Modi maneuvers as support for Indian farmers’ protest swells

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Indian farmers have called for a four-hour Bharat bandh (all-India shutdown) from 11 AM to 3 PM today to press their demand that the country’s far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government rescind a series of recently-adopted laws that put them at the mercy of domestic and international agribusiness.

Several hundred thousand farmers, some with their wives and children, are currently camped at Singhu and other entry points to India’s Delhi National Capital Territory. Many have been there since Nov. 27, when police, acting on the orders of the BJP government, used tear gas, water cannons and barbed wire barricades to block them from entering Delhi.

The protest has since swelled as other farmers, including from southern India, flock to join, and now constitutes a serious political crisis for the BJP government.

“On TV, I saw the videos of farmers being attacked with water cannons and tear gas,” Vijay Gorle, a farmer from the Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, told the Hindustan Times on December 7. “They needed the country's support, so four of us caught a train to reach Delhi station and from there a cab to reach here on Saturday.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP used the September Monsoon session of parliament to ram through a series of measures long demanded by Indian and international capital, claiming they were needed to revive an Indian economy that had been roiled by the COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s ruinous response to it.

These measures include three agricultural bills that are the focus of the farmers’ agitation, and a “reform” of the labour code. The latter illegalizes most worker job action, promotes precarious contract-labour employment, and guts restrictions on mass layoffs and plant closures.

The farmers launched their agitation on Nov. 26, the same day that tens of millions of workers across India mounted a one-day protest strike to oppose the Modi government’s “labour reform” and privatization drive, and to demand emergency financial assistance for the hundreds of millions of impoverished workers and toilers who have been left to fend for themselves amid the ongoing socio-economic disaster.

There is huge popular sympathy for the farmers and an even larger well of opposition to the Hindu supremacist BJP, which is ruthlessly implementing “pro-investor” policies, while relentlessly stoking anti-Muslim chauvinism.

But the Stalinist parliamentary parties—the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM and the Communist Party of India (CPI)—and the trade unions are doing everything they can to demobilize the working class, and channel the mass anger behind the right-wing bourgeois opposition and futile appeals to Modi to change course.

The CPM-aligned Centre for Indian Trade Unions, the CPI’s trade union affiliate, the All India Trade Union Congress, and eight other central trade union federations—along with numerous independent unions, including those representing railway and bank workers—have pledged their support for today’s Bharat bandh. However, if they have their way, virtually all workers will remain on the job. Any action in support of the farmers’ will be limited to lunchtime picketing or after work rallies, and in the case of the bank workers to wearing “pro-farmer” badges.

The All India Motor Transport Congress, which represents owner-operator truck drivers and truck companies, has by contrast called on its members to keep their vehicles off the road in a show of support for the farmers. According to an AIMTC representative, 65 percent of their members’ business involves the transport of farm goods.

What the Stalinists are above all determined to prevent is the working class intervening as an independent force, using the crisis the farmer protests has provoked to fight for its own class demands and to advance a socialist program to rally India’s toilers behind it in a struggle against the Modi government and the entire Indian capitalist order. Such a program would defend not only the farmers, but all the rural masses—first and foremost, the impoverished agricultural workers and landless peasants—from the encroachments and privations of big business.

Last week, Kerala Chief Minister and CPM Politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan tweeted: "We urge the Government of India to listen to the protesting farmers and resolve the issue in an amicable manner. The whole of our country needs to come together on this; because farmers are the lifeblood of this country.”

On Sunday, the CPM and CPI issued a joint statement with the Congress Party—until recently the Indian bourgeoisie’s preferred party of government—and various regional parties, including the Tamil Nadu-based DMK, Uttar Pradesh-based Samajwadi Party, and the Maharashtra-based Nationalist Congress Party. The statement expressed support for today’s Bharat bandh and denounced the BJP government’s agricultural laws, saying they “threaten India’s food security, destroy agriculture and our farmers” and will subject farmers and consumers “to the caprices of multi-national agri-business corporates and domestic corporates.”

This is a cynical fraud. When in government, all of these parties have themselves implemented similar “pro-market” reforms. Indeed, from 1991 till 2014, when the Modi government came to power in Delhi, Congress-led governments did much of the heavy lifting in instituting the Indian ruling class’ “new economic policy,” and its corollary, the pursuit of closer ties and ultimately a “global strategic partnership” with US imperialism.

The opposition’s “support” for the farmers is aimed at ensuring their agitation does not serve as a catalyst for a broader working class-led challenge to the Modi government and the bourgeoisie’s class war agenda. They also hope to be able to exploit it to push back against the BJP, which has systematically squeezed them from positions of political power and influence.

While feigning support for the farmers, the Congress Chief Minister of Punjab, whose farmers have been in the forefront of the agitation against the BJP’s “agricultural reform” laws, met last Thursday with Amit Shah, India’s Home Minister and Modi’s chief henchman, to seek “an early resolution to the impasse.” At the conclusion of the meeting, Captain Amarinder Singh said he had urged Shah to make concessions to the farmers “soon,” because the farmers' action "affects the economy of my Punjab as well as the security of the nation.” He then appealed to the farmers to “just as urgently find a solution to this problem,” repeating that it is “impacting national security.”

Singh’s remarks about “national security” highlight the fears within the political elite that the farmers’ agitation could spark a much broader opposition movement or result in a violent clash between the protesting farmers and security forces that would further discredit the Indian state in the eyes of the masses.

The BJP government hoped to snuff out the “Delhi Chalo ” (Let’s go to Delhi) farm protest at the outset through a massive state mobilization on Nov. 26-27 that saw much of Haryana, the BJP-ruled state that neighbours Delhi and Punjab, turned into an armed camp. But that failed, as tens of thousands of farmers managed to get through the police gauntlet to the borders of the capital territory.

Since then the government has been maneuvering, hoping to defuse the crisis through promises of a handful of cosmetic changes to the bills. At the same time, it continues to prepare for a possible massive security operation involving the army to suppress the farmers’ protest. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has joined Home Minister Shah at all high-level government consultations on the farm agitation.

