Second major hurricane hits Central America in two weeks

Andrea Lobo

Hurricane Iota reached eastern Nicaragua on Monday night as a Category 5 storm with sustained winds of 160 mph. Less than two weeks after Hurricane Eta made landfall in the exact same location and caused widespread devastation across Central and North America, the US National Hurricane Center is forecasting “catastrophic impacts” from another record-setting storm.

From Panama to North Carolina, Eta left at least 178 dead and 120 missing. The UN has estimated that over 2.5 million people were affected, including 1.3 million in Honduras, 640,000 in Guatemala and 180,000 in southern Mexico.

Ahead of the arrival of Iota, the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that 358,000 people remain in shelters in Central America.

“What Hurricane Eta left is not just a humanitarian catastrophe that requires immediate attention, but it has seeded future migration crises that we must seek to prevent,” warned regional IOM director Michele Klein-Solomon.

According to hurricane specialist Philip Klotzbach at Colorado State University, Hurricane Iota marks the first time the Atlantic has seen two major hurricanes in November. Amid a long list of records, Iota is the first Category 5 hurricane of the 2020 hurricane season in the Atlantic and is stronger, quantified by its lower pressure, than Hurricane Katrina when it destroyed New Orleans in 2005.

San Pedro Sula flooded after Hurricane Eta, November 5 (Credit: Facebook @ManuelPortilloVisual)

For the first time on record, Iota is the third storm in a single season to intensify at or above 60 knots (nautical miles per hour) in 24 hours, according to Tomer Burg, a PhD meteorology student at the University of Oklahoma.

Iota is expected to continue westward and impact the largest city and capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa, potentially with tropical storm intensity, before reaching El Salvador.

From the storms being intensified by higher sea surface temperatures due to global warming—on top of five years of crops damaged by droughts in the region—to the “herd immunity” policy of governments leaving the impoverished masses to fend for themselves against the COVID-19 pandemic, Central America is confronting a catastrophe created by the capitalist subordination of every concern to private profit.

Before the hurricanes saturated the soil and the pandemic tipped over an already collapsed health care system, the stage had been set by Wall Street’s imperialist plunder and the concentration of the remaining resources in the hands of a tiny oligarchy.

Two members of the Miskito community in Nicaragua’s Puerto Cabezas, which was directly impacted by Hurricane Eta and was about to be hit by Iota, spoke to the WSWS on condition of anonymity. They explained that the government of Daniel Ortega was able to evacuate those in the most vulnerable areas ahead of Eta and provided shelter and “some food” to most, mainly in schools.

However, having lost the roof of his home, one of them explained, “Aid for reconstruction is only being provided to [Sandinista] party members.”

Before the connection was lost due to worsening weather, the other man explained, “Ninety-five percent of our community was destroyed, and we still have no power. The generator at this place [shelter] was also damaged.”

The shelter of a family in Honduras, November 7 (Credit: Facebook @ManuelPortilloVisual)

Both are survivors of Hurricane Mitch, which killed about 7,000 people in Honduras and nearly 4,000 in Nicaragua, becoming the deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record. While never recovering, the primarily indigenous communities in the Northern Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region of Nicaragua have endured further shocks from the economic crisis and state repression following the wave of anti-austerity protests in 2018. This has been compounded by the coronavirus pandemic.

While the Nicaraguan authorities have not given a general estimate of the damage from Eta, the emergency agency Sinapred has warned that 80,000 families will be directly affected by Hurricane Iota and that evacuations have been underway since Friday in coastal communities.

Photographer Manuel Portillo, who is documenting the devastation caused by Eta in Honduras, described widespread “dismay, uncertainty and trauma” to the WSWS on Monday. “Again after 1998 with Hurricane Mitch, we see a major hurricane that clearly exposes the vulnerability of the country and our authorities.”

“The crux of the matter is the lack of an evacuation plan. People have not been provided with decent shelters. A place with drinking water, bathrooms, basic needs does not exist. People left on their own vehicles, some on foot, some on motorcycles, carrying whatever few belongings they could salvage.”

Portillo explained that most survived because of the help from fellow Hondurans. “Only thanks to the help from the people have most been rescued, have most of those affected received food. There have been hundreds and hundreds of donations,” he said.

“For years, thousands of families have emigrated due to the socio-political situation in the country, and this is leaving thousands of families literally on the street,” he added. Citing a report that up to 25,000 jobs will be lost in the Choloma municipality, he concludes: “Many transnational factories there were flooded, losing everything in the workplaces, and are planning on leaving. Where will those families work? ... This affects the poorest of the people, the most exposed families that find no other solution than leaving the country.”

Speaking to EFE, Honduran economist Alejandro Sikaffi estimated that Eta caused about $5 billion in damages, much more than Hurricane Mitch. Together with the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sikaffi estimates $12.5 billion in economic losses or half of the country’s yearly production.

The record 31 named storms of the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season (Credit: Twitter @Ben McNoldy)

Despite its growing vulnerability, Honduras does not have any fund designated to deal with natural emergencies.

The 2009 military coup backed by the Obama administration to install a puppet regime was followed by a wave of privatizations, tax cuts and social austerity. Debt servicing to financial vultures has risen to nearly a third of the government budget. The defense budget tripled. Former vice president and President-elect Joe Biden was Obama’s main envoy to the region during this period.

Now, ahead of an historic wave of migration from Central America to the United States, the Biden transition team has named as its top immigration adviser Cecilia Muñoz, who defended the separation of migrant families and massive deportations under the Obama administration, which deported nearly 217,000 Hondurans.

Meanwhile, as Donald Trump seeks to nullify his electoral defeat in the presidential elections and establish a presidential dictatorship, he has placed bigoted loyalists in the top offices of the Pentagon. Appointed as senior adviser to the secretary of defense, retired colonel Douglas MacGregor called for martial law on the US-Mexico border and the shooting of border crossers last year, claiming Central American migrants will cause the “collapse” of the nation and are a “human foundation for a permanent dictatorship of the left.”

