Threat of a US-led military intervention in Venezuela grows as Guaidó’s coalition splits

Andrea Lobo

As the December 6 legislative elections approach in Venezuela, the Trump administration is escalating its threats of military aggression to overthrow the government of President Nicolas Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

This danger has been increased by the deepening domestic political crisis in the US in the lead-up to the November presidential elections. Meanwhile, appeals by Maduro for a rapprochement with Washington and the Venezuelan right have only emboldened imperialism.

Divisions within Venezuela’s US-backed right-wing opposition, moreover, have only made the situation more explosive. Juan Guaidó—recognized as the “interim president” by Washington, the European Union and their allies—could lose control of his main political platform, the National Assembly, after the December elections.

While Guaidó is boycotting the elections, Maduro has raised the stakes in this regard by announcing that the PSUV-controlled National Constituent Assembly—created in 2017 to sideline the opposition-controlled National Assembly—would cease to operate next year.

Exasperated by the failure of Guaidó to instigate a military overthrow of Maduro, and fearful of growing mass opposition from below, Guaidó’s coalition is breaking apart. Last weekend, the former vice-presidential candidate María Corina Machado broke with Guaidó for even negotiating with the Maduro government and not pursuing “a unity to oust Maduro and his regime in the shortest time possible through a national and international operation.” She has long been a creature of US intelligence and an advocate of a US military invasion.

Then, on Wednesday, former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles announced that his Justice First Party, one of the three larger opposition parties, will participate in the legislative elections, declaring: “We are not going to hand over the National Assembly to Maduro as a gift.”

Capriles is believed to have negotiated the pardoning of 110 opposition figures, some in prison and others in exile. This followed an initial pardoning of legislator Juan Requesens, accused of participating in a failed drone assassination attempt against Maduro in August 2018.

Another figure pardoned was Freddy Guevara, an opposition politician who was granted asylum in the Chilean embassy in November 2017, shortly after he proclaimed the goal of “the Chilean arrangement with what happened to Allende and Chile’s reconstruction afterwards,” i.e., a CIA-orchestrated coup to murder Maduro and install a fascist military dictatorship modeled on that of Augusto Pinochet.

Most media outlets claim that these pardons are nothing more than an appeal to sections of the opposition to participate in the December elections and undermine the efforts by Washington to delegitimize it. However, this assumes that Maduro is some implacable foe of US imperialism.

On the contrary, the Maduro government, as a representative of a section of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, which is entirely dependent on US and European markets and capital, has repeatedly sought a deal. Earlier this year, Maduro said to the Washington Post that “a bonanza could be waiting for U.S. oil companies” if Trump lifted sanctions and recognized his government.

Maduro—and Hugo Chávez before him—speaks for a faction of the ruling elite that hopes to use its suppression of the class struggle and close economic ties with other major economies like Russia, China and Iran, in order to secure concessions from US and European capital.

The pardons constitute the latest olive branch extended by Maduro to Washington as desperation grows in Caracas from the deepening economic and social crisis, worsened by US oil sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The virus is spreading out of control across Venezuela. The government is reporting widespread “community transmission” and more than 1,000 new cases daily, reaching a total of 48,883 infections. The government has recognized 398 COVID-19 deaths, while sources tied to Guaidó claim the death toll is 778.

The health care system was already collapsing before the pandemic. US sanctions had deprived Venezuela of the dollars needed for essential imports like medicines and medical equipment, adding to years of social austerity by the Maduro government and the migration of the majority of doctors, according to medical associations.

In response to growing class tensions, Caracas has turned increasingly to brutal repression and attacks against democratic rights to quell opposition from the working class.

Repressive operations involving agents of the Special Action Forces (FAES) was confirmed by the Attorney General Tarek William Saab himself when he charged two FAES officials with the killing of two journalists during a raid on a local station of Guacamaya TV in the Zulia state. While Saab sought to present the killers as rogues and “infiltrators,” there are numerous other reports of extrajudicial killings of journalists and protesters in slums.

All appeals to Washington, however, have only led to more aggressive preparations and actual attempts to overthrow Maduro via military intervention. The pandemic crisis has only increased US concerns that its geopolitical rivals, chiefly China, are increasing their influence in Latin America at the expense of US imperialism.

The Pentagon is currently overseeing the largest US military deployment in Latin America since the 1989 invasion of Panama, sending dozens of warships, helicopters, patrol aircraft and thousands of troops to the Caribbean in a supposed “anti-drug” mission after falsely claiming that Venezuela bore major responsibility for the flow of narcotics to the US.

On August 28, Rear Adm. Andrew Tiongson, the US Southern Command’s director of operations, said in a press conference that the deployment in the Caribbean seeks to oppose “criminal opportunists who have no regard for human life and are intent on making a profit off their poisonous and illicit trade.” This is nonsense. The bulk of drug trafficking from Latin America to the US passes through the territories of Colombia and Central America, ruled by right-wing governments aligned with Washington.

Tiongson then added cryptically: “And we, and we have also just, we want to always support what the Venezuelan people need, which is their right in their democratic government to be installed. So, we are watching that closely and, again, that is part of our fight, if you will.”

On August 17, Colombian president Iván Duque, Trump’s closest ally in the region, announced together with US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and Southern Command chief, Adm. Craig Faller, a $5 billion “Colombia Grows” initiative, centered on opposing “drug trafficking.” Duque, whose government is facing a deep political crisis, specifically referred to “ending the usurpation of power in Venezuela.”

Since the announcement, Duque has bypassed opposition in the Colombian Supreme Court and Congress to authorize the presence of US troops in the country, which was followed by the return of a team of US Security Force Assistance Brigades.

