Fascist Republican representative stripped of committee assignments

Jacob Crosse

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives voted Thursday evening to punish Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene for her advocacy of fascist conspiracy theories and threats of violence by stripping her of her committee assignments. A resolution to discipline Greene, a QAnon adherent, passed the House on a near-party-line vote, 230-199. Only 11 Republicans voted in favor of the resolution.

The measure to remove Greene, House Resolution 72, advanced past the Rules Committee on Wednesday and was taken up by the House on Thursday. The resolution only requires that Greene be taken off the two committees to which she is currently assigned, and does not prohibit her from serving on other committees or bar her from future assignments.

An LED billboard calling for the resignation of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is seen on Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021, in Dalton, Ga. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

The measure was taken up after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy refused to remove Greene from her assignments on the Budget Committee and the Education and Labor Committee following recent exposures of Greene’s social media accounts, on which she advocated assassinating Democratic politicians, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, and characterized mass school shootings as “false flag” events staged by supporters of gun control.

Facing denunciations from Democratic members as well as some Republicans, Greene, in a speech from the floor of the House on Thursday, attempted to portray herself as a free speech advocate who has been the victim of “cancel culture” and an all-powerful media conspiracy. Unconvincingly claiming to be a “very regular American” Greene parroted such lines as, “You see, school shootings are absolutely real,” and, “I also want to tell you, 9/11 absolutely happened.” That she had to grit her teeth and spit out such statements only underscored her embrace of the delusional ultra right.

Greene never apologized for “liking” social media comments advocating the assassination of Democratic politicians, nor did she recant comments in which she claimed that Muslims shouldn’t serve in the government, that Jewish bankers started the wildfires in California with space-based lasers or that George Soros (a Jewish billionaire) was funding “migrant caravans.”

Attempting to excuse her past support for QAnon, a fascist conspiracy theory that postulates that Donald Trump is the leader of movement that will massacre Satan-worshiping, child sacrificing, cannibalistic Democratic politicians, Greene claimed, “The media … is just as guilty as QAnon of presenting truth and lies to divide us.”

Early Wednesday morning, McCarthy met with House Majority Leader Representative Steny Hoyer to discuss his proposal that Greene give up her seat on the Education and Labor Committee but retain her position on the Budget Committee. Hoyer and the Democrats rejected the proposal, with Hoyer telling reporters on Wednesday that the outcome was not “sufficient … given her consistent statements before and after her membership in the Congress, which have given great concern for people’s individual safety.”

“She’s placed many members in fear for their welfare,” Hoyer said. “We believe she also gave aid and comfort to those who led an insurrection.” Why Hoyer did not seek to have Greene arrested and prosecuted, in that case, he did not say.

In 2019, McCarthy stripped Iowa Representative Steve King of his committee assignments after King signaled his support for “white nationalism” and questioned what was offensive about “white supremacy” in an interview with the New York Times. But he declined to take the same action against Greene, who has been publicly backed by former president Trump.

During a roughly four-hour-long Republican caucus meeting late Wednesday night Republicans discussed what to do about Greene as well as a possible challenge to the third-ranking member of the leadership, Liz Cheney of Wyoming, daughter of the former vice president. Cheney was one of the 10 House Republicans to join Democrats in voting to impeach Trump, and Trump loyalists have demanded her removal from the leadership.

McCarthy essentially balanced the two cases against each other, rejecting action against either congresswoman. After Greene addressed the caucus, McCarthy declared his opposition to any disciplinary action, and the assembled Republicans reportedly gave the fascist a standing ovation. At the same time, Cheney retained her position, as the caucus voted 145 to 61 to reject a call for her resignation.

Demonstrating the degree to which the Republican party has doubled down and shifted even further to the right in the wake of the January 6 coup attempt, McCarthy put out a statement Wednesday night “condemning” Greene’s comments while praising her for privately denouncing QAnon in the caucus meeting. He argued that the comments were made “before she was ever a member of Congress,” as though that lessened the significance of her call for murdering one of the leaders of that Congress (Pelosi). Removing Greene from her committee assignments would set a “bad precedent,” he said.

Despite Greene’s claims that she had “stopped believing” in QAnon in 2018, she has defended the conspiracy theory on social media as late as December 4, 2020, after her election to Congress from Georgia’s 14th District. The district, in the northwest corner of the state, has a long history of ultra-right and fascist representatives, including Larry McDonald, a member of the John Birch Society.

While the Republicans attempt to paper over the differences between the growing fascist elements within their ranks and the more established wing of the party, represented by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Representative Cheney, the disciplinary action against Greene will do nothing to stop the growth of fascism in the US and internationally, which arises from the contradictions of the capitalist system which the Democrats defend as much as the Republicans.

Greene, like her hero Trump, is not merely a deranged or repugnant individual. Both are the products of the turn toward fascism and violent repression by an American ruling class that is responding to the decline of the global position of American capitalism and terrified of the growing resistance and militancy in the working class.

Kroger grocery chain closes Southern California stores due to new “hero pay” laws leading to worker protests

Rafael Azul

About 20 grocery store workers rallied in Long Beach, California recently to protest the closure of two Kroger supermarkets. Management at the supermarket chain announced that, in response to a $4-an-hour pay raise to all supermarket employees, it would close those two markets in mid-April and lay off and/or transfer the 200 workers employed at both stores.

At the rally, workers carried homemade signs denouncing corporate greed, demanding hazard pay and calling on all workers to speak out.

Workers protest against Kroger's closure of the Food4Less in Long Beach (Credit: World Socialist Web Site)

Long Beach is an industrial port and logistics city in Los Angeles County. As of last weekend, the city had reported 48,824 cases and 698 deaths from the coronavirus. It lies directly southwest of the city of Los Angeles, which for several weeks has been the worldwide epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic with more than 17,000 deaths and more than one million positive cases as of this writing.