Most Central American migrants are currently being rounded up in Mexico, whose President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has refused to recognize the Biden victory, citing his “friendship” with Trump. López’s administration has already turned the new National Guard into a key partner of Trump’s anti-immigrant forces and created what members of his own party have called “concentration camps” for immigrants.

All of the fundamental issues facing workers—the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects of climate change, the efforts of the ruling elite and trade unions to exploit the pandemic crisis to restructure the global supply chains and deepen the exploitation of workers, pitting them against each other along national lines, and the threat of world war and dictatorship—are shared by all workers regardless of nationality, race, ethnicity or gender.

Beyond a natural disaster, the plight of those in the paths of Hurricanes Eta and Iota is the result of the explosion of the contradictions of global capitalism and its nation-state system, which has opened up a decade of social revolution.

Student strikers in the Philippines demand government action on COVID-19 and typhoon devastation

John Malvar

Students at a number of leading universities in the Philippines are organizing academic strikes to demand that the national government adequately respond to the calamity caused by multiple recent typhoons. University administrations have responded by suspending all classes for a week, but the demands of the students are growing and taking on a more directly political character.

The Philippines, already dealing with the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been battered by a series of massive typhoons. The most recent, Typhoon Vamco, left a trail of devastation. The province of Bicol was ravaged and the northern province of Cagayan remains submerged. The city of Marikina in Metro Manila was likewise subject to massive flooding, and its densely populated streets are now clogged with thick mud and debris.

Residents try to salvage belongings after their homes were toppled from Typhoon Goni in San Andres, Catanduanes province, eastern Philippines on Monday Nov. 2, 2020. (Credit: Philippine Red Cross via AP)

Sixty-nine people have been reported dead as a result of the typhoon, a number that will doubtless rise, 22 of them in Cagayan. The flooding of Cagayan was a result of the release of water from Magat Dam to preserve the structural integrity of the aging facility.

Cagayan occupies a critical agricultural plain. The flooding has destroyed the region’s crops, which will produce massive economic dislocation for the farmers in the province and a sharp rise in food prices throughout the country.

More than 15,000 students are currently housed in evacuation shelters in eight regions throughout the country in the wake of the typhoon. Classes are being conducted online in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even without the devastation wrought by the typhoons, the country’s dilapidated infrastructure and social inequality have made participation in classes nearly impossible for many young people. The situation has now become completely untenable.

The administration of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte responded to the typhoon with callous disinterest. For days, the president held no press conferences. His only public statement was a stupid remark that he wished he could go outside to swim but that his security would not let him.

The phrase #NasaanAngPangulo (where is the president?) began trending on social media. A spokesperson at the Presidential palace issued an instruction to reporters to stop asking “where is the president?”

On Monday, Duterte finally held a press briefing in which he occupied his time largely with telling sexist jokes. There were too many women in the province of Bicol, he declared, and local officials did not adequately respond to the typhoon because they were spending all of their time having sex. He went on in a similar vein.

The calls for a student strike originated on November 14 at Ateneo de Manila University, an elite religious university and one of the most prestigious in the country. The students wrote a petition, which they circulated online to the student body, declaring that they would withhold submission of school requirements until the “national government heeds the people’s demands for proper calamity aid and pandemic response.”

They stated: “We believe that things cannot continue business as usual. We can no longer stomach the ever-rising number of deaths due to the state’s blatant incompetence. We cannot prioritize our schoolwork when our countrymen are suffering unnecessarily at the hands of those in power.”

The petition declared, “We cannot sit idly by and do our modules, ignoring the fact that the Philippine nation is in shambles,” and concluded, “The national government must act now or step down from their positions. No compromises.”

Within 24 hours, nearly 600 students had signed the petition. It articulated the sentiments of a significant section of university youth throughout the country and within a day there were similar strike petitions circulating on a number of campuses. Students at La Salle, another elite religious school, announced their intent to strike, demanding that “either the national government act or step down.”

Students and faculty at the University of the Philippines Diliman, the flagship state university campus, staged a rally and announced plans to strike as well. The number of petitions and strike announcements grows on a daily basis.

Looking to stem the growing movement, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque issued a cynical threat to the Ateneo students that they would fail their classes and not be able to graduate. “If you don’t meet the academic requirements, you will lose your future, you won’t graduate from Ateneo,” he warned.

A number of university administrations have responded to the strike statements by issuing a one week suspension of classes, hoping that by the time they resume, some of the immediate problems might have been resolved and the stoppages would disappear. Classes at Ateneo have been suspended and the strike delayed until November 23.

Rather than backing down, the students have escalated their demands. Recognizing that they had become the central focus of a growing national movement, the students at Ateneo redrafted their strike declaration yesterday evening to incorporate specific political demands. These include the implementation of “free COVID-19 mass testing and proper contact tracing,” the “guarantee of safety, support and funding of local health workers,” the “cessation of military-centric solutions to medical problems,” the “reallocation of Intelligence funds towards relief operations,” aid measures for those affected by the typhoon, and demands for a “no fail” policy from university for all striking students.

They concluded that they would spend their time on strike organizing relief operations and protesting against the Duterte administration.

The student government of Ateneo de Manila University will be voting on the strike petition this afternoon.

Mass student strikes have a long history in the Philippines, and have often been the first indication of the eruption of broader social conflict. The social ills denounced in the petitions circulated by the students of Ateneo and other campuses are fundamentally the product of capitalism, and not simply the incompetencies and corruption of any particular administration. If the student strikes grow, there will be moves on the part of sections of the elite and their political operatives, to channel the unrest behind the removal of Duterte and the installation of Vice President Leni Robredo. The mass student strikes of 2000 were similarly diverted behind the installation of Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who proved to be every bit as repressive and tyrannical as her predecessors.