The US-financed Plan Colombia to support the Colombian ruling elite’s war against peasants, guerrillas and, ostensibly, drug cartels has resulted in a dramatic increase in cocaine trafficking, more than 7 million internally displaced people, countless massacres by the military and paramilitary forces, and an estimated 8 million hectares of land stolen from peasants and concentrated in the hands of landowners that constitute a major constituency of the Duque government.

Among other ominous signs of a foreign intervention, Adm. Remigio Ceballes, commander of the National Armed Forces of Venezuela, stated on August 22, that “International intelligence organizations allied with Venezuela have informed us that Colombia is preparing an aggression.” Then, La Política Online indicated that Mexican military sources have suggested that 9,500 US troops will be redeployed from Germany for operations in Latin America.

Support for US aggression against Venezuela is bipartisan. At a July 27 hearing US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that “Our policy is not to negotiate anything but [Maduro’s] departure.” The ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Menendez, replied, “There is bipartisan support for the policy toward Venezuela, but its focus has left millions of Venezuelans suffering.”

If anything, the Democrats are demanding a more aggressive confrontation globally against Russia and China. On Wednesday, Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden told NBC that “Cuba along with Russia and China has contributed to the political impasse in Venezuela as well. What’s the president doing?” He added: “Nicolas Maduro has gotten stronger … The country is no closer to a free election.”

India sets world record for daily coronavirus infections

Wasantha Rupasinghe

India reported a disastrous 83,883 new COVID-19 infections on Thursday—the highest daily total of any country since the pandemic began. When taken together with a death toll increasing by approximately 1,000 per day, it is manifestly evident that the Indian ruling elite has failed abysmally to contain the pandemic.

The ill-prepared, ten-week nationwide lockdown imposed by the right-wing government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, beginning on March 25, had devastating social consequences for hundreds of millions of workers and their families, while failing to halt the pandemic’s spread. This was above all because the ruling elite failed to use the time gained by the lockdown to invest in the country’s chronically underfunded health care system, and establish a strong network of testing and contact tracing to combat the virus. Additionally, it refused to provide and organize anything beyond token financial and social support to impoverished workers and rural toilers.

The central and state governments subsequently exploited the social crisis to launch a back-to-work campaign that began in late April and went into high gear at the start of June, so as to enable big business to resume raking in large profits.

The return to work has triggered a sharp and ever-expanding rise in infections, with the number of confirmed cases rising by almost 500,000 in June, 1.1 million in July, and just shy of 2 million in August.

Even as the spread of the virus continues to accelerate, Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government have made it clear there will not be another countrywide lockdown. In fact, the government is continuing to ease restrictions.

Last week it unveiled its Unlock 4.0 plan, which is now being implemented with the support of the state governments. Under Unlock 4.0, poorly ventilated subway trains will be permitted to run for the first time since March starting from September 7. As of September 21, sports, social, and cultural gatherings with a maximum of 100 attendees will be allowed. The guidelines issued by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs say that states are no longer permitted to impose lockdowns outside of containment zones without the Centre's permission, a provision that all but rules out widespread lockdowns ever being re-imposed. In addition, state governments are prohibited from sealing their borders.

As governments move to abandon the last remnants of any public health restrictions, active coronavirus infections across India have risen above 800,000. According to official figures, which are widely considered to be a vast underestimation, 68,584 Indians have died from the virus. On Thursday, the authorities reported 1,043 deaths in the preceding 24 hours.

In August alone, India reported close to 2 million COVID-19 cases, which is the highest number any country has recorded during any month since the pandemic erupted in China last January. August also saw a surge in death from the virus with 28,859 fatalities, a 50 percent jump from the previous month's toll.

Like the Trump administration, Indian authorities have tried to explain away the exponential growth in COVID-19 cases by attributing it to increased testing. While it is true India has dramatically scaled up its testing over the past two months, its testing rate still remains one of the lowest in the world. As of September 1, India had performed a mere 32.13 tests per one thousand people. This is less than half the rate of South Africa, and eight times lower than the US.

Medical experts have repeatedly stressed that the official figures only provide a pale reflection of the pandemic’s true impact. In an interview with the website Wire, Professor Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, noted on Monday that the true number of infections could be as high as 30 million. "We are only picking up about 70,000-80,000 or 15 percent of that and missing 85 percent,” he commented. In the “days and weeks ahead” the “number of infections is going to rise.”

Pointing to “India's under-investment in its health system for decades,” Professor Jha added, “The cost of that is really catching up to us. We don’t have primary care … (due to) inadequate investment from the government. ... And the cost of that will be borne by the people.”

Successive governments, including those led by the Congress Party and supported by India’s twin Stalinist parties, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Communist Party of India, limited health care spending to 1.5 percent of GDP or less.

The entire ruling elite has now embraced the murderous policy of “herd immunity,” which allows the virus to spread unchecked with the claim that eventually it will exhaust itself by running out of people to infect. Advocates of this policy, including senior government advisors, have openly admitted that this will result in a death toll in the millions. However, the ruling class considers this a price worth paying to protect the profits and wealth of India’s billionaires and corporate elite.

The virus has spread so widely that infections have even been detected on the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands (A&N), which are located over 1,000 kilometres from the mainland. At least 10 infections have been recorded among members of local tribes, who live in extreme poverty and isolation and are thus very vulnerable to the virus.

