100,000 Spanish dead in pandemic: PSOE-Podemos regime ends restrictions

Alice Summers

Over 100,000 people have died in Spain as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Spain’s National Institute of Statistics (INE), an official state agency.

The INE reports that in the year between 9 February 2020 and 13 February 2021, there were a total of 471,447 deaths in Spain, 103,512 more than in the same period the previous year. February 13 also marked a year since the first officially recognised coronavirus death in Spain, that of a 69-year-old man from the town of L’Eliana, Valencia, recently returned from a trip to Nepal.

Members of Military Emergency Unit arrive at Abando train station, in Bilbao, northern Spain earlier this year. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

The INE figures back up findings by Spain’s funerary services, which report that between 14 March 2020—when Socialist Party (PSOE) Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez declared a state of alarm—and 19 January 2021, 119,113 lives were lost as a result of the pandemic.

Juan Antonio Alguacil, a registered undertaker and member of the US National Funeral Directors Association announced the findings, declaring, “staff organisations of civil registries obtained this figure after determining that [in this period] an average of 383 people were registered every day who had died from coronavirus.”

Alguacil also denounced the PSOE-Podemos government for presenting a falsified death toll well below the figures he was announcing: “These figures exceed all the [official] calculations and, now more than ever, this information transparency is necessary.” The numbers “do not square and are not going to square” with the government’s figures, Alguacil stated, “because it is clear that they do not want us to know the real death toll.”

Alguacil added, “The explanation for this is clear: all those in charge are a disgrace. Ultimately, I have come to think that we will never know the total death figures because right from the very first minute they were lying, they weren’t telling the truth, they were hiding things.”

While news sites such as El País, El Mundo and El Diario were silent on the INE findings and Alguacil’s comment, instead parroting figures from the PSOE-Podemos government, the INE’s findings of over 100,000 deaths from the pandemic were widely reported in other press outlets.

On 13 February, the date on which the INE figures are based, the government’s Spanish death count was only 64,747, almost 40,000 less than the INE’s excess mortality estimate. As of last Friday, this had risen to 68,813, still far below these other figures. An average of 291 coronavirus deaths were reported by the government every day last week and nearly 8,000 daily infections, bringing the total number of cases to well over 3 million.

The Spanish Health Ministry only includes deaths in its official tally if the victim tested positive for the coronavirus, even though very few COVID-19 tests were carried out in the first wave of the pandemic last spring, and the government’s testing program remains inadequate today.

Showing how widespread the devastation caused by the pandemic has been, a study released mid-February by the government-linked Centre for Sociological Research (CIS) reported that more than one in three (38.1 percent) Spaniards know someone who died from the virus. Seventeen percent said that they had lost a friend to COVID-19, and 19.4 percent indicated that a family member who they don’t live with had died. Over 78 percent of people in Spain know at least one person who has contracted the virus, according to the CIS.

Despite the continuing health disaster in Spain, the PSOE-Podemos government and the regional authorities are ending almost all the limited public health restrictions imposed in Spain—in line with the policy of the bourgeoisie across Europe.

Last week, the north-eastern province of Aragón reopened gyms and indoor hospitality settings, although these venues will be limited to 30 percent of their usual capacity. In Asturias, restaurants and bars are open, and indoor cultural activities such as theatre productions can take place up to a capacity of 300 people, as long as spectators wear masks and remain 1.5 metres apart. Gyms and shopping centres are also open.

In Cantabria, the regional government announced last week that shopping centres will now be permitted to open at weekends; libraries, museums, cinemas and theatres can open at 50 percent capacity. Sports stadiums can also open with a third of their usual capacity, up to 1,000 people.

In some regions, such as Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura, even indoor entertainment venues such as casinos and games centres have reopened.

Schools have remained open everywhere, after children returned to classrooms in early January, to allow parents to continue showing up to unsafe offices, factories and other workplaces to pump out profit for the bourgeoisie. Most regions have maintained a perimetral shutdown—preventing people from entering or exiting without justification—but few other restrictions remain. Ineffectual night-time curfews are still in place, but even these have been relaxed in many regions.

The bourgeois media, meanwhile, have launched a relentless “save the summer” campaign, calling for the reopening of tourist sites and promoting the PSOE-Podemos government’s pledge to vaccinate 70 percent of the population by summer. However, it is highly unlikely that this goal will be achieved. As of Friday, only 5 percent of the Spanish population (2.4 million people) had received at least one dose of the vaccine, and only 2.6 percent had received the two required doses.

“If the levels of vaccination are high in June it will save the tourist season,” Bank of Spain chief economist Óscar Arce told El País. “[But] if we delay until the end of summer,” he continued, “the economy will suffer a lot: in these three months of dramatic uncertainty, a lot is at stake.”

In the same El País piece, Gonzalo García, from the financial consultancy firm AFI, demanded the relaxation of any remaining restrictions and the handing of bailout funds to Spanish businesses. “The reactivation [of the economy] is just around the corner, in a matter of months,” he declared. “But it is vital to reduce this period of time as much as possible to prevent companies from going bankrupt and for tourism. Fiscal policy must make a final effort to build a bridge and save the four, six or eight months that remain.”

As the bourgeoisie agitates for the complete reopening of the economy, government representatives are already speaking of a coming “fourth wave” of the pandemic. “It’s possible that there will be a fourth wave,” declared Fernando Simón, director of the Centre for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies, in mid-February, which will “largely depend on how we get out of this one, on what level of low transmission we manage to achieve in this one and on how the vaccination [campaign] develops over the next weeks.”

