What Explains COVID’s East-West Divide?

John Feffer

COVID-19 has been ruthless in choosing winners and losers around the world.

The obvious “losers” have been those countries led by right-wing nationalists: Brazil, India, Russia, the United Kingdom, and (until recently) the United States. These five countries are responsible for more than half of the world’s coronavirus infections and nearly half the deaths.

Just as obviously, the “winners” have been the countries of Asia.

Although China and South Korea were both hit hard early on in the pandemic, they have managed to recover quite dramatically. The rest of the region, meanwhile, has suffered nowhere near the same magnitude of adverse consequences that Europe or the Americas have experienced. Taiwan has had fewer than 1,000 infections and only 7 deaths. Vietnam had had about 1,500 infections and 35 deaths. Thailand has had over 13,000 infections but only 75 deaths. Mongolia has had under 1,700 infections and only two deaths.

Even the less fortunate countries in the region have managed to control the pandemic better than the West has. Burma has suffered over 130,000 infections, but just over 3,000 deaths. Malaysia has had 185,000 infections but only 700 deaths, while Japan has had over 360,000 infections but just under 5,200 deaths. Singapore has actually had the largest per-capita number of infections in the region but has registered only 29 deaths.

The two relative outliers are the Philippines with over 500,000 infections and 10,000 deaths, and Indonesia with nearly a million infections and over 28,000 deaths.

It’s not as if these countries have avoided the various surges that have taken place globally as a result of holiday travel, the loosening of restrictions, or new variants of the disease. But even among the outliers, the renewed outbreaks have been several magnitudes smaller than what Europe or the Americas have faced.

To give you a sense of how relatively successful even these outliers have been, imagine if the Trump administration had handled the pandemic as poorly as the worst performing Asian nation. Rodrigo Duterte is in many ways the Donald Trump of Asia. But if the United States had managed to follow the Filipino example, the United States would now be facing 1.5 million cases of infection and only 30,000 deaths. Instead, America not long ago passed the 25 million mark in cases and the 400,000 mark in deaths.

Now imagine if the Trump administration had dealt with the pandemic as successfully as Vietnam. The United States would have been hit by under 5,000 infections and a little over 100 deaths.

Not fair, you say, because Vietnam is a communist country that can impose draconian restrictions without fear of backlash? Okay, if we use Taiwan as the yardstick for comparison, the United States would have 15,000 infections and a little over 100 deaths.

Not fair, you say, because Taiwan is an island? Okay, if we use South Korea as the baseline, the United States would have had 450,000 infections and about 8,000 deaths.

Any way you look at it, the United States did worse than every single country in Asia. If America had just managed to handle the crisis as effectively as the worst-performing Asian country, close to 400,000 more Americans would be alive today.

It’s easy to blame Trump for this woeful discrepancy between America and Asia. After all, according to the first Global Health Security Index released in 2019, the United States came out on top in terms of its readiness to deal with a pandemic. U.S. hospitals routinely receive high marks in global lists. A failure of governance would seem to be the key distinguishing factor, particularly in light of all the mistakes that Trump made from day one, errors that he compounded through ignorance, incompetence, and sheer foolishness.

But many of the governments in Asia made similar mistakes. Duterte has been widely criticized for delays and missteps. South Korean leader Moon Jae-in faced calls for impeachment early in the crisis because of the government’s failure to prevent the first outbreaks.

So, perhaps at least some of the fault lies elsewhere: not in our political stars, but in ourselves.

East vs. West

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the West indulged in more than a little triumphalism. Pundits fell over each other in their eagerness to declare that the individual had prevailed over the collective, capitalism had vanquished communism, and the West was the best (so forget about the rest).

Many people in Asia, however, begged to differ.  Maybe you remember the debate in the 1990s around “Eastern” vs. “Western” values. Singapore leader Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, along with their house intellectuals, claimed that Asian countries had superior value systems than those of the West.

Rather than unstable democracies, disruptive human rights movements, and the overwhelming cult of the individual, the East valued harmony, order, and the common good. These values, they argued, made possible the continuous economic success of the Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) not to mention the earlier accomplishments of Japan, the leapfrogging rise of Mainland China, and the copycat efforts of the Tiger Cubs (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam). The proof was in the productivity.

The counter-arguments came quickly from such august figures as Kim Dae Jung of South Korea, Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma, and Amartya Sen of India. They pointed out that there’s nothing inherently Western about human rights and democracy. Both South Korea and Taiwan, after all, democratized without putting a dent in their economic growth. Human rights movements had mass appeal in Burma, the Philippines, and elsewhere in the region. After the Asian financial crisis of 1997, which devastated countries in the region, it became increasingly difficult to argue that the East was immune from the same economic problems that plagued capitalism in the West.

As a result, the “Eastern values” camp gradually faded from view. Good riddance to bad theory. The dividing line between East and West was spurious in so many ways, reminiscent of older stereotypes of the East as “unchanging” or “inscrutable.”

And yet, today, COVID-19 has drawn a clear line between Asia and the rest of the world. What’s particularly striking about this latest divergence is the lack of significance in types of governance. The countries that have been successful in Asia have very different forms of government, from communist (Vietnam) to democratic (Taiwan) to military dictatorship (Thailand). Moreover, they have different histories, religious backgrounds, and relationships with the countries of the West. The only thing they share, it would seem, is what realtors are always going on about: location, location, location.

So, should we be resurrecting “Eastern values” to explain such a startling difference in outcomes during this pandemic era?

Three Reasons

The most important reason that Asia reacted to COVID-19 with greater seriousness and better results has to do not with ancient history but with more recent experience.

In 2003, the region was blindsided by the SARS epidemic. The first cases emerged in southern China in late 2002. By March, the new coronavirus was showing up in Hong Kong and Vietnam as well. Eventually it would appear in 29 countries and result in over 700 deaths. By July, after unprecedented international cooperation, the World Health Organization declared the epidemic contained.

Think of SARS as a virus that stimulated Asia’s immunological system. That system went into hyperdrive to fight off the infection. Once Asia successfully beat off the new disease, a certain immunity remained. That immunity was not biological, in the sense that the populations of the region had any resistance to novel coronaviruses. Rather, the immunity consisted of a heightened awareness of the problem, a new set of institutions and practices developed to fight future attacks, and a historical memory among a certain generation of political leadership. The rest of the world, which avoided the brunt of SARS, didn’t develop that kind of immunity.