The pandemic has also put millions of patients at risk who suffer from other major diseases, like diabetes and heart conditions. Sameer Gupta, an interventional cardiologist at the Metro Hospitals and Heart Institute in Delhi, told the IndiaSpend website on August 26 that COVID-19 is damaging patients’ hearts, and those with a pre-existing heart condition are especially at risk of succumbing to the disease. He also stressed that “recovered” COVID-19 patients are returning to hospitals with stress cardiomyopathy—a temporary weakening of the heart muscle—and myocarditis, a weakness of the heart muscle due to inflammation.

The ruling class, however, is much more concerned by the threat to their wealth from the deepening economic crisis, which Modi is proposing to overcome by implementing a fresh wave of investor-friendly “reforms,” including the gutting of labour laws and a fire-sale of public sector enterprises. Data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) on August 31 showed that India’s GDP fell by 23.9 percent in the April-June quarter. This was the largest decline of any major economy, according to Bloomberg.

India’s 28 state governments have slashed spending and, as their financial positions worsen, many are delaying paying state government workers. According to one estimate, the shortfall in revenue from the Goods and Service Tax (GST) has reached 2.35 trillion rupees ($US 32.18 billion). In a calculated move designed to enforce spending cuts, the BJP government has withheld paying the states their designated share of GST revenues and Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has told them to make up for the shortfalls by borrowing from the Reserve Bank of India under its “special borrowing window.”

Several states, including many led by the opposition parties, have rejected the government’s proposal, urging the central government to borrow the money and pass it on to the states. However this dispute is resolved, the revenue shortfall will result in increased burdens being placed on the workers and rural toilers through intensified austerity measures.

Conditions for the vast majority of workers are already disastrous. Immediately after Modi declared the COVID-19 lockdown in March, more than 100 million workers in the so-called informal sector, mostly migrant workers from far-away rural districts, lost their jobs overnight. Many relied on food handouts from charities to survive because the government provided them with little more than famine rations.

Workers employed on a permanent basis have also not been spared. New data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), an independent body that measures and tracks economic indicators, estimated that 18.9 million permanent jobs were lost between April and July.

Despite the escalating social disaster produced by the spreading of the virus throughout the country, India’s mainstream media is giving it little attention. Instead, it has focused on the suicide of Sushant Singh Rajput, a famous Bollywood actor, which took place in mid-June. Media outlets have also intensified their efforts to whip up a bellicose Indian nationalist atmosphere over the ongoing India-China tensions along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the de facto border between the two countries.

The corporate media’s indifference to the mass suffering and death is in line with the callous and ignorant attitude of the Indian ruling class as a whole. This is true not only of Modi’s ruling Hindu supremacist BJP but also of the opposition parties, including Congress and the various regional and caste-based bourgeois parties.

CDC issues emergency order pushing mass evictions off until January

Gabriel Black

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an emergency order Tuesday which will temporarily halt evictions for many Americans.

The order, which immediately came into effect, makes it a criminal offense to evict a person who signs a declaration that, among other things, they cannot afford rent and make less than $99,000 a year as an individual, or double that amount for a couple filing taxes jointly.

A rental sign is posted in front of an apartment complex Tuesday, July 14, 2020, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

The order lasts until January 1, 2021. Critically, it does not reduce rent payments, nor cancel fees, penalties, or interest. During the moratorium, rent and fees will accrue as usual, leaving many renters with a massive bill in the new year.

In order to avoid eviction under the new CDC orders, the individual or family must legally affirm, under penalty of perjury, a list of things. In addition to not making more than $99,000 a year as an individual, or $198,000 a year as a joint-filer, renters must declare that they have used their best efforts to obtain government assistance and that they cannot pay their full rent due to layoff or medical expense.

Additionally, they must declare that they are doing their “best efforts to make timely partial payments” and that they understand that the full rent will still be due, including with late fees, etc. Finally, they must declare that they would “likely become homeless” or move into housing with closer quarters should they get evicted.

The full text of the CDC’s decree can be accessed here.

Experts have criticized the contract both for its vagueness and legal consequences. National Housing Law Project director Eric Dunn told Slate magazine, “[E]specially with the order being very clear about the kinds of penalties that people could face if they make a false statement, a lot of people will be erring on the side of caution. I do think these kinds of things will deter people from being able to take advantage of it, which is unfortunate.”

The decision by the Trump Administration to issue this pause is bound up with the November election and the staggering social and health crises facing the working class.

The CDC order explicitly warns, “In the absence of State and local protections, as many as 30-40 million people in American could be at risk of eviction. A wave of evictions on that scale would be unprecedented in modern times.”

Thirty to forty million people is about ten percent of the American population. The estimate, which comes from a report by the Aspen Institute, also does not include millions of Americans who are at risk of being evicted from homes for non-payment of mortgages. According to mortgage analytics firm Black Knight, 3.9 million households were not paying their mortgages as of late August.

As the CDC notes, the potential for mass evictions will greatly exacerbate the COVID-19 pandemic “because homelessness increases the likelihood of individuals moving into close quarters in congregate settings.” Likewise, homeless people are more likely to have health issues that make them more at risk for contracting the virus.

It is in this context of a “wave of evictions … unprecedented in modern times,” that the Trump Administration seeks to offset this catastrophe until after the election. What would happen if millions, if not tens of millions, of new homeless Americans were added to the already explosive social, political, and epidemiological situation in the country?

While millions of Americans will welcome not being kicked out of their homes for a few more months, the order does nothing to solve the underlying situation—if anything, it sets the stage for a deeper, more explosive crisis once the money becomes due.

Diane Yentel, CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, spoke to National Public Radio. “While an eviction moratorium is an essential step,” she said, “it is a half-measure that extends a financial cliff for renters to fall off of when the moratorium expires and back rent is owed.”

