How ‘QUAD’ To Counter China On The Lines Of NATO

Haider Abbas

The first-round between China and US, from the past couple of months, has gone to the US side, as surely and certainly a lot is happening in terms of geo-politics, a change in what is called as ‘an old guard’ is taking place, as new blocs are getting formed and new formulations are in vogue, to be put forward, for the world to find, particularly, since the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in the world.  If the series of the events are to be enumerated, which have proved to change the political streams in the world, then for sure, it was US president Donald Trump, who took Pakistan PM Imran Khan ‘for a ride’ when he on July 22, 2019 told Imran Khan that Indian PM Modi has asked him to ‘mediate’ on Kashmir, and again on August 2, 2019 reiterated the K word that he would like to intervene on Kashmir if India and Pakistan wanted.  Modi panicked and finished-off the Special status accorded to JK&L under Article 370 on August 5, 2019. A single move, which was to turn the events in history of the world, is what is going-on since then. ‘The step of Narendra Modi government on August 5, abrogating the Article 370 of Jammu and Kashmir, is going to alter the internal and external politics of the country for at least the next fifty years,’ I had written on August 10, 2019, five days hence in Countercurrents.

Imran Khan, who could barely hide his glee on July 23, 2019, when he accorded to Trump ‘a billion people’s prayers’ if he resolved Kashmir issue had to cut a sorry figure as after the abrogation of Article 370, Modi made a visit to a gala welcome in US on Sep 22, 2019 and Modi and Trump regaled before the world and very soon Trump reciprocated to Modi by visiting Delhi on Feb 22, 2020. Kashmir had been thrown to the backburner as the head of the only ‘super-power’ walked hand-in-hand with Modi. But, a challenge to US and India was also coming as China and Pakistan, embittered by India’s move, were together when China supported the issue of Kashmir raised by Pakistan in UN Security Council for thrice in the last year.  Pakistan wanted Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to support Kashmir inside Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) for which KSA had drawn cold-feet and wary of KSA Pakistan foreign minister SM Qureshi announced, on August 6, 2020 that Pakistan was to convene a meeting  of council of foreign ministers on Kashmir outside OIC, which signaled that Malaysia, Turkey, Qatar, Iran and Pakistan, with the support of China and Russia were into forming a new bloc, and which, enraged the KSA crown-prince MbS that he sought the loan of 1 billion USD given to Pakistan be returned, which Pakistan paid, with the help of China, followed by stopping the supply of oil on deferred loan to Pakistan, MbS took the loan back and invested in India and announced annulment of investments in China and invested in India instead. What all was happening through MbS, was of course, to the manipulations of US, as MbS has been personally issued a  summon by a US court on August 11, 2020, that he tried to get killed his intelligence officer Saad Al Jabri, on the lines of which Jamal Khashogi was killed. KSA and UAE have threatened to Pakistan to desist from romancing with a new bloc or else its expatriates are to be packed-off to it.  Pakistan army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa went running to KSA to salvage the ties on August 17, 2020, two days later on August 20, 2020 Qureshi went to China, thus, all signaled that something anew was to be on the anvil.

Things were moving ‘thick and fast’ as US accused its strongest ally KSA to be hunting for ‘nuclear-weapons’ with the help of China on August 4, 2020, the same day when Beirut blasts happened, to subjugate KSA for no end, and so intimated the Gulf-states became that only ten days later UAE, with the entire support of KSA , announced formal-relations with Israel ( on August 14, 2020) which was to snigger at Pakistan’s independence day, as Pakistan and Iran are the only two nations which have a strong stand towards Israel. Pakistan was to be isolated and that is what USA, through KSA wanted, as Pakistan was thenceforth ‘not-required’ for the job in Afghanistan has been done, where the beleaguered US army was forced to sit with the same Afghan-Taliban across the table against which it had waged a twenty-year war!  Only US could stem such a humiliation.

Pakistan is yet to convene the meeting, Turkey is already scuttled in a tussle with Greece, Iran is battered with threats from Israel and US alike and China is locked up with US in its South China Sea as   well as with India in the Himalayas.  Israel is making an ‘intelligence-base’ at Socotra Island, Yemen, to keep a watchful eye on Gwadar Port, Pakistan, which is likely to become the business-hub of future, as China is to carry out its exports from there.  This is how the first-round has gone to the advantage of US as all the adversaries of US are frustrated, to the advantage of US and allies, which very much include India. It is in this situation, and to balance the moves of China yet, in South China Sea, US has propounded a group on the lines of NATO.

