Canada practicing “Torture by any other name”–Experts denounce continued use of solitary confinement in country’s prisons

Hugo Maltais

A report released on February 23 by two prominent criminologists highlights the brutality with which the Canadian state treats those held in federal penitentiaries.

The report exposed, in particular, the phony nature of the measures the Justin Trudeau Liberal government has implemented with the purported aim of abolishing solitary confinement under pressure from prisoner support groups, human rights organizations and, ultimately, the courts.

A solitary confinement cell at the Dorchester Penitentiary in New Brunswick in 2017 (Credit: Office of the Correctional Investigator)

Entitled “Solitary Confinement, Torture, and Canada’s Structured Intervention Units,” the report by Anthony Doob of the University of Toronto and Jane Sprott of Ryerson University concludes that Canada, despite the Trudeau government’s assertions to the contrary, continues to practice solitary confinement in federal penitentiaries, which amounts to “torture by another name.”

According to the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (also known as the Nelson Mandela Rules), solitary confinement is “the confinement of prisoners for 22 hours or more a day without meaningful human contact.” The Nelson Mandela Rules state that solitary confinement should be used “only in exceptional cases as a last resort” and be prohibited for persons with mental or physical disabilities. Prolonged solitary confinement, that is, for more than 15 consecutive days, constitutes torture according to the UN.

In 2018 and 2019, rulings by the Ontario Court of Appeal and the British Columbia Court of Appeal declared that the method used by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) under the euphemism of “administrative segregation” constituted solitary confinement within the meaning of the Nelson Mandela Rules and “cruel and unusual punishment.” The latter is expressly prohibited under Section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The courts also ruled as unconstitutional the provisions of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that authorized “administrative segregation” without limiting the duration of segregation to 15 days or less and without providing a mechanism for independent oversight and review of segregation decisions.

The courts’ description of “administrative segregation” is shocking: inmates are confined for 22 hours a day in cells as small as seven square meters and often without windows, with no meaningful human contact and no access to the physical, social, and intellectual activities of the prison, nor to assistance or rehabilitation programs. It is not uncommon for prisoners to remain incarcerated in these conditions for hundreds of days. There is evidence of prisoners being held in solitary confinement for 1,000 days and, in one case, 6,000 days (over 16 years).

According to experts heard by the courts, solitary confinement causes “severe and terrible” psychological effects, some of which can be permanent. Specific harms include anxiety, withdrawal, hypersensitivity, cognitive dysfunction, hallucinations, irritability, aggression, rage, paranoia, hopelessness, and feelings of impending emotional breakdown. Individuals in solitary confinement are at increased risk for self-harm, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

In 2007, a 19-year-old inmate, Ashley Smith, hanged herself in her isolation cell in a federal penitentiary in Ontario while four guards looked on. They did not intervene, as they had been ordered not to enter the cell “until she stopped breathing” so that she would not “seek attention.” At the time of her death, the young woman had spent 11.5 months in solitary confinement. Various reports and investigations concluded that her death was “preventable” and constituted a homicide.

In 2010, a 22-year-old aboriginal man named Edward Snowshoe hanged himself in his isolation cell at Edmonton Penitentiary in Alberta after spending 162 days there.

Pressed by the public in the wake of these tragic cases and forced by court rulings to remedy the law’s unconstitutionality, Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberal government announced its intention to “reform” administrative segregation. On October 16, 2018, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale introduced Bill C-83, which was passed by Parliament on June 21, 2019, despite strong criticism from experts that the changes it brought were grossly inadequate.

The Liberal reform is mere window dressing, with the main change to the legislation being purely semantic. New “structured intervention units” (SIU) replaced “administrative segregation,” without prohibiting the placement of mentally ill persons in them or seclusion periods exceeding 15 days. The restrictions and monitoring measures put in place are minimal, largely cosmetic, and not even respected by CSC.

For example, the new legislation states that an inmate placed in an SIU should spend at least four hours a day outside his or her cell and should have an “opportunity to interact” with others for at least two hours a day.

Yet the report by criminologists Doob and Sprott reveals that nearly 39 percent of inmates in SIUs do not have access to four hours outside their cells every day. For those who spend 16 or more days in the SIU, the four hours of out-of-cell time per day is not allocated for 76 percent of the days spent in segregation.

Doob and Sprott also conclude that more than 28 percent of stays in SIUs still constitute solitary confinement since inmates do not have access to meaningful human contact for at least two hours per day, and that 10 percent are torture since these conditions last for at least 15 consecutive days. This represents hundreds of cases of cruel and unusual punishment and torture.

Finally, Doob and Sprott also report that the independent committee established by the new legislation has no real oversight of SIUs and almost never intervenes to reverse a decision to place an inmate in segregation or to shorten its duration.

The CSC has sought to impede any meaningful oversight of its use of SIUs, including by systematically failing to provide data on their use. For this reason, caution the experts, their report only “scratches the surface” of the problems associated with solitary confinement in Canadian penitentiaries. Due to the dearth of information a thorough review is simply not possible.

The reaction to the February 23 report demonstrates the Canadian government’s indifference to the revelations of torture and the CSC’s resistance to any real change. The supposed “progressive” Trudeau made a terse statement that ending solitary confinement was “important” to his government and that he intended to “move forward” without specifying how or when.

CSC falsely stated that SIUs were “fundamentally different from the previous model” of administrative segregation. It also blamed the inmates themselves, stating that “often” the failure to meet the daily requirement of four hours out of the cell occurs because “the inmates refuse to avail themselves of the opportunity.” If an inmate refuses to leave his or her cell for safety reasons, however, the responsibility lies with CSC. It should be providing a safe environment for all inmates without having to lock them up in a tiny cell virtually all day.

But the reality is quite different. Life for the more than 13,000 people incarcerated in Canada’s penitentiaries is unhealthy and dangerous. Food is inadequate and of very poor quality–CSC allocates a food budget of $5 per day per prisoner. Crime and violence are rampant. Mental health disorders are 2 to 3 times more prevalent than in the general population and about 60 percent of inmates may suffer from them. On average, more than 10 suicides occur each year in penitentiaries, a rate seven times higher than in the general population. In 2017, there were 70 drug overdoses.

Along with the mentally ill, minorities are overrepresented in Canadian penitentiaries. Aboriginal people, who comprise about 4.3 percent of the Canadian population, make up 30 percent of the prison population. They are also more likely to be placed in isolation.