While the bourgeoisie presents the continued spread of the disease as inevitable, it is the entirely predictable and preventable result of their criminal policy of putting profits before lives, refusing to implement life-saving public health restrictions. Just last week, a study by scientists at Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona and the University of Zaragoza found that had lockdowns been implemented seven days earlier last spring, 23,000 lives would have been saved in Spain.

Workers must reject the lies of representatives of big business, the PSOE-Podemos government and their mouthpieces in the bourgeois media, demanding instead the imposition of a shelter-at-home policy with full pay to all those affected.

Fiji regime summarily deports Pacific university head

John Braddock

Acting on the orders of Fiji’s Prime Minister and former military coup leader, Frank Bainimarama, authorities carried out a midnight raid at the Suva home of the vice-chancellor of the University of the South Pacific (USP) on February 3, and summarily deported him.

Up to 15 immigration, police and military officials forced their way into the home of Professor Pal Ahluwalia, a Canadian national, revoked his work permit and escorted the vice-chancellor and his wife, Sandra Price, to Nadi international airport. They were forced under military guard onto a flight to Brisbane the next day.

Fiji PM Frank Bainimarama

The couple, who have Australian citizenship, were presented with a letter stating they had been declared “prohibited immigrants” by Bainimarama in his capacity as Fiji’s minister for immigration, who had ordered their deportation with immediate effect.

Price said police and immigration officials threatened to break down doors surrounding the house from the front and rear. “I was instructed to get dressed and they confiscated all electronic devices, including our phones, iPads, laptops, watches and passports. I was not left alone to change or even use the washroom. Where were my moral and human rights? There were at least 15 people in our house after curfew,” she told the Guardian .

Ahluwalia told Australia’s ABC he was in “extreme shock” after being “roughed up” during the process. “This is a classic case of beating the whistleblower up,” he said. Ahluwalia’s exposure of allegations of corruption and financial mismanagement under previous university administrations had earned the ire of the Fijian government.

According to the deportation notice, Ahluwalia’s conduct was deemed “prejudicial to peace, defence, public safety, public order, public morality, public health, security, or good government of the Fiji islands.” The couple was deported for unspecified “repeated breaches” of the immigration act and their visa conditions. No details were given.

University of South Pacific Vice Chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia (Source: Twitter)

A police presence is being maintained at the USP’s Laucala campus, in order to intimidate and pre-empt any protests. The university management has called on staff and students to remain calm “for the safety and wellbeing of the university community.”

Ahluwalia’s expulsion was denounced in an open letter by USP students, staff and alumni as a “coup,” and likened it to “gestapo tactics.” Fiji’s Law Society joined the condemnation, while civil society group Civicus said the move would create a “chilling effect for whistle-blowers and those who want to speak up and expose violations by officials in Fiji.”

The trade unions have mounted no campaign. The USP Staff Union (USPSU) mildly criticised the move, accusing the government of “un-Pasifika behaviour” and “violation of human rights and due process.” A meeting of the USPSU and the Association of USP Staff (AUSPS) held a prayer in “solidarity” with the deported academic. The unions are currently seeking a legal opinion over Ahluwalia's employment status. Attorney General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum bluntly declared that the professor’s contract ended when his work permit was cancelled.

The USP is a major regional institution, owned by 12 Pacific states with funding from Australia and New Zealand. Tensions between Ahluwalia and the government have existed since his appointment in 2019. Last year, he was suspended from his post by the university council for “material misconduct,” after exposing alleged corruption and mismanagement under the USP leadership group, with millions of dollars missing.

Last June hundreds of students and staff protested the professor’s suspension and demanded the removal of the USP Executive Committee. Police searched the offices of the Fiji Times for photos of the students involved, including those from other Pacific countries. The USP Students’ Association objected to the intimidating presence of police at the campus protests.

The controversy prompted warnings that the university’s autonomy and academic freedom was under threat. Ahluwalia was finally reinstated in September and cleared of the bogus allegations. After he submitted a report to the council, Auckland accountancy consultancy BDO was hired to investigate the allegations. When the damning report reached the council, it was suppressed and details kept from the public.

The government meanwhile froze a $A28 million university grant, again prompting widespread condemnation. The BDO report was leaked, naming 25 senior USP staff accused of manipulating allowances to pay themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars they were not entitled to.

BDO suggested Ahluwalia’s appointment was against the wishes of the government and of USP pro-chancellor Winston Thompson, citing evidence that efforts began, before the professor arrived, to frustrate his work. Thompson and the previous vice chancellor, Rajesh Chandra, were both regarded as very close to the regime. The government flatly refused to accept the BDO’s findings, claiming its own Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC) found no corruption.

In response, Nauru President and USP Chancellor Lionel Aingimea accused a “small group” of Fiji officials of “hijacking” the regional institution. Samoa’s prime minister, Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi, declared he would seek to “rehouse” the university in his country. He said the deportation was only the latest in a series of issues at the USP which “came as no surprise,” adding that “many big organisations have actually left Fiji in a similar fashion.”

Aingimea last week condemned the ongoing standoff. He said the USP Council was not informed of his deportation by the Fijian authorities and had not revoked his employment contract. The USP was not a “political institution,” he said, and should not be treated as such. Aingimea also expressed concern that donors would be deterred from “investing” in the institution.

New Zealand journalist Michael Field wrote on Pacific Newsroom that the attacks on the vice chancellor were directed by Thompson, a former ambassador to the United States, with close links to Bainimarama’s FijiFirst party. Field noted: “BDO’s report made it clear Thompson was acting for FijiFirst, not USP or its students.”