The depth of the eviction crisis was expressed in a CNN news report of Houston evictions that went viral on Wednesday. Reporter Kyung Lah speaks to a man hired to evict an elderly woman, “today it’s her,” he says, breaking out in tears, “tomorrow it’s me.” According to Lah, 200 eviction orders had come through the Harris County, Texas, courts last week. Before COVID-19, the county averaged 100 a month.

Palmer Heenan, a member of the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society, told the Washington Post, “Eviction has always been seen as a problem for low-income people, but I think there’s an extent to which this is now impacting people who are middle class. Increasingly I’m seeing folks like nurses, firefighters, police officers and accountants.”

The eviction crisis is just one side of a general breakdown of social life caused by the wholly incompetent response of American capitalism to the pandemic.

On Wednesday, Bloomberg published a report on hunger in the United States that found that 50 million Americans—about one-sixth of the entire population—will struggle with being unable to afford enough to eat this year. This is up by 45 percent year-on-year.

This week’s jobs report likewise shows that half of the 29 million Americans receiving unemployment compensation are doing so under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program. The PUA gives unemployment benefits to those who would not normally qualify for benefits, such as gig economy workers and other part-time, self-employed workers. These benefits will also expire for these fourteen million, or so, workers at the turn of the new year.

Throughout schools and universities, teachers and students are protesting the homicidal back-to-school campaign, waging sickouts as university and school systems force students and teachers into inherently unsafe and deadly in-person instruction. Workers face a catch-22: either mass layoffs, as in the case of 19,000 American Airlines employees, or COVID-19-infected assembly lines, as in the case of Fiat Chrysler workers.

Meanwhile, August was the best month for stock market growth in almost a half century (since 1986), even though 30,000 Americans died of the virus. While workers are dying at their jobs, the wealth of the billionaires and multi-millionaires, bound up with the stock market, has soared.

These incomprehensibly large monetary gains are the result of unprecedented government intervention, not to help the hungry, underpaid, precarious mass of people, but to stuff the stock markets full of cash. These historic Federal Reserve policies have likewise decreased the value of the dollar by more than five percent this year—rendering workers’ wages less valuable as goods inflate in price, further adding to the social crisis.

US joblessness crisis worsens as nearly 900,000 file new unemployment claims

Jacob Crosse

New data released by the US Department of Labor on Thursday showed that 881,000 jobless workers filed new unemployment claims last week, exploding claims of an economy in recovery as the worst job crisis in generations continues.

An additional 759,000 people applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), which was created as part of the CARES Act for self-employed, contract, freelance and so-called “gig” workers, an increase of roughly 150,000 from the week before.

The total of more than 1.6 million workers newly unemployed is more than double the worst figure reported during the 2008-2009 financial crash.

People line up at a food distribution site in Chelsea, Massachusetts [Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman]

Five weeks have passed since enhanced unemployment benefits enacted as part of the CARES Act were allowed to lapse by the Democrats and Republicans in Congress. The Republican-controlled Senate and the Democratic-controlled House were equally indifferent to the plight of tens of millions of workers cut off the $600-a-week supplementary federal benefit that had been added to their state unemployment compensation.

Nearly six months after the passage of the CARES Act, the results are clear, according to an analysis from Forbes that tracked 643 billionaires’ wealth from mid-March through early August. The group’s collective wealth increased by over $685 billion, while at the same time in the US, nearly 30 million have lost their jobs, over 5.4 million have lost health care coverage, an estimated one in seven US adults are now going without necessities, and nearly 40 million people face eviction by the end of the year.

Since the expiration of enhanced benefits, more than 5 million people have filed for unemployment compensation. All told, some 60 million unemployment claims have been filed in the US since mid-March, while an astounding 29.2 million workers, nearly one in five workers, were receiving some kind of unemployment benefit from the federal government and state governments in mid-August.

The scale of the crisis is many times greater than any seen in living memory. At the height of the Great Recession a decade ago, nearly 7 million people were collecting unemployment benefits, which steadily declined to under 2 million by March 2020. In the last six months that number has more than quadrupled and remains near 30 million, a figure that severely undercounts the number of actual unemployed workers.

Thursday’s new unemployment claims data mark only the second time in the last 22 weeks that the Labor Department reported less than one million new claims. However, the federal agency recently changed its methodology in reporting overall jobless claims. In a press release, the department advised that it was adjusting its seasonal calculations from using “multiplicative factors” to “additive factors” that the department states will be more accurate “in the presence of a large level shift in a time series.”

These “adjusted” figures do not take into account workers who have had their hours reduced drastically or cut off completely, as is the case with many retail and hospitality sectors. The numbers also do not account for workers who are still nominally employed, but who have not been called back to work yet. Such is the case with office workers in various industries who have been given the “option” of taking an unpaid leave of absence, thereby remaining “employed,” but no longer collecting a paycheck.

An August 8 memorandum signed by US President Donald Trump, dubbed the “Lost Wages Assistance” program, called for distributing $300 in weekly federal unemployment benefits on top of state benefits, to be drawn from a $44 billion Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) fund. This has yet to materialize for millions of workers.

As of this writing, 45 states have been approved by FEMA to begin distributing funds, but only six so far—Arizona, Louisiana, Montana, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas—have actually begun to do so. Dozens of states are unable to give a start date to prospective beneficiaries. According to an estimate by the Century Foundation, if all states and the District of Columbia were to participate in the program, the FEMA fund would be exhausted in six weeks.