Over the past few decades, all sections of the political establishment—from the Conservatives and Bloc Québécois to the social-democratic NDP—have been clamoring for tougher sentences. This shift is part of a rejection of the liberal-capitalist conception of rehabilitation. Rooted in the conquests of the Enlightenment, this conception was based, at least to some extent, on the understanding that violence and crime, as well as drug addiction with which they are often associated, have deep social roots.

In the final analysis, solitary confinement and prison conditions in general are nothing more than an expression of the brutality of the Canadian capitalist state, along with militarism and police violence. The gargantuan security apparatus exists to suppress any social and political opposition to the monopolization of all social wealth by the financial oligarchy. It is an integral part of Canadian capitalism that cannot be “reformed” and must rather be overthrown along with it.

Podemos, Spanish officials receive death threats signed by security forces

Alejandro López

Podemos general secretary Pablo Iglesias, who recently stepped down as Deputy Prime Minister to run in the Madrid regional election, has received letters containing death threats and bullets.

On Thursday, Iglesias posted on Twitter an anonymous letter the Ministry of Interior received for him. It said: “Pablo Iglesias Turrion, you have let our parents and grandparents die. Your wife, your parents and you are sentenced to the capital punishment, your time is running out.” The letter came with four CETME bullets, a rifle used by the Spanish Army, Navy, Civil Guard and National Police.

An anonymous letter addressed to Pablo Iglesias at the Interior Ministry with four rifle bullets. (Pablo Iglesias, Twitter)

Interior Minister Fernando Grandes-Marlaska and the government-appointed head of the Civil Guard police force, María Gámez, received similar letters. Marlaska’s letter said: “You have 10 days to resign. The days of laughing at us are over. National Police. Civil Guard. Time is not on your side for the taponazos [police slang for loud gunshots].” The envelope contained two 7.62x51 mm bullets. Gámez received a similar message a day earlier, with the same type of bullet and references to “ taponazos .”

The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) condemns these letters, which bear all the hallmarks of coming from far-right members of the Spanish security forces. The ICFI has unbridgeable, extensively documented political differences with Podemos, which has implemented “herd immunity” policies that have caused mass deaths in Spain. However, we call on workers and youth to oppose death threats against Podemos, especially those influenced by far-right parties that have also advocated and implemented “herd immunity” policies.

These are the latest in a stream of threats against Iglesias’ life, coinciding with rising fear in ruling circles of workers’ opposition to “herd immunity” policies on the COVID-19 pandemic. After mass strikes in Italy and across Europe compelled Madrid to agree to a lockdown last spring, fascistic Spanish officers close to the far-right Vox party began conspiring to launch a coup. This went hand-in-hand with hysterical denunciations by right-wing parties of “reds” and “communists.”

Multiple leaked messages on officers’ private WhatsApp chat groups revealed the extent of fascist sympathies in the army. Retired generals and colonels proclaimed their loyalty to fascism, boasted of links to active-duty officers and Vox, and called for a coup to murder “26 million” left-wing Spaniards. Chats of active-duty officers expressed support for the fascist retired generals, calling Iglesias a “hunchbacked rat.”

Far-right pickets have been organised daily in front of Iglesias’ house, with some fascists actually prosecuted for entering his property. Last summer, Iglesias cut short his holidays in northern Spain after being hounded by fascists. A former member of La Legión, an elite military unit, was filmed shooting live ammunition at a photograph of Iglesias in an armoury.

In recent weeks, these attacks have intensified. Podemos party headquarters in Cartagena was firebombed, its windows sprayed with obscene graffiti and the word “Rojos” (reds, a derogatory term used by fascists). The Interior Ministry has reinforced Iglesias’ security, due to a risk of an attack during the regional elections. He is guarded by police snipers stationed atop rooftops, unprecedented protection for a Spanish regional election candidate.

At a pre-election debate held at Cadena SER radio, Iglesias walked out of the studio shortly after the debate began, when Vox candidate Rocío Monasterio refused to condemn the letter. She said, “Well, I believe little of what Pablo Iglesias says.” When it came his turn to speak Iglesias called on Monasterio to rectify her words or he would leave. Monasterio refused, saying: “If you are so brave, get up and leave, and leave Spain too.” Iglesias left.

Vox leader Santiago Abascal supported Monasterio and trivialized the death threats against Iglesias, saying that the letter “stinks of a set-up.” He also mocked Iglesias in feminist terms for leaving the debate, calling Iglesias a “little alpha male” who cannot stand “if a woman contradicts him.”

Such threats constitute a serious warning. While Iglesias, Grandes-Marlaska and Gámez are the immediate targets of the death threats, their political target is the growing anger in the working class against deadly “herd immunity” policies implemented in Spain and internationally.

There is deep, historically rooted opposition to fascistic forces and “herd immunity” policies in the European working class. However, this can only be mobilized if it is organized independently of the union bureaucracies and based on Marxist opposition to pseudo-left parties like Podemos. Indeed, a key reason far-right forces feel emboldened to act is that the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government has consistently followed a political agenda set by Vox, providing political cover for coup plotters.

The PSOE-Podemos government ruthlessly implemented the EU’s “herd immunity” policy, leaving over 100,000 dead and 3.4 million infected of COVID-19 in Spain. Amid a fourth wave, fueled by variants, it bowed this month to Vox’s demands to end social distancing measures over the coming weeks, condemning thousands more to unnecessarily die. It is also preparing to enact pension cuts, labour reforms and other austerity measures dictated by a €140 billion European Union (EU) bailout, which passed in parliament thanks to votes from Vox.

This money will be funneled to the financial aristocracy, which made billions from the pandemic as “hunger queues” became common in Spanish cities. According to Forbes, Spain’s billionaires club has gone from 24 to 30 during the pandemic, with its net worth rising from $97.1 billion last year to $137 billion, led by Amancio Ortega’s fortune of $71.3 billion.

Yet, in a further reactionary gesture, PSOE Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez hailed Vox’s vote for EU bailouts as “statesmanlike.”

In fact, amid the bourgeoisie’s murderous response to the pandemic and escalating social inequality, democratic forms of rule are collapsing across America and Europe. It has been nearly two years since German politician Walter Lübcke was shot in cold blood in his house by neo-Nazis for his pro-refugee stance. In the US, a plot to assassinate Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer brought to light a nationwide far-right terror network, just months before then-US President Donald Trump’s January 6, 2021 coup attempt involving sections of the US military and the Republican Party.

Just as the Democratic Party has worked furiously to cover up Trump’s coup attempt, Podemos and the PSOE have downplayed coup threats in Spain and across Europe. On Twitter, referring to his death threats, Iglesias wrote: “There has been no consequence for the retired officers who spoke of shooting 26 million Spaniards for being reds. How will they not feel absolute impunity to send us death threats with bullets from an assault rifle?”

