Government Report Documents US Responsibility for Venezuela’s Humanitarian Dilemma

Roger Harris

Venezuela was once one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America. The popular classes enjoyed major advances from the Bolivarian Revolution initiated by Hugo Chávez. Today Venezuela is experiencing an unprecedented economic crisis with severe humanitarian consequences.

The US government blames the crisis on the mismanagement and corruption of the Venezuelan government headed by Nicolás Maduro. The Venezuelan government faults the US and its allies for imposing sanctions, unilateral coercive measures illegal under international law.

An official US Congressional Research Service report issued April 28, Venezuela: Background and US Relations, suggests the Venezuelan government has valid arguments that it is being strangulated by US sanctions. According to the report:

It is difficult to attribute precisely the extent of Venezuela’s economic collapse that is due to US sanctions versus broad economic mismanagement. A February 2021 Government Accountability Office report asserted that “sanctions, particularly on the state oil company in 2019, likely contributed to the steeper decline of the Venezuelan economy.” The Maduro government has defaulted on all its bonds, and US sanctions prohibit debt restructuring with creditors.

US regime-change activities

The Congressional Research Service report provides a brief revision of history to fit an imperialist narrative to justify the hybrid war to achieve regime change in Venezuela. Hence the US-backed coup in 2002, when the US government welcomed a “return to democracy,” is euphemistically referred to as President Chávez’s “brief ouster from power.” The subsequent employers’ lockout in 2002-2003, designed to economically cripple the government and cause its fall, is called an “oil workers’ strike.” The lethally violent guarimbas calculated to overthrow the elected Maduro government are called “student-led” protests.

While in all the above instances, the US role in events is rendered invisible, the report describes how “Congress has provided funding to support democratic civil society in Venezuela,” which is Washington’s duplicitous shorthand for regime change programs.

The report continues: “For more almost [sic] two decades, the US has provided democracy-related assistance to Venezuelan civil society through the US Agency for International Development and the National Endowment for Democracy,” the former through its appropriately named Office of Transition Initiatives. “For FY2021, the Administration requested…$200 million to support transition in Venezuela.”

In January 2019 the US and its allies ceased to recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate president after then National Assembly leader Juan Guaidó, who had never run for national office, “announced he was willing to serve as interim president.” Guaidó’s coup attempts are euphemistically described as “high-profile but ultimately unsuccessful efforts to encourage security forces to abandon Maduro.”

Even the US allies that have recognized Guaidó, “oppose military intervention in Venezuela and have expressed concerns about the humanitarian effects of broad sanctions,” according to the report.

The report laments that: “The Venezuelan government has made it difficult for Venezuelans to obtain a valid passport and therefore legal status outside the country.” The difficulty, conveniently omitted from the report, is that when a foreign state expels the legitimate Maduro representatives and installs Guaidó’s, Caracas has no means of conducting normal embassy activities.

Economic crisis

Key in the US hybrid war to achieve regime change in Venezuela are the economic sanctions. The report forthrightly describes:

[the] multiyear economic crisis, one of the worst economic crises in the world since World War II: Its economy has contracted by more than 75% since 2014, estimated as the single largest economic collapse outside of war in at least 45 years and more than twice the magnitude of the Great Depression in the US. Imports—which Venezuela relies on for most consumer goods—have fallen by almost 95% since 2013. The country faces shortages of critical food and medicine.

Contrary to the official US narrative that Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution is root cause of all problems, the report admits: “The trigger for Venezuela’s economic crisis was the crash in world oil prices in 2014.”

The report explains how US sanctions confounded the Venezuelan government’s efforts to address this crisis:

Piecemeal efforts to address the crisis, including price controls and the creation of a new digital currency, the petro, were ineffective [because they were blocked by the US government]. Some initiatives, such as restructuring debt or bringing the government budget into balance, were pledged and then abandoned [again prevented by the US government sanctions].

Subsequent rounds of US sanctions targeting the government, central bank, and gold sectors, as well as limiting Venezuela’s access to the US financial system, likely exacerbated economic pressures in Venezuela. With private creditors unwilling and unable (due to sanctions) to purchase new Venezuelan debt, the Maduro government routinely turned to its main international financial backers—China, Russia, and more recently, Iran—but China and Russia are increasingly reluctant to extend further assistance [due to secondary sanctions].

The sanctions are not just against Venezuela but affect other countries amounting to a blockade:

The sanctions framework also prohibited non-US entities from transacting with PdVSA [Venezuelan state-owned oil company] in US dollars and made non-US entities subject to having their US property blocked, should it be determined that they materially assisted PdVSA….

Under the sanctions framework, Treasury also has sanctioned numerous individuals, vessels, and companies involved in trading and shipping Venezuelan oil. This progressive application of sanctions—designed to prevent export and sale of oil produced in Venezuela—has made it more difficult, though not impossible, for PdVSA to complete petroleum sales and export transactions.

Venezuela’s dilemma: patria o muerte

The US government imposes the choice on Venezuela – in the words of the Latin American revolutionary slogan – of patria o muerte (homeland or death). In the period 2017-2018 alone, some 40,000 deaths were attributed to the sanctions. And that was pre-COVID and before the most devastating sanctions fully took effect.

In a weaponization of the pandemic, the US took advantage of the health vulnerability to make conditions even worse, according to the report:

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated the economic challenges facing the Venezuelan government…. Fuel shortages, exacerbated by the end of US-licensed oil for diesel swaps in the fall of 2020, reportedly have made food distribution and humanitarian aid delivery more challenging.

Noting that “it is unclear how Venezuela’s economy can rebuild in the absence of a significant reorientation of economic policies,” the report calls for the abandonment of the Bolivarian social project and adoption of an IMF structural adjustment program, which would remove price controls on vital necessities, privatize banks, and fully open the economy to the dictates of international finance.

“The economic crisis, now exacerbated by the pandemic,” the report coldly explains, “has been devastating for its citizens, with no clear or quick resolution on the horizon in the absence of a resolution to the concurrent political crisis.” The “political crisis” is the US regime change program designed to subjugate Venezuela.