The Modi government and big business, as evidenced by numerous editorials in the major dailies, are adamant that the farm bills not be repealed. Speaking Sunday, Minister of State for Agriculture Kailash Choudhary reiterated that the most the government is willing to offer are “amendments.” As the government has done throughout, Choudhary sought to blame the agitation on the opposition parties and “agitators.” “ I don't think the real farmers, working in their farms, are bothered about” the farm laws, he declared.

BJP representatives have also sought to paint the agitation as limited to Haryana and the majority-Sikh Punjab, going so far as to smear the movement as being infiltrated if not led by “Khalistanis,” i.e. supporters of the creation of a communalist Sikh state. While the anti-farm bill agitation has been centered in those two states, it has support across wide swathes of rural India.

To date, five meetings have been held between farm leaders and BJP government officials, and a further meeting is planned for Wednesday.

The protests have been supported by small and marginal farmers, but the movement is politically led by better off farmers with connections to the political establishment. They have sought to appeal to the government by calling for “politics” to be kept out of the movement, and while welcoming the support of the opposition parties have said that their supporters should not raise party banners or flags when participating in today’s Bharat bandh.

The Delhi police, which is directly under Home Minister Shah’s authority, has vowed to deal sternly with anyone who attempts to disrupt people’s movements or “forcefully” shut shops during today’s protest. BJP-ruled Gujarat, Modi’s home state, has imposed Section 144 of the Criminal Code, banning all gatherings of more than four people. Madhya Pradesh’s BJP chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, told a BJP rally, “We won’t spare those elements who may try to create chaos in the country under the cover of farmers’ protest.”

Coronavirus outbreak at Amazon warehouse in Troutdale, Oregon exceeds 100 infections

Tom Carter

As of the end of November, more than 100 infections have been reported in a major coronavirus outbreak at an Amazon warehouse in Troutdale, Oregon. The outbreak at the PDX9 Fulfillment Center, an 855,000-square-foot building, is still considered “active.”

Oregon’s health authorities reported last week that since the start of the pandemic, there have been 61 deaths and 11,139 cases associated with workplace outbreaks in Oregon.

The inside of an Amazon factory (Wikimedia Commons)

The outbreak at Amazon’s Troutdale warehouse is the fourth largest in the state. The largest three are at prison complexes: the Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario (550 cases); the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution in Pendleton (520 cases); and the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem (192 cases).

The PDX9 warehouse was, even before the coronavirus pandemic, among the most dangerous of all Amazon’s notoriously unsafe workplaces. According to Amazon’s own records, which were analyzed at the end of last year by the Portland Mercury newspaper, “26 out of every 100 workers at PDX9 sustained an injury in 2018.”

This is the same warehouse where management is forcing workers to sign a broad “non-disclosure agreement,” which was the subject of a report last week in the Willamette Week newspaper.

While Amazon’s practice of forcing workers to sign such agreements dates back many years and is not limited to the PDX9 warehouse, these agreements take on a new dimension in the context of the coronavirus pandemic.

Throughout the pandemic, Amazon management has sought to conceal the extent of infections in order to lull workers into a false sense of security. When workers demanded specific information regarding their workplaces, management insisted that the data was protected by privacy laws and refused to make it available. Spontaneous walkouts and sickouts over the spring and summer were frequently triggered by workers’ independent discovery of a case that had been covered up by management.

In the face of the management coverup, workers took to social media to gather and compile their own statistics. Former Amazon worker Jana Jumpp, who prepared the most comprehensive count, told the World Socialist Web Site in June that her count of 2,000 infections represented “just the tip of the iceberg.”

At the end of September, Amazon quietly posted data indicating that nearly 20,000 US employees, including warehouse and Whole Foods workers, had tested positive.

The Troutdale “non-disclosure agreement,” which was described in the Willamette Week report, subjects workers to civil liability if they disclose “proprietary or confidential information of Amazon in whatever form, tangible or intangible, whether or not marked or otherwise designated as confidential, that is not otherwise generally known to the public, relating or pertaining to Amazon’s business, projects, products, customers, suppliers, inventions, or trade secrets.”

Since information about the health and safety conditions relating to the coronavirus inside Amazon warehouses is “information. .. pertaining to Amazon’s business” that is “not otherwise generally known to the public,” this suggests that workers could face a lawsuit for talking on social media about the number of infections in their workplace.

These types of agreements can have a powerful chilling effect, regardless of whether Amazon’s expansively vague and tendentious terms would hold up in court. Workers do not have the ability to pay tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend themselves against armies of lawyers working for a multinational conglomerate with limitless resources. Managers can threaten to sue workers who raise concerns, and rather than risk a lawsuit, workers may simply choose to remain silent.

Amazon is bloated with huge profits resulting from the pandemic, as demand soared for the delivery of goods during lockdowns around the world. While millions of businesses closed their doors and tens of millions of workers added their names to the unemployment rolls, Amazon expanded its operations by hiring hundreds of thousands of workers.

Buoyed by a 74 percent rise in share prices this year and the bipartisan Wall Street bailout engineered by the Democratic and Republican parties in the US, Amazon’s market capitalization has risen to $1.58 trillion as of yesterday. The soaring price of Amazon stock has resulted in the world’s richest person, Jeff Bezos, adding around $80 billion to his personal fortune, which is now estimated at approximately $200 billion.

Amazon now faces mounting anger within its own workforce, as workers around the world demand to know why they were kept at their stations and worked to the bone without adequate safeguards, while Bezos, from the safety of his mansions, added mountains of cash to his fortune on a scale exceeding the national budgets of large national governments.

Management’s campaign of surveillance and repression is motivated above all by fear of a looming insurrection of Amazon workers around the world. The use of “non-disclosure agreements” is only one facet of this oppressive framework.

Amazon has formed its own industrial police and intelligence agency, dubbed Global Security Operations Center (GSOC), which is tasked with targeting industrial actions by Amazon workers around the world that might pose a threat to company profits. This agency is being staffed with veterans of the repressive apparatus of the American state: the police, the intelligence agencies, and the military.

The efforts to anticipate and block an insurrection by Amazon workers includes extensive spying on Amazon workers and invasions of their privacy, including the monitoring of private Facebook groups and listservs by management spies.

