has 453 patients hospitalized with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19, including 185 patients in ICU beds. At present, Utah has only just enough staffed ICU beds to cope with current cases, and hospitalizations are trending upwards. North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming are similarly overwhelmed.

Workers should not, however, lower their guard because of various actions taken by states. The measures that have been taken are inadequate.

As shown in the case of El Paso, lockdowns take more than two weeks to slow the rate of new cases and hospitalizations. Moreover, none of the new lockdown measures so far are aimed at closing schools or workplaces, which have become the two main vectors of transmission.

What is needed is not a piecemeal closing and reopening carried out county by county and state by state, but a nationally and internationally coordinated effort, including the closure of all workplaces, except those required to produce the personal protection equipment, food and other social necessities, and other resources essential for containing and ending the pandemic, with no loss in income for the workers affected. The focus must be on saving lives rather than protecting the profits of corporations and hedge funds.

French government escalates cover-up of COVID-19 infections in schools

Samuel Tissot

On November 6, the French Ministry of National Education released a press statement alleging that only 3,528 students and 1,165 staff at French schools had tested positive for COVID-19 that week. However, statistics from the Ministry of Public Health show that in just the first three days of the week 25,151 people between 0 and 19 years old tested positive for the virus.

With the vast majority of 0–19-year-olds being school-age pupils and only 50,000 children being home-schooled in France, the discrepancy between these two numbers points to a systematic government cover-up of COVID-19 transmission in French schools.

This is not even the full story for last week’s pupil cases. Given that nearly half of the week’s national cases were reported on Thursday and Friday (58,046 and 60,486, respectively), the number of recorded student cases will likely exceed 40,000 when the data becomes available. Furthermore, with an average test positivity rate of over 20 percent over the past week, the actual rate of infection is likely even higher.

The virus is now out of control throughout France. Between November 2 and 6, more than 190,000 positive tests were recorded in the French population. On Saturday, a record 86,852 cases were reported. Underscoring the danger posed to schoolchildren by the virus, 182 individuals in the 0–19 age group are currently hospitalised with COVID-19 in France. Across all age groups, in the week from November 2 to 8, 3,420 people died from COVID-19.

Students leave their school in Cambo les Bains, southwest France, Thursday November 5, 2020 (AP Photo / Bob Edme)

The government’s latest set of lies comes in the face of increasingly militant opposition from French teachers. Beginning last Monday and continuing throughout the week, thousands of teachers organised strike action independently of the unions in opposition to the reopening of schools on November 2, after the All Saints holiday. Across the country, pupils joined their teachers’ strike action. In Paris, this led to violent police attacks against striking teenagers.

The Education Ministry’s criminal methods are a response to this strike action. Its aim is to present schools as safe in order to gain public support for its effort to pressure teachers back into deadly classroom environments. From the point of view of the ruling class across Europe, schools must be kept open so that profit can continue to be extracted from hundreds of millions of working parents.

This attempted cover-up of the extent of the virus’s spread in schools follows similar tactics used by the government in French schools and universities last month. That two official organs of the government are producing contradictory COVID-19 figures speaks to the profound nature of the crisis engulfing the French state in the face of increasing deaths and teacher strikes.

Following the press release, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer doubled down on his ministry’s narrative. He claimed that the number of cases was “under control” and that transmission within the education system was “below the proportions found in the rest of the population.” He added that he wanted schools to stay open “at all costs”—these costs being the lives of students and teachers.

The manipulation of these figures has been complemented by a protocol designed to restrict students’ and teachers’ knowledge of cases within schools. When a pupil is confirmed as COVID-19 positive, only the head teacher is told. Despite the fact that masks only reduce the chance of infection, if those exposed wear a mask they are not considered contact cases or informed of their exposure. On Monday, Joe, a middle school pupil, tweeted, “At school today six students tested positive in year six. The class continued as if nothing had happened.”

Eric Menonville, a science teacher, noted on Twitter that the same lies had been used in the effort to enforce a return to workplaces, “It’s all a joke. The ministry of labor told us less than 1 percent of transmission happens at work and the minister of national education told us there is less than 1 percent in the institutions. So where are the infections happening?”

The censorship of case numbers at a local and national level is a murderous crime against the working class. How many parents have sent their children to school believing there are no cases? How many teachers have gone to work believing they are safe? How many pupils have gone on to infect their parents, grandparents and friends because they were not informed that they were exposed to the virus? How many people will die as a result of these transmission paths?

In response to the exposure of Blanquer’s lies, pseudo-left figures, including Alex Corbière, a La France Insoumise deputy, have only demanded that the minister show the real figures.

This half-hearted response makes no appeal to the thousands who have taken strike action in the last week, nor does it call for the necessary shutdown of in-person education. Similarly, the unions have refused to call a nation-wide strike and have actively isolated the groups of teachers who have taken independent action.

This only underscores the fact that teachers and students must form rank-and-file committees that are independent of the unions and pseudo-left forces. On the basis of a fight against the herd immunity policy of all European governments, their aim must be to expand and coordinate the strikes across the continent.

As well as the immediate closure of schools, strikers must demand the implementation of a national lockdown including all educational institutions, government offices, and businesses, with exceptions for essential food, health, and logistics workers. This must be complemented by a rapid expansion of testing and tracing capacity and the provision of adequate resources to families and teachers to ensure the highest possible quality remote learning.