A second advantage that Asian countries have enjoyed is a coordinated central government response. After its initial denial of COVID-19, Beijing soon switched into high gear to contain the spread of the disease by locking down Wuhan and other hot spots and severely restricting internal travel. South Korea moved rapidly to institute a nationwide testing and tracing system. Taiwan quickly made masks available, imposed an immediate quarantine system, and monitored citizens digitally. Countries in the region with less tightly federated structures – Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia – weren’t able to react as quickly or as consistently. But even they were models of central authority compared to the kind of policy clash between center and periphery that so complicated the pandemic response in countries like Brazil and the United States.

The third advantage, and this comes the closest to a revival of the “Eastern values” argument, is the issue of compliance.

The U.S. anti-mask mentality, for instance, has no real counterpart in Asia. Sure, plenty of people in the region have issues with their governments and with state regulations. A number of the countries in the region, like South Korea, are notoriously low-trust. But throughout the region, citizens have a greater respect for scientific authority and a greater respect for community standards. And those who for whatever reason choose to flout this authority and these standards are quickly shamed into compliance.

As Lawrence Wright points out in his thorough piece on COVID-19 in The New Yorker, consistent mask use stands out as a determinant of success in containing the spread of the virus. “Hong Kong was one of the world’s densest cities, but there was no community spread of the virus there, because nearly everyone wore masks,” he writes. “Taiwan, which was manufacturing ten million masks per day for a population of twenty-three million, was almost untouched. Both places neighbored China, the epicenter.”

Anti-vaccine sentiment is also quite low in Asia. According to a 2018 survey, 85 percent of people in Asia believe vaccines are safe – the highest of any region in the world. Although anti-vaxxers have managed to spread their messages in Asia, it’s notably been in the two countries with the worst records on COVID-19: the Philippines and Indonesia. Elsewhere, vaccination levels have remained high.

It’s not just deference to science or fear of public shaming. Compliance may also derive from a stronger sense of the common good. It’s not as if harmony prevails over Asia like a benevolent weather front. Look at the political polarization in Thailand that has led to multiple mass demonstrations and military coups. Or the rapid alternation in power of different political parties in Taiwan and South Korea. But underneath the great divisions in these societies is a persistent belief in pulling together during a crisis rather than pulling apart.

It is impossible to imagine a scenario in any Asian country like what transpired in the United States during the January 6 insurrection. Lawmakers evacuated from the congressional floor found themselves packed into a small, windowless lockdown room. If ever there were a time for bipartisanship, it was during this attack on American democracy. Yet, some Republican legislators, although they quite obviously couldn’t maintain social distance in this crowded space, refused to wear the masks offered to them. They couldn’t even pretend to care about the health and safety of others, and several lawmakers indeed tested positive for COVID-19 after this experience. This is the American response to the pandemic writ small: astonishing selfishness and ideological rigidity.

In Asia, it’s very possible that the successful efforts by governments to contain COVID-19 will lead to a virtuous circle of trust, if not in the governments then at least in social institutions like medical authorities, as this recent study from South Korea suggests. The West, meanwhile, is descending into a vicious circle of mistrust that vaccinations, herd immunity, and the exile of Trump to Florida will not be enough to forestall.

Forget about so-called Eastern values for a moment. The West needs to look more carefully at its own values, since they are clearly not fit for purpose at a time of crisis.

Taking on Telecom’s “5G”

David Rosen

Do you own a “Fifth Generation” – 5G – smartphone? They are promoted as the hippest, most essential tool of postmodern life. The Gartner Group, a market research firm, estimates that worldwide sales will be 489 million units in 2021. For North America, estimated 2021 sales are projected to be 158,618 units. One forecast estimated 2020 smartphone sales revenue in the U.S. at $75.5 billion.

For nearly a decade, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman of the Children’s Health Defense (CHD), and others have raised serious concerns about the health impacts of 5G technology. The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) and the powerful telecommunications industry have dismissed the critics’ concerns, lumping anyone who raised questions about the technology’s health impact as part of “anti-vaxxer” movement.

“The American public has been poorly served by the FCC,” warned Kennedy. “The FCC’s guidelines are decades-old and are based on scientific assumptions that were proven false. Its failure and disregard of public health is evident in the growing and widespread conditions involving brain damage, learning disabilities, and a host of complex neurological syndromes.” He added: “The FCC has shown that its chief interest is protecting the telecom industry and maximizing its profits, and its position as put forward in its brief is simply indefensible.”

In 2013, the FCC opened an inquiry into 5G, requesting public comment as to whether it needed to review its 1996 health guidelines for Radio Frequency (RF) radiation emitted by wireless devices and infrastructure. Some 2,000 comments were submitted from a wide assortment of scientific, health and public interest organizations and individuals as well as municipal health departments (e.g., Boston and Philadelphia). In December 2019, the FCC ruled that there was no evidence that wireless technology causes harm, nor a need to review the guidelines.

However, things might be changing. On Monday, January 25^th, attorneys for CHD and the Environmental Health Trust (EHT) presented oral arguments before the U.S. Courts of Appeals of the DC Circuit challenging the FCC’s support for the telecom industry’s long-term effort to impose 5G wireless technology on American consumers.

They were joined by David Carpenter, co-editor of the BioInitiative Report, and the Consumers for Safe Cell Phones. In addition, numerous groups submitted supporting documents, among them are the California Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics; U.S. Access Board, NIBS, the Department of Interior, U.S. Navy, the Military, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Toxicology Program (NTP); as well as appeals from leading expert scientists. In all, environmental, health and communications advocacy groups submitted 440 documents consisting of 11,000 pages.

