Graduate student workers at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, are set to begin a three-day strike Wednesday, October 27. The strike coincides with midterms and with freshman parents weekend at Harvard College, the main undergraduate school at Harvard.
The main issues of contention are pay raises, third-party arbitration for harassment grievances and the demand by the Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers (HGSU-UAW) for “agency fees” if a bargaining unit member declines to join the union.
Striking Harvard graduate students in 2019 (WSWS Media)
Strikers will include undergraduate and graduate teaching fellows, teaching assistants and course assistants, as well as graduate research assistants, who will cease grading, instruction and research.
Workers voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike in a September vote, with 91.7 percent, or 1,860 members, voting in favor of authorizing a strike. It is unclear how many members will participate in a strike; the last strike, which lasted most of December 2019, saw thousands of participants among the approximately 4,000 members at the time.
Both the HGSU-UAW and the university administration have declared their desire to avoid a strike. Harvard President Lawrence Bacow told the Harvard Crimson, the student-run campus newspaper, last week, “We’ve made progress on many issues, and I certainly don’t think a strike is needed in order to come to agreement.” He continued, “It’s my hope and expectation that we will reach an agreement without a strike.”
HGSU President Brandon Mancilla said, “We’re still committed to reaching an agreement with the University before [the strike deadline].”
Nevertheless, unless the HGSU-UAW announces a last-minute deal, thousands of graduate workers strike on October 27, which is also the day of the next bargaining session.
In between the strike authorization vote and Wednesday’s vote, Harvard released its annual financial report, revealing that its endowment swelled 27 percent in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021. These returns came from an investment return of 33.6 percent, higher than any year since 2000, the height of the dot-com bubble, bringing Harvard’s endowment to $53.2 billion, more than the gross domestic product of 124 countries.
An Op Ed in the Harvard Crimson noted that, despite Harvard’s much-touted divestment from most fossil fuels, the university continues to invest in and profit from private prisons and half a million acres of illegally purchased and increasingly deforested farmland in Brazil.
Moreover, the university posted a budget surplus of $283 million, despite declining revenue due to the pandemic and some pandemic-related expenses such as COVID-19 testing, thanks in part to salary and hiring freezes and cutting the pay of 2,800 “idled employees and contract workers” by 30 percent in calendar year 2021.
Despite these enormous gains, the university is offering insulting pay increases well below the present inflation rate. As the World Socialist Web Site noted when the strike was authorized:
The HGSU-UAW is calling for salary increases of 5.75 percent, 4.5 percent and 3 percent in the three years of an agreement, retroactive to July 1, 2021. It is also calling for a $21-an-hour minimum wage for hourly student workers with $0.50 increases in following years. Harvard University is proposing raises of 2.5, 3 and 3 percent, with a $19 minimum wage for hourly workers followed by $0.50 increases in the following two years.
Neither proposal meets the needs of student workers. Even if the union’s proposal were adopted in full, which is highly unlikely, with inflation currently running at over 5 percent annually, workers would be treading water and then experience falling wages in real terms.
Many prospective strikers have noted the disparity between the university’s endowment gains and budget surplus on the one hand and paltry pay offers on the other. A doctoral student studying climate tweeted, “They profited off of the pandemic and still won’t pay us enough[,] make it make sense.”
Another doctoral student tweeted, “Over 33% endowment return and still refusing to adjust grad student worker pay to inflation. Shame!”
It is worth noting that the union is not demanding increased measures to safeguard against COVID-19 infection, let alone a return to virtual learning until the pandemic has been brought under control. Indeed, despite vaccination rates of well over 90 percent among both staff and students, Harvard’s graduate schools in particular have seen outbreaks.
Instead, the union relies on the university’s “policies … to provide such a safe workplace … and may improve such policies at its discretion.”
The HGSU-UAW’s decision to limit the strike ahead of time to three days is consistent with the UAW more broadly, which periodically calls “Hollywood strikes” of a few days or even a few hours to let off workers’ steam. When workers do press for prolonged strike action, the UAW starves them with paltry strike pay and divides them from other workers, as exemplified in the current strike of 10,100 John Deere agricultural workers. The Deere workers have been on strike for two weeks even as the UAW is forcing auto parts workers at Dana, Inc., which supplies John Deere, to vote on a second sellout contract after voting down the first by 90 percent.
In going on strike, Harvard graduate workers join thousands of other workers across the country and hundreds of thousands internationally who have gone on strike just this month, in what some commentators are calling “Striketober.” This growing strike wave points to the potential for the Harvard graduate workers strike to become an important inflection point in the class struggle, but only if it is taken out of the hands of the UAW. Workers should form an independent rank-and-file strike committee, which seeks to broaden the struggle and articulate demands that genuinely meet workers’ needs.
Harvard graduate workers are up against the oldest and wealthiest university in the United States, which is dependent on the stock market and wealthy “philanthropists” for its revenue and thus tied directly to the defense of capitalism perhaps more than any other university.
However, they also have powerful allies, including thousands of Harvard employees whose contracts have expired or will expire this year. Five thousand such workers, members of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), have been notified that “their” union has reached a tentative agreement with the university for below-inflation 2.9 percent raises and an insulting $500 bonus.
In addition to the ongoing John Deere strike, hundreds of nurses at Saint Vincent Hospital an hour away in Worcester, Massachusetts, have been on strike since March 8, by far the longest nurses strike in state history. Their strike has been isolated by the Massachusetts Nurses Association and the state AFL-CIO even as the hospital’s owner, health care giant Tenet, has brought in scabs to replace striking workers. While the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) has blocked a planned strike of 60,000 media and entertainment workers, 30 of their members have been on strike at the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, Massachusetts since October 6, demanding higher pay.