“Although sanctions do not seem to be physical warfare weapons,” the Lancet (3/18/20 as quoted by FAIR) noted, “they are just as deadly, if not more so. Jeopardizing the health of populations for political ends is not only illegal but also barbaric.”

Conclusion

The findings in the congressional report are a recommended counterpoint to those of the corporate media such as CNN that anguish over the dire conditions in Venezuela but obscure the major perpetrator. Ditto for leftish analysts such as Chris Gilbert who writes: “The silent event that shook Venezuela in 2015-16 involved an abrupt return to capitalist normality. At about that time Maduro’s government decided to step back from interventions in the economy.” Left out of his picture is the fact that US sanctions were imposed on Venezuela at precisely that time.

If the US government’s propaganda is correct that the current crisis is due to Maduro’s mismanagement and corruption, then illegal and inhumane sanctions would not be needed to dislodge the “regime.” Conversely, given that the sanctions and accompanying blockade are so overwhelming, the impacts of mismanagement and corruption would be difficult to parse out. In fact, the report says, “data suggest that production declines accelerated following sanctions targeting Venezuela’s oil sector.”

The one conclusion for sure is that the US is punishing the Venezuelans for the good things (such as poverty reduction, documented in the report) and not the bad. Otherwise, demonstrable narco-states like Colombia and Honduras that are guilty of manifest human rights violations would be treated like Venezuela, and Venezuela would be the largest recipient of US aid.

The Congressional Research Service report concludes:

The failure to dislodge Maduro from power demonstrated the limits of US and other international efforts to prompt political change in Venezuela. Unilateral US policies, such as oil sanctions, arguably worsened the humanitarian crisis in the country and caused divisions within the international coalition that once backed Guaidó.

In other words, despite inhumane sanctions by the US and its allies, the Bolivarian Revolution has endured because of its popular support.

African Human Rights Vs. Western Human Rights

Thomas C. Mountain

If you ask those of us living in the Africa, almost all of us will tell you that the “human rights” that matter most are those that are basic to the right to life; food, water, shelter, medical care and education for your children.

If you and you family are cold, hungry, sick and illiterate do you think “freedom of the press” has any connection to your daily reality?

If you children are dying of water borne dysentery or malaria exacerbated by malnutrition do “free and fair elections” matter at all to you?

In the west “human rights” exist in an upside down reality where your problem with food is not about having enough but having too much.

When it comes to drinking water your choice is not whether you can find any but whether you will choose generic or designer brand bottled water.

You in the west live in a dwelling with central heat and a/c, running hot and cold water, dishwashers, garbage disposals, giant refrigerators, washer/dryers (you have never washed you clothes by hand in your life) and all sorts of “modern conveniences” that we in the third world have never even dreamed of. The very poorest people, those on welfare/income support would refuse to live somewhere without running hot water, something 95% of the people in Africa can only dream of.

When it comes to medical care your medical plan, if you work for Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, may include such necessities as breast reduction surgery or even liposuction. You don't have to worry about being able to find a doctor let alone being able
to afford medical treatment.

So doesn't it make sense that those sitting in the offices of what I call the “human rights mob” in London, Paris and New York don’t even consider having food, water, shelter, basic medical care and education for your children to be “human rights”? No, “freedom of the press” (which of course applies only to those that own the presses), “free and fair elections” amongst multiple other “freedoms” are what really matter. The human rights mob don’t bother to even list the basics making up the right to life, your very survival, in their catalogue of
“human rights”.

When a society doesn't provide the basics to the right to life than it is violating its peoples human rights in a fundamental, undeniable way. Not only are these countries that fail in this massively violating their peoples human rights they are really just failed states, unable to provide even the minimum basics to their people.

But hey, if they have “free and fair elections” then they are “democracies” never mind trucks driving around picking up dead bodies in the streets. Even Seattle, USA, home to some of the richest corporations in the world, has to pick up a dead body of a homeless person almost everyday.

In the western countries you find widespread homelessness, hunger, medical neglect and even poisonous drinking water i.e. Flint, Michigan. Yet these massive violations of human rights are almost ignored because what matters is “freedom of the press”, “freedom of speech” and “democracy” as in “free and fair elections” never mind the hundreds of million$ spent in winning such.

In Africa where I live, like in Cuba in the western hemisphere, we value real human rights, what I call African human rights, food, water, shelter, medical care and education for your children. Once we have these human rights completely and irrevocably secure than we will start to worry about “Western Human Rights”.

Climate change impact on Gulf Stream will have severe consequences for weather in Europe and North America

Philip Guelpa

Human-induced climate change has caused a substantial reduction in the Gulf Stream’s rate of flow, according to a new study by a team of scientists from Ireland, Britain and Germany published in the journal Nature Geoscience (Caesar et al, 25 February 2021). Furthermore, the researchers predict that should this trend continue, which is likely under current conditions, the degradation of the Gulf Stream will reach a “tipping point” beyond which the change will become irreversible, producing major, negative impacts to weather patterns along the North Atlantic coasts of Europe and North America. The results of this study support previous modeling that predicted the slowing that has now been documented.

The North Atlantic Gulf Stream, also known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), begins near Florida, flows northward along the east coast of North America, then swings eastward toward Europe, subsequently diverging into a number of separate currents. It is one of the world’s major ocean currents which have a major influence on global climate. In particular, the Gulf Stream acts as a moderating influence on the weather patterns of eastern North America and western Europe. Without it, weather patterns in these areas would be more extreme, including a greater range of temperatures and precipitation, and a marked increase in severe storms, possibly deflecting winter storm tracks over Europe. It would also accelerate sea level rise in both areas.

A computerized image of the Gulf Stream

The moderating effect of the Gulf Stream on weather patterns along the northern hemisphere’s Atlantic coasts is caused by the huge amount of warm water—more than 5.2 billion gallons (20 million cubic meters) per second—it pumps into the North Atlantic, counteracting the colder water from the Arctic region to the north.

The researchers predict that the tipping point could be reached by the year 2100, beyond which the Gulf Stream would be substantially degraded or halted altogether. Once that happens, the change would likely be irreversible, regardless of any efforts to moderate climate change.