The plaintiffs were represented by two attorneys. Scott McCullough, former Assistant Texas Attorney General, represented the Irregulators last year in its case against the FCC. EHD was represented by Edward B. Myers, who earlier represented the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and several Native American tribes when the court upheld the relevance of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in FCC proceedings. The plaintiffs arguing that the FCC violated the Administrative Procedures Act and NEPA for failing to comply with the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

The documents allege that 5G electronics are responsible in one way or another for a wide range of illnesses. They include a variety of cancers, non-cancer conditions and DNA damage; blood flow to the brain and damage to the blood-brain barrier, cognitive and memory problems; and effects on sleep, melatonin production and mitochondrial damage. Most startling, in December 2020, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NAS) reported that the most likely cause of the symptoms suffered by the U.S. diplomats in Cuba and China was from RF (wireless) weapons.

At the January 25^th hearing, U.S. Circuit Judge Robert L. Wilkins questioned whether the FCC properly cited two working groups under the Federal Drug Administration’s umbrella that are supposed to monitor the possibility of wireless harms. He pointed out that the FCC failed to explore how these bodies contributed to the record and to substantiate whether they exist at all. “I’m just going to be very upfront with why I’m inclined to rule against you,” Wilkins said.

Judge Patricia Millett went further, noting that the universe of connected devices has grown significantly over the last quarter-century. She pointed out that the FCC’s focus on “fixed devices” doesn’t addressed the potential harms of popular “mobile” devices that consumers constantly interact. “Is an iPad a fixed facility? Is a watch a fixed facility? Is a laptop a fixed facility?,” she asked. “The fixed facility stuff doesn’t feel responsive. I’m really curious about all these other devices.”

In 2019, three of the five FCC commissioners were Republican appointees and the chair, Ajit Pai, previously served as a lawyer for Verizon. Pres. Joe Biden has appointed incumbent FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel as acting chair. She has a long record supporting Net Neutrality and backing efforts to end the Digital Divide. A Democratic controlled commission may be more favorable to a critical consideration of 5G’s health impacts.

The challenge raised about the health impacts of 5G technology recall the legendary struggles that scientists and health activists faced in the battle over the role of cigarette smoking and lung cancer. While the link between cigarette smoking as a likely cause of cancer was acknowledged as early as the 1940s, it was not until 1999 that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a verdict against Philip Morris for the death of Mayola Williams from lung cancer. One can only hope that the case against 5G will not take that long to resolve.

West Papua Calls for Independence Referendum to Avert Genocide

Jeff Armstrong

The Indonesian-occupied nation of West Papua has called for urgent international intervention against Indonesia’s intensification of what a 2016 report called “slow motion genocide.”

West Papua is facing an onslaught of colonial settlement backed by the military of the fifth largest nation in the world, with the largest army in Southeast Asia. Papuans are quickly becoming a minority in their own country, if they are not there already. Former Indonesian intelligence chief Abdullah Mahmud Hendropriyono recently called for the forced removal of some two million indigenous Papuans to the island of Manado in apparent response to a Dec. 1, 2020 reaffirmation of West Papuan independence, first declared 59 years earlier on that date.

The pro-independence coalition known as the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) on its national independence day raised the outlawed Morning Star flag and named a provisional government headed by interim President Benny Wenda, who was arrested and tortured by Indonesia but now lives in exile in England after escaping from custody 18 years ago.

“This is racial ethnic cleansing, a genocidal fantasy at the highest levels of the Indonesian state,” President Wenda said in a recent statement.

The occupation of West Papua is driven by greed and fueled by deep-seated racism that depicts the tribal peoples of the nation as subhumans incapable of self-government, a concept that even penetrates Indonesian textbooks. The chairman of an organization tied to Indonesian President Joko Widodo recently referred to a prominent West Papuan human rights defender as a “monkey,” a common racial slur among Indonesians.

Similar expressions of Indonesian racism sparked demonstrations throughout West Papua in 2019, as did the Black Lives Matter protests that broke out throughout the US and the world last spring and summer. Such demonstrations have been met by the Indonesian state with lethal force and lengthy prison terms. In recent days, 13 West Papuans were arrested and charged with treason for campaigning for an independence referendum, while two others were arrested for displaying the Morning Star emblem on a bracelet and a bag, according to the Free West Papua Campaign. Indonesia has placed tight restrictions on media and human rights observers in West Papua, severely limiting the information available to the world.

According to the 2016 report of the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission (CJPC) of the Archdiocese of Brisbane, “The situation in West Papua is fast approaching a tipping point. In less than five years, the position of Papuans in their own land will be worse than precarious. They are already experiencing a demographic tidal wave.”

Jakarta-based human rights activist Mas Wibowo said that tipping point has come.

Wibowo called on “all countries of the world and the UN [to] immediately intervene in overcoming the extermination of indigenous Papuans and the extermination of all natural resources in the land of West Papua.” Papuans are demanding international recognition for peace talks and a legitimate UN-sponsored referendum on their status. West Papua is rich in natural resources and home to virgin rainforests threatened by Indonesian plans to build new roads into the forests.

“The Indonesian government through its military security forces kills and shoots dead indigenous Papuans every day,” Wibowo said.

Protection of the environment will be a priority of a free West Papua, Wenda said upon assuming the interim presidency. ““Embodying the spirit of the people of West Papua, we are ready to run our country. As laid out in our Provisional Constitution, a future republic of West Papua will be the world’s first green state, and a beacon of human rights – the opposite of decades of bloody Indonesian colonisation.”

Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Papuans have been killed or disappeared in the conflict since Indonesia assumed control in 1963 under UN administration, with a referendum slated to follow six years later. United Nations General Secretary Dag Hammarskjold had recognized West Papua’s independence aspirations before dying in a mysterious plane crash on his way to the Congo in 1961, just months before West Papua declared its independence.

In 1969, Indonesia organized a plebiscite on the status of West Papua under the auspices of the United Nations, known with painful irony as the “Act of Free Choice.” In it, just over 1,000 Papuans were held by force for two weeks without contact with their families or the outside world and threatened with violence if they did not accede to annexation by Indonesia. There was no recorded vote, only a purported show of hands in assemblies of literal captives surrounded by armed Indonesian soldiers.

Nevertheless, the UN recognized the farcical colonial assemblies as the expression of self-determination rights by West Papua, with only scattered international dissent at the UN. Although a 1969 report by the US embassy cited UN officials on the ground who said 95% of Papuans opposed Indonesian rule, the United States was aligned with the brutal dictatorship of Gen. Suharto at the time, and offered no objection to the annexation of what the regime renamed West Irian.

