As US COVID-19 cases top 11 million, Biden aides reject new lockdown to save lives

Patrick Martin

The United States passed 11 million coronavirus cases Sunday, according to the most widely used tracker, from Johns Hopkins University. The grim milestone came amid warnings from public health authorities that the death toll, now nearing 250,000, could hit half a million by the spring.

In state after state, governors have been compelled to issue emergency orders for the partial or complete shutdown of bars, restaurants, gyms and other facilities where people congregate. Michigan shut down all high school sports for three weeks and issued the strongest warnings against large gatherings over the Thanksgiving holiday.

One sphere, however, was entirely exempt from such restrictions: major corporate workplaces, including factories, warehouses and office buildings, where hundreds or thousands of workers are crammed together in defiance of social distancing and other public health considerations.

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden meets with residents of Kenosha at Grace Lutheran Church in Kenosha, Wis., Thursday, Sept. 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The scale of the pandemic is far greater than it was last spring. According to Johns Hopkins, 45 states showed week-to-week increases in the number of infections, in contrast to the handful of states worst hit in March and April and the band of states across the South and Southwest that were the focal point during the summer. Every region of the country is affected, although the worst-hit states are now in the northern plains and upper Midwest—the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois, as well as Michigan.

The most dangerous aspect of the new upsurge is the strain being placed on health care facilities. According to the COVID Tracking Project, there were a record 69,455 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 on Saturday, with the figure expected to hit 70,000 within days.

In many areas, some urban, some rural, every available hospital bed has been filled with a coronavirus patient. As cases mount, necessary facilities will become unavailable and patients will begin dying in hallways, in emergency rooms, in ambulances and in their homes.

All these strains will be compounded by the onset of the annual influenza season, which caused about 400,000 hospitalizations and 22,000 deaths last year.

The response of the Trump administration to the pandemic has been one of willful neglect, now openly proclaimed as the program of “herd immunity,” allowing the infection to run wild through the population while rejecting any public health measures that would impact corporate profits.

Trump himself has not attended a meeting of his White House Coronavirus Task Force in five months, Admiral Brett Giroir, a member of the task force, confirmed in a television interview Sunday. That indifference and callousness is the most important single reason for Trump’s defeat in the November 3 presidential election by Democratic candidate Joe Biden.

But Biden is no more willing to impose burdens on corporate America than Trump. The members of his coronavirus task force, established last week, have made it clear that Biden rejects a lockdown of the economy, the only action that would prevent a winter of devastating death and illness while work on the development, production and distribution of a vaccine continued.

This posture is especially criminal given the enormous progress being made in vaccine development, beginning with Pfizer’s announcement that its vaccine has proven 90 percent effective in third-stage trials involving 40,000 volunteers. Any COVID-19 deaths that take place during the months between development of the vaccine and its widespread distribution are the sole responsibility of those public officials and corporate bosses who are forcing millions to go to work despite the evidence that large workplaces are central points of infection in the pandemic.

The Biden aides who appeared on the television talk shows Sunday gave uniform, consistent answers about coronavirus policy, clearly coordinated with the candidate: there will be no new lockdown; those who become infected bear responsibility for failing to wear masks, socially distance, and wash their hands; no new resources to pay for coronavirus-related economic dislocation will be available unless there is bipartisan congressional support; there is nothing Biden can do about the pandemic until he becomes president on January 20, 2021.

Even that is open to question as Trump refuses to concede and continues plotting to nullify the election results.

Former surgeon general Vivek Murthy, co-chair of the Biden coronavirus task force, appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and also gave an interview to National Public Radio. In both, he blamed the population, not the corporations and government, for the resurgence of COVID-19, citing what he called “pandemic fatigue.”

“People are letting down their guard in terms of social gatherings,” he said, citing dinner parties and other small-scale events. He said nothing about factories and warehouses where hundreds or thousands work side-by-side with barely a pretense of social distancing.

He called for a focus on “expanding testing capacity and our contact tracing force.” That is all well and good, but these measures do not prevent the spread of the virus, they only detect it.

He called for “evidence-based guidance for schools, businesses, and faith organizations,” language that presumes that schools and workplaces will stay open, and churches will hold services, regardless of a deadly pandemic.

When his Fox interviewer pressed him on Biden’s attitude to a lockdown, Murthy replied, “This is a measure of last resort,” adding, “If we just lock down, we’re going to exacerbate pandemic fatigue. We need to approach this with a scalpel rather than with the blunt force of an axe.”

Dr. Atul Gawande, another member of the Biden task force, appeared on ABC’s “This Week” program. He was asked directly about the possibility of a lockdown and he responded bluntly, “We are not in support of a nationwide lockdown and believe there is not a scenario unless—there simply isn’t a scenario because we can get this under control.”

He went on to call for “targeted measures building on mask-wearing to include widespread testing, to include dialing up and down capacity restrictions, and those measures need to happen on a more localized basis.”

Another task force member, Dr. Michael Osterholm, appeared on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” He forthrightly warned that in the interval between the development of a vaccine and its widespread distribution, a matter of months, “we are in a very dangerous period, the most dangerous public health period since 1918,” when a global influenza pandemic killed 50 million people worldwide.

Vaccines would provide the fundamental change, he said, but until they were widely available it was necessary to do everything possible to save lives, regardless of the cost. Osterholm had previously called for a nationwide lockdown, with workers and small businessmen compensated for lost wages and revenues.

On Sunday, he concluded: “You know, my worst fear is what we saw happen in other countries, where people were dying on the streets. People literally were dying in the waiting room of emergency rooms after spending 10 hours just waiting to be seen. That’s going to start happening.

“The media will start reporting it and we will see the breadth and the depth of this tragedy. That, I hope, will not be the way that we finally decide to reduce our risk, this idea of swapping air. We’ve got to stop doing that. And so, I think it is the health care system’s breaking, literally breaking, that will unfortunately bring us to a sense of reality of what we must do in the short term.”

The Biden campaign had previously disavowed Dr. Osterholm’s earlier statement calling for a four-to-six-week lockdown to save lives, and he had been compelled to publicly distance this call from his work for the Biden transition. But the campaign was clearly aware that the doctor was to appear on “Meet the Press” and likely to deviate from Biden’s strict anti-lockdown, pro-corporate position.

So, Ron Klain, newly designated as Biden’s White House chief of staff, was made available to appear on the program immediately after Osterholm, almost as a rebuttal witness.