Further pinching already tight purses is the fact that food prices continue to increase, even as supply chain issues have largely been resolved. An August report on the Consumer Price Index found that food prices had increased by 4.1 percent in 2020 compared to July 2019. Staple products such as eggs, ground beef and milk have continued to increase in price, by as much as 10 percent, even as farmers struggle to break even.

As joblessness continues to rise, lines for food banks stretch for miles in US cities. The continued jobless crisis, coupled with congressional inaction in refusing to extend the $600 federal unemployment benefit at the end of July, has exacerbated hunger in the US. Hunger has always been used to bludgeon the poor and working class into accepting low-paying and dangerous work, even during so-called “good times,” and is now being used to force workers, including school teachers, back into classrooms and workplaces despite the ongoing and unchecked spread of the coronavirus throughout the country.

In a report in yesterday’s New York Times, Terry McNamara, 74, a grandfather from Parma, a working class suburb outside of Cleveland, Ohio, succinctly described the situation as “the Great Depression with minivans.” For McNamara, his daughter and five grandchildren, the waiting in cars for hours to pick up food from local food banks and charities has become a near-daily ritual.

Feeding America, the largest network of food banks and pantries in the US, estimated before the pandemic that a colossal 37 million people in the US, including 11 million children, were food insecure. Feeding America now estimates that over 54 million could face food insecurity in 2020, with up to 18 million of these being children, for whom the lack of regular nourishing meals can have debilitating effects on growth and healthy development.

In response to a public outcry, the US Department of Agriculture reversed an earlier decision that would have required parents to pay for a summer school lunch program that started in March after schools were shut down. The extension, however, is good only until December 31, after which the estimated 30 million children who have been fed through the program will be cut off.

In Texas, Brian Greene, CEO of the Houston Food Bank, spoke to ABC13 on the ongoing demand for the group’s services.

“We’re certainly helping at levels we never saw before. In the early months of this pandemic, we were distributing at the rate of about a million pounds a day” Greene said. “Right now, we’re doing about 800,000 pounds a day. That’s not quite double where we were before the pandemic, but it’s still way above what we’re used to.”

In Orlando, Florida, where the unemployment rate was 15.3 percent in July, workers began arriving at a food distribution point this past Saturday morning at 4 a.m. for the chance to receive much needed groceries. After 4½ hours of waiting, the line of cars stretched for over two miles, the longest it has been in the past 16 weeks. Speaking to the Orlando Sentinel, Nick Canturano, a furloughed restaurant worker, remarked, “Every week it gets worse.”

The global campaign to reopen schools and the international strategy of the working class

Evan Blake

The drive to reopen schools has become the focal point of the class struggle in countries throughout the world. The attempts by the ruling elites to force teachers and students back into classrooms, in order to force parents back to work producing profits, has been met with growing resistance by educators, parents, students and the broader working class.

The  reopening of schools is already having catastrophic consequences in the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is raging out of control globally. Each day over the past two weeks, roughly 260,000 people have been infected and 5,500 people have died worldwide due to the criminally negligent policies pursued by governments. The worst-hit countries—including the US, Britain, Brazil and Sweden—are led by officials consciously seeking to develop “herd immunity” based on mass infections and deaths.

The United States, at the center of world capitalism, provides the sharpest expression of the international drive to reopen schools. Since early July, the Trump administration has issued near-daily proclamations insisting that all schools reopen—from declaring that “science should not stand in the way” of reopening schools, to branding educators “critical infrastructure workers,” to threatening to divert funding from public schools that do not reopen to private, parochial and charter schools that do.

Most recently, Trump has enlisted Professor Scott Atlas, a fellow of the right-wing Hoover Institution at Stanford University, to provide official sanction for the homicidal campaign. The model country that Atlas points to for the US to emulate is Sweden. Last month, it was revealed that Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, explicitly promoted keeping schools open in order to facilitate the development of “herd immunity.” As a result, the number of deaths from COVID-19 in Sweden is over nine times higher than its neighbor Finland. Adopting this policy in the US could kill millions.

On Monday, Atlas visited Tallahassee, Florida, where he urged Republican Governor Ron DeSantis to be even more aggressive in reopening the schools. Already, 1.1 million Florida students have resumed in-person learning, undoubtedly contributing to the 9,200 new infections among children in the second half of August. There has been a 191 percent increase in the number of children infected since July 9, before schools reopened. At least 611 children have been hospitalized in the state, and eight have died.

Equally beholden to Wall Street, the Democratic Party and its backers in the teachers unions are in full agreement with the campaign to reopen schools. Their only difference is that instead of using blunt force, they advance the fraudulent claim that reopening schools can be done “safely,” with cosmetic safety measures.

On Monday, United Federation of Teachers (UFT) President Michael Mulgrew announced an agreement with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, to force hundreds of thousands of students back into classrooms in the largest school district in the US, based on wholly inadequate safety measures that will do nothing to prevent the spread of the virus across the city and region.

In a campaign speech Wednesday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden declared, “Getting our schools opened safely and effectively, this is a national emergency.” Biden offered only tactical criticisms of Trump for his “failure to make sure educators and administrators have the equipment, the resources and the training they need to open safely under the circumstances we find now.”

The New York Times, the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, published an opinion piece Wednesday by Nicholas Kristof in which he urged “that we do everything possible to allow children to safely resume in-person learning.” He added, “It’s absurd that we have allowed liquor stores, gyms, gun shops, restaurants and marijuana dispensaries to operate while keeping schools shut.”

The same ruling class policies are being pursued worldwide, with disastrous results for the working class.

