Tensions rise between neighboring Guyana and Venezuela over a piece of land that has been disputed since at least 1835. Both Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali and Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro have exchanged sharp words about the status of the Essequibo region, which both countries claim. Since 1990, the two countries have pursued their claims through a United Nations “good offices” process; as recently as 2013, President Maduro and Guyana’s then-President Donald Ramotar said that the discussions over Essequibo were “going well” under this UN framework.
Everything changed in 2015, and since then the tensions between the two countries have flared up. Matters became so grave that the UN transferred the dispute mechanism from its “good offices” to the International Court of Justice, which ruled in December 2020 that it has jurisdiction over the case.
It’s All About Oil
Things changed in 2015 because of oil.
ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil companies (newly merged in 1998), signed an agreement with the government of Guyana in 1999 to develop the Stabroek block, which is off the coast of the disputed Essequibo region. Over the course of the following decade, despite the dispute, ExxonMobil began to prospect in the area. It is important to recall that in 2007, the Venezuelan government ejected ExxonMobil from Venezuela’s Orinoco Basin oil fields because the U.S. multinational corporation refused to comply with the new Venezuelan laws. ExxonMobil turned its attention toward Guyana and—in particular—to the disputed Essequibo region. As a consequence of the aggressive prospecting of oil companies (ExxonMobil, but also the Canadian firm CGX), Guyana faced renewed border disputes not only with Venezuela but also with Suriname, Guyana’s neighbor to the east.
In 2015, ExxonMobil announced that it had found 295 feet of “high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs”; this is one of the largest oil finds in recent years. A close reading of the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) between Guyana’s government led by then-President David Granger and ExxonMobil should shock any sensitive person. ExxonMobil was given 75 percent of the oil revenue toward cost recovery, with the rest shared 50-50 with Guyana; the oil company, in turn, is exempt from any taxes. Article 32 (“Stability of Agreement”) says that the government “shall not amend, modify, rescind, terminate, declare invalid or unenforceable, require renegotiation of, compel replacement or substitution, or otherwise seek to avoid, alter, or limit this Agreement” without the consent of ExxonMobil. This agreement traps all future Guyanese governments in an inexcusable deal that has been made on disputed waters.
Having studied the contract, Dr. Jan Mangal—a former presidential adviser to President Granger and a consultant for the Danish company NTD Offshore—said that this deal was one of the worst that he had ever seen. Guyana, Mangal argued, is being “re-colonized,” by which he meant that the deal would “make a few local business people and politicians rich from oil so they will work for the exploiters and so they will not work for their country folk.” Even the International Monetary Fund weighed in with a report that said Guyana signed a very bad deal with ExxonMobil; the terms of the contract, the IMF wrote in a report for the Guyanese government, “are relatively favorable to investors by international standards” with royalty rates for Guyana “well below of what is observed internationally.”
Divide and Rule
When the Romans went out to conquer the Mediterranean world, they did so by the policy of divide et impera, divide the adversaries and then rule over them. The operations of ExxonMobil, with the help of the U.S. government, clearly show them egging on the conflict between Guyana and Venezuela over the Essequibo region so that ExxonMobil benefits in the chaos.
There is mischief in this conflict. After Venezuela declared its independence in 1811, the British colonizers in what they called British Guiana wanted to ensure that their stronghold would not be weakened. In 1835, Robert Hermann Schomburgk surveyed the edges of the British territory and drew a line that claimed the Essequibo and Orinoco river basins for his imperial masters; Venezuela disputed the so-called “Schomburgk Line” in 1840. When gold was discovered in the Cuyuni basin, plainly in Venezuelan territory, the line was shifted to claim that entire region. An arbitration treaty signed in the United States was bathed in controversy, with Venezuela rejecting it (according to Betty Jane Kissler in her 1972 study on the Venezuela-Guyana boundary dispute: 1899-1966). U.S. President Grover Cleveland watched these developments and then noted that the Schomburgk Line had been “largely extended in some mysterious way” and is treated as “so infallible, and so sacred” that they will not accept anything other than full annexation; “The trader,” wrote President Cleveland of the British motivation, “is again in evidence.”
The trader returned to the story with ExxonMobil.
Guyana’s government used money from ExxonMobil “to meet the estimated cost in 2018 of presenting Guyana/Venezuela controversy at the International Court of Justice including payment of legal fees.” In mid-2020, the Guyanese paper Kaieteur News’ senior reporter Kiana Wilburg broke the story that the World Bank had paid $1.2 million to Hunton Andrews Kurth, a law firm long associated with ExxonMobil, to revise Guyana’s petroleum laws. Wilburg’s report quoted the former presidential adviser Dr. Jan Mangal, who said that the government was “letting the very companies we need to regulate dictate the country’s business. This is a recipe for failure. And as you can see, we are failing.”
Before attention could be brought to the sweetheart deal given to ExxonMobil, and the opportunity for ExxonMobil’s lawyers to write Guyana’s laws, then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Guyana in September 2020. He was on a three-day tour of Venezuela’s neighbors—Guyana, Brazil, and Colombia—to accelerate the U.S. hybrid war against Venezuela. It was an odd situation. The CIA had overthrownGuyana’s democratically elected government of President Cheddi Jagan in 1964. More than half a century later, the U.S. was trying to use Guyana as an instrument of regime change against Venezuela. That is why the Guyana Human Rights Association asked President Ali to “avoid any recklessness.” Pompeo’s quid pro quo on the table was that if Guyana joined the crusade against Venezuela and tightened its embrace of ExxonMobil, then the U.S. would support its claims to Essequibo.