More than 3,000 graduate workers at Columbia University in New York City have also authorized strike action, and 155,000 metalworkers in South Africa held a militant strike this month, during which police gunned down two workers and wounded dozens more.
The Czech Republic is in the midst of a political crisis following parliamentary elections on October 8 and 9.
After the election results shook up the political landscape of the EU member state, President Milos Zeman, without whom no new government can be appointed, apparently fell seriously ill. Preparations are now underway for his removal from office and the transfer of his powers. At the same time, a massive increase in coronavirus numbers overshadows the political power struggles.
The right-wing conservative alliance Spolu (Together) emerged from the election as a very narrow winner. With 27.8 percent of the vote, the three-party alliance was marginally ahead of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s ANO party (27.1 percent). The alliance of the Pirate Party and the STAN mayoral party scored 15.6 percent, followed by the radical right-wing Freedom and Direct Democracy Party (SPD) with 9.6 percent.
The Social Democrats (CSSD) and the Communist Party (KSCM), both of which emerged from the former Stalinist state party, failed to clear the 4 percent hurdle and are no longer represented in parliament for the first time since the collapse of the Eastern European regimes 30 years ago. Party leaders Jan Hamáček and Vojtěch Filip announced their resignation on the eve of the election. Both had previously either formed a coalition or supported Prime Minister Babiš’s government. As both parties have been worn down by internal trench warfare for years, the bitter defeat could spell their political end.
The governing coalition was deeply hated in the population. Mass protests against the government occurred several times. Babiš, a businessman and multibillionaire, pursued a program that was directed against the vast majority of working people. This was most evident in its coronavirus policies. Of the country’s 10.7 million inhabitants, more than 1.7 million have been infected and 30,600 have died from COVID-19. Following recent relaxations of protective measures, the numbers are again skyrocketing.
There are currently 771 coronavirus patients in hospitals across the country, 60 percent more than a week ago. The reproduction number, which had been below 1 for months, has skyrocketed to 1.8. Within a week, the seven-day incidence rate increased from 90 to more than 150 per 100,000. The number of new daily infections was recently around 3,600, up 2,100 from a week ago.
The dramatic increase is due in part to the low vaccination rate of 56 percent, but more importantly to the near-total abandonment of any protective measures. Although the third wave has brutally gripped the country and driven hospitals towards collapse, the ruling parties decided in the summer to lift all measures, even the wearing of face masks in the workplace and in public spaces.
The KSCM, in particular, acted as a right-wing rabble-rouser in this regard. At the height of the last wave, it demanded that all measures be lifted and threatened to stop supporting Babiš if they were not.
Eventually, the Pandora Papers revealed that Babiš had acquired a mansion and three hectares of land on the French Côte d’Azur in 2009 with the help of an opaque offshore construction company and three shell companies. These are not the first accusations of this kind against the businessman, who had become one of the richest people in the country as a result of privatizations in the early 1990s.
Regardless, President Zeman declared that he would again entrust Babiš with forming a government despite the election defeat. Zeman was then admitted to the University Hospital in Prague on October 10 and may not be fit to hold office for the foreseeable future.
The transfer of the powers of the president, who is directly elected by the people, to another person is possible only with the approval of both houses of parliament. In the Senate, the centre-right parties that could form a new government already have a majority. In the Chamber of Deputies, this will not be the case until after the constituent session on November 8. Until then, it is still functioning with the old majority of ANO, Social Democrats and Communists.
However, it is also possible that Zeman will become fit for office again by then and propose a head of government. Because of a lack of support, Babiš has announced he will go into opposition. This gives the leader of the right-wing conservative electoral alliance Spolu, Petr Fiala, the best chance of becoming the new head of government.
Leader of center-right Spolu (Together) coalition Petr Fiala, centre, addresses his supporters at the party's election headquarters after the country's parliamentary election, Prague, Czech Republic, Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)
Spolu consists of the three parties ODS, TOP 09 and KDU-CSL. All three were involved in previous governments in different constellations.
Under its founder Václav Klaus, the ODS (Civic Democratic Party) had been the dominant force in the Czech Republic alongside the social democratic CSSD since the 1990s. But its radical free market policies, which led to poverty and unemployment, brought the party ever higher losses. Fiala was education minister in 2013 and has led the party since early 2014. TOP 09 and the arch-conservative Christian Democrats have also moved further and further to the right in recent years and do not have a broad base.
Fiala can only achieve a majority together with the electoral alliance of the Pirates and STAN (Mayors and Independents). These two parties also stand far to the right. The Pirate Party was established in the Czech Republic years ago and member Zdeněk Hřib is mayor in the capital Prague. Hřib is implementing a program there that is completely tailored to the upper middle class and the super-rich.
Since the beginning of his term in office, rents have continued to rise massively, with Prague now one of the European cities with the highest rents, increasingly forcing working-class families to move outside the city or to outlying areas. Cynically, the two-party alliance campaigned with a slogan for “affordable housing for a decent life.”
Pirate Party leader Ivan Bartoš personifies the deeply cynical and repugnant character of this reactionary organisation. While the Pirates posed as a liberal, open party during the election campaign and railed against the “oligarchs” and their right-wing policies, Bartoš himself stands for such policies.
In the Chamber of Deputies, he worked with Tomio Okamura’s ultra-right SPD. “We don’t make any distinctions when we have to push something through in parliament,” is how Bartoš justifies the alliance with fascists. It was also necessary to talk to people who are “racist or populist” or “make hate speeches and divide society,” Bartoš said. “But in parliament, you have to be pragmatic. In the end it’s the votes that count.”
The STAN mayoral party is also on the right, recruiting its members largely from disaffected former members of other conservative parties. It advocates backward regionalism and is open to any alliances if the prospect of posts and offices beckons.
