Northwest Territories grappling with Canada’s highest COVID-19 infection rate

Alexandra Greene

The Northwest Territories (NWT) currently has the highest rate of active COVID-19 cases in Canada, with the equivalent of 740 cases per 100,000 people. This is more than one-and-a-half times the rate in Alberta, where hospitals have had to implement triage protocols, denying vitally needed care to some patients, due to an unprecedented explosion of infections and hospital admissions.

While the NWT’s 356 active infections may seem small in comparison to Alberta’s 15,295, the difference in their respective populations means that the situation in the territory, which makes up much of Canada’s far north, is dire. The Northwest Territories has a population of just 45,500, almost half of whom, some 21,400 people, reside in its capital, Yellowknife.

A nurse holds a phone while a patient affected with COVID-19 speaks with his family from the intensive care unit. (Image Credit: AP/Daniel Cole)

NWT has now recorded nine total COVID-19 deaths, all of them since August, including two that were reported on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.

The territory had largely escaped the ravages of COVID-19 until the country’s current Delta-driven fourth wave erupted in early August. Since the pandemic began in Canada in March 2020, the Northwest Territories has had 1,537 confirmed COVID-19 cases. Of these, close to 1,400 have been reported since mid-August 2021.

This rapid increase in infections has been largely caused by an outbreak of the Delta variant in the Sahtu region, which subsequently spread to Yellowknife.

On Sunday, NWT’s chief public health officer announced that an exposure to COVID-19 had occurred last week at the territory’s legislature building. This alone has resulted in six confirmed cases and two probable cases to date. Other outbreaks declared this week include one at the Inuvik homeless shelter and another at Diamond Jenness Secondary School, both in Hay River.

Located in Yellowknife, the territory’s main hospital, Stanton Territorial Hospital, has just six ICU (intensive care) beds. By October 4, all six of these beds were occupied by patients suffering from COVID-19. The federal government sent oxygen concentrators from the national stockpile to the territory, after a public alert was issued by the NWT health authority that Stanton Territorial Hospital was struggling with oxygen supply issues.

The federal government also requested that the Red Cross send health care workers to assist in the territory. Nurses, doctors and health care staff have since been deployed to work at the temporary shelter set up at the Yellowknife Arena in September to provide services to the city’s large “underhoused” population.

The territory’s health care system is under immense pressure and was already becoming overwhelmed by mid-September. In Yellowknife as well as smaller communities throughout the NWT, health care staff have been moved out of clinics and redeployed to facilities where there are greater numbers of severely ill or at-risk patients. Non-urgent procedures and appointments have been cancelled and postponed. The health care authority announced that opioid maintenance treatment appointments and mental health and addictions counselling sessions are being triaged and moved online.

In recent weeks, there have been 36 hospitalizations due to the virus, including 13 ICU admissions. Prior to the current surge in cases, the territory had seen only four COVID-related hospitalizations during the entire pandemic.

The first six people who died from COVID-19 in the Northwest Territories ranged in their ages and the communities they came from but were all indigenous. This was confirmed by Health Minister Julie Green, who stated that some of those who died from the virus were indigenous elders, adding that important knowledge of their culture and communities died with them.

To try and counteract the spread of the virus, in-person schooling has been halted in communities across the territory and gathering restrictions are in place in the two most heavily affected communities of Yellowknife and Behchokǫ̀.

“If I were to lift the orders, it would overwhelm the health hospital system for sure,” Dr. Kami Kandola, NWT’s chief medical officer of health, told CBC News in a recent interview. Kandola also pointed out that if the health care system in the NWT were to become further taxed, the normal course of action would be to transport critically ill patients to Alberta for treatment. However, with Alberta’s own health care system overwhelmed, that option is largely if not entirely foreclosed—placing the territories’ population at still greater risk.

Kandola said that the waning immunity provide by mRNA COVID-19 vaccines is a major factor in the current surge of infections. The Northwest Territories began vaccinating elders on December 31, 2020, months ahead of the vaccine rollout in other parts of the country. “Because we were privileged to get the vaccine first, we unfortunately are going to be the first ones to experience the waning immunity, which we’re seeing in our own case numbers,” she warned in a September interview with CBC.

At the beginning of October, the territory began to supply third doses of the vaccine for people aged 75 and over in its hardest hit communities as part of a “limited roll-out.” Care home residents received a third dose in August.

While waning vaccination efficacy may well be a critical factor in the spread of the virus, the premature repeal of public health orders is ultimately what has enabled the virus to again take root in the Northwest Territories. Epidemiologists and other health experts have long warned of the consequences of relying solely on vaccinations to protect a given population.

The dismantling of many of the most basic public health protections by the territorial government was in line with policies pursued by governments across Canada. With the support and encouragement of the federal Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau, provinces from coast to coast lifted restrictions following the deadly third pandemic wave last spring. The most disastrous consequences of this “profits before life” strategy can be seen in Alberta. Overall, Canada’s official COVID-19 death toll has surpassed 28,000, but credible studies suggest the figure is actually over 50,000.

The current outbreak in Yellowknife has severely impacted the city’s large homeless population. Critics have pointed out that this could have been avoided had the territorial government not rolled back safety measures that were put in place early on in the pandemic.

