School systems in the United States experience surge in COVID-19 and other illnesses as classes resume

Harvey Simpkins

As school systems across the United States return from summer vacation, COVID-19 is once again surging, leading to the temporary closure of some school systems in Texas and Kentucky. Cases will only continue to rise as more school systems, including New York City, open after Labor Day.

Elementary School students in Camden, South Carolina on September 15, 2021. [AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins]

Last week in Kentucky, Lee County School District and Magoffin County Schools both closed due to large numbers of COVID-19 cases. In Magoffin County, attendance fell to 83 percent during the third week since returning from summer break, leading to the decision to switch to remote schooling at the end of last week.

“We’re seeing a lot of illness being reported consistent with COVID and influenza,” Scott Lockard, a public health director in Kentucky, told ABC News. “Lee County had a surge of cases and attendance dropped below the threshold needed to stay open, so they closed.”

Runge Independent School District in Texas, which has 195 students, closed from August 22–29 and canceled all extracurricular activities due to a sharp rise in COVID-19 among staff, with 10 out of the district’s 43 staff members testing positive as of August 21.

Hawaii, one of the few states to continue to report in some capacity on COVID cases among students and staff, has similarly seen a growing uptick in reported cases since schools reopened for students on August 7. In South Carolina, Richland School District Two canceled a pair of football games after players from a varsity and junior varsity high school team experienced a surge in cases.

According to infectious disease modeler J.P. Weiland, based on COVID-19 wastewater monitoring data from Biobot Analytics for the week ending August 24, there are currently about 580,000 new infections each day in the United States, with one in every 57 people currently infected. Although COVID cases have appeared to reach their summer peak, health experts warn that with schools opening the surge can continue into the fall and winter months.

For the week ending August 19, the CDC reported that new hospitalizations for COVID-19 jumped 18.8 percent, with admissions having increased every week since June 24. Among adolescents aged 12 to 15, reports of COVID-19 emergency room visits nearly doubled from the week prior, reaching levels not seen in a year among this age group.

According to the CDC, deaths from COVID-19 in the United States for those aged 0–17 now stand at 2,305. COVID-19 is the leading cause of death in children caused by any infectious or respiratory disease, far outpacing the flu and pneumonia. Children, like the rest of the population, are also suffering from Long COVID in large numbers, with a July 2023 study published in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, finding that 16 percent of those infected experienced one or more persistent symptoms at least three months after infection.

A wide range of studies has also found that COVID-19 can cause long-term damage to nearly every organ in the body, including the brain, heart, lungs and kidneys. It has also been linked to diabetes and a range of cardiovascular events, from heart attacks to strokes. A September 2022 study from the Journal of Medical Virology found a 30 percent increase in heart attacks among people aged 25 to 44 during the first two years of the pandemic.

In the face of the latest surge in COVID-19, and the obvious dangers to the population from infection which remain, the Biden administration continues its policy of indifference. Not only have they not lifted a finger to protect schools and their communities against the ongoing flood of infections, neither have the promises to clean the air in these public spaces through infrastructure renovations been realized.

This is in keeping with Biden’s decision to end the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency in May, which eliminated the last vestiges of government assistance during the pandemic and forced the population to accustom itself to coexisting with a rapidly mutating pathogen.

With the expiration of the public health emergency, tests, treatments and vaccines are no longer free or easily accessible and individuals are now left to the profit-seeking whims of insurance and pharmaceutical companies for these necessary measures. There is also currently no updated vaccine available to deal with the continuing evolution of the virus.

Biden’s decision to let the disease run rampant, with no protections offered to the working class, is consistent with his approach to the pandemic since taking office and on par with the capitalist tenet that profits will always be prioritized over life and well-being.

Just a month into his tenure, without any scientific basis, he falsely told a second-grade student in a February 2021 CNN town hall, “You’re not likely to be able to be exposed to something and spread it to mommy or daddy.” In fact, study after study have pointed to the opposite.

One of the latest studies published in the JAMA Network Open in June showed that 70.4 percent of transmissions in a cohort of 166,170 households originated with a child. The study also noted the strong connection between in-person schooling and rises in within-household transmission.

“[W]e found that children represented the majority of index cases after schools reopened in both the 2020–2021 and 2021–2022 school years. However, these transmissions decreased during summer and winter school breaks, which is consistent with prior studies showing school attendance associated with increased respiratory viral spread, and school holidays with decreased spread.”

The teachers’ unions likewise continue to play their pernicious role in facilitating the spread of COVID-19 in schools. The American Federation of Teachers last posted something on its website related to the pandemic in April, when it highlighted statements from its president, Randi Weingarten, to Congress in which she dishonestly claimed that “[O]pening schools safely—even as the pandemic surged—guided the AFT’s every action.”

In fact, Weingarten and the AFT systematically beat back opposition from rank-and-file teachers who opposed returning to unsafe schools. Most notoriously, in January 2022, at the height of the massive wave caused by the Omicron variant when millions were getting infected each day, the Chicago Teachers Union, affiliated with the AFT, forced teachers to return to work despite a vote by 73 percent of teachers to not return to unsafe schools after winter break.