A columnist for Kaieteur News wrote a sharp commentary after Pompeo left the country. “Here we are, caught in the middle, between Exxon and Venezuela and we have nothing to show for it. We Guyanese don’t even know the full details regarding oil deals conducted on our behalf, by our political leaders with Exxon… We talk about oil and the man comes and talks about terrorism and drugs and the sea—the things that matter to America. He protects his own, delivers to his own,” the columnist wrote. “Once again, Guyanese got nothing.”
The conflict on the Guyanese-Venezuelan border heats up. ExxonMobil sits on the sidelines, smiling. The distraction suits the oil giants. They make their money whether there is peace or war.
The Farmers’ Protest Movement has brought into sharp focus that India consists of two countries. One is the mighty sprawling urban India where all of us fortunate live spoilt by consumerism and wanting more and more at the cost of others. The other is the weak scattered rural population who are waiting still since 1947 independence to survive poverty, hunger, malnutrition, unemployment and basic education and health facilities. In 73 years of independence the rural population has been denied even the ultimate basic necessity of clean drinking water – why bother for more.
For the first time the rural population has risen against the insensitive Government in the form of village farmers protesting the one-sided Farm Laws and telling the rulers to mind their own business. The farmers are declaring that we toil and till the land with our sweat and thus feed the vast population of this country and the least you can do is to step telling us that the Farm Laws are for my benefit. Don’t call us Khalistanis or terrorists because if we stop farming you will not survive. You have no tears for the more than 3,00,000 farmers that have committed suicide over the years and more than 130 farmers have died during this recent ongoing protest but you shed a lot of tears for the earning fall of your dear Corporates or for sliding GDP.
Our Father of the Nation warned us in 1948 with these prophetic words :
“Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?’
Merely placing flowers in Rajghat on his birthday and martyrdom day was not Mahatma’s message. He was Mahatma for and of the poor and deprived.
We are ready to lower taxes and give tax breaks to the urban population and the rich community but not increased subsidies to the toiling farmers. Compare this with other countries who promote farming not kill it.
GOVERNMENT SUBSIDY
TO Agriculture sector 2019
Economies
Subsidy US$
China
185.9 Billion
E,U,
101.3 Billion
U.S.A.
48.9 Billion
Japan
37.6 Billion
Indonesia
29.4 Billion
Korea
20.8 Billion
India
11.0 Billion
Source : Tradevistas
The Migrant crisis during this Corona Virus and continuous lockdown has shown us the underbelly of our pseudo-development model. Globalisation and so-called liberalization has benefitted a few at the top and the vast majority at the bottom of the pile have waited patiently for the promised trickle-down effect which never came in the last thirty years. Vast technological progress has not resulted in equitable distribution of wealth; rather it has converted a human being into a number to be manipulated, shadowed and controlled by a heartless technology. This globalization has reduced the vast majority as a statistical entity whose only purpose in life is to serve the fortunate and powerful few. This is slavery of the worst kind since the slave is brain-washed to feel that he is serving a noble purpose.
It would be pertinent to remember in these turbulent times what Mahatma Gandhi had suggested in the 1940’s for making the rural India as the centerpiece of planning and growth.
“I am convinced that if India is to attain true freedom and through India the world also, then sooner or later the fact must be recognized that people will have to live in villages, not in towns, in huts, not in palaces.
My idea of Village Swaraj is that it is a complete Republic, independent of its neighbours for its own vital wants, and yet interdependent for many others in which dependence is a necessity. Thus every village’s first concern will be to grow its own food crops and cotton for its cloth. It should have a reserve for its cattle, recreation and playground for adults and children. Then if more land is available, it will grow useful money crops. The village will maintain a village theatre, school and public hall. It will have its own waterworks ensuring clean water supply. This can be done through controlled wells or tanks. Education will be compulsory up to the final basic course. As far as possible every activity will be conducted on the co-operative basis.
No one under it should suffer for want of food and clothing. We should be ashamed of resting or having a square meal so long as there is one able-bodied man or woman without work or food.”
The wide gulf existing between the urban and rural population even after 73 years of independence proves that we are more concerned for our city population than our simple living uneducated rural human beings. It explains how quick we are ready to spend crores over new Parliament building, bullet train, smart cities, modernizing airports, etc. but would rather not divert any budgetary support to build schools, hospitals, provide drinking water and electricity to villages in India. Much has been made of village electrification in India proclaiming that almost all Indian villages have been electrified. Of course electric poles may have been erected and wires stretched but there is no current flowing through them.
The disparity between urban and rural development has been sharply focused by Mr. Avay Shukla in a revealing article entitled ‘The Day Bharat came calling on India’ as given below –
S. No.
Item
Urban
Rural
1.
Wealth Growth
102 billionaires
330,000 high net worth individuals
200 million hungry
40% children malnutrition
Over 3,00,000 suicides due to debt
2.
Expenditure on smart cities
200,000Crores
NIL
3.
Doctors and hospital beds
80%
20%
4.
During Pandemic
100 billionaires increased their wealth by 400 billion dollars
120 million, mainly migrants, lost jobs
5.
Per capita income
Rs. 98435
Rs. 40924
6.
Monthly household expenditure
Rs. 2630
Rs. 1430
7.
