Hyundai and Renault-Nissan forced to shut Indian plants due to worker unrest over lack of COVID-19 protections

Yuan Darwin

After rank-and-file workers staged a sit-down strike Monday to protest the lack of COVID-19 protections, management at a Hyundai Motors plant in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu announced a five-day suspension of operations, starting Tuesday. The autoworkers were protesting the dangerous working conditions at the plant, where 150 are currently being treated for COVID-19 symptoms, according to a union official. Ten Hyundai Motors India workers have already perished from the virus.

Five thousand workers at Renault-Nissan’s car plant, also located in the Sriperumbudur-Oragaram industrial belt, were set to follow the example of their Hyundai colleagues by walking off the job Wednesday. At least five Renault-Nissan workers have lost their lives to the virus. Well aware that social tensions are at the boiling point and that the protest movement could spread like wildfire, Renault-Nissan management subverted the job action by announcing a five-day suspension of plant operations until May 30.

Renault Nissan Automotive India workers (Credit: global.nissannews.com)

The Renault-Nissan workers said that their demands for COVID-19 protections had been ignored. CNBC TV18 reported that the workers’ main complaints are a lack of medical insurance, management’s insistence on running the plant at full capacity—making social distancing impossible—and cramped canteens.

Prior to the shutdown, Renault-Nissan had demanded that workers maintain a backbreaking pace of 27 jobs per hour on line 1 and 40 jobs per hour on line 2. With 95 percent of the workers 40 and younger yet to be vaccinated, management’s decision to keep the factory operating at full tilt has allowed the virus to run rampant through the plant.

The Tamil Nadu autoworkers’ job action underscores that it is the global working class that is the main source of opposition to the ruling elite’s criminal “open economy” policy, which prioritizes capitalist profit over saving workers’ lives. In spring 2020, autoworkers in Italy, Spain, Canada, and the United States carried out work stoppages in open rebellion against the corporatist trade unions, which, like the employers, were desperate to keep production running. These job actions saved countless thousands of lives, forcing the ruling elites in North America and Europe to impose temporary shutdowns that they otherwise had no intention of ever implementing.

Likewise, the eruption of working-class anger over the callous indifference displayed by the Indian ruling elite towards workers’ lives testifies to the deep and widespread opposition to the “profits before lives” response to COVID-19 pursued by the Indian government at all levels. India is currently the world epicentre of the pandemic, with well over 4,000 official daily deaths now being recorded. The true depth of the crisis is far worse, with credible estimates suggesting that tens of thousands are dying every day.

Narendra Modi’s far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) central government bears chief responsibility for this catastrophe. It has insisted on keeping the economy open at all costs and is refusing to provide social support to the hundreds of millions thrust into destitution by the limited lockdown measures imposed by some state governments. Last month, as daily infections approached 300,000 and official daily deaths climbed past 3,000, Modi declared it was necessary to “save India from lockdown,” not to save the Indian people from the deadly virus.

However, the opposition parties defend the interests of corporate India no less ruthlessly. In Tamil Nadu, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) was recently elected to the state government as the lead party of an electoral alliance including the Congress Party, till recently the ruling class’s preferred party of national government, and the twin Stalinist parties, the Communist Party of India–Marxist (CPM) and Communist Party of India (CPI).

The DMK regime, like its AIADMK predecessor, which was a close ally of Modi and his BJP, has maintained a policy of allowing factories and other industrial worksites to continue operating as if there were no pandemic. Although the DMK government officially unveiled a statewide lockdown after coming to power, it granted massive exemptions for industrial worksites and factories. Speaking much like Modi, DMK chairman and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin remarked, “Lockdowns cannot be the solution, as we also realize that it impacts economic growth.”

In the face of this brutal class-war agenda, the job actions by the Hyundai and Renault Nissan workers are only the most prominent examples of mounting working-class anger. At MRF Tyres Ltd., in Puducherry, a Union Territory adjacent to Tamil Nadu, workers mounted strikes last week to demand justice and compensation for two workers who had died from COVID-19, and for the immediate shutdown of the company’s plants. More than 300 workers at Caparo India, an auto parts company, took strike action against unsafe working conditions and the death of an unknown number of workers at its plants. The strike, which began on May 15, was sabotaged by the Stalinist-led Centre of Indian Trade Unions federation on May 21.

In the absence of any official records of worker deaths, and with regional and national newspapers consciously covering up the extent of the slaughter, workers have begun sharing information on workplace deaths via social media. According to these sources, more than 25 workers have died in recent weeks at various globally connected companies just in Tamil Nadu. The death toll is especially high in the Sriperumbudur-Oragaram industrial area, which is located on the outskirts of Chennai, India’s fourth-largest urban agglomeration and Tamil Nadu’s capital. The entire region has been dubbed the “Detroit of Asia” because millions of autoworkers are employed there in sweatshop conditions.

In the Gurgaon-Manesar industrial belt in the northern state of Haryana, Rajesh, one of the current leaders of the Maruti Suzuki Employees Union, and various workers forums and blogs, such as the Hindi-language Mehnatkash and Workers Unity, report that more than 20 workers have died during the recent surge in COVID-19 infections. These include five workers at Maruti Suzuki’s plant in Gurgaon, two workers at a Honda plant and one worker at the Tata Motors facility.

The conditions of brutal exploitation that prevail in the Gurgaon-Manesar industrial belt were exemplified by the monstrous 2012 company-government frame-up of Maruti Suzuki workers. In 2017, 13 militant workers at Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar car assembly plant were sent to jail for life. Their sole “crime” was to have led a year-long struggle, including sit-down strikes and occupations, against a brutal work regime and precarious contract-labour jobs and to build an independent union in opposition to a company-backed, state-sponsored union.

As the anger among workers has grown over the past year over speedup, poverty wages and the lack of COVID-19 protections, the trade unions have worked systematically to isolate and suppress their struggles. The Stalinist-led CITU, Maoist-led AICCTU, and the LTUC in Tamil Nadu have consistently isolated workers’ struggles from one another and from the wider urban and rural workforce. Each group of workers has been left to fight their government-backed transnational employer alone.