Initially, the territorial government turned the downtown Aspen Apartment complex and the city’s Arnica Inn into isolation centres for those experiencing homelessness. A second day shelter was also opened downtown. Aspen Apartments had 36 rooms in which homeless people could isolate while awaiting COVID test results and remain isolated and sheltered if they did test positive for the virus. However, when case numbers declined last spring, the government closed the centre, saying it was not being used. A day shelter also closed in the spring, and now as Yellowknife struggles with the Delta variant-fueled outbreak, there are few places for the homeless population to isolate or find safe shelter. Places to access food and other essential services and escape the harsh Northern elements have also been shut.

From mid-August to September 12 alone, 19 people using shelters in Yellowknife tested positive for the virus, as did 10 health care and shelter workers. The number of shelter workers who contracted the virus or were otherwise affected by the outbreak and unable to come to work forced a further day shelter to close and, as of September 11, Yellowknife’s sobering centre close its doors indefinitely.

The Northwest Territories, and especially its indigenous population, have long been severely impacted by a chronic shortage of proper housing and rampant homelessness. (Senate of Canada)

With temperatures dropping as winter draws nearer, there is no 24-hour shelter available for those without anywhere else to go. A Quality Inn has now been converted into an isolation centre, but shelter workers and advocates for the homeless population have said that the process of setting this up has been an “intense scramble to throw things together.”

Since the start of September, numerous outbreaks at worksites have occurred across the Northwest Territories. Two workers tested positive for COVID-19 at the NWT Power Corporation’s Snare Hydro System worksite, which is located roughly 140 kilometres northwest of Yellowknife. There were also two confirmed cases among workers at the Ekati diamond mine, as well as one case at the Gahcho Kué diamond mine in Fort Smith. Cases were also recorded at the Diavik mine and the Imperial Oil facility in Norman Wells.

In all the cases at the various diamond mines and the Imperial Oil facility, the workers who tested positive had travelled into the Northwest Territories for work and do not reside there. Many workers live in Alberta and travel north to jobs in the NWT. Alberta’s skyrocketing case numbers make it all the more reckless and irresponsible to force workers to keep non-essential production facilities, such as diamond mines, operating throughout the pandemic.

Washington strangles Afghanistan’s economy as millions face starvation

Bill Van Auken

Two months after the August 15 fall of Kabul to the Taliban and the ignominious end of Washington’s 20-year war and occupation in Afghanistan, the country is teetering on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

Measures being taken by the Biden administration to strangle the country’s economy threaten to inflict the greatest crime against humanity committed in Afghanistan over the course of decades of US imperialist intervention.

An internally displaced Afghan child looks for plastic and other items which can be used as a replacement for firewood, at a garbage dump in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2019. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

United Nations agencies are warning that over nine out of 10 Afghan families are already unable to obtain sufficient food and that over 1 million children could face acute malnutrition and even death by starvation in the coming year. Already almost half the country’s children are malnourished, while there is a mounting danger of diseases like the measles and polio spreading throughout the population.

Conditions were already dire before the final withdrawal of US troops and the collapse of the American puppet regime in Kabul, with Afghanistan ranking 169th out of 189 countries on the UN’s human development index. A drought has destroyed much of the wheat harvest and inflation has sent food prices soaring.

Since the consummation of the US debacle, however, the country has suffered two hammer blows. First, all foreign aid and development funds have been summarily cut off. While a large portion of this money went directly into the pockets of corrupt US-backed officials, it accounted for roughly 80 percent of the government’s budget and was the mainstay of the country’s economy, which in 20 years of US occupation never developed any significant industry.

Second, and even more devastating, the US has imposed unilateral sanctions against the Taliban-controlled government on the basis of having classified the former insurgent movement as a Specially Designated Terrorist Group (SDGT), making it a potential crime for anyone in the US—and given secondary sanctions, anyone in the world—from dealing with it.

The US, meanwhile, has frozen some $9.5 billion in Afghanistan government assets, most of it held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Under pressure from the Biden administration, the International Monetary Fund has also cut off Kabul’s access to hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency reserves.

The cutoff of dollar assets to Afghanistan’s dollarized economy is bringing economic activity to a grinding halt, while depriving the government of cash to meet payrolls of teachers, health care professionals and other workers in vital public services, some of whom have already gone months without salaries. Non-governmental aid agencies are also unable to pay their employees or fund their operations.

Also under US pressure, the World Bank cut off $600 million in funding that underpins the country’s health care system. With NGOs responsible for much of the country’s health care also deprived of funds, some 2,000 hospitals and clinics, including those dedicated to treating COVID-19 patients, have been forced to shut down across Afghanistan, the Red Cross reports.

“Unless money starts flowing soon, a total economic collapse will plunge Afghans into a humanitarian catastrophe,” Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, warned after a visit to Afghanistan last week.

Egeland reported that the cutoff of liquidity had left his organization unable to pay staff or suppliers in Afghanistan. “Instead, we are forced to purchase tents, blankets and food in neighboring Pakistan. Now imagine this dilemma multiplied for every employer in Afghanistan.”