COVID-19 pandemic creating a social disaster in India

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Despite the attempts by the Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to paint a rosy picture about the coronavirus crisis, the pandemic is continuing to spread throughout cities and villages, having already created a social catastrophe.

For all Modi’s talk of “decreasing” COVID-19 cases, every day sees 40,000 to 50,000 officially recorded new infections and 500 deaths, even though these figures are currently about half the most recent peaks in September.

Interviewed by the Economic Times on October 29, Modi did not even refer to the more than 127,000 COVID-19 deaths in the country. Instead, he said: “We should assess our coronavirus fight against the metric of how many lives we are able to save.” He claimed: “India followed a preemptive, proactive, graded, whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to tackle the pandemic.”

Commuters wearing face mask as a precaution against the coronavirus jostle for a ride on a bus in Kolkata, India, Tuesday, July 21, 2020. (AP Photo/Bikas Das)

In reality, as a result of the failure of Modi’s Baratiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government and state governments throughout the country to stop the spread of the virus, India has become the world second-worst impacted country. According to the highly understated official figures, reported COVID-19 cases now exceed 8.5 million. More than half a million cases are still active.

India’s COVID-19 testing rate is among the lowest in the world and falling. Daily tests per thousand people have dropped from 0.86 per thousand on October 26 to 0.75 on November 2. A number of epidemiologists and medical experts have warned of a second surge during the winter and as a result of large social gatherings in the festive season following the easing of government restrictions.

Internal migrant workers

In his Times interview, Modi claimed that his “timely” lockdown “helped” to avoid “the rapid spread of the virus with many more deaths.” The truth is that the two-month lockdown was a failure and a disaster for hundreds of millions of people, mostly migrant workers. It was not accompanied by mass testing, contact tracing, the supply of basic necessities for people forced to remain indoors and, most importantly, the huge allocation of resources needed to upgrade the under-funded public health system.

More than 100 million migrant workers lost their livelihoods overnight when Modi declared a nationwide lockdown on March 24 with just four hours’ notice. Nearly 1,000 migrant workers died from starvation, exhaustion or accidents as they tried to walk home, often hundreds of kilometers from where they worked. Those unable to walk home were detained in hellish “quarantine” centres without enough food, medical care and COVID testing. When they were finally allowed to leave for their villages amid mounting unrest, many carried the virus to remote areas with virtually non-existent public health facilities.

Modi also boasted of providing “free food grain and pulses to 800 million people for eight months.” But according to a NewsClick report, which cited a survey by civil society organisations, “nearly 66 percent of rural households fell short of cash for food, nearly 40 percent of the households had reduced their food intake, 41 percent of the returned migrants were not working and only 7 percent of migrants had found work under the MGMNREGA [Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act]”.

The survey noted that “a number of households had pawned assets to buy food items, and three out of every four had experienced fear and anxiety.” It stated that “only half the returned migrants got free rations three times or more as the Modi government had promised.” Quoting a report published by the Stranded Workers Action Network, the article said 84 percent of migrant workers had received no wages from their employers during the lockdown, while 12 percent got partial payment.

Women and children

Millions of children in poor families have been deprived of education as they cannot afford internet facilities to follow online classes during the closure of schools. The Indian Express on October 12 revealed increasing child trafficking and other crimes targeting children. It reported: “As the economic distress began to sink in, a more sinister movement of children gathered pace—of those being taken away from their homes for illegal labour, trafficking and forced marriages.”

Between March and August, Childline, a national hotline established by the Ministry for Women and Child Development, received 2.7 million distress calls. Another Express article said most of the parents of trafficked children are marginal farm labourers and farmers whose income was severely impacted when they could not sell their perishable vegetables during the lockdown.

Rising other deaths

Due to the disruption of already crippled health facilities, millions of patients suffering from serious diseases like cancer, leukemia and chronic diabetes are in immense danger. An article in the Wire on October 20 painted a grim picture of the situation at the Dr Bhubaneswar Borooah Cancer Institute (BBCI) in Guwahati, the sole full-fledged cancer care centre in India’s northeast.

It showed patient visits at the BBCI fell by 50 percent during the lockdown, while the chemotherapies dropped by 42 percent, radiotherapy 56 percent and surgeries 74 percent.

According to a National Cancer Registry Program (NCRP) report, northeast India had the highest national incidence of cancers between 2012 and 2016. Even at normal times, cancer patients in the region had a hard time accessing cancer care and treatment due to the lack of medical care facilities.

It is likewise with patients suffering tuberculosis (TB), the world’s deadliest infectious disease. India accounts for a fourth of global TB cases. Due to the lockdown and reassignment of lab technicians, between January and June, TB notifications in India dipped by 25 percent from the corresponding period in 2019, according to the World Health Organisation’s annual TB report. This will translate into “millions of excess deaths from tuberculosis,” Zarir F. Udwadia, a consultant physician at Mumbai’s Hinduja Hospital, told the Wire Science.

The pandemic has adversely affected the mental health of millions of people suffering from anxiety, fear, isolation, distancing, uncertainty and emotional distress. India accounts for 15 percent of the world’s mental, neurological and substance-use disorders. According to the Wire, the health ministry has “admitted a treatment gap of 50-70 percent, and this gap has only been rising. To cater to the needs of patients, there are only 0.3 psychiatrists, 0.12 psychologists and 0.07 social workers for every 100,000 Indians.”