US released its Pentagon report on September 2, 2020 to let the whole world know about the growing China power, in which US too has been left behind in some corners, and acting fast to the prevalent currents, US has taken into confidence Japan and has announced a formation of QUAD on the lines of NATO, which would include Australia, Japan, India and US to counter Beijing.  The importance given to the project can be felt as US made its No.2 diplomat, Deputy Secretary of State Stephan Biegun to announce it (QUAD) on the lines of NATO  or European Union as a counter to China in Indo-Pacific region.  ‘There is certainly an invitation there at some point to formalize a structure like this,” he said.  Known officially as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, the grouping is an informal strategic forum of the four democracies that holds semiregular summits and joint military drills, and discusses regional economic and development assistance. It is often credited as the brainchild of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose August 2007 speech titled “Confluence of the Two Seas” provided the foundations for the grouping’, published in The Times of Japan on September 1, 2020.

This news on QUAD came a day earlier to the Pentagon report and US made its diplomat say that US would strategise to push back China in virtually every domain and QUAD is but a part of the overall initiative to contain China. ‘For the first time in the Quad’s history, the stars are aligning for a harder line on China, and the implications going forward could be significant,” said a senior defense analyst “Most importantly, Quad resolve would also no longer be symbolic, but concrete, and this should enhance the deterrence value of the group toward China,” he wrote. Biegun also explicitly noted that “the Quad isn’t exclusive” to the four countries currently involved’.

It becomes increasingly clear that a new bloc is round the corner and if India or China or Pakistan would go for a war, it would be construed to be a war with Japan, Australia and US, and all the QUAD nations would jointly come to the rescue of each other, and this is what India can rightly expect as it is ranged against both China and Pakistan. Other nations which are to follow in QUAD membership are likely to be Indonesia, Vietnam, South Korea, New Zealand, Philippines, with Israel as a formidable buddy to add to the strength of US.

How China and Russia will counter this US move is for the time to tell, but certainly the first-round has added to the stimulus of US where India is very clearly heading for an advantage over China and Pakistan. Will Pakistan abandon OIC and scoff-off from KSA, as it is very much that KSA and UAE are to throw-back its citizens from their lands very soon as Israel is now to call the shots from the Gulf-states. It is at this juncture the world is never so poised for a spark which might trigger an all-out-war-in-the-world, as a small nation like Philippine has daunted China that it would invite US navy to its rescue if China threatens its sovereignty.

New Zealand Greens in crisis over private school funding

Tom Peters

A crisis erupted in the New Zealand Green Party late last month after co-leader James Shaw boasted that the Labour Party-led coalition government, which includes the Greens and the right-wing NZ First Party, would give $11.7 million to the private Green School in Taranaki.

James Shaw in 2014 [Credit: Wikimedia Commons]

Shaw, who is associate finance minister, said the funding would create construction jobs and help the school expand “to meet growing demand from parents all over New Zealand, and the rest of the world, wanting to enrol their children.”

In fact, the Green School is an elite institution with domestic student fees ranging from $16,000 to $23,000 a year and almost double that for international students. Its website says it aims to shape “the leaders of the future” in “a world of huge environmental threats and massive entrepreneurial opportunities.”

Shaw’s enthusiastic announcement triggered a significant backlash from working people. Teachers and public school staff, who held nationwide strikes last year over chronic understaffing and a funding crisis, were particularly angered. Marfell Community School acting principal Kealy Warren sent Shaw and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern an open letter demanding equivalent funding for her school to fix leaky classrooms, upgrade technology and address other urgent needs.

On September 1, Shaw publicly apologised, saying he made “an error of judgement” in violating the Green Party’s policy, which states that “public funding for private schools should be phased out and transferred to public schools.” In an attempt at damage control, the Green School said it could accept some of the money as a loan instead of a grant.

Far from being an anomaly, however, the funding decision is completely in line with the government’s pro-business response to the economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The money for the Green School came from a $50 billion Covid Response and Recovery Fund (CRRF). The fund, fully supported by the Greens, is being distributed to businesses in the form of wage subsidies, tax concessions, handouts and loans.

The Reserve Bank, meanwhile, has allocated up to $100 billion for quantitative easing, i.e., buying back government bonds from private banks in order to prop up their profits.

As economics commentator Bernard Hickey recently wrote in Newsroom, “the Labour-led government has delivered the biggest shot of cash and monetary support to the wealthy in the history of New Zealand, while giving nothing to the renters, the jobless, students, migrants and the working poor who mostly voted it in.”

A historic social crisis is unfolding as a result. Mass redundancies have pushed tens of thousands more people into poverty. Median incomes have plummeted by 7.6 percent in the past year and the Ministry of Social Development expects 16 percent of the population will be on welfare by January.