Regardless of who will form the future government, the current situation shows one thing very clearly. The working class in the Czech Republic and all of Eastern Europe is confronted with fundamental questions. Thirty years of capitalist rule have not led to democracy and a better standard of living for the working class, as was promised at the time by all the defenders of restoring capitalism. Instead, parliaments have become the rallying point of right-wing and reactionary elements that have no base in the broader population.
Relations between Turkey and several of its major NATO allies, including the United States, Germany and France, are close to the breaking point after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered the foreign ministry to declare 10 ambassadors to Turkey persona non grata.
Erdoğan was thereby threatening to expel the ambassadors of Canada, France, Finland, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the United States. Most are NATO allies of Turkey. However, on October 18, their ambassadors had signed a joint statement titled “Statement on Four Years of Osman Kavala’s Detention.”
Yesterday, the US Embassy in Turkey issued an official statement on Twitter to ease tensions. Retweeted by all other embassies, it stated: “In response to questions regarding the Statement of October 18, the United States notes that it maintains compliance with Article 41 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic relations.” This article specifies that ambassadors “have a duty not to interfere in the internal affairs” of the state where they work.
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel pose for the media at the end of a joint news conference following their meeting at Huber vila, Erdogan's presidential resident, in Istanbul, Turkey, Saturday, Oct. 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Last night, after a cabinet meeting, Erdoğan also sought to ease tensions, declaring: “Our aim is not to cause a crisis but to protect the interests of our country. We believe they [ambassadors] will be more careful in their statements now. With the statement they made today, they turned back from slandering our judiciary.”
Osman Kavala, owner of the Kavala Group, is a millionaire businessman. His companies reportedly have ties to NATO, the Turkish Armed Forces and the Istanbul Police Department. He participates in several foundations, including the Open Society Foundation of American-Hungarian billionaire George Soros.
In their statement, the 10 ambassadors had declared: “The continuing delays in his trial, including by merging different cases and creating new ones after a previous acquittal, cast a shadow over respect for democracy, the rule of law and transparency in the Turkish judiciary system,” before adding that they “believe a just and speedy resolution to his case must be in line with Turkey’s international obligations and domestic laws. Noting the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights on the matter, we call for Turkey to secure his urgent release.”
Kavala was accused of financing the 2013 mass protests in Gezi Park but was acquitted in 2020. However, he was immediately rearrested on charges of aiding the NATO-backed attempted 2016 coup against Erdoğan and spying for Washington. The European Court of Human Rights demanded his immediate release two years ago. His arrest has been strongly criticized by the European political and media establishment since 2017.
Moreover, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) agency downgraded Turkey to a so-called “grey list” on Thursday, for allegedly not blocking money laundering and terrorist financing.
According to Reuters, the International Monetary Fund has found that “grey-listing reduces capital inflow by an estimated 7.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), while foreign direct investment (FDI) and portfolio flows are also hit.”
Turkey is in the throes of a major financial and economic crisis and a collapse in living standards for millions of working people. The Turkish lira has fallen over 20 percent against the US dollar since early September, reaching a historic low. Official annual inflation rate has hit 20 percent, and working-class opposition is rapidly growing. There has been a surge of strikes and a sharp decline in votes for Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Facing this internal crisis accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical conflicts, including over eastern Mediterranean gas resources and the NATO wars in Libya and Syria, top Turkish officials reacted sharply to this unprecedented joint diplomatic move. As the 10 countries’ ambassadors were summoned to the Foreign Ministry to protest their statement, Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gül said: “According to our Constitution, no ambassador can give advice to our courts or tell them to do anything.”
Erdoğan was harsher than his officials. On Saturday, in the northwestern province of Eskişehir, he said: “I gave the necessary order to our foreign minister and said what must be done: These 10 ambassadors must be declared persona non grata at once. You will sort it out immediately.” He added, “They will know and understand Turkey. The day they do not know and understand Turkey, they will leave.”
After this threat of a historic break in the traditional military-strategic alliance between Turkey and the US-led NATO alliance, Abdülkadir Selvi, a columnist close to Erdoğan at the daily Hürriyet, sent a calculated signal. In an article yesterday, while supporting Erdoğan’s outburst, Selvi called for calm, warning against “breaking ties with the Western world.”
He wrote: “It takes 15 minutes to make the deportation decision [for ambassadors], but then it can take us 15 years to sort things out [with these countries]. I’m worried this will hurt us the most.” He then listed possible retaliatory measures reportedly being discussed in Europe and North America: “To remove Turkey from the Council of Europe; suspend membership negotiations with the EU; withdrawal of EU funds, and a decision of the US and Canada to act jointly against Turkey.”
The Turkish bourgeoisie is deeply attached to the US-led NATO alliance and especially the European market. On Tuesday, TÜSİAD, a major Turkish business federation, expressed its growing concerns, endorsing ties with Washington and the European Union (EU). Its president Simone Kaslowski declared: “The cost of separation from the world is very high, and the damage is irreversible,” adding: “We think it will be important for Turkey to be a respected member of the rule-based global system in the face of the threats and opportunities of the future.”
On Saturday, the New York Times reported: “The Biden administration was the driving force behind the letter, in keeping with the president’s policy of publicly calling out states over human rights violations.” A State Department spokesperson said: “The US was aware of the reports [on Erdoğan’s order] and was seeking clarity from the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” according to Reuters.
European Parliament President David Sassoli tweeted: “The expulsion of ten ambassadors is a sign of the authoritarian drift of the Turkish government. We will not be intimidated. Freedom for Osman Kavala.”
While the German Foreign Ministry said: “We are currently in intensive consultation with the nine other countries concerned,” Bundestag Deputy Speaker Claudia Roth (Green Party) demanded that Turkey be sanctioned, the German daily Bild reported.