Amazon was exposed last month for sending spies from the notorious Pinkerton detective agency into a warehouse in Poland. And recent reports from the Spanish media outlet El Diario point to the use of Pinkerton agents last year in Spain, in the context of a broader transport strike in Catalonia.

According to the report in El Diario, which Amazon management has denied, the spies were used on October 30, 2019 at a warehouse in El Prat de Llobregat, in the province of Barcelona.

Anonymous reviews left by workers on the employment web site Indeed paint a devastating picture of working conditions at Amazon in Troutdale.

Workers summarized their experiences as “Repetitive, boring, strict,” “Horrible work experience,” “Physically demanding and no support,” “Exhausting,” “Boring and treated as a machine,” and “Tedious, repetitive work.”

The only “upside,” many workers wrote, is that they made enough money to pay rent. “Fast-paced, fast burnout,” wrote one worker. “Definitely a place where people are encouraged to work hard, work extra hours, and keep up the pace.”

“They work you to near death,” wrote an IT support technician at the same warehouse. “They make sure you are left with no life in your body at the end of shift ... if you do good, they raise your requirements.”

“It’s all about productivity there. You as a person don’t matter,” another worker wrote. “The upper leadership only pays lip service about caring about health and safety of employees.”

“Personally, I hate it,” wrote one current worker. “I’ve worked there two years and I want to kill myself every time I walk in the building.” Another worker wrote, “They don’t care about the employee, just the money!!”

Toward a ‘New Normal’ in Post-Covid U. S. Health Care

John Geyman

The COVID-19 pandemic has unmasked chronic shortcomings of the U. S. health care system that have exacerbated the challenging situation the nation faces in trying to recover from the most severe pandemic in more than a hundred years. The pandemic became a triple crisis—the pandemic itself, the resultant economic downturn, and underlying systemic racism. This crisis calls for reflection on how these long-term problems can be dealt with in order to move past recovery to an improved system. Pressing issues must be addressed involving medicine, public health and health policy.

Markers of the Devastating Impact of the COVID pandemic in the U. S.

Nine months into the pandemic in this country, these markers document their scope and unparalleled impacts:

• More than 14 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 275,000 deaths, projected by the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation to exceed 410,000 by early 2021.

• Many patients not wanting to go near an ER, hospital or doctor’s office for fear of exposure to the virus.

• Temporary closure of almost 2,000 low-cost and free health clinics, with others worried about their financial viability.

• Almost one in ten health workers lost their jobs in the first two months of the pandemic.

• Primary care physicians in smaller independent group practices, already in short supply, faced with such a large drop in patient volume that they had to consider closing their practices.

• By June, 2020, almost 600 front-line health care workers had died of COVID-19.

• Hospitals postponing elective treatments and procedures, resulting in precipitous drops in patient flow and revenue.

• Closure of many psychiatric beds in order to expand the number of beds for COVID patients, thereby further stressing mental health care.

• Nursing homes, the original epicenter of the pandemic, being pressured to discharge patients to relieve pressure on crowded hospitals.

• By September, with tens of millions of Americans out of work, almost one in four households were food insecure.

• Public health and infectious disease experts sidelined and marginalized by the anti-science Trump administration.

• Absence of any evidence-based national health policy within the Trump administration, including failure to invoke the Defense Production Act to build a National Strategic Stockpile of Critical Supplies such as personal protective equipment, face masks, and test kits.

• Profiteering, even to the point of fraud, by opportunistic traders and middlemen for coronavirus face masks and COVID test kits

Transformative Changes over the Last 50 Years that impair our recovery from the pandemic

These six major changes have greatly impacted medical practice and our health care system, which together have contributed to decreasing access to affordable care, compromised quality of care, and made us more vulnerable to pandemics.

Rise of the medical-industrial complex

In their 1970 book, The American Health Empire: Power, Profits and Politics, John and Barbara Ehrenreich described the growth of technology and its products after World War II, the replacement of physicians by hospitals at the center of the new system, and the increasing threat of institutionalized medicine to the hallowed doctor-patient relationship.

Corporatization

Ironically, the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 opened up new opportunities for corporate investment across much of the health care enterprise, including hospitals, nursing homes, clinical laboratories, and even the insurance industry.

Commodification of health care services

Health care became big business as a commodity for sale on a largely deregulated market, with corporate stakeholders vying for profits for themselves and their Wall Street shareholders.

Privatization

According to the 2016 annual survey by the Commerce Department, for- profit ownership of facilities across the health care system had reached these numbers, higher than many of us might realize: Hospice 63%; Nursing homes 65%; Home care 76%; Dialysis centers 90%; SurgiCenters 95%; and Free-standing Lab/Imaging Centers 100%. Privatization of Medicare and Medicaid has sacrificed the social contract established in 1965 as private insurers reap a bonanza that now accounts for more than one-half of their net revenue. They increase their profits by upcoding diagnoses, claiming payment for conditions for which treatment was not given, and successfully lobbying Congress for large overpayments over many years.

Growth of investor-owned care

Since the 1980s, investor-owned chains have grown across most parts of the medical-industrial complex ranging from acute care and rehabilitation hospitals to psychiatric hospitals and nursing homes. In every instance, they bring higher costs and worse quality of care than their not-for-profit counterparts. When private equity is involved, volatility results as venture capital firms acquire facilities, seek a maximal investor return over a 3 to 5-year timeline, load facilities with excessive debt that often makes default or bankruptcy likely as a profit-taking strategy. As a result, many hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities end up being closed, with a loss of essential community services.

Decline in sovereignty and clinical autonomy of physicians

The above five system changes have had a major impact on physicians and medical practice. Today, as hospital systems buy up physician practices, they employ two-thirds of U. S. physicians, often under productivity-based contracts that reward them for providing a higher volume of services and ordering more expensive tests. Further instability of relationships between hospitals and physicians occur when insurers purchase their own clinics.

Physicians today have to cope with different and changing policies of more than 1,000 private insurers concerning restricted networks, pre-authorizations, and other requirements related to reimbursement. A 2016 study found that U. S. physicians in ambulatory practice are now spending twice as much time each day on EHR/desk work than with patients, leaving less face-to-face time with patients and lower practice satisfaction.

