Amid warnings of “catastrophic” COVID-19 third wave, Brazil’s state governors reopen economy

Eduardo Parati

As deaths decrease in the immediate aftermath of April’s second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, the number of new cases are already rising again since the beginning of May. The rolling average of new daily cases has increased from 56,533 on April 26 to 64,665 on May 19, well on its way to reaching the levels of the March surge that resulted in a historically unprecedented population decrease in April in many states, including heavily populated states in the south and southeast, as a direct result of COVID-19 deaths.

Vaccine arrives in the state of Pará (crédito: Jader Paes/Ag.Parás)

Since April, the death toll has been decreasing, dropping to 1,901 on May 17. However, since March, both the death toll and the number of new cases have remained above the scale of the first wave of May-August of last year. A May 13 report from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) pointed out that “The continuing high level observed, despite the slight reduction in the severity indicators, demands that all safety measures be maintained because a third wave now, with such high rates, could represent an even graver health crisis.”

Brazil has registered a total of more than 15,800,000 cases and 440,000 deaths so far, ranking as the second country with most deaths for more than a year before India’s current deadly surge saw it surpass fatalities in both Brazil and the US on Thursday.

Fiocruz warned that a new surge, given the current scenario of high incidence rates, “will be catastrophic.” It will also present an “opportunity for the emergence of new variants of the virus due to the intensity of transmission, as we have seen in other regions and countries.”

These warnings have not stopped the drive to reopen the economies of every state in Brazil, covered up by lying claims that the stabilization of cases means that the pandemic is “under control.”

Since April 18, right-wing Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) São Paulo state Governor João Doria has announced “transition phase” measures, reopening the economy, based on a small decrease in ICU occupancy rates, going from more than 90 percent in April to 79 percent this week.

The current number of occupied ICUs in São Paulo is above 10,000, much worse than during the first wave, when it reached a peak of 6,500. There are currently seven states with ICU beds filled to over 90 percent, and seven others reporting rates above 80 percent.

During a press conference Wednesday, Doria’s Health Secretary Jean Gorinchteyn declared that the increase in infirmary occupation rates confirmed the effectiveness of vaccination efforts, “increasing the number of patients with light symptoms,” while the growing number of new cases in the state was the result of “an increase in testing.”

On Wednesday, Doria declared a new stage in the reopening of the economy, increasing hours businesses are allowed to remain open, and raising the of limit of people indoors to 60 percent, starting on June 1. Since April, during the second wave, state governments throughout the country started reopening their economies, including in states governed by the Workers Party (PT).

In Ceará, where PT Governor Camilo Santana reopened businesses and schools for small children in April, the number of new cases has increased for the past three consecutive weeks. The state’s ICUs are currently 93 percent occupied. This did not stop the state’s health secretary from declaring this week that “transmission rates are already stabilizing.”

Meanwhile, the grave risks posed by the stabilization in the number of new cases is being covered up by the mainstream media, which is promoting the provision of small batches of vaccines as a major advance in the fight against the pandemic while at the same time reporting on the weekly changes in opening hours of stores, restaurants and gyms, along with the reopening of schools. The latest achievement, representing full vaccination for 4 percent of the population, was announced with relief by the media on Monday, amid reports of a full stoppage of vaccine distribution due to shortages throughout the country.

The efforts by governments and the media are aimed at staving off a wave of opposition in Brazil, as the slow pace of immunization amid high levels of new coronavirus cases is creating the conditions for an explosion of popular anger over the pandemic policies of the ruling class. They clearly foresee the danger that the mass demonstrations that have rocked Colombia for more than a week will spread to Brazil and throughout the region.

The attempts to promote the vaccination efforts as the only effective response to the pandemic were exposed by a recent study published as a pre-print article on May 12. The study estimates that 16.9 percent of all Manaus infections by the Brazilian variant P.1 in 2021 were, in fact, reinfections, illustrating the effects of letting the virus spread through the population without social distancing or contact tracing measures.

In a recent interview, the São Paulo state government Coronavirus Contingency Center interim chief and president of the Butantan Institute, one of the two facilities producing vaccines in the country, Dimas Covas, declared that an effective vaccination campaign would only become a reality during September or October. In March, federal Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga postponed the end date for restricting full vaccination to health workers, the elderly and other priority groups from April to September.

The efforts of Fiocruz, one of the vaccine production centers, have faced consecutive setbacks, mainly due to delays in imports of materials necessary for production. Such delays occur while the efforts of global immunization are disrupted by the competition of all major capitalist powers, refusing to lift patents for vaccines and blocking vaccine materials from being exported.

Moreover, attempts by the mainstream media to promote themselves as defenders of the use of masks are belied by reports about the new CDC guidelines allowing for the end of mask and social distancing mandates in the US. A report by Estado de São Paulo on the new guidelines echoed the Biden administration’s propaganda campaign, stating, “The measure tries to offer guarantees that some semblance of normal life can come back” and adding, “The new orientation comes while half of American adults have already received at least one vaccine shot against COVID-19, according to the CDC.”

The unscientific idea that mask mandates can be relaxed after half the population gets one shot is in fact a program of mass infection, being supported by Estado and the corporate interests which the newspaper represents.

Last month, Folha de São Paulo published an article making the bogus claim that the reopening of schools had no effect on new cases in the largest school district in the country. One of the authors, João Paulo Cossi Fernandes, worked at the Lemann Foundation during 2016-2017.

The foundation is one of the major education NGOs and think tanks that worked alongside the government in pushing through national educational “reform” in 2017, which resulted in the further worsening of working conditions for teachers and is set to end night classes by 2022, spelling the exclusion of millions of students who have to work during the day.

Since last year, the foundation dedicated itself to promoting the return to schools, in tandem with state governments throughout the country, using the false claim that children are not significant vectors of transmission for the coronavirus.

