The End of Duterte? Four Ways the Strongman Could Fall

Walden Bello

“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”

— T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

The fix that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is in now illustrates the truth in the saying that the best laid plans of mice and men are often unraveled by the least expected event.

In the case of the beleaguered Philippine president, the equivalent of the asteroid from outer space that killed off the dinosaurs was COVID-19, which threw him from the high horse he was riding in triumph after the midterm elections of 2019, which his partisans swept at all levels.

COVID-19 has exposed the gross incompetence of a small-town mayor with few qualifications for higher office flung to the presidency by an electoral insurgency. But just as devastating to Duterte’s legitimacy as the public health catastrophe and the economic crisis that it has spawned has been the glaring contrast between the priority he assigned to pursuing the war on drugs, passing the draconian Anti-Terrorism Act, and seizing ABS-CBN television network when the clear priority for the rest of the country was containing the rampaging virus, which has infected nearly 190,000 Filipinos and killed close to 3,000.

To people who have seen neighboring countries like Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam successfully limit infections to a few thousand and deaths to a handful through comprehensive containment programs, the revelation of Duterte’s incompetence could not have come in a more shocking way.

The hundreds of thousands blinded by his gangster charisma in the last four years have had the scales fall from their eyes and are now asking themselves how they could possibly have fallen in love with a person whose only skill was mass murder. Even Duterte’s usually aggressive true believers and paid trolls are confused and defensive in their comments, or are simply keeping quiet, waiting desperately for the wind shift that will never come.

The Unraveling

A man who had projected a bigger than life image has been cut down to size, and he knows it.

He knows that the real message of a recent Supreme Court ruling that unreasonable searches and seizures in the war on drugs are a violation of the Constitution is that the justices he has been so contemptuous of have finally screwed up the courage to oppose him. He knows that when the opportunist par excellence, former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo comes out and tells the public that they should be patient with the president since his task is a “difficult” one, her real intent is to signal Duterte that she is thinking of jumping ship and that he better come up with a better deal than the one they have now.

Panic has now seized him. This is the only explanation for his weird challenge to health workers to mount a “revolution” against him after they had publicly requested that he provide a comprehensive strategy to contain COVID-19. Growing desperation can be the only reason for his cursing the country and giving it the obscene middle finger salute during a late night television program for what he rightfully perceived as the erosion of support for his war on drugs.

Popular support, expressed in electoral results and surveys, was what propped him up and encouraged his arrogance in power. With that disappearing, the question now is not if he will go but how he will leave. Reliance on the army or police to maintain oneself in power is a poor substitute for popular legitimacy. The next best thing to popular support, a disciplined mass party that is ideologically or personally loyal, such as the RSS in the case of Narendra Modi in India, is one that Duterte has failed to develop.

Four Scenarios of the End

Here are some more than plausible scenarios for his departure.

One is that he is overthrown in a military coup. People might say that this is improbable since he has filled his cabinet with generals. What they forget is that coups are usually launched by colonels and junior officers who are not only ambitious but, like most Filipinos, have families and friends that are suffering from the pandemic and its economic consequences and the lack of any strategy to deal with the catastrophe. Indeed, to preempt such a “colonels’ coup” and preserve the chain of command, some of the generals who now swear fealty to Duterte to his face might themselves be tempted to make the first move.

A second scenario is a popular insurrection where a critical mass of citizens takes to the streets to demand Duterte’s ouster and, faced with the impossibility of putting down a mass uprising such as that which ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, the armed forces either declare themselves neutral or join the people.

A third scenario is that Duterte hangs on till the national elections of 2022 but is a lame duck in “perpetual isolation” in the presidential palace, to use his spokesman’s description of his current condition, unable to control events, with his allies fighting among themselves to succeed him but also trying to distance themselves from a putrid presidency as they face massive popular repudiation in the polls.

Of course, barring death from natural causes, probably the best option for Duterte is the fourth scenario, that is, to resign now — what I call, borrowing from T.S Eliot, the “whimper option.”

That way he still might be allowed to live out his last days in his hometown of Davao in the southern Philippines and save his buddy Chinese President Xi Jin Ping from spending for his board and lodging in Beijing, like the U.S. did hosting the exiled Ferdinand Marcos gang in Honolulu.

Resignation would also assure him that he will not go out feet first, an option this cruel man did not offer the 27,000 people that were subjected to extra-judicial execution under his bloody watch.

Of course, resignation will not save him from being handed over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. But he may draw some comfort from the fact that the ICC does not give out death sentences.

In any event, the pace of history is quickening in the Philippines as reality begins to dawn on the strongman that, to borrow the words of Frank Sinatra’s song “My Way” that is one of his favorites, “the end is near and so I face the final curtain.”

USA Is Wary Of China

Haider Abbas

The US Office of the Secretary of Defense Report released on Sep 2, 2020, is a 200-page document available free in PDF form, is named as Military and Security Developments Involving the Peoples Republic of China-2020, has been put to the world to see and probe as to what miracle China has become, militarily, apart from what economically it is.  US-China are locked-up in many conflicts as China has challenged the uni-polar super-power status of US, since 1989, when Soviet Union was broken. Interestingly, since the beginning of the year 2020, the two giants have accused each other for COVID-19 pandemic which has sent the whole world into a downward toil as millions all across the globe have lost their jobs and hundreds of thousands have lost their lives. This report assumes extreme importance, particularly for its timings, as China and US are embroiled in a conflict in South China Sea, where US has India, and more than half a dozen nations on its side, and China is equally involved in a border dispute with India along the Himalayas with Pakistan on its side. Both China and Pakistan are in collusion against India, as India’s PM Modi, brought them to be openly-together, after the annulment of the Article 370 which gave special status to JK& L on August 5, 2019.

The report is for the world to assuage the capabilities of China as to which missile-systems is China into developing, and quite proverbially it has blown the senses of ‘US and its allies’ alike. In its opening paragraph, the objective of the report has been defined, ‘The report shall address the current and probable future course of military-technological development of the People’s Liberation Army and the tenets and probable development of Chinese security strategy and military strategy, and of the military organizations and operational concepts supporting such development over the next 20 years. The report shall also address United States-China engagement and cooperation on security matters during the period covered by the report, including through United States-China military-to-military contacts, and the United States strategy for such engagement and cooperation in the future’( Page-3).  Clearly, the US establishment wants engagement and cooperation, and not conflict, with China.