The Biden administration’s policies represent an act of raw revenge for the debacle that ended the 20-year US war, an act of collective punishment against an entire population of 40 million people for failing to support US imperialism’s attempt to impose colonial-style rule. At the same time, they are driven by definite geostrategic considerations. Washington is opposed to the consolidation of any regime in Kabul that is not under its thumb, and particularly to a regime that would forge closer ties to China.

It was in this context that the G20 countries met Tuesday to consider the crisis in Afghanistan. Divisions between the US, Europe and China over the issue were readily apparent.

In advance of the meeting, the European Union began the talks by announcing €1 billion ($1.2 billion) “to avert a major humanitarian and socioeconomic collapse,” the EU’s chief Ursula von der Leyen said. The gesture no doubt expresses concerns in European capitals that the country’s economic collapse will trigger a refugee flow even greater than that of 2015.

At the same time, however, there was much less than met the eye in the European package. It included €300 million already pledged, with an addition of just €250 million for Afghanistan and the rest going to neighboring countries to manage refugee flows. Given that roughly 50 percent of aid money is spent on administrative costs, this means that little more than €125 million will reach the starving Afghan people. This after a 20-year war in which Washington spent some $2 trillion and its European allies spent tens of billions of dollars.

In a thinly veiled condemnation of US policy in Afghanistan, Germany’s lame-duck Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters covering the G20, “To stand by and watch 40 million people plunge into chaos because electricity can’t be supplied and no financial system exists, that cannot and should not be the goal of the international community.”

Neither China’s President Xi Jinping nor Russia’s President Vladimir Putin participated in the G20 virtual summit. Beijing is set to participate next week in a meeting in Moscow that will include Afghanistan’s neighboring countries as well as a large delegation from the Taliban.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, however, told a G20 foreign ministers meeting that sanctions against Afghanistan’s de facto government must be lifted and the country’s assets unfrozen. Participating in the virtual summit, he stressed that the countries that “caused the current predicament” had a responsibility to prevent a humanitarian disaster.

A White House readout of President Joe Biden’s meeting with the G20 leaders on Afghanistan stressed US determination to “maintain a laser-focus on our enduring counterterrorism efforts, including against threats from ISIS-K, and ensuring safe passage for those foreign nationals and Afghan partners with documentation seeking to depart Afghanistan,” while mentioning humanitarian aid as an afterthought.

For his part, State Department spokesman Ned Price dodged a question about the US allowing Afghanistan access to its frozen assets, asserting that Washington would wait to see what the Taliban would do “six weeks from now, six months from now” to determine “what our set of incentives—sticks, carrots, everything in between—looks like with any future government of Afghanistan.”

Washington has justified its policy of starving the Afghan population with references to “human rights” and by invoking the Taliban’s policies towards women. Answering this propaganda line, Taliban spokesperson Inamullah Samangani said, “If they ban our assets, 90 percent of the Afghan people will fall into poverty. Isn’t this also in contradiction with the principles of human rights?”

There is no doubt that the homicidal US policy toward Afghanistan is driven in large measure by Washington’s ever more bellicose confrontation with China. The Taliban government has described China, with which Afghanistan shares a narrow border, as its “most important partner” and a “dependable friend.”

Cut off from aid and the country’s reserves by Washington and its allies, the Taliban sees China as potentially filling the vacuum, including through investments connected to its Belt and Road Initiative.

Chinese investment in the country increased by nearly 12 percent in 2020, and Beijing has interest in exploiting Afghanistan’s rare earth metals, estimated at between 1 and 3 trillion dollars in value. The Chinese media Wednesday attributed a fall in the price of stocks connected to lithium to the prospect that exploitation of Afghanistan’s lithium reserves, the largest in the world, would bring down the price of the mineral, which is key to the development of China’s electric car industry.

After waging a two-decade dirty war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives before ending in a debacle, Washington is embarked on policies that threaten to condemn millions of Afghans to starvation, while turning the ravaged country into a battlefield in a US war against China.

Pandemic continues to kill in America, while the ruling elite squabbles over mandates

Benjamin Mateus

There is barely a mention of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States any more, other than the assertions by the mainstream press that the worst is now behind us or announcements of new approvals of vaccinations. The recent declines have been celebrated even though the daily infection rates remain above most of the previous peaks, and new waves—and variants—could well arise.

The pandemic has had and continues to have a massive impact on the population regardless of the media’s silence on the matter. There have been more than 45.4 million reported COVID-19 infections during the pandemic. The reported number of COVID-related deaths is approaching 740,000. Over the last three months, 10 million infections were registered with 114,000 deaths, demonstrating the virulence of the Delta variant despite more than half the population being fully vaccinated.

However, even these figures are a significant underreporting of the true calamity. According to data provided by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s model of excess COVID-19 deaths, the death toll stands at a horrific 1.33 million lives lost over the span of 18 months. Nearly 300,000 of these deaths occurred during the last wave of infections.

The discrepancy between the reported COVID deaths and the excess deaths estimated on the basis of COVID-19 models is staggering, and yet there is not a mention of it in the bourgeoisie press and by the political establishment.