Ahluwalia and Field both suggested that their expulsion was bound up with the existence of more evidence over corrupt practices involving government agencies. Ahluwalia claimed that the highly-connected Thompson “has presided over several interesting, very interesting, downfalls of public institutions.”

The AsiaPacific Report NZ noted that with the USP’s future in jeopardy, there has been a “deafening silence” from Australia and New Zealand. Statements by the two local powers merely expressed “concern” about USP, while failing to condemn the treatment of the vice chancellor—doubtless to protect their diplomatic relations with Bainimarama, who is being cultivated as an ally to counter China’s influence in the region.

Ahluwalia’s case again highlights the pattern of repression by the Bainimarama regime, which still rests directly on the military despite elections in 2014 and 2018 fraudulently hailed as “democratic” by Canberra and Wellington. Harsh austerity measures are accompanied by intimidation of opposition parties and the working class, and rampant violence by the police and military.

Sedition provisions in the Crimes Act and the Public Order Act have been used to target journalists, activists and government critics. The Media Act has been used to attack press freedom and prosecute journalists. Assemblies, protests and strikes are routinely banned. All these anti-democratic measures have been intensified under the cover of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fiji’s parliamentary speaker has now disallowed any debate on the deportation and crisis at USP. Ratu Epeli Nailatikau ruled that a written question from the opposition National Federation Party, and an Adjournment Motion from SODELPA, did not qualify as an urgent matter of public importance.

Poverty in Germany: Two-million people too poor to heat their homes

Elisabeth Zimmermann

On February 15, as temperatures plunged well below zero, snow and frost covered large parts of Europe and the homeless froze to death on the streets, the German Federal Statistics Office reported that more than 2 million people in Germany were freezing in their homes because they were too poor to heat them.

The figures refer to 2019, when 2.5 percent of the population was afflicted by this problem. The proportion was particularly high among those living in single-person households, at 4.8 percent, and among single parents and their children, at 7 percent. The risk of falling seriously ill or even freezing to death in such conditions is very high.

One must expect that the number of people who are unable to adequately heat their homes due to financial hardship has increased this winter. The continuing social crisis has worsened due to the coronavirus pandemic. Those who were earning the least have been particularly affected by layoffs and reduced working hours.

The fact that millions of people in one of the world’s richest countries cannot afford heating is the result of the policies of governments over the past decades. A key role was played by the coalition of the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, which formed the federal government under Gerhard Schröder from 1998 to 2005. With its Agenda 2010, government policy created a huge low-wage sector with the active assistance of the trade unions.

The continuous increase in the cost of rents, heating and electricity is putting pressure on millions of people and low-income families. Those who are dependent on basic security benefits and long-term unemployment (Hartz IV) do not get reimbursed for the actual electricity and heating costs, but only an “appropriate amount.” Many cannot cover the difference between real and “appropriate” costs, as the Hartz IV standard rates are too low to ensure a minimum subsistence level. Currently, the standard rate for a single person is €446 a month.

A 2017 study by the Centre for European Economic Research shows that recipients of Basic Security benefits are particularly affected by power cuts. The reason for this is that the share earmarked for electricity in Hartz IV does not sufficiently cover electricity costs: “While the cost of electricity climbed by almost 40 percent between the years 2008 and 2018, the state allocations for electricity in basic security benefits increased by only 27 percent.”

The European Central Bank and the German government have given several trillion euros to the big banks and corporations through bond purchases and stimulus packages. The DAX is soaring while thousands of people are dying from COVID-19 due to lack of protection. At the same time, there is no support for people who are in need or have already been living in poverty long-term due to the worsening social crisis.

The 10 richest Germans have increased their wealth by 35 percent to $242 billion during the pandemic. The richest 1 percent of the population owns the same amount as the poorest 75 percent. Despite this, the German government plans to squeeze the billions gifted to the rich out of the working class by making further cuts in social services, health care and education.

Germany is not an exception in this. European Union (EU)-wide, 7 percent of the population were unable to heat their homes sufficiently or at all in 2019, according to the European Statistics Office. In Bulgaria, the figure was 30.1 percent, in Lithuania, 26.7 percent, and in Cyprus, 21 percent. Suffering the same hardship were 11.1 percent in Italy, 9.3 percent in Romania, 7.5 percent in Spain, 6.2 percent in France and 4.2 percent in Poland.

Two percent of the population in Sweden, Austria and Finland were also unable to heat their homes adequately. In total, 30 million people in the EU were affected by the inability to afford heating in 2019, which is roughly equivalent to the population of Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic combined. It must be assumed that the situation has worsened with the pandemic.

In a video interview with euronews, a pensioner from Belgium describes how she only turns up her heating in the afternoons and turns it off again in the evenings because she does not have the money to heat her apartment continuously. She also reports that she largely only eats pasta and eggs. Meat is too expensive and is on the menu once a month, at best.

Major US school districts reopen despite spread of more contagious and lethal COVID-19 variants

Evan Blake

Across the US, numerous school districts began reopening Monday in a reckless move that will exacerbate the spread of COVID-19. Over the past month and, in particular, following the February 10 betrayal by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), the corporate media, both big business parties and the teachers unions have conspired to send millions of children into classrooms at the most dangerous stage of the pandemic. The Democratic Party has spearheaded this campaign, with local and state officials implementing Biden’s goal of fully reopening the majority of K-8 schools by the end of April.