Directions toward a ‘New Normal’ in U. S. health care

As noted, medical practice, health care, public health and health policy have been diverted over the last several decades from their original, service-oriented missions to adapting to their corporate overlords, as enabled by powerful Wall Street interests. Health care reform has become an urgent need, raising the question of how the medical profession can play a leading role.

If we can agree that health care is a human right and essential need and not a privilege based on ability to pay, the following directions give us a roadmap to providing the best possible care for individuals and populations in this country.

1) Establish universal coverage

2) Expand primary care

3) Restore independent, small group practice

4) Strengthen evidence-based evaluation of health care services

5) Rebuild public health

Single-payer Medicare for All, as framed by House Bill 1384 now in the House, would bring us a mechanism to meet all of the above needs through a new system of national health insurance (NHI). Yes, it would eliminate the private health insurance industry, but that industry has had a long run as an enormous profit-driven industry that fights against any reforms that would reduce its size or profits. Employer-sponsored health insurance, by far the largest part of the industry, involving about 150 million Americans in past years, has proven to be too expensive and volatile to be relied upon, even before the pandemic struck. Today, with more than one in ten U. S. businesses planning to lay off workers during the last 3 months of 2020, often with loss of insurance, the circumstances for them have become dire.

The COVID pandemic has shown how the private health insurance industry is more of a problem than an asset. Taiwan has had national health insurance for the last 20 years, and was able to control the pandemic much earlier with far fewer lives lost and less disruption to their economy than the U. S. Their system achieves much better health outcomes than ours, and its electronic information system facilitated a strong, coordinated approach to widespread testing, rapid results, quarantine, and effective contact tracing. In late October, despite its population density and proximity to mainland China, Taiwan had experienced just 550 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 7 deaths.

Hopeful Signs within the medical profession favoring reform

Although most medical organizations in the U. S. have long opposed national health insurance, there has been a sea change in that pattern with the endorsement of Medicare for All by the American College of Physicians in 2019. The American Medical Association and the American College of Radiology have withdrawn from the “Partnership for America’s Health Care Future,” an industry front group formed to fight coverage expansions like Medicare for All. The Hawaii and Vermont State Medical Associations have endorsed Medicare for all. More recently, the California Medical Association added equity and social justice to its mission statement.

The AMA and its House of Delegates have overwhelmingly voted for the first time to adopt policies that name and act on racism as a public health threat and launched a Health Equity Center. The AMA elected its first black president in 2019.

As physicians become more stressed and frustrated under the grip of their corporate employers, many have come to seriously consider the advantages of independent private practice under NHI. Not surprisingly, younger physicians are much more receptive to NHI than their older colleagues.

Other medical and health care organizations have long supported universal coverage under NHI, including Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) the American Public Health Association, National Nurses United, and others. In the midst of this pandemic, further support for NHI is coming from Public Citizen and a number of new coalitions.

Conclusion

A new day exists with the recent 2020 elections that returned Democrats to the White House together with a majority in the House and possibly a 50-50 split in the Senate depending on the outcome of the two January Senate runoffs in Georgia. This brings new opportunities to reform health care rather than incremental patches to a broken system.

Why Biden Should Forgive Billions in Student Debt

Sonali Kolhatkar

There is an easy option available to President-elect Joe Biden to ease the economic suffering of Americans on the first day he takes office, and that is to cancel outstanding federal government student loans. Senator Elizabeth Warren made the case during a recent Senate Banking Committee hearing, saying that, “All on his own, President-elect Biden will have the ability to administratively cancel billions of dollars in student loan debt using the authority that Congress has already given to the Secretary of Education.” She added, “This is the single most effective economic stimulus that is available through executive action.”

She’s right. About 45 million Americans have a whopping $1.6 trillion of student loan debts, and a significant number have made no progress in paying them off. After home mortgages, student loans are the second most common debt in the United States. There is no mystery as to why this is the case. While the cost of higher education has risen, wages have simply not kept up, and debt has slowly ballooned. The burden of debt repayment has held people back from buying homes, moving out of their parents’ homes, having children, pursuing further education, starting businesses, and more. In other words, it has dragged down lives and the economy.

Senator Warren asked Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, “If people who, instead of spending that money in the economy, are spending that money by sending money back to the federal government on their student loan payments. That is a problem for the economy, is it not?”

Cody Hounanian, program director of the group Student Debt Crisis, explained to me in an interview that federal government loan debts are “around 80 percent of the federal student loan market.” The rest is held by private institutions. While Biden does not have the authority on his own to address private loan debt, he could, with the stroke of a pen, cancel federal government loans. Indeed, it may be the easiest and most effective economic stimulus plan available to him using his executive authority. Hounanian said, “The President of the United States, no matter who it is, including Donald Trump, has the authority right now to cancel student loan debt using executive action. This is a power written into the Higher Education Act.”

Canceling federal student loans is a racial justice issue as well. The existing racial wealth gap is exacerbated by student debt. One report estimated that racial inequities in student loans are even higher than expected with Black graduates owing nearly two times the amount that white graduates owe. According to Hounanian, “debt cancelation is a civil rights issue. It is an important equalizer.”

During his campaign, Biden endorsed canceling $10,000 per person of student loan debt. Yet, as soon as he won the election, Biden called on Congress to take up the matter. Zack Friedman writes in an article for Forbes, “Biden is deferring to Congress to pass relevant legislation on student loans, rather than act unilaterally as president.”

At a time when partisan gridlock in Congress has blocked most progressive legislation from even getting a hearing, Biden’s suggestion is naïve at best. Even Trump understood the seriousness of the issue when he used his executive power (for once in a positive manner) to extend until the end of the year student loan payment relief that was included in the CARES Act.

Biden is being flanked to the left by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as well. Schumer—not known as a champion of progressive causes—has joined forces with Senator Warren to demand that Biden cancel $50,000 per person of student loans through executive action. If Biden is shy about using his executive authority in the wake of the Trump presidency, the nation is in deep trouble.