Likewise, the AFT has not made any meaningful demands on the Biden administration or the Democratic-controlled Congress to allocate all necessary funds to make every public school safe for in-person learning, including through upgrading HVAC systems, installing high-quality air purifiers in every classroom, and the installation of UV technology. Such technological upgrades would severely curtail the spread of COVID-19, if not eliminate it entirely.

Similarly, National Educators United (NEU), a pseudo-left pressure group within the AFT and the National Education Association, has remained almost completely silent on the pandemic since the Democrats took over the White House. Their one and only action on the pandemic since Biden became president occurred in late January 2021, when they launched a petition to keep schools open in the midst of the Omicron surge, only calling for mitigations such as testing and the use of high-quality masks.

More than two-and-a-half years later, with schools again opening in the midst of another COVID surge, NEU echoes the teachers’ unions, President Biden and both political parties in ignoring the disease and its attendant dangers to teachers and students. Even calls for basic mitigation measures, such as the use of high-quality masks, contact tracing, and testing of potentially exposed students, have been dropped.

The effect of the bipartisan decision to let the virus rip, backed by the unions and pseudo-left groups like the NEU and the Democratic Socialists of America, is that large portions of the population have been misled into believing that the pandemic is over. With schools reopening and even the most minimal mitigations no longer in place, the stage is set for yet another completely avoidable wave of severe disease and death.

Eni MINDS Scholarships (Master In Natural Resources Development And Storage) 2024

APPLICATION DEADLINE:

4th September 2023

Tell Me About Award:

We are looking for young graduates in Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, Geology and Geophysics, interested in attending the 2nd level Specializing Master MiNDS’ programme in Natural Resources Development and Storage realized by Eni in partnership with Politecnico di Torino, that aimed to develop professionals on a strategic vision, in the medium and long term, of the Energy sector, and specialize them on topics related to innovative technology and cutting-edge digital solutions to promote the energy transition in the traditional energy sector.

The Eni Master’s, organised in collaboration with the Politecnico di Torino, will be renewed from academic year 2023-2024 to offer a high standard of excellent training, developing the latest skills to respond to the current and future challenges of the Energy sector, and has become MiNDS: Master in Natural Resources Development and Storage.

The aim is to provide students with specialist skills and a 360° view of the energy industry, with a special focus on Natural Resources and Energy Transition, which can be used in practice in the sector.

Through the acquisition of integrated technical skills (energy storage, CCUS, geothermal energy, circular economy and sustainability, digitalization, etc.) to be combined with the traditional skills model of the Energy sector, we intend to encourage the entry into the labor market of highly qualified young people who are able to give immediate application of the knowledge acquired.

WHICH FIELDS ARE ELIGIBLE?

Master of science degree in Energy and Nuclear, Aerospace and Space, Chemical, Civil, Mechanical and Environmental Engineering, Computing, Physical-Mathematical Models for Industrial Engineering; Materials Engineering; Physics; Mathematics; Geological and Geophysical Science, awarded within September 30th, 2023;

TYPE:

Second Master’s

Who Can Apply?

The Specializing Master’s programme is intended for candidates with the following requirements:

• – Energy and Nuclear, Aerospace and Space, Chemical, Civil, Mechanical and Environmental Engineering, Computing, Physical-Mathematical Models for Industrial Engineering;
   – Materials Engineering;
   – Physics;
   – Mathematics;
   – Geological and Geophysical Science.
• final mark no lower than 100/110 or equivalent
• Age under 30 at 31 December 2023.
• excellent knowledge of English which will be assessed during the selection process (for non-Italian candidates a good knowledge of the Italian language is considered an essential prerequisite for the admission. Eni will assess the candidate’s level of proficiency during the interview).

WHERE WILL AWARD BE TAKEN?

Politecnico di Torino, Italy

HOW MANY AWARDS?

Not specified

What Is The Benefit Of Award?

The Program includes 8 months of classroom at Politecnico di Torino (with lessons by Eni/Politecnico di Torino) + 4 months of internship at Eni.

Eni provides scholarships of € 1.500 per month to all participants.

At the end of the course, participants receive a 2nd-level Master’s diploma in Natural Resources Development and Storage (MiNDS) from the Politecnico di Torino.

The enrolment fee for the Master’s will be paid for all students directly by Eni to the Politecnico di Torino.

HOW LONG WILL AWARD LAST?

13 months. 9 months study + 4 months internship.

How To Apply:

Applications are open until 4 September 2023 at 2:00 p.m. (Italian time); read the call for applications and apply.

Selection tests will take place online and/or at the company’s premises approximately by the end of September 2023. Applicants who meet the requirements will be informed about the selection process and further instructions by email.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Israel Confronts Its Future

Cesar Chelala

Image of Israel flags.

Image by Timo Wagner.

One important unintended consequence of the Israeli government’s recent decision to control the judicial system in the country has been increased criticism of its policies towards the Palestinians and the occupation of Palestinian land. The Palestinian people are violently displaced from their own homes, and replaced by a group of extremist Jewish settlers who appropriate their land. Those settlements, and the failure of the often-corrupt Palestinian leadership, have made a two-state solution impossible. How can one call something a state when the population has no control over their own land and resources?