And despite these horrific developments, instead of employing any significant public health measures to save lives and livelihoods, the message has evolved into mitigate through vaccinations only.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” provided what passes for caution in the official discourse. He told anchor Jonathan Karl, “We certainly are turning the corner on this particular surge, Jon. But we have experienced over now close to 20 months of surges that go up and then come down, and then go back up again. The way to keep it down, to make that turnaround continue to go down, is to do what we mentioned: get people vaccinated.”

Critical modeling of the dynamics of community spread employing various strategies for dealing with the pandemic has shown that vaccinations alone will not stem the tide of infections. The vaccination campaigns have all but stalled, making any stated vaccination goal difficult to achieve. Currently, only 56.6 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, below what would be required even to slow the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant.

As for eradicating the virus and freeing humanity from this deadly threat, neither of the two camps in bourgeois politics hold out any such prospect.

Placing the discussion into context, even before the last surge in the US this summer, scientists had estimated that combined with infections and vaccines, approximately 83.3 percent of the population had some level of immunity. And yet, the last wave was only second in its destructive force to the winter surge. Without measures in place to curtail the spread of infection, the virus will continue to spark new fires across the country, including a likely new surge accompanying the colder weather that is imminent in the Northern US states.

Presently, the pandemic is rippling through dispersed populations of rural regions for whom the lack of infrastructure and access to health care are playing havoc. A new study from the University of Iowa College of Public Health found COVID-19 death rates in rural regions were double those reported in urban areas.

On Wednesday, Alaska saw 18 more people hospitalized for COVID-19, bringing the total to 204. Cases also doubled overnight with 1,220 new infections. The state continues to lead in infection rates. Earlier in the month the state health officials activated a “crisis standard of care” policy across 20 hospitals, which means critical life-sustaining care is being rationed to those deemed best fit to survive. For instance, at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, treatment for a 70-year-old woman on a ventilator and dialysis machine was terminated to free up the machine for a 48-year-old man, according to CNBC . Both patients, however, passed away.

The current surge in hospitalizations in Montana has persisted. This week the state broke the 2,000 mark for the first time during the pandemic as the figure rose to 2,227 COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, breaking the previous record of 1,456 on October 4, 2020. Wyoming and West Virginia are experiencing similar surges of cases.

But more densely populated states are also suffering anew. Michigan has witnessed a resurgence of the infection. The state’s health department reported on Wednesday that there were 8,671 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases and 110 deaths over the span of just two days. Hospital emergency rooms are filled with patients lying on stretchers in the crowded hallways left unattended from staffing shortages. However, many are also there not because of COVID-19 but other ailments that have been long neglected, but which are now forcing people to overcome their understandable reluctance to seek hospital treatment.

Dr. Brad Uren, an emergency medicine professor at the University of Michigan College of Emergency Physicians, told the Detroit Free Press, “We’re back to pre-COVID volumes, but also have the added burden of the COVID patients and the sort of backlog of patients that have been deferring some of their care over the last year.”

Wisconsin has seen cases peak across the state, with the seven-day average having reached over 2,600 cases. As schools there ended even mitigation policies, the number of infections among children has soared, contributing to the present dire situation. Deaths have begun to track upwards again. According to the Wisconsin Hospital Association, more than 1,170 people are admitted to the hospitals in the state with 310 in intensive care units.

Though the number of new cases nationally has been declining, with the seven-day average now a little over 91,000 per day, the death toll remains high, with more than 1,900 people dying each day. There are also indications that the decline in national COVID-19 cases is slowing, which has ominous implications as the country is heading into winter with the added burden of the flu season.

Though full vaccination status for the elderly has reached 80 percent, they were also the first to be vaccinated, meaning their immunity to the coronavirus is most likely to have weakened. The continuing drive to return to pre-pandemic norms means that this age group faces renewed dangers of the full implementation of the “learning to live with the virus” policy. Though one in 450 people has died from COVID-19 in the United States, COVID-19 deaths among the elderly are now at one in 100, highlighting the dangers for this age group. Thus far, more than a half million people aged 65 or older have died from coronavirus in America.

Despite these grim statistics, the Biden administration is pushing ahead with a policy focused almost exclusively on vaccinations, while other public health measures go by the boards. Biden signed an executive order implementing emergency temporary standards (ETS) that would force companies with more than 100 employees to mandate vaccination or regular testing. Once it goes into effect, the ETS would impact around 80 million workers, half the US workforce. Yesterday, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) submitted the text of the new vaccine rule for large employers to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, June 2021 (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has taken the offensive against the vaccine mandate push by signing an executive order on Monday that would prohibit companies and organizations from enforcing a COVID-19 mandate on workers . The order states, “No entity in Texas can compel receipt of a COVID-19 vaccine by any individual, including any employee or a consumer, who objects to such vaccination for any reason of personal conscience, based on a religious belief, including prior recovery from COVID-19.” However, as many of these corporate “entities” operate across multiple states, it will only further exacerbate the global supply chain issues and the chaotic economic situation as companies have to determine which rules they will abide by.

The vaccinated governor presides over a state with one of the highest COVID-19 death tolls. Close to 69,000 people have died thus far, and more than 200 are still dying each day. Assuredly, these decisions are driven by personal political ambitions and not based on any moral stance or consideration based on sound scientific advice. In this regard, both the Democrats and Republicans are complicit in the massive number of deaths caused by their policies.