“This is an opportunity for Joe Biden to have his FDR moment,” said Hounanian. His organization Student Debt Crisis has been working on this issue for years and is part of a large coalition of hundreds of organizations calling on Biden to do the right thing. A petition launched earlier this year to cancel student loans has garnered more than 1.3 million signatures. Advocacy groups are optimistic that this may be the closest they have come in years to realizing their goal of eliminating student loan debt.

And yet the voices of opposition are already pressuring Biden to do the wrong thing. Fox Business in a laughably hypocritical piece claimed that canceling student loan debt was regressive and would disproportionately benefit wealthier Americans. The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, in a typically patronizing tone claimed that loan forgiveness “rewards fiscal irresponsibility,” failing of course to apply those same standards to tax breaks for wealthy Americans or taxpayer-funded subsidies for corporations. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called the idea of debt forgiveness an “insidious notion of government gift-giving,” simultaneously refusing to see the economic benefits by her department’s policies to wealthy Americans as “gift-giving.”

DeVos also claimed that forgiving student loans was “unfair” to those who did not go to college or those who managed to pay off their loans. In other words, all should suffer because some suffered. This is the conservative logic gleefully invoked to preserve any unfair status quo that maintains wealth inequality. Imagine applying that logic to, say, the 2017 tax reform bill. Why should corporations and wealthy Americans get tax breaks that their predecessors or earlier counterparts did not obtain?

Thankfully, most Americans do not espouse the elitist views of out-of-touch billionaires who have waged class war on the nation for decades. A recent Pew poll found that an overwhelming majority supports federal government action to address the student debt crisis.

Biden has already made it clear that on the issue of student debt forgiveness, he falls on the side of ordinary Americans and not on the side of Fox Business or DeVos. What he appears unclear on is how best to achieve his goal of easing the burden of student loans. If his presidency does not seize the moment and use its clear authority to realize his stated goals,—if he instead defers to an unrealistic legislative path—then his campaign promises will rightly be viewed as disingenuous.

As the global pandemic was unfolding in the United States, Biden rightly said, “In this moment of crisis, we should be sending federal resources to those who need it most. It’s not just good economics—it’s the right thing to do.”

Hindutva Leviathan

Bhabani Shankar Nayak

The Hindutva governments led by BJP in India are brazenly attacking Muslims, students, journalists, writers, human right activists, youths, farmers and marginalised communities. These assaults are integral to RSS and its ideology of Hindutva politics. The suppression of civil liberty is growing. The independent judiciary and free democratic institutions are abjectly surrendering to the Hindutva project shaped by the crony capitalist classes in India. The BJP governments in centre and states are implementing economic policies that destroys the future of working classes in India. The BJP governments are also implementing social policies that ruins social peace and harmony. The ruthless Modi government is empowering lynch mob to control democratic dissents of the civil society.  The assassination of democratic politics and liberal society in India by electoral means is near complete. It is a matter of time before Brahminical Hindu caste order as outlined in the Manusmṛiti becomes formal law.

The Hindutva politics is shaped by the bigoted ideology of RSS. It has revealed itself after forming BJP led government with absolute majority under the leadership of Mr Narendra Modi. The Modi led BJP government shows the essence of its politics of control, command and communalisation of individuals, families, societies, states and governments. It has revealed the vileness of RSS and its fascist ideology. The decisive victory of these forces undermines liberal, constitutional and secular traditions of Indian state and government. The intention is to replace Indian constitution with Hindutva Leviathan as outlined by the mediaeval outlooks of RSS.

The Hindutva Leviathan is based on the Hobbesian idea of ‘sovereign’ without democratic accountability and citizenship rights. It does not believe in India as a modern state based on social, political and cultural contracts and cooperation based on democratic citizenship. The everyday curtailment of individual liberties are regular affairs. The rise of conflicts between different religious and regional groups are on rise after Hindutva forces came to power. Hindutva is an organised ideology of a political project of national and global capitalist classes to control society, domesticate consumption and dominate the economic system. It talks about cultural nationalism to hide its reactionary outlooks.

Hindutva forces spread hatred and fear to manufacture crisis based on false propaganda. The environment of crisis helps to suspend democratic politics in the name of unity, integrity and sovereignty of the nation state, where the government enjoys absolute power to control citizens without any questions in the absence of politics. There is no opposition to the government. Any opposition to the government is branded as anti-national. The original anti-nationals are in power today. The RSS is antithetical to the ideals of modern democracy. It did not participate in the Indian nationalist struggle against British colonialism. It formed ideological partnership with reactionary forces and weakened anti colonial struggles in India. The same organisation distributes certificates of nationalism today; the irony dies its natural death in Indian politics.

There is systematic regular campaign against religious minorities and opponents of BJP and RSS. There is regular demonisation campaign against Muslims, Christians and rationalists in India. The idea is to domesticate and destroy the very foundation of democratic citizenship in India. RSS does not believe in the ideology of democracy. The nasty, brutish, selfish and authoritarian ideology of RSS and BJP derives its philosophical and political outlooks from solitary ruling class ideology of western Europe. The European fascists and Nazis provide ideological inspirations to Hindutva forces in India today.  These reactionaries celebrate the ideology of ethnic cleansing.

The stripping away of citizenship rights from Indian Muslims, Christians and other religious minorities reveal the sinister design of RSS to destroy Indian democracy. It is time to stand up for the rights and liberties of Indian Muslims as citizens of India. The failure to defend Muslims in India will not only weaken Indian democracy; it will also weaken citizenship rights of all Indians. Hindutva is not a defender of Hindus. It is an organised principle of fascism to look common Indians to empower and enrich Indian and global capitalist classes.

As capitalism completely consolidates its absolute power over Indian state and government, the marginalisation of people and conflicts between different communities will become a norm. In this way, Hindutva is pushing Indian into a situation of civil war. In such a situation, the Hindutva forces can exercise their power with impunity. Indians are waiting to face enormous risk of facing coercive state power under the guidance of Hindutva authoritarian ideology and government. There will be the no political choice for people to elect their own government. It is going to be a society free from any form of individual liberty and rights. The basic survival will be under question mark.