The report almost in the very beginning acknowledges that China is already quite ahead to US. Indeed, as this report shows, ‘China is already ahead of the United States in certain areas such as Shipbuilding,  The Peoples Republic of China (PRC)  has the largest navy in the world, with an overall battle force of approximately 350 ships and submarines including over 130 major surface combatants. In comparison, the U.S. Navy’s battle force is approximately 293 ships as of early 2020, (in terms of ) Land-based conventional ballistic and cruise missiles -The PRC has more than 1,250 ground-launched ballistic missiles (GLBMs) and ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. The United States currently fields one type of conventional GLBM with a range of 70 to 300 kilometers and no GLCMs. (In context to) Integrated air defense systems- The PRC has one of the world’s largest forces of advanced long-range surface-to-air systems-including Russian-built S-400s, S-300s, and domestically produced systems—that constitute part of its robust and redundant integrated air defense system architecture’, What has startled US is that China is at par and at times more excellent to US despite spending almost one-third of what US spends on its budget. ‘China’s official defense budget was $174 billion in 2019 compared to the US budget of about $685 billion.

This Department of Defense report is enough to make US realise the wherewithal of China’s position vis-à-vis to it. DoD  has clearly accredited that  ‘China is progressing with the development of missiles and electronic weapons that could target satellites in low and high orbits, China already has operational ground-based missiles that can hit satellites in low-Earth orbit and “probably intends to pursue additional Anti Satellite(ASAT)weapons capable of destroying satellites up to geosynchronous Earth orbit.  The Pentagon says Chinese military strategists regard the ability to use space-based systems and to deny them to adversaries as central to modern warfare. China for years has continued to “strengthen its military space capabilities despite its public stance against the militarization of space.  China has not publicly acknowledged the existence of any new anti-satellite weapons programs since it confirmed it used an ASAT missile to destroy a weather satellite in 2007, but the nation has been steadily advancing in this area.  Electronic weapons -such as satellite jammers, cyber capabilities and directed-energy weapons — also are part of China’s arsenal of counterspace systems’. The report further informs, ‘According to China’s military strategy, an adversary’s imaging, communications navigation and early warning satellites would be targeted in order to “blind and deafen the enemy,” ( Page-66).  Besides strengthening its anti-satellite weapons technology, China is advancing space capabilities across the board — in satellites, launch vehicles, sensors and lunar systems, all intended to help fulfill China’s long-term goal of becoming the world’s most powerful space power’.

Hence, China is now to be in a position to destroy US low-and-high orbit satellites and even has the strength to destroy US weather satellite too, but China would never admit to it, what is adding more headache to US is that China is also into making direct-energy-weapons (DEW) which is a ranged weapon that damages its target with highly focused energy, including laser, microwaves and particle beams. Potential applications of this technology include weapons that target personnel, missiles, vehicles, and optical devices. These DEWs are to be the future warfare and India too has been assiduously pursing it and is also close to it.  India had got a ‘step closer to DEW as India’s DRDO has successfully tested laser- system’ was reported on June 14, 2018 in the Economic Times.

India is catching-up with China in its mountain, since May 2020, and this has also found a reference in the report. ‘Tensions with India persist along the northeastern border near the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China asserts is part of Tibet and therefore part of China, and near the Aksai Chin region at the western end of the Tibetan Plateau. Chinese and Indian patrols regularly encounter one another along the disputed border, and both sides often accuse one another of border incursions’ (Page-11). The report also put into focus that Chinese army ‘is additionally developing the capabilities and operational concepts to conduct offensive operations within the Second Island Chain, in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and in some cases, globally’(Page-73). India, is therefore, closely following with US, in its pursuit of China and has allied with US in South China Sea where US intends to choke China in straits of Malacca from where the largest chunk of Chinese exports pass to reach to the world. But, in the wake of this report, it becomes clear that gone are the days of machineguns as now waves can be captured so as to paralyse the adversary.

The way US has been pursuing China in the past few months, in South China Sea, by stationing its aircraft carriers since July 4, 2020 which are governed and controlled through satellites, and if the conflicts aggravates further, then the possibility of China using its technology to destroy satellite-connection of US aircrafts cannot be ruled out, which of course, will result in a free-fall of them, or they may be controlled through electronic magnetic pulse technology of China. This is what all the report is firmly all about. Moreover, the fear lurking in US is that China has launched its own GPS system (i.e. Beidou) on June 24, 2020, hence, it is no more reliant on US, and is also forming new partners by way of distribution or finance and military-technology, which all will result in division of the world into-two parts. As through the advancement of technology to such heights, the maneuverability of US, to have turned the Iran missile to hit the Ukraine passenger plane, is for the future researchers to find.

The apprehension in US is that unlike US which engages into fanfare and propaganda of its military might, China exercises a civilisational-silence over its military brilliance, and given the Chinese proximity with Pakistan, what if China transfers this technology to Pakistan, which probably would need it in the earnest, as already there are reports that Israel, armed with its F-35 stealth bombers, is making an intelligence-base on Socotra island of Yemen, to keep an eye on Gwadar, Pakistan  where the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor ends. The probability of China giving-technology to Pakistan is very high, as they call each-other all weather friends but will US or Israel also provide India the same technology to counter Pakistan and China, is for the time to see.

Australia: International students and foreign visa holders face major social crisis

Robert Campion

A recent online survey has further exposed the desperate situation facing temporary migrants in Australia who have been abandoned by state and federal governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conducted by Unions New South Wales between March 2020 and mid-May, the survey of 5,342 respondents is the first large-scale data set of temporary migrants conducted since the coronavirus crisis began.

Hundreds of international students lining up to collect food vouchers in Melbourne, June 1 [Credit: @BeauNewham, Twitter]

According to the Department of Home Affairs, there are almost 2.03 million temporary residents in Australia, down from 2.17 million in March. Most are denied access to meagre wage and unemployment subsidies.

The survey was predominantly answered by those on student visas (67 percent), with 10 percent as holiday makers and 23 percent in other categories, such as bridging visas. Half of the respondents identified as casual workers, 33 percent as part-time and only 15 percent as full-time.

The survey revealed that 65 percent of temporary migrants lost their job during the pandemic. Another 23 percent have had their hours reduced. The most heavily affected sector was the entertainment and tourism industry with 75 percent of foreign visa employees in the sector being thrown out of work, followed by both hospitality and beauty therapists with 74 percent each.

The figure was 35 percent for food-delivery drivers and 28 percent for those employed in health and aged care. Working holiday makers (or backpackers) experienced a 77 percent loss in jobs.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, visa holders are more likely to live in capital cities. Some 92 percent of those on student visas are in urban centres. The mass job cuts, combined with the high costs of living, has consigned many to a hand-to-mouth existence.