Another Wire article, based on data from the Indian government’s Health Management Information System, reported “drastic declines in health services during lockdown, ranging from 20 percent or so for ANC (number of pregnant women registered for antenatal care) registration to 60 percent or so for in-patient headcount and major operations.” It added: “Out-patient attendance during the lockdown was just half of normal levels.”

All these figures show that an even bigger health disaster is on the way, behind the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yet, the government and the Indian ruling class have refused to direct much-needed funds into the healthcare system. In his Times interview, Modi insisted that India was becoming a “major producer of PPE and masks” and “we are not only meeting our domestic demand but are also capable of meeting the demand of other countries.” Yet, 87,000 health care workers have been infected and 573 have died due to COVID-19, even according to the government’s own data.

India’s health budget was less than 2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product between 2009 and 2019, one of the lowest levels in the world. India ranks 184 out 191 countries in public spending on health. An estimated 62.4 percent of the current health expenditure is paid by patients themselves. The government contributes only 16.7 percent, putting India among the countries with highest out-of-pocket expenditures on health.

Police crack down on Thai protesters demanding democratic rights

Peter Symonds

The riot police clashed with thousands of protesters in the Thai capital of Bangkok on Sunday as they sought to deliver letters setting out their grievances and demands to the King Maha Vajiralongkorn. The ongoing protests, comprised mainly of students and young people, are demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha and his military-backed government, a new constitution and reforms to the monarchy.

The protesters gathered at the city’s Democracy Monument before marching toward the Grand Palace, where they planned to deliver their letters. While the police estimated the number involved at 7,000, Reuters journalists put the figure at more than 10,000. After the protesters broke through police lines and pushed aside one of the buses set up as a barrier, the police used water cannon and riot police to disperse the march.

One demonstrator, Thawatchai Tongsuk, told Associated Press: “If the police gave way, I believe that the leaders would have submitted the letters and then been finished. Everyone would go home… The more violence they use, the more people will join the protest.”

The protests have continued for months despite the arrest of protest leaders and the imposition of a state of emergency. Broad layers of young people have been involved in what has been a politically diffuse movement that has included everything from references to the Hunger Games and Harry Potter to the involvement of activists demanding gay rights. The underlying motivation, however, is hostility to the political domination of the military in concert with the monarchy, the state bureaucracy and key sections of business.

Protesters occupy a main road as they gather at a junction in Bangkok, Thailand, October 15, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit]

Prime Minister Prayuth, as army commander in chief, led the 2014 military coup that ousted the Pheu Thai government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and was installed as head of the military junta. Yingluck Shinawatra and her billionaire brother Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted as prime minister by the 2006 military coup, represent business whose interests have been stymied by the domination of traditional Bangkok elites.

While an election was eventually held last year, it was under an anti-democratic constitution drawn up by the military that stacked the 250-seat upper house with military appointees and allowed for the installation of an “outside prime minister”—that is one that had not stood for election. Prayuth, who did not stand for election, was appointed by a joint sitting of the upper house with the 500-seat lower house. Even then, the military’s Palang Precharath party came second in the election. It had to wheel and deal to obtain enough support to install Prayuth, who has nominally retired from the army, as prime minister.

The protesters have publicly criticised the monarchy, which has been the political linchpin of the Bangkok elites. In doing so, they risk jail terms of up to 15 years under the country’s draconian lese majeste law—the repeal of which is one of their demands. The monarchy has become even more unpopular after King Maha Vajiralongkorn was installed in 2006 following the death of his father. The king, who spends most of his time in Germany, has attempted to consolidate his personal control over the huge crown assets and elements of the military.

The protest on Sunday was designed to expose the empty character of the king’s gesture a week before. At a rally of thousands of royalists outside the Grand Palace, a reporter asked the king what he had to say to the protesters. “We love them all the same,” he declared and said Thailand was a land of compromise, hinting that concessions might be possible.

The government, however, has made no such moves. Amid an expanding protest movement, Prayuth revoked the state of emergency earlier this month and attempted to establish a meaningless “national consultation” aimed at enlisting the assistance of opposition parties. But he has flatly refused to resign. Protest leaders have rejected any participation in such a process.

The New York Times cited a right-wing royalist and publishing tycoon, Sondhi Limthongkul. At the end of last month, he called for the military to directly intervene so as to restore stability and protect the monarchy. “I see a coup as not a bad thing,” he said. Sondhi was central to whipping up yellow shirt, royalist opposition to Thaksin Shinawatra, paving the way for his overthrow in 2006.

Prayuth has refused to rule out a coup, saying in late October that he would not determine whether “there will be a coup or there won’t be a coup.” In reality, a military “coup” would do no more than shuffle the personnel in the regime, which is effectively controlled by the military in any case. However, the military would be brought onto the streets to suppress the protests, including by force. In 2010, the military violently suppressed protracted demonstrations by pro-Shinawatra “red shirts,” killing at last 90 and wounding hundreds.

The lack of a clear political program is the greatest danger confronting the protesters, who continue to have illusions in the opposition parties—including the Pheu Thai party of the Shinawatras and the smaller Move Forward Party (MFP) that, as the Future Forward Party, won a significant vote from younger people at the 2019 election. Like Pheu Thai, however, the MFP represents layers of big business that seek to end the domination of the traditional elites.

The founder of the Future Forward Party, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, who was disqualified from parliament earlier this year on trumped-up charges, has personal wealth of $US180 million. He was a top executive of the Thai Summit Group, which was founded by his father and is the largest auto parts manufacturer in the country.