The Long Beach City Council mandated the $4-an-hour “hero pay” wage supplement two weeks ago, in response to the pandemic. The order will last 120 days. Similar ordinances are being proposed in other California cities. The LA City Council is discussing a $5-an-hour hazard pay as are other Los Angeles suburbs.

Last week, the board of supervisors in Santa Clara County also voted to draft a $5-per-hour measure. Similar measures are being considered in San José and the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Long Beach wage supplement applies to supermarkets and all grocery stores with at least 300 employees nationally or more than 15 employees at each store.

Kroger management denounced the Long Beach rule, charging the city with interfering in the wage-bargaining process, and for treating other large retailers unequally. Long Beach exempted retail giants Target and Walmart from the rule, even though both those chains sell groceries. A company statement declared that both stores had been “long-struggling.” A company spokesperson indicated that underperforming stores in other cities would also close if forced to pay the extra amount.

The Long Beach Press-Telegram quoted an email from John Votava, corporate affairs director for Ralphs supermarkets, who called the new mandates “misguided,” placing “any struggling store in jeopardy of closure.”

The California Grocers Association has filed a lawsuit against the Long Beach measure, claiming that “grocers operate with razor thin margins.”

Not so for Kroger Company—the Brookings Institution reported the firm made $2.6 billion in profits between February 2 and November 7, 2020, out of which it used $989 million for stock buybacks.

Last November, in a study entitled “Windfall for Profits and Deadly Risks,” Brookings examined pandemic hazard pay at Kroger and 12 other companies, ranging from big-box stores and grocery chains to pharmacies and electronic stores. “The numbers are stark,” declared the report. “They paint a picture of most companies prioritizing profits and wealth for shareholders over investment in their employees.” The study found that these companies could have quadrupled hazard pay to their workers and still made a handsome profit during the pandemic.

Nationally, the average Kroger’s cashier makes a poverty wage of $10 an hour. In Long Beach, a city with a high cost of living, the minimum wage for employers with 26 or more workers is almost as exploitative, $14 per hour.

Kroger and the other retailers have counted on the complicity of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW). Nearly 17 years ago, a 19-week strike and lockout involving 59,000 Los Angeles area grocery workers resulted in a resounding victory for the employers, including Ralphs and other Kroger markets.

The UFCW accepted drastic reductions in overtime pay, cuts to holiday pay and sick time, increases in health care deductibles and the elimination of defined benefit pension plans. This sellout then served as a model for UFCW contracts across the country.

More recently in 2019, the UFCW settled for contracts in California and Oregon with wages increases of under one percent per year, well below the inflation rate, while banning strike action. In 2020, the UFCW pushed through another sellout agreement in West Virginia. A $4-an-hour increase would barely begin to compensate for those betrayals

Workers should place no confidence in the union to defend their jobs or wages or to protect them from the coronavirus pandemic. That is why grocery workers across California, the US, and internationally must take matters into their own hands, forming rank-and file committees independent of the UFCW and other unions to fight for adequate pay and resources to confront the COVID-19 pandemic and make up for decades of attacks on wages, benefits and working conditions.

French teachers denounce Macron government’s “herd immunity” policy in schools

Will Morrow

There is widespread and growing opposition among educators in France to the Macron government’s policy of permitting the coronavirus to spread unhindered through schools among teachers, students, and their families.

Last night, Prime Minister Jean Castex delivered a press conference to announce that the government was continuing to reject any lock-down measures. The seven-day rolling average for daily cases is over 20,000, and for daily deaths, 427. More than 64 percent of emergency care beds nationally are occupied, with 3,277 coronavirus patients now in intensive care units. Yet Castex declared that the “situation does not justify” a lock-down.

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

His statements directly contradict the warnings of scientists and medical professionals, who have denounced Macron’s announcement last week rejecting a national lock-down. Macron is openly pursuing a policy of allowing the virus to spread in order to prevent any impact of a lock-down on the profits of French corporations. The Journal de Dimanche cited Geoffrey Roux de Bézieux, the head of the national employers’ association, confirming that it was in continuous exchange with the government, and that “businessmen would be indignant at the return of a solution identical to that of March,” when a full lock-down was implemented.

The school system is the sharpest point of the policy of sacrificing lives for profits. The French government has boasted that it has kept schools open throughout the pandemic for more days than any other country. As across Europe and in the US, children and teachers are being herded into classrooms so that their parents can be forced into workplaces.

Among teachers and students internationally, however, opposition to this policy is growing. In Chicago, over 20,000 educators voted to reject the resumption of in-person classes demanded by the Democratic mayor and the Biden administration. Educators in the UK forced the closure of schools in January.

French teachers who spoke to the World Socialist Web Site described non-existent social-distancing measures, being kept in the dark as their students contract the virus, and a systematic policy of keeping schools in classrooms even as cases are confirmed.

Stéphanie, who has taught for 21 years and currently teachers second-year primary school, told the WSWS she was “more than upset by the current situation. Today my school learned that a student tested positive for the virus. This student ate in the canteen (therefore without a mask), and no one is considered as a contact case. In my own class I have had students with the virus. One stayed home for a week, returned without any explanation, and no one was considered a contact case because everyone wears a mask. You can imagine how seven-year-olds wear a mask.”

The social-distancing policy is “that we open the window,” she said. “The rules for contact tracing are different at school than elsewhere: There is [supposedly] never any contact in schools. No social distancing because we have all the students there.”

The government’s policy “is that the schools must absolutely remain open to protect the economy while putting the workers directly in danger.”

Emmeline, an English teacher with three years’ experience as a substitute teacher in middle and high school, described similar conditions.

“There is no social distancing at my school. I have six classes in total and I have up to 33 students per class… A lot of the students don’t wear their masks properly or the mask is too big for them so it just slips off their face all day long. One was coughing and sneezing in class today and pulled his mask down each time so there’s bound to be sick children in that class in the days to come. Several of my students have had Covid but recovered from it. Tons of kids at my school have had it but the school hasn’t been closed despite all the contaminations.”