As Biden remarked last month during a White House speech urging large companies to enforce vaccination mandates on their labor force, “While America is in much better shape than it was seven months ago when I took office, I need to tell you a second fact: we’re in a tough stretch and it could last a while.” The president said more than he had probably intended.

South African metalworkers strike expands

Patrick Martin

Some 16,000 workers in a smaller union have joined the 155,000 members of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), who walked out October 5 over demands for wage increases and other improvements.

Members of the Metal and Electrical Workers Union of South Africa (MEWUSA) announced that its members in the industry had come out on the picket lines. A third union, UASA, said it was in dispute with the employers but had not yet approved a walkout.

The strike has begun to have an impact on the South African auto industry, which is entirely dependent on steel and auto parts that come from the factories where NUMSA members have walked out. The German-based carmaker BMW was the first automaker to announce the disruption of production, saying that its main assembly plant was affected on Monday, losing 700 vehicles.

Striking members of NUMSA (Source: Twitter/Unati Msuthu)

The executive director of the National Association of Automotive Component and Allied Manufacturers (NAACAM) said in a statement, “We expect more OEM [Original Equipment Manufacturer] assembly lines to be impacted if the strike continues into next week, due to lack of production in parts of the supply chain.”

The auto industry accounts for 5 percent of South Africa’s GDP, on top of the 8 percent of GDP represented by the output of the steel and metal industries themselves.

The strikers continue to encounter widespread violence from police and security guards. At least six workers were injured Monday when police fired rubber bullets at a picket line outside the Wireforce plant in Germiston. Edward Matube, the union secretary in Germiston, said police told the workers they were to keep at least 150 meters from the Wireforce premise.

Matube said one of the police began counting down from 10 for them to disperse. “We were leaving when they started shooting, so they shot at our backs,” he told the press. Another union officer, Nelson Kiyane, released photos the next day showing bullet wounds on his thighs and on other workers’ backs and legs, confirming that they were shot as they were moving away from the factory, not toward it.

The expansion of the strike coincides with an official statement from NUMSA rejecting the latest contract offered by the major employers federation, as well as attacking two smaller employers groups which have failed to make any new offer at all.

NUMSA announced Wednesday it was rejecting the offer by the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of South Africa (SEIFSA), which raised the proposed first-year wage increase from 4.4 percent to 6 percent but still well below the 8 percent demanded by the union and limited only to the lowest paid workers. Metalworkers received no wage increase at all in 2020 because the union agreed to freeze all bargaining during the initial period of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At a press conference Thursday, NUMSA General Secretary Irvin Jim put on a demagogic show of intransigence, while at the same time holding out an olive branch to SEIFSA. He used as props for this cynical performance the refusal of two smaller employer groups, the National Employers’ Association of South Africa (NEASA) and the South African Engineers’ and Founders’ Association (SAEFA), to match the offer made by SEIFSA.

Jim said that SEIFSA had limited its offer to workers currently making the minimum pay at each company, while the union wanted any increase to apply to all workers at all pay grades. But NEASA and SAEFA, whose member companies tend to be smaller, less well financed and based in the regions rather than the central industrial area around Johannesburg, have refused to make a new offer to the union. The union leader called the 4.28 percent raise proposed by NEASA a “non-offer.”

While SEIFSA had reached out to NUMSA after the beginning of the strike, the other two associations were sabotaging the structure of collective bargaining and seeking to “advance down variation of wages in industrial sectors.”

“Our message to SAEFA, NEASA and their CEOs is that they must stop their shenanigans of working to break down the collective bargaining power of workers and come to the negotiation table,” he concluded.

The effect of these statements was to present SEIFSA as the “good” employers’ group and the other two as “bad” federations, although SEIFSA includes the largest and wealthiest of the corporations, including those linked most closely to globally mobile capital. The result could well be a settlement with SEIFSA only that leaves workers at the two smaller groups in the lurch.

It is extremely significant that the NUMSA leader declared his support for a deal at the 6 percent level, provided that this was extended to all pay rates and not just the minimums, effectively abandoning the 8 percent demand for which the workers went on strike.

Irvin Jim said that for the past decade metalworkers had received “unilaterally imposed crumbs or no increase at all,” although his own organization is by far the largest in the industry and has done nothing to fight back, including the betrayal of the last major strike in 2014.

He went on to criticize the government of President Cyril Ramaphosa and the ruling African National Congress. “The working class across all sectors, particularly the industrial proletariat with hard skills, have been victims of an ANC government that failed to impose a meaningful national minimum wage that breaks the back of the apartheid wage gap,” Jim said.

This government, however, depends for its existence on the support from the trade unions. The biggest labor federation, COSATU, is actually part of the government, and Ramaphosa himself, before he became a billionaire capitalist boss, was the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers.

NUMSA broke away from COSATU, but it never broke with the fundamental political perspective of the ANC, the Stalinist South African Communist Party, and COSATU, which is the development of “black capitalism” in South Africa to replace the apartheid monstrosity, rather than the mobilization of the vast power of the South African working class on the basis of revolutionary socialist politics.