In this Feb. 25, 2021, file photo, Assistant Principal Janette Van Gelderen, left, welcomes students at Newhall Elementary in Santa Clarita, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

At the same time, politicians from both parties are loosening other restrictions on in-person gatherings, reopening bars, restaurants and other indoor venues. With more infectious, lethal and potentially vaccine-resistant variants of SARS-CoV-2 spreading throughout the country, the stage has been set for a massive spring surge of the pandemic that will cause further needless suffering and deaths.

The recent decline in the daily case count in the US has now stalled at roughly 70,000 new cases per day, a highly elevated figure that exceeds last summer’s surge. There continue to be roughly 2,000 new deaths each day across the country, while epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm has warned that there will be a “hurricane” of infections and deaths by the end of March.

In pressing to reopen schools, politicians have invoked the unscientific guidelines released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on February 12, which explicitly state that schools can open and stay open “at any level of community transmission.” On Monday, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky hypocritically stated, “Now is not the time to relax the critical safeguards that we know can stop the spread of COVID-19 in our communities.” Only two weeks ago, Walensky made the rounds on all the talk shows to endorse school reopenings.

It is an urgent necessity that all schools and non-essential workplaces be closed immediately until the pandemic is brought under control and the population is fully vaccinated, with full funding provided for remote learning and guaranteed income for all affected workers. Yet the exact opposite policies are being pursued everywhere on behalf of Wall Street. The only purpose of opening schools is for them to serve as daycare facilities for children while their parents return to unsafe workplaces to produce corporate profits.

According to “Burbio’s K-12 School Opening Tracker,” the majority of school districts are now offering fully in-person learning or hybrid instruction in which children attend in-person part of the week. Only three states—California, Oregon and Maryland—are offering in-person learning at less than 20 percent of their schools.

School districts across Maryland began reopening Monday under orders from Republican Governor Larry Hogan, who has threatened action against teachers who do not comply. These included Anne Arundel County (80,000 total enrollment), Howard County (60,000), Baltimore City (84,000), Baltimore County (111,000) and Harford County (39,000).

The third largest district in the US, Chicago Public Schools (CPS), opened its doors Monday to roughly 37,000 K-5 students returning to their classrooms after their teachers returned last Monday. Educators for grades 6-8 also returned to their classrooms Monday, with tens of thousands of students in those grades set to return on March 8.

On Monday, School District of Philadelphia (SDP) Superintendent William Hite announced that he reached an agreement with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) to begin returning Pre-K through second grade students to schools starting on March 8, with their teachers returning this Wednesday. While reopenings for older grades have not yet been announced, this initial reopening will be used as a wedge to facilitate the broader reopening of the district, which is the eighteenth largest in the country with roughly 120,000 students.

In Tennessee, Shelby County Schools (SCS), which serves roughly 111,000 students in the Memphis metro region, began reopening Monday. On Wednesday, high schools in Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) will resume in-person learning after lower grades returned in mid-February.

Last Thursday, roughly 62,000 middle school students returned to 471 schools in New York City, the largest district in the US with over 1.1 million students. This followed the initial reopening of Detroit Public Schools (DPS) last Wednesday, with numerous districts across Michigan reopening over the past week.

Across the West Coast, Democratic governors and mayors are pressing to reopen schools in the coming weeks. The most significant struggle is unfolding in Los Angeles, the country’s second largest school district with roughly 665,000 students. The pseudo-left-led United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) is following the same playbook used by the CTU in Chicago, posturing as intransigent on vaccinating teachers before reopening schools, while at the same time allowing teachers to “volunteer” to return to schools starting this Thursday.

At a press briefing Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that seven new counties in the state will move from the highest “purple tier” to the “red tier” of slightly lower infections, which will enable school districts in those counties to begin reopening. It is expected that San Franscisco, with Democratic Mayor London Breed pushing to reopen schools, will be included in the list. In nearby Oakland, Democratic Mayor Libby Schaaf was a featured speaker at a right-wing rally to reopen schools, stating, “It’s time we get our kids back to school.”

In Washington, Tacoma Public Schools—where teachers held a sickout last week—began reopening Monday. The state’s largest school district, Seattle Public Schools (SPS), is slated to send Pre-K through fifth grade students back to school next Monday. Schools across Oregon are scheduled to resume in-person learning in late March, with the largest district in Portland reopening on April 8.

Despite the back-to-school push, many parents are boycotting in-person learning to protect the health of their children and families. Officials in Council Rock School District, just outside of Philadelphia, have complained that as many as 30 percent of the high school students who were signed up for in-person learning have not showed up.

The reopening of each of these major districts will set a precedent for the full resumption of in-person learning throughout their surrounding regions. In every instance, the most critical role is being played by the teachers unions, which have conspired with Democratic officials at the local, state and national levels to reopen schools.

American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten, whose annual salary is roughly $500,000 and sits on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), recently told the New York Times that she spends 15 hours a day on the phone with the White House, the CDC, local mayors and union leaders working to get schools open.

On Monday, Weingarten issued a peculiar tweet of the WSWS article, “Thousands of students return for in-person schooling in Chicago.” Addressing the tweet to CTU President Jesse Sharkey, she included a quote from Sharkey referring to his desire for speedy negotiations to reopen high schools. Evidently, Weingarten was attempting to pressure Sharkey to follow through with this pledge.

Tweet by Randi Weingarten

Weingarten is widely recognized as a reactionary stooge of the Democrats, with many of her posts denounced by rank-and-file educators. A tweet replying to Weingarten by WSWS writer Kristina Betinis on the need to oppose school reopenings received an enthusiastic response.

Comment by Kristina Betinis

The mass reopening of schools underway across the country will only add fuel to the fire and accelerate the spread of COVID-19 in the coming weeks. Mobilizing educators and the broader working class to oppose this policy and implement the necessary measures to contain the pandemic is a life-and-death question, which must be fought for with the utmost urgency.