That the coronavirus cannot be put under control in one state or country without a global coordinated response is again being shown by the deadly toll of the pandemic in India and its neighboring countries. This week, the southern-most states of Brazil were put on alert for new cases after the appearance of the Indian variant in Argentina. Moreover, the May 13 Fiocruz report declared four Brazilian states were already showing a tendency of increase in new cases, posing the risk of a third wave that could spread out of control throughout the region.

Israeli security forces storm al-Aqsa after Gaza ceasefire

Jean Shaoul

On Friday, just hours after a fragile ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad came into effect, Israeli security forces fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets at worshippers in the al-Aqsa Mosque compound. At least 20 Palestinians were injured, with two taken to hospital.

People pass a rubble heap beside a building previously destroyed by an air-strike following a cease-fire reached after an 11-day war between Gaza's Hamas rulers and Israel, in Gaza City, Friday, May 21, 2021. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Tens of thousands had come for Friday prayers to celebrate the ceasefire. They carried Palestinian flags, distributed sweets and chanted slogans including “God is the Greatest” and “Greetings to Ezzedin al-Qassam,” referring to Hamas’ military wing, led by Mohammed Deif, who has been targeted repeatedly by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Police entered the compound to confiscate flags and disperse the crowd, provoking angry scuffles. The Jerusalem District commander then ordered mass reinforcements to “handle the protesters.”

In Sheikh Jarrah, police violently broke up a peaceful protest of hundreds of Palestinians and Jewish Israelis because one of the participants waved a Palestinian flag. The police chief also reinforced the police presence in Silwan, Isawiya and Sheikh Jarrah, having put in place barricades around the East Jerusalem neighbourhoods.

The IDF was preparing for unrest in the West Bank, including in Hebron where Hamas supporters were planning to celebrate “the resistance’s victory.” The IDF announced that the Border Police, sent to Lod in Israel to put down Palestinian protests against gun-toting Zionist vigilante groups were to return to the West Bank.

Unrest is also expected in Umm al-Fahm in central Israel, following the fatal shooting in the head of 17-year-old Mohammed Kiwan on Wednesday, leading to protests the police dispersed with tear gas. A general strike closed the town on Thursday, the day of Kiwan’s funeral.

Israel’s air strikes continued up until the ceasefire, mediated by Egypt, brought a temporary end to the one-sided war that killed at least 243 Palestinians, including 65 children and wounded more than 1,900. In contrast, just 12 people were killed in Israel.

The scale of the destruction and suffering in just 11 days is truly shocking. Hamas’ information officer Salaameh Maaruf has estimated the damage to be about $250 million. Of this:

* $92 million is damage to housing and NGO offices,

* $40 million is damage to Gaza’s commerce and industry,

* $27 million is damage to roads and water and sewage infrastructure,

* $23 million is damage to government building,

* $22 million is the cost of replacing the electricity distribution grid, and

* $24 million is damage suffered by the agricultural sector.

About 800,000 people have no regular access to drinking water. Around 10,000 metres of underground sewage and water lines, as well as wastewater networks, sewage evacuation vehicles, wells and a wastewater pumping station have been damaged. At least 50 schools have been seriously damaged.

US President Joe Biden absurdly said that the Israel-Gaza ceasefire would bring a genuine opportunity for progress. He ignored the murderous assaults by Israel on Gaza, including the wars of 2008-09, 2012 and 2014, and the weekly attacks on the Great March of Return in 2018-19, as well as countless other lesser attacks on the besieged enclave greenlighted by Washington and the Arab regimes.

Signaling his ongoing support for Israel against Hamas, Biden said “humanitarian assistance” for the reconstruction of Gaza would be done in coordination with the Palestinian Authority, run by Hamas’ rival, President Mahmoud Abbas, in the West Bank, and “in a manner that does not permit Hamas to simply restock its military arsenal.” He promised Netanyahu that Washington would replenish Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system that had protected it from Hamas’ projectiles.

There was great rejoicing in Gaza and the occupied West Bank at the end of hostilities, with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh hailing a “victory” and claiming it would have a wide impact in the region’s relationship with Israel. “We have destroyed the project of ‘coexistence’ with Israel, of ‘normalization’ with Israel”, he claimed, and Hamas would enjoy growing regional support. The fight against Israel would continue until the al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem was “liberated.”

Osama Hamdan, Hamas’ foreign relations bureau chief, said that Hamas had received assurances regarding Israeli policy toward Sheikh Jarrah, where several families faced eviction, and the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem that had triggered the war.

Israeli politicians, however, gave Hamas leaders no grounds for such optimism. Netanyahu threatened “a new level of force” if Hamas broke the ceasefire, saying, “If Hamas thinks we will tolerate a drizzle of rockets, it is wrong.” He claimed that the IDF’s operations had succeeded in dramatically setting back Hamas, with the destruction of 100 kilometres of tunnels, military infrastructure used for both land and sea attacks, as well as the assassination of 20 senior Hamas members.

Aware that he had made similar claims before without bringing an end to the conflict, Netanyahu said that while Israel had “changed the equation” the “public and Hamas don’t know everything... the entirety of our achievements will be revealed over time.”

But according to Ha’aretz, security officials were less than convinced about the “success” of the operation, noting that Israel’s strikes on Hamas’ rocket arsenal and launchers were less damaging than originally thought, with just 40 percent destroyed, meaning Hamas still had a large arsenal of rockets. They criticized the “poor” intelligence and the IDF’s failure to destroy most of Hamas’ tunnels, as well as the failure to mount a ground invasion and assassinate Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader, and Mohammed Deif, its military leader.

Defence Minister Benny Gantz, who has spoken with the leaders of the Arab regimes in the last days, threatened Hamas that any funds for the reconstruction of Gaza depended on making progress with Israel’s other conditions. He warned that without further political and diplomatic progress against Hamas, Operation Guardians of the Walls would “end up being another round on the way to the next military operation.”