In the current strike, the ANC government will inevitably play a reactionary anti-working-class role. Employment and Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi has limited his statements so far to calling for calm. “It is common cause that the country is now going through one of the most difficult periods occasioned by the pandemic on one hand and the inclement economic conditions that prevailed even before COVID-19 on the other,” he said.

“It is against this background that we appeal to all the players—workers and employers, unions, federations and employer bodies—to handle the sensitive talks with the necessary caution,” he said, adding, “Cool heads should prevail and the good of the country and our economy should always be at the top of mind.”

What terrifies the ANC government and the capitalist class which it serves is that the trade union organizations, which act to defend the ruling elite and suppress the working class, are increasingly discredited, and the working class is now coming forward into revolutionary action.

Soaring food prices drive hunger around the world

John Malvar

The 2021 Global Hunger Index (GHI), published on Thursday, revealed soaring levels of hunger among the poor and working populations around the globe.

The foreword, written by the heads of Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide, the organizations responsible for the GHI, stated that the report “points to a dire hunger situation, a result of the toxic cocktail of the climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and increasingly severe and protracted conflicts.”

Rising food prices are a critical contributing factor in the growth of world hunger over the past year. Rapidly mounting inflation and the disruption of the supply chain networks of global capitalism are driving up the prices of all basic consumer goods. The U.S. Energy Information Authority reported that nearly half of all US households who use natural gas to heat their homes will pay an average of 30 to 50 percent more this winter for heating than last year.

Cars line up for food at the Utah Food Bank’s mobile food pantry at the Maverik Center Friday, April 24, 2020, in West Valley City, Utah [Credit: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer]

Real hourly earnings for American workers have fallen 1.9 percent since January. Workers in countries around the globe confront a similar situation, one that has become unlivable. Increasingly unable to pay rent, purchase adequate food, obtain fuel, they are being driven into struggle.

They confront a social system, capitalism, that exploits them, overworks them, and then leaves them without the basic necessities of life. The producers of the world’s goods find themselves without the means of survival. Nowhere is this more palpable than with the skyrocketing levels of world hunger.

The GHI report on hunger appears a week after the United Nations held a high-level event, Action in Support of Preventing and Ending Famine Now. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Director-General Qu Dongyu told the assembly, “Today we face unprecedented food crises on multiple fronts. Starvation and hunger-related deaths are a present reality. ... As we near the end of 2021, the situation has continued to deteriorate.”

The report stated that hunger remained at “serious, alarming, or extremely alarming levels in nearly 50 countries” and noted that “after decades of decline, the global prevalence of undernourishment ... is increasing.”

Three factors, according to the GHI, drive the rising levels of world hunger, which have driven 41 million people to “the very edge of famine”—“conflict, climate change, and the economic devastation brought on by Covid-19.”

Fueled by inflation and the economic dislocation caused by the pandemic, world food prices are soaring. The FAO Food Price Index (FFPI), which measures change in international prices of a basket of food commodities, reported in September that prices were 32.8 percent higher than they had been a year prior. The prices of the most basic staples rose even more sharply; wheat was up 41 percent and maize 38 percent from September 2020.

These figures contain immense misery. According to an article published in Nature Food in July, three billion people could not afford a healthy diet before the pandemic. Soaring food prices, and rising prices of consumer goods generally, have markedly worsened the situation. While 43 percent of the world’s population could not afford a healthy diet prior to COVID-19, by the end of 2020 the numbers had risen to 50 percent.

A 32 percent rise in the price of food has a profound impact on the poor. In underdeveloped countries, a majority of the population will spend somewhere from 40 to 60 percent of household income on food. The poorest 20 percent of the population in the United States spent from 30 to 40 percent of household income on food. Rising prices either mean an inability to pay rent and other expenses or cuts in the quality and overall calories of the food consumed.

The mass hunger and malnutrition confronting a substantial portion of the world’s working class is a social catastrophe, not a natural one. It is an immense crime which has been committed by the capitalist class around the globe.

The three factors driving world hunger identified by the GHI—conflict, the economic dislocation of the pandemic and climate change—are all the results of the irrational and rapacious character of capitalism.

The sharp rise in world hunger over the past year is above all a result of the criminal mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic by capitalist governments around the globe. The FAO cited “food price spikes, movement restrictions that limit market and pastoralist activities alike, rising inflation, decreased purchasing power” among the economic effects of the pandemic on world food consumption.

There are now 2.37 billion people in the category of “food insecure.” Most subsist on one or two small meals a day of inadequate nutrition, often simply a grain extended with a meager source of fat and a vegetable.

Around the world, working parents go hungry to ensure that there is food on their children’s plates. They invent ways of extending their food. They find ways to cook scraps. They dull hunger pains with instant coffee. They eat rice with a pinch of fish paste and a smear of vegetable oil.

Basic necessaries in much of the world are sold in small units as it is all that most can afford. Rice is purchased by the cup; oil in a small tied-off plastic bag.