Eighty-seven percent of respondents reported difficulty paying their weekly expenses. Some 61 percent were relying on savings which would be exhausted in a matter of weeks. Eleven percent did not have enough savings for a week of expenses.

Many now face the threat of homelessness, with 30 percent unable to pay rent and anticipating eviction. Four percent were already effectively homeless. Almost a quarter (23 percent) were sharing a bedroom to save costs, and 9 percent indicated that housemates had left their accommodation, driving up rent costs to an unpayable amount.

A growing number are going hungry. Forty-three percent said they were skipping meals on a regular basis to reduce costs and were relying on friends to survive. Footage on Twitter shows a City of Melbourne food voucher line for international students extending hundreds of metres. The $200 food vouchers were limited for use at the Queen Victoria Market as part of a publicity campaign, and students were urged to share pictures of their shopping and meals on social media.

Renata Tavares Silva, a Brazilian student now unemployed in Sydney, told the Special Broadcasting Corporation last month that he was “simply terrified. Each way you look you feel like ‘I don’t have anywhere to go.’ This year when I’m about to finish school, I simply lose my job, how will I survive?”

International students are required to pay full-course fees upfront and provide a significant source of revenue for the Australian corporate elite and its governments, which treat them as cash cows. In the 2018–19 financial year, international education contributed $37.6 billion, the largest service export and the third largest export in total, behind iron ore and coal.

The last three years (2017–19) have seen a large growth in international student numbers, 12.6 percent, 11.4 percent and 9.7 percent respectively. The students, however, are excluded from most forms of official assistance.

Ninety-nine percent of participants reported that they were not receiving any form of income support from the government or from charity organisations.

At the outset of the pandemic, Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared that those visa holders without the means to survive should, “make their way home.” In practice, this stance has been supported by the federal Labor Party opposition and state governments, Liberal and Labor alike, which have done nothing for visa holders.

At the same time, federal stimulus packages have been granted to the corporate elite totalling more than $314 billion in a bid to shore up profits. Recent revelations confirm that hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal JobKeeper subsidies, a $1,500 fortnightly payment supposedly intended for employees, have been pocketed by some of the country’s largest companies as they axed thousands of jobs.

The unions enforced the pro-business response to the pandemic, closely collaborating with the governments and corporations. They have compelled many workers to remain on the job in unsafe conditions, and have overseen the destruction of hundreds of thousands of positions. The unions are centrally involved in the ruling elite’s attempts to use the pandemic for a further corporate overhaul of working conditions and industrial relations.

The unions’ posture of sympathy towards foreign visa holders, which accompanied the release of the survey, are a sham. The unions are directly responsible for the gutting of full-time employment that has resulted in massive rates of casualisation. They have signed countless enterprise agreements with businesses, slashing the already meagre wages and conditions of the most exploited workers, including foreign visa holders.

The plight of visa holders and international students is one of the sharpest expressions of the social crisis confronting the entire working class.

Prior to the pandemic, some 40 to 50 percent of the workforce was employed on a casual or contract basis. Many of them have now lost their job and confront a disaster with the winding-back of even the limited subsidies introduced this year.

The elimination of tens of thousands of full-time jobs was initiated by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments in the 1980s and 90s. Working with the unions they deregulated the economy, and oversaw the destruction of whole sections of manufacturing. The Labor governments’ abolished free university education, introducing upfront fees for international students, and then rolling-out deferred fees for domestic students.

India: Death toll from Kerala landslide rises to 65

Shibu Vavara

The official number of those killed in a landslide early last month at a tea plantation in the southern Indian state of Kerala has climbed to 65. The tea estate was at Rajamala, near Munnar, in the Idukki district. Plantation workers and their family members died when the massive landslide buried a row of 20 estate workers’ homes in the early hours of August 7.

According to media reports, over 80 people lived in the dwellings—most of them single-room shacks. Only 12 people survived the disaster and five remain missing, presumed dead. Most of the estate workers came from families that originally migrated from Tamil Nadu and had been living in the area for three generations.

Rescue and search operations were suspended after three weeks due to rising water levels in a nearby river. Several victims are believed to have been washed away.

The landslides occurred at around 2 a.m. The area, which is part of the Eravikulam National Park lacks decent road access. Munnar, the nearest town, is some 30 kilometres away.

Workers were only allowed to live in the national park because of the presence of plantations. The estates are owned by the Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Company, which took over from Tata Tea Limited, when the latter withdrew from most of its plantations in Munnar to focus on the growth of its branded tea business.

Nearly 12,000 people are employed by Kanan Devan Hills, which has seven tea estates, covering an area of 24,000 hectares, and 16 tea manufacturing units with an annual production of 22 million kilograms.

While preliminary analysis of the disaster points to the heavy rain in the area, landslides are not simply a natural calamity. Government authorities have failed to provide the most basic public infrastructure to the region even though Munnar is Kerala’s premium hill station and tourist spot. A general hospital, owned by Tata, is the only medical facility in the area. The nearest specialist hospital, the Government Medical College Hospital, is in Kottayam around 136 kilometres away.

Rescue operation teams, moreover, were not able to quickly reach the area because the temporary Periavarai Bridge, which is the only way to get to the scene of the disaster, had been washed away by the heavy rain. The permanent bridge collapsed two years ago and a new bridge was under construction. Rescue vehicles and ambulances had to wait for hours until the temporary bridge was repaired.

Kerala’s Left Democratic Front (LDF) state government, which is led by the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist)-CPM, blamed poor access to the area for rescue operation delays. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, a CPM leader, blamed the lack of adequate electricity, telecommunications and roads to the region while taking no responsibility for his government’s refusal to provide this basic infrastructure.

According to media reports, the area had no electricity for more than four days before the calamity. Questioned about this, Kerala State Electricity Board authorities attempted to wash their hands of any responsibility by declaring that power supplies to the area were under the control of the Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Company.

Along with the grossly inadequate infrastructure, the poverty-stricken estate employees face disastrous working and living conditions, which they fought to change for many years.

In 2015, nearly 300,000 plantation workers at state-owned and private tea and rubber estates in Kerala began indefinite state-wide strike action demanding higher wages and better conditions. The plantation unions called the stoppage not to mobilise workers in an independent struggle to challenge the employers and the state government, but to dissipate workers’ mounting hostility towards the unions and their collaboration with estate management.

The walkout was a response to widespread popular support for a militant nine-day strike by about 6,000, mainly women workers in Munnar from the Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Company the previous September. The Munnar workers, who rebelled against their unions attacking, barring officials from their meetings, demanded a 500-rupee daily wage (less than $US7 per day) and a 20 percent bonus.