One must reply to Iglesias that he bears considerable political responsibility for far-right impunity. Last December, he publicly downplayed these dangers on television, while social media boiled with anger over fascist threats to kill tens of millions. In a prime-time interview, he brazenly insisted: “What these gentlemen say, at their age and already retired, in a chat with a few too many drinks, does not pose any threat.”

Soon after, this was exposed as lie. Videos emerged of active-duty Spanish soldiers singing fascist songs, and active-duty officers embraced retired generals’ calls to kill “26 million” in leaked chats.

La Marea recently interviewed an officer who, in a distorted voice to guard against retaliation, said: “We have denounced the existence of a neo-Nazi cell in the Army, and the [the Ministry of Defence] response has been nil.” The army has responded by trying to identify the leakers of the report detailing neo-Nazi networks in the army, but in order to expel the leakers. The PSOE-Podemos government has made no attempt to stop this reactionary proceeding.

German parliament adopts changes to Infection Protection Act

Gregor Link

Germany’s parliament adopted this week an update to the Infection Protection Act to impose nationwide regulations. The law secured support from 343 deputies from the governing parties, the Christian Democrats (CDU), Christian Social Union, and Social Democrats (SPD). There were 250 “no” votes, from the far-right Alternative for Germany, the Free Democrats and the Left Party, and 64 abstentions by the Greens.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel casts her vote during a meeting of the German federal parliament, Bundestag, at the Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, April 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

The dishonesty of the debate that preceded the majority support for the change was breath-taking. Deputy Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) stated cynically that one could not simply “ignore” that “over 80,000 citizens of this country” have lost their lives to the virus. Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn claimed that the law was “effectively” equipped to “break the third wave.”

AfD parliamentary group leader Alexander Gaulland accused the government of establishing a dictatorship, while a far-right mob supported by the AfD ran rampant outside. According to police sources, around 8,000 people participated in various protests, some of which had been banned in advance, and engaged in clashes with the police. More than 200 were arrested.

Right-wing extremist mob in front of the Bundestag (AP Photo / Michael Sohn)

AfD parliamentary group co-leader Alice Weidel paid the demonstrators a visit, allegedly to get “a picture of the scene.” According to media reports, an AfD deputy managed to smuggle members of the “Lateral Thinkers” movement into the parliament. A team associated with the lawyer Martin Haintz allegedly tried to film proceedings from the spectators’ gallery.

In reality, the new law, which was described in the media as a “nationwide emergency brake,” does not create the basis for a shutdown based on medical and scientific criteria. Instead, it increases the incidence rate at which schools are allowed to remain open by 65 percent and grants vast powers to the states and municipalities to dismantle the remaining restrictions. This largely corresponds to the demands of the far-right AfD.

Like the previous measures adopted by the federal and state governments, no worksites were impacted by the regulations. Employers were merely obliged to offer two voluntary tests for all employees each week. This in spite of the fact that a University of Düsseldorf study has demonstrated that regions with a higher percentage of production workers have higher infection rates than others. This indicates that workplaces, like schools, are hotspots for the virus.

The “obligation to work from home,” which was also adopted, only applies if “no unavoidable business reasons are contradicted,” a criterion that is impossible to regulate.

The only concrete “restrictions” contained in the law are contact restrictions and curfews in private life. In addition to the already existing staggered closures of retail outlets, bans will be placed on meeting more than one person from another household or leaving one’s home between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. But these measures will only apply if the infection rate is above 100 per 100,000 over the previous seven days for three days in a row.

To avoid imposing identically worded regulations agreed at previous meetings between the chancellor and the heads of the state governments, municipalities repeatedly presented false, allegedly “cleaned” incidences in which “easily confined mass outbreaks,” such as in factories, were arbitrarily excluded.

As soon as the incidence declines below 100 for several days, states and municipalities can immediately allow further openings, which is a recipe for the controlled mass infection of the population at a “minimum speed” of 100 per 100,000 residents per week.

To put the murderous scale of this figure into context, it is worth considering the state of affairs in hospitals as well as developments with the pandemic in other countries. Figures from Johns Hopkins University show that the highest incidence rate ever recorded in China was 2. It was 0.4 in Vietnam; in New Zealand it was 10. In Germany, the current incidence rate is 160.

The 68,000 infections recorded overall in the hard-hit Chinese province of Hubai are being surpassed in Germany every two to three days.

The law has especially disastrous consequences for schools: while in-person learning has up to now been halted in most states when the incidence rate surpasses 100, the switch to online learning will now only take place after the incidence rises above 165 for three days in a row. Students are to be taught in full classes up to an incidence of 100.

The Education and Scholarship Union (GEW) and German Teachers Association criticised the 165-incidence limit as “too high” and demanded a reduction to 100, which would merely mean a slower spread of the pandemic.

The current regulations in force at the state level, which were based on an incidence of 100, have resulted in the incidence among children aged five to 14 being between two and four times higher than the population as a whole in some areas. This was revealed in a recent report from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). Even these figures reported by local health agencies likely substantially underestimate the extent of asymptomatic spread among children.

As medical experts and scientists have repeatedly noted, an asymptomatic infection does not necessarily translate into an illness free from consequences. The RKI has registered at least 828 COVID-19 hospitalisations among children cared for or accommodated “in daycare centres, youth centres, schools, homes, and holiday camps.”

Despite this, hundreds of thousands of students returned to in-person learning this week with the end of the Easter holidays. This includes students in Berlin, where students in year 7 to year 9 are beginning a hybrid model, and in Baden-Württemberg and North-Rhine Westphalia. Berlin Education Senator Sandra Scheeres (SPD) described the “incidence of 165” as “an arbitrarily chosen number,” and demanded “that other things are taken into account.” Meanwhile, Saxony’s state government has announced that it will keep schools open regardless of the incidence rate.

The Left Party, which voted against the “emergency brake” because its votes were not required for it to pass, is also responsible for the policy of mass infection. The government in Thuringia, which is led by the Left Party, oversees a state-wide incidence of 246, the highest of any German state. The Left Party declared that it would not call for or support a call for mediation in the Federal Council, Germany’s upper house, over the legislation.

Federal Council President Reiner Haseloff (CDU) made clear several weeks ago that the federal and state governments always accepted that children would be infected en masse in open schools. He remarked at a March press conference, “We always made clear that we would have a potential of increasing contacts by 250,000 people.” This was “understood nationwide by everyone, including the chancellor.” By way of justification, Haseloff added that one had to “include daycare and schools,” otherwise one would have had to “write off the entire school year.”