Population
55%
45%
Through the decentralization of power and the investment emphasis on the rural sector, we can invert the existing pyramid so that the poor, deprived and neglected become the prime concern of ours and real development indices relate to the well-being of this section of society. It is of no consequence if the rich get richer; it is important that the bottom is offered a life of purpose and happiness. The equality and equity will not then remain merely a slogan.
Rural India is crying for help and the Farmers’ Agitation is a result of this neglect. The test of real leadership is that it hears these complaints and acts according to the will of the population which it is supposed to represent. The silence from this Government is deafening.
With Pakistan in the throes of mounting social, economic and geopolitical crises, Prime Minister Imran Khan and his right-wing populist Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI) government are being pressured by a ten-party opposition alliance to step down and call fresh elections. An ultimatum on January 31 for the government to step down passed with no response. The opposition alliance subsequently announced that it would expand its campaign. Previous attempts by the government to stop opposition rallies by declaring them illegal have failed.
Formed last October, the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) is led by the dynastic Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N). These longstanding parties of the Pakistani bourgeoisie have been widely discredited by their implementation for the past three decades of International Monetary Fund-dictated pro-market “reforms,” and their support for Washington’s neo-colonial Afghan war and the seven decades-old partnership between the Pakistani military and the Pentagon.
Police officers in riot gear stand guard outside the head office of Election Commission of Pakistan on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)
Both parties are now posturing as strong opponents of the right-wing policies of the Khan government. Almost as soon as he assumed office in August 2018, Khan unceremoniously dropped his election campaign rhetoric about building an “Islamic welfare state” in favor of further pro-market reforms demanded by the IMF.
The PDM claims the PTI government is illegitimate because the military rigged the 2018 election to ensure a PTI victory and Khan’s assuming office. At the time, both the PPP and PML-N rejected the election results, but they soon reconciled themselves to sitting on the parliamentary opposition benches. While there was acknowledgment that the military—which has repeatedly staged coups and effectively controls the country’s foreign and national security policies—pulled strings behind the scenes on the PTI’s behalf, there was little to no popular support for the corrupt PML-N and PPP’s challenge to the election outcome.
However, amid rising popular dissatisfaction with the PTI government due to the skyrocketing cost of living, its privatization measures, destruction of jobs, and the paltry support it provided during an inadequate and ill-prepared COVID-19 lockdown, the PDM has been able to gain some popular traction.
From December 2019 to March 2020, prices were rising at a double-digit annual rate, peaking at 14.6 per cent in January. Since then, inflation has hovered between 8 and 10 per cent, making it increasingly difficult for many to put food on the table.
At the IMF’s urging and in the name of reducing the budget deficit, Khan imposed a wage freeze on all government sector workers as part of the budget for the 2020-21 financial year. At the same time the government increased the defense budget by 12 per cent, and to 18 percent of all state expenditure.
In November, Pakistan Steel Mills laid off 4,544 workers as part of the Khan government’s privatization drive. The government’s pledge to the IMF that it will sell off a long list of state-run enterprises has provoked widespread opposition. These include protests this year by Water & Power Development Authority workers against the privatization of the state-run utility and its power distribution entities. Health care workers have also continued to voice their opposition to the government’s plans to privatize the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, the top hospital in Islamabad.
The impact of these economic policies is especially devastating for young workers. In running for office, the PTI not only postured as an alternative to the corrupt parties of Islamabad. It promised it would significantly expand youth employment opportunities.
The Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
Popular anger towards the government has been exacerbated by the ever-worsening socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic domestically and globally.
The official figures show Pakistan with relatively low numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths, 555,000 and 11,830 respectively. However, given Pakistan’s ramshackle health care system and teeming slums, and the widespread prevalence of hunger and disease, these figures undoubtedly understate the pandemic’s true impact.
The government responded to the pandemic with callous indifference towards the poor. Apart from a face-saving measure of four monthly payments of 12,000 rupees (about US$74.50) to 12 million low-income earners, nothing has been done to assist the estimated 20.6 million workers who have lost their jobs since April. Khan refused to implement comprehensive lockdown measures to prevent the spread of the virus, because “people would die of hunger.”
Undermining the government’s claim to be overseeing an economic and jobs recovery, official figures indicate that poverty has increased by 10 million since the onset of the pandemic, meaning that 60 million Pakistanis now live in poverty.
Other data shows that poverty was in fact much more widespread in the country prior to the pandemic than the government cares to admit. Hafiz A. Pasha, an internationally recognized economist and former minister in past PML-N and PPP governments, told the Express Tribune in December 2019 that the PTI government was implementing “probably the toughest” IMF program in the country’s history and that this would result in the pauperization of some 20 million people. Pasha projected that the number of people in poverty would increase from 69 million in June 2018 to 87 million by June 2020.
Despite the health emergency and the severe economic crisis caused by the pandemic, the government has continued to push through IMF-dictated anti-worker policies, whilst removing the limited lockdown measures instituted in the spring. Its main aim has been to meet the IMF targets and obtain a resumption of payments from a suspended $6 billion loan.
In addition to hypocritically posing as opponents of the PTI’s ruinous economic policies, the PML-N and PPP leaders have made limited criticisms of the military and intelligence apparatus for routinely violating democratic rights.
The support the Pashtun Tahaffuz [Protection] Movement (PTM) has given the PDM helps the PPP and PML-N leaderships deflect attention away from their own complicity in the military’s crimes. Formed in 2018 to demand the military be held to account for abuses against the Pashtun population and especially the enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and wholesale violations of human rights it carried out in the Northwest region formerly known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the PTM attracted widespread popular support.