After winning the state elections in May 2016, CPM Chief Minister Vijayan visited Munnar and told the estate workers that their wages would be increased to 500-rupees per day. It remains another broken pledge.

In an attempt to contain mounting working-class anger over last month’s landslide disaster, Vijayan announced a 500,000-rupee payment to the surviving families. Given his government’s previous failure to deliver on official promises, even this meagre amount is unlikely to be delivered.

The opposition, Congress-led United Democratic Front, which has also headed numerous Kerala state governments, is equally responsible for the terrible conditions facing plantation workers and the latest disaster.

German court sentences members of leftist Turkish party to prison

Justus Leicht

In late July, following proceedings lasting more than four years, a clearly political trial has ended with heavy prison sentences for 10 members of the Maoist TKP/ML (Turkish Communist Party/Marxist-Leninist). The sentences were passed by the Munich Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht). The entire trial was a scandal and demonstrates the extent to which German political and legal authorities are prepared to ignore basic democratic norms.

The defendants, including German citizens and a number of asylum seekers whose asylum applications in Germany had been accepted, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from two years and nine months to six years and six months.

The harshest punishment was meted out to Müslüm Elma, who was sentenced to six and a half years in prison on charges of being a TKP/ML “ring leader.” After more than five years in prison on remand, the Munich Higher Regional Court (OLG) revoked its arrest warrant against him in what amounts to a travesty of justice. During the course of the trial the court had persistently refused to release him from remand custody.

Elma had already spent 22 years in prison in Turkey for his activities in the TKP/ML. He was tortured there under the rule of the 1980 military coup regime and was then given political asylum in Germany due to this political persecution.

In total, the 10 accused received more than 40 years in prison. None of them was accused of acts of violence or any other criminal act in Germany. The charges related only to their membership in the TKP/ML, which in turn is not classified as a terrorist or criminal organisation in Germany. The group is not banned in Germany and does not appear on any international terrorist list, including that of the European Union, which has a long list of alleged terror organisations based on the political criteria determined by individual EU governments.

The TKP/ML is considered a terrorist organisation only in Turkey, where it is engaged in a hopeless guerrilla war with the reactionary Turkish state. In neighbouring Syria, the organisation combats Turkish-backed Islamist militias such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). However, none of the 10 accused have been charged with involvement in any type of violence. The indictment was directed solely at membership or “ring-leadership” in a “terrorist organisation abroad,” according to paragraph 129b of the German Criminal Code.

Section 129 of the Criminal Code, i.e., the law that prohibits membership in criminal organisations, has not been primarily directed against so-called “organised crime,” which could be described as “apolitical,” such as drug and human trafficking. Section 129 of the German Criminal Code (StGB) received its present name and basic structure (with minor subsequent amendments) in the context of the 1st Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1951, which was used to prosecute Communists in post war Germany.

The memorandum to the 1951 government draft stated: “The modern state needs new protective regulations to advance its line of defence and prevent enemies of the state under the mask of non-violence from obtaining power by fraud.” Under the SPD-led federal government of Helmut Schmidt, this legislation was supplemented in 1976 by paragraph 129a StGB (Terrorist Associations). In 2002, the SPD-Green government led by Gerhard Schröder introduced paragraph 129b StGB, which was decisive in prosecuting the TKP/ML. This extension of the law had already been discussed at EU level in 1999 and was enforced after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.

In all three legal forms, membership in an association, including “its purposes or activities”—according to the text of the law—is punishable when there is evidence of “intention” to commit a crime. Whether an individual is involved in committing an offence (or had already committed one) is irrelevant. Thus, the term “organisational offence”—irrespective of whether it has a political background or not—means that it is not deeds, but rather standpoints or mere intentions to commit an act, which can be punished. Since it is not a question of participation in concrete crimes at home or abroad, the paragraphs have been used primarily for investigative purposes and intimidation.

If, as in this case, the “offence” (i.e., mere membership) relates to an organisation outside the jurisdiction of the EU, the law stipulates that the German Ministry of Justice must authorise prosecution. Such an authorisation was apparently given over four years ago by then Minister of Justice and current Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD).

The concrete accusations made by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, which the court followed, were essentially that the defendants had recruited members in Germany, and had organised propaganda events and fund-raising campaigns, i.e., had used legal means to support an organisation legally recognised in Germany.

The German domestic intelligence agency (Verfassungsschutz) which monitors the TKP/ML as “Turkish left-wing extremists,” also admits that it was unaware of any “appeals for the use of force or carrying out of violent acts in Germany.” Likewise, there were “no indications that this practice would change in future.” Instead, the Verfassungsschutz accuses the organisation of “striving for a violent overthrow” of the government in Turkey and committing attacks accordingly.

The defence team for the accused TKP/ML members described the trial as “a piece of work commissioned” by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is establishing an authoritarian regime in Turkey and increasingly using violence to prosecute opposition forces. The defence also challenged the German Ministry of Justice’s authority to prosecute and demanded the trial be halted at its outset.

In fact, paragraph 129b of the German Criminal Code states that the ministry, when deciding on authorisation, must take into account “whether the efforts of the organisation are directed against the basic values of a state order that respects human dignity or against the peaceful coexistence of peoples and, after weighing all the circumstances, appears punishable.” On this basis, the authority to prosecute should never have been granted in the first place.

In 2016, the same court had already made a ruling declaring that it did not matter whether the Turkish state committed human rights violations or—as in Syria—supported Islamist terrorist groups.

The court also denied that the authorisation by the ministry to prosecute was arbitrary. It admitted that there was no such authorisation in the case of the “Free Syrian Army,” which also fights for the violent overthrow of a state order using force. But, the court reasoned, this was happening in another country, in Syria. At the same time, the ministry had also given authority to prosecute the DHKP-C, a leftist guerrilla group also operating in Turkey.

In fact, the arbitrary nature of the court’s rulings is particularly evident here. Whether or not an organisation is prosecuted as terrorist depends, according to the court, not on the nature of its methods, but rather whether it seeks to overthrow a state which is an ally of Germany. The TKP/ML acts in Syria as a de facto agency of US imperialism. It works together in Syria with the Kurdish-dominated YPG (People’s Defence Units), which in turn has long collaborated closely with the US military.

It is more or less undisputed that in the course of the prosecution the Federal Prosecutor’s Office also used extensive material it received from Turkish authorities and that Turkish spies had illegally collected such evidence in Germany. Although the Attorney General is investigating the espionage activities of the Turkish secret service (MIT) in a number of other cases, the court presented a letter from “Police General Directorate Istanbul,” openly admitting to acts of spying.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, the letter declared that as a “result of the compilation of secret service information” about the defendants’ milieu, it had been discovered that “in Germany there is a cadre of about 700 to 800 people and this number increases to 2,000 at organised events. When the court handed down its verdict, however, it claimed that the “evidence” from Turkey “played almost no role.”