The profits-before-lives policy is meeting with mounting contempt among the population and is exposing capitalism worldwide before the eyes of millions of people. A social media post by Olaf T. from southern Germany was typical. “It is simply sad and disgusting what is happening here in the world,” he wrote on Facebook. “Capitalism has reached the pinnacle of global contempt for humanity and injustice!” While the government refuses to increase the wages of health care workers, according to Olaf, “the shareholders in the health care system ‘award’ each other with fat dividend payouts, and that for ‘doing nothing’!”

The health care conglomerate Fresenius, whose subsidiary company Helios GmbH operates 86 hospitals in Germany, announced an annual increase in shareholder dividends for the 28th year in a row, and announced in the face of “further coronavirus-related burdens” a “new cost-cutting programme” for 2021.

Fatal Tesla Model S crash under investigation by authorities, raises safety concerns

Jessica Goldstein

Last Monday the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the National Transportation Safety Board began sending teams to investigate a fiery Tesla Model S crash that occurred April 17 in Woodlands Township near Houston, Texas, that left two dead.

Photo of wreckage (Source: ABC13, ABC13.com)

The two men killed in the crash were identified by local authorities as Everett Talbot, 69, an engineer, and his friend Dr. William Varner, 69. According to a Reuters report on April 19, the vehicle “was traveling at high speed near Houston when it failed to negotiate a curve and went off the road, crashing into a tree and bursting into flames” in the Carlton Woods Creekside subdivision last Saturday night.

The Harris County Precinct 4 Constable’s Office reported that subsequent small fires continued to flare up for hours and required rescue workers to use about 30,000 gallons of water to extinguish, due to the fact that the car’s battery continued to reignite after the crash, ABC13 Eyewitness News reported.

Authorities insist that no one was present in the driver’s seat at the time of the crash. One man was found in the passenger’s seat and another in the back seat of the vehicle when fire and emergency response teams arrived at the scene of the accident.

The cause of the initial fire, which almost completely torched the vehicle and its victims in a matter of moments, is still under investigation. However, there is some reason to believe that the car battery itself may have been defective. The corporation is still under investigation by the NHTSA for its decision to issue a software update for 2,000 vehicles rather than to recall them after reports that the vehicles had a possible battery defect that could start fires.

Tesla drivers have also made numerous complaints to the NHTSA to allege that sudden acceleration of the vehicles occurred in a number of situations which could potentially cause serious harm to drivers, passengers and property, such as sitting in traffic and while attempting to park in a garage or at a curb.

Woodlands Township Fire Chief Palmer Buck told Car and Driver that “this was our first experience with a large-scale runaway lithium-ion fire” and that had the crash occurred on a highway rather than a residential area with access to a fire hydrant, the situation could have been far worse as the fire department’s trucks, “which carry between 500 and 1000 gallons, would not have been able to keep on lightly soaking the car for that much time.”

The NHTSA and NTB are currently investigating whether the Tesla Model S’s autopilot system, a partially automated system on Tesla vehicles that can keep a car centered in its lane, keep a distance from cars in front of it and change lanes automatically, was engaged at the time of the crash. “We have witness statements from people that said [the victims] left to test drive the vehicle without a driver and to show the friend how it can drive itself,” Herman told Reuters.

Elon Musk, billionaire Tesla CEO and currently the third wealthiest person in the world with a fortune of about $174 billion, tweeted Monday to dispute assertions that the autopilot was engaged at the time of the Texas crash. “Data logs recovered so far show Autopilot was not enabled & this car did not purchase [Full Self-Driving].”

To date, there are no fully autonomous vehicles on market. Yet several consumer agencies note that the marketing of its autopilot feature is misleading and potentially dangerous to drivers.

Herman and other local and national officials have not said whether they have received any of this purported data from Tesla, if it exists. Musk’s wealth dropped by $5.6 billion as share prices of Tesla’s stock dipped by 3.4 percent after news of the fatal crash hit the airwaves.

Tesla is well-known by now to authorities and interest groups for a number of incidents regarding possible defects with the vehicles’ software systems, including autopilot, and batteries. The April 17 crash is the 28th accident involving a Tesla vehicle under investigation by the NHTSA.

In the wake of numerous safety issues with Tesla cars, former US Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, appointed by former US President Donald Trump, said that the NHTSA would look into measures to address safety “without hampering innovation in development of automated driving systems,” meaning that it would consider the possibility of the most lenient regulations that would not interfere in any way with Tesla’s ability to amass profits.

Current US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, appointed by President Joe Biden, has also hinted at implementing regulations on electric vehicle safety, but nothing in his statements on the issue indicate that anything under the Democratic Biden administration would be any departure from the business-friendly policies of the Republican Trump.

Buttigieg said last month that “I would suggest that the policy framework in the U.S. has not really caught up with the technology platforms… So we intend to pay a lot of attention for that and do everything we can within our authorities.”

Buttigieg himself has overseen the dismantling of public transportation infrastructure during his tenure as mayor of South Bend, Indiana. From 2011–2019, public transportation ridership in the city fell 32 percent under his leadership while vast sums of money were funneled into the transformation of the industrial and mainly working class city’s downtown area into a playground for the wealthy.

For both the Democrats and the Republicans, the interests of US capitalism play a role in the refusal to seriously address safety regulations. Any attempt to slow the flow of profits into the hands of the ruling elites pose a threat to the US’ goal to dominate the world market in the production of electric and self-driving vehicles at the behest of its global competitors.

The NHTSA does not have much clout as a regulatory agency, and primarily relies on self-reporting from auto companies themselves, which puts the agency at the mercy of the corporations. A Washington Post report on the crash cited Frank Borris, a former head of NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation, who said “the agency is in a tough position because of a slow, outdated regulatory process that can’t keep up with fast-developing technology.”

Kelly Funkhouser, who heads connected and automated vehicle testing for the advocacy agency Consumer Reports, told the Post that “Tesla’s numbers have been inaccurate in the past and are difficult to verify without underlying data.”

Funkhauser has called for government oversight of the production and development of automated driving systems. She asserts that the circumstances surrounding recent crashes of Tesla vehicles may indicate that the company is not testing its automated driving systems, and instead dangerously “getting away with using the general population of Tesla owners as guinea pigs to test the system.”

On Thursday, Consumer Reports published the outcome of a demonstration that showed that car owners of its latest Model Y could easily outsmart the Tesla autopilot’s driver monitoring features that are supposed to ensure a driver is alert and present in the driver’s seat while the system is engaged, by simply keeping a weight on the steering wheel.