US military assistance to Indonesia was suspended through most of the Clinton Administration in response to international revulsion over Indonesia’s genocidal war on East Timor, whose annexation the US was virtually alone in the world in recognizing. Military ties have increased since then, beginning with frequent military training exercises with the Hawaiian National Guard but recently expanding to combat training for elite Kopassus troops on the mainland with US special forces. US military ties to Kopassus had been restricted due to the elite force’s role in human rights abuses. An additional 450 members of an elite Indonesian battalion have been deployed to Indonesia this month.

Even before the formal annexation of West Papua, Indonesia conducted aerial bombing and other scorched earth tactics against a resistance initially only armed with bows and arrows. The armed wing of the ULMWP, the West Papua National Liberation Army, has held its own for decades, but the beleaguered nation of West Papua will have to rely on international solidarity as much as its own determination and ingenuity to win freedom from a nation 100 times its population. Current and former parliamentarians from at least 15 nations have joined Papuan calls for an independence referendum, including Catalonian President-in-Exile Carles Puigdemont and former British labor leader Jeremy Corbyn. Former Sinn Fein TD Caoimhghín Ó Caolain called on the Irish government in 2001 to “state publicly its support for self-determination for the people of West Papua.”

“We indigenous Papuans ask you all for moral and social responsibility to save us from the genocide of indigenous Papuans and ecocide in the land of West Papua,” Wibowo said.

Biden’s Most Urgent Challenge: More Countries Wanting Nukes

Nick Licata

Former President Donald Trump had placed the United States on the runway to take off on another nuclear arms race. Trump threw out two treaties that held Russia and the U.S. in check. It also deterred other nations from developing nuclear weapons over the last thirty years.

President Joseph Biden cut the throttle by agreeing to a five-year extension with Russia on their remaining nuclear arms treaty: the New SALT Treaty. But that single act is not enough to keep the U.S., Russia, and other countries, from flying off to seek security in possessing nuclear weapons. There must be a plan.

First, a quick review of the Trump administration’s actions is in order. On August 2, 2019, the United States formally withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. It required the United States and the Soviet Union to verifiably eliminate all ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. With these range restrictions, missiles from Russia’s furthest western and eastern boundaries could not reach the lower 48 states or Hawaii.
The 32-year-old treaty initiated an intrusive inspection regime, including on-site inspections, to maintain compliance. Over the past decade, the United States and Russia have charged the other country with not complying with the INF Treaty. Trump decided to “terminate” the agreement accusing the Russians again of noncompliance. As a non-sequitur, Trump also said he had concerns about China’s missiles. China is not part of the INF treaty; that concern could have been dealt with separately.

In May of this year, Trump said he was also pulling out of the 30-year-old Treaty on Open Skies. That treaty has reduced the chances of an accidental war between Russia and the United States by allowing reconnaissance flights over the two countries. Trump accused Russia once again of not complying with a treaty.

In this instance, he added that “… there’s a very good chance we’ll have a new agreement or do something to put that agreement back together.” The national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien, issued a statement saying that the Trump administration would try to reach a new arms-control agreement with Russia and China. However, Trump left office without putting anything on the table to show the Russians or the Chinese.

President George W. Bush started to walk away from nuclear-arms treaties before Trump. In 2001, he withdrew the U.S. from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) with Russia. Bush sought to build a massive missile defense system.

Ironically, three former Republican presidents successfully negotiated the three nuclear-arms treaties that Trump and George W. Bush dumped: President Nixon on the ABM, President Reagan on the INF, and George H. W. Bush on the Open Skies. However, since President George W. Bush, most Republicans in Congress have not shown interest in avoiding a nuclear-arms race.

The passage of the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) under President Obama in April 2010 is a perfect example. While the Senate approved it by 71 to 26, over two-thirds of the Republicans voted against it. Even so, the current START pact, which Biden would extend, has been endorsed by six former secretaries of State who worked in Republican administrations and by past presidents from both parties.

On his first full month as president, Trump criticized the New START treaty as a “one-sided deal” and a “bad deal.” That position was undermined by an aggregate data report published by his State Department, which may have been removed from the website where it was to be posted. That report showed that the treaty was working and that both countries kept their strategic nuclear arsenals within the treaty’s limits.

This year Trump said he was trying to negotiate a shorter extension for New START than the five-year option built into the treaty to be approved by both countries. Russia’s legislative body, the Duma, has approved the five-year extension.

Meanwhile, Trump had failed to do so because he tried to include China in the treaty, as had tried to do in the Open Skies Treaty. China refused, and Trump’s envoy wasted months trying to change their mind. Biden’s team has kept their eye on the ball. It’s Russia, not China.  Biden officials have said that Moscow’s arsenal “is at least ten times the size of China’s.”

Biden’s approval of the extension does not need the Senate’s approval. But if the treaty is amended, it could be considered a new treaty subject to a two-thirds vote for Senate approval. And that would not have happened unless the new treaty dramatically conformed to any conditions the Republicans demanded.

Biden’s decision to extend New START avoided real consequences that Trump would have invited by scuttling the last strategic nuclear arms treaty with Russia. First, it would have allowed both countries to deploy an unlimited number of nuclear-armed submarines, bombers, and missiles.

Second, by significantly growing our nuclear arsenal, federal funds could be diverted from rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. Third, it would have encouraged non-nuclear weaponized nations to begin to develop them. The Washington Post reported that American military leaders recognize this danger and supported the New Start Treaty.

But those dangerous trends remain real possibilities. Biden must publicize them enough to build support for promoting a national campaign to reduce the chance of a nuclear war. That may be the only way to overcome congressional Republican’s reluctance to negotiate any arms agreements.

With more than 10,000 nuclear warheads on Earth, avoiding nuclear war is an issue recognized by the international community. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres videotaped a message saying, “Nuclear weapons pose growing dangers, and the world needs urgent action to ensure their elimination and prevent the catastrophic human and environmental consequences any use would cause.”