At Renault-Nissan, the Renault-Nissan India Thozhillalar Sangam (RNITS) trade union, which is currently under the control of the Maoist People’s Power group, urged workers last week to focus their efforts on a lawsuit aimed at getting the courts to intervene and order improvements in their working conditions. Providing yet another cynical twist to the ruling elite’s “open economy” policy, the two-judge bench at the Madras High Court promptly responded, “[W]hile the health of workers is paramount, if industries go down there will be no place for them to work.”

The growing number of unnecessary worker deaths underscores the urgency of an immediate shutdown of nonessential production, including the auto industry, in Tamil Nadu and across India to combat the spread of the disease and save hundreds of thousands of lives. This must be accompanied with full compensation for all workers affected and their families until the pandemic is brought under control.

The billions made by the automakers and other major companies, and the hundreds of billions India’s billionaires “earned” this year from the monies the world’s central bank poured into the financial markets, must be confiscated to pay for a massive public health program, including free and universal vaccinations and social support for workers, their families, and India’s impoverished masses.

South Korean president backs US war plans in summit with Biden

Ben McGrath

South Korean President Moon Jae-in traveled to Washington last week for a summit with US President Joe Biden. The meeting on Friday was Moon’s first trip abroad since the COVID-19 pandemic began, as well as Biden’s second in-person summit with a foreign leader, following Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s visit in April. Biden’s emphasis on US alliances with Japan and South Korea at the beginning of his term is indicative of Washington’s growing war preparations aimed at China.

Couched in the empty terms of adherence to “democratic norms, human rights, and the rule of law at home and abroad,” the summit’s purpose was to shore up the military alliance between Washington and Seoul. Under former President Donald Trump, Washington sharply ratcheted up tensions with Beijing over Taiwan by increasingly calling into question the “One China” policy, which the Biden administration has only intensified.

Moon Jae-in (Flickr.com/Janne Wittoeck)

The “One China” policy states that Taiwan is a part of China, a fact which Washington recognizes as it has had no formal diplomatic relations with Taipei since 1979. Beijing has stated that any attempt by Taiwan to declare independence will lead to war, particularly as it fears the island will be turned into a launch pad for US attacks against the Chinese mainland.

Moon and Biden’s joint statement released following the summit makes clear that Seoul has signed onto these war plans behind the backs of the South Korean people. Seoul attempted to claim afterwards that, as the statement did not directly reference China, there should be no reason for Beijing to be upset and dismissed the latter’s concerns. In fact, the joint statement included a veritable checklist of anti-China phrases.

The two leaders, the statement read, “pledge to maintain peace and stability, lawful unimpeded commerce, and respect for international law, including freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea and beyond. President Biden and President Moon emphasize the importance of preserving peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”

Phrases like “freedom of navigation” and “rule of law” are used to demonize Beijing while simultaneously justifying US belligerence in the East and South China Seas.

The reference to Taiwan is the first time that a joint statement between Washington and Seoul has mentioned the island. Biden and Suga included a similar reference to Taiwan last month for the first time since 1969. Neither Washington nor Seoul or Tokyo have any concern for “peace and stability” over Taiwan. The naming of the island in the statement calls into question the “One China” policy, which all three countries formally recognize. Seoul ended diplomatic relations with Taipei and recognized Beijing as the legitimate government of all China including Taiwan in 1992.

The summit took place a few days after another US naval provocation. On May 18, the US Navy sent a guided-missile destroyer, the USS Curtis Wilber, through the Taiwan Strait, stating that the maneuver “demonstrates the US commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.” It was the fifth transit through the strait since Biden took office in January. The inclusion of Taiwan therefore is a strong signal of Seoul’s support for Washington’s confrontational stance against Beijing.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian warned Monday, “China brooks no foreign interference on the Taiwan issue.” China’s ambassador to South Korea, Xing Haiming, commented the same day on the joint statement, “There was no mention of China, but it’s not that [Beijing] is unaware it is targeting China.” He reiterated that the Taiwan issue an internal affair.

Indicative of the current war danger, Washington and Seoul also used the summit to announce the end of any restrictions on the range of South Korea’s ballistic missiles. The restrictions had banned missiles that exceed 800 kilometers and stem from 1979 when Washington sought to halt Seoul’s nascent nuclear weapon program. The changes will allow Seoul to acquire weaponry that could strike deep into China.

A former Defense Ministry official told Yonhap News Agency: “Longer ranges mean that we can launch missiles from safer locations in the rear, which will give us greater strategic flexibility and enable us to better prepare for threats from North Korea and others,”—undoubtedly a reference to China.

Expressing China’s concern about long range South Korean missiles, Ambassador Xing warned, “China would not sit still should its national interests be harmed.” In response, South Korea’s First Vice Foreign Minister Choi Jong-geon brushed aside the comments, declaring on Monday, “If [Beijing] was uncomfortable, it should have already been uncomfortable about the missile development long before.”

In fact, Beijing has made it quite clear for years, particularly in response to the deployment of a US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile battery in South Korea that it was deeply concerned about the development of missile and radar capabilities close to its borders. While the US operates the THAAD battery, its deployment caused a serious rift between Beijing and Seoul and economic retaliation by China.

In a similar vein, Moon also expressed support for the US-South Korea-Japan trilateral alliance, ostensibly aimed at North Korea. The alliance is considered a crucial aspect of US war plans including to station radar and ballistic missile systems, such as THAAD, throughout the region, including placing missiles in Taiwan, Okinawa, and the Philippines. The US considers the missile and radar systems in South Korea and Japan as a key element of its nuclear strategy in blocking Chinese counter-attacks.

To facilitate these operations, Washington has long-pushed for closer military cooperation between Seoul and Tokyo. This includes the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), which Seoul and Tokyo signed in November 2016.