Although the PTM limited its demands for “justice” only to crimes against Pashtuns, its agitation struck a chord among millions of other Pakistanis who have suffered at the hands of the military—whether in Karachi, occupied since 2013 on the pretext of fighting “crime” and “terrorism,” or Balochistan, where the military is brutally suppressing a Baloch ethno-separatist insurgency.
Pakistan’s venal ruling elite, including governments led and supported by the PPP and PML-N, prosecuted war in the FATA region as part of its reactionary partnership with US imperialism. Washington, for its part, terrorized the region with industrial-scale killings by Predator drones.
The criminal role of Washington and the reactionary Pentagon-Rawalpindi axis, however, do not trouble the PTM. By joining the servile local agents of US imperialism in the Islamabad elite to form the PDM, and continuing to support it despite formally withdrawing from the alliance, the PTM has doubly demonstrated its own right-wing, pro-imperialist character.
Neither the PPP or PML-N, nor the PDM as a whole, represent a path forward for the workers and toilers of Pakistan against the destruction of their livelihoods and the gutting of democratic rights. Led by tried and tested elements of the ruling elite, the PDM merely intends to exploit mass dissatisfaction towards the Khan government for reactionary ends in the bitter factional feud unfolding in Islamabad. The anti-democratic character of this alliance is symbolized by its president, Maulana Fazalur Rehman of the Islamist fundamentalist Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazal (JUI-F). A fixture of the political establishment, Rehman for many years connived with the US-backed dictator General Pervez Musharraf.
This “unlikely coalition,” as some commentators have described it, has lasted longer than many initially expected. The PDM’s continued ability to challenge the government reflects growing resentments within powerful sections of Islamabad’s elite, which perceives the Khan government’s policies as damaging to its interests.
Geopolitical crisis fuels factional disputes within the ruling class
With the backing of top military leaders, Khan has attempted to sideline the PTI’s principal political opponents through corruption cases. However, powerful sections of the ruling elite, including elements within the military, apparently believe that this campaign has gone too far. Almost every significant leader of the opposition is facing corruption charges from the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), an agency with wide-ranging powers established in 1999 by Musharraf to intimidate or jail those opposed to his coup regime.
The military has directly ruled Pakistan for almost half of its existence as an independent state. While Musharraf was forced from power in 2008, the military has remained very much the power behind the throne, including maintaining its own relations with Washington and fiercely rebuffing civilian attempts to assert control over foreign and security policy. Under the Khan government, it has significantly increased its economic role, exacerbating factional tensions in Islamabad. Khan has appointed serving or retired military generals to key economic, industrial and policymaking positions.
Over the past decade-and-a-half Islamabad’s relations with Washington have become increasingly fraught because the latter has anointed its arch-rival, India, as its principal South Asian ally and made it a pivot of its anti-China strategic offensive. Islamabad and Beijing have responded by strengthening their longstanding partnership, with China making a point of privileging its ties with the Pakistani military. An expression of this is Beijing’s favoring of the military over civilian authorities to economically and strategically supervise the building of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). A factor in Beijing’s calculations was undoubtedly Khan’s commitment to Washington, later reversed to, “review” the CPEC projects.
The CPEC includes large-scale infrastructure projects with investments exceeding $US 60 billion. Generous kickbacks attached to large development projects certainly play a major role in the dogfight within the political establishment. It is likely that the generals are devouring the lion’s share. These tensions are significantly exacerbated by the country’s severe economic crisis amid ongoing global economic turbulence.
Foreign direct investment in the country remains abysmally low, while exports are virtually stagnant. The economy is essentially functioning on borrowed money. Under the Khan government, the public debt has increased as a ratio to gross domestic product from 72.5 per cent to 87 per cent. Repayments for foreign borrowings alone have increased to $10.4 billion this year.
The IMF is demanding politically explosive measures, including a further raising of electricity tariffs and higher tax collection targets. Apart from the government’s need to secure the resumption of its $6 billion IMF loan, the IMF’s approval of its economic policy is essential for Islamabad to borrow from other international banks and raise money by issuing bonds. The demand from Saudi Arabia for the early repayment of a loan of $3 billion, of which $1 billion remains outstanding after December and January payments, put significant pressure on Pakistan’s dwindling foreign reserves.
Islamabad is also being rattled by the continuing crisis in its relations with Washington. During the Cold War, Pakistan was Washington’s principal South Asian ally. Nothing could more clearly demonstrate the extent of Islamabad’s geopolitical crisis in recent years than Washington’s public endorsement of India’s 2016 and 2019 “surgical strike” attacks deep inside Pakistan’s territory, under the pretext of “self-defense.” On both occasions, New Delhi’s aggressive actions brought the two countries to the precipice of an all-out war.
Washington has secured its alliance with India by providing New Delhi access to civilian nuclear technology and advanced US weaponry, and expanding cooperation between the two countries’ militaries. In doing so, Washington has ignored repeated warnings from Islamabad that it is dangerously disrupting the “balance of power” in the region.
A further geopolitical setback for Islamabad came when the imperialist and great powers, China excepted, spurned its pleas that they oppose New Delhi’s illegal stripping of the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region of its semi-autonomous constitutional status. This reactionary power play was followed by a brutal security crackdown in Indian-held Kashmir that continues to this day.