She said she thought schools needed to be closed and online learning organized, with large investments in resources for both students, parents and teachers in order to facilitate this. “The government needs to start investing in real solutions,” she said. “What happened during the first lockdown was just an absolute joke: we had nothing to work with. Just our books, our computers, our wifi, our mobile phones… it was absolutely terrible. I honestly think that if they have the correct online resources per class/per level, we’d be able to do online teaching and it would be a heck of a lot easier for everyone. No commuting, no overcrowded classrooms, not having to wear the mask and potentially contaminate your classmates.”

“I really feel like we’re the ‘sacrificed’ ones,” she added. She said she had not previously heard about the ongoing struggle by Chicago teachers against the school openings, but supported it. “Wow, I didn’t know [about it]! Good for them!” She added that she thought there should be a united struggle by teachers in Europe and the United States. “I completely agree with it,” she said. “I’m beyond tired of being exploited… It’s like we’re not important. Underpaid, invisible: just go to work and shut up.”

Claire, a middle-school teacher with 17 years’ experience, said that the government is protecting “the large fortunes and shareholders,” which is why schools are kept open. “The worst is that they camouflage it all by saying that closing schools would be a disaster for the children.”

“I think the children are being put in danger, but the education ministry has insisted since the beginning that the school setting is safe and that children are not contagious… In October, we had a dozen confirmed cases but some parents with the virus have continued to send their children to school, and other students have never been tested. For the last three weeks, we have had cases. In October, 5 teachers were contaminated, two of them definitely at school.”

The Macron government has only been able to keep schools open because of the complete support it has received from the trade unions for its criminal policy. The national education unions call for keeping schools open. They maintain the Macron government’s lying claim that it would be impossible to organize effective at-distance learning, and that teachers must therefore continue to keep schools open.

In November, strikes broke out at dozens of schools across the country. The unions responded by calling a one-day “warning strike,” which they made clear was not aimed at closing schools, but to let off steam and smother demands for the closure of schools.

If a struggle is to be organized against the Macron government’s policy of herd immunity, it must be organized by educators and students themselves. Educators should form their own action committees at schools, independent of the trade union apparatuses, and reach out to other teachers online in France and across Europe. This would provide the means for the preparation of a European-wide strike to enforce the closure of schools and non-essential workplaces, so that the vaccine can be safely administered to the population. Vast resources must be expended to provide all the required resources to students and teachers for remote learning, and to provide an income to parents to remain home and care for their children.

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The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

Medea Benjamin & Nicolas J. S. Davies

In 2004, journalist Ron Suskind quoted a Bush White House advisor, reportedly Karl Rove, as boasting, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” He dismissed Suskind’s assumption that public policy must be rooted in “the reality-based community.” “We’re history’s actors,” the advisor told him, “…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Sixteen years later, the American wars and war crimes launched by the Bush administration have only spread chaos and violence far and wide, and this historic conjunction of criminality and failure has predictably undermined America’s international power and authority. Back in the imperial heartland, the political marketing industry that Rove and his colleagues were part of has had more success dividing and ruling the hearts and minds of Americans than of Iraqis, Russians or Chinese.

The irony of the Bush administration’s imperial pretensions was that America has been an empire from its very founding, and that a White House staffer’s political use of the term “empire” in 2004 was not emblematic of a new and rising empire as he claimed, but of a decadent, declining empire stumbling blindly into an agonizing death spiral.

Americans were not always so ignorant of the imperial nature of their country’s ambitions. George Washington described New York as “the seat of an empire,” and his military campaign against British forces there as the “pathway to empire.” New Yorkers eagerly embraced their state’s identity as the Empire State, which is still enshrined in the Empire State Building and on New York State license plates.

The expansion of America’s territorial sovereignty over Native American lands, the Louisiana Purchase and the annexation of northern Mexico in the Mexican-American War built an empire that far outstripped the one that George Washington built. But that imperial expansion was more controversial than most Americans realize. Fourteen out of fifty-two U.S. senators voted against the 1848 treaty to annex most of Mexico, without which Americans might still be visiting California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Nevada, Utah and most of Colorado as exotic Mexican travel spots.

In the full flowering of the American empire after the Second World War, its leaders understood the skill and subtlety required to exercise imperial power in a post-colonial world. No country fighting for independence from the U.K. or France was going to welcome imperial invaders from America. So America’s leaders developed a system of neocolonialism through which they exercised overarching imperial sovereignty over much of the world, while scrupulously avoiding terms like “empire” or “imperialism” that would undermine their post-colonial credentials.

It was left to critics like President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana to seriously examine the imperial control that wealthy countries still exercised over nominally independent post-colonial countries like his. In his book, Neo-Colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism, Nkrumah condemned neocolonialism as “the worst form of imperialism.” “For those who practice it,” he wrote, “it means power without responsibility, and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress.”

So post-World War Two Americans grew up in carefully crafted ignorance of the very fact of American empire, and the myths woven to disguise it provide fertile soil for today’s political divisions and disintegration. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and Biden’s promise to “restore American leadership” are both appeals to nostalgia for the fruits of American empire.

Past blame games over who lost China or Vietnam or Cuba have come home to roost in an argument over who lost America and who can somehow restore its mythical former greatness or leadership. Even as America leads the world in allowing a pandemic to ravage its people and economy, neither party’s leaders are ready for a more realistic debate over how to redefine and rebuild America as a post-imperial nation in today’s multipolar world.

Every successful empire has expanded, ruled and exploited its far-flung territories through a combination of economic and military power. Even in the American empire’s neocolonial phase, the role of the U.S. military and the CIA was to kick open doors through which American businessmen could “follow the flag” to set up shop and develop new markets.