Moon’s ruling Democratic Party, which praised the results of the Biden summit as a success, postured as opponents of GSOMIA in 2016 as the opposition party, though they attacked it from a right-wing nationalist perspective, calling it “unpatriotic.”

The results of the summit demonstrate not a commitment from Seoul and Washington for “peace and stability” in the Asia-Pacific, but the opposite: a drive towards a conflict that could have devastating global consequences.

Fed policies spark concerns over dollar’s global role

Nick Beams

Questions are beginning to be raised in financial circles about the long-term status of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency as the Fed continues to pour money into the financial system, effectively financing the growing debt of the US government, while fuelling an asset bubble.

On Tuesday, the Financial Times published a major article by long-time financial commentator John Plender entitled “The demise of the dollar? Reserve currencies in the era of ‘going big’.”

The Federal Reserve in Washington [Credit: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File]

Plender began with a reference to what he called an “apocalyptic warning” by the billionaire US hedge fund chief Stanley Druckenmiller that the dollar could cease to be the predominant global reserve currency within 15 years.

The warning was made in an interview with Druckenmiller on the business channel CBNC on May 11, where he elaborated on an op-ed piece he had written for the Wall Street Journal that day headlined “The Fed is playing with fire.”

The central criticism advanced by Druckemiller was that, while he agreed with the Fed’s initial actions, its continuation of the ultra-low interest rate regime and asset purchases, under conditions where the US economy was undergoing a significant recovery, was now creating major risks.

“I can’t find any period in history where monetary and fiscal policy were this out of step with the economic circumstances, not one,” he stated in the CNBC interview.

Druckemiller said in the long term the Fed’s policies and the rising government debts and deficits they support threatened the dollar’s international standing.

“If they want to do all this and risk our reserve currency status, risk an asset bubble blowing up, so be it. But I think we ought to at least have a conversation about it.

“If we are going to monetize our debt and we’re going to enable more and more of this spending, that’s why I am worried now, for the first time, that within 15 years we lose our reserve currency status and of course all the unbelievable benefits that have accrued with it,” he said.

While not fully endorsing Druckenmiller’s warnings, Plender pointed out that “even before the coronavirus pandemic and the extraordinary economic conditions it has generated, there were signs that the dollar’s dominance was slipping.”

Plender noted that in its most recent survey, covering the last quarter of 2020, the International Monetary Fund had found that dollar reserves held by central banks had fallen to 59 percent, their lowest levels in 25 years, and well below the 71 percent when the euro was launched in 1999.

Plender drew attention to the extraordinary developments that took place in the market for US Treasury bonds when the pandemic began to make its economic and financial effects felt in March 2020 which raised “important questions about the market’s liquidity.” The usual response to financial turbulence is a rush to purchase Treasury bonds as a “safe haven.”

In early March there was a typical and orderly flight to safety in US Treasuries. But from March 9 on “there was a disorderly flight from Treasury paper into cash” resulting from forced selling by hedge funds that had borrowed heavily to try to profit from differences in the yield on Treasuries and the yields in futures markets.

The plunge in the market threatened the solvency of highly leveraged funds, forcing them to sell, promoting a feedback loop in which those sales prompted further declines and further sales.

“That should not have happened in what is usually termed the world’s deepest, most liquid government bond market,” Plender wrote.

The other factor in the plunge, and the one most significant from the standpoint of the dollar’s global role, was the sell-off by international investors. While purchases of US Treasury bonds rose from $1.79 trillion in February 2020 to $2.67 trillion in March, “this was more than offset by foreign sales, which jumped from $1.79 trillion to $2.98 trillion, nearly a trillion higher than the previous peak over the decade.”

Druckenmiller also referred to this development in his Wall Street Journal op-ed, pointing out that, according to projections by the Congressional Budget office, in 20 years almost 30 percent of all fiscal revenues, compared to the current level of 8 percent, would be needed just to meet interest payments. Thus, the pressure on the Fed to simply monetize the debt, that is to buy it up, would inevitably rise.

He said the March 2020 events had shown that the risks were no longer hypothetical. For decades US Treasuries had been regarded as the preferred asset for foreign investors.

“It was therefore shocking and unprecedented to find that in the midst of last year’s stock market meltdown and while the Cares Act was being debated, foreigners aggressively sold US Treasuries. This was dismissed by the Fed as a problem in the plumbing of financial markets. Even after trillions spent to prop up the bond market, foreigners have continued to be net sellers. The Fed chooses to interpret this troubling sign as the result of technicalities rather than doubts about the soundness of current and past policies.”

In his CNBC interview, Druckenmiller alluded to, but did not elaborate on, the core reason for the Fed’s continuing massive intervention amounting at present to $1.4 trillion a year.

He said thatwithout Fed intervention bond rates would reach “prohibitive” levels. He did not lay out the consequences of such a development, but they are clear. Even a relatively small increase in the bond rate threatens to collapse the speculative bubble which has enabled finance capital to rake in trillions of dollars during the pandemic.

Druckemiller wrote that the Fed “should balance rather than fuel asset prices.” But the fear in Fed circles is that even the talk of tapering its asset purchases could set off a crisis and so it is sticking, at least so far, to its insistence that monetary policy must remain “accommodative.”

Other commentators are also voicing their concerns. On Tuesday, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers posted another opinion piece in the Washington Post repeating earlier warnings about the dangers of inflation.

He said the Biden administration was correct in pointing out that some of the inflation was transitory, but not everything was likely to be temporary and policymakers “starting at the Fed, need to help contain inflation expectations and reduce the risk of a major contractionary shock by explicitly recognizing that overheating, and not excessive slack, is the predominant near-term risk for the economy.”

As always, wages occupy a key place in the thinking of Summers and other such analysts. He wrote that policies towards workers should be aimed at the “the labour shortage that is our current reality” and increased unemployment benefits “should surely be allowed to run out in September” and end sooner in some parts of the country.