Despite Erdoğan’s efforts, US-Turkish relations have been in a mounting crisis since President Biden took office. Biden, who was vice president during the 2016 NATO coup attempt in Turkey, declared his support for Turkey’s Republican People’s Party (CHP)-led bourgeois opposition before becoming president.
Erdoğan, who did not meet Biden at the UN General Assembly in September, told reporters: “It is my hope that, as two NATO countries, we should treat each other with friendship, not hostility,” adding: “But the current trajectory does not bode well. The point we have reached in our relations with the United States is not good. I cannot say things have gotten off to a good start with Biden.”
While the diplomatic crisis appears temporarily resolved, conflicts between Turkey and its NATO allies remain deep. To avoid spoiling good relations with Beijing, Erdoğan has not supported US government accusations that China is perpetrating a “Uyghur genocide.” Moreover, Ankara acquired a Russian-made S-400 air defense system and made other military deals with Moscow, though these are unacceptable to Washington.
Moreover, Biden’s support for Kurdish nationalist militias in Syria—the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by the People’s Defense Units (YPG)—still leads to conflict between these two NATO states. After the recent UN summit, Erdoğan stated: “Biden started to carry weapons, ammunition and equipment to terrorist groups [i.e., the YPG]. We are not going to watch this by standing idly by.”
Writing to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this month, Biden said: “the actions by the government of Turkey to conduct a military offensive into northeast Syria … further threatens to undermine the peace, security, and stability in the region, and continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
On October 15, after two Turkish security personnel were allegedly killed in a YPG attack, Erdoğan signaled a new invasion of Syria targeting US-backed Kurdish forces, stating: “The terrorists of the PKK, YPG and PYD are running wild in entire Syria, not only in the northern part. The leading supporters of them are the international coalition and the US.”
On Friday, Israel’s Defence Minister Benny Gantz signed a military order declaring six of the most prominent Palestinian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the occupied Palestinian territories “terrorist organizations.”
The decree is an attack on Palestinian human rights activists and the communities they represent, and on the local and international public’s right to information about the situation in the occupied territories. The six NGOs have documented abuses by Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas, and sought to defend Palestinian prisoners, farmworkers, women and children.
Gantz claimed, without providing any evidence, that they are part of an international network run by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), designated as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US and the European Union (EU). Once one of the most important Palestinian organisations, the PFLP, which rejected the Oslo Accords in favour of a one state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, views both the Fatah-led PA government in the West Bank and the Hamas government in Gaza as illegal because there have been no elections since 2006.
Palestinians evacuate a wounded man during clashes with Israeli security forces at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City Monday, May 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
The military order asserted that the NGOs are “controlled by senior leaders” of the PFLP and employ its members, including some who had “participated in terror activity.” Furthermore, the order stated, they served as a “central source” of financing for the PFLP, having received “large sums of money from European countries and international organisations.”
Despite claiming to have “unambiguous and cast in concrete” evidence, Israel has not announced any plans for a criminal investigation. The six groups have two months to appeal the decision.
Gantz’s edict, issued under Israel’s domestic anti-terrorism law of 2016, enables the authorities to close the NGOs’ offices, seize assets, arrest staff and even prohibit funding or public expressions of support for their activities.
Crucially, it serves to intimidate and prevent third parties and international organisations from funding or supporting them and their work, since Israeli counterterrorism law mandates jail terms not just for members of groups designated as terrorist organizations but also for people in Israel who express support for them. It is thus aimed at depriving the NGOs of their funding as international opposition to Israel’s criminal suppression of the Palestinians has grown.
The order is explicitly aimed at human rights organisations that have played a major role in exposing the crimes committed by the military, security, police and intelligence forces against the Palestinians, as well as right-wing Jewish settlers’ violent and murderous attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. The six organizations include:
Addameer, which offers legal aid to Palestinians in Israeli prisons, collects information on prisoners and the conditions of their incarceration, campaigns against practices such as administrative detention without trial, torture and solitary confinement by the Israeli authorities.
Al-Haq, which compiles reports on human rights violations in the occupied territories by both Israel and the PA and has published reports on torture in PA prisons and the lack of freedom of expression in Palestinian society.
The Bisan Center, which has criticized the impact of the Israeli occupation on poverty in the West Bank and the PA's neoliberal policies.
Defense for Children International Palestine, a branch of the Geneva-based Defense for Children, which provides aid to children being tried in Israeli military courts and researches children imprisoned by Israel, numbering 200, and the impact of the occupation on children’s rights.
The Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, which trains women to take part in politics, helps establish cooperatives and offers legal and psychological aid to women.
The Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which seeks to promote “farmers’ steadfastness and sustainable livelihoods” and aids Palestinian farmers—mainly in Area C of the West Bank that is under Israeli military control and home to the vast majority of the Israeli settlements—who have been subject to years of harassment by settlers with the active support of the Israeli army.
Israel’s decision has been condemned by human rights organisations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israel’s B’Tselem. The UN Human Rights Office in the occupied Palestinian territories issued a statement saying, “Counter-terrorism legislation must not be used to constrain legitimate human rights and humanitarian work.” It described the reasons cited by Gantz as “vague or irrelevant” and his decision as the latest move in a “long-stigmatising campaign” against the Palestinian NGOs.
The PA called the military edict an “unhinged assault” on Palestinian civil society. Its statement said, “This fallacious and libelous slander is a strategic assault on Palestinian civil society and the Palestinian people’s fundamental right to oppose Israel’s illegal occupation and expose its continuing crimes.”
None of the Palestinian organisations has yet issued a response.
The major powers, including the US, Germany, Britain, France, and India, as well as Greece, that are currently participating in joint aerial exercises with Israel, have studiously avoided condemning Israel’s action.