Robredo, chair of the Liberal Party, represents the interests of Filipino capitalists who are closely tied to Washington and who oppose Duterte’s reorientation of Philippine foreign policy and economic ties toward Beijing. The Liberal Party has been a leading political vehicle of the Filipino elite, capitalists and plantation owners, since the end of World War II.

Removing Duterte and installing Robredo would serve the interests of a rival faction of Filipino capitalists and of Washington, but it would do nothing to alleviate the social inequality and poverty of the masses of Filipino workers and peasants.

The only way forward for the student strikes is to turn to the working class and to take up the political program of socialism, which requires independence from every section of the capitalist class and their political representatives.

New China-led trade bloc sets stage for further tensions with the US

Peter Symonds

Eight years after negotiations began, a regional trade and economic agreement—the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)—was signed by 15 Asia-Pacific nations on Sunday, including China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and all 10 members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

While relatively limited in scope, the deal is a further blow to US ambitions for economic domination of the region. After President Trump pulled the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the world’s largest economy is not part of either of the two main economic blocs.

Chinese President Xi Jinping at a party function in 2018 (Crédit: Xinhua)

ASEAN, rather than China, initiated the push for the RCEP agreement, but the very size of the Chinese economy—the world’s second largest—ensures that it will be the predominant influence within the grouping. Whether Joseph Biden or Trump is finally installed as the next US president, both have signaled a further ramping up of Washington’s confrontation with Beijing, including in the economic sphere.

The agreement is being billed as the world’s largest trade deal, with the countries involved accounting for some 30 percent of global economic output. Even without the involvement of India, which pulled out of the talks last year, the region covered has a population of 2.2 billion. According to American-based professors, Peter Petri and Michael Plummer, cited by the Financial Times, RCEP will contribute $186 billion to the size of the global economy and 0.2 percent to the economies of its members.

The Asia-Pacific region is already covered by a multitude of bilateral and multilateral trade deals, which the RCEP arrangements will seek to rationalise. The agreement will broadly cover goods and services, investment, intellectual property and electronic commerce. It is regarded as a step towards creating a more coherent trading zone like the European Union or North America, but is not expected to result in large tariff reductions as many of the items are already covered by existing trade deals. It does, however, set standards throughout the region that at present vary considerably.

Currently, for instance, the rules of origin that determine where a product is considered to be made differ between the various trade agreements. An item produced in one country, containing components produced elsewhere, might be eligible under a free trade agreement with Japan, but not South Korea. Now if a product is eligible under RCEP, it will have the same status in all 15 members’ states.

RCEP is also the first time that the three major North East Asian economies—China, South Korea and Japan—are part of the same trading bloc. Previous attempts by the three governments to reach an accord had repeatedly failed. By Japanese government estimates, the new trade agreement will eliminate tariffs on 91 percent of goods between the three countries. Some 92 percent of Japanese items exported to South Korea will now be tariff-free, as compared to only 19 percent previously, as will 86 percent of items exported to China, up from 8 percent.

The limited character of the deal is underlined by the fact that it allows countries to keep tariffs on imports in sectors regarded as particularly important or sensitive. As a result, agriculture is for the most part not included in the agreement and the coverage of services is also restricted.

The underlying geo-political tensions remain.

Beijing no doubt regards the agreement as a welcome counter to the escalating trade war by the Trump administration, which has imposed tariffs on two thirds of Chinese consumer goods. China’s premier Li Keqiang described the agreement as “a victory of multilateralism and free trade.”

A comment in the hawkish state-owned Global Times was headlined “RCEP will end US hegemony in West Pacific.” The new agreement, it declared, “sends out the message that Asian countries do not want to choose sides between the US and China” and “represents the failure of the Trump administration’s attempted encirclement of China in the western Pacific.”

The presence of formal US military allies—Australia, Japan and South Korea—in the economic grouping underscores the fact that all three are heavily dependent on trade with China, and have attempted a precarious balancing act between Beijing and Washington.

The Australian government, which has backed Trump’s confrontational stance and increasingly whipped up anti-Chinese sentiment to justify draconian anti-foreign interference legislation, has faced Chinese trade measures in response. It welcomed the RCEP agreement as a means of warming frosty relations with Beijing.

India withdrew from the negotiations last year citing concerns that its manufacturers would not be able to compete with Chinese goods. India already has a $60 billion a year trade deficit with China. While the door remains open for India to join the agreement, relations with China have deteriorated further amid border clashes this year.

The next US administration will not simply accept a growth of Chinese economic influence in Asia. Biden was vice-president under President Obama who launched the “pivot to Asia” aimed at undermining China economically and diplomatically and preparing for war. The TPP was pushed by Obama as a means of isolating Beijing by establishing an exclusive economic grouping that included major Asian economies such as Japan but excluded China.

In the course of the US election campaign, Biden and the Democrats attacked Trump for being too soft on China. Asked at a press conference yesterday about the signing of the RCEP agreement, Biden declared that he would not discuss US trade policy because he had not taken office and “there’s only one president at a time.”

Nevertheless, in a comment aimed against China, Biden declared: “We make up 25 percent… of the economy in the world… We need to be aligned with the other democracies, another 25 percent or more so that we can set the rules of the road instead of having China and others dictate outcomes because they are the only game in town.”

Biden has not indicated whether he would seek to rejoin the TPP, which was renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership after Trump withdrew the US. It is clear, however, that a Biden administration will continue the aggressive stance towards China initiated under Obama and escalated under Trump.

US imperialism is engaged in a desperate effort to stem its historic decline and is prepared to use all methods—military, as well as diplomatic and economic— to shore up its position against any potential rival, chief among them being China. As in the 1930s, the sharpening trade war is leading to military conflict involving nuclear-armed powers.