In a comment published in the Financial Times on Tuesday, financial analyst Mohamed El-Arian recalled the signs of market turbulence earlier this year, including the GameStop phenomenon, the surge in bond market yields and the collapse of the little-known family investment firm Archegos Capital in March that inflicted some $10 billion in known losses on banks.

“Disruptive spillovers” were contained, he wrote, “by luck rather than crisis prevention measures” and “the enormous risk-taking encouraged by the provision of liquidity resumed.”

However, the drivers of these “near accidents” should not be ignored as they were “part of dry tinder that, if ignited, could risk a consequential financial accident.”

El-Arian described the Fed as being hostage to its “new monetary framework,” dictating that financial market support should continue even as inflation starts to rise. It now faced a “tricky policy pivot” that involved the twin risks of market volatility and loss of Fed credibility. Rather than just “surfing the liquidity wave,” it was better to risk some short-term discomfort than “the durable damage that a bigger policy mistake would inflict on asset values, the functioning of markets, and economic and social wellbeing.”

The basic problem for all the scenarios for a smooth glide-path to stability is that they ignore the fundamental cause of the Fed’s massive intervention. It was a response to the freezing of the world’s largest and supposedly most liquid bond market in March last year. The contradictions of the financial system, fuelled by policies going back more than a decade that led to that event, have only intensified in the period since.

Pandemic Pounds Have Added To U.S. Obesity––So Has Size Inflation

Martha Rosenberg

Many health experts have noted that the more “diet foods” people eat, the fatter they are actually getting. Why? Because they are still psychologically hooked on eating all day which is fine with Big Food. In fact it is the Big Food agenda.

The pronouncements of health officials preceded the Covid-19 pandemic in which over half of U.S. adults gained weight according to an American Psychological Association poll; two out of five gained an average of 29 pounds and ten percent gained more than 50 pounds.

According to the New York Times, the average American man (before Covid) weighed 194 pounds and average woman weighed an astounding 165 pounds. In the years 1976-1980, those figures were 172.2 pounds and 144.2, respectively.

Nor are pounds the only sign of the growing American adiposity: the average American woman in the 1950s had a 25 inch waist and today has a waist of 34 inches. Maybe that should be “waist.”

As people have gotten fatter, so have stadium seats, airplane seats, ambulances and even operating tables. Few notice because the effects are everywhere. Young people, who used to be primarily thinner than older people, are leading the obesity way says Cancer Research UK. They often outweigh their parents.

Size Inflation Enables Obesity

It is often said that Marilyn Monroe wore a Size 14 dress, a fact that is supposed to show that being “plump” used to be more acceptable than it is today. But it is just the opposite. Ms. Monroe rarely weighed as much as 120 and usually weighed between 115 and 118. Moreover, she had a 22 inch waist–2-3 inches less than women in the 1950s and 12 inches less than the average today–and 35 inch hips. Yes, the waist of today’s women is the size of what their hips used to be.

Not surprisingly, our growing girth is a big problem for the fashion industry because overweight people do not rush to buy clothes or take pleasure in wearing them. Nor do they appreciate size labels that make them feel fat. (Years ago shoe stores were said to leave the size off women’s shoes for the same reason.) Enter size inflation, sometimes called vanity sizing, with its fabricated denominations like Size Zero.

Size Zero is said to fit women who measure from 30-22-32 to 33-25-35 inches. But a little look at fashion history shows that those dimensions used to describe a Size 5! More shockingly, in the 1970s, those dimensions described a Size 10.

If anyone has a doubt about how size inflation has made people thinner without losing a pound, go to a resale shop and try to try on a “Size 7” from decades ago. Prepare to be demoralized.

Men don’t scour resale shops the way women tend to do but if they did they would likely be just as demoralized if they tried to try on the three-piece powder blue disco suit similar to the one John Travolta wore in Saturday Night Fever. Can a vest be left casually unbuttoned?

Baggy Hip Hop fashions, low riding pants that sit on the hips and stretchy yoga pants and leggings are also indicted as enabling Americans to balloon in size without realizing it because their clothes still fit. Once upon a time, our ancestors called elastic waistbands “the Devil’s Playground” for exactly that reason.

Beware the Big Food Agenda

A chilling documentary released a few years ago, Fed Up, narrated by Katie Couric, highlighted how the U.S. government capitulates to Big Food lobbies such as the sugar industry and followed the money involved in keeping people fat. Moreover, labs across the country ensure that such junk food is addictive. Finally, Big Food has launched aggressive campaigns, sanctioned by governments, to cast obesity as “lack of exercise” and not something they cause.

Obesity is not just about aesthetics and there is no such thing as “fit but fat.” People carrying excess weight are at greater risk of mortality, hypertension, high LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea and many cancers says the CDC. The conditions increase the health care costs of fat people…and everyone else.

No one would smoke cigarettes because it made Big Tobacco money and kept medical industries thriving. Yet junk food-related obesity does a very similar thing. Moreover, no one is born fat or “naturally fat”–it is not a disability–though Big Food certainly doesn’t mind that thinking.

As Covid shutdowns end and people assess the Covid-19 weight damages and hit the gyms, will we see an improvement in national obesity? Not as long as Big Food’s processed, fattening junk food and its advertising are everywhere. In fact, obesity may increase as “food courts” reopen.

North Rhine-Westphalian state government plans to clamp down on the right to protest

Andreas Kunstmann & Dietmar Gaisenkersting

The North Rhine-Westphalian (NRW) state government plans to place significant new restrictions on the right to freedom of assembly. As early as June 30, the state legislature is expected to pass a new assembly law that will make it easier for the police and authorities to ban demonstrations and protests and criminalize participants.

NRW has been governed by a coalition of Christian Democrats (CDU) and Free Democrats (FDP) for four years. The state premier is CDU leader Armin Laschet, who is also the Christian Democratic candidate for chancellor in the September 26 federal election. In the 2017 coalition agreement, the CDU and FDP had agreed to revise the right of assembly. Until now, the federal law has applied. Since 2006, however, the states have had the option of enacting their own assembly laws.