Israel’s criminal aerial bombardment of the essentially defenceless population was originally triggered by outrage in both the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel over its violent raids on al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan and the threatened expulsion of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan in favour of Jewish settlers. The families have appealed to Supreme Court which will hear the Silwan case on Wednesday and the Sheikh Jarrah case, postponed on Jerusalem Day in a bid to quell the turmoil, in a few weeks’ time. The results of the hearings are likely to further inflame tensions between the Palestinians and fascistic settler groups, under conditions where Israel is now confronted with the very real possibility of a civil war.

At the same time, the war has also intensified the deep political crisis, exemplified by Israel’s inability to form a stable government after four inconclusive elections in two years. A major factor in Netanyahu’s provocations against the Palestinians was his determination amid his ongoing trial for corruption, bribery, and breach of trust to torpedo any possibility of opposition leader Yair Lapid forming a coalition government. With Lapid’s success dependent on support from Mansour Abbas’s Arab Joint List, the war with Gaza sent one of Lapid’s potential allies, Naftali Bennett and his right-wing Yamina Party, scurrying back to Netanyahu’s camp. Despite this, Netanyahu is no nearer to being able to form a government, potentially precipitating a fifth election. It is these conditions that underpin Netanyahu’s deepening hostility to Iran. On Wednesday, he accused Tehran of launching an armed drone from either Iraq or Syria to Israel via Jordan.

UK COVID cases rise due to ending containment and spread of Indian variant

Robert Stevens

Coronavirus cases in England have begun to rise once more, after being in decline for weeks, due to the reopening of the economy and widespread circulation of the highly transmissible Indian variant (B.1.617.2).

On Friday, the health ministry announced that the R (reproduction) rate in England has risen to between 0.9 and 1.1, meaning the virus is no longer in retreat, with every 10 people carrying the virus transmitting it to between nine and 11 other people.

Queue forms down the street at vaccination centre in a pharmacy on Withington Road, in the Whalley Range district of Manchester, England. 20/05/2021 (credit: WSWS media)

Public Health England (PHE) announced Thursday that 3,424 cases of B.1.617.2 had been confirmed in Britain—a 160 percent rise on the 1,313 cases confirmed a week earlier. The 3,424 cases marked an increase of 15 percent in just one day, with the figure standing at 2,967 Thursday.

The seven worst Covid hotspots in England are all large ethnically diverse urban areas with a substantial working class and Indian sub-continent population—Bolton, Blackburn, Bedford, Kirklees, Burnley, Hounslow and Leicester. The spread of the variant nationwide is clear in that Hounslow is in west London, Bedford in south England Leicester in the East Midlands, Kirklees in West Yorkshire, and other areas in the north west of England.

Bolton recorded 982 new B.1.617.2 cases in seven days, the equivalent of 341.5 cases per 100,000 people. The previous seven days saw a ratio of 189.2 per 100,000.

As the spread of the variant escalated, local authorities are being forced to defy Covid vaccine regulations, which so far have been aimed at immunising the most vulnerable first with older age groups prioritised. On Friday, Manchester—the largest city of the north west and centre of the Greater Manchester region that contains Bolton—announced it would rollout the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to unvaccinated 16-year-olds in a “preventative vaccination plan” in target wards with a black, Asian and minority ethnic population above 50 percent. Bolton authorities already have a similar vaccination programme underway.

The effectiveness of vaccination in combating the Indian variant is under review, with positive results indicated in India itself and elsewhere. But there is some evidence that the variant can infect those who have been vaccinated.

The data confirms the fears of scientists that the Indian variant is set to be the dominant strain in the UK in a matter of days. With the economy to be fully reopened by June 21, and travel not prohibited even to countries that have been placed on an “amber list”, such as France, Spain, Greece and the US, all the conditions are in place for the further spread of the variant globally.

Professor Andrew Hayward, an infectious diseases expert at University College London and member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) advising the government was asked Wednesday if the UK was at the start of a third wave of the pandemic. He replied, “I think so” and that he was “very concerned.”

Hayward added, “I think that concern largely arises from the fact that it’s more transmissible than the previous variants which was already substantially more transmissible than the variant before that.

“I think what we can see is that this strain can circulate very effectively, although it was originally imported through travel to India, it’s spread fairly effectively first of all within households and now more broadly within communities, so I don’t really see why it wouldn’t continue to spread in other parts of the country.”

He called for more “generalised measures” to fight the spread of the variant. “Fortunately we’ve had a good proportion of the population vaccinated, but there’s still people who aren’t vaccinated in high-risk groups, the vaccine isn’t 100% effective, and also even in the younger groups if you get many, many thousands or hundreds of thousands of cases, then you will expect a lot of hospitalisations and deaths to result from that. So that’s the threat. And it’s really over the next week or two we will see how much these outbreaks that at the moment are relatively localised, how much they become generalised across the population. And if that happens, that’s when we’re going to be much more worried.”

The Conservative government is once again turning a blind eye to scientific evidence and warnings, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisting, on a visit in Portsmouth to the HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier Friday, “At the moment I can't see anything that makes me think we're going to have to deviate from the roadmap [for reopening]—though clearly we must remain cautious in our approach.”

The Tories are responding to the demands of big business that no more lockdowns are imposed and to their support base in the more affluent suburban and rural areas of the country not living in the overcrowded urban centres being hit by the resurgence of the virus.

The media is busy amplifying this demand, with the Times insisting Friday, “Covid surge testing eases fears over spread of Indian variant”. It cited the comments of government deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam who said it was likely that fears that the Indian variant could be up to 50 percent more transmissible than the Kent strain could be assuaged as the mutation, according to estimates, may only be around 30 percent more transmissible!

According to modelling by Sage published this month, a more transmissible rate around 30 percent would see thousands of daily hospitalisation if the disease were allowed to spread.