From demonetisation, GST, lockdowns to farm laws; the Hindutva forces continue to manufacture crisis to obscure their arrogance of ignorance and hide all failures of governance. The populist politics of common-sense and street smartness of the school dropout criminals have taken over all institutions of state and government in India. There is no organised opposition to Hindutva politics and policies of Modi and brethren. Such a dangerous situation puts India and Indians in a vulnerable position in a fragile world. There is no difference between autocratic regimes and Hindutva led government in India. It is imperative for the masses to stand up against the arbitrariness of ideological politics, absoluteness of ruling class power and order. After four centuries, Hindutva forces are implementing the Hobbesian ideology in India that Hobbes wanted to escape during early 17th century Europe.

The struggle against Hindutva leviathan is the only alternative for the survival of India and Indians. There is no other way for the survival of India as a liberal, secular and constitutional democracy. The ongoing farmer’s struggle against Modi government gives us hope that a democratic struggle is possible to uphold and expand the idea of democratic India by defeating the ideological and political apparatus of Hindutva leviathan.

Trump Exits Somalia

Binoy Kampmark

These are things that might have been done earlier.  During the last, flickering days of the Trump administration, activity is being witnessed across countries which have a US troop presence.  Numbers are being reduced.  Security wonks are getting the jitters.  Is the imperium shrinking?  Will President elect Joe Biden wake up and reverse the trend?  With the Beltway foreign policy Blob advising him, most likely.

In November, acting defence secretary Christopher Miller announced that the number of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq would fall from 4,500 to 2,500 and 3,500 to 2,500 respectively.  Somalia has been added to the list of countries which will see US withdrawals in some number.  The current troop presence stands at 700, tasked with assisting an African Union-backed peacekeeping force combat the al-Shabaab insurgency.  A good number are also there to train and support Danab, the Somali special forces with eyes on capturing and killing leaders of the insurgent movement.  The ultimate objective of US Africa Command in East Africa, then, “is one in which terrorist organizations are not able to threaten the US homeland, US persons, international allies or destabilize the region.”

This is a conflict that has a relentless air of eternity to it.  Al-Shabaab counts itself as yet another, albeit more formidable militant group, that has thrived in Somalia’s unruly environment.  Its claim to radicalised fame came with Ethiopia’s December 2006 invasion of the country.  It was encouraged by the Somalian transitional government, with the intention of ousting al-Shabaab and the Islamic Courts Union from Mogadishu, captured by the fundamentalist alliance that June.

According to Robert Wise, the Ethiopian occupation transformed al-Shabaab “from a small relatively unimportant part of a more moderate Islamic movement into the most powerful and radical armed faction in the country.”  Yet another salient lesson in the perils of foreign intervention.

US administrations might have feared the messiness of the Somali scene.  The death of 18 US soldiers in October 1993 in a failed effort to capture the warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid in Mogadishu stung.  Cruise-missile humanitarians and interventionists would have to wait for the republic to find its feet again.  The attacks of September 11, 2001 on the United States furnished the moment, incarnating the global terrorist phenomenon and the pretext for an international deployment of US forces, officially and covertly.  On March 19, 2003, the capture and interrogation of Suleiman Abdallah heralded the return of US troops to Somalia.

During the Obama administration, US drone strikes, with all the accompanying problems of legality and accountability, were the favoured weapon of choice against the group.  These were also accompanied by ground raids.  Killings, such as those of its leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane, in September 2014, were celebrated as triggers for an eventual collapse that never came.  “Godane’s removal is a major symbolic and operational loss to the largest al-Qaida affiliate in Africa,” came the confident assessment from the White House, “and reflects years of painstaking work by our intelligence, military and law enforcement officials.”

Godane’s slaying was a spur, rather than a deterrent, for the organisation.  Attacks on African peacekeeping forces increased; suicide bombings were used liberally, culminating in the slaughter of October 2017 in Mogadishu leaving almost 600 civilians dead.

In the earlier stage of his administration, President Donald Trump showed a marked interest in deepening US involvement in Somalia.  The rhetoric of disentanglement was nowhere to be found.  In March 2017, he approved a proposal from the Pentagon to expand operations against militants in the country.  Commanders were no longer required to obtain high-level vetting of al-Shabaab targets in designated “areas of active hostilities”.  As General Thomas Waldhauser of US Africa Command described it, “It allows [us] to prosecute targets in a more rapid fashion.” In 2018, 47 US drone strikes were executed.  Last year, the number climbed to 63.

This was not to last. Trump began to cool to the US involvement.  Earlier this year, the US pulled out from the cities of Bosaso and Galkayo.  The now departed defence secretary Mark Esper was not enthused by the change of heart, and preferred continued engagement.  Trump, for his part, preferred Kenyan security forces to have a greater role.

The statement from the Pentagon was packed with those reassurances that will affect audiences differently.  The overall theme of the exit is change without difference.  “The US is not withdrawing or disengaging from Africa.  We remain committed to our African partners and enduring support through a whole-of-government approach.”

This is not the case of US soldiers returning home to celebratory fanfare for a disentangling republic.  Many will find themselves in neighbouring Kenya, which has had its fair share of problems with al-Shabaab.  “As a result of this decision, some forces may be reassigned outside of East Africa.  However, the remaining forces will be repositioned from Somalia into neighbouring countries in order to allow cross-border operations by both US and partner forces.”

Somali President Mohamed Abdullah Mohamed is none too keen on the move, suggesting that his brittle government has gotten used to a particular diet of assistance.  In October, he took to Twitter to claim that US “military support to Somalia has enabled us to effectively combat Al-Shabaab and secure the Horn of Africa.  A victory through this journey and for Somali-US partnership can only be achieved through continuous security partnership and capacity building support.”

Senator Ayub Ismail Yusuf called the decision to remove US forces “untimely.”  Well attuned to the language that has kept Washington engaged in foreign theatres since 2001, the true enemy was terrorism.  “The fight against global terrorism is still ongoing and we must still win this battle for peace and security to prevail.”  Colonel Ahmed Abdullahi Sheikh, Danab’s commander for three years till 2019, is convinced that making such a withdrawal permanent “will have a huge toll on counterterrorism efforts”.