Conscious that workers and young people are shifting to the left, the Green Party is seeking to market itself as “progressive” in the lead-up to the October 17 election. Shaw and co-leader Marama Davidson both acknowledged that the Green School funding scandal could make it harder to return to parliament. The party is polling around 5 percent—the minimum required to gain seats.

The Greens’ first policy announcement in June called for everyone not employed, including students, to receive at least $325 a week, $75 more than the current unemployment benefit. This would be funded by a small wealth tax—just 1 percent on any assets over $1 million and 2 percent for assets over $2 million—and slightly higher income tax for people earning more than $100,000.

These modest reforms would not raise enough money to reverse decades of austerity, and in any case they will never be implemented by a Labour-Green government. The Ardern government has betrayed its promises to alleviate poverty and inequality, which were worsening even before the pandemic.

Prior to the 2017 election, the Greens agreed with Labour on a set of “Budget Responsibility Rules,” which promised to pay down debt and cap government spending at 30 percent of gross domestic product, about the same level as the 2008–2017 National Party government. This ensured ongoing austerity, leading to a worsening crisis in public hospitals, schools and other public services.

The Greens’ most high-profile policy achievement in government was an essentially meaningless “Zero Carbon Act,” implemented last year following climate strikes involving tens of thousands of school students. It sets the goal of making the country carbon-neutral by 2050 and contains exemptions for the agriculture industry, New Zealand’s biggest source of emissions. The government’s main mechanism is an emissions trading scheme—a market-based tool which will do nothing to stop the threat of catastrophic climate change.

As part of the Ardern government, Shaw and Davidson have worked closely with the right-wing and anti-immigrant New Zealand First Party. Ardern gave NZ First a major role in government, including the roles of foreign minister, defence minister and internal affairs minister.

Late last year, Shaw, in his capacity as minister for climate change, joined NZ First’s Ron Mark, the defence minister, in releasing a climate change policy for the armed forces. Shaw presented the government’s $20 billion plan to upgrade the military, including new aircraft and navy vessels, as necessary to respond to natural disasters caused by climate change.

In fact, the spending is to assist New Zealand’s integration into the US-led war preparations against China. While the Greens sometimes posture as antiwar, they have previously backed New Zealand’s role in the occupation of Afghanistan, as well as the Australian-led interventions in East Timor and the Solomon Islands.

A number of former Green MPs, including Catherine Delahunty, Mojo Mathers and Sue Bradford, have criticised Shaw for undermining the party. Bradford wrote: “Just when you think the Greens might be sticking to their principles after three compromising years, Shaw gifts $11.7m to a private school.”

Some of the Greens’ pseudo-left supporters called for Shaw to step down to give the party a more “left” image. Emilie Rākete, from Organise Aotearoa, tweeted that Shaw “needs to resign,” adding that co-leader “Marama Davidson stands with working class and brown communities.”

Socialist Aotearoa’s Elliot Crossan similarly wrote on Facebook that “a Marama Davidson-led Green Party would be a force for good that the left could (critically of course) support,” whereas Shaw was a “neoliberal” who should be “booted out.”

Such statements are nonsense. As the record shows, the Greens, like their counterparts in Australia, Europe and elsewhere, are a party of the upper-middle class, backed by significant sections of big business. In 2020, the party has received tens of thousands of dollars from Peter Kraus, a multi-millionaire shareholder in healthcare company Ebos; Phillip Mills, founder of the Les Mills chain of gyms; and Bruce Copeland, who owns software development company Sandfield.

Shaw, a former advisor to PricewaterhouseCoopers and HSBC bank, was elected as co-leader in 2015, not by mistake, but because he embodies the capitalist politics of the party. If the Green Party is still part of the government after the election, it will continue to support an agenda of austerity, handouts to businesses, militarism and anti-immigrant policies.

Unions enforce takeover of Virgin Australia by private equity firm

Martin Scott

Virgin Australia creditors yesterday voted in favour of a $3.5 billion buyout by private equity firm Bain Capital after union leaders urged workers to back the deal.

While the sale will allegedly allow Virgin employees to receive the approximately $451 million owed to them, it will not result in the reinstatement of the 3,000 workers sacked last month, or guarantee the jobs of the remaining 6,000 Virgin staff.

Virgin CEO Paul Scurrah said yesterday that while further cuts were not planned in the short term, if there are “changes” to the federal government’s JobKeeper wage subsidy, “clearly our position on that will have to be reviewed. We cannot give any guarantees at this point in time.”