Decades of punitive policies by the many iterations of the Israeli government have destroyed the Palestinian’s capacity to protect their land without resorting to violence. Palestinian attacks on Israelis cannot be condoned. But Palestinians are defending their land from invading settlers, a policy for which they have paid a high price.

According to B’TSELEM, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, since occupying the West Bank in 1967, Israel has misappropriated more than 2 million dunams (1 dunam equals 0.247 acre) of land, including building and expanding settlements and paving roads for settlers.

Data by the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, show that there have been at least 570 attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank through the end of June 2023, a substantial increase over 2022. These numbers don’t include incidents of intimidation and settlers’ trespassing Palestinian homes.

According to the United Nations, “Armed and masked Israeli settlers are attacking Palestinians in their homes, attacking children on their way to school, destroying property and burning olive groves, and terrorizing entire communities with complete impunity.”

On Saturday, June 24, 2023, residents of Um Safa, Ramallah District, reported that Israeli settlers, aided by soldiers, attacked local residents and set fire to homes with occupants still inside. Last March, Israel’s Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, called for a Palestinian village to be “wiped out” in retaliation for the murder of two Israelis. In her poem “When they say pledge allegiance, I say” Palestinian-American poet Hala Alyan writes, “…my country is no country but ghost//is no man but ghost//my country is dead//my country is name the dead…”

Amiram Levin who headed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Northern Command and was a deputy director of the Mossad intelligence agency, recently told Kan radio from Tel Aviv that the Israeli military has been weakened because of reservists’ refusal to serve amid the government’s judicial overhaul and that it has also become “rotten to its core” due to Israel’s ongoing presence in the West Bank.

“It [the Israeli military] stands on the side, looks at the rioting settlers, and begins to be a partner in war crimes,” Levin said on the radio. “It’s 10 times worse than the issue of [military] readiness…and I say honestly, I am not angry at the Palestinians, I am angry at us. We are killing ourselves from the inside.”

When Levin was asked if he agreed with a May 2016 speech by former Meretz MK Yair Golan, who was IDF deputy chief of staff at the time, in which he said that policies in Israel were similar to some in Europe in the years leading up to the Holocaust he responded: “We find it difficult to say it, but that’s the truth. Look at Hebron, look at the streets, streets that Arabs can’t use, only Jews, that’s exactly what happened in countries like that.”

That brutal policy of discrimination and terror is denonced by the Hebrew poet Aharon Shabtai in his poem “War,”

I, too, have declared war:

You’ll need to divert part of the force

deployed to wipe out the Arabs-

to drive them out of their homes

and expropriate the land-

and set it against me.

You’ve got tanks and planes,

and soldiers by the battalion

you’ve got the rams’ horns in your hands

with which to rouse the masses;

you’ve got men to interrogate and torture;

you’ve got cells for detention.

I have only this heart

with which I give shelter

to an Arab child.

Aim your weapon at it:

even if you blow it apart

it will always,

always mock you.

The British historian Simon Schama recently told The Observer that Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence “promised equal rights to all religious and ethnic groups.” He also stated that Israel faces “disintegration of the political and social compact” over the current government’s decision to alter the judicial system and expand Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories.

In addition to leaders of the IDF, international human rights organizations, historians and, increasingly, many Jewish individuals have also condemned the settlements. I met Stéphane Hessel, a Jewish survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp, a hero of the French Resistance, and an observer of the editing of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights in New York many years ago. He was there as a member of the Bertrand Russel Tribunal, which was highly critical of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. I asked him how he, as a Jew, could be a member of that tribunal. With sadness in his eyes, he told me, “Because I love Israel.”

New waves of migrants expose alleged “recovery” in Venezuela

Andrea Lobo

A massive surge Venezuelan migrants and refugees has been reported crossing the Darién jungle between Colombia and Panama, headed toward the United States. 

Venezuelan migrants with a Colombian immigration official [Photo: @MigracionCol]

Panamanian migration authorities reported on Thursday that between 2,500 and 3,000 migrants—mostly from Venezuela but also many Ecuadorians, Haitians and growing numbers from Africa and China—are crossing the Darién daily. An estimated 248,000 migrants crossed in all of 2022, while this year has already seen more than 300,000. 

Last week, videos of thousands of Venezuelan migrants entering from the Colombian side, including many families with children, went viral on social media. 

In a joint program with the United States and Colombian governments, Panama deployed thousands of security forces to block the migrants. The only effect, however, has been to compel the travelers to take even more perilous and longer routes through the dangerous and dense jungle. Last week, Panamanian authorities threatened to “close the border,” which will only lead to more migrants dying and going missing attempting to cross.

Earlier this year, Venezuelans drove a surge in migration in the days before the Biden administration imposed a new ban on asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border in May. 

More than 7.3 million Venezuelans—over a fifth of the pre-crisis population—have emigrated since 2014. A deep economic and political crisis began that year, prompted primarily by a drop in international oil prices and an economic and financial blockade by the United States aimed at facilitating regime change. 