Klain made it clear that Biden would call only for a national mask mandate, not a lockdown. When interviewer Chuck Todd asked him about Osterholm’s declaration that those affected economically by a lockdown had to be compensated for their lost wages and income, Klain made only a vague reference to bipartisan congressional action during the current lame-duck session, before Biden is slated to become president.

Quebec Solidaire embraces the ruling elite’s criminal “herd immunity” policy

Louis Girard

— “There were no outbreaks in cinemas. There are more than 100 cases at the Olymel [slaughterhouse]. Why is Olymel open while cinemas are closed?”

— “There are outbreaks at schools, but schools remain open. There are no outbreaks in museums, but museums are closed.”

— “Winter is coming. Can we imagine opening up heated terraces? It is happening elsewhere, in other Nordic countries.”

These comments have been made in the midst of a resurgence of the coronavirus pandemic in Canada, and under conditions where Quebec, with more than 6,600 deaths, has one of the highest COVID-19 death rates in the world (> 775 per million inhabitants).

Their meaning is clear: it is not enough for the government to keep most businesses open and to order public school students to physically attend class. It must follow through on its policy of letting the virus wreak havoc on the population so as not to interfere with corporate profit-making, and lift all restrictions on cinemas, museums and restaurants. The example to follow is that of “Nordic” Sweden, where the authorities officially adopted a laissez-faire attitude in the name of “herd immunity,” leading to a per capita death rate nine times higher than that of neighbouring Finland.

QS's two official spokespersons, Manon Massé (left) and Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois (right). (Photo credit: Quebec Solidaire)

The quotes reproduced above do not come from anti-mask activists and other coronavirus deniers linked to the extreme right. Nor are they remarks of business leaders spearheading the ruinous back-to-work, back-to-school campaign that has led to the current cross-Canada surge in COVID-19 cases. Rather, they were made by the two co-leaders of Quebec Solidaire—Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois (the author of the first two quotes) and Manon Massé (the third quote)—at a recent press conference.

With these statements, Quebec Solidaire (QS) is not just defending and supporting the right-wing CAQ (Coalition Avenir Québec) provincial government’s disastrous handling of the pandemic, as it has repeatedly done since last March. QS is emerging as among the most brazen promoters of the ruling class’ criminal “herd immunity” policy.

Although generally not openly proclaimed, this policy is being implemented by American and European leaders and by Canada’s political establishment —most notably Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberal government, Francois Legault’s CAQ government, and Ontario’s Conservative government. It prioritizes profits over human health and lives.

In Canada, it was Legault’s government, with the backing of QS, that took the lead in the campaign for a premature return to work, when it sought as early as last April to reopen Quebec’s schools. Since September, Legault and his CAQ, the hard-right governments of Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, and British Columbia’s NDP regime have stubbornly persisted with the reopening of schools and businesses even as COVID-19 cases have soared, and workplaces and schools have emerged as major vectors for the virus’ transmission.

For their part, sections of the mainstream media, led by the Toronto Sun, have enthusiastically echoed the pseudo-scientific call for “herd immunity” made by right-wing scientists in the Great Barrington Declaration.

“Much of Canada is now barreling down the Barrington Highway,” warned the Globe and Mail ’s award-winning, senior health reporter last week. “In their words and (in)actions,” continued André Picard, governments “have embraced an approach … that profits matter more than people, that we should let the coronavirus run wild and, if the vulnerable die in service of economic growth, so be it.”

This reckless approach is leading inexorably to a surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths. Since schools reopened at the end of August, cases nationwide have more than doubled, rising from 129,000 to more than 295,000. Government projections show that within a matter of weeks Canada could be recording 10,000 or more new infections per day, which would quickly result in hospitals being overrun with sick and dying patients.

A large majority of Canadians—70 percent, according to a poll conducted last month—support the closure of non-essential businesses to halt the pandemic’s “second wave.” Quebec Solidaire, however, is calling for the opposite.

A party of the privileged upper-middle class, QS is opposed to mobilizing working people to fight for the elementary health measures required to halt the pandemic’s spread–from closing all schools and non-essential businesses, to pouring massive state resources into systematic testing, contact-tracing and refurbishing a public health system ravaged by decades of capitalist austerity. For QS, it is likewise unthinkable that workers laid off or forced to shelter at home during the pandemic be compensated for all income losses, while the virus is brought under control.

This is because such steps would adversely impact the profitability of Quebec and Canadian capitalism, which underpins the privileges of the social layer for whom Quebec Solidaire speaks, and because they live in trepidation of the growth in class struggle that would be needed to compel implementation of the requisite measures to protect the population from the pandemic and its economic fallout.

In the twisted pro-capitalist logic of the QS leaders, dozens of cases and one death in a slaughterhouse, and outbreaks at hundreds of schools, become reasons for a further easing of lockdown measures—not the other way around.

This apology for “herd immunity” comes after the QS leadership was criticized by party activists at a September conference for their conciliatory and complacent attitude towards François Legault, an ex-big business CEO, and his right-wing, “Quebec First” CAQ government. But, whether some members like it or not, QS views the pandemic as a golden opportunity to integrate itself even more fully into the political establishment, as evidenced by its defense of Legault’s disastrous handling of the pandemic and it advocacy of “herd immunity.”

Since the beginning of the pandemic, QS has promoted the official lie that Legault and the entire Canadian ruling class were “surprised” by the pandemic, and that such an event was unforeseeable. In reality, many warnings were issued by the scientific community and government institutions long before 2020, including in Canada after the SARS outbreak of 2002-2003. The World Health Organization (WHO) was warning of the immense dangers posed by the coronavirus in mid-January. Yet it was only on March 10 that the Trudeau government even asked the provinces to check for possible shortages of ventilators, PPE (personal protective equipment), and other vital equipment.

Quebec Solidaire joined the corporate media, the New Democratic Party and the unions in covering up the vast sums (more than $650 billion) the Trudeau government and Bank of Canada poured into the banks, big business, and financial markets at the beginning of the lockdown in March to bail out the rich and super-rich. And QS has regularly reiterated its “faith,” to use Massé’s words, in Quebec’s Public Health agency and its director, Horacio Arruda, who has served as Legaualt’s right-hand man throughout the pandemic.

A serious response to the health crisis requires the rejection of the social principle defended by Arruda, his political boss Legault, Prime Minister Trudeau, and the entire Canadian ruling elite—the primacy of profit over human life. It also demands coordinated measures at the international level, in close cooperation with scientific experts from around the world—an initiative diametrically opposed to the Quebec nationalism and parochialism that animates all of Quebec Solidaire’s politics and actions.