At every stage of the pandemic, Johnson’s government has reverted to its favoured herd immunity policy of mass infection. After abandoning its spring lockdown last summer, the government imposed a series of ineffectual local lockdowns on a regional basis, covering much of northern England, Scotland and south Wales. These were followed in October by a policy of “circuit breakers” that did nothing to stop the spread. The government finally put in place a four-week limited lockdown in England in November, covering over 50 million people, but by then, it was too late to stop the spread of the Kent variant only first detected in September.

By mid-December the mutated virus was responsible for nearly two-thirds of cases in the capital, London. The failure to impose the necessary public safety measures and restrictions created the conditions for the Kent variant to spread, claiming a greater loss of life than in the first horrific wave and bringing the death toll above 150,000.

Van Tam now compares the infection rate between the Kent variant and the Indian variant, while omitting to mention how much more infectious the Kent variant was compared with the original strain!

The Financial Times in a May 17 editorial declared, “Government is right to continue easing restrictions while stepping up jabs… to save Britain’s reopening”. It then admitted that Sage “says there is a ‘realistic possibility’ [the Indian variant] is 50 percent more transmissible than the so-called Kent variant, which was itself 40 to 80 percent more contagious than the original coronavirus. The rapid march of the new strain in places such as Bolton and Blackburn suggests it is set, as the Kent variant did, to become the dominant form of the disease. India, where the strain was first identified, has illustrated the tragic dangers of complacency.”

The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the ruling class does not give a damn about the deadly consequences of reopening. As Johnson blurted out last October in frustration at having to authorise the November lockdown, “No more f***ing lockdowns, let the bodies pile high in their thousands!” Moreover, the Tories can depend on their de facto coalition partners in the Labour Party and the trade unions to ram through this assault on the working class. Labour has backed the Tories every move for well over a year in a policy of “constructive criticism”. Backing the government and insisting “that this has be the last lockdown” (Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer), even its mealy mouthed appeals to “proceed with caution” and “follow the science” have been ditched.

Chile’s ruling right wing suffers crushing defeat in election of Constitutional Convention

Mauricio Saavedra

Last weekend’s Constitutional Convention election in Chile saw a crushing defeat for the ruling right wing and the traditional parliamentary opposition in the selection of 155 constituent seats. The results reveal both a deepening of the leftward shift among the masses and the urgent necessity for the working class to break with dangerous illusions in the parliamentary road promoted by the Communist Party and Frente Amplio and their satellite pseudo-left organizations.

Surrounded by military personnel Sebastian Piñera signed national emergency decree on national television (credit: Presidencia de Chile)

Only 40 percent of the eligible electorate voted in the multi-elections that included posts for regional governors, municipal mayors and councilors. The Constitutional Convention will have up to a year to draft a new constitution, the key provisions of which must be approved by a two-thirds majority. After that, another national referendum will decide whether or not to accept the new constitution.

Those that voted overwhelmingly sought candidates who promised to inscribe in the nation’s new charter guarantees to public health, an education and pension system, democratic rights, an end to social inequality, the redistribution of wealth, environmental protections and indigenous rights.

It needs to be said from the outset that capitalism cannot guarantee any of these demands because it is a system based on social inequality and exploitation. Illusions in bankrupt reformist myths are all the more dangerous today as capitalist governments, from the most powerful imperialist nations to the semi-colonial countries, deal with political, health and social crises by “letting it rip.”

With the coronavirus pandemic, “democracies” as varied as Spain and India, France and the US have guaranteed only wanton death. The deliberate implementation of herd immunity policies that put profits above the lives of millions has permitted the global financial and corporate elite to increase their wealth by US$4 trillion to $14 trillion in the last year—while workers and their families have had to eat into savings, suffer depression-level unemployment, see loved ones die in understaffed and under-resourced hospitals and forced to send unvaccinated children to school.

Confronted in the last two years with explosive industrial action and an eruption of the international class struggle, bourgeois governments of all types are flirting with authoritarian, conspiratorial and fascistic forms of rule and externalizing their crises of rule by menacing border conflicts and regional wars.

Chile is no exception. Right-wing billionaire President Sebastian Piñera turned to the military to deal with the social eruption of 2019 and decreed a state of emergency for the first time since the return to civilian rule. With the support of Congress, Piñera also passed draconian laws beefing up the repressive apparatus and allowing the use of the military for policing measures. A case has been presented to the International Criminal Court by a group of human rights organizations charging Piñera and civilian and military authorities with crimes against humanity for the police repression that resulted in 36 deaths, disappearances, hundreds mutilated and injured and thousands of human rights abuses, atrocities which continue to this day.

While professing to oppose the government and threatening legal charges against it, the entire parliamentary left including the Frente Amplio coalition and the Stalinist Communist Party unions came to the rescue by offering to work with the beleaguered Piñera government and overseeing national unity peace talks.

They did this to divert the massive anti-capitalist demonstrations into harmless appeals to change the constitution imposed under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. A general strike in mid-November 2019 forced on the Stalinist-dominated union confederation, the CUT, proved to be the last called, as an agreement between the parliamentary right and left laid the groundwork for the plebiscite, held last October, challenging the authoritarian constitution.

From then on, the left and CUT initiated token protests and stunts achieving only the dissipation of workers’ militancy, while the unions in mining, Chile’s most important industry, entered into roundtable discussions agreeing to wage freezes and took no industrial action despite the spread of COVID-19 in key mining towns.

Amid the carnage caused by the coronavirus pandemic in Chile—with 1.5 million confirmed and suspected COVID-19 cases over the past 14 months and 35,000 confirmed and suspected deaths—communities rioted against hunger, the lack of running water, government negligence, and indiscriminate police violence. Distribution committees and soup kitchens spontaneously emerged to meet the dire needs of the population.

The parliamentary left and the trade union bureaucracy again sought to divert these initiatives with populist appeals and political stunts.

One was in favor of a series of laws permitting withdrawals from contributions to private pension funds. In reality, the working and middle classes were underwriting their own economic hardship (some US$50 billion has been withdrawn from the AFPs).