German artists, cultural institutions fight for survival in COVID-19 crisis

Stefan Steinberg

Germany’s theatres, cinemas and museums have been closed for the month of November as the rate of new coronavirus cases soars, due to the coalition government’s policy of ensuring that schools, businesses and industries remain open. Many of Germany’s cultural institutions and artists fear bankruptcy and destitution as the COVID-19 crisis deepens and the government refuses to allocate adequate funding.

The second shutdown of Germany’s cultural landscape has hit the country’s relatively large community of independent and freelance artists and musicians hardest. Even before the pandemic, many were already living at the edge of subsistence. Now, they have been stripped of any income as concerts, exhibitions, art and film festivals have been cancelled and clubs shut down. Deprived of any regular income, they remain confronted with bills for rent, electricity, health insurance and living expenses for themselves and their families.

Gasteig cultural center, home to the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra (Credit: Schlaier)

Following the lifting of the country’s first lockdown in March, theatres, cinemas and museums reopened, but with health-related restrictions limiting the number of visitors. In major cities such as Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt-Main, cultural activity depends heavily on tourism, which also came to a virtual halt over the summer.

Due to the health crisis, large numbers of workers in every branch of industry either lost their jobs altogether or were placed on short-time working, with a corresponding loss of wages. As a result, according to one poll, almost two-thirds (64 percent) of Germans reported spending less this year on cultural events. The travel industry and gastronomy (both 57 percent) were also heavily affected.

In the initial stage of the coronavirus crisis, and following the lockdown in March, the German coalition government provided essentially unlimited sums of cash to big business and the banks, in what Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party, SPD) termed a “bazooka” and a “big bang.” Artists and the self-employed, on the other hand, were allocated a pittance.

The latter, except in the case of a few programmes provided by individual German states, were only allowed to apply for limited funding depending on their ability to prove previous business expenses. No allowance was made for living costs, meaning that many cultural workers were denied any adequate compensation for their loss of income.

To give an example of the class character of the German government’s generosity: in the spring of this year, one single concern, the country’s national airline, Lufthansa, alone received a total of €9 billion (US$10.7 billion) from the government. At the same time, in most of the German federal states basically nothing was provided for the arts and artists. In Berlin self-employed artists and freelancers could apply for the one-time sum of €5,000 (US$5,929)—but not even that was provided to everyone.

Lisa Batiashvili (Credit: Mat Hennek)

In petitions and open letters, artists gave vent to their anger. In an open letter, world-famous violinists Anne-Sophie Mutter and Lisa Batiashvili, conductors Christian Thielemann and Thomas Hengelbrock, and opera singers René Pape and Matthias Goerne asked, also on behalf of lesser-known artists, “Are we only popular when times are rosy?” They demanded “to put artists in a position to bridge the next eight, nine, maybe even twelve months without slipping into unintentional and undeserved misery, into total depression.”

That’s not what the government did, and now—following the latest partial lockdown—the situation is even worse. While the government estimates that the country’s cultural and entertainment industries could lose up to €28 billion in revenue, its latest “New Start in Culture” (Neustart Kultur) programme envisages providing the entirely inadequate sum of €1 billion for arts and culture. One quarter of this amount is earmarked for cultural institutions whose operation is not predominantly financed by the public sector, and less than half a billion has been allocated to provide compensation for workers in the cultural sector.

Just how little reach this programme has for individual artists can be seen in the ratio of the number of applicants to the number of scholarships awarded. In the programme for “visual artists,” for example, out of 5,602 applications, only 675 scholarships were awarded. According to the programme, the money was not intended as “economic aid,” but was awarded on the basis of performance-oriented criteria of supposed “artistic quality,” independent of the applicants’ initial financial situation, and is therefore completely unsuitable for providing substantial support to artists in financial need.

Various federal states have also promoted widely published initiatives and scholarships for the arts, which in reality amount to a drop in a bucket and will do nothing to alleviate the plight of cultural workers. In August, the Berlin Senate launched “Special Scholarship Programmes for Berlin Artists” to assist musicians, composers, dancers, actors, curators, authors and visual artists. Out of 8,075 applications, only 1,995 received scholarships, also independent of the financial situation of all applicants.

Commenting on the Berlin programme, the Professional Association of Visual Artists Berlin (bbk berlin) insisted there had been “More losers than winners.” And it criticised the government’s “New Start in Culture” programme for ignoring the needs of artists in favour of “promoting an elite.”

Deprived of any type of income, tens of thousands of artists are being forced to apply for the state’s miserly Hartz IV social welfare payments. Instead of properly compensating cultural workers, the SDP in the German coalition government proposes to “simplify” the application process for Hartz IV payments.

Thomas Ostermeier (Credit: Jean-Charles Mourisseau)

In a press release titled “The SPD sets a Hartz IV trap” issued at the start of this month, bbk berlin denounced the SPD’s opposition to proposals for adequate “bridging assistance” for artists and its advocacy instead of Hartz IV unemployment payments.

Addressing the first secretary of the SPD parliamentary group, Carsten Schneider, the bbk press release observes, “No, Mr. Schneider, no, ladies and gentlemen of the SPD, it is not about further aggravation of the already notorious ‘simplified access’ to unemployment benefit II. Artists as well as other single, self-employed persons whose professional existence is threatened by the coronavirus episodes are not unemployed. They are gainfully employed. Therefore they do not require social welfare benefits.”

The press release argues for “unbureaucratic, accessible programmes to enable artists to maintain their professional existence through the pandemic crisis,” and continues: “What they need—and what society as a whole needs—is equal treatment of self-employed workers…if we do not want to stand in the ruins of the cultural landscape in Germany after the coronavirus crisis.”

In addition to the individual artists and cultural workers affected, the current crisis is also hitting the country’s leading theatres and opera houses. One of Germany’s leading theatre directors, Thomas Ostermeier (Berliner Schaubühne), reports that, despite declining incomes, many citizens have expressed their concern for the state of culture in Germany and eagerly await a return to theatres, cinemas and opera houses.