The US State Department, Israel’s puppet master, issued a hypocritical, pro forma statement about the importance of human rights, emphasising it had not been informed about the measure and would request more information about the designations.
The EU, which claims to support the Palestinians’ human rights and has funded some of the NGOs while supplying Israel with weaponry, has remained silent on the issue. Similarly, the UK, which is cracking down on support for the Palestinians on university campuses under the pretext of fighting anti-Semitism, has said nothing.
Within Israel, B’Tselem and more than 20 NGOs ran a front-page ad in Ha’aretz stating, “Criminalizing human rights organizations is a cowardly act that is characteristic of oppressive authoritarian regimes” and pointing out that “Over the years, Israel has consistently framed any Palestinian move that was not a surrender to apartheid and occupation as ‘terrorism.’”
This latest escalation follows a long line of efforts to suppress protesters, activists, community organizers, lawyers and journalists in Palestine, Israel and internationally who seek to expose, challenge and sanction Israel’s human rights abuses. Israel’s ministry of strategic affairs, working with far-right nationalist forces and settler groups, has targeted and slandered Palestinian NGOs with claims of corruption and misuse of funds, clamped down on their finances, denied entry to their employees and international co-thinkers and raided their offices.
Last July, Israeli security forces broke into the offices of Defense for Children International and the Bisan Center for Research and Development, confiscating equipment and files, while Addameer has for years faced countless raids on its offices that have involved the damage or theft of equipment and files.
As Al-Haq points out, “It is no coincidence that Israel’s recent escalation of punitive measures against Al-Haq and fellow civil society organisations has come in the immediate aftermath of the opening of an International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into Israel’s crimes in the Situation in Palestine.”
Some of the six groups played an important role in the campaign to prosecute Israeli leaders at the ICC that culminated in the ruling last March by then ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda that there was enough preliminary evidence to justify an investigation into possible war crimes in the Palestinian territories. Israel has refused to cooperate with the inquiry. By designating these groups as terrorist, Israel is seeking to undermine the case and their witness statements in the eyes of the court.
The outlawing of human rights groups and persecution of humanitarian activists follows Israel’s decades-long suppression of the Palestinians that has included collective punishment, house demolitions, deportations, detention without trial, torture, targeted assassinations and most recently the denial of COVID-19 vaccinations. This, along with legislation establishing an apartheid state, confirms that Israel has repudiated all the limited characteristics of bourgeois democracy.
It demonstrates that it is impossible for Israel’s financial and political elite to maintain even the semblance of democratic rule while illegally occupying Palestinian land and the Golan Heights, discriminating against their own Palestinian citizens and systematically impoverishing the vast majority of Jewish and Palestinian Israelis.
Canada’s Liberal minority government has effectively eliminated all emergency pandemic financial support for unemployed workers, with the aim of enforcing big business’ drive to increase economic output and profits amid the country’s fourth wave of COVID-19 infections and deaths.
The more than 800,000 workers who have been receiving the Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB), which paid up to $400 a week to those either jobless or with sharply reduced working hours, have had the rug pulled out from under them. Many are now threatened with destitution, even hunger and homelessness.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Flanked by Prime Minster Justin Trudeau, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland told a press conference last Thursday that the CRB would not be further extended. Consequently, last week is the final week for which CRB payments will be made. This callous decision will impact those ineligible for employment insurance—that is, largely younger workers and those who were employed in the so-called gig economy.
Freeland announced the CRB would be replaced by a new benefit, but this is nothing more than a sham. The new benefit has been expressly designed to make it all but impossible for jobless or underemployed workers to obtain a single cent in future government assistance, even as the COVID-19 pandemic rages across the country. For her part, Freeland said the goal of the changes is to make government support “more narrow, more targeted and less expensive.”
The Liberals’ Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit will provide a meagre $300 per week and only to workers who cannot go to work during a provincially ordered pandemic lockdown. Under these terms, none of the more than 800,000 people receiving CRB benefits last week will be eligible for the Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit once, weeks’ hence, it gets parliamentary sanction. Nor would they or any other workers likely ever be eligible, since the provincial governments have uniformly vowed not to reimpose lockdowns no matter how high COVID-19 infections and deaths rise.
In comments to CTV News, Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough emphasized that workers would only be eligible for the benefit under a “complete lockdown.” Anyone losing their job due to the tightening of public health restrictions short of a “complete lockdown” will get nothing.
Although Canada continues to record almost 3,000 new infections per day and almost 2,000 people have died of COVID since September 1, governments across the country are once again rushing to remove any and all public health restrictions as they double-down on the ruling class’s homicidal “live with the virus” strategy. Yesterday, John Horgan’s trade union-backed New Democratic Party government in BC and Doug Ford’s hard-right Conservative government in Ontario lifted virtually all capacity restrictions in indoor settings. In announcing its latest rollback of COVID restrictions, the Ontario government stressed its aim is to continue aggressively removing public health measures, with all of them, including mask mandates, ended by March 2022.
Ford’s plans to abolish all COVID restrictions “seem to complement what is occurring federally”—i.e., both underpin the corporate drive to churn out bigger profits—observed an Ottawa Citizen editorial Saturday. “Now that the federal government is ending COVID relief programs such as the Canada Recovery Benefit,” the Citizen continued, “it is possible more people who depended on such subsidies will seek work. As Ontario loosens restrictions on small business, demand for employees will rise. All of this, presumably, will be good for the economy.”