The problems of malnutrition and hunger confront the working class in even the richest country in the world. American inner cities are food deserts, where the nearest source of healthy food is often miles away and inaccessible by public transit. All that is available at a nearby liquor store are Spam and Frosted Flakes. Lines form outside food banks often stretching for a block. One in five Americans relied on food bank assistance in 2020.

Every day more than seven hundred million people, 8.8 percent of the world’s population, go to bed on an empty stomach, according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP). Hunger and malnutrition mean shortened life expectancies, stunted mental development, the premature death of loved ones; it means widows and orphans and childless parents.

The crisis of the pandemic, the drive of the capitalist class to force workers back into the factories, and the soaring cost of food and other basic goods are fueling an explosive growth in the global class struggle. Workers around the world are beginning to move, in opposition to the capitalist class and in defiance of the corporatist trade unions that have for decades strangled their struggles. They are engaged in a fight for their lives in a struggle over how society’s resources will be allocated.

The vast wealth of humanity, the product of our collective labor, is enough to feed, clothe, shelter and provide a rich and meaningful life to every human on this planet.

These immense resources, however, are controlled by a handful of billionaires and the super-rich, who have parasitically profited off the exploitation of the world’s working class and who squander this wealth. They have grown richer in the pandemic. Over the course of 2020, the world’s billionaires brought in an additional $5.5 trillion in personal wealth.

Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos compete with each other to take vanity flights to space, while a majority of the world’s population cannot afford a healthy diet. Society can afford to feed everyone on earth, but it cannot afford the billionaires.

Netflix UNESCO Short Film Competition 2022

Application Deadline:

14th November 2021

Tell Me About Netflix UNESCO Short Film Competition:

We believe that a great story can come from anywhere, and be loved everywhere. Africa has a rich heritage of storytelling and a young population that is ready to step up and tell Africa’s stories, in all their multiplicity. We’re excited by the fresh new voices that are ready to tell the stories they were told by prior generations, to the world. Netflix has partnered with UNESCO to launch a short film competition, “African Folktales, Reimagined,” to find the bravest, wittiest, and most surprising retellings of some of Africa’s most-loved folktales. We can’t wait to see what you’ve got.

Folktales have always played an important role in the heritage of a culture, passing down values, knowledge, and customs from one generation to the next. Knowledge that builds communities, nations and unites the world in shared understanding and experience. We believe Africa’s rich history of storytelling, from universal tales to hyper-local fables, provides a fertile ground for creative retelling. This is an opportunity to reimagine the relevance of these tales to our contemporary society and extend them to the world stage on-screen: a celebration of Africa’s profoundly varied culture, folklore, and heritage. This competition invites submissions from emerging filmmakers across Sub-Saharan Africa on the theme of “African Folktales, Reimagined”.

What Type of Scholarship is this?

Contest

Who can apply?

The Netflix UNESCO Short Film Competition is open to individuals seeking to venture into feature film development and production. Applicants must have a minimum of 2 years and a maximum of 5 years of demonstrable professional experience in the audio-visual industry. Applicants must have developed and produced 1 to 2 theatrical feature films, television fiction, documentaries, or 2-3 short films and/or commercials.

Do you have a tale to share with the world? If our call has set your imagination alight, you may be one of the final six storytellers chosen to tell the stories you were told, to the world, on-screen. We are calling upon budding filmmakers to share their reimagined African folktale concept for a short film that celebrates the dynamism of African cultures. All genres welcome! Look at this brief as creative ignition — see where the theme takes you. You will submit a concept synopsis that should give us a clear idea of your creative vision and artistic angle.

Be a part of the new generation that shares Africa’s dazzling folktales — and just be sure to put your own fresh twist on it. Shortlisted finalists will have the opportunity to take part in “How to Pitch to Netflix” workshops. These will give you the chance to prepare, polish, and present your film concepts with the help of industry experts. The Netflix and UNESCO judging committee will then mentor six winners to develop a 12 to 20-minute short film. The final 6 storytellers will each win $25,000; each of them will also receive a production budget of up to $75,000 to create their short film. The collection of winning films will be launched on Netflix in 2022 as an “Anthology of African Folktales, Reimagined.”

How are Applicants Selected?

• Submit synopsis: You will need to submit a synopsis of your concept (no more than 500 words) in a Creative Statement as well as a link to a recent CV and a portfolio of any past audiovisual work you have produced.
• The shortlist: We’ll announce our top 20 finalists in January who will then be invited to a “How to Pitch to Netflix” workshop.
• The finalists: Our final 6 winners will be selected by an independent judging panel guided by Netflix and UNESCO

Which Countries are Eligible?

Sub-Saharan African countries

How Many Scholarships will be Given?

6

What is the Benefit of Netflix UNESCO Short Film Competition?

Six winners will have their short films (12-20 minutes long) launched on the Netflix service in 2022, as an “Anthology of African Folktales, Reimagined.” Each of the 6 winners will receive a production grant of US$75,000 (through a local production company) to develop, shoot and post-produce their films which will be administered by a nominated local production agency. In addition, each of the 6 winners will receive $25,000.