In an interview with Die Zeit, Ostermeier also pointed to the international ramifications of the crisis for touring companies. “Before the pandemic,” he explained, “we visited around twenty countries each year, bringing in around two and a half million euros. I know from our partner stages in New York, London, Paris and in faraway Asia that the pandemic is wreaking massive financial havoc on them, especially in the USA and the UK. The National Theatre in London has had to lay off a third of its staff, and the theatres in New York are unlikely to open their doors before autumn 2021. The Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Armory Theatre are threatened in their existence because their sponsors are also struggling with economic problems.”

Till Brönner (Credit: Tom Beetz)

The overwhelming majority of artists and cultural institutions in Germany fully accept the need for protective and lockdown measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, anger and protests are growing at the failure of the government to protect the arts.

Last week, numerous musical ensembles and opera houses, including the Munich Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin, took part in a video action “20 Minutes of silence” (hashtag #sangundklanglos) aimed at stressing the social implications of orchestras and ensembles forced into silence.

One of Germany’s leading musicians, trumpet player Till Brönner, posted a video recently expressing his ire over the government’s failure to support musicians and artists. When asked what made him so angry, Brönner responded: “I’m furious that since February, I—along with very many others—have had to watch how the government of Germany, the government of a cultural nation, apparently doesn’t think at all about the life and professional reality of artists.”

In particular, Brönner objects to the government’s degradation of the arts and culture to the “leisure economy,” which must subordinate itself to the “real economy.” The danger that Brönner and other artists raise is that the government will use the present crisis to drastically reduce spending on the arts to free up even more funds for big business, the banks and the military.

In a recent Perspective defending the outstanding pianist Igor Levit against anti-Semitic attacks, we quoted from Leon Trotsky’s famous essay “Art and Politics in Our Epoch” (1938): “Art can neither escape the crisis nor partition itself off. Art cannot save itself. It will rot away inevitably—as Grecian art rotted beneath the ruins of a culture founded on slavery—unless present-day society is able to rebuild itself. This task is essentially revolutionary in character.”

And we stressed: “These words resonate powerfully today, as the pandemic and the crisis of world capitalism have thrown the very survival of major cultural institutions and countless artists into question, while the bourgeoisie is moving to dismantle all remaining social, democratic and cultural rights of the working class.”

Biden names pro-war think tank and former Pentagon officials to transition team

Ray Coleman & Nick Barrickman

Last week, President-elect Joe Biden named key members of his Department of Defense transition team. Eight of Biden’s 23 team members are from pro-military think tanks. Kathleen Hicks, senior vice-president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington D.C. think tank with close ties to the US military and intelligence agencies, will head Biden’s Pentagon transition team. Hicks is also “Henry A. Kissinger chair” and director of the International Security Program at the CSIS.

The CSIS gets significant funding from war contractors such as General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon. According to Hicks’ profile on the CSIS website, her areas of specialization include Asia, climate change, counterterrorism and homeland security, the defense industry, defense strategy and capabilities, NATO and weapons of mass destruction proliferation.

MQ-1 Predator, armed with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles (Wikimedia Commons)

She is a member of the board of trustees of the Aerospace Corporation and sits on the board of directors of the US Naval Institute. She has received distinguished service awards from three secretaries of defense and a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Hicks was a high-ranking Pentagon official in the administration of President Barack Obama during the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. She served as principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy in the Defense Department. She also held the post of deputy undersecretary of defense for strategy, plans and forces.

The CSIS has supplied several other individuals chosen for Biden’s Pentagon transition team. Melissa Dalton was a Pentagon official from 2007 to 2014, a period that spanned the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Her focus is the Middle East.

Another member of Biden’s defense transition team is Andrew Hunter, who served in the Pentagon from 2011 to 2014.

“The DC think tank scene is well represented” on Biden’s military transition team, states Defense News.

According to a 2016 New York Times investigative piece (“How Think Tanks Amplify Corporate America’s Influence”), the CSIS functions as a de facto lobbying arm of the defense industry, using its connections with corporations and the government to promote the sale of weapons of war.

“Think tanks,” states the Times, “have power in government policy debates because they are seen as researchers independent of moneyed interests. But in the chase for funds, think tanks are pushing agendas important to corporate donors, at times blurring the line between researchers and lobbyists.”

The CSIS also has extremely close ties to the government of Saudi Arabia, which has waged war on the population of Yemen for the past five years while receiving weapons from the same military contractors that fund CSIS.

Other members of the team, Ely Ratner and Susanna Blume, were most recently employed by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a think tank that is likewise heavily funded by military contractors, as well as oil conglomerates. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’s foreign policy team during the presidential campaign was also drawn from this think tank.

The CNAS was co-founded by Michèle Flournoy, who served as the Obama administration’s undersecretary of defense for policy from 2009 until 2012. Flournoy is widely expected to be chosen by Biden for the post of secretary of defense.

Despite its ties to the Democratic Party, the CNAS also includes prominent Republicans such as Richard Armitage on its board of directors. Armitage, a longtime Republican Party Pentagon strategist, is closely tied to the oil industry and served in both Bush administrations as they carried out the criminal wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003.

The Rand Corporation has also contributed personnel to Biden’s transition team. One of its officials, Christine Wormuth, served in the Department of Defense under Obama. Other Rand officials recruited to the Biden team include Stacie Pettyjohn and Terri Tanielian. Pettyjohn’s areas of expertise include the internet, military affairs, military facilities, terrorism and war-gaming, while Tanielian’s specialty is military health and medicine.

In a sign of continuity between the foreign policy of the Trump administration and that of the incoming Biden team, Politico reported Thursday that Biden had reached out to officials associated with former Defense Secretary James Mattis for consultation, including over possible cabinet positions.