The criminal character of the ruling elite’s drive to deprive workers of any financial support to force them to accept dangerous low-paid jobs, where they will face a high risk of infecting themselves and their loved ones, is underscored by the ongoing progression of the pandemic. One day prior to Freeland’s announcement, Saskatchewan’s chief medical health officer, Dr. Saqib Shahab, broke down in tears as he informed the province’s residents that his agency’s modelling shows that the number of intensive care patients infected with COVID-19 could more than double by the new year. Saskatchewan is already sending patients to Ontario due to a lack of health care staff and beds. In neighbouring Alberta, where some hospitals were forced to deny care to patients deemed least likely to survive over recent weeks, the COVID-19 fatality rate is three times higher than for the rest of Canada. According to Worldometers, 765 people are currently in critical condition across the country, and the death toll reached 28,750 Monday.
Corporate Canada and its political representatives are positively reveling in this mass death, applauding the Liberal government for scrapping the last vestiges of financial support for workers. Big business had long complained that the CRB was “overly generous” and blamed it for the staff shortages, especially in the low-wage restaurant, hospitality and retail sectors. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce declared Freeland’s announcement “the fair thing to do for businesses.” It praised the fact that while financial supports for workers were effectively removed, companies that hire new employees can continue to receive a subsidy worth 50 percent of their salary costs until May 2022.
The official opposition Conservatives, who have long echoed business complaints about the CRB, were likewise full of praise. “The Prime Minister followed (party leader Erin) O’Toole’s fiscal plan and announced that the CRB would be ending,” said Tory finance critic Ed Fast, before going on to demand that Trudeau “halt” his government’s “out of control spending.”
The reality is that the big business Liberals, together with their allies in the trade unions and NDP, have been working throughout the pandemic to protect the interests of big business at the expense of the working class. The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), the CRB’s predecessor, extended a pittance of $500 per week to workers laid off following the outbreak of the pandemic. This program, touted as generous by NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and Canadian Labour Congress head Hassan Yussuff, was a drop in the bucket compared to the more than $650 billion forked over to the banks and big business by the Trudeau Liberal government in March 2020. This unprecedented bailout of Canada’s financial oligarchy led to the accumulation of fabulous quantities of wealth, with the country’s super-rich billionaires becoming $78 billion richer during the pandemic’s first year.
Last fall, the Trudeau government took the first step in scrapping financial support for workers by replacing the CERB with the CRB. Initially, the government planned to accompany this change by slashing benefit payments from the already inadequate $500 per week to just $400. However, faced with the rapidly accelerating second wave of the pandemic, which was the product of the reopening of the economy and schools pursued by all provincial governments and overseen by Trudeau, the Liberals backtracked and maintained the $500-a-week payments until the spring. In their 2021 budget, they cut CRB payments to $400 a week, a move which secured the needed majority parliamentary support thanks to the votes of the New Democrats.
No such “fiscal prudence,” to use Freeland’s corporate jargon, is exercised when dealing with Canada’s wealthy elite. The Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, which also expired last weekend, was a massive corporate slush fund that paid for bumper shareholder payouts and lavish executive salaries at many of the country’s leading businesses.
There is also nothing new in Trudeau’s partnership with hard-right provincial governments in implementing the ruling elite’s murderous open economy/open schools policy. In its September 2020 throne speech, which passed with NDP support, the Trudeau government called for any future anti-COVID lockdowns to be adopted “at the local level” and on a “short-term” basis. This gave the likes of Quebec’s “herd immunity”-promoting premier, Francois Legault, and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, who was describing COVID-19 as a “flu” as late as June 2020, a free hand to pursue a policy of mass infection and death.
In early July 2021, when Kenney declared that Alberta was “open for summer” and eliminated almost all public health measures, Trudeau and his Liberal government said and did nothing. Over two months later, when Alberta’s ICUs were already full to the brim with seriously ill patients, the prime minister cynically seized on Kenney’s reckless reopening strategy to attack the federal Conservatives in the final days of the federal election campaign.
The scrapping of what little remained in the way of financial support for Canadian workers marks a further stage in the intimate collaboration between all Canada’s parliamentary parties in enforcing the interests of the ruling elite during the pandemic. It and the recent joint US-Canadian naval provocation against China in the Taiwan Strait provide a foretaste of how ruthless the incoming Liberal minority government will be in attacking the rights and living standards of working people and in pursuing an aggressive foreign policy aimed at upholding the global interests of Canadian imperialism.
Today Trudeau is to announce the cabinet for his third term in office. Business lobby groups and media commentators have been clamouring for months about the need to make Canada more “competitive” and ready to take advantage of the “economic recovery,” code words for forcing workers to accept brutal exploitation, low wages, and next to no benefits and job protections. To make clear that he supports this agenda, Trudeau promptly announced after last month’s election that Freeland, a darling of the financial and corporate elite for her hawkish fiscal policies and virulent anti-Russia stance, will remain deputy prime minister and finance minister.
The aggressive class war program of big business and all its political representatives from Trudeau and Ford to Legault and Horgan is increasingly meeting with resistance from the working class. Like their counterparts in the United States—where a massive strike wave among manufacturing, health care and other workers is being fueled by decades of concession contracts and the corporate oligarchy’s prioritization of profits over human lives during the pandemic—workers across Canada have waged a series of militant strikes in recent months for improvements in wages and conditions. The mass protests which swept Alberta in opposition to the Kenney government’s dismantling of public health measures also revealed the broad-based hostility to the ruling elite’s strategy of “living with the virus.”
The ongoing record breaking rainfall in California, which started on Saturday, raises the danger of a potential megaflood.
While California suffers many devastating natural disasters, such as earthquakes, as well as wildfires and droughts—which have repeatedly broken records in recent years under the influence of man-made climate change—among the worst natural disasters to hit the western United States in the last 160 years was the Great Flood of 1862.