To that end, the first-ever treaty to ban nuclear weapons entered into force on January 22, President Joe Biden’s first day in office. The U.N. General Assembly initially approved The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in July 2017. But it did not become adopted as international law until 50 countries ratified it, and as of today, there are now 62.

Officially it bans nuclear weapons. However, none of the nine countries known or believed to possess nuclear weapons — the United States, Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel — support it. Neither does the 30-nation NATO alliance support it.

This treaty has good intentions, but without any authority to enforce it, a replay of what happened after World War I is certain. At President Wilson’s insistence, the League of Nations’ creation was codified as part I of the Versailles Treaty ending the war. The League was a “general association of nations established to afford mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity of all nations…”

Even with those guarantees, the U.S. Senate refused to have the U.S. join it. If it had, nations belonging to the League would still have ignored its disarmament objectives since they were based entirely upon “goodwill.” There was no enforcement mechanism. Such is the case with the current treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons.

However, one existing successful treaty does not have an enforcement mechanism and is a multinational agreement. The treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) went into force in 1970. One-hundred ninety-one nations are party to the treaty, including five who have nuclear-weapons. What keeps it going is that there is a review of the treaty’s operation every five years.

The underlying success of the NPT has been an understood bargain that the non-nuclear states would not develop the bomb in exchange for the existing nuclear weapons states reducing and ultimately eliminating their arsenals. As a result, Michael O’Hanlon, the Director of Research at Brookings Institute, states that current nuclear arsenals are only about one-fifth the size of what they were a half-century ago.

Nevertheless, the U.S. and Russia are still the central nuclear-weapons states, accounting for more than 90% of the total number of warheads on Earth today. None of the other seven known nuclear-weapons states, including China, has more than 300. North Korea has the smallest amount, approximately between three and five dozen.

The danger now is that our current political climate is moving away from reaching compromises. The lack of getting them creates an unstable environment and contributes to the spreading of nuclear weapons. Trump removing the U.S. from the INF treaty and the Iran Treaty, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), has contributed to this condition.

Robert Einhorn, a Senior Fellow in Brookings’ Foreign Policy Division, believes that not only are the NPT’s disarmament goals at risk but now there are fears that the number of nuclear-armed states could increase.

Einhorn believes that if the U.S. does not return to JCPOA, Iran will consider leaving the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In response, the Saudi crown prince says the Kingdom will acquire nuclear weapons if Iran does. Then we have President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan asking why other countries’ have nuclear weapons, and Turkey has none.

Meanwhile, Trump’s one-on-one relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has not produced any positive changes. In fact, the Congressional Research Service issued a January 2021 report that said, “Recent ballistic missile tests and an October 2020 military parade suggest that North Korea is continuing to build a nuclear warfighting capability designed to evade regional ballistic missile defenses.”

Biden must avoid weakening existing treaties, which could lead to a free-for-all race to build nuclear weapons. He needs to reassert the U.S.’s role as a leader in negotiating new nuclear-arms treaties. Four presidents successfully played that role, Nixon, Reagan, H.W. Bush, and Obama. Our last president just walked away from that leadership role. Biden has the opportunity to make once again the U.S. the voice of reason in reaching complicated treaties.

The first step to grabbing the world’s attention would be to re-engage with other nations in making the Iranian treaty work better for everyone. If we remain on the sidelines, skirmishes between countries could lead to multiple nations seeking to possess nuclear weapons.

Without treaties, those conflicts could trigger nuclear wars. We are not an island. We will suffer if there is any use of nuclear weapons. The cost of lives to us will be many times greater than what we endured with the covid pandemic.

Why the Scottish Independence Movement May be Difficult to Stop

Patrick Cockburn

Predictions of the break-up of the UK may be reaching a crescendo, but they are scarcely new. In 1707, Jonathan Swift wrote a poem deriding the Act of Union between England and Scotland, which had just been passed, for seeking to combine two incompatible peoples in one state: “As if a man in making posies/ Should bundle thistles up with roses”. He goes on to say that political differences would inevitably sink the whole enterprise, as “tossing faction will o’erwhelm/ Our crazy double-bottomed realm”.

Swift was confident that the ramshackle project would founder, but it has taken 313 years for his prediction to look as if it might come true – and even then the split may not be quite as imminent as some imagine.

It is true that the last 20 opinion polls show that most Scots now favour independence, but the shift against the union is only a few years old, as is the dominance of the Scottish National Party at the polls.

Compare this short span with the Irish struggle for home rule, which was at its height from 1885 to 1918, when those seeking self-rule through constitutional means were replaced by Sinn Fein and unilateral secession. Many of the arguments used against Irish separatism – the most notable being that it made no economic sense – are now used against the Scots and are likely to be equally ineffectual.

The downplaying of Scottish self-determination on the grounds that it is less important than bread-and-butter issues by Boris Johnson during his one-day visit to Scotland on Thursday sounds absurdly hypocritical, coming as it does from a prime minister who only has the job because he promoted British sovereignty above all else in leaving the EU. Doubtless he and his advisers recognise this contradiction all too well since the purpose of his trip to Scotland in the middle of the pandemic was evidently to rebrand Johnson in Scottish eyes as “Mr Vaccine” rather than “Mr Brexit”.

It is a measure of just how rattled the British government must be by Scottish separatism that it should hope that the appearance of Johnson in a white coat claiming, contrary to the evidence, that Scots voters consider independence to be “irrelevant”, would help turn the political tide. He claimed self-destructively that giving priority to self-rule over economic benefits is “like saying you don’t mind what you eat as long as it is with a spoon”.

Catchy phrases like this must have the SNP leaders rocking with secret glee, as Johnson’s patronising words serve only to remind Scottish voters of the two main reason why they are more inclined towards secession today than in the referendum of 2014: Britain’s departure from the EU and Johnson’s shambolic response to coronavirus last year, compared to that of the competent-looking Nicola Sturgeon.

Johnson and his Brexiteer government are being force-fed the same political lesson that they once taught to others, which is that once a nationalist movement has gained momentum, become a mark of identity for people, and is a vehicle for social and economic grievances, then it is very difficult to stop it.

Yet self-rule comes in different shades of practical independence. Even if Scotland and Northern Ireland shift significantly further away from direct control by the UK government, the degree to which they can freely go their own way will be dictated by the underlying balance of power, as the Brexiteers have been discovering to their cost.