In Brazil, the country with the second-highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths after the US, the fascistic president Jair Bolsonaro is relying on state and local politicians to reopen schools across the country, including his ostensible opponents in the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB). Within the first week of classes resuming in Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas, outbreaks of COVID-19 erupted in 36 schools.

In Britain, the Boris Johnson government is not requiring teachers or students to wear face masks in classrooms. Similar to the Democrats in the US, the Labour Party under right-wing Blairite Sir Keir Starmer fully supports the campaign to reopen the schools, while offering toothless criticisms.

The German political establishment began reopening schools in early August as part of a broader reopening of the economy, which immediately caused outbreaks across the country. Plans are in place to reopen schools across Europe, including in Italy and Spain, the hardest-hit countries in the initial months of the pandemic. Schools reopened throughout France Tuesday, sending 12 million students back into classrooms, while the pandemic is once again spreading throughout the country.

In Russia, schools reopened nationwide on Tuesday, the same day the country surpassed one million COVID-19 cases. Officials are taking no precautions and are not even requiring teachers or students to wear face masks. Russian President Vladimir Putin stated Tuesday that there are no plans to transition to fully online learning in the event of outbreaks in schools.

In each country, these policies are provoking enormous opposition. Hundreds of protests have taken place worldwide to denounce the reopening of schools. Well over 100 Facebook groups have formed to oppose school reopenings, attracting hundreds of thousands of members worldwide. Educators, parents and students have begun to establish independent rank-and-file safety committees in the US, Germany, Britain and Australia, and there is growing sentiment for nationwide and even international strike action.

A survey of over 200 British educators and parents conducted by the World Socialist Web Site recently found that over half of respondents said they would participate in a general strike to halt the reopening of schools. This Saturday, the Socialist Equality Party (Britain) is hosting an online meeting to organize the widespread opposition to school reopenings, which has drawn wide interest.

In Germany, a public meeting held last weekend by the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) attracted hundreds of teachers, students and parents from across the country. Students in Dortmund, Germany recently founded a committee at their school to organize opposition to school reopenings and fight for safe teaching conditions.

The Datafolha research institute recently found that 80 percent of Brazilians oppose reopening schools, while 60 percent recognize that this policy will “severely aggravate the pandemic.” There is huge support for nationwide strike action, which would dovetail with an ongoing postal workers’ strike, but the National Confederation of Education Workers (CNTE) and other unions are doing everything they can to prevent this from taking place.

The Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee in the US, formed three weeks ago, has quickly become a pole of attraction for those opposed to school reopenings. Hundreds of educators, parents, students and other workers throughout the US and internationally have participated in two online meetings hosted by the committee. Last week, the Duval County Educators Rank-and-File Committee was formed to organize the immense opposition of educators in the Jacksonville, Florida region, while similar committees are being formed in New York City, Detroit, Texas, Hawaii and other cities and states across the country.

Faced with a global campaign by the ruling elites, who are intent on reopening schools and accelerating the spread of the pandemic, the working class must be guided by a global perspective. While the teachers unions in every country promote nationalism and subordinate the interests the working class to the needs of the profit system, the pandemic is an international crisis that can be addressed only through a globally coordinated struggle by the working class.

The central task facing educators, parents, students and the entire working class is to build networks of rank-and-file safety committees in every country, to mobilize the collective strength of the working class as an independent social force. The reckless reopening of schools must be halted, and the vast resources squandered on the bailout of the corporate and financial oligarchy must be redirected to provide state-of-the-art technology for remote learning, universal testing and the provision of income protection and high-quality health care to all those impacted by the deadly contagion.

The Socialist Equality Party in the US and its sister parties in the International Committee of the Fourth International are fighting to fuse the growing movement of the working class with the political perspective and program of world socialism: that is, the rational and democratically planned reorganization of society to meet human needs, not private profit.

COVID-19 in Iran: The Impact of Sanctions

Sanaa Alvira

The US reinstated sanctions against Iran in November 2018, after withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal. The imposition of new sanctions under the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign has left the Iranian economy reeling. They have also had a negative impact on the Iranian healthcare system during the pandemic. This commentary aims to bring out some of the effects that sanctions have had on Iran’s ability to deal with COVID-19.

Iran has seen a rapid rise in infections, and the number of daily recorded deaths is at an all-time high. This recent jump is the result of a second wave of infections that began after the lockdown, imposed in April, was eased. Due to these reasons, Iran continues to grapple with the highest mortality rate in West Asia. Iran’s request to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for US$ 5 billion in emergency funding highlights the situation it currently faces.

Of course, sanctions are not solely to blame. Experts have highlighted Iranian mismanagement in the early days of the virus' spread. A combination of religious and political forces prevented the government from imposing a quarantine in Qom, the epicentre of the outbreak. This initial failure allowed the virus to spread throughout the country. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that Iran’s coronavirus death toll is five times higher than what is reported because of testing being restricted to only severe cases.

However, the pandemic has been especially unforgiving owing to the economic impact of sanctions. In its report in October 2019, Human Rights Watch (HRW) found that “current economic sanctions, despite humanitarian exemptions, are causing unnecessary suffering to Iranian citizens afflicted with a range of diseases and medical conditions.”

The depreciation of the Iranian Rial severely hampered the government’s ability to provide adequate healthcare once the virus began spreading. The prohibition on the purchase of US Dollars—the global reserve currency—has made it impossible for Iran to buy essential equipment from abroad and receive financial aid from other countries and organisations. It has left the country's economy in recession. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for a waiving of sanctions in cognisance of the public health crisis. Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has made a similar appeal.