Lithograph of K Street in the city of Sacramento, California—during the Great Flood of 1862
Set off by a series of storms that inundated much of the land from Oregon to San Diego, the agriculturally rich Central Valley became a vast inland sea, 300 miles long and 20 miles wide. The state capital in Sacramento was under water for six months, forcing the government to relocate to San Francisco. One-third of California’s state property was destroyed, along with one in every eight private homes.
Thousands of people died, possibly up to 1 percent of California’s entire population. And while floods of this magnitude used to happen every 200 years or so, models generated by Daniel Swain and researchers at UCLA’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences found that they will now happen roughly every 65 years, due to the effects of climate change. Swain also predicts a 20 percent increase in the intensity of megastorms, meaning the next one could be far more devastating.
Worryingly, the period leading up to the Great Flood of 1862 was similar to today. The state was emerging from two decades of severe drought. Farmers and ranchers had been praying for a wet winter. At first, it looked like they would get what they wanted. The storms began in November, 1861, with weeks of snow at high elevations.
But then it started to rain. In California, it rained for 43 straight days, starting on Christmas Eve. Entire communities were swept away. Transportation, mail and communication across the state were disrupted for a month. California’s new governor, Leland Stanford, had to take a rowboat to get to his inauguration. In Nevada, the Carson Valley became a lake. In Idaho, the Boise River swelled to two miles wide, washing away portions of the Oregon Trail. The Colorado and Gila Rivers flooded in New Mexico Territory, turning Fort Yuma into an island.
A diagram of the flood areas of the December 1861–January 1862 California Megastorm [Credit: USGS]
The flood also impacted the course of California’s economy. Prior to the storm, it had been dominated by cattle ranching in the Central Valley, run predominantly by Mexicans who had gained citizenship and land rights at the end of the Mexican-American War (1846–1848) under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Those who survived the 20-year drought, saw their lands flooded and cattle drowned by the storms. One quarter of the state’s 800,000 head of cattle perished in the flood. The ranchers had to sell their land to Anglo settlers at pennies per acre. And the Anglo farmers began growing nuts, cotton and vegetables. Meanwhile, many of the Mexican ranchers were forced to become day laborers just to survive.
The event also influenced the course of wars. In New Mexico Territory, for example, the flooded Rio Grande impeded the California Column as it attempted to cut off the retreating Confederate Army of New Mexico, allowing them to escape into Texas. And in California’s Owens Valley, it brought the Paiutes, who were on the brink of starvation because the storms had decimated the wild game they relied on, into conflict with ranchers, who were trespassing on their lands to graze their herds. Over 200 Native Americans died in the Owens Valley Indian War (1862-1867), along with roughly 60 members of the California Militia.
Research indicates that storms of this magnitude have occurred roughly every 200 years in California, which means another is likely, possibly soon. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) examined sediment data from the San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Barbara basin, Sacramento Valley, and Klamath Mountain region, and found megafloods occurred in the years 212, 440, 603, 1029, c.1300, 1418, 1605, 1750, 1810, as well as 1861–62. Many were worse than the flood of 1862, especially the one in 1605, which researchers believe was 50 percent worse than any of the others.
The storms that caused these megafloods were the result of atmospheric rivers, thin belts of water vapor that hover about a mile above the Earth’s surface, extending thousands of miles over the sea. They originate in the tropics and carry as much water as 10 Mississippi Rivers. Weaker atmospheric rivers hit the California coast yearly, producing 30–50 percent of the state’s rain and snow in just 10 days each year.
Even these “minor” atmospheric river events are significant. They cause more than 80 percent of the flooding in California’s rivers and 80 percent of the levee breaks that occur in the Central Valley. Another atmospheric river hit Northern California on Sunday, October 24, with a predicted three inches of rain in a single day and some areas seeing significantly more. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has declared a La Niña for the second winter in a row. Because La Niñas often bring increased rain to Northern California, this coming atmospheric river could be the beginning of a very wet winter.
According to climate models, global warming will increase the number of atmospheric rivers hitting California each year and they will carry more water than previous ones, increasing the intensity of megastorms. Some models predict that the odds of another megastorm like 1862 will at least double by 2100 due to the extra moisture caused by global warming. Swain says that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase at today’s rate, the US could see a 30 to 127 percent increase in the number of people at risk from floods nationwide.
Even without the effects of climate change, the consequences of a megaflood today will be much more serious than they were in 1862, when California had only 500,000 residents. Today there are hundreds of communities and large cities in the Central Valley, with a combined population of 6.5 million people. The Sacramento area alone is home to more than 1 million people, while Fresno has over 500,000 people, and Bakersfield has nearly 400,000 residents. The Central Valley includes the flood plains of two major rivers, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, as well as many smaller rivers that drain down from the Sierra Nevada mountains.
This is not just a problem for Californians, either. Another flood like the one in 1862 would have a dire impact on the availability and cost of food for everyone in the US. The Central Valley comprises less than 1 percent of all US farmland, yet it produces 25 percent of the nation’s food supply, including 90 percent of the broccoli, carrots, garlic, celery, grapes, tangerines and plums, as well as 40 percent of the lettuce, cabbage, oranges, peaches and peppers, and over 20 percent of the milk. That is $46 billion worth of food annually, double the next most agriculturally productive state in the US.
A megaflood would also be an ecological nightmare. There are 4 million cows in the state and a massive flood would severely pollute the soil and groundwater with rotting carcasses and concentrated manure from drowned cattle. The hundreds of millions of pounds of fertilizers and pesticides used in the state each year would be similarly thoroughly mixed into California’s broader ecology.
Oil spills are a further danger. Kern County, for example, is one of the nation’s most prolific oil-producing regions, generating 70 percent of California’s oil and more than double what the state of Louisiana produces. It also has two large refineries. A major flood would pull much of these toxins into the soil and ground water and quickly spread them throughout the flooded regions, potentially creating by far the biggest cleanup site in the nation’s history.