According to Politico, such talks were “in the early stages” and secretive. Mattis served as Trump’s Pentagon chief from 2017 until late 2018, when he resigned in protest over Trump’s announced plans to draw down the US troop presence in Syria. Prior to serving in Trump’s cabinet, Mattis directed Marines in the murderous 2004 leveling of Fallujah in Iraq, a war crime. In early 2018, Mattis released the new National Defense Strategy, which announced that the focus of US military operations had shifted from the “war on terror” to “great power competition,” directed centrally against Russia and China.

Biden’s plans to continue and deepen the US war drive around the world have caused defense industry stocks to soar. Shares in companies such as Raytheon, Boeing and Northrop Grumman shot up once the media called the presidential race for Biden on Saturday, Nov. 7. On the next trading day, Monday, Nov. 9, many defense industry stocks jumped in anticipation of a pro-war Biden White House and continued Republican control of the Senate.

During the week of Nov. 4–10, Raytheon shares vaulted 19 percent, Boeing shot up 22 percent and General Dynamics rose nine percent. Shares of the iShares US Aerospace and Defense exchange traded fund, which contains a basket of defense stocks such as Lockheed Martin, Teledyne Technologies, Northrop Grumman and Huntington Ingalls, rose almost 12 percent that week.

“This is a growth industry, unfortunately, and it continues to be so,” stated analyst Lou Whitehead on Nasdaq.com’s “Industry Focus” show last week.

Defense consultant and former Democratic Senate staffer Arnold Punaro told the Washington Post: “Our industry knows Joe Biden really well, and he knows our industry really well. I think the industry will have, when it comes to national security, a very positive view” of the incoming administration.

Under the Trump administration, the Pentagon budget increased from $663 billion in fiscal year 2017 to $738 billion in the 2020 fiscal year. Despite the tens of billions of additional dollars spent on the military under Trump, total defense spending actually peaked in fiscal year 2010, during the Obama administration, at $850 billion.

During the Democratic primary campaign, Biden claimed that if he were elected president he would “end the Forever Wars, which have cost us untold blood and treasure.” As is clear from his transition team, this was a sham.

Biden will also continue the nation’s nuclear modernization program, which, according to the Arms Control Association, will cost $1.2 trillion over a three-decade period. This program was recommended in the final years of the Obama administration and is aimed primarily at preparing for conflicts with Washington’s main military competitors, China and Russia.

Northrop Grumman is the primary contractor for the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent program, which entails the construction of new intercontinental ballistic missiles. CEO Kathy Warden gleefully informed investors during the company’s most recent earnings call in October that this program alone could be worth $85 billion or more over the life of the contract. Northrop Grumman also has the contract for developing and building the B-21 Raider nuclear-armed stealth bomber.

“We’re confident that a new administration would recognize that value and continue to support the modernization efforts that are well underway for both GBSD and B-21,” she said.

Trump or Biden, the defense contractors are assured massive profits. While billions will be spent to rearm and prepare the US for nuclear war while funneling more profits to the war profiteers, the population will once again be told that “there is no money” for health care or social programs amid the pandemic.

Throughout the election campaign, Biden and running mate Kamala Harris avoided addressing the acute socioeconomic issues facing working people. Instead, the campaign promoted racial and identity politics, touting the supposedly “historic” nomination of Harris, an African American and Asian American woman, as vice president.

In keeping with the Democratic Party’s race and gender fixation, Biden has selected members of minority groups to serve on his Pentagon transition team. According to Military.com, Biden has chosen retired Adm. Michelle Howard, who “was the first-ever African American woman to command a Navy ship” as well as “the Navy’s first female four-star admiral.” Overall, 15 of Biden’s 23 total Defense Department transition team members are women.

Such symbolic choices will be cold comfort for the millions of men, women and children in the US and around the world who are threatened by the war plans of a Biden administration.

As COVID-19 spreads in workplaces, US autoworkers call for emergency action to save lives

Shannon Jones

With COVID-19 cases surging across the US and record levels of infections, demands are growing among autoworkers to shut down the plants, which have become major vectors of transmission. The seriousness of the situation is highlighted by developments in the Detroit area, where major outbreaks have been reported at Fiat Chrysler plants in the northern suburb of Sterling Heights.

On Monday, over 8,000 new cases were reported in Michigan, while Illinois had over 11,000 and Ohio 5,700. Nationwide, the US is reporting near 150,000 daily new cases with over 8,000 deaths in the last week, bringing total deaths to over one quarter of a million.

On Saturday, the Sterling Heights Assembly Rank-and-File Safety Committee issued a statement calling for a work stoppage to halt production to save lives and demand full compensation for workers. It reported that all United Auto Workers Local 1700 shop stewards at the plant have been sent home to quarantine and at least one worker, Mark Bianchi, is already dead. Many supervisors are out with COVID-19, including all three skilled trades supervisors. One worker told the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter that 25 people in the paint department alone were sent home on Friday due to exposure.

Dearborn Truck worker (Source: Ford Media)

At the nearby Sterling Stamping plant, at least 30 cases are being reported. The UAW has closed its union hall and several local stewards and reps have been sent home while the union insists that workers continue production.

At the Jefferson North Assembly Plant (JNAP) in Detroit, a member of the JNAP Rank-and-File Safety Committee reported that an entire team on the “B” crew engine line was sent home after a worker tested positive for COVID-19. Last month, the UAW admitted that at least 59 JNAP workers had been infected and two died since May.

Workers say that basic safety measures, such as the mask policy, are not being strictly enforced. Screening is being done in a perfunctory and haphazard manner. Workers are not able to keep proper social distancing, with workers packed together at the exits.

Even workers that exhibit COVID-19 symptoms are sometimes not being tested. Workers are not being informed of COVID-19 cases in their departments or even COVID-19 deaths. Management makes it so difficult to collect pay when workers are infected that some would prefer not to get tested and continue reporting to work. Complaints filed with the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration are routinely ignored.