The study revealed that Tesla relies primarily on detection of weight on the steering wheel to determine driver presence. This is a less advanced system than those used by Ford, GM, BMW and Subaru in their development of automated driver systems, which use camera-based technology and warning systems to ensure that drivers are looking at the road, and mechanisms to slow and stop the vehicle when drivers appear unfocused.

However, any regulations under the capitalist system will do little if anything to seriously address the issue of public safety in the development of electric and self-driving vehicles. Throughout the course of the pandemic and for years before, the government has always bowed to the corporations’ demands for profit interests over the health and safety of human beings.

Musk alone amassed a personal fortune of $151 billion over the course of the pandemic, while workers in Tesla plants were forced to labor under unsafe conditions where the COVID-19 virus ran rampant to produce these profits. His wealth is based almost entirely on stock prices and ruthless speculation, leading Tesla to cut production costs and safety measures to continuously buoy up fictitious capital.

In 2020, Musk and Tesla defied Alameda County, California, public health officials’ orders to close its plant in Fremont, leading to hundreds of infections among workers and several deaths. These deadly conditions were aided and abetted by the Democratic Party, which is in control of the county and the state, by turning a blind eye to Tesla’s illegal actions and further pushing ahead with business and school reopenings to serve the interests of the corporations.

Australian government cancels Chinese economic deals

Mike Head

Australia’s government this week took to a new level its support for the US-backed confrontation with China and also set a global precedent for tearing up economic agreements previously signed with Beijing.

The Liberal-National Coalition invoked new powers introduced last December in order to cancel two deals previously struck by the Victorian state Labor government under the umbrella of China’s massive infrastructure Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The 2018 “Memorandum of Understanding” (MoU) and 2019 “Framework” agreements were vague and non-enforceable, and had never actually been activated. That only makes their overturn by Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government more clearly a direct and deliberate attack on the BRI.

Washington regards with hostility, as a threat to US hegemony, the ambitious BRI project to link China by road, rail and sea with the rest of the Eurasian continent, right across to Europe, as well as to help build infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific and Africa.

The four-page 2018 MoU merely agreed to “cooperation within the Framework of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative.” Much of the language in the MoU consisted of motherhood statements, such as “form synergy in cooperation,”

Likewise, the nine-page 2019 agreed to “jointly promote” that “Framework” without any concrete proposals. It contained more general statements, such as a desire to “enhance two-way trade”

Evidently, Victorian construction companies hoped for lucrative opportunities in China, while Chinese infrastructure firms could tender for Victorian government projects. Amid growing US and Australian trade war measures against China and the stepping up of the US-led military build-up in Asia, however, no projects ever resulted.

Marise Payne, Australia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. (Wikimedia Commons)

Nevertheless, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne formally declared these deals to be “inconsistent with Australia’s foreign policy or adverse to our foreign relations in line with the relevant test in Australia’s Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Act 2020.” She gave no further reasons and provided no other explanation.

By further cutting across economic relations with China, on top of a series of bans on Chinese investment, and steps to stop reliance on “supply chains” from China, Canberra’s move points to the accelerating US-led preparations for a war against China to prevent it from challenging US power.

The White House was clearly involved in the decision. Asked if the Biden administration had been in touch with Canberra over the issue, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki did not deny it.

Instead, Psaki revealed how much Washington is preoccupied with combating China. “How we can work together as a global community and in a coordinated fashion as it relates to China is part of nearly every discussion the President has with a European partner or country in the region,” she said.

Morrison defended scrapping the Chinese deals, saying his government would “always act in Australia’s national interest to protect Australia” and “advance our national interests of a free and open Indo-Pacific and a world that seeks a balance in favour of freedom.”

Such provocative language declares China to be a threat to Australia and world “freedom,” when in reality it is the US and its allies that have conducted barbaric neo-colonial wars for decades, from Vietnam to the Middle East, and are now menacing China.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton added to the belligerence by saying Australia would not be “bullied by anyone” in exerting its sovereign rights. He denounced the Victorian government for betraying the “national interest” by signing the two documents.

This anti-China campaign has bipartisan backing within the parliamentary establishment. For its part, the Victorian Labor government readily accepted the cancellation of its deals. Federal Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese sought to outbid the Morrison government, saying a proper explanation was needed about why Victoria’s deals were scrapped but not the 99-year lease of the civilian Port of Darwin to Chinese company Landbridge in 2015.

The Darwin lease is particularly sensitive because President Obama personally rebuked Morrison’s predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull in 2015 for allowing the lease of the northern Australian port to go ahead without consulting Washington.

Albanese’s stance is in line with his message at Labor’s recent national conference, where he said Labor governments were needed for periods of war and crisis, as a Labor government had proved by initiating the US military alliance during World War II. Backed by the trade unions, Labor’s conference passed no less than six resolutions denouncing China.

Murdoch media outlets and most others hailed the Morrison government for “standing up to” China. Some nervousness was voiced by sections of mining-related business, however, because China has become Australia’s largest export market over the past two decades, with iron ore sales and revenues soaring.

Today’s Australian Financial Review editorial criticised the government for “prodding” China “for no obvious gain on moribund Belt and Road agreements.” Malcolm Broomhead, the chairman of mining, oil and gas giant Orica and a BHP board member, told the Australian: “I just don’t understand the deliberate provocation of China which sits at odds with ‘we want to be friends.’”

Despite such qualms that the attacks on China are provoking restrictions on Australian exports to China, the ruling class as a whole depends heavily on US investment and on Washington’s support to pursue its own neo-colonial interests. That is why the Australian ruling elite has joined every major US war since World War II.

The Chinese government reacted angrily and lodged a formal protest. Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin accused the Morrison government of “political manipulation and bullying” and setting a “bad” global precedent. He said China had signed BRI cooperation documents with 140 countries and 31 international organisations. “Australia is the first and only country to tear apart an agreement.”

Last year, the Chinese embassy issued a 14-point complaint against Australia’s discriminatory tariff and other economic measures against Chinese companies, including the ban on the teleco giant Huawei. That ban, imposed in 2018, was demanded by Washington and mirrored by other US allies.

More widespread cancellations of China-linked economic, educational and cultural agreements by state and local governments and universities are looming. So far, Payne said she had reviewed more than 1,000 existing or proposed deals and decided to cancel only four—the two with China and older Victorian agreements with Syria and Iran. Later, after landing in New Zealand, she said she expected further such decisions.