Counting on Beijing’s own fears of the growing Indo-US alliance, Islamabad is desperately relying on Beijing to push back against India’s belligerence. This intertwining of the India-Pakistan rivalry with the conflict between US imperialism and China is further destabilizing the entire region, and increasing the threat of a catastrophic war fought with nuclear weapons.
Biden’s assumption of the reins of power in Washington has revived hopes among sections of Pakistan’s ruling elite that relations with the US can be patched up. These sections believe they can get back in Washington’s good graces by helping shepherd the Taliban into striking a deal with the US-installed government in Kabul along the lines demanded by Washington.
However, the Biden administration has made it abundantly clear that it intends to strengthen the Indo-US “global strategic partnership,” as part of a further ratcheting up of US imperialism’s drive to thwart China’s emergence as a “strategic competitor.” Any attempt by Islamabad to maneuver with Washington will therefore immediately come up against US demands that it should curtail China’s growing influence in the country. That would include, above all, revisiting the CPEC projects opposed by both Washington and India.
US foreign policy specialists have indicated the Biden administration also plans to pressure Islamabad to endorse Washington’s highly provocative and dangerous campaign against Beijing over of its treatment of the Muslim Uyghur minority in China’s strategically situated Xinjiang province. Anthony Blinken, the incoming US Secretary of State, has expressed his support for the grotesque accusation labelled by his predecessor, the Trump acolyte Mike Pompeo, that China is perpetrating a “genocide” against the Uyghurs.
Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced Wednesday that the hard-right Ford government is intensifying its homicidal drive to reopen all of the province’s schools. By mid-February, students will even return to in-person classes in Toronto and the neighbouring Peel and York Regions. The Greater Toronto area has been hit especially hard by COVID-19 due to large workplace outbreaks and cramped living conditions.
Lecce’s announcement was the culmination of a dishonest propaganda campaign designed to convince parents and students that schools are safe.
Albert Campbell High School (Photo: Toronto District School Board)
Well aware of the widespread opposition to cramming pupils from dozens of households into small, poorly-ventilated rooms on a daily basis, the Ford government delayed school reopenings after the Christmas break.
To divide teachers and parents and feign that it was adhering to a science-based policy, the government reopened educational institutions regionally, beginning in sparsely-populated northern Ontario on January 11. Between January 25 and February 1, more than 250,000 students returned to the classroom in various parts of southern Ontario. Thirteen districts, including Hamilton and Windsor, are now set to follow on Monday, before Toronto, Peel, and York join them on February 16.
The most cynical aspect of the back-to-school drive is the government’s attempt to claim that it is being driven by concerns about children’s well-being. Education Minister Lecce said in a statement last week, “[The] government agrees with the growing consensus in the medical community that returning students to in-person learning is essential to the well-being, development and mental health of children.”
This is a lie. The reality is that the government “agrees” with big business that students must return to school so that their parents can be freed up from childcare responsibilities in order to go back to work churning out profits for the capitalists. This was more or less spelled out by the chief medical officer in Renfrew County in eastern Ontario, Dr. Robert Cushman, when the local school district reopened last month, “These kids need to go back to school,” said Cushman. “They need it for their education, they need it for their mental health, their social lives. And not only that, the parents of so many students are working parents so this is a driver of the economy.”
Thousands of teachers, parents and students across the province are well aware of the fact that they are being sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit. They are troubled by the dangerous conditions they will confront in schools, as shown by last week’s walkout by special education assistants at Beverley Public School in Toronto. But the opposition to school reopenings has been smothered by the education trade unions, which have opposed worker job action as “illegal” and instructed school staff to put their faith in the pro-employer Ontario Labour Relations Board to ensure safe working conditions. Accepting the right-wing propaganda that “we must learn to live with the virus,” they are now urging the government to accept their proposals for reduced class sizes and other minimal safety measures so it never has to close schools again!
The Ford government gained ideological fodder for its push to resume in-person learning in a report from the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto (also known as SickKids Hospital), released in mid-January. SickKids has been advising the provincial government on children and COVID-19 throughout the pandemic.
Dr. Ronald Cohn, a contributor to the report and the CEO of SickKids, summed up the report’s outlook, noting, “It is our strong opinion that schools should be the last doors to close and the first to open in society.”
Central to the report’s argument is the adverse effects of social distancing on the health of children, particularly young children. “It is critical to balance the risk of direct infection and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) in children and youth, school staff and the community with the harms of school closure, which is impacting children and youth’s physical health, developmental health, mental health and learning,” states the report.
The authors claimed it is possible to reopen schools with “enhanced infection prevention and control strategies and a robust testing strategy.” However, this “enhanced” strategy does not even include mass testing for asymptomatic students, a critical measure given that the vast majority of infections among children are asymptomatic.
The study also called for teachers and support staff to be prioritized for vaccination.
The report accepts the continued spread of the virus in schools as a given, writing, “It is anticipated that we will continue to detect cases of symptomatic and asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection in schools and it is important that public health authorities and schools be prepared to respond to cases involving both students and staff.” Astonishingly, the report observed that even if positive cases were detected at a school, this should not be considered reason enough to close it.
Much of the report is a rehash of earlier recommendations given to Queen’s Park as the new school year approached in late summer, and many of which the government chose to ignore. However today, the nationwide seven-day average of cases is approximately ten times greater than it was then. The government has not marshalled nearly enough resources to establish an adequate testing and tracing system that could reasonably allow for the reopening of schools even in a scenario where community transmission was under control.