Although the recording of precise measurements began only in 2004, the researchers were able to use 11 proxy indicators to reconstruct key characteristics of the Gulf Stream back about 2,000 years. These include atmospheric temperature records, Atlantic silt data from underwater sediment cores, deep-sea coral population records, tree rings and ice cores. These data allowed for estimations of the Gulf Stream’s water temperature and rate of flow. For example, different coral species prefer specific temperature environments. Changes in coral populations thus indicate shifts in water temperature over time. And the greater the rate of water flow the larger the sediment particles that can be moved by the current. The data collected, representing a variety of sources and taken from dispersed locations were, nevertheless, found to present a broadly consistent pattern.

Similar research has been done for years. A work on the impact of climate change on the Gulf Stream was published in 2007, when Zickfield et. al. noted that, if current warming trends continue, there is a 40 percent chance of a “collapse” of the ocean current by 2100.

The sensitivity of the Gulf Stream’s rate of flow to global warming is indicated by two changes identified by the study. The first was a small reduction prompted by the end of the Little Ice Age, a period of natural global cooling which lasted from approximately 1300 to 1850. The second was much more significant. Beginning in the mid-20th century, as anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming accelerated, the rate of flow began a precipitous decrease, which has now reached 15 percent below the previous level. It is now at its lowest in over a millennium.

The historic pattern of flow of the Gulf Stream is driven by what is called deep convection. Warm and salty water moves from the south to the north where it cools down and thus gets denser. When it is heavy enough the water sinks to deeper ocean layers and flows back to the south. Global warming disturbs this mechanism: Increased rainfall and enhanced melting of the Greenland ice sheet add fresh water to the surface ocean. This reduces the salinity and thus the density of the water, inhibiting the sinking and thus weakening the flow of the Gulf Stream.

A warmer climate increases rainfall and accelerates the rate of glacial melting, most significantly in this case the Greenland ice sheet. Separate research has demonstrated that melting of the Greenland ice sheet is 14 percent more rapid now than it was between 1985 and 1999.

The researchers project that at the current rate, assuming no significant reduction in the pace of global warming, the Gulf Stream could slow another 45 percent by the end of the century, at or near a critical tipping point of no return.

The consequences of disruption of the Gulf Stream are one more indication of the truly catastrophic effects of uncontrolled climate change. So far, the meagre efforts toward slowing the rate of global warming have been woefully inadequate, amounting to little more than lip service.

As with the lack of effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this criminal pattern is the direct result of the maniacal and myopic drive of capitalism to maximize profits, no matter what the cost, even if it means rendering the earth unlivable. One need only look at our near neighbor, the planet Venus, an extreme and unlivable hothouse, to see what’s in store unless the working class takes control and rapidly implements the measures needed to halt climate change.

Amid COVID-19 pandemic, Germany, France spend billions on new fighter jets

Kumaran Ira

Germany, France and Spain are negotiating a multi-billion-euro project to develop a joint European fighter jet, the Future Combat Air System (FCAS). Brushing aside the over 1 million European deaths from COVID-19 due to the European Union’s (EU) “herd immunity” policy with the claim there is no money to fund a scientific social distancing policy, they are preparing to instead spend hundreds of billions of euros on war planning.

Yesterday, French Junior Defence Minister for Armament Joël Barre announced that a final deal on the FCAS could be announced this week. A financing deal between Airbus and Dassault on the FCAS was already announced on April 6. Airbus, French defence contractors Dassault and Thales, and various subcontractors across Europe are the key firms involved in the FCAS, which is expected to replace both Dassault’s Rafale jet and the Eurofighter made by Airbus in 2040.

A French Air Force Dassault Rafale (Wikimedia Commons)

Last month, German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and her French counterpart, Florence Parly, met to discuss the FCAS program. This came amid reports that German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative government is anxious to have the FCAS programme’s financing fully decided before the Bundestag (parliament) elections in September.

Kramp-Karrenbauer declared that the programme is in a “very decisive phase.” She indicated that some final points, such as engine development, still need clarification, adding, “we as politicians expect the industry to jointly find a viable basis (for the next steps of the project) which we can accept.”

There are continuing tensions, however, as German and French unions fight over which models and what factories would be most involved in building the fighter jet.

For her part, Parly called the FCAS “above all a political project,” declaring: “It is above all the will of France and Germany to give the very best to our army and to build a European defence programme that both countries seek. Both of us think the same thing: we need an agreement by the end of the month.”

The FCAS, expected to be operational by 2040, is a massive programme to build fighters, drones, combat technologies involving “cloud” computing, and secure communication systems. It got the green light in a 2017 meeting of the Franco-German Council of Defence Ministries, with spending to be shared equally between Paris and Berlin. Estimates of its overall cost range from €100 billion to a recent report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung placing it at €500 billion.

From its inception, this programme was based on massive military spending increases financed by EU austerity attacks on the working class and sweeping cuts to social spending. After the NATO-backed regime change operation in Ukraine in 2014, the NATO military alliance called on European states to spend 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defence.

Now, amid the pandemic, this build-up is based on the EU’s “herd immunity” policy. Berlin and Paris claim there is no money to finance social distancing policies, and that public funds should instead be handed over to massive military programmes and the EU’s €2 trillion bank and corporate bailouts. Based on such arguments, the EU is not only refusing to cut military spending, despite the economic collapse produced by their response to the pandemic, but is actually raising military spending rapidly.

Berlin and Paris led an EU health policy that saw over 1 million deaths in Europe, with the continent’s hospitals overwhelmed. According to official statistics, France has the most recorded COVID-19 cases of any European country, at 5.7 million, and Germany has 3.4 million. Over 104,000 and 83,000 people have died of COVID-19 in France and Germany, respectively.

At the same time, Germany reported record high military spending of €53 billion this year. For its part, amid the collapse in GDP due to the pandemic, France is allocating 2.1 percent of its GDP, or €49.7 billion, to its defence budget. France’s 2019-25 military budgeting law gave the armed forces €18 billion more in 2019 than they received in 2017. Last year, Parly reported that the French military’s investment budget between 2019 and 2023 would total €110 billion.