Universities have until June to submit their lists of exchange and other agreements with overseas universities and other entities. Already, the US-aligned and government-subsidised Australian Security Policy Institute is calling for the shutting down of the dozen or so Confucius Institutes on Australian campuses.

The rapidity of the shift against China is underscored by the fact that in 2017 Turnbull’s Coalition government reached its own BRI agreement with the Chinese government. Then trade minister Steven Ciobo said: “Australia supports the aims of initiatives such as the Belt and Road that improve infrastructure development and increased opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region.”

Over the past three years, the Australian government has become a frontrunner in measures against China, including the far-reaching, anti-democratic “ foreign interference ” laws passed in 2018, that Washington regards as a model for similar provisions internationally.

US “excess deaths” in 2020 surpassed the toll during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic

Benjamin Mateus

According to a report published Friday by the New York Times, in 2020 the United States suffered the biggest single-year surge in its death rate since the federal government began publishing statistics, significantly surpassing the rise in the death rate during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.

Workers burying bodies in a mass grave on Hart Island, April 9, 2020. (Credit: AP Photo/John Minchillo)

The Times conducted its own analysis of annual US death rates going back a century and found that the rate jump from 2019 to 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, was 16 percent, as compared to the 12 percent surge in the US during the global pandemic that occurred over a century ago. The total number of COVID-19 deaths in the US is already approaching 600,000, on track to surpass the 675,000 estimated to have been killed in the US during the 1918 pandemic.

By the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluations modeling projections, the COVID-19 death toll is expected to surpass 600,000 before June, reaching 620,000 by August under a best-case scenario.

The Times report aligns with an analysis of mortality data conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which found that from March 2020 until February 20, 2021, there were 574,000 more Americans who died than would be expected in a typical year. This places the deaths nationwide at 21 percent higher than what has usually been observed.

A JAMA report published online on April 2, 2021, authored by Dr. Steven H. Wool and colleagues from Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, corroborated these findings in their analysis. They found that between March 1, 2020 and January 2, 2021, there were 522,368 excess deaths, accounting for a 22.9 percent increase in all-cause mortality.

At the time, there had been 378,039 confirmed COVID-19 deaths. As they explained, “Excess deaths not attributed to COVID-19 could reflect either immediate or delayed mortality from undocumented COVID-19 infections, or non-COVID-19 deaths secondary to the pandemic, such as from delayed care or behavioral health crises.”

Adjustments must be made for the differences in population size of the United States in 1918 compared to 2020. Additionally, as health care and public health measures have improved, the population’s lifespan has risen. As a result, the per capita death rates for the two periods are substantially different, which adds complexity to these comparisons. Nevertheless, the 16 percent increase in the death rate in 2020 from preceding year, compared to the 12 percent jump during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, is staggering.

Overall, 10 percent of the 3.4 million deaths in the United States were attributed to COVID-19, making it the third leading cause of death in 2020 after heart disease with 21 percent and cancer with 18 percent.

Comparing these two pandemics highlights that the COVID-19 infection is not merely another flu. It is a dangerous pathogen that has repeatedly demonstrated a tremendous ability to wreak havoc on the population’s life, and needs to be treated with the utmost seriousness and caution. Maliciously criminal has been the repeated dismissal of this reality by the political establishment and the ruling elite in their prosecution of the policy of “herd immunity,” which has enriched them in unimagined proportions while allowing the virus to run rampant and mutate into more virulent forms.

In light of advances in our understanding of the biology of these infectious organisms, including the medical advances in the treatment of COVID-19 infections that have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, to have allowed so many to become infected and perish is a historic crime. It is the result of capitalism’s remorseless drive to extract profits and further enrich a layer of oligarchs who number in the tens of thousands on a planet with 7.8 billion people. That the COVID-19 pandemic can even be compared to the Spanish Flu that occurred one hundred years ago speaks to the abject failure of the current political process to govern or protect the population of almost every wealthy nation.

In the US, current infection rates are approximately 64,000 per day, while the average daily death toll has settled in at just over 700. Yet the Biden administration is celebrating these developments as the success story of their vaccination campaign. Meanwhile, one state governor after another is biting at the bit to relax restrictions and fully open their economies.

As of April 23, 135.8 million people had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, accounting for 40.9 percent of the population, while 89.2 million people, representing 26.9 percent of the people, have now been fully vaccinated. According to the Washington Post vaccination tracker, a total of 282.2 million COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed to the states.

Despite this achievement, the recent trends in immunization indicate that moving forward, the situation will grow considerably more challenging for the Biden administration. Last week saw an average of only 2.95 million doses per day, a decline of 12 percent. Scientists have estimated that upwards of 70 to 90 percent of the population will need to be inoculated if meaningful herd immunity is to be achieved.

Amid news of the sudden slowdown in vaccination rates, President Biden took to the media on Wednesday to proclaim that the US would reach the milestone of 200 million jabs this week, exceeding the target set for the end of April. He then made his pitch to the nation, stating, “I’m calling on every employer large and small in every state to give employees the time off they need, with pay, to get vaccinated. No working American should lose a single dollar from their paycheck because they chose to fulfill their patriotic duty of getting vaccinated.”

The vaccines are critical to the defeat of the pandemic, but the cynical attempt by the government to use this necessary and life-saving tool to justify the reopening of unsafe factories and offices as well as schools while the pandemic continues to rage only helps the far-right promote vaccine skepticism among sections of the middle class and working class.

A recent report in US News & World Report noted that “states that are having a difficult time disbursing to school districts hundreds of billions of dollars in federal aid from the most recent coronavirus relief package are running up against a Friday deadline to explain to the Education Department why that’s the case.”

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, seeking to speed up the reopening of the schools, said, “Every child deserves an opportunity to hear their name being spoken in the classroom this year. As our nation heals and recovers from the pandemic, our decisions and actions will impact generations of learners. Our inaction will too.”

Meanwhile, Michigan’s recent surge of COVID-19 cases was preceded by hundreds of school outbreaks throughout the state. Michigan has seen a record-breaking number of children hospitalized with severe infections. Michigan Health & Hospital Association data shows that the number of children hospitalized statewide has reached 70, double the number seen during the worst of the wave that swept through in November.

The push by Democrats no less than Republicans to lift whatever COVID-19-related restrictions remain, especially among the vaccinated, has the potential to fuel more contagious strains of the coronavirus. In 1918, public health officials understood little of the virus that plagued their communities, relying on basic measures to control the death and mayhem it created. The blame for the disaster during the current pandemic lies entirely with the bourgeoisie.

Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa 2022

Application Deadline: 20th July 2021, 12pm BST.