How to Apply for Netflix UNESCO Short Film Competition:

• You are under 35 years old
• You are a citizen and resident of a Sub-Saharan African country
• You are a filmmaker with limited experience, but have developed and produced 1- to 2 theatrical feature films, television fiction, documentaries, or 2-3 short films and/or commercials seeking to venture into feature film development and production

If you’re eligible for this competition then let’s get started. Create an account to start your application. You’ll receive an email with a link to your application if you don’t complete it all in one go. Good luck!

APPLY NOW

Visit Netflix UNESCO Short Film Competition Webpage for Details

UN Human Rights Council Abandons Yemen

Charles Pierson

The UN Human Rights Council has quashed an ongoing investigation into possible war crimes in Yemen.  The HRC rejected a draft resolution on October 7 which would have continued the mandate of the UN Group of Eminent Independent and Regional Experts on Yemen (GEE) to investigate war crimes and human rights violations in Yemen for another two years.  This was the first time in the Council’s 15-year history that a resolution was defeated (rather than passed and then ignored).

Yemen has been at war since 2014, when the country’s Houthi rebels (Ansar Allah) toppled the internationally-recognized government of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.  In 2015, a military coalition led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates intervened in Yemen, ostensibly at President Hadi’s request.  The Saudi-led coalition is backed by the US and UK, while the Houthis receive support from Iran.  Also at war in Yemen are the Southern Transitional Council, a separatist movement in Yemen’s south; Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; and Al-Islah, the Yemeni branch of the Muslim Brotherhood; as well as a variety of extremist militias and tribes.  The Group of International Experts has concluded that it has “reasonable grounds” to conclude that all of these actors have committed serious human rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law.[1]  Yet none of them voted against the October 7 resolution.  Saudi Arabia and the US are not even members of the Human Rights Council.  So, who killed the GEE’s investigation?

Eighteen members of the Human Rights Council voted to continue the GEE’s mandate, twenty-one voted against, and seven abstained.[2]  Three of the 28 states voting against the resolution were Russia, China, and Bahrain. All three are repressive states with miserable human rights records.

Bahrain is a member of the Saudi-led coalition at war in Yemen, so naturally it voted against the resolution.

Russia’s and China’s votes against the October 7 resolution take a little more explaining.  The US Institute of Peace says that “China’s position on the Yemen conflict is driven primarily by its interest in maintaining close strategic relations with Saudi Arabia.  As a result, Beijing has acquiesced to the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen.”  USIP notes that China has supported peace initiatives and supplies Yemen with humanitarian aid.  China’s altruism should comfort the Uyghurs in Xinjiang and the citizens of Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Russia is not militarily involved in Yemen, possibly because it is too busy slaughtering Syrians for the Assad dictatorship.  Russia is an ally of Iran, but is also trying to improve relations with Saudi Arabia.  By voting no on October 7, Russia has taken a few degrees of heat off Tehran and Riyadh.

Russia and China must have hated voting to end the GEE investigation which is even more of an embarrassment to the US than it is to them.  The US has actively assisted the Saudi-led coalition since 2015 with intelligence sharing, target spotting, arms sales, spare parts for coalition aircraft, and (until November 2018) in-flight refueling of coalition warplanes—all without the consent of Congress.  In its September 2020 report, the GEE called upon the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Yemen to the International Criminal Court.[3]  The veto held by the US and the four other permanent members of the Security Council will ensure that this never happens.

This seems to be the season for denying justice to innocent men, women, and children subjected to indiscriminate bombing, detention, enforced disappearances, weaponized starvation, forced displacement, torture, rape, and other offenses.  The International Criminal Court announced on September 27 that the US would be left out of its probe of war crimes in Afghanistan.  Impunity reigns.

* * *

Saudi Arabia served recently on the Human Rights Council, but lost its 2020 reelection bid after two terms.  Yet the kingdom’s malign influence persists.  Reuters observes that “Rights activists said … that Saudi Arabia lobbied heavily against the Western resolution.”  I can imagine.  The Saudi Lobby has a lot of money and a lot of muscle.  According to the independent Center for International Policy, Saudi Arabia spent at least $31 million on lobbying in the US last year, more than a million dollars of that going to campaign contributions; this at a time when Yemen is struggling to feed itself.  Even before the war, Yemen was the poorest country in the Arab world.  Today, Yemen is skidding towards famine thanks to coalition bombing and a coalition land, sea, and air blockade on food, fuel, and medicine.  The UN calls Yemen “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.”

Now that the Saudi Lobby has successfully torpedoed the GEE’s investigation into war crimes in Yemen, their next target will be California Democratic Representative Ro Khanna’s amendment to the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act.  Khanna’s amendment was accepted by the House of Representatives.  If incorporated in the final version of the NDAA, Khanna’s amendment will end all US support to the Saudi-led coalition.  However, similar amendments from Congressman Khanna were stripped in conference last year and the year before.  Will the same thing happen this year?

Khanna is trying to accomplish what President Biden promised to do, but so far has not:  end all US support for coalition “offensive operations” in Yemen.  Biden has ended some, but not all, US support.  In September, the Biden Administration approved a $500 million contract to provide maintenance support services for Saudi warplanes.  In addition, President Biden has decided to go ahead with a $23 billion arms sale to the UAE which was negotiated under the Trump Administration.

Yemen’s suffering continues.