This spending has gone hand in hand with a growing campaign by European capitalist politicians and media to develop the EU as an aggressive military alliance. In 2018, amid mass “yellow vest” protests against social inequality, French President Emmanuel Macron insisted that Europe had to be prepared for war against Russia, China and the United States. Such arguments were retailed in countless articles by German and French media.

In 2019, German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) warned that if the EU “does not act as one, it will find itself at the whim of other world powers.” It added, “our military and industrial sectors are at risk of becoming technologically dependent. That makes cooperation not just an option, but a requirement.”

Last spring, in the initial weeks of the pandemic in Europe, Le Monde drew the link between an aggressive EU foreign policy and the EU’s “herd immunity” policy on the pandemic. Denouncing “China-centric globalisation,” it endorsed Trump’s rejection of masks and social distancing policies. It approvingly described the Trump administration’s policy as “the ‘business first’ option, sacrificing part of its population to not leave Chinese power with an open field.”

Now, as they leave millions to die of COVID-19 and insist that all social distancing policies must be ended, the EU powers are intensifying plans for all-out global war between nuclear powers. Indeed, French military chief of staff General Thierry Burkhard recently told Britain’s Economist that France needs a “hardening” of its land army, currently fighting a bloody war in Mali: “We absolutely have to prepare for a more dangerous world.”

The type of conflict being considered is exemplified by the French military’s Operation Orion, war games slated for 2023 to train for high-intensity warfare against other major powers. Currently, reports indicate French forces up to the strength of a division, or around 25,000 soldiers, could be involved in the exercise in northern France, along with UK, Belgian and US troops.

Le Nouvel Economiste recently devoted an article to Operation Orion, noting that it is part of a “generational transformation” of the French and European military.

The magazine reported, “The spectre of high-intensity warfare is now so widely spread in French military thought that this scenario has its own acronym: HEM, or Hypothesis of a Major Engagement. Possible adversaries are not named but include not only Russia, but also Turkey or a North African country. French generals believe they have a decade to prepare. Study groups cover all potential issues, from arms shortages to social resilience, to the question of whether citizens are ‘ready to accept a level of losses we have never seen since World War II,’ says one participant.”

These reports underscore the critical necessity of an international mobilisation of the working class across Europe and beyond, against both the “herd immunity” policies of capitalist governments and the imperialist powers’ accelerating drive toward World War III.

Dutch caretaker government scraps partial lockdown as infections mount

Parwini Zora

Following its European counterparts, the Dutch government has implemented the first stage of its easing of social-distancing restrictions, starting on April 28. The government took this reckless measure even though it is still a caretaker government, the Dutch bourgeois parties having failed to form a government since elections in March.

“We are of course glad that this is possible again, because society yearns for more freedom,” said Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

Guests queue, bottom, to take their seats at spaced out terrace tables in Utrecht, Netherlands, Wednesday, April 28, 2021. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

In fact, it is impossible for society to be truly free without putting an end to the pandemic, which continues to mount. The National Institute for Public Health and Environment (RIVM) reported the number of COVID-19 cases hit 1.5 million, in a country with a population of 17.3 million. The incidence rate is over 300 of every 100,000 persons, and more than 20,000 deaths according to even conservative estimates. Coronavirus infections and hospitalizations are at record levels, with 2,638 in hospital, including 811 patients in the ICU.

Defying the advice of its own Outbreak Management Team (OMT), the government is pressing ahead with policies that will spread the virus and feed the speculative run-up in share markets, as demanded by far-right riots earlier this year.

From April 28, the night time curfew in force since January 23 will be suspended, retail businesses resume operations, and bars and pubs will reopen terraces for customers between noon and 6 p.m.

This year’s Eurovision song contest is scheduled for May 18-22 in Rotterdam with the green light for a live audience. The Dutch government has confirmed that 3,500 people will be allowed to watch six dress rehearsals and three live performances inside the city’s Ahoy Arena.

Predictably, neo-fascists who instigated nationwide riots against health measures earlier this year are jubilant. Tweets by Geert Wilders of the Party for Freedom (PVV), and Thierry Baudet of the Forum for Democracy (FvD) enthused at people “eating bread and honey” while enjoying sunny terraces, as the stock market is “counting out its money.”

The far-right Viruswaarheid (Virus Truth) outfit, which was at the forefront of anti-lockdown protests, felt further emboldened to demand the abolition of all remaining coronavirus measures in a summary proceeding at the court in The Hague. Representatives of hospitality associations, as well as mayors opposed to restrictions on restaurant dining, echoed these demands.

This comes as the spread of coronavirus variants and the slow pace of vaccination drives a new eruption of coronavirus cases across Europe and in the Netherlands. The GGD-GHOR community health care umbrella organization also recently reported failures in correctly tracing the 5.4 million vaccinations administered in the Netherlands. This follows “errors” by the RIVM in recording COVID-19 infections and problems with online scheduling of test or vaccination appointments due to continued technical glitches.

Growing numbers of younger patients, aged between 30 and 50, are arriving in hospitals as the Netherlands battle the peak of a third wave of COVID-19 infections. These are the consequences of the criminal “herd immunity” policy of successive Rutte-led governments, which kept workers going to work during the pandemic, including in non-essential industries during its so-called “lockdown.”

The number of seriously ill young people needing hospitalization has exploded, amid the reopening of primary schools and the spread of the UK variant of the coronavirus. A two-week school holiday in May intersects with the easing of restrictions, however, and so hospitals expect the worst from mid to late May.

In the decades since the Stalinist regime dissolved the Soviet Union in 1991 and the foundation of the European Union (EU) in 1992, health care has been ravaged by austerity, while the financial markets received repeated bailouts.

Just during the three Rutte-led coalition governments in the last decade, some 70,000 health care staff have been laid off, and ICU capacity cut by half. By 2018, five hospitals went bankrupt, as health care workers reported record high levels of burnout. Amid a global eruption of class struggle, Dutch health care workers organized a first-ever nationwide strike in January 2020.