Young people need to turn to a different political perspective. Around the world, the ruling classes, confronted with mounting economic and social crises, are resorting more and more to authoritarian forms of rule to contain and suppress growing opposition in the working class. The fight for democratic rights in Thailand is intimately bound up with an orientation to the working class, not politicians such as Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit and their parties, and the struggle based on a socialist program to abolish capitalism.

Australian Senate passes motion acknowledging “alleged” persecution of Julian Assange

Oscar Grenfell

On Monday, the Australian Senate passed a motion “noting” the plight of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, who is imprisoned in Britain and faces extradition to the United States for his exposure of American imperialism’s war crimes, global diplomatic intrigues and human rights violations.

The motion was the first to be passed in either house of the federal parliament that is in any way supportive of Assange, since the British police illegally arrested him in April 2019. It is one of only a handful of times the WikiLeaks founder has been mentioned in parliament following last month’s conclusion of the final British show trial hearings for his extradition on unprecedented US espionage charges, on which he could be jailed for life.

The impetus for the motion was undoubtedly concern over popular hostility toward the complicity of the parliamentary establishment in the railroading of an Australian journalist and publisher.

Over 150 legal experts and lawyers’ associations around the world condemned the British court proceedings as a legal travesty. A group of 161 prominent international political figures, including 13 former national presidents, similarly denounced the hearings as a sham and demanded Assange’s immediate freedom.

Assange with former Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño in 2013 [Credit: Xavier Granja Cedeño/Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores]

The Australian government and the Labor Party opposition, aided by the corporate media, however, maintained a stony silence throughout the trial. This was in line with the support given by the entire political establishment for escalating US militarism and its corollary—efforts to quash anti-war opposition, epitomised by the campaign to destroy Assange.

With the verdict over Assange’s extradition due on January 4, the Australian ruling elite is well aware that the widespread latent public support for the WikiLeaks founder, which they have sought to suppress, will again come to the surface.

The motion’s function was to put on record the “concerns” of some parliamentary parties, without committing them to anything. The perfunctory character of such gestures is underscored by the fact that not a single corporate media outlet, including the publicly-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation, reported the motion. Nor does it appear that any of those who passed it have gone to any great lengths to publicise the motion.

The resolution was moved by Greens Senators Peter Whish-Wilson, Sarah Hanson-Young and Janet Rice. The motion passed with the support of Labor Party senators and some crossbenchers. Those who voted against were members of the Liberal-National Coalition government and the right-wing populist Jacqui Lambie.

The text of the motion can be described only as ambivalent, tepid and mealy-mouthed. Its form is to state a series of incontestable facts, without commenting on their significance or putting forward any clear political position.

The motion begins by “noting” that Assange is an Australian citizen, that he has a family and that he won a 2011 Walkley Award for outstanding contributions to journalism, all of which can be discovered by looking at his Wikipedia entry.

The second section “acknowledges that during the recent extradition trial, the court heard evidence about” WikiLeaks’ exposure of war crimes and human rights abuses, along with

(ii) the alleged spying operation conducted against Julian Assange by UC Global on behalf of United States (US) intelligence agencies, (iii) the alleged seizure of legally privileged material from the Ecuadorian Embassy by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, (iv) alleged plans to poison and kidnap Julian Assange, and (v) the devastating health consequences that Julian Assange is currently facing.

The final section “acknowledges” that there have been demands from local councils for the Australian government to intervene in defence of Assange, that a number of “world leaders” have called for his freedom, and that protests have been held in support of the WikiLeaks founder.

The motion abruptly concludes by noting that a British court will rule on Assange’s extradition next January. Anyone looking for an indication of what the senators themselves are planning to do will be disappointed.

Significantly, the motion was amended between the time that it was put on notice on Sunday night, and passed on Monday. The change was to place the word “alleged” before each of the references to violations of Assange’s rights by the US government and intelligence agencies.

The purpose of these amendments was to prevent any direct condemnation of the crimes of the American state against Assange, or any suggestion that the senators were preempting the decision of the British courts.

Labor, like the Coalition government, has insisted that it has “full confidence” in the British and US legal processes, despite the fact that the attempt to extradite Assange and to prosecute him for publishing activities violates international laws and domestic legislation in both the UK and US.

Labor has held fast to this position, even as it has been shown that the British judge overseeing the case has close ties to the intelligence agencies, and that Assange has been denied the right to prepare a defence, would have no prospect of a fair trial in the US, and has been deliberately imperiled by coronavirus infection by being detained in a maximum-security British prison, despite the fact that he has not been convicted of a crime.

By inserting “alleged” before each substantive statement of fact, the motion leaves Assange’s fate in the hands of the British judiciary and ruling class, which have already demonstrated that they will rubber stamp the demands of the major powers for Assange to be thrown in a US prison for the rest of his life.

Similar calculations underlie the motion’s failure to make any demands for the Australian government to intervene. Labor has echoed the government’s false claims that it can provide only worthless “consular assistance” to Assange. This has been aimed at covering-up the fact that there are substantial legal bases and precedent for a government to fight for the freedom of a citizen who is being persecuted abroad.

Behind Labor’s mask of impartiality and vague concern for Assange’s health, the party, which has the closest ties to the US and Australian intelligence agencies, is intensely hostile to the WikiLeaks founder. It was a Greens-backed Labor government that responded to WikiLeaks’ exposures of US war crimes by denouncing it in 2011 as a criminal organisation, and pledging to assist the American intelligence agencies in their campaign against Assange.