Protest against the assembly law on May 22 in Cologne (Photo WSWS)

In January, the NRW state executive submitted a draft bill to the state assembly, which has since been discussed in the committees. Now the executive is urging haste in enacting the legislation. It wants to use pandemic-related restrictions on freedom of demonstration to weaken the considerable opposition to the law.

In 2018, the state executive expanded surveillance of individuals, criminalized protests and gave the police sweeping powers with a new police law. The current draft extends this policy.

Public and nonpublic meetings, demonstrations and protest events are to be made considerably more difficult to organize in advance. Assemblies must be registered at least 48 hours in advance, and the police must also be informed of the number of stewards. If the police decide that public safety is at risk, the stewards must be named, along with their addresses.

Carrying out video surveillance will be simplified. Drones will be allowed for use by the police to film gatherings. The police will have the power to set up “checkpoints” to take personal details. Demonstration participants may also be intimidated with targeted bans on participation and “verbal warnings.” Threats of punishment and fines are being drastically increased, in some cases up to two years in prison.

Under the term “militancy ban,” the previous “uniforms ban” is being tightened. Wearing “uniform-like clothing” at gatherings is prohibited. Soccer fans in team jerseys, the so-called “Black Block” of Antifa (who wear all black clothing) or supporters of “Ende Gelände” protesting against lignite mining in white painters’ overalls fear being criminalized in this way. Work clothes or high-visibility vests, such as those worn by the “yellow vests” in France, can also be subsumed under uniform-like clothing.

Anything that is “aggressive” and “provocative [or] conveys a willingness to use violence and thereby has an intimidating effect” can be cited against an assembly. This could be chants or demonstrators linking arms. Even slogans such as “Down with capitalism!” “Expropriate the banks and corporations!” or, as at the Berlin tenants demonstrations, “Expropriate the landlord Deutsche Wohnen” can violate the elastic legal paragraphs of the “ban on militancy.” Violations can be punished with up to two years in prison.

The Laschet state government is making little effort to disguise its real motives. In light of the coronavirus policies of those in power, which have led to millions of deaths worldwide, mass layoffs and the extreme redistribution of income and wealth to those at the top, it is preparing for fierce social conflict. The herd immunity policy, the billions handed over to the corporations and superrich, mass job cuts, wage reductions and growing social inequality are incompatible with democracy.

The bill’s preamble refers to the historical experiences of the Weimar Republic (1918-33), declaring, “The Weimar Republic also perished from its lack of inner fortitude, lack of will and/or the (in)ability to protect democracy and the republic in Germany against the extremists on the left and right fringes of the political spectrum who were ready to use violence, who agitated and demonstrated permanently in halls and on the streets.”

In fact, the Weimar authorities covered up for and supported paramilitary associations and fascist Sturmabteilungen (SA), while brutally persecuting workers and leftists and even throwing pacifists like Carl von Ossietzky into prison.

The NRW state government always counters criticism of its draft law with the argument that the restriction of democratic rights is directed primarily against neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists. However, in seeking to justify the legislation in interviews, such as those given by state Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU), reference is always made to the danger of “right-wing and left-wing extremist endeavors” in equal measure. This argument is as old as it is false.

The dismantling of democratic rights is aimed at the working class and youth and never the right wingers, who are supported by the state and its apparatus. This was exemplified by the invitation of several “experts” to address a parliamentary hearing on the bill at the beginning of May. Among others, the state government invited Professor Norbert Ullrich from the North Rhine-Westphalia University of Police and Public Administration, Thomas Dammers, a retired police officer who led several operations against the “Ende Gelände” protests, and Michael Elicker.

Elicker, a lawyer and professor at Saarland University, also works for three east German state associations of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). At the hearing, he spoke vehemently in favour of the “disruption ban” in the law, among other things. As an example, he chose the loud disruption of a demonstration by the far-right Pegida in Dresden by counterdemonstrators.

Paragraph 7 of the new law, “Störungsverbot” (“disruption ban”), prohibits disrupting a gathering with the aim of hindering or impeding it. This includes even calling for the prevention or blocking of a gathering, such as Nazi marches. Even the “preparation or practice of acts of disruption” is to be prohibited.

Ontario’s Laurentian University declares insolvency, slashes hundreds of jobs, dozens of programs

Matthew Richter

Management at Laurentian University, which serves Northern Ontario as a postsecondary hub, filed for creditor protection in February and has spent the past three months imposing savage cuts on the institution’s faculty and staff. The use of insolvency proceedings for the first time at a Canadian postsecondary educational institution was greenlighted by Ontario’s hard-right Conservative government and broad sections of the ruling elite. They view it as setting a precedent for a broader assault on education workers and drive to reorganize the postsecondary sector to more fully meet the needs of big business.

A quarter of the tenured faculty—about 110 professors—were unceremoniously laid off last month, with no prior notice during a Zoom call with school administration. Scores of contract positions have also been axed, above all, through Laurentian’s ending of the federated status of three smaller regional universities: the Huntington University, Thorneloe University and the University of Sudbury.

Signage for Laurentian University (Greying_Geezer/Flickr.com)

The cuts are especially devastating in a region that has no other major postsecondary institution. Moreover, Laurentian was one of the few institutions in predominantly English-speaking Ontario that allowed students to study in French, an option that has now been severely curtailed with the elimination of key programs like French language and cultural studies.

Fifty-eight undergraduate and 11 graduate programs were eliminated entirely, accounting for about a third of the northern university’s course offerings. Programs that were cut include undergraduate degrees in anthropology, environmental science, geography, Italian, mathematics, modern languages, music, philosophy, physics, political science and Spanish.

It also appears likely that Laurentian’s Indigenous Studies program, one of the oldest in Canada, will cease to exist.