Such comments suggest a far rosier picture of US involvement and Somali government successes.  The US Defence Department Inspector General is far more measured in the July-September 2020 report.  “Despite many years of sustained Somali, US, and international counterterrorism pressure, the terrorist threat in East Africa is not degraded: al-Shabaab retains freedom of movement in many parts of southern Somalia and has demonstrated an ability and intent to attack outside of the country, including targeting US interests.”

For the devotees of the imperial footprint, there is no way around it.  The decision to exit is poor; the imperium’s interests will be harmed.  William Lawrence from the American University in Washington, D.C. does not even shy away from a pseudo-colonial message.  “The blow from the US operations standpoint is that over time, it will lose its ability to Americanise on the ground and to have more interaction with Somali troops.”  Somalia would suffer a “real blow” with the departure of US personnel.  “There is no good military or strategic reason for this move.”

New coronavirus hotspots at German meatpacking plants and Amazon hubs

Marianne Arens

The measures implemented by the Merkel government and the federal states to deal with the pandemic are doing nothing to stop the spread of Sars-CoV-2 but are sacrificing hundreds of lives every day unnecessarily for the profit interests of the corporations and banks. This is shown by the daily registered case numbers. Despite a high number of unreported cases, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reports extremely high new infection and rising death rates. On Friday, there were again almost 23,500 new infections and 432 deaths within 24 hours. On Saturday, 497 deaths were reported.

The government measures, which remain valid until January 10, except for Christmas, only affect private households. The federal and state governments are refraining from closing businesses, schools and day-care centres or restricting the use of public transportation. In doing so, they are counteracting the first commandment of any successful pandemic control: “Avoid all social contacts!”

Arbeiterin in einem Amazon Fulfillment Center (AP Photo/David McNew)

“The virus spreads wherever people come together. The virus is always there,” Robert Koch Institute (RKI) President Lothar Wieler stated on Thursday. More than 18,000 people have died of COVID-19 in Germany so far. The deadly course of events particularly affects older people.

Many younger people also face severe symptoms and die of Sars-CoV-2. Twenty-nine-year-old rapper Brittanya Karma died of the virus in Hamburg on December 1. According to official RKI data, at least 12 teachers and educators, 27 nurses in hospitals and 55 others in old people’s homes, nursing homes and mass accommodation have succumbed to the cruel lung disease so far.

In a new study, intensive care physicians have found that during the first wave, about 20 percent of COVID-19 patients treated in hospital died. Of those who were admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU), one in two died. These alarming results, which were obtained from the data of around 10,000 patients, were presented to the public on Wednesday by Prof. Christian Karagiannidis of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine (DIVI).

Among those reportedly currently struggling for their lives in an ICU are at least five Amazon employees. Hundreds of them are ill. This was revealed by local works council representatives belonging to the Verdi union in the logistics centres in Graben (Bavaria) and Koblenz (Rhineland-Palatinate). The focus of the pandemic is thus on the working class, which confronts the worst conditions, earns the least and is most at risk from COVID-19.

Verdi reported via a Tweet on November 26, “At the Graben site near Augsburg, around 300 of the 1,800 employees in total are currently ill with COVID-19. Of the ver.di members among those infected, five are in intensive care.” Amazon in Koblenz also saw dozens of new COVID-19 cases in November. For this reason, the company cancelled the entire night shift in Koblenz for two weeks until November 26; around 400 employees were quarantined.

According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the number of 300 infected people in Graben can be traced back to the Augsburg trade union secretary, Sylwia Lech, who evaluated statements from employees. This was contradicted by an official Amazon spokesperson and a representative of the Augsburg health department. According to them, “only” about 30 infected persons are known from the Amazon site in Graben.

As Lech explained, however, the Amazon workers come from a huge catchment area that extends beyond the district to Munich and Kaufbeuren. The health department in Augsburg was never aware of all cases. In any event, the numbers are alarming, and show that Amazon has so far covered up and played down serious outbreaks.

The billion-dollar company has decided not to systematically test and protect all its employees and, if need be, will carry on operations at any cost to life. This is especially the case now, when it is important not to endanger its profitable Christmas trade. Even before the pandemic, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos was the richest man in the world. In the months when COVID-19 has raged he was able to increase his fortune to over $200 billion.

At the same time, 20,000 Amazon workers in the United States alone have become infected with the coronavirus. There have also been outbreaks in European branches in Spain, France, Italy, Poland and Germany, but Amazon is doing its best to cover these up.

The health authorities in the districts where the logistics centres are located see no need for action and hardly exercise any control over the company, which apparently does not provide precise figures that are updated daily. Yet Amazon is known for the most precise and comprehensive monitoring practices when it comes to scrutinizing the work of its employees.

Verdi is not lifting a finger to ensure better protection from the pandemic. The services union fully supports the herd immunity policy of the federal and state governments, in which many ministers with Verdi membership sit. The union plays a key role in sabotaging any resistance to this policy in schools and other public enterprises and institutions. It is pursuing the same policy at Amazon.

On its various websites, Verdi instructs even high-risk patients among its members that they must go to work at the risk of their lives. Under the headline, “Coronavirus: What employees need to know,” it says, “Injuring oneself or contracting an illness are part of the general risks of life, whether at work or during leisure time. This also applies to employees with a pre-existing illness that does not make them incapable of working, but which means they are exposed to a higher risk of developing a more severe course of disease due to a coronavirus infection.”

There are also new coronavirus outbreaks in other large companies. At the large Tönnies slaughterhouse in Weißenfels (Saxony-Anhalt), 172 workers tested positive for COVID-19 a few days ago. Production involving 2,200 workers is to continue, nevertheless. The company only promised to take the infected workers to special quarantine facilities and carry out further tests. In the summer, there were mass outbreaks at the main Tönnies plant in Rheda-Wiedenbrück (NRW), in which more than 2,000 people became infected. About 40 workers had to be hospitalized at that time, some of them requiring intensive care.