Nearly one year ago, the initial lockdowns at the start of the pandemic were only implemented due to the eruption of wildcat strikes by autoworkers outside the control of the corrupt United Auto Workers (UAW), as well as the threat of wildcat strikes by educators outside the control of the AFT and other teachers unions. The closure of schools alone was estimated to have saved roughly 40,600 lives between March 9 and May 7, 2020, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Over the past year, mass disaffection with the unions has spurred the growth of networks of rank-and-file safety committees among educators and autoworkers in the US, as well as Baltimore Amazon workers and other sections of the working class in the UK, Germany, Australia, Sri Lanka, Turkey and other countries. These committees are the center of opposition to the ruling elite’s homicidal policies and are fighting for the preparation of general strike action in each country.

Argentina: The death of ex-president Carlos Saúl Menem

Rafael Azul

Argentine ex-president Carlos Menem died on February 14 at the age of 90. Menem’s health had deteriorated significantly since June 2020, due to persistent bacterial infections.

Widely hated by Argentine workers for his destruction of jobs and living standards in the 1990s, his death evoked tributes from the country’s Peronist President Alberto Fernandez and Vice President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, as well as from the right-wing ex-president Mauricio Macri and other Peronist and Radical Party leaders.

Inauguration of Carlos Menem in 1989

While the various parties and fronts that represent the politics of Pabloism, Morenismo and Guevaraism, such as the pseudo-left FIT and its main constituents the PTS (Socialist Workers Party) and PO (Workers Party), distanced themselves from this cynical spectacle, they avoided any mention of their own complicity and political betrayals that facilitated Menem’s rise to power and consistently blocked the revolutionary struggles of the working class.

Pabloism and its Argentine variant, Morenismo were founded upon a nationalist rejection of revolutionary Marxism and an irrevocable break with Trotskyism and the Fourth International. Both were based on the denial of the revolutionary role of the working class, endowing other forces—the middle class, the peasantry, the national bourgeoisie—with the task of fighting imperialism and achieving socialism.

While these forces today condemn the Menem administration for its neo-liberal economic policies and its pardons for the leaders of the military dictatorship for the kidnapping, torture and murder of left-wing workers and youth, they don’t mention their own proposal for a general amnesty in 1980, in the waning years of the dictatorship, or their history of support for the Malvinas War, when they urged the working class to support it in the name of anti-imperialism, national unity and a so-called “democratic revolution,” peddling the illusion that it would lead to socialism.

Despite tactical and political differences, the bourgeois governments that ruled Argentina during this entire historical period had one aim in mind, to strangle the revolutionary movement of the working class.

In the 1970s neither the Peronists nor the military junta (1976-1983) had been able to fully contain the struggle of workers, despite the savage repression by the military rulers.

In 1981, in a desperate attempt to unite Argentines behind it, the military launched the invasion of the Malvinas islands (Falklands) in 1981.

Its defeat ended military rule and was followed by the election of Radical Party candidate Raul Alfonsín. With the collapse of the Argentine Peso and hyperinflation, by September 1988 the working class was in open revolt, and Alfonsín was forced to call for early elections. The ruling class turned to Menem and the Peronists.

The Menem administration, Argentina’s third instance of Peronist rule (1945-55, 1972-76, and 1989-99), constituted a nationalist corporatist and rabidly anti-socialist response by the ruling class and Argentine military to suppress the upsurges within the working class. To this day, Peronism works in close collaboration with the corporatist trade union bureaucracies and the pseudo-left tendencies to this same end.

A member of the Peronist (Justicialista) Party, Menem ruled Argentina between 1989 and 1999. During the 1988 elections, Menem, the scion of a landowning family in the Andean La Rioja province, and right-wing governor of that region, had presented himself as the “candidate of the poor,” a continuator of the social welfare and nationalistic policies of the early years of Gen. Juan Peron’s rule in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

In the midst of a debt crisis and hyperinflation, such measures were impossible under capitalism. Once in power, Menem put in place the policies demanded by the International Monetary Fund and Wall Street vultures.

Demonstrating his government’s continuity with the policies of the military dictatorship, in 1990 Menem named Domingo Cavallo to his cabinet. Cavallo had held various posts under the junta, including head of the Central Bank. The day of his appointment, the Buenos Aires stock market responded with a 30 percent jump in stock value. Cavallo’s appointment was also welcomed by the IMF and Wall Street. Cavallo continued the economic work of the military regime, proceeding to privatize the economy and impose a “made in Wall Street” neo-liberal plan for the economy.

By 1994, 90 percent of state-owned firms had been privatized, and brutal austerity measures drove one-third of all Argentines below the poverty line. In addition to mass unemployment, the job market was transformed with the rise of casual and part-time gig work.

Menem’s decade was characterized by privatizing state-owned industries, such as the YPF oil company, the national airlines and the telecommunications system, as well as the lifting of subsidies and tariffs to liberalize foreign trade. His policies, akin to those implemented by Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the US, created a wave of mass unemployment—officially 30.9 percent in 1996 (over 4 million people)—and wage cuts. The national pension system was also privatized, following the Pinochet model in Chile, and the labor market liberalized. Austerity measures were imposed to control inflation, further attacking jobs.

Additionally, the Menem administration allied itself with US imperialism, sending Argentine military forces to participate in the first Persian Gulf War and facilitating arm sales to right-wing regimes in Latin America. He also pardoned those found guilty of torture and murder during the military-fascist dictatorship. In this he counted on the support of the CGT trade union federation, whose leaders were also implicated in the formation of the right-wing deaths squads of the 1970s and which actively suppressed the class struggle.