Defeating the pandemic requires the independent political mobilization of the international working class, which produces society’s wealth, including health care and the equipment essential to the functioning of modern society. If these resources are to be used rationally in the interests of working people, rather than deployed to produce private profit and increase the already gargantuan wealth of the 1 percent, they must be placed under public ownership and the democratic control of the working class as the result of a revolutionary struggle against capitalism and the establishment of workers power.

Quebec Solidaire has no plan to curb the pandemic. Faced with a global pandemic that has revealed the full extent of the economic, social and moral bankruptcy of capitalist society, QS seeks to hide fundamental class divisions by promoting the reactionary myth of “national unity,” thereby helping bind working people to big business and the capitalist state. “If we want to defeat the virus,” said the QS legislator Nadeau-Dubois, “we need a social contract between the people and the government.” The same call for “national unity” would be used in an independent Quebec, of which QS is an ardent promoter, to subordinate workers to the Quebec ruling class and impose austerity and militarism.

Quebec Solidaire’s support for “herd immunity,” for allowing the pandemic to run rampant, infect masses of people and inflict mass fatalities, is in keeping with the political line advanced by its international sister parties.

In Spain, Podemos is the junior partner in a Socialist Party-led government that has enforced a criminal policy of reopening all sectors of the economy and schools. The result is that Spain has among the highest numbers of infections and deaths in Western Europe. In Germany, leading Left Party politicians have declared their support for the “Swedish model,” i.e., a rejection of all lockdown measures in favour of letting the virus rip through the population. Bodo Ramelow, the Left Party minister president in the state of Thuringia, recently dismissed the threat posed by the virus, claiming that it does not represent a greater danger than a normal lung infection.

In September, Jacobin, the semi-official organ of the Democratic Socialists of America, with which QS has fraternal ties, published an interview article that advocated the adoption of the Swedish “herd immunity” policy. One of the two epidemiologists featured in the Jacobin article, Harvard University Professor Martin Kulldorff, subsequently helped co-author the Great Barrington Declaration, and in early October was invited to the White House to confer with Trump officials responsible for America’s COVID-19 response.

These experiences are a serious warning to working people. QS now lends support to the right-wing CAQ government and urges that its criminal “herd immunity” policy be expanded still further. Were QS to be successful in following Podemos’ path, and secure a direct role in government, it would be no less ruthless in attacking the working class.

A Dedicated Obsession: Washington’s Continuing Iran Sanctions Regime

Binoy Kampmark

One dogma that is likely to persist in US foreign policy during a Biden presidency will be the sanctions regime adopted towards Iran.  Every messianic state craves clearly scripted enemies, and the demonology about the Islamic Republic is not going to go begging.  Elliot Abrahams, the current US special representative for Iran, told Associated Press on November 12 that, “Even if you went back to the (nuclear deal) and even if the Iranians were willing to return … this newly enriched uranium, you would not have solved these fundamental questions of whether Iran is going to be permitted to violate long-term commitments it has made to the world community.”

It is worth pointing out that it was President Donald Trump who proved so itchy to renege on the nuclear deal to begin with.  In May 2018, his administration formally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the long negotiated harvest of the Obama administration in July 2015.  Over the course of 120 days, it re-imposed all previously lifted economic sanctions, including “secondary sanctions” on non-US entities conducting financial or commercial transactions with Iran. A unilateral shredding of Washington’s own undertakings was made while still expecting the mullahs to continue in sweet compliance.

The less than compliant response from Tehran has not made this one of Trump’s finer moments: an abandonment of nuclear limits marked out by the agreement; a resumption of the nuclear program; an increasingly emboldened stance in the Middle East.  According to UN inspectors, Iran’s enriched stockpile currently lies at 2,440 kilograms.  Under the deal, it would have been under 300 kilograms.  All of this took place despite the precipitous fall in oil exports, a decline in currency value and a steep rise in inflation.

Even before the pandemic, human rights organisations were already warning about the broader health implications of a brutal sanctions regime.  As Human Rights Watch explained in an October 2019 report, the consequences of such sanctions “pose a serious threat to Iranians’ right to health and access to essential medicines – and has almost certainly contributed to documented shortages – ranging from a lack of critical drugs for epilepsy patients to limited chemotherapy medications for Iranians with cancer.”

The US State Department and the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control continue to maintain that humanitarian goods, which also covers medicine and medical supplies, are exempt in the sanctions policy.  A rosily inaccurate picture, given the imposition of sanctions on 18 Iranian banks including those entities engaged in financing foods and medicines.  To this comes the added complication of what the US considers “dual use” items: hazmat suits, face shields, oxygen generators, air filters.  Decisions to grant exemptions, the purview of bureaucrats, are tardily made.

The advent of the novel coronavirus pandemic inspired a ghoulish train of thought in the Trump administration.  Easing sanctions to better enable Iran to cope with COVID-19 was never entertained.  Instead, as Djavad Salehi-Isfahani of the Brookings Institute observed, “the US piled on more sanctions, and chose to ignore calls from world leaders, former US diplomats, and the United Nations to ease sanctions.”  Such a bloodthirsty sentiment was captured by the Wall Street Journal in March 2020, whose editors decided that sanctions should continue, despite Iran becoming a pandemic hotspot.  “If American sanctions were the culprit, it might be reasonable to consider lifting them.  But the regime’s incompetence and self-interest are to blame.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif thought differently of it, accusing the US of “medical terrorism” in blunting Tehran’s efforts to access financial resources during the COVID-19 crisis.  Hadi Yazdani, a physician and a member of the reformist Union of Islamic People Party, sports a more nuanced view: US sanctions have well hobbled the government’s pandemic policy, but so has inefficiency and habitual bureaucratic mismanagement.

The dedicatedly nasty sanctions regime encouraged and enforced by the United States is now frustrating efforts in the country to make advance payment to the COVAX facility, created to assist in providing future COVID-19 vaccines to more indigent states.  This will become more pressing, given rising death tolls.  (On November 13, 461 were reported in the state media.)

The rate of COVID-19 infections is also scorching: 11,737 cases over 24 hours from Friday, according to Sima Sadat Lari, a health ministry spokeswoman who has become the regular herald of doom.  She also admitted that various questions on the vaccines remained unanswered, notably in terms of “how effective the vaccine is and for what groups it is more effective.”