In 2005, in the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the US Army Corps of Engineers inspected California’s flood control infrastructure and found that many of its levies were built between 1850 and 1920, with outdated engineering criteria and only sporadic improvements since then. Sacramento, which is situated at the confluence of two major rivers, the Sacramento and the American, had levees designed for an 80-year flood. It was the most at-risk metropolitan area in the country at the time, with less than half the flood protection of New Orleans.
In 2009, the Multi Hazards Demonstration Project (MHDP) of the USGS examined California’s historical record for flooding, as well as its flood control infrastructure. From that data, they made a prediction of the likely effects of a 1-in-1,000-year storm event called ARkStorm (Atmospheric River 1,000 Storm). They found that an atmospheric river lasting just 23 days would cause more than $725 billion in damage to property, business and agriculture, three times the damage from a hypothetical super earthquake (i.e., the Big One). It would affect up to 25 percent of all California homes and disrupt power, water and sewage for months; 1.5 million people would have to evacuate. And it would likely lead to food shortages.
The California and federal governments have largely ignored these reports. The state has spent only $2 billion on Central Valley flood control improvements since 2007, much of it on refortifying hundreds of miles of substandard levees. In 2018, Californians passed Proposition 68, which allocated $4 billion for parks and water projects. While the majority of the funding went to parks and recreational projects, just $550 million was allocated for flood protection. Proposition 3, which would have allocated another $700 million to Central Valley flood protection and $300 million to dam renovations, was rejected by voters in 2018. Nevertheless, as a result of the investments that have gone toward flood protection, Sacramento is now a Class 2 FEMA community (2nd highest level of premium reductions by flood insurance companies). And Roseville, also in the Central Valley, is the first and only Class 1 FEMA community in the US.
Flooded roads in Southern California in 2018
The reality is, however, that California still needs an additional $80 billion in investment and three decade’s worth of work to bring the rest of the state up to today’s flood safety standards. A 2017 analysis found that 50 percent of the urban levees in the Central Valley were not up to current engineering standards. And most of the rural communities in the Central Valley still had not received any funding to shore up their flood protections. The state’s dams are also in deplorable condition and are on average 70 years old.
The ARkStorm report warned that spillways could fail in a megastorm. A harbinger of this came during the 2017 AR event, when the Oroville Dam’s spillway failed and 188,000 people had to be evacuated, some on only a few minutes notice. That year was Northern California’s wettest winter in 100 years and the flooding resulted in $1.5 billion in damage. Yet, it was still a “mild” winter compared with 1862.
There are 26 dams in California with extremely high downstream risk, meaning hundreds of thousands, or millions, of people could be affected by a failure of any one of them. History has shown the consequences of not shoring up dams for severe storm events and maintaining them to modern engineering standards. In 1975, Typhoon Nina produced so much rain that the Banquio and Shimantan Dams failed, killing 240,000 people in China and making 11 million homeless. A similar event in India killed 5,000 people in 1979. And in 1928, the St. Francis Dam, just 40 miles north of downtown Los Angeles, failed because of engineering flaws, killing at least 431 people. (In 1928, the population of Los Angeles County was only 10-20 percent of what it is today).
Though flood experts have known for decades about the threat of another megaflood, many regional flood managers, particularly in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, have argued that resources would be better spent on educating the public about the risks of living in a floodplain than on shoring up the state’s outdated dams and levees.
Many people who live in flood plains, however, cannot afford to move or put their homes on stilts. Many are living there precisely because of the skyrocketing rents and mortgages in the less flood-prone areas of San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego or Los Angeles, or because their jobs are there. And even if these workers did have the economic means to leave the area, such measures do nothing to protect against the catastrophic agricultural and ecological consequences of a megaflood.
Southern California is particularly at risk. During the 1862 flood, the Santa Ana, Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers merged, creating an inland sea in Los Angeles and Orange Counties. In his book, Ecology of Fear, Mike Davis explains that residents were able to row from where the Los Angeles Civic Center is today to Newport Beach. Like the Central Valley, Los Angeles and Orange Counties were sparsely populated then. Now there are millions of people living in the floodplains of those two counties.
For a moment in history, it looked like development might not go the way it did. According to Davis, there were several developers, like the Olmsted Brothers, who, in the 1920s and 1930s, wanted to turn the Los Angeles River and adjacent plains into a green beltway, specifically for flood control and public recreation. They even called for the parklands to extend into low-income neighborhoods to benefit working class families. They envisioned retaining the broad natural channels of the alluvial plain as a nature preserve and as a sponge for the next flood. Instead, Southern Pacific Railroad, which owned much of the land, began the process of developing the area into a private subdivision, to the cheers of the Los Angeles Times and large speculators.
The flood of 1938 put a temporary damper on this speculative exuberance. Southern California got a year’s worth of rain in about two days, likely from an atmospheric river. Again, the Los Angeles, San Gabriel and Santa Ana Rivers merged, creating another inland sea. Up to 115 people died in that flood, while 5,600 homes were destroyed. In response, the US Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies began converting the Los Angeles River into a paved channel that would flush future storms out to sea. Reassured, the speculators returned and the housing boom resumed.
The channel is, however, only designed for a relatively small 50-year flood. A 100-year storm would likely flood 1,000 acres of adjacent lands, up to 18 feet deep in some places, affecting 3,300 parcels of land, including parts of Griffith Park, Glendale and Burbank. An ARkStorm would be far worse.
Like with the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists have known for decades about the risks of the next megaflood and government agencies have had ample opportunities to prepare. And as with the pandemic, there was very little done to prepare for such eventuality. It is up to the social force that will be most impacted by such devastating events, the working class, to fight for the resources and measures needed to avert such disasters and save lives.