The working class strongly rejected Menem’s policies with strikes and protests. In 1993, there was the “Santiagazo,” a mass protest in which public employees in Argentina’s poorest province, owed back wages, set fires to government buildings and the homes of several local trade union and political officials. The rebellion lit the fuse to a social powder-keg, an explosion of anti-government protests, strikes, marches, factory occupations, road blockades, soup kitchens, and other forms of protest, in addition to the general strikes mentioned above. The workers’ rebellion encompassed the entire territory of the country. The Menem administration countered with brutal police repression.

The Santiagazo exposed the right-wing pro-big business nature of Menem’s government, and its willingness to use state repression to impose the policies of banks and financial capitalists, to increase exploitation, impose general poverty on the working class, and generate a “surplus population” of disposable workers at the mercy of the profit interests of big business, the IMF and Wall Street.

Menem’s policies were a direct betrayal of his campaign promises to the working class—his pledge to adopt the nationalist economic policies of the first Peron presidency. His administration continued and completed the work the military dictatorship and the Alfonsín government, in the context of world crisis, the collapse of the previous models of state intervention, import substitution and concessions to the working class, and the collapse of nationalist economic models internationally, including, most significantly, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Argentine economic and social crisis took place in the context of a global capitalist crisis that included Mexico’s economic implosion, the “Tequila crisis” of 1994, and the Asian currency crisis of 1997.

The ability of Menem and the ruling class to control the explosion of working class resistance rested heavily upon the role of the corporatist trade unions aligned with Peronism, as well as the Stalinist, Pabloite and Morenoite tendencies.

After two decades with Menem in power—he had tried to alter the constitution to gain a third term in office—the Peronists suffered a crushing defeat at the polls, reflecting the broad disgust with the impoverishment of the majority of the population, ever-widening social polarization and the soaring unemployment that characterized the Menem era.

By the end of Menem’s presidency, 13 million Argentines, out of a total population of 27 million, were classified as poor by the government’s own standards, while one study showed that the profits of the 500 most important firms in Argentina increased by 69 percent between 1993 and 1997.

Menem’s successor, President Fernando De la Rua of the Radical Party, presided over barely two and a half years of more austerity for the working class and concentration of wealth among a narrow financial oligarchy before he was toppled by a mass revolt by Argentine workers in December 2001, forced to flee the Casa Rosada, Argentina’s presidential palace, aboard a helicopter.

Trump intensifies fascistic agitation at CPAC conference

Patrick Martin

The closing address by former President Donald Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Florida marks a further stage in the elevation of an outright fascistic tendency in American politics.

The ex-president railed against what he called “the onslaught of radicalism and socialism, and, indeed, it all leads to communism,” which he said it was necessary to “fight… once and for all.” He associated this, absurdly, with the policies of the incoming Biden administration, which he denounced for rolling back his immigration policies and other measures.

Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Sunday, Feb. 28, 2021, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

A central focus of Trump’s speech, however, was on the need to purge any opposition from the Republican Party. In the course of his speech, he named every Republican member of Congress who had voted in the House of Representatives to impeach him, or in the Senate to convict him, on charges arising from the January 6 attack on Congress by fascist Trump supporters.

The ex-president declared, “Get rid of them all,” and hailed several former aides or Trump loyalists who have announced they will challenge these “traitors” in Republican primaries next year.

When Trump repeated his lies about the stolen 2020 election, the CPAC audience responded with chants, “You won.” It is now clear that adherence to the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump is to be a litmus test for Republican candidates and office-holders going forward. It is a key element in the effort to transform the Republican Party into the party of Trump, a personalist, authoritarian organization, symbolized by the golden statue of the defeated president put on display at the conference.

Trump began his speech by dismissing suggestions that he might build a third party, indicating that dominating the Republican Party was his preferred course of action. There was little attempt to disguise the fascistic stamp Trump would impart: the stage at CPAC was built in the shape of the Othala Rune, a symbol adopted by two units of the Waffen SS, a key instrument in Hitler’s extermination of the Jews.

When the issue was raised with CPAC’s organizers, they denied any connection to the symbol’s use by neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in the United States, including those that marched in the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where an anti-Nazi protester was murdered by a fascist.

There were undoubtedly members of fascist groups in the CPAC audience who appreciated the symbolism, and one prominent neo-Nazi, Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, was seen by reporters mingling with the crowd and taking photos with his fans.

Trump’s CPAC speech was his first major public statement since his January 6 diatribe to a crowd outside the White House, which then marched down Pennsylvania Avenue and forced its way into the Capitol, temporarily shutting down the formal counting of the electoral votes that validated Biden’s election win and Trump’s defeat. Trump reiterated both the themes and the tone of January 6 to an equally rabid audience.

The Republican Party establishment that he now reviles played a critical role in legitimizing Trump’s false claims of a stolen election. Mitch McConnell, then the Senate majority leader, sustained the pretense that Trump had not suffered a devastating defeat on November 3, arguing that Trump was merely exercising his legal rights by filing dozens of baseless lawsuits against the counting and certifying of votes in key battleground states.

McConnell, joined by the overwhelming majority of Republicans in both the House and Senate, refused to acknowledge Biden as president-elect until after the Electoral College vote in December. In the House, a majority of Republicans continued to challenge the electoral votes for Biden even after the mob attack of January 6.