During the transition period in US politics, we can expect the Trump administration to be particularly testy about modifying its position on sanctions.  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continues to busy himself with blacklisting Iranian entities.  The Treasury Department, for instance, recently placed a supply chain network on the list, claiming it “facilitated the procurement of sensitive goods, including US-origin electronic components” for an Iranian entity linked to the production of “military communication systems, avionics, information technology, electronic warfare, and missile launchers.”

Pompeo – and in this, he has a few devotees- argues that a return to the nuclear deal would be dotty and dangerous.  “It’s a crazy idea to think that you’re going to get back into a deal that permitted a clean pathway for the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon by which they could terrorize the entire world.”  President-elect Joe Biden, for his part, insists that Iran “must return to strict compliance with the deal.  If it does so, I would rejoin the agreement and use our renewed commitment to diplomacy to work with our allies to strengthen and extend it, while more effectively pushing back against Iran’s other destabilizing activities.”

The statements of the president-elect suggest nothing comforting to health specialists and policy makers bearing witness to the suffering caused by sanctions.  Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy might be abandoned in name, but will continue exerting a haunting influence.  The hawks in the Republican Party will be sharpening their talons, ever watchful of any softening towards Tehran.

Sino–India dispute: how far can it go?

Amir Mohammad Sayem

In September 11, both India and China optimistically agreed to reduce tensions, caused by China’s occupation of Indian lands, with a joint statement in Moscow made by the foreign ministers of respective parties on the need to achieve results through negotiations and military de-escalation. In actual fact, the recent Sino-India border clashes, which started between the two Asian nuclear armed rivals in May 2020, has till now led to deaths of 20+ Indian soldiers and some unknown number of Chinese counterparts. After heavy clashes in the Galwan Valley of the western Himalayas, two countries gathered military strengths in the respective bordering areas raising a cause of concern in the region and beyond.

But a crucial question remains on whether the joint declaration can end clashes or tensions can lead to a war between the countries — and beyond. It is unsurprising that conflicts between the countries, which share the world’s longest unmarked border of several thousand kilometers, are not new; both fought a large-scale war in 1962 through which China occupied some of Indian territories — especially from India ruled Jammu and Kashmir — that is now known as Aksai Chin. Infrequent small-scale clashes occurred for several times since then, although increased in the last decade, such as the 21-day stand-off in the Daulat Beg Oldie sector in eastern Ladakh in 2013, 16-day stand-off in the Chumar sector of Ladakh in 2014, and 73-day tense stand-off in the Doklam region of Bhutan.

Possibility of further conflicts exists because of not only history of conflicts between the powers but also other reasons including existence of ultra-nationalism, China’s assertive means of progression — regionally and globally — and rising geo-political competition between the two Asian powers and between China and some other countries including the USA. In fact, China continued economic development and improved military strengths since the 1970s almost silently, but superbly rising economic power with the 2013 BRI initiative, rendered as the new version of the historic Silk Road, made China forward moving with assertive foreign policy to gain more control in Asia and beyond. Most probably, China will continue assertive foreign policy, noticeably enhanced during the pandemic, for materializing its forward-moving national goals in economic, political and other terms.

On the contrary, India’s rising nationalism and increased efforts to exert greater regional control, coupled with the USA’s China containment policy and some other recent developments in the region can motivate India to continue its rivalry. The QUAD — consisting of the USA, India, Japan and Australia — and several bilateral defense agreements of India with the USA in 2016 and 2020 including the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement are to be specially noted here. These developments may not only motivate India to continue its efforts to becoming a regional hegemony in Asia but also compel China to deter these for its planned progression and regional and global hegemony. Indeed, China’s strengthening of military power in the South China Sea against the US navy presence and increased efforts to making military ties with countries neighbouring India clearly reflects such intention.

A significant mistake of anyone can, in my opinion, lead to a large-scale war between the countries with the further possibility of involvement of other powers at both sides — alternatively, India and its allied countries versus China and its allies — at the highest possible scenario. In that case, exchange of the most destructive weapons like nuclear, which can result in unprecedented devastation not only in the region but also beyond in terms of number of deaths, economic situations and some other terms, is not unlikely altogether. At the lowest possible scenario, on the other hand, small-scale conflicts may occur between India and China in the bordering areas, resulting in deaths of a small number of soldiers and, possibly, civilians of both sides, along with some other impacts.

But a large-scale war between the two giant Asian rivals is less probable, at least at this moment, even though its chance remains in the future. In fact, there are many deterrents from both sides that can cancel out such a possibility. Most of all, enormous economic impacts driven by the pandemic and the necessity of recovery from damages can put significant barriers; besides, both countries have more than 90 billion US dollars yearly bilateral trade that will be lost, given that any large-scale war occurs. Not less important is China and India are rising — the latter more rapidly though — in economic and other terms. No country, I think, may now take the risk of a massive war, a decisive setback to further progression of both.

In addition to deterrents between India and China, rising tensions in the South China Sea especially between china and the USA may serve as a major deterrent to any large-scale war between India and China, despite the fact that this simultaneously can provoke a large-scale war in the entire region and beyond if mishandled. While India may embrace South China Sea tension because of pressure it exerts upon its regional rival, China sees it as a challenge to its planned development. Additionally, China may not see war at two fronts — India and South China Sea — as beneficial and practical option. Consequently, China can be less interested in getting engaged with a large-scale war against India soon, unless it is significantly attacked by the latter, which now seems unwilling too.

Yet, small-scale Indo-China conflicts or border clashes may not be discarded in total. In fact, relations between the two countries are seriously hostile because of occupation of India’s land by China and many other reasons noted above that may not be mended significantly, even if both parties want. The Line of Actual Control between the countries is a potential hotbed of clashes owing to increased presence of military forces. Not less important is the fact that new form of cold-war which has in the mean time started between the USA and China — two global powers — may give less scope of improving confident relations between the two Asian rivals  and avoiding tensions altogether in the days ahead.

It is undeniable that Indo-China war is undesired by reason of its potential catastrophic impacts, not only in the region but also beyond. Under such a context, both India and China has some roles to play to end every possibility of war with the resolution of bilateral problems on the basis of negotiations. Given that geo-politics is unavoidable, it is at least desired that all parties engaged with the rising South China Sea tensions avert any large-scale war in the region. In my opinion, the world may not be able to recover from losses if any massive war occurs between India and China, along with their allied countries.