Nevertheless, nothing happened. Supported by government decisions, Tönnies and other meat packing companies are able to continue to produce at full capacity despite the explosive spread of Sars-CoV-2, and even carry out operations on Sundays.

“ As COVID-19 surges in Europe, governments protect profits over lives ” was the title of a WSWS article published on October 28, which stated, “The lockdowns proposed by European governments will not halt the pandemic or avert a disastrous loss of life.” This was already clearly demonstrated in November, the deadliest month of the coronavirus pandemic to date. In the last two weeks alone, there have been 72,000 avoidable deaths from coronavirus in Europe and more than 4,400 in Germany.

COVID-19 is now the leading cause of death in the US

Benjamin Mateus

Since the week ending November 22, the seven-day total number of deaths related to COVID-19 has exceeded 11,000 in the United States. This makes it the leading cause of death three weeks running, surpassing heart disease, which claims approximately 10,700 people each week.

February 29, 2020 marked the first death in the US from COVID-19. On that date, a Washington state man in his 50s with underlying health conditions succumbed to the viral infection. Nine months later, the US death toll is rapidly approaching 290,000.

According to current projections based on estimates by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), the death toll will surpass half a million by March 1—that is, by the one-year anniversary of the first reported death. This means the US will see another 215,000 people die from the virus in less than three months—an average rate of 17,900 deaths per week for the next 12 weeks.

Dr. Rafik Abdou, right, and respiratory therapist Babu Paramban check on a COVID-19 patient at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in the Mission Hills section of Los Angeles, Nov 19, 2020 (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

If the rolling out of vaccines is factored in, as of April 1 the projected death toll will have declined by only 10,000. In what is being described by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a historic public health crisis, the vaccine is not the Hollywood scenario of the cavalry come to the rescue that it is being made out to be in the media.

In fact, as the Washington Post reported Sunday: “Federal officials have slashed the amount of coronavirus vaccine they plan to ship to states in December because of constraints on supply. … Instead of the delivery of 300 million or so doses of vaccine immediately after emergency-use approval and before the end of 2020 as the Trump administration had originally promised, current plans call for availability of around a tenth of that, or 35 million doses.”

Vaccines are critical life-saving therapeutics in the long run, but to halt the explosive spread of the pandemic and save countless thousands of lives, immediate emergency measures are essential.

Aside from apt comparisons to World War II and the Civil War, which took their toll over several years, only the annual deaths from heart disease and cancer, which in 2019 stood at 655,381 and 599,274, respectively, exceed death from COVID-19. However, unlike heart disease and cancer, COVID-19 deaths are easily preventable.

The implementation of lockdowns and strict public health measures accompanied by full income protection for those workers affected, the allocation of vast resources to expand and improve the health care infrastructure and provide adequate personal protective equipment, and the provision of high-speed internet access to all students will immediately break the transmission chains and drive down the numbers to levels where contact tracing and isolation measures can be nationally instituted to bring the pandemic under control.

Yet, regardless of the political faction that holds power and the magnitude of the health crisis befalling the population, Wall Street rules, and Wall Street will not tolerate any measures that depress stock values or interrupt the flow of profit from the exploitation of the workforce. As President-elect Joe Biden said, “I’m not going to shut down the economy, period.”

The consequences of this bipartisan policy of “herd immunity” are already seen in the breakdown of health care systems across the nation.

On Friday, there were a record 235,000 new cases of COVID-19, indicating that the post-Thanksgiving surge is underway. Six states—Pennsylvania, New York, California, Illinois, Florida and Ohio—reported more than 10,000 new cases on Friday. The seven-day moving average of the COVID-19 positivity rate has risen from 4.1 percent in October to over 10 percent today. Twenty-nine states reported positivity rates greater than 10 percent. In Idaho, one in two test results confirmed COVID-19 infection.

In what amounts to an absurd position that abdicates all responsibility for the pandemic, the CDC’s latest recommendation is for people inside their own homes to wear facemasks and physically distance from their families to help limit the transmission of the virus. If, as CDC Director Robert Redfield admitted, the next few months “are going to be the most difficult time in the public history of this nation,” why does he not declare that a lockdown is required to avert more deaths instead of asking people to isolate from each other in their own homes?

Hospitalizations for COVID-19, which reached near 60,000 in April and July, have now exceeded 100,000. If projections hold, hospitalizations for the virus will peak at 180,000 by January 15. Intensive care units that were caring for one COVID-19 patient out of 10 in September are now seeing that ratio climb to one in four, or 25 percent of intensive care admissions.

In November, the University of Nebraska Medical Center, renowned for treating dangerous and unusual diseases, converted an entire building just for COVID-19 patients. Three of its 10 COVID-19 units have been converted to ICU facilities to care for the sickest patients. Infectious disease specialist Angela Hewlett told the Atlantic, “We’ve never had to do anything like this. We are on an absolutely catastrophic path.” The hospital provides critical care covering a 200-mile radius.

There is a deep concern that with rising hospitalizations, the level of care is declining, as health care workers fall ill or suffer from exhaustion. New graduates from nursing schools and residency programs are being thrown into the breach, despite lacking the skill and acumen that come from years of experience. COVID-19 patients in the ICU tend to stay three times the usual length and require twice the attention.

According to Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, the percentage of people hospitalized with COVID-19 had been stable for weeks at 3.5 percent. Recently, however, a smaller proportion of cases are being accounted for in hospitalization statistics. The implication is that hospitals are running out of beds and staff, and the standard for admission is beginning to change. This means that only the sickest are being admitted, creating a bottleneck for intensive care and further exacerbating the situation.

For instance, in South Dakota’s Avera Health system, scores and scores of COVID-19 patients are being sent home with oxygen tanks to preserve the less than a dozen ICU beds available for the most urgent cases. Patients in Texas are being sent across the state border to Oklahoma. But as that state’s system becomes overwhelmed, patients have to make do with staying put at urgent care centers not prepared to care for them.

The case fatality rate is already seeing an upturn, which means that hundreds of patients who will die in the next few weeks would have survived had they been infected just a month ago. A recent report published in the Atlantic on the rate of hospitalizations stated, “But ominous no longer fits what we’re observing in the data because calamity is no longer imminent; it is here.”