The elevation of an increasingly fascistic tendency in American politics is rooted in the reality of capitalism. The staggering levels of inequality are incompatible with democratic forms of rule. Over the past year, the response of the ruling class to the pandemic has led to the death of more than half a million people, with fascistic gangs mobilized to enforce the demand of the financial oligarchy that there be no restraints on the spread of the virus.

The role of the Democratic Party, a party of Wall Street and the military, is to suppress opposition in the working class, covering up at every point the extreme danger to democratic rights. The militarist and right-wing politics of the Biden administration, along with the promotion of the politics of racial and gender identity, provide Trump and the Republicans with the opportunity to exploit social grievances for reactionary purposes.

Biden announced his desire for “a strong Republican Party, a strong opposition” throughout the transition. Even after a majority of congressional Republicans sided with the fascist attackers on January 6 and voted to overturn the electoral votes in Georgia and Pennsylvania won by Biden, the Democratic Party refrained from any political retaliation. It limited itself to the cosmetic removal of a single Republican, QAnon conspiracy theory supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene, from her committee assignments.

The impeachment and Senate trial of Trump were deliberately managed by the Democrats to exclude any charges that would implicate congressional Republicans. After voting to open the trial to testimony from one House Republican prepared to confirm Trump’s support for the January 6 coup attempt, the Democrats reversed themselves and decided to shut down the trial without hearing a single witness.

The legislative agenda of the Biden administration has likewise been predicated on an effort to achieve “bipartisanship,” i.e., to win Republican votes, an all-purpose excuse for such reactionary steps as dropping the $15-an-hour minimum wage from the coronavirus economic recovery bill.

The CPAC spectacle is a warning to the working class. The forces that were on display on January 6, which culminated in a frontal attack on American democracy, continue to be whipped and mobilized by Trump. Thanks to the complicity of the political establishment as a whole, Democratic and Republican, they are being given a central role in American politics.

The effort of a faction of the ruling class to develop a fascistic movement arises not out of strength, but weakness. The financial elite is working to deploy all the forces at its disposal against the working class, using both of its political parties.

The American ruling class is terrified of the mass radicalization of the working class that is being generated by a year of the pandemic, ongoing economic dislocation and increasing social inequality. The fight against the resurgence of fascism and the turn to authoritarianism and dictatorship requires the transformation of this objective movement into a conscious, organized and revolutionary movement for socialism.

US-backed “human rights” resolution to pressure Sri Lanka to break ties with China

K. Ratnayake

Last week, a “Core Group on Sri Lanka” presented a resolution to the ongoing UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) meeting in Geneva. The resolution focuses on human rights issues, including war crimes during the 30-year civil war between the Sri Lankan military and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Entitled “Promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka,” the resolution, with any modifications, will be put to the vote in the UNHRC on March 22.

Tamil families fleeing war in January 2009 (Source: Wikimedia)

The Core Group includes the UK, Canada, Germany, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Malawi. Although Washington is not a member of the group, it was behind the resolution, having promoted it last December, following discussions with UK diplomats and Tamil groups in Sri Lanka, including the pro-US Tamil National Alliance.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed the UNHRC meeting last week via video, calling for his country’s readmission to the UN body.

Blinken hypocritically declared that President Biden’s administration is “placing democracy and human rights at the centre” of its foreign policy.

“We encourage the Council to support resolutions at this session addressing issues of concern around the world, including ongoing human rights violations in Syria and North Korea, the lack of accountability for past atrocities in Sri Lanka, and the need for further investigation into the situation in South Sudan.”

US imperialism is the world’s supreme war criminal. In the last three decades alone, it has launched one war after another in the Middle East, the Balkans, Afghanistan and elsewhere, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

What US Secretary of State Blinken really meant was the Biden administration, just like its predecessors, will cynically use human rights violations to bring other countries into line with Washington’s geo-strategic interests. Blinken also condemned human rights violations by China and Russia in his video address.

Blinken’s speech and the Core Group resolution have nothing to do with defending human rights in Sri Lanka but are to “persuade” President Gotabhaya Rajapakse to break relations with Beijing and fully embrace Washington’s confrontation with China.

Washington is concerned that the cash-strapped Colombo regime is becoming more dependent on Chinese investments and loans. The debt-ridden Sri Lankan economy is in unprecedented turmoil, seriously impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and confronting falling exports and the devaluation of the country’s currency.

The Core Group resolution calls for a “comprehensive accountability process for all violations and abuses of human rights committed in Sri Lanka,” including those by the LTTE. It also declares “the importance of preserving and analysing evidence relating to violations and abuses of human rights in Sri Lanka with a view to advancing accountability” by the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Such evidence would be used to “support relevant judicial proceedings” in member states of the UN, i.e., the prosecution of perpetrators of war crimes.

Although not included in the resolution, UN High Commissioner of Human Rights Michelle Bachelet’s report on Sri Lanka in January specifically referred to a failure of “accountability” and proposed referring this to the International Criminal Court. Bachelet also called for targeted sanctions, including the imposition of travel bans and freezing the assets of those “credibly accused of human rights violations” in Sri Lanka.

Addressing last week’s meeting, Bachelet offered support for judicial proceedings in other countries against “the perpetrators of grave human rights violations in Sri Lanka.”

Successive Sri Lankan governments and its military committed numerous war crimes during the 30-year war against the LTTE which began in 1983. The Sri Lankan ruling elite and the media used the LTTE’s terrorist and anti-democratic acts to cover up Colombo’s atrocities.

President Mahinda Rajapakse resumed the war in 2006 with the backing of the US and other imperialist powers, as well as India, after a four-year fragile “ceasefire.” His brother, the then defence secretary and now president, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, supervised these bloody military operations.