Competing pressures for union and disunion are normally analysed in the context of the UK alone, but it is more realistic and illuminating to look at them in relation to the British Isles as a whole.

Ireland gained a large measure of independence in 1921 and was neutral in the Second World War, but stayed to a surprising extent in the British sphere of influence because of the disparity in political and economic strength and the common labour market. But the British exit from the EU, while Ireland stays inside, made the two countries much more equal when it came to negotiations, particularly when there is a US administration sympathetic to the Irish.

One of the many things that Arlene Foster and her Democratic Unionist Party failed to understand was that no British leader wants to quarrel with Brussels and Washington in order to go along with the wishes of one million unionist/Protestants in Northern Ireland. A sign of the times is that few in the rest of the UK were much concerned that a chunk of their country, in the shape of Northern Ireland, remains bizarrely inside the EU and the commercial EU/UK frontier now runs down the Irish Sea.

Yet this does not necessarily mean that Irish unity is around the corner, or even the corner after that. Demography may be changing but, just as the unionist/Protestant community could not monopolise control when they were the majority, the same will be true of the nationalist/Catholic side as they become more numerous. Whatever the outcome of a border poll, in the unlikely event of it taking place in the near future, communal allegiances will stay the same. The basic premise of the Good Friday Agreement remains correct – both communities must have a veto over radical constitutional changes they do not like, if peace is to be preserved.

Ireland, north and south, is full of ominous warning for Johnson and his cabinet as they try to block and reverse the Scottish move towards independence. There are delicious ironies in watching them repeat, almost word for word, the old Remainer arguments about the advantages of economic union with a larger entity, which they once denounced. In an early period, the Conservatives had likewise failed “to kill home rule by kindness” by social and economic reform in Ireland.

These measures may have mitigated historic hatreds but had little lasting impact as the Home Rulers went on winning elections. It was frustration at the failure to win home rule by constitutional means, despite repeated endorsement at the polls, that handed the initiative to those advocating unconstitutional methods. In addition to the armed uprising of 1916, the newly elected Sinn Fein MPs left the Westminster parliament and established their own in Dublin.

Practical secessionism like this may still be over the horizon in Scotland, but nationalist movements everywhere in the world almost invariably respond to the path towards self-determination being closed off by becoming more rather than less radical.

The legitimacy and the visibility of the Scottish demand for self-rule will be confirmed if the SNP wins a majority in the Scottish parliament in the election in May. But Johnson’s dash through Scotland – his precise itinerary concealed to avoid protesters – highlights a crucial change in the political landscape of Britain that is already under way.

“The Scottish Question” now occupies the place once held by “the Irish Question” as a divisive issue that will dominate the political agenda of the UK for decades to come. After all those years, Swift may turn out to have been right.

Budget 2021 Epitomises Hindutva Quackery in India

Bhabani Shankar Nayak

Budgets are political visions with economic planning based on resource allocation and revenue generation to face the crisis, fulfil the needs and desires of citizens, and shape the path towards future prosperity of society. Modi’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget speech and her budget documents in the tablet made by a South Korean company and backed up in a tablet made by a Taiwanese company does not develop digital infrastructure. The presentation of budget in a tablet does not make digital India. The higher investment in health and education can only shape both agrarian and industrial revolution for digital India.

The abysmal social spending makes this budget as one of the worst in independent India. It shows lack of priorities and commitment for the people and their everyday needs.  The government shows no commitment to invest in the people of India. The Modi led BJP government has failed the people of India yet again in the Budget 2021-21. It is a document of apathy. The budget lacks missions and visions to move India and Indians in the path of economic growth and human development. The budget has failed to ensure health, education, employment and other essential welfare service to the people of India. The half-hearted documentation of data, time gaps, fictional accounts with dubious presentation in the budget makes it more as a propaganda document than a serious and trustworthy economic exercise to revive India’s growth story.  But the budget doesn’t reveal the amount that Mr Narendra Modi is going to spend for his advertisements and propaganda.

In spite of all limitations, the Budget 2021 shows its unflinching commitment to neoliberal economic policy prescriptions shaped by the corporates and for the crony capitalist classes in India and abroad. The budget also shows the hollowness of so-called economic nationalism of RSS and BJP. The idea of deception is written within ideological narratives and political strategies of Hindutva quackery. There is neither anything bold nor any cure in it. The budget is a Hindutva quackery’s guide to economic recovery where the corporates profits and mass miseries are ensured.

This budget is another shock therapy to Indian economy and society to deepen the crisis further. There is no plan to fight poverty and unemployment in this budget. It truly upholds Mr Narendra Modi’s idea of minimum government for people and maximum support for his crony capitalist friends. He returns the favour to his corporate friends who support him with election expenses through electoral bonds. It is a corporate budget devoid of democratic accountability to the electorates. Like quacks, people still believe in Hindutva quackery and their aggressive propaganda that ruins India and Indians.

The budget will neither inspire demand nor fuel production and distribution. It will further intensify crises of availability and accessibility of essential goods and services. This budget will further marginalise people and ensure the deepening of poverty, food insecurity, unemployment, illiteracy, ill-health and economic crisis. These conditions of crises are essential requirements for the sustainability of Hindutva quackery. A combination of crisis trap created by conditions of poverty, ignorance and illiteracy produces Hindutva quackery in Indian politics, culture and society. The RSS trained Hindutva quacks hide their deceptive practices and ignorance by shouting aggressively about their power and skills in crowded streets, marketplaces and in remote villages. The Hindutva quacks use every opportunity to promote themselves as only alternatives.

The quacks hypnotise their victims by the sugar-coating propaganda skills driven by organisational networks and fear mongering propaganda. The RSS and BJP follows dictums of quackery in letter and spirit. The corporate mass media is their biggest asset to hide the arrogance and ignorance of Hindutva quackery. Indian population in hopeless conditions believe in Hindutva quacks led by Mr Narendra Modi. Indians are seeking relieve from their immediate pain and sufferings.  But Hindutva quackery does not want people to recover from pain and sufferings. The path of peace, prosperity, good health and education, scientific ethos, social harmony, secured employment and conscious citizens are perennial threats to very existence of Hindutva quackery in India. Therefore, Hindutva quacks shaped and led by the RSS and BJP are using every opportunity to stop the path of economic growth and social development in India. The indefinite conditions of crisis is a perfect condition for the Hindutva quacks to control, manipulate and dominate India and Indians for a long time.