UAE and Israeli settlers find common ground in Jerusalem

James M. Dorsey

Weakened by Joe Biden’s electoral defeat of US President Donald J. Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu risks being caught between a rock and a hard place as Jordan, the Palestine Authority and the United Arab Emirates manoeuvre for control of what is to Jews the Temple Mount and to Muslims the Haram ash-Sharif, the third most holy site in Islam.

The rivalry for control of Jerusalem’s most sensitive, emotive, contested, and potentially explosive place is occurring against the backdrop of a parallel and interlinked run-up to a competition for the succession of Mahmoud Abbas, the frail 84-year old Palestinian president.

The Jerusalem site has been administered since Israel conquered East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war by the Jordanian and Palestinian-controlled Supreme Muslim Council.

Rivalry for the religious control of the site that hosts the Al Aqsa Mosque and is where the First Jewish Temple was built by King Solomon in 957 BC involves multiple risks for Mr. Netanyahu.

Mr. Netanyahu’s inclination to back attempts by the UAE with Saudi Arabia, home to Mecca and Medina, Islam’s holiest cities, in the background, to muscle their way into the administration of the Haram ash-Sharif could complicate relations with Jordan and widen differences with the Palestine Authority.

The UAE enhanced its ability to manoeuvre by establishing diplomatic relations with Israel and rushing to forge closer ties to the country’s political, security and economic elites.

In a twist of irony, the UAE finds common ground with the Israeli settler movement and the Jewish far-right in wanting to weaken Jordanian-Palestinian control of the Haram ash-Sharif and counter Turkish efforts to stoke Palestinian nationalist and religious sentiment. The settlers and the far-right are calling for internationalization of the administration of the Haram ash-Sharif, which plays into the UAE’s hands.

“Ironically, it may be the case that calls for just such an arrangement may come from Muslim citizens of countries that have normalized their ties with Israel and find it offensive that a small group of Palestinians are attempting to ban them from visiting one of their holiest sites,” said Josiah Rotenberg, a member of the Board of Governors of the Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based right-wing think tank.

The UAE’s recognition of Israel and willingness to engage not only with businesses located in Israel’s pre-1967 borders but also those headquartered in Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank and invest in a technology park in East Jerusalem has fueled a war of words with the Palestinians and sparked incidents with Emirati visitors to the Haram ash-Sharif.

“Most of the citizens of Israel, myself included, continue to… demand that Prime Minister Netanyahu apply full sovereignty to Judea and Samaria,” said settlement leader Yossi Dagan after heading a settlers’ delegation on a visit to Dubai to discuss business opportunities. Mr. Dagan was using the biblical name of the West Bank.

The visit reinforced Palestinian assertions that the creation of diplomatic ties between Israel and Arab states prior to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would reinforce Israeli occupation rather than open the door to the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The “Israeli-Emirati deal raises the concern and fear within the Jordanian Awqaf and among Palestinians, because it aims to give the UAE a new role inside al-Aqsa,” said former Palestinian minister of Jerusalem affairs Khaled Abu Arafa, referring to the Supreme Muslim Council.

Muhammad Hussein, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, didn’t need Mr. Dagan’s statement to come to that conclusion.

Resigning in protest from an Emirati clerical group established to project the UAE as a beacon of moderate Islam immediately after the announcement of UAE-Israel relations, Mr. Hussein banned Muslims from the Emirates from visiting and praying at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

An Emirati business delegation visiting Israel last month was verbally assaulted and told to go home by Palestinian worshippers when they went to pray at the mosque.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shatiyyeh scolded the Emiratis, saying that “one ought to enter the gates of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque by way of its owners, rather than through the gates of the occupation.”

Responding on Twitter, Laith al-Awadhi, an Emirati national, retorted: “We will visit Al-Aqsa because it does not belong to you, it belongs to all Muslims.”

Saudi lawyer and writer Abdel Rahman al-Lahim chipped in arguing that “it is very important for the Emiratis and Bahrainis to discuss with Israel ways of liberating Al-Aqsa Mosque from Palestinian thugs in order to protect visitors from Palestinian thuggery.”

Mr. Abbas, the Palestinian president, has slowed down a reconciliation between his Fatah movement and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, in anticipation of a more empathetic policy by an incoming Biden administration.

Mr. Abbas broke off relations with the United States after Mr. Trump produced an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan that endorsed annexation, recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and cut off funding for the Palestinians.

Palestinian officials suspect the UAE, backed by Israel, of positioning Mohammed Dahlan, an Abu Dhabi-based former Palestinian security chief with close ties to Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed as well as US officials, as a potential successor to Mr. Abbas.

Mr. Abbas could be disappointed by the degree to which a Biden administration may reverse Mr. Trump’s policy and find that it may not oppose broadening the administration of the Haram ash-Sharif.

In an interview with The Times of Israel, Anthony (Tony) Blinken, Mr. Biden’s top foreign policy advisor and a former senior official under President Barak Obama, signaled that Mr. Biden would, in contrast to Mr. Trump, oppose Israeli efforts to annex parts of the West Bank and could adopt a more critical attitude towards expansion of existing Israeli settlements.

It would likely be a position endorsed by the UAE despite the Emirates’ engagement with the settlers.

Mr. Blinken insisted that a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the “only way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state and also to fulfil the Palestinian right to a state of their own.”

With both Israel and the Palestinians “far from a place where they’re ready to engage on negotiations or final status talks” Mr. Blinken said that a Biden administration would seek to ensure that “neither side takes additional unilateral steps that make the prospect of two states even more distant or closing it entirely.”

The Biden administration could well see broadening of the governance of Haram ash-Sharif as one way of achieving that goal.

Organic Farmers Need Support and Linkages to a Fair Market

Bharat Dogra

There is worldwide realization that food system has been  becoming less safe and healthy. This is to a large extent because of the use of excessive  chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Some of the inputs used in fact have been found to be so poisonous and harmful that it is a very sad surprise how their use in food and farming systems ever got authorized.

After second world war ended some of the  weapon factories found a new diversion in chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides and this is how a highly harmful trend started in the food and farming system of the world. While the world has incurred truly massive health and ecological costs of this, instead of taking remedial actions the giant corporations trying to dominate world food system are moving fast in the direction of even more hazards in the form of GM foods and moving away from naturally grown foods in various ways towards industrial foods grown with a fearful cocktail of industrial chemicals and other inputs.

The entire effort is for profits and dominance, but is sought to be covered up , with the help of peddler ‘experts’, with a lot of high-sounding talk and objectives. If these experts have their way, hardly any natural, healthy, wholesome food will be left in a dystopian future.