With the drying up of international reserves necessary for basic imports like food, medicines, machinery and parts, the economy shrank 80 percent. At its lowest point in the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 95 percent of the population was living under the official poverty line and suffering from food insecurity in the country with the largest oil reserves in the world.

In May 2020, a failed mercenary invasion organized with the support of the Trump administration and US oligarchs spelled the end of the attempts to install the deeply unpopular US puppet Juan Guaidó, who had declared himself Venezuelan president in January 2019. Then, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine instigated by the US and NATO powers, the Biden administration began seeking a limited rapprochement with President Nicolas Maduro to procure alternatives to Russian oil. 

Last year, Maduro renewed negotiations with the US-backed opposition and announced presidential elections for 2024. Then, in November 2022, the Biden Treasury Department allowed Chevron to resume operations in Venezuela, including oil exports to the United States. Oil production has increased from negligible amounts to nearly 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) in July. This compares to 2-3 million bpd before sanctions began, while crude oil prices around $80 per barrel today remain far below the peak of $147 per barrel in 2008.

The US State Department also expressed support for an “anti-corruption crusade” launched by Maduro that led to the arrest of 76 top officials and businesspeople associated with the state-owned oil company PDVSA. Most belonged to the “boliburguesía,” a layer that made ill-gotten fortunes under the “Bolivarian” regimes of bourgeois nationalist Hugo Chavez and his successor Maduro. 

Through measures of economic war, including the seizure of foreign assets of the Venezuelan state, US imperialism essentially rebooted the Venezuelan economy and temporarily succeeded in its main geopolitical objective of cutting Venezuela’s oil supply to China. However, as production restarts, most of the Venezuelan petroleum coke is being shipped to China, mainly to service a massive debt, and Turkey. 

However, the United States is now seeking to use Chevron and ongoing sanctions to revert the country back to before the nationalization of Venezuelan oil in 1976 and place it directly back in the hands of US corporations. 

As the United States escalates its war drive against Russia and China, the dispute over oil and other major commodities in Venezuela and the rest of South America threatens to become a flashpoint in a global conflict. 

Maduro has combined appeals to Washington with his demagogic “anti-imperialist” rhetoric, while exploiting a slight economic uptick last year to absurdly proclaim a “recovery” and “fixing” of the economy. However, the economy is already stagnating this year given the low levels of national consumption and lack of access to credit and trade markets internationally.

The Andres Bello Catholic University reported that multidimensional poverty fell from 65.2 percent to 50.5 percent of households last year, but most households still depend on a tenuous access to social assistance. Ninety percent of homes require “bags of food” from the Local Supply and Production Councils (CLAP), but only 35 percent get them monthly, according to the study. Meanwhile, two-thirds of students rely on school nutritional support and reports indicate that most don’t show up to school when this aid is not available. 

Most significantly, study authors found that inequality has continued to increase sharply. The Gini coefficient, which estimates income distribution, rose from 0.407 in 2014 to 0.603 last year, which places Venezuela as the most unequal country in the Americas. 

The historic lowering of the standard of living for workers in what was one of the wealthier countries in the region, while a thin layer continued to enrich itself, has only been made possible thanks to the violent suppression of the class struggle by the Maduro administration. Every sign of social opposition from below has been met by the use of the Bolivarian National Guard, the special forces and political armed groups. 

While the US was never able to rally any popular support behind Guaidó, social hatred to Maduro has reached the point that polls show that María Corina Machado, a long-time right-wing politician financed by Washington who broke with Guaidó, would defeat Maduro in the presidential elections, obtaining 50 percent of the vote. The Maduro government, however, has disqualified Machado.

Several reports from Venezuelans inside and outside the country reflect widespread popular illusions that a government under Machado, whose politics are inspired in Margaret Thatcher, would lead to an ending of sanctions and an economic recovery. However, whether it is under Maduro, Machado or any other capitalist politician, the Venezuelan ruling elite offers no alternative to the subordination of the economy to foreign finance capital, which is intent on exploiting the country’s natural resources and cheap labor, maintaining conditions of widespread misery. 

These same calculations have also applied to Venezuelan migrants. Numerous papers from the World Bank, IMF, and US-based think-tanks have described the exodus as a lucrative opportunity, proposing injections of capital in Mexico, South and Central America aimed at exploiting the young and relatively skilled and educated Venezuelan workforce. Undoubtedly, a major incentive for rejecting migrants from the US is to exploit them at cheaper rates south of the border, while profits ultimately find their way to Wall Street. 

About 2.5 million Venezuelans moved to Colombia, which has “regularized” the residency status of virtually all of them under a Temporary Protection Status. While allowing migrants to work legally, the temporary nature of the program maintains a vulnerable position exploited by employers. 

The US authorities have also reached agreements with countries in Central America and Colombia, in some cases involving European governments and Canada, to establish third-country facilities where refugees will be compelled to apply for asylum.