The entire trial recalled the methods used by an authoritarian regime. The defendants had spent several years in pre-trial detention, on occasion under extremely repressive conditions. They were isolated, were only allowed to speak with their lawyers through glass partitions, and their correspondence with defence attorneys was monitored.

In her closing remarks, one of the defendants, a doctor, Dilay Banu Büyükavci, compared the trial to that of the NSU terrorist Beate Zschäpe, who appeared before the same court.

Public prosecutor Heise had repeatedly claimed “this is a criminal trial and not a political trial,” Büyükavci said, “but all the measures we have been subjected to demonstrate the opposite.” While she had been subjected to isolation and other measures, Zschäpe, who “killed 10 people, robbed a bank and planned bomb attacks, and was thus accused of attempted murder, did not have to endure the type of special measures imposed on me.”

The same applies to the defendants accused of membership in the neo-Nazi Old School Society. Among its activities the Old School Society had hoarded large quantities of explosives and planned attacks on homes for asylum seekers. Its “ringleaders” were also sentenced by the Munich Higher Regional Court to between four and a half and five years in prison, i.e., considerably less time than Müslüm Elma, whose only “crime” was leading an organisation that was legal in Germany.

The verdict amounts to a persecution of opinions (Gesinnungsjustiz), an arbitrary means of intimidation aimed at influencing foreign and domestic politics. The message sent is that anyone who is left-wing and/or opposes a regime allied with Germany can be imprisoned in Germany for years, even if he or she resorted to entirely legal means within an organization that is legal in Germany. The preparations for a right-wing, authoritarian regime in Germany are rapidly developing.

The defenders of the TKP/ML members have announced they plan to appeal the verdict.

Coronavirus assistance for university students in Germany—a calculated fraud

Lisa Lachlan

A law passed by the German parliament on May 7 promising support for students and the sciences during the coronavirus pandemic has proven to be a “calculated fraud,” as correctly assessed by the World Socialist Web Site on June 13. It is in fact a blatant attempt to make students pay for the crisis.

Since June, angry and indignant posts have been mounting on social media from students accusing the government of ignorance and inaction, disregarding the needs of roughly a million students in need of assistance.

Students demonstrate on June 8th in Bonn for greater assistance

Most of the criticism is directed toward the so-called “stop-gap aid,” stipulated in the law to be paid from an “emergency fund” of €100 million. Students who lost their jobs during the months of March, April and May because of the pandemic and who are facing existential need can apply for a subsidy of €100 to at most €500 for the months of June, July and August. The applications must be submitted to each university’s Studentenwerk, state-run non-profit organisations for student affairs at German universities.

Students who lost their jobs before March and were unable to find new employment because of the lockdown are automatically excluded from funding, regardless of whether or not they are threatened by existential need. Likewise excluded are students whose bank accounts contained more than €500.

In a June 16 tweet, one student commented: “In Germany you are considered poor with an income of 781 Euro per month. Unless you are studying, then [Education Minister] Anja Karliczek says that with 500 Euro in the bank you are so rich that you can’t get state support.”

It is entirely clear that topping up accounts capped at €599 changes nothing in the existential situation confronting many students.

“In almost no university town can you make ends meet with that. Then there are the costs from the previous months. And the assistance is only for June, July and August. The Corona crisis, on the other hand, has no end in sight,” commented Amanda Steinmaus, executive member of the fzs (Free Association of Student Bodies), on the organisation’s website on July 2.

That alone would explain the anger and disgust of many students. On the one hand, the €100 million in “stop-gap aid” provided by the federal government is a pitiful sum that could support at most 66,666 students for three months at €500 per month. In June alone, 82,000 applications were submitted to the emergency aid fund.

The level of need, as Steinmaus made clear, lies well above that: “According to a survey, a million students during the Corona crisis are in serious financial need.”

The application process is handled by each university’s student union and is a huge administrative act. Just for software with which students can apply for the stop-gap aid, the Ministry of Education paid €325,027.

An additional €25 processing fee is applied to every application. Because a separate application is required for each month of support, the administrative costs are trebled. Disbursements only reach students after long waiting periods. The first applications were processed on June 29.

Soon after the application process started, it became clear that the intention of the federal government was not to help students out of a financial emergency with stop-gap aid. Of around 82,000 applications, roughly half were rejected. One common reason given for the rejection was that the pandemic could not be blamed since the student’s employment had been terminated before March, or students were given the automatic response that the application was rejected due to illegibility or incomplete documentation.

There are increasing reports in social media from students whose applications were rejected although their accounts were negative or under €10 and without further indication of which documents were illegible or incorrect.

“I myself meticulously and completely scanned in documents for hours. The Studentenwerk and the hotline of the ministry of education wouldn’t tell me why I was rejected…,” complained one student on social media.

In the meanwhile, it has become known that the application software has had problems uploading and opening the required documents. Roughly half of the rejected applications are affected by this issue. Despite the faulty software, students receiving rejection notices cannot submit further documents and as such lose their right to any aid.

Moreover, the application system does not allow changes to information provided in the previous month’s application, meaning that a rejection in June almost automatically results in a rejection in July.

This is a deliberate failure to provide assistance on the part of the federal government. In this way, the government is squeezing more money out of the working class to finance bank rescues, the artificial inflation of the stock market and massive armament programmes.

In light of this, it borders on audacity that Education Minister Anja Karliczek (CDU) explained the high rejection rate by claiming that many students might possibly have withdrawn their application for stop-gap aid because they no longer need the money.

Exactly the opposite is the case. At the end of July, the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW—a significant German, state-owned development bank) reported receiving 22,000 new applications for student loans totaling €641.6 million since May.

This will have devastating consequences for many students since the “interest-free” loans for students, which in addition to the €100 million “stop-gap aid” represent the heart of the “emergency aid” for students, are essentially normal KfW loans that have existed in their current form since 2006 and have to be repaid with high interest.

Here, too, it becomes clear that Karliczek is not interested in helping students, but rather in building up student loans as an alternative to BAföG (subsidised government loans for students) in the long term. As in the United States, students will then start their careers with a huge mountain of debt.

In the last eight years, the number of students who are supported by BAföG has decreased by 26 percent. In 2019, around 489,300 students received these subsidised student loans, that is 17 percent of all students. In 2012, it was around 671,000 or 26 percent.