Virgin Australia Airbus A320 at Christmas Island International Airport [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

In other words, the airline’s remaining workers will keep their jobs for only as long as its owners continue to receive massive sums of public money. JobKeeper is being progressively wound back, beginning this month, meaning that Scurrah’s statements are a virtual guarantee of further mass sackings.

The Australian Federation of Airline Pilots (AFAP), which covers most Virgin pilots, called on workers to support the Bain deal, claiming that the only alternative was liquidation “which would mean millions in lost entitlements for thousands of employees.”

Despite the recent sacking of one third of Virgin’s crew, AFAP has not flagged any action beyond a nebulous vow to “focus on holding Bain and CEO Paul Scurrah to their commitments to grow the airline once the pandemic subsides.”

The Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA), which represents 350 Virgin maintenance workers also urged its members to support the deal.

The ALAEA, along with the Transport Workers Union (TWU) previously objected to Bain’s plan to appoint former Qantas executive Jayne Hrdlicka in a leadership position. Hrdlicka ran low-cost Qantas affiliate Jetstar between 2012 and 2017, during which time the group slashed more than 5,000 jobs. In reality these “voluntary redundancies” were executed with the backing of the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Australian Services Union, which also helped the company impose an 18-month pay freeze on thousands of employees.

The TWU threw its support behind the deal after Bain promised to create a “union advisory council” at the resurrected Virgin. The body, which will comprise three union representatives, Bain, and Virgin CEO Paul Scurrah, will further entrench the unions as an arm of management.

Bain has a long history in the parasitic practice of “leveraged buyouts” in which cash-strapped companies are bought up, huge management fees are accrued, assets are stripped and workers are thrown on the scrapheap to prepare the company for quick resale.

The union advisory council will enforce this agenda. It will insist that workers continue to accept sackings and reduced conditions, in a never-ending regression based on a lie that this will “protect” some jobs.

TWU National Secretary Michael Kaine said he hoped to use the advisory council to influence the makeup of the Virgin board, flagging the union’s intention to subordinate unrest among workers to appeals to upper management.

In an August 25 statement, the TWU “welcome[d] the administrators creditors’ report on Virgin as another milestone for the airline.” The union made no criticism or demands of the company, instead laying the blame for the wave of job losses at Virgin and Qantas at the feet of the Liberal-National federal government.

The statement read: “We will hold the Federal Government to account over its failures on Virgin. It has provided little direction or assurances on the future despite the fact that tens of thousands of jobs are dependent on Virgin getting back up and running.”

In other words, the union is calling for a further transfer of public money into the coffers of big business based on the premise that Virgin is “too big to fail” and must be propped up.

Virgin has already claimed an estimated $156 million in wage subsidies from the falsely-titled JobKeeper scheme, despite sacking thousands of workers and compelling others to take their accrued leave during the pandemic. The company also shared in a $715 million federal relief package for the airline industry announced in March.

Prior to the announcement of “JobKeeper 2.0,” the administrators handling the Virgin sale warned the federal government that leading bidders had threatened to pull out if the wage subsidy was not extended beyond its original end date of September 27.

While airlines throughout the world have been severely impacted by COVID-19, the reality is that Virgin had been running at a loss for years before the pandemic. In August last year, Scurrah announced 750 jobs would be slashed after the airline recorded its seventh consecutive annual loss.

The devastation in the Australian aviation industry is not limited to Virgin. Despite receiving at least $515 million in government handouts and wage subsidies, Qantas last month announced that it would shed 2,050 ground-handling jobs—on top of 6,000 cuts issued in June—while its Jetstar will let go 370 workers.

The cuts follow strikes in December and January by Jetstar pilots and baggage handlers. The TWU and AFAP collaborated with management to minimise the impact of the industrial action, engaging in only rolling stoppages, and halting the strikes over the busy Christmas period.

In response to the latest cuts, the TWU has called for Qantas CEO Alan Joyce to “step down and let some civilised, moderate, responsible leadership take place at Qantas.” This characterisation of the assault on workers as the product of an individual CEO promotes the illusion that a change in management could provide fair conditions and stable employment for workers.

The reality is that the attack on jobs and conditions currently being carried out under the guise of the coronavirus pandemic is the inevitable result of businesses being operated solely to serve the profit interests of their shareholders.

Contrary to the claims of the unions, no change in management, “advisory council” or corporate bailout will protect jobs in aviation or any other industry. The establishment of the “advisory council” demonstrates that the unions are the direct agents of the most predatory and rapacious sections of finance capital.

The fight to defend jobs and conditions means a rebellion against these corporatised, anti-working class organisations. New organisations of struggle, including independent rank-and-file committees, must be established throughout the industry, to develop a genuine industrial and political counter-offensive, uniting all aviation employees and turning out to other sections of the working class facing similar corporate attacks.