To counter this, small farmer based farming using eco-friendly, organic methods to produce safe and healthy farming is needed. In conditions of developing countries like India, there is no room for expensive certification procedures which turn even organic farming into expensive farming which can be controlled by corporate interests. Here we need very low-cost and very self-reliant organic farming based on making best use of local resources.

While it is necessary to give up chemical fertilizers, pesticides, weedicides etc., it is equally important to emphasize that very careful nurturing of farms is needed, all the while learning from nature and natural processes. Good soil and water/moisture conservation practices are needed.

As a new generation of farmers has grown up which has seen only chemical-intensive farming in several parts of the country, sustained organic farming campaigns are needed. Even in areas where chemical-intensive farming has not spread much, it is being promoted as a model of progress, so here too to break this myth organic farming campaign is needed. In addition campaigns to protect diversity of  traditional seeds are needed as these seeds are certainly more important from the point of view of organic farming.

In addition efforts to link organic farmers with consumers  in cities who are keen to buy their food crops at a fair price are also needed. Certain identified villages of organic farmers can be linked to certain urban colonies where they have good support for selling their produce without any middlemen and without any curbs. Cottage-scale food processing which can add value to organic food crops is also much needed.

Sahbhagi Vikash Abhiyan in Odisha has encouraged organic farmers in various ways  while also setting up cottage scale rural food-processing units to add value. Save the Seeds Movement in Uttarakhand has worked for several years for saving traditional seeds and mixed farming systems. Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic  Agriculture or ASHA has worked consistently for protecting and promoting organic farming and for advancing the common interests and concerns of its members all over the country.

A program which has tried to combine these various efforts in several states of India is called Bhoomi Ka. Supported by Welthungerhilfe and involving several social and environmental activists, this program has reached out to many farmers for promoting organic farming, also organizing training programs for this. When such initiatives progress, community organizations and/or farmer producer organizations are formed to take forward the work . At the same time efforts are made to forge links with consumers in cities and to facilitate the inter-action of farmers and consumers. Safe and healthy food issues are also introduced in educational work.  Campaigns for safe food also contribute to improving the market prospects of organic farmers.

While all such efforts are welcome, at present their strength is much less compared to the powerful big business interests who are working against the interests of eco-friendly farming and safe, healthy food. Hence much bigger campaigns are needed to take organic farming forward in highly self-reliant and very low-cost ways so that healthy food produced in eco-friendly ways also becomes more accessible for all.

If such campaigns can convince governments to be more supportive, then a substantial share of the organic food crops grown in a village can be purchased by the government at a fair price for allocation to nutrition programs and ration shops of the same village.

Future of American Democracy: On Inequality, Polarization and Violence

Ramzy Baroud

In January 2017, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)’s Democracy Index downgraded the state of democracy in the United States from “full democracy” to “flawed democracy”.

The demotion of a country that has constantly prided itself, not only on being democratic but also on championing democracy throughout the world, took many by surprise. Some US pundits challenged the findings altogether.

However, judging by events that have transpired since, the accuracy of the EIU Index continues to demonstrate itself in the everyday reality of American politics: the extreme political and cultural polarization; growing influence of armed militias, police violence; mistreatment of undocumented immigrants, including children; marginalization of the country’s minorities in mainstream politics and so on.

The EIU’s Democracy Index has, finally, exposed the deteriorating state of democracy in the US because it is based on 60 different indicators which, aside from traditional categories – i.e. the function of government – also include other indicators such as gender equality, civil liberties and political culture.

Judging by the number, diversity and depth of the above indicators, it is safe to assume that the outcome of the US general elections this November will not have an immediate bearing on the state of American democracy. On the contrary, the outcome is likely to further fragment an already divided society and continue to turn the country’s state-run institutions – including the Supreme Court – into a battleground for political and ideological alliances.

While the buzzword throughout the election campaigns has been ‘saving American democracy’, the state of democracy in the US is likely to worsen in the foreseeable future. This is because America’s ruling elites, whether Republicans or Democrats, refuse to acknowledge the actual ailments that have afflicted American political culture for many years.

Sadly, when the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders, former Democratic presidential nominee, insisted that massive structural adjustments were necessary at every level of government, he was dismissed by the Democratic establishment as ‘unrealistic’, and altogether ‘unelectable’.

Sanders was, of course, right, because the crisis in American democracy was not initiated by the election of Donald Trump in 2016. The latter event was a mere symptom of a larger, protracted problem.

These are some of the major issues that are unlikely to be effortlessly resolved by the outcome of the elections, thus will continue to downgrade the state of democracy in the US.

The Inequality Gap: Income inequality, which is the source of socio-political strife, is one of the US’ major challenges, spanning over 50 years. Inequality, now compounded with the COVID-19 pandemic, is worsening, affecting certain racial groups – African Americans, in particular – and women, more than others.

According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center in February 2020, “income inequality in the US is the highest of all the G7 nations,” a major concern for 78 percent of Democrats and 41 percent of Republicans.

Political Polarization: The large gap between the wealthy few and the impoverished many is not the only schism creating a wedge in American society. Political polarization – although, interestingly, it does not always express itself based on rational class demarcation – is a major problem in the US.

Both Republicans and Democrats have succeeded in making their case to enlist the support of certain strata of American society, while doing very little to fulfill the many promises the ruling establishments of these two camps often make during election campaigns.

For example, Republicans use a populist political discourse to reach out to working-class white Americans, promising them economic prosperity; yet, there is no evidence that the lot of working-class white American families has improved under the Trump Administration.

The same is true with Democrats, who have, falsely, long situated themselves as the champions of racial justice and fairer treatment of undocumented immigrants.

Militarization of Society: With socio-economic inequality and political polarization at their worst, trust in democracy and the role of the state to fix a deeply flawed system is waning. This lack of trust in the central government spans hundreds of years, thus, the constant emphasis on the Second Amendment of the US Constitution regarding “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

Indeed, US society is one of the most militarized in the world. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), two-thirds of all local terrorism in the US is carried out by right-wing militias, who are now more emboldened and angrier than ever before. According to an October Southern Poverty Law Center report, there are about 180 active anti-government paramilitary groups in the US.

For the first time in many years, talks of another ‘American Civil War’ have become a daily mainstream media discussion.

It would be entirely unrealistic to imagine that democracy in the US will be restored as a result of any given elections. Without a fundamental shift in US politics that confronts the underlying problems behind the socio-economic inequality and political polarization, the future carries yet more fragmentation and, possibly, violence.