Another political stunt was the promotion of a one-time 2.5 percent levy on the super-rich and a temporary 3 percent increase in the corporate tax rate, which, even if passed in the Senate, will prove thoroughly inadequate to finance a so-called basic income for destitute households. Meanwhile, Chile’s billionaires doubled their wealth during the pandemic from $21 billion in March 2020 to $42.7 billion in April 2021.

Yet another is a Royalty Bill on copper sales approved at the committee level in the lower house on April 26, three weeks before the constituent elections. In the proposed bill, royalties slide from a marginal rate of 15 percent when the copper prices rise above US$2.00 per lb. to 75 percent when prices exceed US$4.00 per lb. This last maneuver has raised concerns among the mining giants, though it is unlikely to pass in the Senate.

It came as a surprise to no one, except possibly a section of the elite, that both the incumbent right and the traditional parliamentary left would suffer a significant setback in the election held over the May 15-16 weekend. In the October plebiscite, 78 percent had voted to repeal Pinochet’s charter and to elect a constitutional convention. Moreover, poll after poll has shown that the population despises the establishment parties, the courts and the repressive institutions—Piñera’s support has remained in the single and low double digits for two years.

President Piñera’s extreme-right coalition “Chile Vamos,” made up of late Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s civilian accomplices from National Renovation and the UDI, as well as the fascistic Republican Party, garnered only 39 out of the total 155 constituent seats, an insufficient number to make up the one-third vote required to veto changes.

The center-left “Approve” coalition, made up of the Socialist Party, the Christian Democrats, the Party for Democracy and the Radical Party, which governed for 24 of the last 30 years of civilian rule, won a mere 25 seats.

While the “Approve Dignity” coalition of the Stalinist Communist Party (PCCh) and the pseudo-left Frente Amplio (Broad Front) garnered only 27 seats, they likely will receive backing from the 48 independent constituents, many of whom are from Stalinist-aligned social organizations, as well as the 17 indigenous representatives with reserved positions.

The danger lies in the unfounded expectation that the Stalinists and pseudo-left will fight for the interests of the working class and impoverished masses. These parties and their satellites, many of whom ran as independents, are led by layers of the upper-middle class tied to the capitalist state or who wish to be integrated into the state and derive sustenance from it. They all are proven guardians of capitalist private property.

Chile’s Stalinist Communist Party (PCCh) has a long historic record in this regard, having paved the way to the 1973 military coup and the violent repression of the Chilean working class by subordinating its struggles to the so-called “parliamentary road to socialism” and the bourgeois Popular Unity coalition government of Salvador Allende.

Chile under Pinochet was a laboratory for the social counterrevolution that spread worldwide with capitalist globalization. The “renovated left” and trade union bureaucrats readily accommodated themselves to the new normal in the 1980s, abandoning even the pretense of social reforms during the so-called democratic transition from military rule. If the Stalinists didn’t participate in the coalitions that governed during the first two decades of the return to civilian rule in 1990, it wasn’t due to some principled opposition.

Fast forward to the 21st century and these organizations rest on a new social base composed of the upper-middle class—bureaucrats and functionaries, professionals, academics, journalists, lawyers, celebrities—who promote identity politics as the means of climbing up the political, social and income ladder. With this in mind, they are presenting “gender parity” in the Constitutional Convention and other state institutions and indigenous and minority representation as an illustration of a progressive, democratic victory when the entire parliamentary exercise has been given the imprimatur of imperialist reaction.

The Economist, mouthpiece of British imperialism since the 1840s wrote in March “Chile is embarking on a potentially constructive process of redefinition… In a country where politicians and institutions, from the Catholic church to the police, are discredited, the process is almost as important as the product. There are important novelties: the assembly must have broadly equal numbers of women and men, 17 seats are reserved for indigenous people and several candidates standing for independent lists are likely to be chosen…”

The influential US imperialist think tank the Council of Foreign Relations was more categorical in a report issued earlier this month:

Gender parity in the Constitutional Assembly could also represent the first step towards equal access to positions of power and decision-making processes for women. … Such commitments to political inclusion are necessary to strengthen Chile’s democracy and to meet the long-neglected needs of its most vulnerable citizens. … But no matter the result, the inclusion of women and indigenous groups at unprecedented levels is a step towards true democratic governance ... (emphasis added).

Rewriting the constitution will not bring an end to the capitalist crisis, the class struggle or the threat of dictatorship in Chile. Nor can the capitalist state be reformed, refounded or “democratized.” Rather, it must be must be overthrown by the working class in the fight to establish a new state based on workers’ control.

COVID-19 potentially killing tens of thousands in India every day

Deepal Jayasekera

COVID-19 killed more than 29,000 Indians in the seven days between May 14 and May 20, according to government figures. This included 4,209 fatalities Thursday and 4,529—a single-day world record—on Tuesday.

Just in the seven weeks since April 1, India’s official total of COVID-19 fatalities has risen by more than 125,000, or 75 percent, reaching 291,331 as of yesterday morning.

Horrific as these totals are, they are viewed by all but the staunchest defenders of India’s far-right, Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government as gross undercounts.

Jammu and Kashmir State Disaster Response Force soldiers carry empty coffins for transporting bodies of people who died of COVID-19 outside government medical hospital in Jammu, India, Wednesday, May 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)

Pre-pandemic, three-quarters of all deaths in India were not properly recorded with a verified cause of death. Furthermore, numerous local studies conducted in recent weeks comparing government death tallies with figures from cremations and burial grounds show a vast discrepancy, with the number of corpses treated under COVID-19 protocols running 5 to 10 times higher than the official statistics would indicate.

Extrapolating from these figures under conditions where on average more than 4,000 Indians are being officially registered as COVID-19 fatalities daily, it is a fair—albeit harrowing—assumption that India’s true daily COVID-19 death toll now numbers in the tens of thousands.