A worker at another Detroit area auto plant, Fiat Chrysler Warren Stamping, said, “We have had two union officials die and also a team leader in the early months of the pandemic. One area was blocked off for a possible case (pending test results) from a supervisor who showed symptoms on Thursday. People have been working in that area all day and the company is just now taking precautions. Also, today a contractor working in another area tested positive. They sent all personnel working in that area home, blocked it off, and none of the employees working 15 feet from the affected area were notified.

"A sanitization company was called in but could not make it in a timely manner because they were busy sanitizing two other possible cases at Warren Truck at the time.

"I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said at least one case per week has occurred, and some weeks two cases, since the beginning of May. That’s at least 24 cases that we are aware of. The rank and file are not being made aware of incidents until at least the next day unless we witness the sanitization ourselves and spread the news to others. Rank-and-file workers are being forced to work within six feet of each other. And people working near COVID positive employees are just moved to other parts of the plant to work with other employees while the company sanitizes the affected area, possibly spreading it to others.”

On Monday, president-elect Joe Biden held a virtual meeting with the heads of major unions and major retail, auto and tech company executives. Among those attending were AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, UAW President Rory Gamble and the leaders of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and other unions. Corporate representatives included General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Microsoft president and CEO Satya Nadella, Target chairman and CEO Brian Cornell, and Sonia Syngal, CEO of Gap.

According to remarks released by the AFL-CIO, Trumka said, “We need to make sure all COVID-19 cases are counted and reported so we know where the major outbreaks are before they get worse.” The fact is the AFL-CIO, UAW, UFCW and other unions are chiefly responsible for concealing information about outbreaks because they know that workers will take matters into their own hands and halt production.

Biden announced that his administration would rely more heavily on the unions to suppress the class struggle, “Unions are going to have increased power [in a Biden administration],” he said. Reports said the corporate CEOs nodded in response.

While admitting that “we face a dark winter ahead,” Biden made it clear that he proposed no serious measures to halt the spread of the pandemic. This was underscored at a press conference later in the day where Biden refused to respond to questions about a national lockdown over COVID-19. In fact, Biden is just as opposed as President Trump to any measures to fight the virus that might impact corporate profits.

On Sunday, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced new emergency measures under the state’s public health code to slow the spread of coronavirus, including a three-week closure starting Wednesday of all colleges and high schools in the state. Also impacted are eat-in dining at restaurants and other recreational and entertainment activities. Whitmer explicitly exempted factories and construction sites, even though Michigan's chief medical director said they were a major source of outbreaks, along with nursing homes and schools.

No one at the press asked why the governor’s health order excludes auto plants and other factories as well as K-8 schools? The answer is obvious; the factories must be kept open at all costs to feed the profits of the corporation and Wall Street. Elementary schools must also be kept in session to free parents to continue working.

A worker at the Fiat Chrysler Warren Truck plant who was infected with the virus said, “I’m infected now because the company does not take proper steps to keep the plant safe. At least five or six people in my area at the plant got infected and are out.

“On the exits, there is no social distancing at all. It’s terrible! People are packed together when we go through the exits. The only time we can finally social distance is when we get to the parking lot.

“We are the city. Workers come from counties all over the area and then if they get infected, they bring it into neighborhoods all around. We need to shut it all down.

“If we had even been informed of the infections in the plant, I could have been spared. And my family—my wife two kids, and my sister.

“The company just doesn’t care how many of us get sick.”

Urgent action is needed. We call on autoworkers and all workers to build and expand the network of rank-and-file safety committees to fight for an immediate halt to all non-essential production until the virus is contained. All workers must be fully compensated during the shutdown along with small businesses and others affected by the pandemic. The enormous fortunes being accumulated by the Wall Street billionaires must be redirected to meet pressing human needs. Life must take place over private profit.

With Malabar exercise, Quad emerging as US-led, anti-China military alliance

Shuvu Batta & Keith Jones

India, the US, and Washington’s two most important Asia-Pacific allies—Japan and Australia—are to begin today the second phase of the 2020 Malabar naval exercise.

Whilst India and the Pentagon have staged a Malabar naval exercise at least once each year since 1992, the current iteration is widely recognized as having major strategic significance. This is because it marks an important step toward the crystallization of a US-led, anti-China military-security alliance, involving New Delhi and Washington’s key regional treaty allies. For the past two decades, a central aim of US global strategy, under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, has been to harness India—a nuclear-armed state that borders China, provides the ideal vantage point to dominate the Indian Ocean and has a growing blue-water navy—to American imperialism’s strategic agenda.

Ships from the Indian Navy, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and the U.S. Navy sail in formation in the Bay of Bengal during 2017 Malabar Exercise (Credit: Wikipedia Commons)

The current exercise is not formally being held under the auspices of the Quad, a strategic dialogue between the US, Japan, Australia and India that was revived in 2018, and that Washington has publicly said it wants to see transformed into a NATO-style alliance.

However, it is a clear signal from the four powers that they are now seeking to develop the capacity and expertise for joint military planning, action, and combat against China—that is that they are preparing for a possible third world war.

India invited Australia to join the Malabar exercise for the first time since 2007, shortly after the Quad foreign ministers met in Tokyo in early October. Japan was already made a permanent third member of the Malabar event in 2015.

Commenting on the participation of all four members of the Quad in this year’s Malabar exercise, the Global Times, a mouthpiece of the Chinese government, declared, “the Quad military alliance is officially formed.”

With bipartisan support, Washington has dramatically intensified it diplomatic, economic and military-strategic pressure on China over the past two years. In July, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly repudiated Washington’s five-decade-old policy of “engagement” with China and proclaimed defeating Beijing’s “tyranny”—that is, regime change—to be the animating principle and central goal of America’s China policy.