The systematic nature of the cost reductions implemented in recent years is becoming apparent to millions of people in the course of the COVID-19 crisis and palpable for those directly affected. It is a fatal mistake to believe that appeals to the federal government can change its ruthless policy. As the current situation shows, the federal government has not made BAföG quickly and unbureaucratically available to students in need, even though the annual BAföG budget has not been exhausted. The fzs notes that the BAföG fund currently contains €900 million that are being withheld from students.

Many students in need will be forced to drop out of their studies in the coming semester in order to apply for basic security [ Grundsicherung ], since students are not entitled to Hartz IV unemployment benefits. Early dropout figures are already available for Berlin. According to the Senate Chancellery, there were around 4,600 dropouts in 2019. In 2020, there have already been 5500, around 20 percent more than in the previous year

As in all areas of society, the coronavirus pandemic exposes the reality of social inequality at Germany’s universities. It is the result of the same policies that are jeopardising the lives of millions of people to harvest profits from the economy and accelerate the redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top of society.

Students must see the blatant attacks on equal access to education in relation to the criminal reopening of schools, massive job cuts in the auto, aviation and other industries, and the hasty and irresponsible resumption of production that are endangering the lives of millions of people. Students and workers must combine their protest with the struggle for an international socialist perspective.

Quebec teachers denounce unions for their complicity in reckless school reopening

Louis Girard

Millions of students across Canada are going back to school this week and next, returning to unsafe and overcrowded classrooms as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage across the country and internationally.

The back-to-school drive has one overriding aim: to force working parents to return to work so they can resume generating massive profits for big business. It is being jointly orchestrated by the provincial governments—Liberal, Conservative, Coalition Avenir Quebec, and NDP—and by the Justin Trudeau-led federal Liberal government.

Among its most ardent promoters is Quebec Premier François Legault and his CAQ (Coalition for Quebec’s Future) government. Legault has refused to offer worried parents the alternative of e-learning, insisting it be reserved only for children with a doctor-certified medical condition.

After a spike in COVID-19 cases this week, including at many newly reopened schools, Legault blamed the public for ignoring social-distancing rules and vowed to keep the schools open even as teachers and students fall sick. "Above all, I do not want to close the schools," he declared.

In Quebec, the epicenter of the pandemic in Canada, the Ministry of Health is refusing to provide official updates on school-related COVID-19 cases. But according to data compiled by a Montreal father on the covidecolesquebec.org website, more than 30 schools in the province have already had at least one positive case.

Across the province, workers, parents and medical experts have expressed deep concern about the government’s school reopening plans:

• A group of parents has sent a formal notice to the Ministry of Education to demand the implementation of online school learning. Politimi Karounis, a member of this group, said he has received thousands of messages from parents who are concerned about their children going back to school.
  
• Sarah Gibson, a mother of two teenage girls in a Montreal suburb, launched a petition to demand the plan be revised to provide an online-learning option, reduce class sizes, and incorporate other science-based safety measures. To date more than 30,000 people have signed the online petition. Refuting the government's lies, the text accompanying the petition states that it is "increasingly clear that children are as contagious as adults." The text draws attention to airborne transmission, in the presence of often antiquated ventilation systems, as an important vector for the spread of the virus. And it stresses the need for regular testing of students and school staff.
  
• A group of 150 doctors, epidemiologists and other scientists have signed an open letter to the Legault government denouncing the reopening of schools. "The current back-to-school plan in Quebec needs to better consider all the available scientific evidence to prevent outbreaks in schools, to avoid jeopardizing the safety of our children, teachers and parents, as well as, to prevent a resurgence of SARS-CoV2 (COVID-19) in our community," the letter states.

In Quebec, as in the rest of Canada, the trade unions have been working for decades with the ruling class to impose capitalist austerity. Today they are fully collaborating in the back-to-work campaign, merely making timid criticisms of the premature return to school in order to camouflage their collaboration with the authorities.

But workers, in all fields of activity and on an international scale, are beginning to draw lessons from the treacherous role of the unions.

Comments posted to social media by Quebec teachers underscore that they are searching for an alternative to the union bureaucracy, which has no intention of protecting the health and safety of education workers. Particularly significant are the trenchant criticisms of the Autonomous Federation of Teachers (FAE/Fédération autonome de l'enseignement), a union that claims to be “more militant.”

These include the following comments, each from a different teacher.

• “I thought my union was mobilized, but I was wrong! There is no ventilation system in our schools, no reduction in [pupil-to-teacher] ratios, no visors, no Plexiglas, no windowless classrooms, and on top of that, at the secondary level we have to disinfect ourselves every time we arrive in a new classroom.”
  
• “Our unions... Forget it! We have to mobilize ourselves and then kick them out!”
  
• “I've always been the first one to defend the FAE, but I don't understand... High school teachers will be teaching in windowless, poorly ventilated environments... I'm speechless and very disappointed!”
  
• “It’s not a matter of demanding answers, what we need is action! We have been denouncing this problem for the past six months right here in connection with Covid and we ask you not to let the government expose us to this additional danger. The new school year has already begun and all I still see is a ‘wait for some to die’ attitude.”

The Socialist Equality Party insists that the only way to stop the homicidal reopening of schools, and save lives, is for the working class to take matters into its own hands through the establishment of safety committees made up of rank-and-file workers, independent of and opposed to the pro-capitalist unions.

Such rank-and-file committees must demand the immediate closure of schools until the pandemic is contained, as well as a massive increase in public education funding to ensure that all students have access to online education and necessary support services, including mental health, special education and food security.

The ruling elite will inevitably claim there is “no money” to implement these demands. Workers must respond by showing that resources are plentiful, but they are being diverted to further enrich the corporate-financial aristocracy. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the federal government, Bank of Canada, and other government agencies have funneled hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout funds into the financial markets, banks, and big business to ensure the investments and profits of the rich and super-rich.

The fight against the reckless and premature reopening of schools must be combined with the political mobilization of the working class and the preparation of a counteroffensive in defense of human lives. That is why rank-and-file safety committees in schools must make a broad appeal to all workers–educators, school bus drivers, custodians, maintenance and other support staff, as well as construction, health care, logistics, food, retail and restaurant workers.

In the United States, where thousands of infections among teachers and students have been reported across the country since schools reopened in late July, several groups of teachers have taken the decision to establish rank-and-file safety committees.

Former Australian PM Tony Abbott: Let the elderly die for corporate profits

Oscar Grenfell

In an address to the British Policy Exchange think tank earlier this week, former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott branded any measures to tackle the spread of COVID-19 as a “health dictatorship” and called for the elderly to be left to die from the virus.