This health crisis is compounded by an immense social crisis, with hundreds of millions facing hunger and joblessness, after more than a year in which their meagre living standards have been further squeezed. A recent Azim Premji University study found that an additional 230 million people were pushed below the official 375 rupee ($5) per day poverty line last year.

Prioritizing corporate profit over saving lives, the BJP government has adamantly opposed instituting a nationwide lockdown, as exemplified by Modi’s infamous April 20 proclamation that his priority is to “save” India from a lockdown, not the population from the virus. But the state governments that have instituted limited lockdown measures due to the crush of COVID-19 infections and the collapse of their health care systems have refused to provide anything beyond famine relief to the tens of millions stripped of their livelihood. And even that relief is oftentimes difficult to access.

Yesterday, Kamal Nath, a leading Congress Party politician, said an analysis of cremation and graveyard figured showed that in March and April there had been more than 102,000 deaths from COVID-19 in his home state of Madhya Pradesh. Government figures from India’s fifth most populous state put the pandemic death total for the same period at less than 2,000.

Whatever the accuracy of Kamal Nath’s claims, there is a mountain of evidence pointing to government efforts to cover up and downplay the extent of the COVID-19 carnage. To cite but one example: the Uttar Pradesh Primary Teachers’ Association has claimed that at least 1,600 teachers and support staff have died from COVID-19 after being forced by the BJP-led state government to help conduct voting for last month’s local (panchayat) elections; the state authorities initially recognized just three COVID fatalities, and even now put the total at under than 100.

In a desperate attempt to shift attention away from the wave of deaths and the ongoing shortages of medical oxygen, ICU beds and drugs, the BJP government is trumpeting a marked decline in the number of new daily infections. Whereas last week new infections were averaging some 400,000 per day, this week they have fallen below 300,000.

The limited lockdown measures imposed in some states and particularly in India’s largest cities likely have had some impact. But the decline in cases is also associated with reduced testing and the spread of the virus to rural India, where tests are far less readily available and there is little to any public health system to speak of.

On Thursday, the Modi government announced that it will reduce the number of RT-PCR tests, which are widely believed to be the most accurate method to detect COVID-19 infections, to 40 percent of total tests by the end of June. The government has already reduced its RT-PCR testing capacity to 1.2-1.3 million a day from around 1.6 million last week.

A further complicating factor is the sudden prevalence of black fungus or mucormycosis infections. Health expert have linked the surge in mucormycosis cases to the use of steroids to combat COVID-19, particularly on patients already suffering from diabetes. By Wednesday, about 5,000 people across India had reportedly developed black fungus infections, with 126 of them succumbing to the disease. As India now faces an acute shortage of the anti-fungal drug Amphotericin B, many more lives are likely to be taken by this deadly disease.

Under this situation, the Delhi High Court urged the Modi government to immediately import Amphotericin B from wherever it is available in the world. In so doing, the court accepted the Delhi government’s contention that under conditions where only 10 percent of the all-India demand for the drug is being met, the Modi government’s plans to increase domestic production are inadequate. “The premium here,” said the court, “is time and human life. … You need to import to bridge this gap between the plan to produce more and the actual production coming about, otherwise we will lose more precious lives. We want you to act today.”

The court ruling, which is non-binding, reflects concerns within sections of India’s ruling elite over the growing popular anger over the COVID-19 catastrophe, and fears that the criminal mishandling of it by all sections of the political establishment, including opposition-led state governments, is dangerously discrediting bourgeois rule.

In addition to anti-fungal drugs, lives of COVID-19 patients are threatened by shortages of some antibiotics such as Azithromycin and Doxycycline; key steroids, including dexamethasone, methylprednisolone and prednisolone; other life-saving medicines; vitamins; and even the common pain killer paracetamol. These shortages are especially dire in small towns and rural areas. All this comes on top of chronic shortages of medical oxygen. Last week, a further 75 people died due to lack of oxygen at Goa’s biggest hospital.

The disastrous state of India’s public healthcare system is the product of decades of neglect at the national and state levels. For decades, all levels of India’s government combined have spent a paltry 1.5 percent of GDP per annum on health care.

The shambolic rollout of India’s vaccination program has further increased the vulnerability of the population to the country’s second wave of the pandemic—a second wave that was both foreseeable and foreseen, but which Modi and the political establishment as a whole wantonly ignored. As of May 20, just 10.7 percent of the Indian population had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and just 3 percent had been fully vaccinated.

However, when it comes to India’s military the situation is radically different. Underscoring the real priorities of the Modi government, 97 percent of India’s military personnel have received a first dose and almost 90 percent are now fully vaccinated. A senior military officer told the media on Thursday, “The vaccination and protocols have helped us maintain operational readiness along the borders with China and Pakistan as well as assist civil administrations across the country in tackling the crisis.”

French ruling class supports police rally at the National Assembly

Alex Lantier

Wednesday’s demonstration by thousands of police officers outside the National Assembly, called by a group of police unions dominated by the neo-fascist Alliance union, is a sharp warning. The police enjoy the near-unanimous backing of the establishment parties while they call for the building of an authoritarian police state.

The rally was called after the death on May 5 of a police officer in Avignon, Brigadier Eric Masson. It had transparent political aims. While the Macron government’s recently-passed “global security” law is currently being reviewed by the country’s constitutional council, the police demanded minimum sentences for individuals who allegedly assaulted police officers. The police denounced the judicial system and in particular the minister of justice, former defence lawyer Éric Dupont-Moretti.

Fabien Vanhemelryck, the head of the Alliance-police union, booed Dupont-Moretti and, to a standing ovation from the crowd of police officers, shouted: “The problem with the police is the justice system.” This was a call to break the judicial system and establish a police state.

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, center, meets police officers during a police officers demonstration, Wednesday, May 19, 2021 in Paris. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

The hatred of strikers and social demonstrations that animated the pro-police demonstrators was expressed in the comment of one protester, who confided his love for the police to Europe1: “They are the last bastions of peace. They are fed up with this permanent guerrilla warfare.”