As 82.6 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the March Dutch elections that returned Rutte to power by default, over 60 percent said “health care” was the main issue for them in the elections, as the pandemic triggers the deepest social and economic crisis the Netherlands have seen in decades.

Mainly due to the treacherous role played by pseudo-left parties and the union bureaucracies, there was no political alternative for workers to express their opposition to the government’s murderous herd immunity policy and to EU austerity measures. Protest votes went into the dead end of the far right, or the liberal D66 party, which capitalized on the bankruptcy of the Labour and Socialist Parties. All of these parties have supported, tacitly or otherwise, Rutte’s ending of social distancing.

The two leading Dutch union confederations, deflecting strikes through “collective agreements” at the negotiation table with the state and corporate management, have kept the 9 million-strong Dutch working class in check and at work throughout the pandemic. They played the role of a well-oiled extension of management, which views them as reliable, well-to-do agents to strangle workers’ struggles in the interests of the financial aristocracy.

The Christian National Trade Union (CNV) has supported the easing of the lockdown, saying it “comes not a day too soon” and adding, “Too many hospitality and retail businesses are currently on the brink of collapse after months of closure, threatening to cost many people their jobs .”

The Netherlands Trade Union Confederation (FNV), the largest Dutch trade union, added that it too is pleased to see bars and restaurants reopen as the virus circulates massively. FNV director Edwin Vlek told fnvhoreca.nl that opening terraces will offer relief to businesses. “It is nice that the catering industry is allowed to do something again and that there is some perspective again.” He added that the FNV is “disappointed by the limitations” that remain on free movement, which mean that state policy contributes “to the recovery of this industry only to a minimal extent.”

Pseudo-left parties acting as gung-ho cheerleaders of the union bureaucracies, like the Dutch section of the International Socialist Alternative, Socialistisch Alternatief (SA), the Pabloite Grenzeloos, and the Communist Platform are maintaining a complicit silence in this social murder.

A week before the easing of social distancing measures, Dutch doctors warned of “an emergency” at hospitals, which are on the brink of collapse. Association of Intensive Care Physicians chairman Diederik Gommers has publicly warned of a “Code Black” scenario, in which patients outnumber hospital beds, and physicians are forced to massively deny care to dying COVID-19 victims.

Wim Schleekens from Red Team C 19 NL, an independent team of medical experts, told Al Jazeera: “We are maybe in ‘Code Black’ already. Because we keep patients home, we send them home too early.” He added that the government has been “playing with fire.”

In the Dutch city of Venlo, the VieCuri Medical Centre announced on May 1 that it cannot admit any more patients. “We always try our best to provide good care to every patient, but every hospital has its maximum capacity,” stated its spokesperson.

Global consumer price surge hits workers

Gabriel Black

Over the last week leading businesses, banks and financial analysts have released estimates predicting that global consumer prices, whether toilet paper, electronics, or food, have and will continue to rise substantially in 2021.

Tents of the homeless on the sidewalk in Skid Row, Los Angeles, 2018 (Photo: Wikipedia/Russ Allison Loar)

Already in the United States, the Consumer Price Index, a measure of average prices, increased by 0.6 percent in March, the largest monthly increase since August 2012. In the UK, prices increased by 0.7 percent in the same month.

At the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting this past weekend, billionaire Warren Buffett said, “We are seeing substantial inflation. We are raising prices. People are raising prices to us, and it’s being accepted.” He described the economy as “red hot.”

A list of major global brands has already announced major price increases:

• Kimberly-Clark, which owns Kleenex and a host of other bathroom and hygiene products, said it would increase prices on all major products in North America due to “significant” cost inflation, increasing prices 5 to 10 percent.
  
  
• Procter & Gamble, which owns dozens of leading household brands, including Tide, Gillette, Crest, Pampers, Dawn, Swiffer, Ivory, IAMS and Head & Shoulders, will increase prices in personal care products 5 to 10 percent to “offset significant commodity cost inflation.”
  
  
• General Mills’ chief financial officer (CFO) of the global food processor told analysts on a call that it was facing “increased supply-chain and freight costs ‘in this higher-demand environment,’” according to the New York Times.
  
  
• Whirpool’s CFO told Yahoo Finance that it was increasing the cost of its products by 5 to 12 percent in response to rising steel costs. Steel prices are up about 75 percent since March 2020.
  
  
• Kraft Heinz’s CEO Miguel Patricio told Reuters that there would be increases to food products such as salad dressings, sweets, mac & cheese, and other wheat-containing products, as well as mayonnaise.
  
  
• Unilever, a major global food manufacturer, owner of Lipton, said there would be a high, single-digit percentage increase in costs.

These cost increases will disproportionately impact the working class, who spend a larger portion of their income on food and basic consumer goods. In the US, for example, the bottom quintile of the population spends 36 percent of its income on food, whereas the average household spends 13 percent on food.

Already, workers throughout the world face a grim job market, where wages and employment levels remain below pre-pandemic levels. Bloomberg has estimated that some 150 million “middle class” global workers, making between $10 and $20 a day, have been pushed back below that wage group. The International Labor Organization estimated in January that an equivalent of 255 million full-time jobs were lost due to the pandemic. In this context of extreme economic difficulty, rising prices will severely impact the livelihoods of workers.

The price increase in consumer goods is the result of a combination of factors. Above all, however, is the soaring cost of the underlying commodities, which go into global production chains.

• Food prices increased for their 10th consecutive month in March, reaching levels not seen since July 2014. Sugar, oil and grains have been leading the increase.
  
  
• Oil prices have rebounded to their pre-pandemic high, reaching levels not seen since 2018. At the pump, average US prices have gone from $1.75 a gallon to almost $3.00 today.
  
  
• The Metal and Minerals Price Index (encompassing many important industrial metals) is up 60 percent from one year ago, with many metals, such as copper, at or near record highs.
  
  
• Lumber futures have surged to record highs, increasing by more than 500 percent over the last year, far above pre-pandemic levels.
  
  
• UBS predicts that commodities will, as a whole, rise by 10 percent over the coming year.