Eligible Countries: Countries within Sub-Saharan Africa. For the purposes of the competition, sub-Saharan countries include:

Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Crucial commercialisation support is awarded to a shortlist of innovative applicants through a six-month period of training and mentoring. Following this period of mentorship, finalists will be invited to present at an event held in Africa and a winner will be selected to receive £25,000 along with runners-up, who will each be awarded £10,000.

Eligibility: To be eligible,

• Applicants must be individuals or groups of no more than three people.
• Individual applicants must be citizens of a country within sub-Saharan Africa and currently reside there. For teams of two or three, the lead applicant must be a citizen of a country within sub-Saharan Africa and currently reside there.
• Applicants must have an engineering innovation and provide a letter of support from a university of research institution.
• Industrial researchers and establishments are not eligible.
• The applicant’s innovation can be any new product, technology or service, based on research in engineering defined in its broadest sense to encompass a wide range of fields, including: agricultural technology, biotechnology, chemical engineering, civil engineering, computer science, design engineering, electrical and electronic engineering, ICT, materials science, mechanical engineering, and medical engineering. If you are in any doubt that your area of expertise would be considered engineering then please contact the Academy to discuss your application.
• Applicants should have achieved the development of, and be in the early stages of commercialising, an engineering innovation that:

1. will bring social and/or environmental benefits to country/countries in sub-Saharan Africa;
2. has strong potential to be replicated and scaled up;
3. is accompanied by an ambitious but realistic business plan which has strong commercial viability.

Number of Awardees: not specified

Value of Prize: Finalists will be invited to present at an event held in Africa and a winner will be selected to receive £25,000 along with runners-up, who will each be awarded £10,000

Duration of Program: Crucial commercialisation support is awarded to a shortlist of innovative applicants, through a six month period of training and mentoring.

How to Apply: All applications must be submitted via the online grants system, applicants should ensure they read the guidance notes before submitting their application.

Visit Program Webpage for Details

Gender Equitable and Transformative Social Policy for Post-COVID-19 Africa (GETSPA): Post-Doctoral Fellowship

Application Deadline: 15th May 2021

About the Award: The overarching goal of this project is the transformation of the approaches to and cultures of social policymaking and implementation to establish Gender Equitable and Transformative Social Policy approaches in Africa.

Eligible Field(s): Post-doctoral fellows will participate in the research and publications component of the project, specifically in producing papers that provide a pan-African, sub-regional or comparative perspectives on key issues and debates in social policy.
The following is an indicative list of themes that post-doctoral fellows could consider:
i. social and economic policy interface and synergies
ii. gender-equitable social policy
iii. politics and the democratic underpinnings of social policy
iv. key debates in the field social policy
v. new and neglected dimensions of social policy

This list is not exhaustive and, therefore, applicants are free to propose other themes relevant to a gender-equitable and transformative social policy agenda.

Type: Postdoctorate

Eligibility:

• Applicants must have been awarded a doctoral degree from a recognized university within the past 5 years (not earlier than 2015).
• Applicants must also have a record of research/publication in social policy-related areas in African contexts.

Eligible Countries: African countries

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:

• Work from their country of residence.
• Work in a cooperative manner with members of the GETSPA Technical Team, one of whom will be assigned as a primary supervisor.
• Assume primary responsibility for the development of their research.
• Participate in project conferences and seminars.
• Produce papers for publication.
• Assist the lead investigators with editing issue papers and reports.
• Any other tasks needed for the successful execution of the project.
• The monthly honorarium is $1,000 (inclusive).

Duration of Award: The duration of the fellowship is eight (8) months—from 1 June 2021 to 31 January 2022.

How to Apply: Applicants must submit the following documentations:

• proof of award of degree
• a CV
• a 3- to 4-page concept note: a statement of the primary areas of interest the applicant intends to work on during the fellowship period and a clear timeline of activities and outputs
• two letters of reference

Email applications and/or enquiries to GETSPA PIs at pis.getspa.ias@ug.edu.gh.
The subject field should include the phrase “GETSPA post-doc”.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Rebuilding Black-Owned Businesses After COVID-19

Dedrick Asante-Muhammad & Joshua Devine

With over half of American adults now at least partially vaccinated, many of us are beginning to imagine a future beyond the pandemic. But for the many small businesses that didn’t survive, there’s no “after.”

Black-owned businesses have been especially hard-hit. That’s because even after three pandemic relief packages, there’s an elephant in the room that every resource, policy, and program is failing to address: the preexisting conditions of Black entrepreneurs.

Despite strong entrepreneurial traditions in Black America, the pre-COVID state of Black business — and indeed of Black economics generally — was itself in need of redress. In economic crises throughout our history, African Americans are impacted first and worst, yet they’re the last to recover. COVID-19 has been no exception.

The severity with which COVID-19 continues to ravage Black businesses has everything to do with this preexisting condition. A stronger recovery for Black business requires policymakers and resource providers to address not just the economic results of the COVID recession, but also these deeper inequalities.

Here are a few of them.

The business revenue pre-condition: Black entrepreneurship greatly increased between 1992 and 2012, from 3.6 percent of all firms to almost 10 percent. Yet even with Black entrepreneurship increasing almost threefold, the proportion of Black revenue decreased by half — from 1 percent to just 0.5 percent.

The income inequality pre-condition: For the last 50 years, Black Americans have received only about 60 percent of the income of white Americans. Even tripling the share of Black-owned businesses did little to change this.

This affects not just families, but entire businesses. Since most entrepreneurs use their social circles to begin growing their customer base, Black entrepreneurs are often forced to rely on a customer base with much less spending capital.

The wealth inequality precondition: According to the Federal Reserve, the median wealth for white households is $188,000, while the median wealth for Black households is just $24,000.  This lack of wealth steers Black entrepreneurs into industries that require less start-up capital — such as beauty, hair care, and social and health services. But these industries also are lower revenue businesses.

Black businesses have suffered terribly during the pandemic. But there’s not much to be gained by getting Black entrepreneurship back to the unstable, low-revenue normal that existed pre-COVID.

Instead, we must push Black entrepreneurship forward — so that it returns stronger after the pandemic and can weather whatever crisis comes next. We need policies, programs, and resources that target Black entrepreneurs and boldly address their pre-existing conditions.

In a new paper for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, we offer a few ideas.

First, we advocate direct stimulus payments to spur revenue growth for Black businesses, as well as a new system of partners and resources to support Black-owned, Black-led banks and institutions that can deliver capital for these enterprises.