The savage destruction of a large chunk of the university’s academic course offerings, combined with the termination of a substantial section of tenured faculty, was the desired and intended policy pursued by the administration .

Like other Ontario universities, Laurentian was facing mounting financial pressures due to years of government underfunding and the cuts the Doug Ford-led provincial government implemented shortly after taking power in 2018. These pressures were exacerbated by the pandemic and Laurentian’s inability as a smaller institution in the north to recruit large numbers of international students and develop lucrative corporate partnerships.

That said, Laurentian President Robert Haché, with the tacit support of Ford and possibly the major banks, manufactured a financial crisis and then presented his decision to seek protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) as a fait accompli. The CCAA, intended for private companies, allowed Haché and his fellow university managers to draft their plan to decimate the university behind closed doors with no input from staff or students and in flagrant violation of all collective agreements with the faculty and staff.

After callously terminating a quarter of the permanent workforce, management then bullied the terrified and demoralized remaining faculty to accept sweeping concessions in new collective agreements that were rammed through in a matter of hours. With the proverbial gun held to their heads, the faculty voted for a 5 percent across-the-board pay cut from May 1, followed by pay freezes for two years. The laid off faculty were told they would have to seek severance pay through the CCAA process. In other words, they will be lucky to receive a cent of severance pay once the highly profitable banks have received their pound of flesh with interest on top.

In the self-serving narrative presented by management, Laurentian owed $91 million on three different unsecured lines of credit with RBC ($71.1 million), TD Canada Trust ($18.5 million) and the Bank of Montreal ($1.3 million). At a time when the RBC line of credit was undrawn, Laurentian opened an additional line of credit for $14.4 million with Desjardins, according to court documents. This was repaid in full last fall upon the receipt of tuition fees. For reasons that remain unclear, both RBC and Desjardins rescinded their lines of credit to the institution last summer. Laurentian conducted its financial operations running its operating budget and its restricted funds (those for research grants, etc.) from a single bank account, further complicating accounting.

Even industry experts have pointed to the dubious nature of the financial dealings at Laurentian. Alex Usher, the president of the Toronto-based consulting firm Higher Education Strategy Associates, remarked, “Did the bank actually withdraw the line of credit?” writes Usher. “If so, why? Or, did Laurentian University’s President actually choose to renounce the line of credit in order to provoke a crisis (the careful wording of [President] Haché’s affidavit is ambiguous on this point). If there were non-CCAA alternatives that could have been taken and were not, that’s probably unforgivable.”

Management has long sought to drastically cut costs at the university. Laurentian’s court documents for the CCAA proceeding bitterly complained that it costs on average $2,000 more than the provincial average to educate students at Laurentian. The faculty association was also known for its militancy.

The underhanded and ruthless actions taken by university management had the blessing of the provincial Tory government. The province could have easily forwarded the money to avoid the bankruptcy proceedings, even if only to claw it back at a later date from provincial grants. Laurentian, however, is the proverbial canary in the coal mine.

Big business is determined to restructure postsecondary education, both to tie it more fully to its labour market needs and to develop further profit streams through the corporatization and privatization of education. By allowing Laurentian to brutally restructure its operations at the expense of staff and students, the political establishment has sent a message that a wave of cost-cutting and layoffs is looming across the entire sector.

As far as the apostles of the market are concerned, the Enlightenment ideals of the value of a comprehensive education and an educated citizenry are obstacles to be overcome. They also want to press forward with changing how universities are funded.

The decades immediately following World War II saw a significant expansion of Canada’s universities and, in the 1960s, community colleges. This was bound up with the postwar boom and the needs of industry and the expanding welfare state for a more highly skilled, technically trained workforce, as well as concerns within the political elite—as articulated in the 1951 report of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences (commonly known as the Massey Commission)—about fostering a Canadian identity as a bulwark of capitalist rule.

Initially the federal government played a leading role by providing universities operating grants, and during the 1960 the provinces increased their per capita support for students by over 85 percent. Objectively, this was based on the postwar boom.

With its end in the 1970s there were major changes in university funding. Ottawa largely withdrew from providing direct funding, with the exception of research funding and Canada Student Loans, and instead provided the provinces with transfers to help fund postsecondary education in the form of cash and tax credit transfers.

These transfers were consolidated with health transfers to the provinces by the Chretien Liberal government in the mid-1990s, with cuts totaling in the billions of dollars. The provinces then imposed sweeping cuts in their funding of postsecondary institutions and allowed tuition to increase annually by 7-8 percent for the better part of a decade. Student aid was disembowelled, resulting in the usurious program of large loans that run interest rates several percentage points higher than the prime rate. This led to a doubling of the student debt. Currently, the average student owes at least $28,000 upon graduation that students must repay and cannot declare bankruptcy on. As a share of operating revenues for universities, government funding dropped from 77 percent in 1992 to 55 percent in 2012.

Tuition fees rose in response, especially for international students. According to Statistics Canada, the average annual tuition fee for an international student was $29,712 for the 2019-20 year.

The rabid anti-worker, anti-education, right-wing Ford regime is the most naked and backward exponent of the market-based view of education. Last November, the provincial government instituted a performance-based funding initiative. In a press release dated November 26, 2020, the provincial government declared that it had “signed historic agreements with public colleges and universities that will revolutionize post-secondary educational institutions. The move will help students get the education, skills and experience they need to find good jobs by ensuring post-secondary institutions offer programs that align with labour market demands.”

The move is clearly meant to take a further major step in the direction of fully commodifying and corporatizing postsecondary education. Up to 60 percent of funding from the provincial government will be dependent on 10 performance metrics, such as graduate earnings, a vague category of “experiential learning” (i.e., co-op programs) and economic impact. Institutions that fail to meet the metrics will have their funding cut.

Significantly, this draconian move has not been challenged by the opposition Liberals. The opposition NDP critic Chris Glover confined himself to lamely stating that the move would “destabilize institutions and make it impossible for them to budget.”