The character of the motion demonstrates again that the fight for Assange’s freedom cannot succeed through parliamentary horse-trading and appeals to the official parties.

The Greens, while claiming to oppose the persecution of Assange, have rejected calls, including from within their own ranks, for a public, party campaign demanding that the government intervene to secure his freedom. Instead, they have sought to divert opposition behind illusions in the very parliamentary set-up that is responsible for Assange’s dire plight.

This is in line with the Greens’ character as a party of the affluent upper middle-class, oriented toward forming coalitions with Labor and the Liberals, and increasingly open in its support for imperialist war.

As the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) explained in a recent congress resolution, “the only way to block Assange’s extradition to the US and secure his freedom is through the development of a mass international movement, centred in the working class. Millions of workers have entered into explosive struggles over the past years, including in Britain, the US, and, increasingly, in Australia. These will intensify over the coming period.

“The task of all those fighting for Assange’s freedom, including the SEP, is to turn to this movement, and to explain that the fight for the WikiLeaks founder’s liberty must be inscribed on the banner of every struggle in defence of democratic rights, for social equality and against war.”

GM Canada contract ratification ends 2020 negotiations at Detroit Three’s Canadian operations

Carl Bronski

Unifor announced Monday that 85 percent of those who voted accepted a new three-year contract with General Motors Canada. The agreement covers about 1,100 workers in St. Catharines, 360 workers in Oshawa (with another 175 on layoff), and 75 at the Woodstock, Ontario parts distribution center.

In a press release announcing ratification of the deal, Unifor President Jerry Dias praised the federal Liberal and Ontario Conservative governments for their “support.” The federal and provincial governments are providing well over a billion dollars in subsidies to the Detroit Three automakers—GM, Ford, and Fiat-Chrysler—as part of a union-supported restructuring of the Canadian auto industry aimed at ensuring its “global competitiveness.” The new deal will ensure that the industry continues to produce bumper profits for investors through intensified production, job-cutting, and a further erosion of workers’ rights and living standards

“I want to thank both levels of government for supporting us,” declared Dias. “We went into bargaining in the middle of a pandemic, facing great uncertainty. Now we can proudly say these three contracts will breathe new life into Canada’s auto sector.”

Jerry Dias, Unifor National President. (Image Credit: UNIFOR Canada/Facebook)

Throughout the 2020 auto negotiations Unifor has functioned as nothing more than a cheap labour contractor, offering up current and future autoworkers to be ruthlessly exploited for the profit interests of the Detroit Three transnational auto giants.

The lavish government handouts and the incentives provided to automakers to retain a significant share of their North American production in the US and Canada under the renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) undoubtedly played a significant role in the investment pledges the Detroit Three have made to Unifor as part of the 2020 contract negotiations.

But their most important consideration was Unifor’s readiness to further enshrine and expand their use of two-tier and TPT (Temporary Part Time) workers, otherwise maintain real wages and benefits well below what they were before the 2008-9 auto industry “bailout,” and impose regressive work-rule changes.

The much-ballyhooed reopening of the Oshawa Assembly Plant in 2022, which GM has said will create up to 1,700 jobs, provides an example of this pro-corporate policy in microcosm.

There are only 175 workers from the shuttered Oshawa GM assembly operation who are currently marked as “on layoff” and therefore eligible for the projected new jobs. The rest of the 2,600 former assembly workers have either taken retirement or severance packages or are among the 300 workers who remain employed at the plant producing after-market parts.

Consequently, the vast majority of the expanded Oshawa workforce will be made up of second-tier new hires, who will have vastly inferior rights and face a lengthy eight-year “grow-in” period before they reach full pay.

There will also be a large contingent of TPT workers. They will be full-time in all but name yet have virtually no rights or prospect of obtaining permanent employment. Henceforth at least 15 percent of the Oshawa workforce will be made up of TPT workers, says the bargaining report issued by Unifor Local 222.

Unifor has also agreed to the introduction of an alternative work schedule (AWS) in Oshawa. This grants the plant’s management authority to organize shifts as they see fit, and eliminates overtime pay for most work on weekends or beyond the traditional 8-hour workday. The bargaining report notes, “(T)he company will have the ability to structure the shift’s start and end times to avoid high peak time utility costs.” It continues, “The company will maintain the ability to maximum run-time for optimal operating flexibility, inclusive of unpaid lunches (8.5-hour shifts).” In other words, autoworkers will be forced to endure anti-social shift patterns at considerable cost to their social and family lives, so as to further boost GM’s profits; and they will receive no paid meal breaks.

Buried in the union “highlights package” is an admission from Unifor that the company has in fact made “no future product commitment” to the Oshawa plant beyond 2025. GM, says the Unifor document, has committed to the reopened plant producing its hot-selling Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra models for a “life-cycle” of at least three years, or what the union terms “well into the new Collective Agreement 2023.”

Even for those three years, GM has given no commitment to retaining a 1,700-strong workforce. The local agreement explicitly notes that new hires will be “laid off” if there is a “permanent reduction in (the work) force.”

Like GM, Ford Canada and FCA are calculating that they will reap major labour cost advantages thanks to their ability to flood their plants with low-paid new hires and TPTs. At Ford, Unifor also agreed to the introduction of the onerous Alternative Work Schedule, a concession it and the company hid from workers until after the contract ratification vote. Overtime payments for 10 hour shifts at Ford have already ended.