Some  argue that the appeal for sanctions relief panders to the Iranian regime's brutalities. The US claims that Iran’s campaign to obtain relief is “to raise funds for its terror operations.” Although there is little evidence that sanctions have actually hindered (if not advanced) Iran’s core strategic objectives, there are those who believe that the current circumstances are opportune for disrupting Iran’s nuclear programme and regional terror networks by doubling-down on sanctions.

The Trump administration maintains that the sanctions allow exemptions for humanitarian goods. Unfortunately, this is truer on paper than in practice. Yes, US sanctions do not apply to transactions in food supplies, agricultural commodities, and medical goods, which include over-the-counter prescriptions and medical equipment. However, certain vaccines, sterilisation machines, respirators, and other devices that are crucial to fighting the virus are not permitted for export to Iran without a special license issued by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Washington, on their part, has offered assistance to Iran in their COVID-19 response efforts. Unfortunately, this has been rejected by them on the grounds of a conspiracy theory that the virus could have been created by the US. 

The European Union’s (EU) INSTEX (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges) serves as a channel to bypass US sanctions. Iran is able to receive aid from countries like Germany, France, and Britain via INSTEX, without relying on direct financial transactions. INSTEX aims to incentivise Iran to uphold its commitments to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which the country has gradually been moving away from in response to the US withdrawal. In line with its continued efforts to preserve the JCPOA, the E3 successfully concluded the first transaction of medical goods from Europe to Iran on 31 March 2020.

Iran’s Gulf neighbours, particularly the UAE—which incidentally supported the US withdrawal—has also facilitated large financial packages to Iran. However, a few medical exemptions are not enough. Iran requires a range of resources to effectively address the outbreak.

While Iran’s own mismanagement has certainly played a hand in aggravating the impact of the pandemic, it does not compare to the repercussions of four decades of sanctions. Unfortunately for the US, beyond causing distress to the Iranian public, Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy is unlikely to yield the intended results.

UAE-Israel Abraham Accord: The Iran Context

Majid Izadpanahi


On 13 August 2020, US President Donald Trump announced the signing of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)-Israel deal, also known as the Abraham Accord. The UAE is the third Arab state (after Egypt and Jordan), and the first Arab state of the Persian Gulf, to sign a peace treaty with Israel. At this juncture, it is essential to understand Iran’s opposition of the deal and the deal’s possible implications for Tehran.

Iran’s Stances vis-à-vis Israel and Arab StatesPrior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Tehran managed balancing good relations with Israel and Arab states. Iran was the second Muslim majority country (after Turkey) to establish diplomatic ties with Israel. Tehran also had cordial relations with Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, and Iraq, albeit there were times when limited competing nationalism (with Egypt) or brief  territorial disputes (with the UAE and Iraq) cast a shadow over relations between Iran and the Arab states.

However, Tehran’s post 1979 regime has followed a rigid policy in West Asia. Ayatollah Khomeini’s Trotskyite policy based on exporting the revolution has damaged relations between Iran and Arab states. From the Arab states’ vantage point, the Iran is a threat to their internal security seeking to overthrow their governments. Moreover, Tehran’s new Shia regime’s ambition of leading the Muslim world has added an ideological dimension to the tension, Shiism vs Sunniism.

Vis-à-vis Tel Aviv, Ayatollah Khomeini called for “wiping Israel off the world map,” which became former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s oft-repeated slogan; the cornerstone of Tehran’s approach towards Israel; and one of the main cause of Iran-US tensions. Tehran’s involvement in Arab world disputes and its continuous support ofanti-Israeli groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas has pushed Arabs and Israelis together due to their perception of a common threat from the Islamic Republic. Turkey’s engagement in West Asian conflicts as well as its issues with Israel and the West under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s leadership has raised concerns in Tel Aviv and among Arab states that view Iran and Turkey as imperialist forces.

Iran’s intransigent policy towards the states in the region has engendered a vicious circle of ideological and security rivalry. Now, Tehran’s concerns over UAE-Israel deal have prompted political and military officials to react sharply. Iran’s Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, stated that this deal will strengthen the ‘Axis of Resistance’—a term used to describe Tehran-backed proxy groups. Iran’s conservative newspaper Kayhan, which has close links with Ayatollah Khamenei, stated that the UAE is now a “legitimate target.” Other officials such as President Hassan Rouhani and Major General Mohammad Bagheri angrily opposed the deal. Iran soon unveiled two new missiles named after the late General Qasem Soleimani and Iran-backed Iraqi militia leader and politician, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

The Abraham Accord and IranThe Abraham Accord—which has proved to be more about Iran and Turkey rather than Arab-Israel rapprochement and/or the Palestinian Question—is expected to boost President Trump’s re-election campaign in the 2020 US presidential election. Irrespective of who becomes the next US president, Washington will continue its support for its major allies in the region—Israel, UAE, and Saudi Arabia—against threats from Tehran. To illustrate, Republican President Trump followed a “Maximum Pressure on Iran,” policy which succeeded Democrat President Barack Obama’s “Crippling Sanctions” policy.

Even if the arms embargo on Iran is lifted and a Democrat president assumes charge in Washington, on the domestic level, the Islamic Republic is dealing with bleak economic prospects, corruption, internal unrest, and a crisis of legitimacy. Strong opposition from the Iranian public against involvement in Israel-Arab issues as in “No Gaza, No Lebanon, My Life For Iran;”  opposition to the Islamic Republic’s depiction of the US as the enemy;” and mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic response has not helped the situation. Internationally, sanctions continue; strong opposition to Iran exists in Iraq and Lebanon; and the recognition of Hezbollah as terrorist group, combined with losses in Syria and concerns over the nuclear and missile program have all resulted in limited room to manoeuvre for Iran.