Abbott, who held the highest political office in Australia between 2013 and 2015, sketched out a homicidal program that would not have been out of place in Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Its essence was a call for governments to explicitly adopt a policy that would lead to tens or hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths and to remove any obstacles to corporate profit-making activities.

The former PM gave unvarnished expression to the socially-criminal response to the pandemic by governments internationally. He nevertheless complained that not enough politicians were “thinking like health economists trained to pose uncomfortable questions about the level of deaths we might have to live with.”

Abbott cited figures, for which he provided no evidence, claiming that the Australian government was spending up to $200,000 to prolong the life of each elderly COVID-19 patient by as little as a year. The clear implication was that such basic health care was not a good investment. He repeated the familiar refrain of capitalist politicians throughout the pandemic, warning that the cure could not be worse than the disease.

Abbott delivering his address to the Policy Exchange think tank (Photo: Screenshot from Policy Exchange video of the event)

Abbott couched his reactionary proposals in pseudo-philosophical musings: “In this climate of fear it was hard for governments to ask ‘how much is a life worth?’ Because every life is precious, and every death is sad, but that has never stopped families sometimes electing to make elderly relatives as comfortable as possible while nature takes its course.”

In this case, letting “nature take its course” means subjecting the elderly, and other vulnerable individuals considered surplus to the requirements of big business, to an agonising death by denying them medical treatment.

Abbott was very explicit about the purpose of his statements. It was above all necessary, he insisted, for workers to return fully to their places of employment.

Abbott warned of “People once sturdily self-reliant looking to the government more than ever for support and sustenance, a something-for-nothing mindset, reinforced amongst young people spared the need of searching for jobs.” This, he said, risked “establishing a new normal,” where ordinary people expected governments to assist them.

In other words, the main issue is for workers to be on the job, so that surplus value can be pumped out of them, regardless of the danger to their lives. Even minimal unemployment benefits must be wound back, as part of a broader austerity offensive against the working class.

Abbott attempted to justify his proposals by concluding: “Fear of falling sick is stopping us from feeling fully alive.”

The limited media commentary on Abbott’s speech has focused on the undeniable right-wing proclivities of the former Liberal Party politician. He was a protégé of B.A. Santamaria, a reactionary ideologue who helped split Australia’s pro-capitalist Labor Party in the 1950s, declaring that it had been over-run by communists. Abbott’s entire political career has been associated with nationalist militarism, anti-immigrant xenophobia and anti-communism.

Others have noted the apparent hypocrisy of Abbott, a fervent Catholic who has invoked the “sanctity of life” to oppose abortion and euthanasia, coming out in favour of what amounts to state-enforced “euthanasia.” It is hardly a revelation, however, that Abbott, like his colleagues in official politics, secular and religious alike, worships first of all at the altar of profit.

Much of the coverage has missed the main point. What Abbott was outlining has already been carried out by capitalist governments around the world, including in Britain, the US and Australia, whether they are led by establishment parties of the “right” or the supposed “left.”

Abbott, who is in line to become a trade envoy for the British government, has been promoted by that country’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The British government responded to the pandemic by adopting a policy of “herd immunity,” allowing COVID-19 to spread unchecked throughout the country, because of the impact on big business that lockdown measures would have. This included a mass culling of the elderly in aged-care homes, which Abbott now lauds and promotes.

The WSWS, moreover, has previously documented the fact that the Policy Exchange think tank where Abbott spoke is the scene of high-level discussions of the British state and the Conservative Party, along with its US ally.

It is notable that Abbott has come under fire from Britain’s “liberal” press, including the Guardian, who have denounced his putative position as a trade envoy.

Demonstrating the selfish concerns of the upper-middle class, they have passed over Abbott’s homicidal speech, instead condemning his record of misogyny and homophobia as incompatible with their fixation on individual identity. By this they have signaled that they have no fundamental opposition to the policy of “herd immunity.”

The implications of Abbott’s speech for domestic Australian politics have also received scant attention.

The entire Australian establishment, including the official media, the governing federal Liberal-Nationals and Labor opposition, and the various state administrations, have centred their response to the pandemic on the same back-to-work and “reopening of the economy” campaigns that have been carried out by their counterparts internationally.

While they did not explicitly adopt the program of “herd immunity,” all Australian governments, Liberal-National and Labor alike, rejected expert medical advice in April which called for a policy aimed at eliminating coronavirus transmission. This, they claimed, would be too costly.

The financial press published “death calculi,” along the lines of Abbott’s speech, weighing the cost of treatment against its impact on profits, and invariably concluding that the latter would need to take priority.

As has happened elsewhere, the premature lifting of lockdown measures beginning in May has resulted in a new surge of the pandemic, centred in the state of Victoria. There, the state Labor government of Premier Daniel Andrews rejected calls from epidemiologists for immediate workplace and school shutdowns as daily case numbers soared.

Mass outbreaks have occurred in aged-care homes. This is the direct outcome of the corporatisation of the sector by federal governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, over decades. Minimal health precautions were rejected by many of the private operators, while staff are primarily low-paid casuals without any medical expertise.

State Labor authorities prevented the hospitalisation of residents infected with COVID-19, instead consigning them to treatment that amounts to palliative care. Thousands have been infected and hundreds have tragically died.

It was only when Victoria’s hospital system threatened to be completely overwhelmed that Andrews implemented “Stage Four” restrictions, involving the closure of Melbourne’s retail sector, the resumption of online learning and some restrictions on other workplaces.

Those “Stage Four” measures are set to elapse in less than a fortnight. Abbott’s speech was a carefully-timed intervention. The former PM retains close ties to the federal Liberal-National government and the Murdoch press: the forces spearheading a stepped-up campaign for the lifting of virtually all remaining COVID-19 restrictions.

It was hardly a coincidence that the day before Abbott’s speech, Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg gave a series of interviews demanding that lockdown measures be overturned in Victoria, to provide businesses with “certainty.”

Signalling yet again the bipartisan character of the pro-business response to the pandemic, Andrews immediately promised to present a “road map” out of the restrictions this Sunday. Being worked out in secret with the representatives of ten industry groups, it will undoubtedly involve the sort of workplace and school reopenings that resulted in the last resurgence of the virus.

School and college outbreaks make Iowa the US COVID-19 hotspot

Benjamin Mateus

Iowa has become typical of the front line of the pandemic—a tempest brewing, with cases soaring while the political and corporate establishment turn a blind eye to the devastating public health crisis and initiate policies that will make it even worse by intensifying the back-to-school and back-to-work campaign.