All three deals Unifor has brokered with the Detroit Three provide the automakers with the power to renege on their investment promises essentially at will. GM, for example, says its commitments are “conditional on stable demand, business and market conditions; the ability to continue producing profitably; and the full execution of GMS (Global Manufacturing Systems),” i.e., its global production strategy. Similar contract language has enabled GM to close three of its Canadian plants, including the Oshawa Assembly Plant in 2019, over the past decade, despite previous “guarantees” they would remain open.

The Unifor-GM deal explicitly opens the door to further contract concessions. After outlining its investment plans for all three of the facilities covered by the agreement, the GM “investment and product commitment letter” states, “The parties understand that the expected conditions upon which these opportunities are based can change, potentially affecting the product allocation and/or employment levels. If any changes to the above are anticipated, the parties will discuss in advance.”

Unifor’s imposition of savage attacks on workers’ rights is the inevitable product of its nationalist and corporatist program, which insists that workers’ jobs and benefits must be subordinated to the automakers’ profits and investor returns. The union insists that autoworkers protect the competitive position of the transnational corporations operating in Canada and compete against workers in the US, Mexico and around the world for investments and products.

The pitting of autoworkers against each other has facilitated the whipsawing of wages and benefits back and forth across North America’s borders by the globally mobile automakers and contributed to the destruction of tens of thousands of auto jobs in Canada and the United States since the 1980s.

The latest bargaining round has seen both Unifor and the UAW intensify their promotion of Canadian and American nationalism. Unifor pressed for and succeeded in obtaining three-year agreements at all of the Detroit Three’s Canadian operations, instead of the usual four-year deals. This means the new contracts will expire in Sept. 2023, at the same time as those between the UAW and Detroit Three.

This was not done to unify workers across the borders for a common fight. On the contrary, Dias justified Unifor’s push for a common expiry date with the complaint that the UAW scooped up all the new product-placements before Unifor got to the bargaining table a year later. Opposed to a joint struggle of US and Canadian autoworkers, Unifor’s aim is to go head to head with the UAW in a bidding war, to determine which union apparatus can provide the automakers the most lucrative terms, in a race to the bottom at workers’ expense.

The UAW, for its part, has reacted with its own outburst of American nationalism to the news that GM is restarting truck production in Oshawa. “It's a little disappointing they didn’t give us a chance at increasing our line speed vs. retooling another plant,” Eric Welter, the UAW Local 598 chairman at the Flint Truck plant, told the Detroit News. “It's not a concern today or tomorrow,” said Rich LeTourneau, UAW Local 2209 plant chairman in Fort Wayne, Indiana, “but … (when) there has to be a volume reduction somewhere. Where does that hit?”

While Unifor proved able to impose savage attacks on autoworkers across the Detroit Three’s Canadian operations during the 2020 bargaining round, significant signs of opposition did emerge. These included substantial minorities voting ‘no’ in all three ratification votes, and the widespread readership among autoworkers achieved by articles and statements from the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter.

In opposition to the nationalist poison spewed by Unifor, the UAW and other unions, autoworkers are increasingly aware that they have to unite their struggle across borders to fight the transnational corporations. This was demonstrated in the courageous stand taken by the GM workers in Silao, Mexico who defied the corrupt CTM union and refused to accept added work during the 2019 GM strike in the US. Workers in the US and Canada expressed their solidarity with the Silao workers who were victimized for taking a stand.

The task now facing autoworkers is to translate this opposition into a conscious political struggle against the automakers’ insatiable drive for profit and their junior partners in Unifor. As the sweeping union-backed concessions come into force in the plants in the weeks and months ahead, the formation of rank-and-file action committees by autoworkers in every plant to fight for decent working conditions and a safe and healthy workplace will be posed with ever greater urgency. The struggle to establish such committees must decisively reject Unifor’s Canadian nationalism and subordination of workers’ jobs and livelihoods to corporate profits.

Wall Street and global stocks boosted by news of COVID-19 vaccine

Nick Beams

The announcement by Pfizer early on Monday morning that its COVID-19 vaccine had proved 90 percent effective in trials produced a surge on Wall Street when trading began for the day and boosted markets around the world.

The S&P 500 index immediately jumped by around 4 percent to record an intraday record high before finishing the day up by 1.2 percent. The Dow jumped by more than 1000 points at one stage, putting it in sight of breaching the 30,000 mark, before falling back at the close of the day.

There was, however, a significant divergence in the market as the tech-heavy NASDAQ index fell by 2.2 percent This was due to a shift away from stocks that have benefited as a result of the pandemic and working from home. So-called hot “momentum” stocks, such as Zoom, Video Communications, PayPal and Netflix were among the biggest losers.

The divergence continued yesterday as the Dow rose by a further 263 points, or 0.9 percent, the S&P dropped by 0.1 percent and the NASDAQ was down by 1.4 percent. But even after these falls, the NASDAQ remains 28 percent higher than at the start of the year.

Covid-19 vaccine (AP Photo)

The bifurcation in the market reflects a turn by Wall Street investors to so-called value stocks—those companies that have been hammered as a result of the pandemic—and are looking to a return to more normal conditions in the event that a vaccine can be successfully developed and rolled out.

But the change in the market does not indicate any underlying strength in the economy. Rather it is an expression of the highly speculative character of shifts by Wall Street investors based on the assumption that growth will start to return.