These fundamental commodities, like oil, food and metals, affect the prices of a wide variety of consumer items and services. Rising lumber prices have added $36,000 to the cost of building a new home. Likewise, the rising price of metals, like copper and steel, affect a wide variety of consumer goods, including telecommunications, cars, motors and construction. Rising oil prices drive up all prices by increasing the cost of transportation.

Prices have increased partially because of disruptions in supply chains due to COVID-19. Issues such as labor shortages, shipping bottlenecks and supply-demand mismatches due to changed COVID-19 consumption patterns have all impacted global supply chains. For example, many farms based on seasonal migrating labor faced shortages due to border closures. Outside of major ports in California, dozens of container ships await unloading in a giant bottleneck holding back goods from the US market.

Indian state elections deliver blow to Modi, amid COVID-19 catastrophe

Rohantha De Silva

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national government have suffered a major setback in five state assembly elections held in late March and April, but whose results were only tabulated on Sunday.

Trinamool Congress party chief Mamata Banerjee shows victory sign as she addresses supporters and media following her party's victory in the West Bengal state elections in Kolkata, India, Sunday, May 2, 2021. (AP Photo)

The Hindu supremacist BJP fell far short of what it had loudly proclaimed to be its principal goal—wresting power in West Bengal, India’s fourth most populous state, from Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress.

Banerjee is a right-wing demagogue, who came to power in 2011 exploiting mass anger over the Stalinist-led Left Front’s implementation of what it itself termed “pro-investor” policies. But the BJP views her as an adversary and calculated that a victory in West Bengal would give it a much needed political boost in the face of mounting opposition to its class war, communalist authoritarian agenda.

Hoping to bank on its strong performance in West Bengal in the 2019 national election, the BJP poured enormous energy and resources into its campaign to defeat Banerjee. Modi and his chief henchman, Home Minister Amit Shah, held numerous rallies in West Bengal, where they shamelessly sought to polarize the electorate along communal lines, by championing their anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act and denouncing Banerjee for “Muslim appeasement” and abetting “foreign infiltration.”

However, the BJP failed even to match its 2019 vote share, while the TMC’s rose by 4 percentage points to more than 48 percent, enough to win 214 of the 294 state assembly seats.

In Tamil Nadu, the sixth largest state, the BJP’s regional ally, the AIADMK, went down to defeat after 10 years in office. In the neighbouring southern state of Kerala, the BJP lost its sole state assembly seat.

India’s ruling party did retain power in the northeastern state of Assam at the head of a coalition government. Its only other consolation came in Puducherry, a Union Territory and former French colonial enclave with a population of 1.25 million. There it was able to gain a share of power as the junior partner of a local Congress Party split-off.

The five states that went to the polls this spring have an aggregate population of 255 million, making them home to about 18 percent of all Indians.

The campaign unfolded as COVID-19 cases surged across the country, transforming India into the pandemic’s global epicenter. Nevertheless, until the very final stages of West Bengal’s eight-phase election, Modi and the other party leaders recklessly continued to hold mass election rallies. This was part of a concerted campaign, spearheaded by Modi and his BJP, but supported by the entire political establishment, to systematically downplay the virus’ danger and project an air of normalcy to justify their keeping the “economy open.”

The prioritizing of the profits of India’s venal capitalist elite over saving human lives has led to a human catastrophe. India has been averaging more than 100,000 new COVID-19 infections since April 7; 200,000 since April 17; and 300,000 since April 24. As a consequence, India’s dilapidated health care system has been overwhelmed leading to mass deaths. Officially India has recorded more than 20,000 COVID-19 deaths in just the past seven days. But this is widely acknowledged to be only a fraction of the true death toll. “From all the modeling we’ve done, we believe the true number of deaths is two to five times what is being reported,” University of Michigan epidemiologist Bhramar Mukherjee told the New York Times.

There is mounting mass anger against the Modi government. Over its criminal mishandling of the pandemic. Over its attempts to “revive” India’s economy through further austerity, an accelerated privatization drive, a battery of pro-agribusiness laws, and a labour code “reform” that promotes precious contract-labour jobs and outlaws most strikes. And over its moves to further integrate India into US imperialism’s military-strategic offensive against China.

Tens of millions of workers joined a general strike last November 26 to protest the government’s self-avowed “pro-investor policies” and to demand emergency support for the hundreds of millions who lost their livelihood when the Modi government imposed a calamitous, ill-prepared lockdown last spring. Tens, and at times hundreds, of thousands of farmers have been camped on the outskirts of the national capital Delhi since late November to demand repeal of the three pro-agribusiness laws rammed through parliament last September.

However, the anger against the Modi government and against the broader drive of the Indian ruling elite to intensify the exploitation of India’s workers and toilers found only very distorted expression in the election outcome. There are two main reasons for this.

First, balloting was completed in all the states other than West Bengal by April 6. That is before the mounting wave of COVID-19 infections had become a veritable tsunami, and under conditions where the political establishment and corporate media were still insisting in unison that India was beating the coronavirus.

Second, and more importantly, the BJP’s electoral opponents are themselves deeply discredited among India’s workers and toilers, because of their own role in implementing the ruling class’ socially incendiary agenda. This is above all true of the Congress Party, until recently the Indian bourgeoisie’s preferred party of national government, and the two major Stalinist parties, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM and the Communist Party of India (CPI).

The state election results delivered yet another body blow to the Congress, which in 2019 failed to win even 10 percent of the seats in India’s lower house of parliament for the second straight national election. The Congress failed in its much ballyhooed attempt to unseat the incumbent governments in Kerala and Assam, lost all 23 seats it held in the West Bengal assembly and fell from power in Puducherry.

In Tamil Nadu, where it stood as part of the victorious DMK-led electoral alliance it may be given a few cabinet posts. But with 133 of the 234 seats state assembly seats, the DMK has a clear majority on its own.

The Stalinists are making much of the reelection of Kerala’s Left Democratic Front (LDF) government, the only state government they now lead. The LDF won 99 seats in the 140-member assembly, with the CPM capturing 62, the CPI 17, and the remaining 20 split between a renegade Congress faction, the Kerala Congress (M), and the communal Indian Union Muslim League, until recently a Congress ally.