Earlier this month, Mexico announced a plan to admit 20,000 vetted refugees from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela over three years to a program of “work opportunities in regions with labor shortages,” i.e., the most desperate migrants will be super-exploited under the most grueling and unsafe conditions. On top of $40 million for the program, Biden also handed the Mexican authorities and bosses a vague promise of “resettlement referrals” to the US, which will be kept dangling just out of reach of the refugees. 

At the same time, from all sides, Venezuelan migrants face victimization by police and military forces, xenophobic campaigns stirred up by Latin America’s ruling elites, lack of housing and social assistance, precarious, unsafe and largely informal working conditions, threats by organized crime and countless other deadly obstacles. 

Just last week, at least 18 people, mostly Venezuelan migrants, died when their bus crashed in Puebla, Mexico, while 29 migrants, mostly Venezuelans, were injured when their bus fell into a precipice in Costa Rica.

This generation of Venezuelan workers has not only been scattered across the entire American continent, but has experienced in one country after another the bankruptcy and reactionary character of all bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist movements, which are ultimately all subordinated and dependent upon imperialism.

Macron threatens war as Niger’s junta calls to expel French ambassador

Athiyan Silva

Last Friday, Niger’s military junta in Niamey gave French Ambassador to Niger Sylvain Itté a 48-hour deadline to leave the country. The deadline to expel the French ambassador comes after Niger’s August 3 cancellation of five military cooperation agreements signed between 1977 and 2020. It ordered on August 14 that all French troops in Niger, which is a former French colony, leave the country by early September.

French soldiers disembark from a U.S. Air Force C130 cargo plane at Niamey, Niger base, on June 9, 2021. [AP Photo]

The letter issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Niger appointed by the junta indicated “that the competent Nigerien authorities had decided to withdraw their approval from Mr. Sylvain ITTE and to ask him to leave Nigerien territory within forty-eight hours.’’ The ministry said the decision to expel the ambassador was “in response to actions taken by the French government against Niger’s interests.’’ This included the ambassador’s refusal to respond to an invitation to meet with Niger’s new foreign minister.

An ultimatum against the French ambassador was quickly rejected by the French Foreign Ministry in Paris which has repeatedly stated that he does not recognize the authority of the Nigerien junta. “The putschists do not have the authority to make this request, the ambassador’s approval coming only from the legitimate elected Nigerien authorities,” the French government said.

Yesterday, French President Emmanuel Macron gave a speech at a yearly conference of French ambassadors in the Elysée presidential palace. Macron declared that Itté would stay in Niger and that military action would be prepared against Niger. He declared that the junta in Niamey “has no authority” to tell Itté to leave their country. He also hailed the “responsible policy” of African countries in the ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) that might invade Niger at the behest of Paris and Washington.

He praised plans for “supporting diplomatic action, and once it is agreed upon military action, by ECOWAS in the framework of a partnership.”

Macron also implicitly criticized opposition to plans for French-led military interventions against Niger and military regimes in neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso. “The weakness that some had towards previous putsches have encouraged regional tendencies,” he said.

In reality, the putsches are the product of over a decade of bloody NATO wars across Africa and, in particular, across much of France’s former colonial empire in Africa. After NATO’s 2011 war on Libya in 2011, France launched in 2013 a nine-year military occupation of Mali, during which it posted thousands of troops in Niger and Burkina Faso. Amid mounting anger, strikes and protests against the French military presence, French troops were forced to leave Mali last year.

Governments that worked closely with French military operations in Mali, Burkina Faso and now Niger have fallen amid growing popular anger, replaced by military regimes that have sought out ties with Russia and the Wagner Group militia also active in the Ukraine conflict.

Now, amid the NATO war with Russia in Ukraine, there are growing threats of a major escalation in Africa. France in particular is pushing for a war in which ECOWAS heavyweights like Nigeria, Ghana or the Ivory Coast would provide ground troops for a NATO-led war to take back Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. Paris, Washington and other NATO powers have backed ECOWAS’s call to reinstate Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum, whom the junta ousted in a coup on July 26.

On August 24, the day before Niger called to expel Itté, the foreign ministers of Burkina Faso and Mali, Olivia Rouamba and Abdoulaye Diop, respectively, went to Niamey to met with junta leader General Abdurahamane Thiani. They then signed agreements authorizing the defense and security forces of Burkina Faso and Mali to intervene on Nigerien territory in the event of an attack.

Last week, representatives of ECOWAS held talks with General Abdourahmane Tchiani in Niamey. The meeting came a day after officials of the ECOWAS states said they were ready to intervene militarily to reinstate Bazoum.

While the ECOWAS delegation was in Niamey, Tchiani claimed he would hold power for a maximum of “three years” before returning power to an elected regime. The delegation insisted that the plan proposed by the military junta was unacceptable, and that Mohamed Bazoum should be reinstated. Thus, the negotiations ended in failure.

The junta refused to reinstate Bazoum. General Tchiani warned ECOWAS against any intervention in Niger, stating: “But let us be clear. If an attack were to be undertaken against us, it will not be the walk in the park some people seem to think.”

On August 26, thousands took to the streets of Niamey and gathered at Niger’s General Seyni Kountché Stadium, chanting anti-French slogans, after French officials denounced “illegal military rulers” in Niger. They hoisted Nigerian, Algerian and Russian flags.