But now U.S. militarism and America’s economic interests have diverged. Apart from a few military contractors, American businesses have not followed the flag into the ruins of Iraq or America’s other current war-zones in any lasting way. Eighteen years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq’s largest trading partner is China, while Afghanistan’s is Pakistan, Somalia’s is the UAE (United Arab Emirates), and Libya’s is the European Union (EU).

Instead of opening doors for American big business or supporting America’s diplomatic position in the world, the U.S. war machine has become a bull in the global china shop, wielding purely destructive power to destabilize countries and wreck their economies, closing doors to economic opportunity instead of opening them, diverting resources from real needs at home, and damaging America’s international standing instead of enhancing it.

When President Eisenhower warned against the “unwarranted influence” of America’s military-industrial complex, he was predicting precisely this kind of dangerous dichotomy between the real economic and social needs of the American people and a war machine that costs more than the next ten militaries in the world put together but cannot win a war or vanquish a virus, let alone reconquer a lost empire.

China and the EU have become the major trading partners of most countries in the world. The United States is still a regional economic power, but even in South America, most countries now trade more with China. America’s militarism has accelerated these trends by squandering our resources on weapons and wars, while China and the EU have invested in peaceful economic development and 21st century infrastructure.

For example, China has built the largest high-speed rail network in the world in just 10 years (2008-2018), and Europe has been building and expanding its high-speed network since the 1990s, but high-speed rail is still only on the drawing board in America.

China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty, while America’s poverty rate has barely budged in 50 years and child poverty has increased. America still has the weakest social safety net of any developed country and no universal healthcare system, and the inequalities of wealth and power caused by extreme neoliberalism have left half of Americans with little or no savings to live on in retirement or to weather any disruption in their lives.

Our leaders’ insistence on siphoning off 66% of U.S. federal discretionary spending to preserve and expand a war machine that has long outlived any useful role in America’s declining economic empire is a debilitating waste of resources that jeopardizes our future.

Decades ago Martin Luther King Jr. warned us that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

As our government debates whether we can “afford” COVID relief, a Green New Deal and universal healthcare, we would be wise to recognize that our only hope of transforming this decadent, declining empire into a dynamic and prosperous post-imperial nation is to rapidly and profoundly shift our national priorities from irrelevant, destructive militarism to the programs of social uplift that Dr. King called for.

Coronavirus Education: Learning and Teaching from the Margins

Binoy Kampmark

The coronavirus student, a species brought forth in the world of education by a pandemic that has killed over 400,000 people in the United States and 100,000 in the United Kingdom, is a troubled creature.  When universities and schools across the globe were given varying and often contradictory messages on the safety of continuing in class teaching and participation, the seeds of confusion and fear were sown.  The broadest, most acceptable solution, at least in terms of safety, was moving learning to an online format.

One evident issue, notably in higher education, is the attractions offered by remote or virtual learning.  Finally, those championing cost saving measures by physically exiling the teacher from the classroom in favour of stale, pre-recorded sessions of lifeless content, had a pretext.  In consulting the literature on what is banally called “E-learning,” the following article in Quantity and Quantity suggests what it consists of: “technology-based learning through websites, learning portals, video conferencing, YouTube, mobile apps, and thousand [sic] type of free available websites for blended learning tools.”

All these platforms have undeniable uses.  A multifaceted technological environment contaminated by Google, YouTube and social media has found a way into pedagogical technique and learning.  But the tool so fashioned is never the complete human; true learning must have, on some level, a flesh and blood contact if it involves other humans, a connection by which the cerebral cortex can be stimulated and thrilled.

Without realising it, those who arrived at terms such as “remote learning” were accurate to a fault: learning in remote fashion is emotionally stripping and estranging, a learning experience forged on the dark side of the moon.  Glacial and discouragingly distant, the impression is one of being left abandoned in a garage without an understanding of the tools at hand and how they might best be used.  The poor abandoned sod is left to seek inspiration from elsewhere, in the process enriching the already obscenely wealthy tech giants of Silicon Valley.

Student responses to this change of learning circumstances have varied.  Anxiety and stress remain central, hindering any adaption to online education.  Nor is this helped by the unevenness of technological access of the global student population, occasioned by the often ridiculous assumption that each member of the human race is plugged into the weirdly wonderful Internet. “Although these inequalities existed earlier,” observe the authors of a study of student responses to online learning in an Indian university, the Netaji Subhas University of Technology, “the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed this digital divide.”

The response to online learning also varies depending on which authority you wish to consult.  But the impressiveness of learning in a physically tangible environment is clear.  The survey study of opinions from 358 students at the Netaji Subhas University of Technology found that 65.9% thought in-class learning more rewarding.  Some 68.1% of students did concede that academics had improved their online teaching abilities since the beginning of the pandemic, while 77.9% found it useful.

A more personal touch is offered by a highly sanitised student account in the University of Queensland’s Contact Magazine.  Such material should always be treated with due care, given the publishing outlet and the manicured, lipstick rich enthusiasm of the student.  But even here, the Bachelor of Engineering honours candidate can admit to “personal challenges around remaining motivated and up to date now that my schedule is more fluid”.  There was also the temptation to spend more time watching Netflix.  “Unfortunately,” she concedes, “many of my courses had a large practical component to them, which are no longer available.”

While forms of online learning have distinct advantages in, for instance, coping with COVID-19 restrictions and mitigating the risks of transmission, a bigger picture is always at play in the world of organisational management.  Motives are multiple, and rarely do they centre with absolute certainty upon protecting student welfare.

One driving motivation behind moving educational institutions to the online world is the replication of management even as teaching staff are reduced.  Academics have been made redundant as student enrolments fall, coaxed into providing recordings and content that can be endlessly reused.  There are threats of departmental amalgamation and a cancellation of courses.  But there is always more room for the addition of COVID-19 bureaucrats.  As ever, more individuals otherwise unconnected to the actual process of teaching and research will find a way to louse up matters.  These good sorts, with a brief of faux compassion, are charged with not inconsiderable surveillance and direction powers.  Their role is to keep a good wide eye on staff and students to ensure they are observing hygiene practices, undertaking re-education modules on how best to teach and learn in a “COVID-19 safe” way, and root out the deviants.