In the final months of the war, around 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed, according to UN estimates, and hundreds of young people who surrendered to the military were simply “disappeared.” Washington has never been seriously concerned about these war crimes.

Colombo was heavily dependent on Beijing for financial assistance and supplies of weapons to prosecute its brutal war. The then Obama administration—with Biden as vice president—began its “pivot to Asia” to encircle and isolate China and was hostile to these relations.

Washington used the UNHRC to bring a resolution on Sri Lanka and pressure it to distance itself from Beijing. When that failed, it orchestrated a regime-change operation to oust then President Mahinda Rajapakse and to replace him with Maithripala Sirisena.

Sirisena and his prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, reoriented Sri Lanka’s foreign policy towards Washington and its strategic partner India. The new regime immediately began integrating the Sri Lankan military with US military planning against China. In return, Washington helped Sri Lanka suppress calls for an international war crimes probe and swung its support behind a resolution proposing a so-called “domestic judicial mechanism.”

Following the return to power of Gotabhaya Rajapakse and Mahinda Rajapakse as president and prime minister respectively in the 2019 and 2020 elections, Washington and New Delhi have consistently raised concerns about Colombo’s developing relations with Beijing.

Colombo hopes to appease Washington and New Delhi by declaring that it only has economic relations with China. The Rajapakse regime, however, is heavily dependent on the military to bolster its autocratic rule and vowed to protect it from any war crime investigations.

Addressing the UNHRC last week, Sri Lankan Foreign Affairs Minister Dinesh Gunawardena rejected Bachelet’s report. “The recommendations and conclusions [in the report],” he declared, “reflect the preconceived, politicised and prejudicial agenda which certain elements have relentlessly pursued against Sri Lanka.”

While Gunawardena said nothing about on the Core Group resolution, President Rajapakse wrote to UNHRC member countries seeking their support for Sri Lanka. The diplomatic battle unfolding in the UNHRC over the resolution on Sri Lanka underscores the deepening geopolitical tensions between the US on one side and China and Russia on the other.

China’s Permanent Representative in Geneva Ambassador Chen Xu commended Sri Lanka for its “efforts to actively promote and protect human rights, advance sustainable economic and social development, improve people’s living standard, protect the rights of the vulnerable groups, advance national reconciliation and combat terrorism.”

Without naming any country, Chen said that China opposes the “politicisation and double standards on human rights, as well as using human rights as an excuse in interfering in other countries’ internal affairs.”

China is keen to maintain—and bolster—its influence in Colombo as part of its efforts to counter US threats and in doing so has no concerns about human rights violations in Sri Lanka. Russia’s UNHRC envoy made similar statements opposing any interference in “Sri Lanka’s internal affairs.”

Because of its regional and global influence, Colombo is eager to win Indian support and defeat the UNHRC resolution. But like Washington, New Delhi is hostile to Rajapakse’s relations with China and in 2015, backed the US regime-change operation to remove Mahinda Rajapakse as president.

Last month, however, Colombo angered New Delhi by reneging on an agreement to hand over Colombo Port’s Eastern Terminal as a joint venture amid growing opposition among workers against the privatisation of state-owned assets.

Extreme-right nationalist elements that support the Rajapakse regime also whipped up an anti-Indian campaign against the agreement. Keen to secure a foothold in the strategically-located port, India blamed China, claiming it was behind this campaign to repudiate the agreement.

Without taking a position on the Core Group resolution Mani Pandey, India’s envoy to the UN, said his country supports “the aspirations” of the Tamil minority. He called on Colombo to take the necessary steps for “reconciliation,” and implement the 13th amendment to the constitution of Sri Lanka—a power-sharing arrangement with the Tamil elite. While Colombo is averse to any such power-sharing arrangement, India has continuously used the Tamil capitalist parties in Sri Lanka to pressure successive governments.

The escalating efforts to bring Sri Lanka into line point to the advanced nature of US war planning against China. Washington is making clear to the Rajapakse regime that it must end its political balancing act and fully align itself with US imperialism’s war preparations.

Financial Reserves and the Racial Wealth Gap

Chuck Collins & Omar Ocampo

Why is it that the wealthiest country on earth has the highest death toll of any nation in the world?  And why are Black and Latino people among those experiencing the greatest mortality and hardship during the pandemic?

There is excellent research on how the Black-white wealth gap left Black households more vulnerable (see resources below).  But let’s consider the racial wealth divide in financial reserves as measure of precariousness as the U.S. entered into the pandemic.  A much higher percentage of Black and Latino households are part of the vulnerable “underwater nation,” with zero or negative wealth.

According to the most recent Federal Reserve data, 14 percent of white households had zero or negative wealth.  An estimated 28 percent of Black households had zero or negative wealth, twice the level of whites. And 26 percent of Latino households had zero or negative wealth.

This is a slight improvement over previous years.  Emerging from the 2008-2009 economic meltdown, 40 percent of Black households and 34 percent of Latino households had zero or negative wealth in 2013, compared to 16 percent of white households.

By one estimate, from before the pandemic, almost 80 percent of U.S. workers live paycheck to paycheck. Miss one check and you’re taking a second look at what’s in the back of the pantry cupboard.

There is a strong likelihood is that the pandemic will exhaust the financial savings and reserves of many households and we can anticipate an increase in the number of households in “underwater nation.”

Notes:  Our analysis draws from 2019 Federal Reserve data and excludes cars from the calculation of wealth.  Our view is that car ownership is an insufficient indicator of financial well-being and essentially illiquid as a form of wealth.