The coming weeks and months are critical in determining the future direction of American society. Alas, the current indicators are hardly promising.

Farm Bills: The Great North Indian Famine Enclosure

Vinod Kumar Edachery

With Farm Bills rammed through Parliament, the ethnic majoritarian ‘sarkar’, the deep state and elites have initiated another covert attack to dismantle the subsistence economy of rural India.  Instead of focusing on poverty reduction measures these enactments facilitate the accumulation of profits by the agro industry monopolies. Without Government intervention and support direct income of the peasant farmer is reduced, justifying commercialisation of Indian agriculture with the promise of better prices in the global market.  The demands of the imperial market for export crops will compel the farmers to shift acreage from food crops to non-food crops resulting in an enduring famine.  Half the landmass of India, 52.62% of it being arable land will be transformed into Enclosures for exploitation by Adani, Ambani like monopolies and the much touted contract farming.  Control over farm land, and the right to sell agro products for value gained through the peasant farmer Champaran Andolan of 1917 has now been usurped by the Farm Bills.

The monopolies of the imperial North will now be able to import Indian farmers produce at low price – below the real value of the agriculture produce – reflecting cheap labour.  Due to the low prices the rural cultivator, 85% of them holding less than 2 acres of land will be forced into chronic debt, loss of small holdings to absentee landlords, amidst increasing uncertainty of subsistence.  The Farm Bills are structured to legalise hoarding and speculation ensuring farm produce ends up controlled by the non-agriculturalist moneylenders, and urban merchants.  This new breed of intermediaries between the village, the monopolies and the global market empowered by Farm Laws will continue to accumulate wealth. Correspondingly increasing rural farmers’ poverty which is created by individuals – new intermediaries, monopolies – competitively pursuing their own good.   Resulting in an impoverished population of landless labourers and their families forced to till the soil for ever decreasing wages.  Without Minimum Support Price guarantees, crop insurance, and the perishable nature of farm produce the farmers bargaining power is diminished. Naturally small holdings become uneconomical for the farmer, who unable to invest further, allows the land to waste and is forced to seek employment in the non – agricultural sector. The increasing numbers of rural unemployed becomes a mass colony of exploitable proletariat – referred to by Marx as ‘non-owners of the means of production’ – the distressed segment in the vice like grip of decreasing wages, and reduced social spending policies of the Government of India.

GoI’s reluctance to intervene in the plight of the peasants, farmers ought to be read in conjunction with the World Development Reports.  Since 1999 the World Bank Group has been propagating non-intervention by third world countries and ‘part of the strategy in which its central logic is betrayed, is to deny the poor any alternative, and to create a reserve army of labour…’ (Paul Cammack)  The World Bank diktat ‘to intervene less in industrial and agricultural pricing; deregulate restrictions to entry and exit’ has been complied both in letter and spirit by the pliant Modi regime. The Farm Laws are a testimony to Modi brand desi servitude to the imperial nations of the North – the ‘lakshman rekha’ he dare not cross – replicating the colonial agricultural policies of the British East India Company that will transform India into a food import dependent nation.    Such is the objective of the strategic dispossession of land from the kissan ‘crafted’ by the ethnic despot for finance capital.

While the war rhetoric is ramped up, defence spending increased, army pensions reduced the land – controlled by citizen peasant farmers in the Hindi heartland – is offered on a platter to the agro industry monopolies.  With the majority of defence personnel hailing from the North Indian rural sector, their salaries support their families’ engagement in traditional rural farming.  These ‘workers’ in uniform and their joint family holdings are the targets of dispossession by the indigenous brahmins and Marwari moneylenders for the forces of finance capital.   Kissan and jawan betrayed, the land has been alienated by acts of legislative treason.  Increasing poverty, malnutrition will be the lasting legacy of this perpetual lease ‘crafted’ with bad laws for the imperial monopolies.  Statutes are approved in ‘masked Cov-Indian silence’; without debate but resounding shouts, and claps of the ethnic majority in Parliament.

The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020, and the other two enactments evidence the shameless surrender of sovereign policy space by GoI.  These enactments reaffirm a covenant promise to the imperial powers that there will not be any policy shift towards redistribution of wealth –  the abiding disaster of poverty and destitution will pan over India . A poverty landscape is ensured by exempting food items like pulses, cereals, rice and onions from the ambit of the Act.  GoI has declared their non-intervention policy by abstaining from procurement, and dismantling of the public distribution system.  Passing of the Farm Bills grants unfettered freedom for private industry to step into the void and engage in hoarding, and profiteering. The three Farm Bills are a carte blanche for the agro-business monopolies to accumulate profits at the cost of the Indian peasant farmer. The uneven field leaves ‘peasantry at the mercy of powerful private monopsonists, and that too in commodities subject to wild price fluctuations’ (Prof. Patnaik).  Freedom of commerce for hoarders, racketeers and market manipulators – impoverishment, misery and lathis’ for the poor.

The Indian farmer who puts rice, and bread on the table of the elites, would not be able to guarantee their own families’ subsistence.  Indicative of a community level food crisis, leaving children to bear the brunt of lopsided policy prioritisation.  Acreage for food and non-food crops will be linked to the fluctuating demand in the global marketplace, as a result land for subsistence farming is reduced. This village level food scarcity takes India to ‘the top spot in child wasting rate in the world’. The Global Hunger Index further states ‘around 90 per cent of children in India aged between 6 and 23 months don’t even get minimum required food’ ensuring a generation of stunted children.

If undernourishment is a central manifestation of poverty then there is already a famine oozing and destitution spreading over India.  Gandhiji led the Champaran Andolan in 1917 forcing colonial Britain to abolish indigo plantations. The demand of the peasant farmer to retain control over the land, and value for produce was first raised at Champaran and colonial Britain had to abolish anti-farmer laws. These are Famine Bills enacted to facilitate another imperialist conquest to take control of North India, creating an exclusive Enclosure for exploitation of lives, land and generations. While the promise maker Modi feeds peacocks the mass of children born in India united by poverty are forced to wander as orphans. Famine Bills evidence parliamentary dishonesty and treason that demands a verdict in the people’s court.

Timelines:

1917 Champaran Andolan, Bihar – movement established farmers right to control farming in the land, and sale of farm products for value.

1948 Nathuram Godse emerged from the admiring crowd, bowed and shot Gandhiji three times at point-blank range.

2020 Three Famine Bills ceding control of farmers land and rights to the imperial monopolies. The gains of Champaran reversed. Gandhiji killed again in Parliament by the ethnic majority Namaste Baapu !