As the New York Times commented in an article on Monday’s surge: “With little changed on the ground, the market’s exuberance can be confounding. After all, the United States is still setting records for new coronavirus cases, the economy is still in the grip of a recession, and it could be months before a vaccine is widely available. But investing by its nature looks to the future, and on Monday investors were basing their buying and selling on their expectations of what the world could look like in a few months, rather than what it looks like today.”

In other words, the market surge is a major gamble amid signs that it could rapidly run out of steam. And market turbulence could result from another significant development—the rise in the yield on the US 10-year Treasury bond which has recorded a sharp increase in the last few days after plunging to record lows.

The yield on the bond, which forms a base rate for rates across the economy, has risen to as high as 0.97 percent, a level last reached in March. Bob Michele, the chief investment officer at JP Morgan Asset Management, told the Financial Times that it could go as high as 1.25 percent.

An increase in interest rates would raise borrowing costs for corporations which have raised large amounts of debt to take advantage of ultra-low credit orchestrated by the Fed, which has poured trillions of dollars into financial markets.

Michele argued that the Fed was unlikely to let Treasury yields to spike significantly, given the potential financial damage.

“This can only go as far as the Fed is willing to let it go,” he said. “They are not going to let it go crazy because that could derail the recovery.”

It is a measure of how dependent financial markets have become on the actions of the central bank and how far their operations have moved from the past that the prospect of an economic “recovery” and a return of interest rates on Treasury bonds to something resembling more “normal” conditions could be the source of market turbulence.

The Fed has indicated it intends to keep interest rates at their present ultra-low levels until the end of 2023 and is intervening in bond markets to the tune of $80 billion per month—a rate of almost $1 trillion per year—to hold them down. It may have to increase its level in the coming period because of the increase in government debt.

As the Financial Times noted in an article earlier this month, in order to “insure against a destabilising rise in borrowing costs that could upend the economic recovery, some market participants believe the Fed must soon focus the bulk of its bond-buying on longer term debt, or increase the aggregate size of its purchases.”

The rise on Wall Street has been broadly replicated on global financial markets. Japan’s Nikkei index rose by more than 2 percent on Monday after passing through the 25,000 level on Friday for the first time in more than three decades.

Europe’s Stoxx 600 index was up by 4 percent on Monday, its biggest increase since May, and the MSCI All Country World index of global stocks hit a record after rising by 1.3 percent on the day.

But with the surge in the pandemic in Europe and the prospect of a further contraction likely to shatter earlier forecasts for a revival in the further quarter, jobless levels are set to rise again.

According to research issued by the European Central Bank, one in seven Spanish workers are employed in businesses, excluding financial firms, which are at risk of a collapse. The figures for Germany and France are 8 percent, and 10 percent in Italy. Companies at risk of collapse are defined as those having negative working capital and high debt levels despite receiving subsidies.

Indian Navy: Time to Expand the Geographical Scope of Mission Based Deployments

Vijay Sakhuja

The Indian Navy has added a new acronym—TIDE—to its lexicon, which stands for Trust; Interoperability; Domain Awareness; and Enhanced Engagements. In his online address, titled “SAGAR - Charting India’s Maritime Security,” to the National Defence College, India’s Navy Chief, Adm Karambir Singh, emphasised that TIDE is closely linked with Indian Prime Minister Narendera Modi’s vision of Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR), an initiate that was announced five years ago in Mauritius.

Adm Singh also alluded to the Indian Navy’s three ‘Lines of Effort’: (a) collaboration and cooperation; (b) enhancing positive influence in the region; and (c) enhancing reach and sustenance in the farthest corners of India’s areas of interest, which resonate with “like-minded maritime nations, and are focused towards pursuance of our overall national and regional maritime objectives.” However, in the same breath, ostensibly referring to China, he was unequivocal that the ‘global commons’ could emerge as ‘contested seas’ threatening free flow of commerce and trade. Addressing this, he argued, necessitates a “pragmatic and outcome based strategy, rather than a purely conceptual.”

Although it is fashionable for militaries to coin acronyms for long or complex formulations for use in their day-to-day operational and administrative functioning, Adm Singh’s acronym, TIDE, embeds three important security discourses—cooperative, convergent, and competitive. These are also echoed in India’s politico-diplomatic thinking and strategic decision-making.

The ‘cooperative’ discourse is led by SAGAR, which motivates states to “conserve and sustainably use the maritime domain, and to make meaningful efforts to create a safe, secure and stable maritime domain.” Its primary focus is on the Indian Ocean, in which India is an important player and has been labelled as the ‘net security provider’. Its contribution to regional grouping such as the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC), the Djibouti Code of Conduct, the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) etc is worth mentioning.

The ‘convergent’ security discourse is the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI), flagged by Prime Minister Modi at the November 2019 East Asia Summit in Bangkok. It is an ‘open global initiative’ and draws on “existing regional cooperation architecture and mechanisms to focus on seven central pillars conceived around Maritime Security; Maritime Ecology; Maritime Resources; Capacity Building and Resource Sharing; Disaster Risk Reduction and Management; Science, Technology and Academic Cooperation; and Trade Connectivity and Maritime Transport.” These are to be achieved by creating partnerships with interested countries. Significantly, India’s vision of the IPOI resonates with Japan’s Free and Open Indo Pacific, which envisages combining two continents (Asia and Africa) and two oceans (Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean); and the ASEAN Outlook on Indo-Pacific, which seeks cooperation in a broad range of areas of maritime collaboration, connectivity, UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030, economy etc.