Laurentian’s travails provide the clearest example yet of how the ruling class intends to enforce its plan to drastically restructure higher education across the country in the interests of big business. If quality postsecondary education is to be defended and expanded so as to provide free education for all, faculty, support staff and students must turn to the working class. It is the only social force that has the power and interest in reorganizing socioeconomic life to place human needs, science and culture before the imperative of capitalist profit.

Malian army detains president in French-backed coup aiming to strangle strikes

Kumaran Ira

On Monday, Malian troops loyal to the National Committee for the Salvation of the People (CNSP) junta detained top members of the interim transition government. President Bah Ndaw, Prime Minister Moctar Ouane and defence minister Souleymane Doucoure are now being held in a military base in Kati outside the capital, Bamako.

Colonel Assimi Goïta, vice president of the transition and strongman of the CNSP, spoke on television, declaring that he had placed the leading officials “outside their prerogatives” in order to “preserve the transition charter and defend the Republic.”

Malian police gather outside the Bourse du Travail where striking workers gathered to protest the arrest of President Bah N'Daw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane by military personnel in Bamako, Mali, on May 25, 2021. (AP Photo)

Goïta criticized the interim Ouane government for reshuffling the cabinet “in agreement with the President of the transition” but “without consultation with the vice president,” i.e., himself. Two of Goïta’s key allies—Colonels Sadio Camara and Modibo Koné, who occupied the defense and security portfolios—had been ousted from the government the day before. Goïta also accused the government of failing to bring the growing strike wave in Mali under control.

The coup comes as Mali and the entire Sahel are rocked by growing social protests against the eight-year French war in the Sahel, and mass strikes. The arrangements on which French imperialism relied to launch its war in 2013—supposedly to fight “terrorism,” but in reality to occupy its former colony, after a coup ousted Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré in March 2012—are collapsing. With the war widely hated, workers in Mali are entering into struggle, demanding wage increases.

Last week, the National Workers' Union of Mali (UNTM) called for a five-day strike after negotiations with the government over wages failed. The strike has shut down banks and public services. The union reported that “the strike is being widely observed and the country is literally paralyzed.”

Strikers are demanding the implementation of key demands including the recruitment of at least 20,000 young graduates into the civil service. Civil servants are also demanding the integration into the public service of all teachers in community schools, and the application of wage increases they obtained in the public sector in 2014 and 2019 for the private sector.

The central aim of the coup, as it has rapidly emerged, is to work with the union bureaucracy and the corrupt political establishment to strangle the strike and crush mounting working class opposition to exploitation, the botched official handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the French war.

Under intense pressure from workers, the UNTM had been forced to threaten an unlimited strike starting on Friday if its demands are not met. However, last night the UNTM seized upon the pretext of the coup to call off the strike. “The trade union federation does not want to increase the potential suffering of the population through this new political crisis,” UNTM Secretary for Economic Questions Ousmane Traoré told AFP.

The treachery of the UNTM bureaucracy points to the underlying aims of the Malian coup plotters, and their backers in Paris: to suppress the growing strike and political militancy among workers in Mali and across the Sahel, so the war and the exploitation of the working class can continue.

Last Friday, Ouane reacted to the mounting strikes by presenting the resignation of his government. Ndaw immediately reappointed him to form a new government. However, this provoked bitter conflicts within Mali’s so-called “transition” regime, which emerged last September from the August 18, 2020 coup that toppled President Ibrahim Bouba Keïta. The regime is formally tasked with overseeing an 18-month transition back to civilian rule, with elections slated for February 2022.

Not only the CNSP junta, but also the June 5, 2020 Movement-Rally of Patriotic Forces (M5-RPF) opposed Ndaw’s reappointment of Ouane, with the M5-RPF declaring that it would not join the future government.

The M5-RPF was the principal political organization that backed the CNSP’s coup last August, encouraging mass protests by youth in Bamako into the dead end of supporting the CNSP. Both the M5-RPF and the CNSP were heavily supported behind the scenes during last year’s coup by French imperialism, who backed the coup to block a broader movement of the Malian working class and oppressed masses demanding French troops leave the Sahel.

Relying on these political forces, Goïta launched the coup. He clearly calculated that, as during the August 2020 coup, whatever criticisms are made by the imperialist powers will be purely for show, and that Paris will continue supporting him as long as he creates conditions for the French war to continue.

Indeed, the European powers, the US State Department, the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) issued the usual formal condemnations. The UN and the AU issued a joint statement demanding the “immediate and unconditional release” of the interim officials and adding, “the international community rejects in advance any act of coercion, including forced resignations.” ECOWAS, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany also signed the statement.

At Monday’s European Summit, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced an “unacceptable coup” in Mali, threatening EU sanctions against the country. European leaders “condemned in the strongest possible terms the arrest of the President of Mali and his Prime Minister,” Macron declared, calling it “an unacceptable coup d'état within a coup d'état.”

All of these statements are empty rhetoric designed to provide a democratic fig leaf for a military coup and the suppression of the working class so the war can continue.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called the coup a “coup by force,” declining to label it a “military coup.” Radio France Internationale explained that the purpose of this terminology was “to leave a chance to negotiations” between Goïta and the civilian authorities.

Le Drian made clear that French policy is to put pressure on both army and the political parties to work out a deal backing the transition government and France’s presence in Mali. Speaking to the National Assembly, he said: “We demand the liberation of the authorities, whose security must be guaranteed, as well as the immediate return to the normal course of the transition … I insist that, if somehow there was no return to order in the transition, we would take immediate measures targeting political and military leaders who are blocking the transition.”

This cynical imperialist policy is steeped in blood. As Paris has tried to play off different ethnic groups against each other, Mali has seen rising sectarian massacres and killings carried out by French-backed forces. The UN Human Rights and Protection Division has catalogued over 100 extrajudicial executions perpetrated by the French-backed Malian Defence and Security Forces (MDSF).