Looking AheadOn a regional level, the Abraham Accord can sideline the Palestinian Question and prompt other Arab states to improve ties with Israel due to their fear of Tehran and Ankara. It could also fuel regional conflicts and shift the balance of power in favour of the UAE. If UAE-Israel relations go beyond investment, tourism and technology to include military and security ties, it will change the balance of power and the UAE’s role in Yemen and Libya. If Israeli arms reach the UAE, Abu Dhabi could crush the Iran-backed Houthi group in Yemen and support Khalifa Haftar in Libya against Turkey. This would push Tehran and Ankara together, triggering new blocs in the region.

This deal has the potential to add another dimension to the Iran-UAE rivalry along with religious, ideological and territorial aspects. Israeli presence in Iran’s southern shores would force Tehran to follow securitised and military approaches towards the UAE. Considering the domestic and international obstacles Iran is experiencing, Tehran could face difficulties in supporting its proxy groups across the region to counter emerging UAE-Israel ties. This could be a huge blow to the Islamic Republic and a game changer in the region.

The Abraham Accord and UAE-Israel Relations: Winners and Losers

Muneer Ahmed


On 13 August 2020, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel signed the watershed Abraham Accord—the peace agreement to formalise bilateral diplomatic relations. It marks a major turn of events in West Asia. Washington announced the deal with optimism, and it drew strong criticism from Palestine.

The fundamental clauses of the deal include UAE recognising Israel as a state, and Israel halting  annexation of parts of the West Bank. While the formal recognition clause is final, assurances on the halting of annexation are weak. The deal may have stalled immediate annexation but the status quo will persist in terms of a gradual annexation of the Palestinian territories. Sharp criticism from Palestinians was inevitable, but Washington’s optimism for broader regional peace is also overstated. The concrete benefits are likely to be bilateral, for the UAE and Israel, and will pertain to balancing Iran.

Israel and Palestine: No Change in Status QuoThe West Bank has been under gradual occupation via illegal Israeli settlements. This has reduced the chances of Palestinian statehood and realisation of the “two state solution” envisioned in the Oslo Accords to almost unlikely. The status quo of steady annexation may continue with ease despite peaceful proclamations made in the US-UAE-Israel trilateral joint statement. To illustrate, the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) acceptance of UN Resolutions 242 and 338 and recognition of Israel as a state did not stop occupation in parts of the West Bank. Similarly, the Abraham Accord—which was finalised without Palestinian participation—will only temporarily halt annexation instead of preventing it in perpetuity. Contrary to US President Donald Trump’s claim that annexation is “off the table,” Israel claims that annexation has been “postponed.” Overall, the clause about Israeli annexation appears to merely be a public justification for the formalisation of ties.

There is no mention of existing or future Israeli settlements in the joint statement either. The only exceptions are the sections on halting Israeli declarations of its sovereign rights over areas outlined in the Trump Peace Plan. Therefore, the deal is not a significant step towards resolving the Israel-Palestine issue, let alone the settling the “Question of Palestine,” because the Palestinians have denounced the deal. The Oslo Accords gained initial success because an entity representative of the Palestinians was party to it. From this vantage point, the ground reality has not changed for Palestine, barring the significant reduction in symbolic support from the UAE. However, the US has achieved a significant milestone in building an Arab-Israeli alliance against Iran.

No Surprises: All Signs Led to a DealThe UAE had gradually toned down its criticism of Israel over recent years. Their covert ties with Israel have been pivotal in cementing this deal. Signs of these pre-existing conditions culminating in a deal were evident when the UAE ensured its presence in the White House reception on 28 January 2020, when the Trump administration presented its “vision for peace.” In February 2019, the US-led Middle East Security Conference was brokered in Warsaw to build a global strategy against Iran. The conference was attended by representatives from Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, among others. The US arranged secret talks between the UAE and Israel at this conference.

The economic and investment opportunities that form a crucial element of the Trump Peace Plan have also incentivised Gulf monarchies who have been working on their post-oil economies. The recent plunge in oil prices induced by the COVID-19 pandemic would have further incentivised cooperation with the more economically and technologically advanced Israel.

On the other hand, there is a perceived nuclear threat from Iran, especially in the midst of a proxy war in Yemen between the Gulf coalition and Iran-backed Houthi rebels. This has created wedges between traditional allies while opening up avenues for cooperation between traditional foes. For instance, in the Persian Gulf—support from Iran and Turkey helped Qatar to successfully overcome the blockade sanctioned by its traditional allies, the Gulf Cooperation Council states. The subsequent thaw in Israel-UAE relations has contributed to stronger UAE-US-Israel ties.

Looking AheadThe current US administration has brokered the so-called peace agreement between Israel and the UAE to balance Iran. However, if a Democrat-run administration returns to the White House in the upcoming US presidential election, disagreements between the US and new allies over Iran could emerge easily.

Old fault-lines in West Asia and North Africa may be reducing but new ones could emerge if the deal ends up destabilising the region further by pitting Arab countries against each other. From Palestine’s vantage point, the situation seems unlikely to improve. However, Palestinian statehood has effectively been bypassed, as UAE-Israel diplomatic relations are not conditional upon Israel ceasing annexation of West Bank territories. Overall, Washington’s peace projections are overstated, and this deal has the potential to cause more disruptions—especially between Israel and Palestine. Gradual occupation is likely to continue, keeping the conflict alive.