The same week the SickKids report was published the Pediatricians Alliance of Ontario released its own report calling for the reopening of schools as soon as possible. The doctors cited the increase in “suicidal attempts, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, overdoses, eating disorders” and other maladies among their patients during the course of the pandemic.
The shedding of crocodile tears by the ruling elite over the health and social impact of the pandemic on children and families should fool no one. It does not appear to have occurred to any of these medical experts that the mental health crisis and related social problems are the product of decades of savage cuts to public spending and social services by the very same political parties who now pose as protectors of the well-being of “our kids.” The social, educational and health disaster created by these policies has been exacerbated over the first year of the pandemic by the funneling of hundreds of billions of dollars into the coffers of the major banks, big business and top 1 percent, while families and the public services they rely on have been starved of resources.
Despite the claims that the topic of school reopenings remains controversial, scientific studies have clearly established that children play a critical role in community transmission of COVID-19. A study of Montreal area schools found that the increase in general community rates of infection during the fall were preceded by a growth in infections among students. “Our analysis suggests we can expect a further increase in COVID-19 cases once schools are reopened in person,” the authors wrote. Notably, they argued that school reopenings could negate other policies aimed at restricting spread and “could therefore accelerate the exceeding of hospital capacities.”
Moreover, the spread of new variants of the novel coronavirus renders some recommendations made by SickKids even less effective than they once were. For example, at this point there is a large question mark over whether non-medical masks are at all effective against the British B.1.1.7 variant of the virus, which is more transmissible.
At the same time, the federal Liberal and Ontario governments have badly bungled the vaccination program, making the SickKids report’s appeal to inoculate educators akin to pushing on a string. Delays in the production and distribution of the Pfizer vaccine resulted in no new doses being delivered last week. Less than 300,000 doses have been administered so far in a province of nearly 15 million residents.
In truth, the provincial government has consistently ignored its own inadequate measures on schools during the pandemic. An investigation by the Toronto Star published on January 21 uncovered internal documents dating to last summer from Lecce’s office that showed how the government quickly abandoned its initial plans for controlling the spread of the virus. The planned widespread surveillance testing of students was dramatically downsized; the proposal to test all teachers—initially floated by Ford—was quickly abandoned; and the government refused to cap the sizes of classes at 15, or indeed impose any class-size reductions.
Predictably, the news media has marched in lockstep with the Ford government. The Liberal-aligned Toronto Star, a strong supporter of the McGuinty-Wynne Liberal governments which gutted education budgets and attacked teachers’ working conditions during their 16 years in power between 2003 and 2018, published an editorial entitled “Let’s not fail our children, it’s time to open their schools.” Cynically using the fact that the Ford government has allowed wide swathes of the economy to remain open throughout the pandemic, the Star demanded that it do the same for schools. “Toy-making factories are open while our children rot in front of their Zoom school,” it complained.
The effects of the pandemic and social distancing on childhood development and mental health are real and considerable. However, they will only be worsened by a full reopening of schools, which will result in skyrocketing infections among children and young people, who will carry the deadly virus home to their parents and other vulnerable family members.
The only way to protect child welfare and development during the pandemic is to provide billions of dollars in resources to guarantee high-quality online learning for all and full wages to parents who must remain home to look after their kids. The resources for such policies must be expropriated from the super-rich, who are wealthier than ever after a year of mass death and misery.
As the COVID-19 pandemic worsened last March, the University and College Union (UCU) fell in line behind the government and employers’ insistence that “we are all in it together”.
Its negotiators in the pensions and pay dispute, the largest UK university strike in history, put an offer on the table which they admitted “fall[s] short of our original demands” and pledged, “[w]e won’t escalate our disputes during the pandemic—but we won’t abandon them either”.
Manchester University staff and students protest at the Oxford Road campus during last year's national pensions and pay strike
This spirit of generosity was not shared by the universities, who announced plans to make compulsory redundancies, or opened “voluntary” redundancy schemes with the blessing of the UCU, citing projections that income from the inflated fees paid by international students would fall due to deferred or declined offers.
This expected fall failed to materialise, with UCAS figures released in September revealing that the number of students from outside the UK and EU starting a course in 2020 increased 9 percent on the previous year. However, between March and September, over 3,000 university staff were made redundant, according to information obtained by Edvoy.
Even without the excuse of a fall in student numbers, university management continue to use the room to manoeuvre provided by the UCU to force through job losses and restructuring plans, in some cases after previous attempts had failed due to staff and student opposition. These major attacks mirror the mass job losses in the higher education sector which followed the 2008 financial crash, and the response of the UCU has been identical. It is happy for jobs to be lost, as long as it can contain the anger of workers by “negotiating” slightly improved terms and maintaining its position at management’s side.
Last November, the WSWS reported on the hundreds of redundancies being planned at the universities across the UK. The response of the UCU to the attack on jobs, and the continued reopening of campuses during the pandemic, with many university staff classified as “critical workers”, has been to isolate each dispute and oppose calls for unified national action.
The pattern for the UCU’s betrayals was the dispute at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, which was called off on the basis of a management commitment to make no compulsory redundancies. This was hailed by UCU Scotland President and Socialist Workers Party member Carlo Morelli as a “magnificent victory”—even as the Socialist Worker admitted “many workers at the university have come forward to take voluntary redundancy”.
At the University of East London (UEL), where 441 staff have been notified they may be made redundant, 92 staff have already been affected by the restructuring, according to the Guardian. The majority of these are “voluntary”.