This was the first time in 40 years that a Kerala state election did not result in the rotation of power between the LDF and the Congress-led United Democratic Front. The Congress had great hopes of returning to power in Kerala. In the 2019 national election, its alliance won 19 of the state’s 20 seats. But its campaign, which invariably attacked the LDF from the right, fizzled. Meanwhile, much of the corporate media praised the LDF government and in particular the Kerala Chief Minister and CPM Politburo member “Captain” Pinarayi Vijayan, for their purported “competent” administration—that is, their combination of capitalist development with meagre social welfare schemes.

Outside of Kerala, the CPM and CPI were electoral allies of the Congress Party and very much shared its fate. In Tamil Nadu, the CPM and CPI helped boost the fatuous claims of the DMK-Congress alliance to stand for “social justice,” and as its junior allies each won two assembly seats.

In West Bengal, the Stalinists stood in an electoral alliance with the Congress Party and the recently founded Indian Secular Front and suffered a debacle even more humiliating than did the Congress. The CPM polled just 4.68 percent of the vote, the CPI 0.2 percent, and they and their Left Front allies failed to win a single seat—this in a state where the Left Front ruled for 34 consecutive years, from 1977 through 2011.

While the Stalinists are trying to blame their wipeout in West Bengal on the electoral polarization between the BJP and the TMC, it is in reality the outcome of their decades-long suppression of the class struggle, integration into the capitalist establishment, and support for and pivotal role in implementing the bourgeoisie’s post-1991 “new economic policy.”

Having cheered on Gorbachev and the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy’s restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union, the CPM and CPI propped up a succession of Indian Union governments, most of them Congress led, that fully integrated India into the US-led capitalist order and pursued ever closer relations with Washington. Meanwhile, in West Bengal, their Left Front government pursued capitalist investment by seizing farmers’ land, outlawing strikes in the IT-enabled sector, privatizing businesses and slashing corporate taxes.

For decades, the Stalinists have justified their relentless efforts to politically subordinate the working class to the big business Congress Party and a host of right-wing caste and regional-ethnic parties in the name of fighting the BJP and the Hindu supremacist right. The end result has been that the BJP and reaction have only grown stronger, as they have been able to exploit the popular anger and frustration over the bitter fruits of “Left” and “Left”-supported governments, like the Congress-led UPA which governed India from 2004–2014—endemic poverty, ever-deepening social inequality, ramshackle public services and rampant corruption.

Australian government declares it “illegal” for citizens to return from India

Oscar Grenfell

The Liberal-National Coalition government announced on Friday that Australian citizens stranded in India, where the coronavirus pandemic has spiraled out of control, would commit a criminal offence if they attempted to return home, punishable by massive fines and imprisonment.

Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison in Sydney, Australia, Tuesday, April 27, 2021. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

The edict is a blatant attack on democratic rights and condemns thousands to possible infection and even death. It has highlighted the absence of constitutional protections for key civil liberties, as well as the callous and nationalist response of the Australian ruling elite, and the major imperialist powers, to the humanitarian disaster unfolding in India and other impoverished countries that have become epicentres of the global pandemic.

The ban, which will remain in place until May 15 and could be extended further, is based on provisions in the Biosecurity Act. It grants the federal health minister draconian powers in the event of a health crisis. Penalties for defying the orders of the minister range from fines of up to $66,000 to five years’ imprisonment.

The blockade takes to a new level the criminal indifference of the government, along with the Labor Party opposition, to the plight of tens of thousands of Australian citizens and residents who have been stranded abroad during the pandemic.

There are currently some 34,000 Australians overseas who have registered that they wish to return. The government has consistently refused to organise adequate charter flights for their repatriation and provided only pittances in financial aid. It has maintained stringent caps on the number of international flights permitted to arrive in the country each week, as a result of the failure of the state and federal authorities to develop an effective quarantine program.

A number of those trapped abroad have been reduced to pauperism, while the majority have been compelled to try to book exorbitantly-priced flights from private airlines, which are often subject to repeated cancellations. In some countries, one-way international flights to Australia have cost as much as $35,000.

While the arrival caps have effectively blocked thousands from being repatriated, Friday’s decision was the first time that the government has instituted a blanket ban on citizens returning from a foreign country. According to some legal experts, the blockade may be the first such measure by any government against its citizens since the pandemic began.

Much of the commentary on the ban has focused on its blatantly discriminatory character and its clear racist undertones. No such blockade was instituted on returnees from Britain or the United States, even when the per capita infection rates there were higher than the current rate in India.

The ban on citizens returning from India, however, is an attack on citizenship rights as a whole and establishes a precedent that could be applied to Australians trapped in any other country.

The potentially tragic consequences of the ban are demonstrated by the situation in India. The country is recording nearly 400,000 COVID-19 infections per day, while the daily death toll is approaching 4,000. But these official figures are a gross understatement. Real daily infections are likely in the millions. Journalists and rights organisations have documented thousands of fatalities that have not been included in the official toll.

The country’s health care system has collapsed, with many severely-ill patients unable to receive a hospital bed and a major shortage of oxygen supplies required to keep those stricken by the disease alive.

The eight to ten thousand Australian citizens who will not be able to return face the real risk of contracting a potentially-deadly illness, which they may not be treated for.

Those affected included the very young and the elderly, who are at a particular risk. Drisya Dilin, an Australian hospital administrator, has told the media that she dropped her daughter off in India, with the child’s grandparents, before the pandemic began. The ban means there is no immediate prospect of securing the five-year-old girl’s return.

Other Australians have spoken to the media about fears for their elderly parents, who are also trapped. Australia has a large Indian community, accounting around 2.6 percent of the population, or well over half a million people, many of whom are affected by the tragedy unfolding on the subcontinent.

The government is well aware of the possible consequences of the ban. This morning it was reported that Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly warned Prime Minister Scott Morrison and other senior ministers that the blockade could result in citizens falling ill without the prospect of treatment, as well as a “worst case scenario,” i.e., their death. Kelly, however, indicated his support for the ban, because of Australia’s “limited” quarantine facilities.