TIDE’s ‘competitive’ discourse is reflected in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD) that is associated with the Malabar series of naval exercises, involving India, Japan and the US (which now includes Australia). These fit into New Delhi’s broad understanding of the Indo-Pacific that is centered on China albeit with varying interpretations. Undeniably, the Indo-Pacific is an arena of a power shift (relative and real) and has a bearing on the global security order.

There is ample evidence of competitive security at play in the Indo-Pacific. In particular, the western Pacific Ocean has emerged as the centre of gravity of naval presence, aggressive posturing and maritime/naval infrastructure development. The US has announced the Pacific Deterrence Initiative; has conducted unprecedented multi-carrier operations; and has relentlessly undertaken Freedom of Navigation Operations in the South China Sea. China’s navy has responded in equal measure such as by carrier operations; simultaneous naval-air drills in different sea areas; launching DF series ballistic missiles (carrier killers) in the South China Sea; and military intimidation of Taiwan. The Australian and Japanese navies have conducted high end naval exercises. The French navy too is proactively engaged in multilateral naval exercises; the Canadian navy is making its presence in the region; the British Royal Navy has plans for long deployment in the region by its new carrier; and it would not be surprising to see the German navy in the region in the coming future.

Since June 2017, the Indian Navy has engaged in Mission Based Deployments (MBD) for enhanced Maritime Domain Awareness, and its warships, submarines and aircraft have been deployed in the Indian Ocean on near continuous basis for Presence and Surveillance Missions off critical choke points/sea lanes. It is fair to argue that the future of Indo-Pacific security will be determined in the western Pacific. The Indian navy is not new to the western Pacific, given that it has conducted the Malabar naval exercises in the region (off Guam and the Sea of Japan). The MBDs must avoid being labelled as the proverbial ‘frog in the well’ and expand into the western Pacific.

MTN Global Graduate Programme 2021

Application Deadline: Ongoing

To be Taken at (Country): African countries listed below

About the Award: MTN’s Global Graduate Development Programme seeks to source, develop, and accelerate top graduates from across MTN’s footprint in Africa and the Middle East. The programme offers a privileged experience that fast-tracks talented individuals into critical roles at MTN. The MTN Graduate Development Programme combines both formal development in partnership with Duke Corporate Education and the MTN Academy, as well as on-the-job development through full employment and placement into a strategically aligned role.

The formal component includes modules at MTN’s 3 regional learning centres, located in Southern, Northern and Western Africa.

Type: Job

Eligibility: You should be

• An African in the following countries
• 27 years

You must have completed or be studying towards a qualification with the following:

• minimum 65%
• bachelors degree
• 14 disciplines

You must have experience with the following

• Digital Marketing
• Commerce
• Economics
• Marketing
• Business Administration

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:

• Financial rewards for performance
• Global induction
• Free or subsidised mobile phone
• Medical Aid
• Laptop/tablet
• Staff discounts
• Career development resources
• Pension scheme
• Subsidised canteen services
• Flexible working hours

Duration of Award: Fulltime.

How to Apply: Click your country’s link below:

MTN Global Graduate Programme 2021 – Cameroon

MTN Global Graduate Programme 2021 – eSwatini

MTN Global Graduate Programme 2021 – RSA

MTN Global Graduate Programme 2021 – Uganda

MTN Global Graduate Programme 2021 – Zambia

Visit Award Webpage for Details

African Development Bank Group (AfDB) Call for Papers on the Impact of COVID-19 on African Economies

Application Deadline: 15th November, 2020. 

About the Award: The issue will analyze the impact of COVID-19 on African economies with an emphasis on submissions that address the socio-economic impacts of this pandemic, as well as policy implications. A combination of both theoretical and empirical contributions deriving from forefront of economic models is highly encouraged.

Eligible Field(s): Submitted papers should relate directly to the covid-19 pandemic, including but not limited to the following areas:

• Accommodative Public Policies and Potential Effects
• African and Global Supply Chain Disruptions
• Business Bankruptcies: Winners and Losers
• COVID-19 and Gender Issues
• Debt Sustainability Considerations
• Embedding Behavioral Insights into Policy
• Emerging Opportunities in the Aftermath of the Crisis
• Government Capacity Constraints in Fragile Contexts
• Health Impacts and Opportunities for Strengthening Public Health
• Human Development Challenges in the Time of Pandemics
• National Economic Resilience in Response to the Outbreak
• Socio-economic Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic

Type: Call for Papers

Eligibility:

• Submitted papers should not be under consideration elsewhere.
• Submissions will be screened with respect to their relevance to the theme of the special issue and then will be peer reviewed according to ADRev standards.
• Manuscripts will be checked for plagiarism before review.
• To be accepted, submitted papers should be in English or French, not exceed 7,000 words in length and be preceded by a 200-word abstract.
• Papers submitted after the deadline will be rejected.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: No fee is required to submit for this special issue.

How to Apply: Interested authors should submit their manuscript online via

https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/adrev(link is external). Kindly indicate that the submission is for the special issue.

For more information, please contact Yaya Koloma (y.koloma@afdb.org(link sends e-mail)) and Adeleke Salami (a.salami@afdb.org(link sends e-mail))

Download the call for papers

Visit Award Webpage for Details