After receiving a mandate from members in December to strike, the UCU responded merely by calling on them to work to contract. The chair and vice-chair of the UEL branch of UCU are among the compulsory redundancies, but while the UCU has described this as victimisation it refused to call a stoppage in response.
Goldsmiths University of London has brought forward a new restructuring plan, attempting to cut £6 million from its budget, after an earlier one was defeated by student and staff opposition last year. Goldsmiths UCU branch responded by calling for members to work to contract and boycott the assessment of coursework, demanding the university commit to “no compulsory redundancies for the next 2 years”.
University management responded to this assessment boycott by threatening to deny furlough requests from anyone taking part. Against this attempt to victimise those participating in industrial action, the UCU has not escalated their response, but instead launched a petition on the basis that the university’s victimisation “discriminates against women trade unionists particularly”.
That the UCU has made such pathetic token gestures to defend its own members against victimisation and intimidation by university management demonstrates that it does not intend to wage a serious struggle against job cuts. In every dispute, the UCU reveals its character as a tool of the universities in managing and containing workers’ anger, while imposing the cuts demanded.
A motion put to the members of the UCU branch at Senate House University of London is explicit about the attitude of the union towards redundancies: “The current VR [voluntary redundancies] offering is not the best the University can afford, and offering more favourable terms would, likely, avoid the need for compulsory redundancies through change management processes.” That is, the UCU will wage no struggle against job cuts, as long as the university provides them with slightly better redundancy terms with which they hope to placate their membership.
In response to the plan for 200 job losses announced by Bangor University in October, the only response of the UCU has been to work out, together with the other two university trade unions, UNISON and Unite, an “amazing counterproposal” of “collective pay sacrifice”. This would be in return for a commitment to make no compulsory redundancies and to give the unions seats on the University Council. If this further integration into management is granted, the unions will use their position to impose yet more pay cuts and “voluntary” redundancies.
The University of Leicester has told 145 staff they may be made redundant and announced plans to “disinvest” in certain areas to focus on the “areas of excellence” which bring in more income—on the basis of a report from external private consultants which has not been published. The plans to make research staff redundant in the Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour and to completely eliminate research in pure mathematics were condemned by the UCU, which pointed out that the university had put itself in a dire financial condition prior to the pandemic, having spent large amounts of money on capital investments and become reliant on private finance. The UCU did nothing to oppose the 162 redundancies made by the university during the first wave of the pandemic.
Many of the redundancies planned nationally target areas of research which are vital to help combat the pandemic. The University of Liverpool has announced 47 redundancies in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, and the University of Leeds is seeking voluntary redundancies in both the School of Medicine and the Faculty of Biological Sciences.
The University of Dundee has announced restructuring plans in which it will merge several schools, cutting the equivalent of 34 full-time jobs. The UCU branch announced that if the university does not commit by February 5 to making no compulsory redundancies, they will organise a strike ballot.
Liverpool UCU members have voted to commit the branch to balloting for a strike, and the Leeds branch has “entered into dispute” with the university.
Given that the national UCU policy is to launch a “consultative” online ballot before any actual strike ballot, and that the declaring of a “dispute” inevitably leads to months of negotiations with management, many staff members will leave their jobs before any action is taken.
Events at the University of Brighton illustrate how the unions limit and isolate any industrial action even when their members do force a strike. The university announced a plan to centralise its IT service and notified 49 staff that they may be made redundant, with UNISON estimating 6-15 jobs will be lost. To oppose these changes, which will harm the IT provision in every department, the UCU called on all members to work to contract and arranged a mere five days of strikes in December. When the university did not respond, the UCU called five more for February.
The Brighton branch of UNISON voted overwhelmingly to join the strike in a consultative ballot, but the national union blocked the organisation of the follow-up statutory ballot.
Solent University in Southampton announced in November plans to cut 109 jobs, and said it would send dismissal letters before Christmas. The UCU’s use of a consultative ballot delayed any possible action until long after this point, with the postal ballot which gave a mandate for strike action closing January 20.
The UCU Left faction, under the influence of the Socialist Workers Party, works to provide the union with a “left” cover, advancing ever milder criticisms of every betrayal and spreading the illusion that the leadership can be pushed to the left.
When the UCU committed last March not to escalate strike action in the face of escalating dangers for workers, the UCU Left blamed the members for this betrayal, writing “In these circumstances [of the pandemic], it is perhaps not surprising that many UCU members have put their feelings of anger about the direction of higher education on hold. There seem to be more important things to worry about in the short-term than pension contribution rates and pay inequalities.”
To give the illusion of united national action, even while branches were being practically isolated, the pseudo-left within the union bureaucracy set up the “UCU Solidarity Movement”, which has mostly organised online rallies and solicited donations to strike funds, while hailing every dispute as a sign of the UCU’s ability to fight. This continued even after the union bureaucracy charged a £10 levy to around 100,000 of its members to keep afloat a Fighting Fund to “support … members who take strike action and face salary deductions from their employers.” This is despite the fact that the bureaucracy already coins in around £22 million in the dues income it receives annually.
The brutal deportation of three Austrian-born minors last week clearly shows that the parties involved in the Austrian coalition government—including, above all the Greens—have fully adopted the policies of the far-right Freedom Party.
Last Thursday, a group of people, including three minors, were taken from a deportation centre in Vienna-Simmering and flown to Georgia and Armenia. Around 160 people protested against the deportations.