There are other, telling implications.  The pandemic crisis has been productive to aspiring razor gangs obsessed with trimming budgetary expenditure across entire entities.  The property paladins have been smacking their lips, keen to snap up more space needlessly occupied by instructors and their students.

What many institutions are doing is delivering an emaciated model of teaching and learning while keeping the costs of taking the subjects at the same, pre-coronavirus level.  The modern learning institution has become the clearing house for glorified correspondence courses.  By the time the vaccination drive has parked most of the world’s population into appropriate spots of security, the learning environment will have a permanently cold and mechanical sense to it.  Students of the future will be none the wiser.

Portugal records worst rate of Covid-19 cases in the world

Paul Mitchell

The people of Portugal are suffering the terrible fate of leading the world in terms of new coronavirus infections and deaths.

Around 15,000 new infections and 250 deaths per 1 million inhabitants occurred last month, compared to the European Union (EU) average of 4,200 and 103. A record 16,432 new cases and 303 deaths from the virus were reported on January 28.

In the month of January alone, nearly half of the 726,321 infections and 12,757 deaths since the start of the pandemic were reported.

Graph showing the increase in COVID-19 infections and deaths in Portugal as of February 2. (graph courtesy of World Health Organisation)

Hospitals across the country of just over 10 million people are reportedly on the verge of collapse, with ambulances queuing for hours due to the lack of beds. The Garcia de Horta Hospital in Almada is operating at more than 300 percent of its capacity. Socialist Party (PS) Health Minister Marta Temido admitted, “We are putting all means to work in all sectors, but there is a limit. And we are very close to the limit.”

Last Friday, Portugal’s air force flew three critically ill COVID-19 patients from Lisbon to the island of Madeira, where there are spare hospital beds. On Sunday, Austria agreed to take Portuguese intensive-care patients and Germany agreed to airlift military medics, paramedics and equipment. International flights have been curtailed and Portugal's sole land border with Spain closed.

The newly re-elected conservative President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, warned that the lockdown announced in mid-January in response to the surge in infections and deaths would probably last until the end of March and possibly into the summer.

PS Prime Minister, António Costa, told reporters that the situation was not just “bad” but “terrible”: “There’s no point in feeding the illusion that we are not facing the worst moment. And we’ll face this worst moment for a few more weeks, that is for sure.”

Costa said the reason for the surge in infections was his government's relaxation of restrictive measures at Christmas and the appearance of a more infectious COVID-19 variant first detected in Britain. In a de facto warning to the working class throughout Europe, experts estimate the British variant accounts for up to 40 percent of all new cases. There has also been an increase in a new variant from Brazil, a former colony, the people of which still have close connections with Portugal.

But Costa sought to shift his government's responsibility for continuing the chronic underfunding of Portugal's public health system (SNS), saying it was down to his confusing “messages”.

“There were certainly errors: often the way I transmitted the message to the Portuguese... and, when the recipient of the message did not understand the message, then it is the messenger’s fault, I have no doubt about it,” he said.

Last year, the country avoided the worst of the devastation caused by COVID-19, largely due to the Portuguese population abiding by restrictive measures including social distancing, the wearing of masks and limiting travel. According to Alexandre Lourenço, the president of the Portuguese Association of Hospital Administrators, Portugal also got through the first wave last year by delaying 120,000 operations and more than 10 million appointments, most of which have still not been carried out.

Stay At Home For Us. Director General of Health poster

However, as was the case internationally, in the pursuit of a murderous herd immunity policy pressure mounted from big business, especially from the tourism sector which represents 20 percent of Portugal's GDP, to reopen the economy.

The PS duly obliged. It rejected the closure of schools and non-essential production, and refused to pay full wages to quarantined workers, to prevent the transmission of the virus. This was because such policies would impact on the profits of major corporations. Its priority was the protection of corporate profits, not lives.

Schools started and normal working resumed in the autumn. Inevitably, infections began to increase. By November there was a new state of emergency and new restrictive measures in place, including a 1pm weekend curfew.

However, claiming that infections were declining in early December, the government announced that it would “save Christmas.” For three days, Portuguese citizens were allowed to travel freely across the country, curfews were relaxed and family gatherings allowed. Many Portuguese workers living in the UK and British expats entered the country without having to present a negative Covid test or be tested at Portuguese airports.

As COVID-19 surged, the PS government was forced to announce another lockdown in its ninth state of emergency on January 15. Even then it was sold as a “softer” version allowing schools, churches and 52 types of businesses to continue operating. With the pandemic continuing to spike and public anger mounting, schools were told to close on January 22. But by then the damage was done.

As Algarve regional health official, Ana Cristina Guerreiro, explained, “Since the beginning of the school season, many cases have arisen, which came from family transmission. And the epidemiological investigation caused many of the classes to go home in preventative isolation. This caused, in the whole country, a very large number of cases at home and a high number of cases that had not existed before; such a large number of school children with a positive test.”

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has singled out Portugal as “lagging behind” in the rolling out of vaccines, exacerbated by the European Union’s (EU) vaccine distribution debacle. By the end of January just 70,000 people had been fully vaccinated with two doses and it was only this Monday that those over 80 start getting their shots.

Portugal is one of the countries that has made the least extra expenditure on health during the pandemic. According to the report “Health at a Glance Europe 2020”, which measures expenditure on specialized medical equipment, personal protective equipment (PPE), track and testing capacity, hiring of additional workers, support for hospitals and the development of vaccines, Portugal spent 57 euros per person—half the EU average of 112 euros.

The COVID-19 disaster facing Portugal is a result of more systemic reasons. The public health sector has been under constant attack since the global banking crisis of 2008 under the dictates of the “troika” financial institutions. A prime objective of governments has been compliance with EU imposed austerity programmes. In its five years in power, Costa's PS administration produced an unprecedented 0.3 percent budget surplus.