We also support greater transparency in data collection for small business lending. We need to hold financial institutions accountable for historic discrimination in their lending and credit practices.

Finally, we support making unemployment benefits permanently available to self-employed people who lose their income. And we urge a transition to universal health care that will benefit Black Americans, entrepreneurs, and the nation as a whole.

In this crisis is an opportunity to address the racial economic inequality that consistently keeps too many Americans one crisis away from a disaster.

Why Donbass Matters

Nicky Reid

Dark storm clouds are gathering over the contested Ukrainian border regions of Donbass and Crimea as two antiquated superpowers surge headlong towards a conflict that could easily end in nuclear oblivion. It may take two dinosaurs to tango but it doesn’t take a paleontologist to tell you that this disaster in waiting has ‘made in America’ written all over it. After months of belligerent violations, it was a flurry of press releases from the White House, Defense Department, and NATO that finally empowered the American funded puppet regime of Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev to finally torch the Russian brokered Minsk Peace Agreement and openly seek to rid itself of Russian influence over Crimea and local autonomy over Donbass by any means necessary. And why not? The White House openly admits that during their first phone call on Good Friday, Biden offered Zelensky, “unwavering support for Ukraine sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s ongoing aggression in Donbass and Crimea.” For those of you who don’t speak fluent NATO, that’s code for, ‘Bomb! Bomb! Bomb!’

And NATO membership is what this growing disaster is all about. According to NATO bylaws, a nation cannot be absorbed into the NATO blob until it first purges itself of all territorial disputes and foreign military presence. That means the Russian annexed region of Crimea and the independent republics of Luhansk and Donetsk need to be obliterated. Russia naturally can’t stand for such foreign villainy on its borders and thus we find ourselves in Doctor Strangelove country with 40,000 NATO troops knocking at the door and two Russian armies and three airborne units ready to greet them.

This colossal shitstorm has been a long time coming. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the US has been dumping billions of dollars through the National Endowment for Democracy into influencing Ukraine to join the NATO fold in ganging up on their Russian neighbors. We lost patience with simply perverting democracy in 2014 when the democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych chose closer ties with Russia over Euro servitude. The US called in its allies in the nation’s fledgling neo-Nazi movement and they launched a coup that chased that nations democracy to Moscow and ended with an openly racist junta in power in Kiev.

America underestimated the nation’s ethnic Russian population in Ukraine’s east however. The already autonomous region of Crimea chose to return to Russia before Obama’s favorite fascists could purge Russia’s Black Sea Fleet from the peninsula which had been Russian territory for centuries before Khrushchev unceremoniously gifted it to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic decades before an independent Ukraine had ever existed. The Novorossiyans of the Donbass attempted to follow suit with their own referendum in 2014, but Russia left them high and dry when they chose independence over rejoining the motherland. The result was a violent civil war that’s claimed over 14,000 bodies in the name of assimilation.

The western media blames Russia for every mortar out of Mariupol, though they’ve offered absolutely bupkis in the way of evidence for their cockamamie conspiracy theory of a Russian invasion. If Russia had invaded, this thing would have ended like Georgia’s 2008 attempt to purge itself of ethnic undesirables for NATO membership. Russia kicked their ass back to Tbilisi before John McCain could get his dick hard. If anything, Russia has shown enormous restraint in Ukraine, but I’m less than impressed with their motives for doing so.

NATO is an imperial protection racket and it always has been. Contrary to popular mythology, the Warsaw Pact was constructed to defend the Soviet Union from western intervention. The US never gave a shit about communism. NATO was always about lynching Russia and lynching Russia was always about denying Asia a viable land bridge to the European economic integration which would have spelled out the end of Atlantic supremacy once and for all. This is why the Cold War never really ended. It just got colder with NATO’s obliteration of Yugoslavia and its expansion deeper and deeper into Russia’s sphere of influence to the point where Moscow has now found itself literally surrounded on all sides with no one left to turn to but China, the real powerhouse at the top of our shitlist.

This is why the tiny impoverished border region of Donbass matters so much to both sides of this conflict. To those rusted old Cold War juggernauts, it’s just another domino in NATO’s conspiracy against the Eurasian Century. But Donbass is more than just a game piece. It is a proud autonomous region which has struggled valiantly for its dignity against both western and eastern influence for generations, going all the way back to the stateless tribal proto-anarchism of the Cossacks who suffered harsh persecution from the Bolsheviks. This persecution only multiplied when the region became an unsurprising stronghold for Nestor Makhno’s Anarchist Black Army. Donbass was further punished for their intransigence with devastating famines under Stalin, but this didn’t stop them from becoming the backbone of Khrushchev’s Ukrainian front against the Nazi invaders who slaughtered Novorossiyan civilians by the millions.

This proud history of hard-headed rebellion continued when the region voted overwhelmingly to leave the Soviet Union and help build an independent Ukrainian republic. However, when Donbass discovered that they were simply trading one set of masters for another, they did what they do best and rebelled in a bloody coal strike that nearly ended in a civil war during the early-mid nineties. Finally, after years of abuse from Kiev, the last straw fell with the coup against Yanukovych, whom the region had voted for by 90%. When the same fascist flags their fathers died beneath went up over Kiev and announcements were made to ban their indigenous Russian language, the Novorossiyans said enough. From across the region they returned to their hometowns, taking a huge chunk of Ukraine’s working class military with them, and they voted to finally declare independence as the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic in 2014.

They expected Russia to have their backs like Crimea. But when the region chose independence over annexation, Russia left their ethnic brethren with the cold war shoulder. Even the Moscow brokered Minsk Agreement ignored the popular will of the People’s Republics and suggested reintegration back into Ukraine as part of a Russian style federation. And now, once again, the Donbass stands alone between two warring masters. As a Panarchist who views popular secession as a sacrament of a truly free society, this breaks my heart. Like the Armenians in Artsakh, the Novorossiyans in Donbass did everything right and now face certain punishment for doing so. The voice of the people has been made loud and clear by generations of Novorossiyans, but all Russia and NATO can hear is each other talking over their perceived lessers.

The solution to this tragedy is not a unipolar world or a bipolar world, it’s a thousand polar world. Only when the small tribes of this planet stand united under the solidarity of massive stateless autonomy will the world truly see how big we really are. Only when the people of Luhansk and Donetsk can look to the people of Chiapas and Chechnya and Rojava and Artsakh for solidarity will they truly be heard in every language. The only solution to a world governed by several flags is a world governed by a million. I just pray it’s not too late for the proud people of the Donbass. They deserve better than obliteration. They deserve liberation. We all do.