Police drag away a protester (video clip)
The deportation of women and children was carried out with precision and extreme brutality by a large contingent of police. According to several observers at the scene, special police units were present wearing masks and accompanied by police dogs. Witnesses compared the police action to an “anti-terrorist operation.” According to several participants in the protests, the security forces made fun of their victims, making clearly audible, derogatory remarks aimed at provoking resistance.
When sit-ins were organised in front of the deportation centre to prevent the group from being forced to travel to the airport, police brutally attacked the peaceful protesters. According to a report in the German weekly Der Freitag, shortly before 5 a.m. police declared that “this assembly had assumed a character threatening public order” and would be dispersed.
Shortly afterwards, according to the report, “everything happened very quickly. Someone shouted an incomprehensible command. then there were kicks, blows and screams. The police forcefully dragged people away, along the asphalt. Individual policemen beat peaceful demonstrators who fell to the ground or were only just caught from hitting the ground by bystanders. Some young people fought back, but only briefly.” Then the vehicles left for the airport.
The deportations have been sharply criticised and on the same day, around 1,000 people gathered in the centre of Vienna to demonstrate against this inhumane policy.
Among those grabbed for deportation were two girls, Tina (12) and Lea (5), as well as their mother. They were flown to Georgia, their mother’s home country. Both children were born and raised in Austria. Numerous classmates, teachers and friends campaigned for the family to be able to stay in Vienna. Just one day before the deportations, several classmates came to the deportation prison to say goodbye to Tina through barred windows. Many expressed their bewilderment, anger and sadness in interviews.
The family lacks any prospects for the future in Georgia—a country which is completely foreign to the children. The former Soviet republic, ruled by rival cliques of oligarchs, is plagued by disastrous political, economic and social conditions. Although the Georgian authorities regularly and brutally suppress all forms of opposition, the country was classified as a “safe country of origin” by Austria in 2016.
Half of all workers are employed in agriculture, working largely under precarious conditions. Unemployment and poverty are rampant, and the coronavirus pandemic has merely exacerbated the situation. According to the World Bank, Georgia’s gross domestic product fell by about 6 percent last year and according to official figures, the coronavirus has claimed more than 3,000 lives in the country.
The situation is even worse in Armenia, where another child was deported. The Austrian Foreign Ministry has currently issued a level 6 travel warning for the country. Even after the end of recent hostilities with neighbouring Azerbaijan, the situation remains highly unstable. Tens of thousands who fled the contested areas have still not returned, and the war has further aggravated an already dire social and economic situation. The pandemic rages unchecked, and in January, hundreds of sick people could no longer be treated in the country’s clinics.
Undeterred, the governing coalition in Austria of the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Greens justified the deportations. The notoriously right-wing interior minister, Karl Nehammer (ÖVP), blamed the family for the deportation, brazenly declaring it was a case of “asylum abuse.”
As they have done many times before, the Greens tried to hide their involvement in right-wing government policies with a few crocodile tears. Green Federal President Alexander van der Bellen declared in a video on Twitter: “I cannot and will not believe that we live in a country where this is really necessary in this form.” Other Greens, such as Vice-Chancellor Werner Kogler, also joined the chorus of hypocrisy, declaring that the deportation had been “inhumane.”
This posturing, however, cannot hide the fact that the Greens have taken over the role of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), which quit the government in 2019. From the start of their period in government, the ÖVP and the Greens agreed to continue the right-wing programme of the FPÖ with regard to immigration and asylum policy. Like other ÖVP ministers, Nehammer explicitly emphasised at the beginning of the coalition that he would not change course.
At the same time, Kogler has left no doubt that he plans to continue the coalition despite the deportations. In the past, the existing asylum laws had been passed without his party’s consent, the vice-chancellor said. Other parliamentary majorities would be needed to change the laws.
The Green minister of health, Rudolf Anschober, argued in similar fashion. In an interview with Puls 24, he said, “My God, we are in government so we can contribute to making things better. That succeeds on many days, on some days unfortunately not.”
In 2020, the ÖVP and the Greens gave their consent to around 900 deportations. The fact that fewer people were deported in 2020 than in previous years was only due to the pandemic. Apparently, however, the ÖVP and the Greens want to increase the number of deportations again this year, as the opposition FPÖ recently demanded. Last year, the Greens, together with the ÖVP and FPÖ, voted against accepting refugees from the Greek refugee camp Moria.
The transparent attempt by Austrian Socialist Party (SPÖ) leader Pamela Rendi-Wagner to make political capital out of the deportations is doomed to fail. “As a mother, I am stunned that well-integrated children are torn away and deported to a foreign country,” Rendi-Wagner wrote on Twitter.
In fact, the Social Democrats together with the ÖVP have constantly tightened asylum legislation in recent years and laid the groundwork for the deportations. In 2016, the SPÖ and ÖVP agreed to the so-called emergency regulation to limit asylum applications. This means that only a few groups of refugees are now given an opportunity to apply for asylum if the government sees a threat to public order and internal security in Austria due to an increased number of asylum seekers.
Vienna’s SPÖ mayor Michael Ludwig also spoke out against the deportations. In fact, Ludwig has long been an advocate of a strict asylum and immigration policy. Last spring, together with his party colleague and right-wing hardliner, Hans Peter Doskozil, head of the Burgenland provincial government, Ludwig spoke out against accepting asylum seekers from the Greek islands. Ludwig said at the time that, although there were free capacities in Austria, he saw no reason for such a step.