History has witnessed to the limited life span of all quacks. All their quackery always bites the dustbin of history. It ends as soon as mass consciousness spreads. Mass consciousness and mass struggle against Hindutva quackery is the only hope for peace and progress in India. The future of Hindutva quackery will be no different in India. This budget reflects that Modi led BJP government is ignorant about basics of Indian economics, democratic politics and inclusive culture in India. The defeat of Hindutva quackery looks immanent and nearer.

The Greater Green Revolution—Distortions in Rural Development

Bharat Dogra

The green revolution has been widely discussed and its different aspects have been highlighted by various observers according to their own understanding of emphasis and priorities. To this writer the essence of the green revolution seems to lie in the following tendencies, all the more significant because these seem to be shared by technological changes in other sectors of rural development spread by the same forces.

Firstly, the green revolution seeks to draw, for better or for worse may be debated later, the peasantry of even very remote rural areas into the pressures and influences of the international market. As long as the farmer continued to grow his traditional varieties with very meager or even nil quantities of agrochemicals, diesel or machinery, he was least affected by what happened in the oil, fertilizer and other related industries of the world, or of the relation of the domestic industry producing these inputs to the industry of other countries, but now all this suddenly became quite important for millions of farmers in the form of the price and availability of fertilizers, pesticides, diesel, tractors etc.

Secondly the propaganda on behalf of the green revolution emphasizes its suitability for small farmers and in a technological sense there is nothing to stop a farmer from growing the new seeds. Seen in the reality of Indian rural conditions and indeed in the conditions of many other countries-the new seeds requiring expensive inputs in large amounts are most likely to trap the low-resource, poor farmer in a debt trap, while those endowed with a good resource base in rural areas are able to take advantage of the several new opportunities, not necessarily in agriculture but more likely in trade or ‘agri business’ – which the green  revolution seeds and their related inputs bring.

A related issue is the very narrow way in which the green revolution concerns itself with the basic problem of hunger. In Indian conditions it was evident that to effectively tackle the problem of hunger food production should not just grow but grow specifically on the fields of the poorest farmers in backward areas. On the other hand by emphasizing concentration of resources in the already well endowed regions and at least initially on the better-off farmers the green revolution follows an opposite pattern. By so doing it makes it possible to collect a lot of ‘marketable surplus’ of grain from a relatively small area to enhance the government’s stocks of grain which, however, by itself cannot ensure that this food reaches the hungry. Thus the green revolution takes a cynical view of the pain of hunger – flaunting grain stocks and asking where is the problem, while doing nothing effective to really increase the ability of the hungry people to eat better.

Lastly it should be pointed out that the green revolution strategy has been promoted and supported at various levels by the foundations and aid organizations based in western countries, as also the multilateral aid organizations in which these countries are dominant.

If these are accepted as some of the most important features of the green revolution, however, the technological changes in other areas of rural development-dairy-development, fisheries and forestry for instance can be seen as exhibiting much the same tendencies.

In the case of dairy development the increasing scale of milk product imports and the setting up of dairy infrastructure based on this, the increased dependence of several towns and cities on imported milk products and the dependence on milk product imports to keep running a cost-heavy dairy infrastructure – all these linked up dairy producers in  remote parts of the country to the dairy sector of the EEC countries during Operation Flood  Project. The dairy development strategy of this project put more emphasis on the technology of crossbreed cows which is better suited for more resourceful dairy farmers. By emphasizing the availability of plenty of milk and milk products in cities for those who have the purchasing power for this, the ‘white revolution’ also adopts a cynical attitude towards the problem of malnutrition, being concerned with only the product and not who gets it. Lastly, this dairy development strategy and its showpiece the Operation Flood project have clearly been supported and promoted by western (or western dominated) aid-giving agencies.

In the area of forestry, massive aid for forestry projects has been accompanied by increased orientation of forestry officials towards forestry practices and policies to predominantly satisfy the need of industries. Emphasis on supporting the growth of mainly those species which industry finds useful, at the expense of the trees needed by tribals and other villagers, has played havoc with their lives and specially with their access to free food available in forests (which was specially useful in lean agricultural season and in drought years).

In the area of marine fisheries also the fisher folk communities of coastal areas have become linked to international fisheries scene based on factors like the size and price of marine exports and the import and charter of trawlers. Rising exports of fish have been accompanied by declining local per capita availability of this staple protein. And the quest for boosting exports has disrupted the livelihood of poor fishermen, impoverishing them while enriching the resourceful late entrants to marine fisheries.

This extension of the important features of green revolution, as also the thinking underlying this technological change in agriculture, to other areas of rural development may be called the greater green revolution.

Hence following the commonly used description of green revolution in the context of agriculture, the greater green revolution may be defined as the extension of similar thinking and technology in animal husbandry and dairying, fisheries, forestry and other related activities which lead to a disruption of traditional practices and the related wisdom of many , many generations, accompanied by the imposition of technologies and inputs which break self-reliance and impose exploitative linkages which are harmful for sustainable development, nutrition, environment protection and animal welfare, while leading to increased business for industrial interests.

Fire at Napier barracks exposes UK government’s brutal treatment of asylum seekers

Thomas Scripps

A fire at the Napier barracks in Kent has shone a light on the barbaric conditions in which the Conservative government is holding hundreds of asylum seekers.

The fire broke out Friday afternoon, destroying a building and leaving roughly 300 people housed in the barracks without electricity, heating or drinking water. Many of the asylum seekers suffering these conditions are sick with COVID-19, following a massive outbreak in the barracks in January which saw at least 120 people test positive. Only a limited number of those falling ill were transferred to hotels.

Conditions in the camp were ripe for an explosion of infections. There are 16 housing blocks at the camp which house dormitories of up to 28 people, with only hanging sheets to divide the beds. Each block has two toilets and showers, and the men eat in a communal canteen at which 13 people at a time gather around two tables.