Participating in this demonstration was Ramato Ibrahim Boubakar. “We have the right to choose the partners we want, and France must respect this choice, we have never been free for 60 years,” he said.

There are calls for further protests in front of the French military and air force base in Niamey starting on September 3, to demand the withdrawal of French troops from Niger.

Algeria, which borders Mali and Niger to the north, has opposed any foreign military action in Niger since the July 26 coup. After the military regime in Algiers allowed French warplanes to use its airspace to bomb targets in Mali during the 2013-2022 war in that country, it suddenly shifted its position 180 degrees. It has announced that it will not grant French fighter bombers the right to overfly Algeria. French military flights that take four hours via Algeria to Niger or Mali are to be forced to take a 10-hour detour.

West Africa [Photo by PirateShip6 / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Niger’s junta, which ordered the French ambassador to leave the country, has not issued similar orders to the ambassadors of the US, Italy and Germany. A US State Department spokesman confirmed that “no such request has been made to the US government,” according to Reuters.

On August 7, as French imperialism prepared ECOWAS for military intervention in Niger, Washington sent Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to hold talks with the junta. “The stakes for France in Niger are much higher than for Washington. ... This is a psychological and strategic defeat for France,” said Cameron Hudson, a former White House National Security Council official focused on Africa, to Politico magazine.

New interimperialist tensions are rising, in particular, between France and the United States. “After the Niger putsch, France fears being overtaken by its US ally,” wrote Le Figaro, citing frustration by French officials at the fact that the junta leaders plan to let US troops but not French troops remain in Niger. “With allies like that, we don’t need enemies,” said an official of the French Foreign Ministry.

Above all, however, the NATO powers are moving to intervene militarily in Africa and escalate the war with Russia they are already waging in Ukraine. Amid threats of NATO and ECOWAS intervention, military tensions are surging in the region. All divisions of the Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali armies have been placed on alert. About 10,000 volunteers in Niger have joined the army and received basic training. Reports suggest that Russia’s Wagner Group is training them.

The death of Yevgeny Prigozhin and US war propaganda

Andre Damon

On August 23, the billionaire Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a crash of his private jet under unexplained circumstances. The crash also killed a significant section of the senior leadership of the Wagner Group, the Russian private military contractor which Prigozhin headed, including its military commander, Dmitry Utkin.

Prigozhin’s airplane was leaving Moscow for St. Petersburg and had been underway for 30 minutes when it experienced a catastrophic failure resembling an explosion, causing the aircraft to plummet from the sky.

Formed in 2014, the Wagner Group has played a major role in Russian military and diplomatic operations, providing not only fighters for the wars in Syria and Ukraine, but also private military services for governments throughout Africa and the Middle East. Prigozhin and Wagner led the successful Russian effort to capture the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, known in Russian as Artyomovsk, in May.

Two months before the crash, Prigozhin, previously a long-time ally of Vladimir Putin, carried out a coup attempt of his Wagner forces, marching from Ukraine and occupying the city of Rostov-on-Don before wheeling toward Moscow and demanding the dismissal of the army leadership. Prigozhin’s coup attempt was the most open expression so far of ongoing, intense infighting within the Russian state apparatus and ruling class.

To start with the obvious, no one knows at this point why the plane crashed or who was responsible. There are as many possibilities as one would find in an Agatha Christie novel. Even the cause of the crash has not been established. However, given who Prigozhin was, it is reasonable to weigh one’s assumptions toward the conclusion that this was not an accident.

Assuming that the crash was the product of deliberate action, this then raises the more complex question of who was responsible. The US media and government immediately rushed to proclaim that Prigozhin was assassinated by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Following a tried and true method, an anonymous UK government official told the Wall Street Journal that the “most likely suspect” was the Russian government. Other major newspapers, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, proclaimed this supposition as an established fact.

US President Joe Biden declared that he was “not surprised” at the death of Prigozhin, adding, “There’s not much in Russia that Putin doesn’t have a hand in.”

Of course, this is not a possibility that can be discounted out of hand. It cannot be excluded that the crash that killed Prigozhin is the aftershock of what occurred in the attempted coup exactly two months ago.

But the question must be asked, if Putin sought to eliminate Prigozhin, why would he do it in this way?

While publicly denouncing the leaders of the coup as traitors, Putin engineered a rapprochement with Prigozhin, dropping criminal charges and appearing alongside him at public diplomatic functions.

Why kill him with a bomb on a plane, along with 10 other individuals, rather than simply arrest and prosecute him? If Putin was so concerned about the possibility of a second coup, why did he allow Prigozhin to move about freely between Moscow and St. Petersburg, and even leave the country and direct his forces in Africa, where they aided in the military coup in Niger?

Even considering the possibility that a Russian actor was involved, Putin would hardly be the only suspect. Prigozhin had many enemies, both in the regular military, whose leadership he had targeted in the coup attempt, and among the Russian billionaire oligarchs.