It is an indictment of the federal and state governments that well over a year into the pandemic they have not instituted any effective quarantine program. The vast majority of international arrivals are still being sent to private hotels, where they are compelled to isolate for a fortnight at their own expense.

All governments have rejected calls from health experts, beginning early last year, for the construction of purpose-built quarantines. Time and again, epidemiologists have warned that hotels are inadequate because their airflow systems are often not capable of preventing the transmission of airborne viruses and they were not constructed to serve as medical facilities.

The hotel quarantines, moreover, have been staffed by low-paid and often casual workers, some of whom must work at multiple facilities to make ends meet. In many cases, they have not been provided with adequate personal protective equipment.

Every significant COVID-19 outbreak in Australia over the past six months or more has been linked to a “leak” from a hotel quarantine. This included the worst phase of the pandemic to date, when a mass outbreak in the state of Victoria last July-August resulted in 750 deaths and some 20,000 infections. This year, clusters have emerged in almost all the capital cities following quarantine failures. The total number of such “leaks” over the past half year is 16.

The ban was imposed as the number of positive cases in quarantine grew rapidly. At the Howard Springs facility in the Northern Territory, there were 53 positive cases a week ago, a figure now down to 41. The proportion of those infected at the site was at one stage over 15 percent, compared with the 2 percent deemed a safe positivity rate by health authorities. As many as 70 percent of returnees from India at Howard Springs had tested positive.

Howard Springs is the only quarantine centre that is not based in a private hotel. It has a capacity of just 900 returnees at any given time. The government ban is a tacit admission that the hotel quarantines are not safe, and only function if none, or hardly any, of those quarantining are COVID positive.

The blockade has provoked widespread opposition from Indian community groups, medical associations, public figures and ordinary people. Amnesty International and civil liberties organisations have condemned the ban as a breach of fundamental human rights. Morrison and his ministers have blithely dismissed the criticism.

Some lawyers and legal firms have foreshadowed a potential challenge through the courts. But Australia’s anti-democratic 1901 Constitution contains no bill of rights, or any explicit recognition of fundamental civil rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and those associated with citizenship, such as the right to return.

This means that a legal case would likely need to assert that the ban does not conform with the Biosecurity Act’s requirement that directives from the health minister be “appropriate and adapted.” The deliberately vague wording of the legislation could render such a case difficult to establish.

The Labor Party opposition has cynically criticised the ban and demanded to know why the federal government has not established purpose-built quarantine facilities. Federally, however, Labor has functioned as a “constructive” opposition throughout the pandemic, largely marching in lockstep with the government. This included support for most of last October’s federal budget measures, which included massive tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, but not enough health funding for the creation of such quarantines.

The majority of the state and territory administrations, moreover, are led by Labor. They have participated alongside the federal government in an extra-constitutional national cabinet that has frequently ruled by decree throughout the pandemic. State governments, including those led by Labor, have presided over the hotel quarantines. The scheme has provided a bonanza for the major hotel corporations, which otherwise would be impacted by the decline in international travel, and kept government spending as low as possible.

On the international front, Labor has supported Australia’s increasingly prominent role in the US-led confrontation with China, as well as the pitiful levels of aid that it has provided to impoverished countries in the Indo-Pacific region as they have been hit by the pandemic. Since the surge began in India, Australia has announced only that it will send 500 ventilators to the country of 1.3 billion people, along with half a million masks, and even fewer face shields and gloves.

Rape and Ethnic Cleansing in Tigray

John Clamp

Victims have told investigators that when Ethiopian federal regular soldiers and militia inflict infertility on Tigrayan women with burning metal rods, after gang-raping them, they tell the women that this is to stop them having ‘Woyene’ children (the Amharans’ derogatory term for ‘Tigrayans’).

Unleashing this kind of sentiment is a dangerous tactic in a country as ethnically diverse and restive as Ethiopia. The several hundred reported rapes must be an underestimate, though by how much is impossible to tell: many parts of Tigray are even now still impossible to access.

Abiy Ahmed’s government is overseeing ethnic cleansing, which partly explains the prevalence of rape allegations in the western part of Tigray. A chunk of the region was granted to the Tigrayans by the then Tigrayan-dominated government, which instituted a more decentralized ethno-federalism through its 1995 constitution. The new federal regions, which have the right to secede, were granted revenue-raising powers. This Tigrayan insurance against future federal domination also helped the coalition government they led until 2018 divide and rule Ethiopia according to ethnic groupings, a strategy which may now be unravelling spectacularly in a country where inter-ethnic violence is always looking for a walk-on part.

Ahmed, an ethnic Oroman, was seen as a new broom in a country where Amharans and Tigrayans had for decades gripped the levers of power, yet his national unity rhetoric failed to draw in the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, which refused to join his Prosperity Party coalition.

Ethiopia is a concoction of around 80 ethnic groupings. The Oroma account for a third, the Amhara 27 per cent, and the Tigrayans just six per cent of the population. For more than two decades after the ousting of former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) led the coalition Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and maintained the Marxist-Leninist tradition for grand-sounding monikers. Yet the TPLF’s dominance was also assured through state brutality and dividing and ruling the other ethnic populations. When Abiy Ahmed became prime minister, releasing many of the thousands of political prisoners was an easy win-win decision to make, and he was ready to end the state of war with Eritrea which had continued for years. Yet now the political capital he acquired in his first two years in power has evaporated, and even his fellow Oromans are questioning Ahmed’s motivations, concerned that his message of national unity may be doublespeak for the precise opposite.

The Nobel Committee has form when it comes to naïve and premature enthusiasms. Awarding Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed its peace prize in 2019 now looks slightly ill-advised, adding substance to criticism of the Committee for rewarding aspirations rather than concrete achievements. Their citation said: ‘As Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed has sought to promote reconciliation, solidarity and social justice.’

The TPLF have fled to the mountains. They have tens of thousands of well-trained fighters at their disposal, and the criminal brutality of the federal intervention has ensured they won’t be short of future volunteers.