As a result, Portugal continues to suffer from one of the smallest hospital capacities per capita in the EU. There are just 4.2 critical care beds per 100,000 people, the lowest in the EU, compared to Spain (over nine such beds per 100,000) and Germany (nearly 30). Promises to implement a National Health Plan and hire more health professionals have failed to materialise.

Swathes of public health services have been privatised. The PS government has refused to invoke powers under the State of Emergency to requisition services from the private health companies, which refused to receive COVID-19 patients in the first wave. Their “help” now is limited to contracting just 80 beds for COVID-19 patients and 800 for non-COVID-19 patients.

At the same time as the National Health Service (SNS) is at the point of collapse, the PS government is pressing ahead with its plans to inject up to €474 million for Novo Banco, the so-called “good bank” rescued from the collapse of Banco Espirito Santo in 2014 and now owned by the US Lone Star vulture fund. Over €4 billion has already been pumped into Novo Bank. This is part of the 18 billion euros used to prop up the financial system over the last decade, even prompting right-wing president, de Sousa, to confess, “It's tempting to say 'why didn't it go to housing, why didn't it go to health, why didn't it go to social security, why did it not go to the homeless?"

Mario Draghi to head Italy’s new government

Peter Schwarz

Former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi is to head Italy’s new government. Italian President Sergio Mattarella tasked the 73 year old with taking the reins of power on Wednesday, after efforts to revive the previous governing coalition of Five Star, Democrats and two smaller parties failed.

Draghi will now assemble a cabinet of technocrats and seek a majority in parliament. That he will get it is not certain but likely. So far, only the fascist Fratelli d’Italia have spoken out clearly against Draghi and for the immediate holding of new elections.

Mario Draghi in 2013 (Source: World Economic Forum)

The Democrats and ex-premier Matteo Renzi, whose minority party had triggered the crisis with its withdrawal from the government, are fully behind Draghi. “Now is the time for the constructive,” Renzi cheered on Twitter. “Now all people of goodwill must heed President Mattarella’s call and support Mario Draghi’s government. Now is the time for sobriety. Zero polemics. Viva l’Italia.”

The other parties are maneuvering. The Five Stars, the largest group in parliament, is in a dilemma. Draghi embodies the political establishment they once claimed to fight. Since the Five Stars have been in government, however, they have proved to be a reliable pillar of capitalist rule. Added to this is the fear of losing their seats. As a result of falling poll ratings and a reduction in the size of parliament, three-quarters of the Five Star MPs would lose their seats in the event voters go to the polls anew.

The leader of the far-right Lega, Matteo Salvini, is calling for early elections, but with little conviction. Less than a year ago, he had proposed Draghi as head of government. Now, too, he attests that the former ECB chief is “estimable.” The problem is not Draghi, “but what he does and for whom he does it.”

Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia is expected to support Draghi. Berlusconi had already said in advance that he would respect Mattarella’s decision.

With Draghi, a man is taking the reins of Italian politics who embodies European finance capital like no other. Born in Rome in 1947, he studied economics in his hometown and earned his doctorate at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1977. Since then, he has taught at several universities and held leading positions in state and private banks. He was executive director of the World Bank, director general of the Italian Ministry of Finance and vice president of the US investment bank Goldman Sachs International in London (2002-05). He then took over as head of Italy’s central bank and then the European Central Bank (2011-19).

As head of the ECB, Draghi’s name became synonymous with the implementation of policies that provided unlimited funds to the financial markets, even as the living standards of the working class continued to fall because of the European Union’s austerity dictates. Draghi’s phrase, “Whatever it takes,” with which he opened the money tap in 2012 when the euro came under pressure on the financial markets, is legendary. Since then, the ECB has bought up several trillion euros’ worth of securities, made the unlimited refinancing of banks possible through low interest rates and thus enabled the stock markets to record continuous highs.

Draghi takes over the leadership of the Italian government at a time when the country is in a deep economic, social and health care crisis and on the eve of a social explosion. It has one of the highest coronavirus infection rates in the world, with 2.6 million infected and 90,000 dead. Unemployment figures are rising, and the national debt, at 160 percent of GDP, is almost three times as high as that allowed by the EU.

Now, Draghi is to ensure that the €209 billion due to the country as grants and loans from the EU’s Coronavirus Fund are used to trim the Italian economy to boost profitability at the expense of the working class—that is, not to alleviate the devastating social consequences of the pandemic.

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung, which does not mince words on such issues, commented, “Tasks await the 73-year-old Draghi that were not tackled or at least not completed during two decades. Now, reforms are unequivocally demanded by the European Union, because without them, Italy threatens to become a systemic risk for the entire political and economic constitution of Europe.”

Such policies cannot be achieved by democratic means. President Mattarella made a dramatic appeal to Italy’s political parties and their deputies to “give, immediately, life to a new government, adequate to deal with the serious emergencies present: health, social, economic, financial.

“Elections—i.e., giving citizens a say—are not something the country can afford at the moment,” the president stressed. “They were too big a gamble at this time due to the pandemic. Italy could not afford to go into election campaign mode for months, with all the risks that entailed.” The coming months were crucial, he said, stressing, “This requires a government in full functioning mode.”

Such a government will be a dictatorship of the banks. It will intensify the policies of austerity and herd immunity, giving further impetus to fascist forces.

Only the independent intervention of the working class can stop the turn of the ruling class toward dictatorship and fascism in Italy and throughout Europe. The anger and willingness of the working class to fight are enormous. But it lacks a political perspective and leadership. The Democrats, their pseudoleft periphery and the trade unions have suppressed all social struggles since the 1990s and pursued policies in the interests of capital. The most right-wing forces have benefited from this. Lega and Fratelli d’Italia are together polling 40 percent in the latest surveys.