With over 67,000 cumulative cases, the seven-day average for COVID-19 cases in Iowa has been steadily climbing. However, the tracking of cases has been mired in willful and calculated ineptitude. With a positivity rate of 18.5 percent, it is a clear indication that the number of cases throughout the state is far higher than reported by authorities. As of September 2, there have been 1,126 total deaths attributed to the infection in a state with a population of only 3.2 million.

Fort Dodge, Iowa (Credit: snyder-associates.com)

Local news reported yesterday that a special education teacher from Des Moines Public Schools died from complications of COVID-19 infection. The teacher, yet to be identified, worked at Ruby Van Meter School for the intellectually disabled. It remains unclear where the teacher contracted the virus. However, Governor Kim Reynolds is demanding that districts open schools for 50 percent in-person instruction, regardless of the deadliness of the infection, with utter disregard for the lives of the communities being put at risk.

On a per-capita basis, Iowa leads with the highest number of COVID-19 cases of any state in the country. With 232 new cases per 100,000 population, it is almost triple the national average of 88 per 100,000. According to the federal coronavirus task force, “community transmission continues to be high in rural and urban counties across Iowa, with the increasing transmission in the major university towns. Mask mandates must be in place to decrease transmission.” Additional recommendations included the closing of bars and restaurants across 61 counties, which Governor Reynolds has chosen to disregard publicly, limiting the shutdown to major towns.

After the July days when COVID-19 cases peaked at more than 70,000 per day in the United States, predominately across the sunbelt states, by August, there were indications that the virus was surging into rural Midwest and Great Plains states. Presently, the seven-day moving average across the US has gradually declined and settled to approximately 42,500 daily cases. Similarly, since the end of July, about 1,000 people are succumbing to COVID-19 each day. The United States will surpass the 200,000-fatality milestone by mid-month.

At a candid moment that put her in bad stead with the Trump administration, Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House’s coronavirus task force, warned early in August, “to everybody who lives in a rural area, you are not immune or protected from this virus. If you’re in multigenerational households, and there’s an outbreak in your rural area or your city, you need to consider wearing a mask at home, assuming that you’re positive, if you have individuals in your households with comorbidities.”

Specifically, rural regions in states like Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota are being identified as new hot spots. Still, due to a lack of infrastructure and accurate reporting, the scope of the outbreaks remains challenging to estimate. The positivity rate for these states ranges from 13.6 to 22.2 percent, indicating a significant unidentified community transmission.

Meatpacking plants are notorious for COVID-19 infections, and Iowa counties with the highest rates of infections are also home to these economic centers of rural food processing. Workers in these plants and their families are facing the difficult decision to send their children to school.

Dr. Megan Srinivas, an infectious disease specialist from Fort Dodge, Iowa, told the Daily Nonpareil, a local newspaper that serves Council Bluffs, Iowa and the southwest counties, “meatpacking plants present a unique challenge to fighting any pandemic including COVID-19. Plants represent a mixing pot. COVID-19 doesn’t recognize county lines, and carpooling across counties is commonplace for these workers.”

Despite the attempt by the media to racialize the pandemic, more conscientious researchers are identifying the connection between socioeconomic index and rates of COVID-19 infection. These plants are run by the labor power of migrants and refugees—African and Central American workers—a high-risk population already given the predilection with poverty and health comorbidities of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. These same low-income laborers live in multigenerational families who depend on the paychecks that keep the lights on at night.

The vulnerability of these areas is compounded by the returning university students who will usually double the population of small towns and cities during the academic year. These students also provide critical economic stimulus to small businesses and commerce that barely eke out a living and have faced significant financial hardship during the last seven months of the pandemic.

Many of the state’s many small colleges are in proximity to the meatpacking and processing plants. Prestige Foods sits on 160 acres of Iowa farmland with over five miles of conveyor belts, 100,000 square feet of kill floor, and 20,000 square feet of freezers. Waterloo-Cedar Falls metro area is also home to a Tyson Fresh Meats plant. The Waterloo, Fort Dodge, and Eagle Grove school districts are home to several small communities in driving vicinity.

Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, and the University of Iowa in Iowa City—accounting for almost 70,000 university students—are within an hour or two of each other, creating a vibrant network of communities perfect for a highly contagious pathogen.

According to the Iowa public health department, Johnson County, home to the University of Iowa, was on a seven-day streak of triple-digit increase of new cases. Since the first day of classes on August 24, there have been at least 1,142 cases of COVID-19 just at the university, including 220 new cases last Wednesday alone. University officials have set aside close to 300 rooms at residence halls for quarantine and isolation purposes. Protests and sickouts have ensued with students challenging the university’s deadly decisions to hold in-person classes.

Story County, home to Iowa State University, has a positivity rate of more than 41 percent. As of August 31, an additional 503 people tested positive. Black Hawk County, home to the University of Northern Iowa, ranks fourth out of 99 counties with the highest COVID-19 cases.

What is happening in Iowa is only the worst example of a nationwide process which has seen many other states and universities become flashpoints over the last month, from the University of North Carolina to Notre Dame to the University of Alabama and numerous colleges in Arizona. Some 25,000 cases of COVID-19 have been reported at colleges and universities across 37 states.

The leading US epidemiologist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, publicly urged university officials not to send infected students home. “Keep them at the university in a place that’s sequestered enough from other students. But don’t have them go home, because they could be spreading it in their home state,” he told NBC’s Today show on Wednesday. It begs the question, “why were they placed in this predicament in the first place?”

Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, told Bloomberg, “It’s going to be kind of this rolling fire, with certain flare-ups that occur in different parts of the country at different times. This is a virus that’s established itself into the population.” This assessment is true as far as it goes, but virus conflagration is by political choice and not by mere accident or incompetence.

That is why Dr. Scott Atlas has gained the ear of President Trump, who normally scorns the advice of scientists. Dr. Atlas’s credentials, unfortunately, do not include the study of infectious diseases or public health, which accounts for his popularity at the White House.

A senior fellow at Stanford University’s conservative Hoover Institution, Dr. Atlas has been pressing to institute a broad policy of herd immunity disguised hypocritically as a policy focused on protecting a small population of at-risk individuals to minimize the risk to the rest of the population. “Once you get to a certain number—we use the word herd—once you get to a certain number, it’s going to go away,” Trump told Fox News on Monday.

This means a murderous pogrom in which state officials decry the impossibility of mandates, dashboards and statistics are manipulated, medical and public health guidelines change to suit political expediency, all in the name of the financial markets that have seen a return to their pre-pandemic highs. Every effort to save lives, protect communities, and create a cohesive response to COVID-19 is thwarted, and in this regard, the drive to open schools is the reverse of the lockdowns that prevented so many infections and saved countless thousands of lives.