Under Narendra Modi’s six-year-old Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, India has dramatically expanded bilateral, trilateral and, since 2018, quadrilateral military-strategic ties, with the US, Japan, and Australia. However, as with Washington, this has reached a qualitatively new level amid the economic crisis and surge in global geopolitical tensions triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

India’s capitalist ruling elite has seized on the border dispute that erupted with China in May and led to a fatal clash in June to whip up animosity against Beijing and overcome popular opposition to integrating India still more fully into Washington’s military-strategic offensive against China. At last month’s “2+2 meeting” of Indian and US foreign and defence ministers, New Delhi signed the final of four agreements the Pentagon considers fundamental for intelligence sharing and joint operations with foreign military allies.

The Indian media is full of commentary noting the significance of the Quad mounting a joint military exercise under conditions where India and China have each arrayed more than 50,000 troops, war planes and tanks along their disputed Himalayan border. Washington, it need be noted, demonstratively intruded into the current Indo-China border dispute almost from the get-go, accusing China of “aggression” and claiming this was part of a pattern of malevolent Chinese actions, including in the South China Sea.

While proclaiming they want peace, Indian political and military leaders have insisted that the onus for defusing the border crisis lies with Beijing. Calling for vigilance, the head of India’s armed forces, Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, recently warned of “border confrontations, transgressions, unprovoked tactical military actions spiralling into a larger conflict.”

The second phase of the Malabar exercise will be staged in the Arabian Sea over four days, ending Nov. 20. It will be led by two aircraft carrier battle groups, the US Navy’s Nimitz Carrier Strike Group and the Indian Navy’s Vikramadiya Carrier Battle Group. According to an Indian Navy press release, “The two carriers, along with other ships, submarine and aircraft of the participating navies,” will engage “in high intensity naval operations” including air defence and cross-deck flying operations.

The exercise’s first phase was held from Nov. 3 through Nov. 6 in the Bay of Bengal—like the Arabian Sea an integral part of the Indian Ocean—off of Visakhapatnam, in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It focussed on air defence and anti-submarine exercises, as well as practicing sea replenishment and communications.

Dominance of the Indian Ocean is central to the Pentagon’s strategy to strategically encircle and militarily confront China, as its sea lanes are the principal conduit for both China’s exports and the oil and other resources that fuel its economy. In the event of a war or war crisis, the US and its allies intend to strangle China economically by denying it access to the Indian Ocean by seizing Indian Ocean and South China Sea chokepoints.

Within this strategy India plays an especially important role because of its location, large military, and strategic rivalry with Beijing.

Not only does India protrude far into the northern half of the Indian Ocean, it controls the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an island chain more than 1700 kilometres (1,050 miles) from mainland India that effectively guards the eastern entrance to the Malacca Strait. An 885-kilometer (550 mile) waterway, the Malacca Strait has been dubbed “the central artery” of world commerce. The Straits carry over 80 percent of Chinese crude oil imports and 40 percent of world trade.

Indian Ocean: Red box identifies the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, yellow box is the Malacca Strait. (Credit: openstreetmaps)

India is rapidly militarizing the Andamans, with plans for further “military infrastructure development.” It is currently the Indian military’s only integrated tri-service (navy, army, air force) command. Recently a US military vehicle—the anti-submarine surveillance aircraft P-8 Poseidon—visited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands for the first time in history. The visit was made possible through the 2016 Indo-US LEMOA agreement. One of the Pentagon’s four “foundational” agreements, it allows US warplanes and warships to use Indian bases for routine resupply and vice versa

In the 18 years since the first Malabar exercise between India and the United States, India has greatly expanded its military might, including its strategic nuclear program. Falling economically further and further behind China, and facing an increasingly large and powerful working class, the Indian bourgeoisie has more and more come to view a close partnership with US imperialism as critical to realizing its own great-power ambitions. And it views its growing military power as providing pivotal leverage with Washington. The US, for its part, is eager to provide its ally with advanced weaponry, so as to monetize their military-security partnership, but also so as to make India more and more dependent on US military supplies.

Since 1992, India has jacked up its military budget from $8.88 billion to more than $70 billion, making it the world’s third largest military spender. It developed its first aircraft carrier in 2013 (INS Vikramaditya), has built nearly 30 other large surface warships and a fleet of strategic and tactical submarines.

It is also seeking to establish close military ties with other Indian Ocean states. It has launched joint surveillance drills with the island states of the Maldives, Seychelles, and Mauritius, and Coordinated Patrols (CORPATs) with the navies of Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, and Indonesia. To entrench and expand its naval presence, India has developed support facilities in Oman, Madagascar, Mauritius, and Singapore.

Publicly the BJP government claims that India is strategically autonomous and will never become a treaty ally of the US. There are several reasons for this: first, it fears the reaction among Indian workers, who are hostile to US imperialism; second, it is wary of Beijing’s response; and finally, it wants to retain the largest possible manoeuvring room, including New Delhi’s longstanding close military-strategic partnership with Moscow.

But among Indian military-strategic analysts it is openly admitted that India has effectively been transformed into a US “frontline state against” China.

Former Indian National Security Adviser M.K Narayanan, who is among the minority who believes India has hitched itself too tightly to Washington, recently wrote in a Hindu op-ed: “The US makes little secret of the fact that the primary push for getting India to sign the foundational agreements was the threat posed by China, and by appending its signature India has signed on to becoming part of the wider anti-China ‘coalition of the willing.’”

Meanwhile, Shivshankar Menon, who succeeded Narayanan as India’s national security adviser under the previous Congress Party-led government, enthused at a recent seminar over the fact that India is increasingly acting in concert with Washington and doing things for US imperialism in the manner of a treaty ally. Said Menon, “Many more people would accept that idea that we would start doing things with the US, for the US, that actually US allies would do—without an alliance.” “I think,” he continued, “the actual practice of interoperability, of taking on particular roles and of fitting into a larger common strategy—I don’t see that being problematic today.”