Eight years ago, the Five Stars filled the political vacuum. With loud rants about the corruption of the political elites, they immediately won a quarter of all votes. Five years later, the Five Stars allied with the far-right Lega and formed a joint government. And now they are likely to help Draghi to power.

Hundreds already deported from the US under Biden despite executive orders

Kevin Martinez

Despite pledging to reverse the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies, President Joe Biden has overseen the deportation of hundreds of immigrants and refugees since assuming office on January 20. Last week saw Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deport 15 people to Jamaica on Thursday and 269 people to Guatemala and Honduras on Friday. More deportation flights are scheduled for next Monday.

After a much hyped 100-day moratorium on deportations was announced by theWhite House a federal judge in Texas ruled on January 26 that it could not be enforced. The ruling, however, did not require the government to actually schedule them. The judge was appointed by President Donald Trump and approved a challenge brought by the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, who drafted a lawsuit challenging the 2020 presidential election results on behalf of Trump.

Immigrants await word on their status (Source: Democracy Now!)

“Within 6 days of Biden’s inauguration, Texas has HALTED his illegal deportation freeze,” Paxton tweeted following the decision. “*This* was a seditious left-wing insurrection. And my team and I stopped it.”

US District Judge Drew Tipton granted the temporary restraining order against enforcing the 100-day moratorium that went into effect on January 22. Tipton said the Biden administration had violated the federal Administrative Procedure Act and did not make clear why a pause in deportations was necessary.

On Friday, Titpon said he would extend his order until February 23. The Biden Justice Department has not issued an appeal to Tipton or a federal court to block the order.

It is unclear how many deported immigrants fell under new guidelines given to the Department of Homeland Security and its agencies that took effect Monday.

In El Paso, Texas, officials deported a woman who witnessed the 2019 massacre at a Walmart which left 23 people dead. According to her lawyer, she had agreed to be a witness against the shooter and met with the local district attorney’s office.

Rosa, who was only identified by her first name for fear of her life in Juarez, Mexico, a city rife with gangs and violence, was pulled over last Wednesday for a broken brake light and was detained based on previous traffic warrants. She was then handed over to ICE and deported before she could reach her attorney.

ICE had issued a detainer, a means by which immigrants are detained for immigration violations on the same day they are arrested. The district attorney’s office in El Paso confirmed that they had given Rosa’s attorneys the needed documents to request a US visa for crime victims, but in a statement also said that Rosa “is not a victim of the Walmart shooting case.”

Honduran officials also confirmed that 131 people landed on Friday on a deportation flight from the US. A flight that landed in Guatemala had 138 people arrive on Friday, with another 30 people expected to arrive the following Monday, according to officials there.

President Biden signed three executive orders on Tuesday that he claimed would create a more “fair, orderly, humane” immigration system. Biden also declared a task force that would supposedly reunite migrant children separated from their families for crossing the US-Mexico border.

Biden’s choice for homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, the first Latino to head the repressive agency, was also confirmed by the Senate this week.

“There’s a lot of talk, with good reason, about the number of executive orders that I’ve signed. I’m not making new law—I’m eliminating bad policy,” said Biden when speaking to reporters in the Oval Office as he signed the three orders.

Biden called the separation of children at the border a “moral and national shame.” It should be noted that this policy was upheld for all eight years of the previous Obama-Biden administration, which deported and broke up more immigrant families than any other administration in US history. Shocking images of children held behind fences were taken in 2014, when Biden was vice president.

The changes contained in Biden’s order are thoroughly cosmetic, intended to do away with the most politically embarrassing aspects of the last administration’s anti-immigrant policies while still retaining, and in some cases expanding, the government’s vast deportation machine.

The task force for separated children will not enforce anything but merely provide recommendations on how to reunite families and issue a report within 120 days and every 60 days thereafter on its progress.

A statement from American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Galernt to NPR said, “What we need now is an immediate commitment to specific remedies, including reunification in the U.S., permanent legal status and restitution for all of the 5,500-plus families separated by the Trump administration.”

He added, “Anything short of that will be extremely troubling given that the U.S. government engaged in deliberate child abuse.”

Biden’s second order rescinded the Migrant Protection Protocols program, or the “Remain in Mexico” program, as dubbed by Trump. The protocol condemned migrants and refugees to stay in Mexico while their asylum cases played out in the US indefinitely, essentially denying them sanctuary.

The exact details of Biden’s plan and how it will assist migrants stuck in squalid camps at the border was unclear. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters to lower their expectations of immediate immigration reform, saying: “That’s going to take some time. It’s not going to happen overnight.”

Immigrant advocates have expressed disappointment with Biden’s new executive orders, including Linda Rivas, an immigrant attorney and director of the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, who represents people caught up in the “Remain in Mexico” program.

She told CNN how she has been trying to console her clients over the last week, including a Honduran mother who was raped while waiting in Mexico under Trump’s policy and is now worried about her 11-year-old son. Rivas explained the current situation for asylum seekers: “Definitely a loss of hope. The trauma they are enduring is unimaginable.”

The third order requires a “top-to-bottom review of recent regulations, policies and guidance that have set up barriers to our legal immigration system.” This included revoking Trump’s “public charge” rule, which prevented immigrants from getting a green card, or permanent residence, if they had or were even just likely to receive public assistance, such as housing subsidies.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has made clear it will be expanding the number of detained immigrant children held in camps along the US-Mexico border by reopening a facility in Carizzo Springs, Texas, designed to hold upwards of 700 children and perhaps more if needed.

The camp will jail unaccompanied children over age 13 who are medically cleared from COVID-19 quarantine, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), the agency under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which is responsible for immigrant children.

Currently, there are some 4,730 children held by the ORR. The agency has been also dealing with COVID-19 infections among children and staff, with a total of 1,748 confirmed cases among children. According to the agency, more than 21,000 coronavirus tests have been given and the “majority” of infected have recovered and been moved from quarantine.