In attendance at the rally were Macron’s interior minister and former Action Française member Gérald Darmanin, the No. 2 of the neo-fascist National Rally, Jordan Bardella and numerous far-right figures, including polemicist and supporter of the Vichy collaborationist regime Eric Zemmour. Bardella said: “If we come to power, we will re-establish the authority of the state and we will protect materially, legally, administratively and by law our police.”

A federation of 14 police unions had called the demonstration, including Alliance, the CFDT, and the Workers Force-linked Unité-SGP union. The General Confederation of Labour-Police called for a demonstration without backing the main slogans. SUD-Intérieur, the police union linked to the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA), did not call to support the demonstration.

This almost unanimous support for a far-right demonstration came not only from the trade union apparatuses, but also from the political parties associated with them. The Socialist Party, the Stalinist Communist Party of France and elements of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France (LFI) lined up behind the far-right police union, when there was no mistaking either the political character of the demonstration or the context in which it took place.

“The police must have a say in the justice system,” said PS first secretary Olivier Faure, who attended the demonstration outside the Assembly. The PS national bureau issued a statement expressing its “attachment to and full support for the police” and promising to send a delegation of MPs to the demonstration.

Anne Hidalgo, the PS mayor of Paris who is preparing a presidential candidacy, participated in the demonstration after telling Europe1: “I will be there with the mayors of my team, of my majority. We must support our police officers, because they are the ones who allow us to live peacefully in our neighbourhoods.” She also claimed that “their work is very difficult, because they are not sufficiently equipped.”

Fabien Roussel, the PCF’s presidential candidate, announced his participation in the demonstration, citing his desire to ensure “that everyone feels at peace.”

Yannick Jadot, the Greens member in the European parliament, participated in the demonstration after tweeting that he wanted to demonstrate his “attachment” to the police and his “expectations of them to re-establish the bond of trust with the French.”

Unsubmissive France, which did not participate in the demonstration, stated that the main obstacle for them was their fear of being attacked by neo-fascist police. Adrien Quatennens, an Unsubmisive France deputy, stressed that “in absolute terms, given what we stand for, for the police, we would have our place there. But I am not sure that the security conditions are present for us to participate.” He was also quick to point out that he felt “a form of frustration” at not being able to attend the demonstration of the police unions.

So, as the ruling elite prepares the campaign for the 2022 presidential elections, almost everything that the ruling class has presented for decades as “left” in France has applauded the far-right police demonstration.

These bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties, having supported decades of austerity and war, followed by an irresponsible and criminal coronavirus policy that has resulted in the deaths of over 108,000 people in France, are aligning themselves with the police force as a bulwark against the social anger of the working class. This same process is taking place not only in France, but internationally.

By sending Darmanin to participate in the police demonstration, the Macron government is continuing its strategy of attacking Marine Le Pen from the right. Darmanin, who already criticised Le Pen in a televised debate as being “soft” on Islam, is trying to gather support among the police, who are currently voting by 74 percent for Le Pen.

The deadly management of the coronavirus pandemic by governments and the level of social inequality reached under capitalism are incompatible with democracy. Following Donald Trump’s unprecedented coup attempt on January 6 in Washington, storming the Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying his electoral defeat, democratic norms are collapsing everywhere. In Spain, top military brass denounced the March 2020 workers’ strikes, which demanded that non-essential workers be allowed to take shelter in their homes, and called for a coup.

In France, the military-police apparatus, aware of the unpopularity of Macron, who has relied on them to repress strikes and “yellow vest” protests, is calling for dictatorship. Thousands of French officers close to the far right have signed calls for an army intervention in France, that is, a coup d’état.

The defence of democratic rights requires the building of an international workers movement, fighting on the basis of a revolutionary and socialist programme, against a failed capitalist social order. This requires a fundamental break with all those parties that attempt to tie workers to Macron, the Socialist Party or their various satellites. Among these must be counted the corrupt national trade union apparatuses, which organise token strikes while holding meetings through their police union federations with the state apparatus that represses them.

Thus, at a press conference before the far-right protest, Mélenchon complained: “The authority of the state from week to week is diluted and dispersed in the face of behaviour that is inadmissible in a Republic. First the military calling on their active colleagues to rise up, then retired police officers calling on those on active duty to precede the military with bad actions.” He pointed out that the demonstration had an “ostensibly factional” character, attacking “the judicial institution.”

Yet Mélenchon proposes nothing more than to rely on Macron. To combat the threat of a coup, he calls on the public authorities backing the military-police apparatus to investigate the threats of a coup that come from that same apparatus.

Teachers’ union supports return to regular operations at schools and nurseries in Germany

Martin Nowak & Johannes Stern

In recent weeks, several federal states have already reopened schools and nurseries on a larger scale. Now, in connection with the general offensive to open up the economy, the complete return to regular operations is being prepared.

In Germany’s most populous federal state North Rhine-Westphalia, schools are to switch to fully in-person teaching from May 31. In Schleswig-Holstein, all grades are again being taught face-to-face in almost all districts and towns in the state as of this week.

In Bavaria, according to state Premier President Markus Söder (Christian Social Union, CSU), the “vast majority of pupils” should be back at school after the Whitsun holidays. The same goal is being pursued by the state government in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania led by state Premier Manuela Schwesig (Social Democratic Party, SPD). In all other federal states, including Thuringia, which is led by the Left Party, school and nursery reopenings are also being pushed forward.

The fact that the federal and state governments are taking this step despite the still high incidence of infections, thus endangering the health and lives of millions of children, parents and educators, has exclusively economic reasons. Beyond seemingly endless demagogic reports about the psychological suffering, the endangerment of children’s well-being in the lockdown and studies about supposedly “safe schools” in the pandemic, the decision-makers are primarily concerned with freeing up parents to work.