But if one asks the question, “Who benefits?” there are many non-Russian suspects, from Ukraine to the United States, or even France and Britain. Over the past several years, the Wagner Group’s operations in both Ukraine and Africa have seriously undermined the geopolitical interests of the imperialist powers.

This would help to explain Ukrainian President Zelensky’s cryptic remark to journalists, “When Ukraine asked the people of the world for help with airplanes, this isn’t what we had in mind.”

While universally proclaiming that Putin was responsible for the death of Prigozhin, leading figures in the US foreign policy establishment and media welcomed the consequences that the assassination would have. In a column responding to the death of Prigozhin, Alexander Vindman, a former National Security Council official and leading US war propagandist, declared that the assassination could “speed peace in Ukraine.” The “elimination of Wagner,” Vindman wrote, “weakens the nationalist wing pushing for a more aggressive war—and may ease pressure on Putin for a continued, expanded war.”

“In fact, the demise of the warlord is very good news for Ukraine,” writes Maksym Skrypchenko, president of the Transatlantic Dialogue Center, a pro-NATO Ukrainian think tank. “The death of Prigozhin, alongside Wagner group’s infamous first commander Dmitry Utkin, will likely provide Ukrainian forces with a battlefield advantage for months to come.”

“With Prigozhin out of the picture, Russian public opinion could also turn against Putin,” he added hopefully. “If we are reading the signs right, the mysterious plane crash that eliminated Russia’s mercenary boss may someday be remembered as the climax of the elaborate tragedy that is Putin’s Ukraine invasion.”

US media commentators likewise pointed to the significant role of Wagner in Russian military and diplomatic relations. “The Wagner group was the forward operation arm of the Kremlin, military and political, in Africa,” said NBC correspondent Richard Engel. “I saw it myself in the Central African Republic, the embassy there was Wagner, it was Wagner that was on patrol in the street. I asked the governor about it, I asked the president, ‘you said we needed protection, we wanted Russian security protection, and they sent Wagner.’”

Noting that Prigozhin had spent his final days traveling to African countries, where he “had helped turn the mercenary group into one of Russia’s most powerful and recognizable assets on the continent,” the Times wrote that “in the span of a few years, Wagner became a security partner for some autocratic governments in Africa, upending power balances in already fragile regions and gaining its own political influence in the process… Wagner’s forces helped strengthen embattled governments and warlords in countries including the Central African Republic, Mali, Libya and Sudan.”

In other words, the presence of Wagner in Ukraine, but even more so in Africa, was a serious obstacle to the military and geopolitical aims of the imperialist powers in these regions.

Another point: In an article headlined “The Godfather in the Kremlin,” the Wall Street Journal declares that the assassination “highlights the evolution of Russia into a mafia state.” The question must be asked, however, if the assassination of leading political figures makes Russia a “mafia state,” what does that make the United States? Or Ukraine?

Prigozhin’s death follows a series of assassinations targeting leading pro-war figures inside Russia carried out by Ukrainian forces,  including Daria Dugina last August and Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in April. After Dugina’s killing, the New York Times was quick to claim that “there was no evidence that the attack was connected to the war in Ukraine.” Yet only two months later, in October, the Times reported, the “U.S. believes Ukrainians were behind an assassination in Russia.”

Just three days before the assassination of Dugina, Times correspondent Andrew Kramer published an article praising pro-Ukraine assassination squads operating inside Russia, in an article entitled, “Behind Enemy Lines, Ukrainians Tell Russians ‘You Are Never Safe.’”

Following a drone attack on the Kremlin earlier this year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked about the United States position on an alleged effort to “assassinate President Vladimir Putin.” Blinken declared, “These are decisions for Ukraine to make about how it’s going to defend itself.”

Earlier this year, a trove of leaked Pentagon documents revealed the immense concern of Pentagon strategists over Wagner’s growing influence in Africa, listing a dozen potential “coordinated US and allied disruption efforts” against Wagner, including “kinetic” options involving the assassination of its leadership.

None of these realities are discussed in the media coverage of Prigozhin’s death, which is driven largely by the propaganda needs of the US government. Facing growing popular opposition to a disastrous war, the US media seeks to do everything possible to demonize Russia and the Putin government.

But words have consequences. This concerted propaganda effort has a logic of its own, becoming itself a factor in the escalation of the war.

BRICS to expand to counter US dollar dependence

Peter Symonds

The summit of the BRICS group of countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—held last week marked a significant bid for greater economic influence on the world stage. A Financial Times commentator rather grandiosely declared that the meeting had the potential to be seen as “the 21st-century equivalent of the Bandung conference of 1955, which launched the non-aligned movement.”

President of China Xi Jinping, center, and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, second left, attend the China-Africa Leaders' Roundtable Dialogue on the last day of the BRICS Summit in South Africa, Aug. 24, 2023. [AP Photo/Alet Pretorius]

The world has fundamentally changed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of the Cold War, during which non-aligned countries manoeuvred between the Soviet and US-dominated blocs. Far from opening up a new era of peace and stability, the world is riven with far deeper economic instability and geo-political tensions. The US and its NATO allies are waging war against Russia in Ukraine even as Washington intensifies its confrontation and preparations for conflict Beijing.