The Department of Homeland Security under Biden is also poised to expand its processing capacity with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) building soft-sided structures in Donna, Texas, near the Rio Grande Valley, because a nearby processing center is being closed for renovation.

The continued deportations and expansion of detention camps under Biden make a mockery of those who claimed a Democratic administration would reverse Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and provide humane and immediate sanctuary for refugees and asylum seekers. Only the most superficial changes have been announced, and hardly enforced at that, while much of the same policies have been kept.

Bangladesh government begins to forcibly remove Rohingya refugees

Wimal Perera

The Bangladesh government has started shipping Rohingya refugees to the isolated and unsafe Bhasan Char island, 34 kilometres from the mainland. At the same time, as the result of an intervention by China, Dhaka is again also seeking to send Rohingyas back to Myanmar, from where they fled the regime’s genocidal violence.

There are over one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Prime Minister Sheik Hasina’s government considers them a burden to the country, and has branded them a “security” threat. They are treated inhumanly, condemned to live under miserable conditions.

Hamida, 22, (center) and her son Mohammed, aged one, wait to receive food aid along with hundreds of other Rohingya refugees, at Kutupalong Refugee Camp, in Bangladesh. © UNHCR/Andrew McConnell

They are currently housed in 34 squalid refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Ukhiya and Teknaf Upazilas, about 350 kilometres from Dhaka. These encampments—the most densely overcrowded refugee camps in the world—have no adequate water supply, sanitation and sewage facilities, constantly threatening the asylum seekers with the spread of various diseases.

The government plans to move some 100,000 refugees to Bhasan Char, an unstable, cyclone-prone island formed by the accumulation of silt where the River Meghna enters the Bay of Bengal. Prior to 2006, the mud island did not exist.

Hasina’s government was forced to halt a previous attempt to relocate Rohingyas to Bhasan Char because of domestic and international criticism. About 300 asylum seekers were sent to the island last May after they tried to escape to Malaysia on a boat.

Dhaka has rejected those criticisms, now insisting the island is safe enough and began the new relocation in early December. Human rights activists told the media the authorities have used both cash enticements and coercion to send batches of people.

The government has so far sent about 6,700 refugees—two groups in December totalling 3,446 people and two groups in January with 3,254. The fourth group was removed on January 30, with 1,466 refugees taken in four ships from Chattogram port.

Meanwhile, China launched an initiative to arrange a January 19 tripartite agreement with Bangladesh and Myanmar for the “repatriation” of refugees back to Myanmar. Myanmar “agreed” to accept some 42,000 refugees, but that tentative agreement contained no guarantees that it will be met.

Two previous repatriation attempts, in November 2018 and August 2019, failed. Refugees refused to go, fearing further atrocities by the Myanmar military and Buddhist supremacists.

In 2017, the Myanmar government’s military brutality in Rakhine State, joined by Buddhist thugs, forced some 750,000 Rohingyas to flee across the border to Bangladesh. They joined about 300,000 refugees who had fled previous persecution.

China’s intervention is significant. Myanmar’s continued refusal to take back refugees has heightened tensions with Bangladesh. It appears that China sought to use the issue to strengthen its influence on Dhaka by prevailing on the Myanmar authorities to accept an agreement.

China was the source of $US1,159 million foreign direct investment in Bangladesh during the fiscal year 2019, or 30 percent of Bangladesh’s total.

During the January 19 meeting, Bangladeshi Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen insisted that repatriation of the refugees should start from the first quarter of this year. But Myanmar’s Deputy Minister for International Cooperation U Hau Do Suan said they could start only in the second quarter of this year.

Reflecting the Bangladeshi government’s frustration, the country’s media has cast renewed doubts over the implementation of the agreement because Myanmar’s military seized control of the country in a coup on February 1.

Bangladesh Enterprise Institute president M. Humayun Kabir told the Daily Star on February 2: “I think the Rohingya repatriation process will slow down because the military government will be more involved in its administrative and internal issues.”

The Bangladeshi government’s own brutal treatment of the Rohingyas was exposed when 300 refugees housed on Bhasan Char staged a hunger strike last September, demanding to join their families in Cox’s Bazar, because of the terrible conditions on the island.

Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, last October accused naval officers of assaulting refugees, saying they “beat Rohingya refugees, including children, who were protesting their detention and begging to return to their families in Cox’s Bazar.”

One refugee reported: “Navy personnel used tree branches and black rubber sticks to beat us.”

The country’s human rights organisation Odhikar accused the authorities of killing more than 100 Rohingya refugees in extrajudicial executions between August 2017 and July 2020, purportedly in crackdowns on the illegal drug trade.

The government used the COVID-19 pandemic to impose a “complete lockdown” in the camps last April. Crackdowns were carried out, shops run by refugees closed, internet services were blocked and mobile phones were confiscated.

In reality, the refugees have been left exposed to COVID-19. The first coronavirus death in Cox’s Bazar was reported in late May when Bangladesh’s total death toll stood at around 700 and cases exceeded 50,000. Because of the government’s low testing rates, the situation in the camps remains unclear.

The World Health Organisation reported in early December that among the refugees: “A total of 363 COVID-19 cases have been reported out of 19,651 samples tested. The total number of deaths stood at 10.”

Now the pandemic is spreading rapidly throughout the country. As of Tuesday, total deaths stood at 8,149 and cases at 536,107, but both figures are under-statements because of the low rate of testing.

UNICEF last August said the pandemic had disrupted life for more than 460,000 Rohingya children, whose education facilities in the camps had been closed since March. The government has provided no alternative methods of education.

In fact, the Bangladesh government’s callous attitude toward the refugees mirrors that of the Myanmar regime. In October, Human Rights Watch criticised Myanmar for accommodating about 130,000 Rohingyas in camps “under squalid and abusive conditions, which are like ‘open prisons’” for “eight years, cut off from their homes, land, and livelihoods.”