Like last year, the Education and Science Union (GEW) is playing a key role in pushing through the “profits before lives” policy in the face of enormous resistance among students, educators and parents. On Thursday, GEW national chair Marlis Tepe told the ZDF morning show, “We are in favour of opening schools as quickly as possible, depending on the incidence level.” Within a “range of 50 to 100” per 100,000, the GEW pleads “to stay with alternating teaching methods. If it then goes down, then you can go to face-to-face teaching.”

Tepe had already backed the move to in-person teaching with the slogan, “Whoever opens, must vaccinate.” The early vaccination of all teachers meant “the health protection of teachers, pupils and their parents could be secured,” she claimed.

GEW Chair Marlis Tepe (Ziko van Dijk, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Everyone knows this is not true. Firstly, the vaccination of teachers is progressing slowly, and a large proportion of teachers are still waiting to be vaccinated. And secondly, even if teachers were fully vaccinated, schools would be breeding grounds for the virus, posing a massive threat to the health and lives of unvaccinated students and their families.

Even vaccinated teachers would be far from safe. COVID-19 variants such as the dangerous Indian variant, for which the effectiveness of many vaccines is at least limited, are also spreading massively in Germany. Worldwide, the pandemic is out of control and about 13,000 people are dying every day. Germany is currently one of the most affected countries in Europe, with around 10,000 infected and 200 deaths per day. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), at least two more teachers died of COVID-19 in May, bringing the total to at least 33 teachers and educators. Almost 900 have had to be hospitalised since the pandemic began.

Despite this, the individual GEW state associations are competing in supporting and pushing the reopening policies of their respective state governments. The current orgy of reopening is a direct result of their policies. Here is just a brief overview of some of the statements and pronouncements of the GEW in recent weeks.

At the end of April, the GEW Saxony published a “Wake-up Call for Open Child Day Care Facilities and Schools.” This had been preceded by the interim closure of nurseries and primary schools in most districts of Saxony. The right-wing state coalition of Christian Democrats (CDU), SPD and Greens had previously pursued an “incidence-independent” reopening course—i.e., a policy openly based on herd immunity. Since the incidence level in almost all Saxony’s districts was around 200, the so-called “federal emergency brake” led to closures in many places. In its “wake-up call,” the GEW complained, “We find it intolerable that for many a girl or boy the nursery or school is the only safe haven and that this place is now closing for them again.”

The GEW Rhineland-Palatinate also openly pleaded for keeping schools and nurseries open regardless of incidence level. “The GEW Rhineland-Palatinate is critical of setting a fixed incidence value as a threshold,” it said in a statement published on April 20. A “fixed orientation towards the incidence value” would result in “frequent changes to the currently applicable measures and thus little planning ability and reliability for employees and parents.” This is unequivocal: nurseries and schools should be kept open even when incidence rates are high so that parents can show up at work in a “plannable and reliable” manner. Explicitly, the GEW demanded “regular operations in everyday life with coronavirus,” which should only be “watched over by the local health authorities.”

GEW Hesse already advocated a return to face-to-face teaching in April. In an April 1 press release the union stated that “for pedagogical and social reasons, it is a priority that pupils from grade 7 onwards are enabled to return to face-to-face teaching—at least daily.” Hesse GEW Deputy President Tony C. Schwarz stressed in the same release, “For us, this is the most urgent next reopening step that must be taken as soon as the infection situation permits. The students in these grades have not been to school since Christmas.”

Then, on April 13, the chair of GEW Hesse, Maike Wiedwald, followed up and demanded in another press release, “An early return to face-to-face teaching for these classes, at least daily, must now be a priority.” When state Education Minister Alexander Lorz (CDU) finally announced at the beginning of May that “in more and more regions of Hesse, pupils, in particular, can go back to school regularly,” the GEW supported this push.

In Lower Saxony, too, the GEW is at the forefront of the reopening policy. When the state government set the course for a return to face-to-face teaching at the beginning of May, the GEW state chair Laura Pooth cynically declared, “The intended alternating teaching [at home and in schools] will have a positive effect on children and young people, provided the schools have been able to provide comprehensive health protection.”

In Berlin, the GEW is working closely with the SPD-Left Party-Green Senate (state executive) to push through the unsafe return to nurseries and schools. When Berlin’s education senator (state minister) Sandra Scheeres (SPD) announced the return of nurseries to regular operations last week, the chairperson of the GEW Berlin, Doreen Siebernik, complained in a statement that “educators are not included in the planning of the nursery reopenings.” The GEW vehemently rejects launching protests or even strikes against the ruthless approach of the Senate, as in all other federal states. As a result, since Monday of this week, Berlin’s nurseries have been back in regular operation—with unforeseeable consequences for children, parents, educators and the infection rate in the capital.

With its support for the reopening policy, the GEW consistently maintains its right-wing policy in the pandemic. As part of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB), it already supported the federal government’s billion-euro bailout package for the banks and corporations at the beginning of last year. Since then, Germany’s largest union IG Metall, public sector union Verdi and the other individual unions have played the central role in keeping the factories and workplaces open, even under the most precarious conditions, so that the billions gifted to big business and the rich can be recovered from the working class.

The reactionary and anti-working-class role of the trade unions underlines the importance of the Action Committees for Safe Education that teachers, students and parents have built in Germany and internationally over the past year of the pandemic. Workers can only defend their interests if they organise independently of the capitalist parties and unions and develop an international perspective and strategy against the murderous “profits before lives” policy.

To stop the pandemic, all schools and non-essential businesses must be closed and all workers and their families must be given the necessary financial support. Resources must be allocated for mass testing, contact tracing and the best medical care for all those infected. The production and distribution of the vaccine must be massively scaled up and removed from the constraints of capitalist profit so that the entire world population is rapidly immunised against the virus.

Then, under conditions where there is sufficient levels of immunization and very low infection rates, billions must be invested to ensure safe teaching conditions in schools and nurseries. At the same time, thousands of additional teachers and educators must be hired and their salaries must be raised significantly.