The fire breaking out at the Napier barracks (credit: Care4Calais)

Residents have repeatedly raised concerns about hygiene and lack of access to healthcare, including psychological services. They have reported several attempted suicides and cases of self-harm. Most have been living in these conditions for four months, having originally been promised their asylum claims would be processed within a month.

In a recent confidential report for the government, the Red Cross described similar appalling conditions at Penally barracks in Wales, home to more than a hundred asylum seekers.

Dozens of humanitarian and migrant rights organisations, legal and medical professionals have demanded the closure of the barracks. Asylum seekers have carried out repeated protests against the inhuman conditions. Some residents have been on hunger strike and others have slept outside, in freezing temperatures, rather than risk infection in the crowded dormitories. Last December, a man at Penally had to be hospitalised as a result of his hunger strike.

Several demonstrations have warned of the risk of a COVID outbreak. Napier resident Jafar, from Iran, said in early January, “The danger of the virus spreading in here is huge.”

When infections took hold, the government responded by blaming the asylum seekers and locking them in the camp. Residents were told “not to leave the site under any circumstance”, on pain of arrest. The canteen was closed but the men were required to queue for food, switched from hot meals to sandwiches. Nothing was done to alter the dormitories.

Minister for immigration compliance, Chris Philip, made the reprehensible statement, “It is incredibly disappointing that prior to this a number of individuals refused tests and have been either refusing to self-isolate or follow social distancing rules, despite repeated requests to do so…”

The asylum seekers responded with an open letter, which stated, “When we are becoming more and more mentally vulnerable and physically ill due to the Covid outbreak in Napier Barracks, the Home Office, specifically its secretary, Priti Patel, and the minister for immigration, Chris Philip, are intentionally ignoring us and trying their best to cover up the disaster which is happening in this army camp.”

It continued, “We are all sharing the same space, we breathe in the same room, and there is no way we can practice social distancing.”

The letter concluded by drawing attention to the asylum seekers’ position as oppressed workers: “no one chose to leave the country that they were born in, no one chose to leave their family and loved ones behind. We came to this country to save our lives…

“There are fathers, sons and husbands here. There are nurses, teachers, engineers and talented people and yet we have been treated like criminals or prisoners.”

The fire has been met with a vicious government response. Kent police say it started following a disturbance at the barracks. Riot police were mobilised alongside firefighters on the Friday afternoon and fourteen people have since been arrested. Volunteers attempting to deliver food and blankets over the weekend say they were turned away by police officers, who said they were treating the site as a crime scene.

Home Secretary Priti Patel delivered an outraged nationalist rant, declaring, “The damage and destruction at Napier barracks is not only appalling but deeply offensive to the taxpayers of this country who are providing this accommodation while asylum claims are being processed.

“This type of action will not be tolerated and the Home Office will support the police to take robust action against those vandalising property, threatening staff and putting lives at risk.

“This site has previously accommodated our brave soldiers and army personnel—It is an insult to say that it is not good enough for these individuals… I am fixing our broken asylum system and will be bringing forward legislation this year to deliver on that commitment.”

Clare Mosley, founder of refugee charity Care4Calais, told the Guardian, “For a British home secretary to accuse and castigate ordinary people when the facts of this incident are not yet even known is shocking and disturbing. It shows a senior government minister operating at the gutter level of gossip and hearsay, and at a time of heightened anxiety and tension across society, she should be ashamed of herself.

“But make no mistake, this not simply a careless, off-the-cuff emotional response. It is a misleading, opportunistic smoke screen concocted to deflect attention from the multiple warnings she has had about what was clearly going to happen at Napier barracks.”

Patel’s comments are another example of how the Tory party is basing itself politically on far right, fascistic forces. Internal Home Office documents seen by the Independent regarding the use of disused army barracks to house asylum seekers state that they are “not analogous” to British citizens in need of welfare. They argue that providing “less generous” accommodation to these vulnerable people is “justified by the need to control immigration” and to not “undermine public confidence in the asylum system”.

By “public confidence”, the Home Office means the support of Britain’s far right. The decision to use the barracks as asylum centres came less than a month after the government apologised for an “operational failure” for placing asylum seekers in a hotel. This came in response to former United Kingdom Independence Party, Brexit and now Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage posting a video outside the hotel claiming “illegal migrants” were living there.

Farage’s action was part of a campaign of fascist intimidation in which groups like Britain First stormed hotels thought to be housing migrants to interrogate and harass the residents.

Around the time the barracks were being established as asylum residences, Labour peer Lord West, a retired Royal Navy Admiral, said migrants should be put in “a concentrated place, whether it's a camp or whatever”.

The government’s destruction of basic human rights and embrace of fascistic politics is coupled with an escalating campaign of censorship. One day before the fire, journalist Andy Aitchison took photos of a protest held outside the barracks where fake blood was thrown at the gates and demonstrators held signs reading “Close Napier now” and “There will be blood on your hands”. The photos were shared widely online.

Six hours later, Aitchison was arrested by five police officers at his home, on suspicion of criminal damage. His phone and camera memory card were seized, and he was held at the police station for seven hours before being released on bail. He has been told not to return to Napier until the case is concluded.

Aitchison told the Independent, “It feels like a light has been shone on them and they’ve got the sledgehammer out. It’s censorship: if you don’t toe the line, we shut you down.”

This is not the first attempt to suppress information about what is happening at Napier. Last November, volunteers at the barracks were told to sign confidentiality agreements, underpinned by the Official Secrets Act, preventing them from speaking about conditions they observed.

There is huge popular opposition to the government’s treatment of asylum seekers. A petition from campaign group Freedom from Torture, “Close asylum camps, save lives”, has received more than 21,000 signatures.

Defending migrants and refugees requires the construction of a socialist movement in the working class. The attack on asylum seekers is part of a global turn to fascist forms of rule, of which the January 6 attempted coup in America is the highest expression. This turn is bound up with the pandemic crisis, which has drastically worsened social inequality, seen workers all over the world thrown into poverty and necessitates a fresh savage assault on living conditions.

Only the combined force of the international working class can confront these dangers and advance the right of all workers to a good standard of living in whatever country they choose.