Pushed by China, the BRICS summit agreed to the expansion of its membership by six countries—Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—as of the beginning of next year. This is just the first stage of a further expansion that could include countries such as Nigeria, Mexico, Venezuela and Vietnam, substantially increasing the economic weight of the bloc.

Much of the commentary in the US and Western press has focused on the obvious political divergences, rivalries and tensions that divide the countries in this grouping. Even before its expansion, India and China have been at loggerheads over border disputes, with India part of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—a US-led quasi-military pact aimed against China.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt and UAE are all closely aligned with the US, while Washington has maintained heavy punitive sanctions on Iran on the pretext of its nuclear programs. Moreover, Iran and Saudi Arabia are bitter rivals for influence in the Middle East and severed diplomatic ties in 2016. Significantly, China brokered the reestablishment of relations between the two Middle Eastern powers in March.

China and Russia clearly viewed the summit as a means of countering the concerted efforts of the US and its allies to isolate and vilify them. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant on concocted war crimes charges, took part in the gathering via video link.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, who arrived ahead of other leaders for a state visit, was feted by the South African government and inducted into the Order of South Africa—an indication of China’s importance in the BRICS grouping. Xi also held a meeting with African leaders on the sidelines of the summit, promising China would “better harness its resources for co-operation” with Africa.

In promoting the expansion of BRICS, China has suggested that the bloc could become a counterweight to the G7 group and other US-dominated institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

In his prepared statement, Xi lashed out at the US, without naming it, as a country “obsessed with maintaining its hegemony,” that had “gone out of its way to cripple the emerging markets, and developing countries.” He warned against the danger of sleepwalking “into the abyss of a new cold war.”

Citing the BRICS internal divergence of views on key issues, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan played down the significance of its expansion, declaring that he did not see it as “evolving into some kind of geo-political rival to the United States or anyone else.”

Nevertheless, yesterday’s editorial in the Australian declared that the summit signaled the transformation of the “previously inconsequential five-nation BRICS alliance” into an expanded, well-funded body primed to advance Chinese and Russian geo-political interests. Reflecting Republican criticism in Washington, it blamed Biden for strained relations with Saudi Arabia and other US allies, warning: “The West will pay a heavy price if it fails to counter the five-nation alliance becoming a potent new player on the world stage.”

An obvious issue is studiously avoided in most of the commentary surrounding the summit. Given the glaring divergences between members of the BRICS, the question is, what is bringing these countries together.

In his comments, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa pointed to the mutual concern about the domination of the US dollar in international financial transactions. “There is a global momentum for the use of local currencies, alternative financial arrangements and alternative payments systems,” he said.

BRICS leaders have instructed their finance ministers and central bank governors to develop ways of reducing their reliance on the US dollar in trade with other member countries.

The attempts to diminish the reliance on the US dollar have been driven by the manner in which US imperialism has exploited the currency’s global position as a financial weapon against targeted countries. The fear in capitals around the world, including those aligned with Washington, was dramatically increased after the Biden administration froze Russia’s central bank reserves following the onset of the war in Ukraine.

Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan aide Nader Mousavizadeh, cited in the Financial Times, explained that it was not the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine so much as the freezing of Russian assets that provoked consternation.

Referring to the scattered nature of the grouping as an “archipelago,” he explained: “For middle powers, it was the equivalent of someone going in and seizing embassy property. It was a reminder that you can have this sense of opportunity in the archipelago but that the alternatives to a US dollar world do not exist.

“Many thought we have to do whatever it takes to avoid being in the position of having reserves of this magnitude frozen in the future. That was Modi’s main response and many other middle power governments including in the Middle East were obsessed about this too.”

While Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva floated the idea of a common BRICS currency prior to the summit, it gained no traction. The ability of any currency, including the Chinese renminbi, to replace the US dollar as the global currency faces major obstacles which cannot be overcome in a disparate grouping such as an expanded BRICS.

Nevertheless, as a lengthy four-part series in the Financial Times entitled “The Rise of the Middle Powers” explained, China’s strategy is to chip away at the US dollar’s dominance by encouraging transactions in renminbi. The fourth part of the series began by noting that last month Argentina, strapped for US dollar reserves, made a payment to the IMF in renminbi instead.

As the article explained, China is engaged in a multi-prong strategy to minimise the global use of the US dollar. This includes the creation of a larger pool of renminbi liquidity in offshore capital markets to facilitate its wider use by traders and investors; the establishment of the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (Cips) as a rival to the existing dollar-denominated inter-bank settlement systems Chips and Swift; and the launching of a digital renminbi.

These strategies face considerable obstacles, not least China’s developing internal financial turmoil and the determination of the US to maintain the dollar’s dominance. What is clear, however, is that US imperialism’s economic and military aggression is driving countries to reconsider previous antagonisms in the face of a common threat.

While BRICS, even in its expanded form, hardly matches the economic clout of the imperialist powers gathered together under the G7 grouping, its consolidation is another ominous echo of the economic and currency blocs formed in the 1930s as the world hurtled toward a disastrous global conflict.