Herd immunity policy in German schools leads to explosion of coronavirus infections

Marianne Arens

The number of people infected with coronavirus in Germany continues to rise steadily, with more people being taken into hospital, intensive care units and needing ventilators every day. On Friday, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) registered 23,542 COVID-19 infections in 24 hours, an all-time high. Over 600 new patients were admitted to intensive care units and another 218 patients died from the virus.

This week, pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech announced news of a possible breakthrough in the search for a COVID-19 vaccine. Other clinical studies also confirm that it may soon be technically possible to provide the world’s population with a vaccine against Sars-CoV-2. A possible end to the pandemic is thus within reach. And yet capitalist politicians refuse to do everything possible to protect the population.

Students cram onto a crowded subway car.

They continue to insist that it is necessary to “live with the virus,” maintaining their de facto herd immunity policy. This is especially true in the federal state of Hesse and the cities of Offenbach and Frankfurt am Main. Both districts have unusually high case numbers. Offenbach, in Hesse, has the highest seven-day incidence rate—317 infected persons per 100,000 inhabitants—and Frankfurt follows in second place with an incidence rate of 273.2.

It is no coincidence that it is precisely in these two cities that the most elementary World Health Organization requirements for controlling the pandemic—testing, isolation and contact tracing—are blatantly disregarded. To keep schools, day-care centres and businesses open at all costs, the politicians responsible in Frankfurt and Offenbach have decided to quarantine only those students who have tested positive at school. If a student is proven to be infected, neither the student’s classmates nor teachers are sent home or even tested. This was confirmed by both health authorities following a query by the Hessenschau .

The case of a schoolgirl in Offenbach reported by the Hessenschau and broadcaster ARD brings to light the full extent of the criminal negligence involved. Schoolgirl Mara, whose classmate tested positive for coronavirus, sat in the classroom behind the sick girl. Nevertheless, she continued attending school untested. Her mother then organized her own test—and lo and behold, Mara was also positive. “If I had stayed in school,” the girl commented, “I would have spent more time with my classmates and friends, who might have become infected.”

To keep the numbers low and schools open, those responsible insist on this irresponsible policy and resort to long disproved fake news as justification.

“There is no reason at all to close schools,” René Gottschalk, head of the Frankfurt Health Department, claimed in an interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau. Regarding the lockdown in March, he adds untruthfully, “This decision had hardly contributed to the fact that the numbers had already fallen in the spring.” And the earth is flat, one might add!

The view that schools are not the drivers of the pandemic has been clearly refuted by science. Only recently, a group of leading Austrian scientists again proved that the closure of schools during the spring lockdown was “certainly a significant contribution” and “one of the most effective individual measures ever.” They pointedly write, “All those who are now speaking out against school closures must state that they are in favour of triage”—in other words, treating some patients and letting others die.

Asked about the situation in schools, Charité virologist Christian Drosten also confirmed again on Tuesday in an NDR podcast, “We have repeated so often: school classes contribute to the spread [of COVID-19] as much as anyone else.” What was needed is a consensus that “we need to reduce contacts throughout society,” he said. Responding to the dogged claim that children are not the drivers of the pandemic, and less happens in schools than in the rest of society, Drosten repeated, “The virus does not care who it affects, and that includes children.”

He explained in detail once again that an infected person is contagious several days before the onset of symptoms, and that it is therefore urgently necessary to locate and test contact persons, “because they are particularly at risk of developing new cases and passing on the virus.”

Drosten also confirmed that considerably more people than known about may already have been infected. Since the federal and state governments deliberately refrained from systematically stepping up the relevant capacities and health authority resources in the summer, the test sites and laboratories were extremely overloaded, and many health authorities had already discontinued systematic contact tracing.

“We know that laboratory capacity and tracing are both overloaded at present,” Drosten said. Everyone was noticing that it is not so easy to get a test. “It could also be that we have a kind of decoupling between the occurrence of infection and the detection process. This means that we do not notice what is actually going on in the population.”

In the meantime, parents and teachers are reacting increasingly anxiously and angrily to the inhumane school and coronavirus policy.

In the Facebook group “Teachers of all subjects and school forms, unite!” Mara’s mother writes about her experience that schools are classifying KP2 [a lower contact rating] contact persons as “coronavirus-free” from the outset. “No! We have experienced it, and so have many others. Infected at school, wrongly rated as KP2 and later tested POSITIVE for coronavirus. My daughter got infected in this way. Fully occupied classes are an enormous risk, and the virus does not stop there either. There should be more publicity ... Also speaking for teachers, who have to submit to all this and have to structure and organize things again and again—what chaos for all concerned!”

Others confirm that this has “been the case here for four weeks now” and that the same is also being done in Frankfurt. Anja reports, “Half the college is in quarantine, but nothing has happened. It’s covered over and covered over. Full classes, [wearing] masks over 7 hours, no distancing possible. It is a tragedy.”

Melanie writes, “Keep the school open come hell or high water—but why?”—“Numbers,” answers Anja. “I was told via the grapevine that the numbers should be kept low to avoid school closures.” [Frankfurt] Mayor Roland [Koch] says, “Leave schools ‘operating normally,’ but allow coronavirus denial demos and ban St. Martins processions for the children—that doesn’t compute!”

The World Socialist Web Site has been explaining for months that opening up schools is part of the concept of keeping capitalist businesses running and that the politicians who do not want to jeopardize big business profits are walking over dead bodies in the process. The IYSSE, the youth organization of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party), calls for a European-wide school strike against the herd immunity policy and for the establishment of independent action committees in schools and factories, independent of the bourgeois parties and trade unions, to fight for effective pandemic protection.

After opening up schools under unsafe conditions, the establishment politicians are refusing to close them again despite mass infections, to make sure parents can go to work. In the Hesse state legislature, where the Social Democrats (SPD) and Left Party are in opposition, they reacted to the discontent of students and teachers in a debate on Thursday by merely demanding that school classes be divided up until Christmas.

Meanwhile, the Greens, who sit in the Hesse state executive along with the Christian Democrats (CDU), took it upon themselves to vehemently defend the opening of schools by CDU Culture Minister Alexander Lorz. Green Member of Parliament Daniel May gave express thanks for the fact that “school reality” had been established since the summer vacations and “that we can realize the educational mission.” He praised the state government’s measures and called for schools to be kept open for as long as possible. “Better to put on a mask than close schools,” he added cynically.