Already suffering from heavy disruptions to its food supply bound up with global warming, Mali has been devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The 14,252 cases and 514 deaths from COVID-19 are widely supposed to be a massive underestimate, as the country’s underdeveloped health care system is swamped.

Because of rising wartime violence in the central and northern regions of Ségou, Mopti, Tombouctou, Gao and Ménaka, the total number of internally displaced in Mali has exploded from 208,000 to 326,000 in 2019 and 2020, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. The violence has also spilled over into neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. Mali suffered its deadliest year on record in 2020, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, which counted more than 2,800 casualties.

The rise of a rare COVID-19 complication known as “black fungus” adds to India’s misery in the pandemic

Benjamin Mateus

Earlier this month, as the coronavirus was rampaging through India’s populous cities and rural communities, medical professionals in hospitals began warning of an alarming epidemic of deadly fungal infections— Mucormycosis (a disease caused by saprophytic fungi that gets its nourishment from dead or decaying organic material) and given the title “black fungus.”

Many of those afflicted with this rare condition are patients who have developed or had recently recovered from COVID-19.

An Indian doctor examines a man for the symptoms of mucormycosis at a government hospital in Mumbai on May 25, 2021. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

According to the Times of India, 5,500 people across the country have developed this deadly infection, with 126 of them losing their lives. In Maharashtra alone, the second most populous state in India, 2,000 cases have been reported, with 800 hospitalized and 90 dead.

A day after the state of Rajasthan declared “black fungus” an epidemic, many other states have fallen in line, proclaiming it a “notifiable disease” under the Epidemic Disease Act, making it mandatory to report the cases to the state government. On May 14, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issued a statement titled “Stay Safe from Mucormycosis: a fungal complication being detected in COVID-19 patients,” asking people to control their diabetes and not use pharmaceuticals without medical supervision.

With health facilities inundated with patients, families caring for their loved ones are turning to purchasing medicines to treat them. The overuse of medications has become a growing concern, as noted by Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy in New Delhi. He told Bloomberg, “The damaging effect of this irrational use of medicines is potentially as high as that of the virus itself.”

Aside from the hot and humid climate conditions that allow the fungi to thrive, risk factors for patients include diabetes mellitus, leading to high blood sugars. Treatment with cheap steroids, which is the mainstay for managing COVID, inevitably impairs the glucose metabolism, causing blood sugar levels to rise exceedingly high while also suppressing the immune system’s ability to respond to infections.

India has one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world, affecting 77 million people. According to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), 463 million people worldwide have diabetes. Of these, 88 million are in South Asia. The IDF projects that by 2045, the number of people afflicted with this disease in India will climb to 134 million. Environmental and lifestyle changes resulting from industrialization and migration to urban centers have contributed significantly to India’s epidemic of Type 2 diabetes.

Patient with Mucormycosis (Wikimedia Commons)

Black fungus is a rare but devastating and highly lethal fungal infection if not immediately treated. The disease can fester and spread behind the orbits of the eyes, sinuses and reach the brain, causing the tissue to become necrotic, forming abscesses that need to be surgically resected. If left untreated, these patients can quickly develop metabolic derangements and altered mental activity. The tissue in the nose or palate can die and fall away, causing horrific disfigurement or loss of sight.

Though strong intravenous antifungal medications, such as Amphotericin B, are being used to treat the infection, surgical removal of rotted tissue is a critical measure. Lack of access to appropriate centers for such aggressive surgical procedures can prove fatal. Yet even these medications are facing acute shortages.

MRI of patients with sinus and orbital abscess with Mucormycosis

The fungal spores can also spread into the lungs and then migrate via the bloodstream to all the body’s organs. Most patients develop high fevers and cough up copious amounts of blood. Immunocompromised patients and, in particular, those with diabetes mellitus are at risk for this debilitating and life-threatening disease. Those with immunocompromised states who are being treated for malignancy or need chronic immunosuppression, those who are malnourished or have AIDS are at risk for this disease.

Ubiquitous in nature, the fungi can be found in the soil on decaying vegetation and feces. In hot climates under humid conditions, the fungi can proliferate and release large numbers of spores that can become lifted into the air currents. Humans are constantly exposed to them, but with an intact immune system, infections are relatively rare, on the order of just less than two per one million in the US. In India, the prevalence of the disease is 70 times higher than the rest of the globe, making it, nonetheless, still rare.

The site of the disease—eyes, nose and lungs—is partly because susceptible individuals inhale these spores, and they lodge in the sinuses and lung tissue. In healthy individuals, the cilia that line the tracts of these organs transport them to the gastrointestinal tracts where they are cleared. For those who develop the invasive fungal disease, the hallmark of the infection is the collapse of infected tissue as the fungi invade into the blood vessels leading to tissue damage and death. The term “black fungus” was coined to describe darkened skin lesions in Indian patients who developed this devastating infection after becoming infected with COVID-19.

Dr. Hemant Thacker, a consulting physician and cardiometabolic specialist at Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai, explained, “One of the ways Mucormycosis travels is by invading the blood vessels. It compromises the circulation to the distal organ and thus produces what is called as necrosis or death of tissue, which then becomes black. So, it is then given the name black fungus.” He added, “If not controlled, not treated, it can have a mortality of anything from 20 to 50 percent.”

The rarity of the disease makes the present situation in India quite dire. In a 2005 publication in the Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases, the authors conducted an exhaustive review dating back to 1885 and analyzed their findings among 929 eligible cases. Those with diabetes and malignancies fared worst. The disseminated form of the disease was uniformly fatal. Sinus and brain involvement impacted those with diabetes most. Survival was 3 percent in cases left untreated.

More than just a devastating disease, black fungus epitomizes the added insult to injury created by conditions inherently tied to the capitalist management of COVID-19. Not only was the pandemic foreseen, but it is also possible to eradicate it. The crisis in India is just one more drop in the ocean of misery created out of the insatiable need to turn a profit on the backs of the working class. In the present instance, it is literally eating away their flesh and blood.