The issue of an alternative political perspective is bluntly posed by the situation itself. The unending cuts to jobs and wages show that the defence of the most basic social rights is incompatible with the private ownership of the airlines. They must be placed under public ownership and democratic workers’ control. This means the fight for a workers’ government and for socialism.

Profits soar as global crash intensifies social crisis in Australia

Mike Head

Data released this week confirmed that Australia—like the rest of the world—has been plunged into the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and with much deeper cuts to jobs, wages and working class living standards still to come.

The economy shrank by 7 percent in the three months to June 30, following a 0.3 percent drop in the March quarter. That is many times worse than during the global financial crisis of 2008–09. More than one million people have been thrown out of work already, accompanied by the greatest cut to wages since World War II.

Nothing comparable has been inflicted on workers since the 1930s, when output plunged by 17.1 percent from 1929 to 1932 and joblessness reached at least 20 percent of the labour force.

Workers line up outside a Centrelink office in Melbourne [Credit: @LordSedgwick, Twitter]

Currently, unemployment is officially 7.5 percent and is expected to rise to about 10 percent by year’s end. But the government itself admits that the real rate of joblessness is already above 11 percent. That is around 20 percent if under-employment is counted.

Another 3.5 million workers are still not counted as jobless because they depend on the JobKeeper wage subsidies being paid to their employers. More than a million of these workers will be cut off JobKeeper by December, according to the government’s estimates.

If not for unprecedented government business bailout packages and high prices for iron ore exports, the crash would have been bigger. The private sector economy contracted by 12 percent.

None of these figures yet register the further economic slide in the current September quarter because of the COVID-19 resurgence in the key industrial state of Victoria that resulted from the premature, corporate-driven, lifting of safety restrictions nationally in June.

While total wages fell a record 2.5 percent in the June quarter, seasonally adjusted gross company profits soared by 15 percent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This points to the further restructuring of class relations in favour of the wealthy elite that is already well underway.

Alongside the impoverishment of wide layers of the working class, especially the young and the most poorly-paid workers, the financial aristocracy is reaping the benefits of the crash and demanding even more in terms of tax cuts and attacks on working conditions.

An immense social disaster is looming as the government slashes the levels of the JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments that have barely kept millions of working class households alive since March.

On Wednesday, the same day that the recession statistics were released, the Labor Party opposition joined hands with the Liberal-National government to push through parliament legislation to allow the already paltry payments to be cut from September 28.

JobKeeper wage subsidies will be reduced from $750 a week—about the level of the minimum wage—to $500 a week by January, while the $550-a-week JobSeeker unemployment benefits could be halved by then, taking them back to sub-poverty levels.

This month also will see the start of the lifting of moratoriums on mortgage repayments and tenant evictions, as well as an end to a permission introduced early in the pandemic for businesses to trade while insolvent. Millions of working class and small business households face financial ruin and homelessness. Australia’s household debt levels—about double annual incomes—are among the highest in the world.

Already, the data shows that household consumption fell by a record 12.1 percent in the June quarter, driven by a record 9.8 percent cut in hours worked. At the same time, the household savings ratio jumped from 6 percent to 19.8 percent. Fearing for the future of their jobs and livelihoods, people tried to pay down debt or put money aside for what lies ahead.

In a particularly disturbing sign of social distress, household expenditure on health services decreased 25.6 percent through the year to June. That is, people either put off medical treatment because of cost or due to fear of infection as the pandemic hit health care workers and aged care facilities.

The wages “share” of national income fell below 50 percent for the first time since the 1950s, accelerating a decline that has continued since the 1970s and further fueling soaring social inequality.

“Average non-farm compensation per employee” actually increased by 3.3 percent in the June quarter, while total wages fell by 2.5 percent. That is because the greatest losses are being imposed on low-paid and casualised workers, not highly-rewarded corporate executives.

Adding to the social divide, many major companies enjoyed bonanzas from multi-billion dollar handouts. Others profiteered from the pandemic-triggered crash by ruthlessly cutting jobs and wages, or by cashing in on higher sales of equipment needed for working at home.

Subsidies via the JobKeeper and “Boosting Cash Flow for Employers” programs totaled $52 billion in the June quarter. Other COVID-19 related subsidies, including those made by state governments, added another $3.6 billion. These are by far the largest business handouts in Australia’s history, dwarfing those made during the 2008–09 crash.

Construction employers were among the highest JobKeeper recipients, obtaining nearly $3.5 billion despite virtually all building sites being kept open. They also received more than $2.5 billion in cash flow boost payments.

Employers in Professional, Scientific and Technical Services received about the same, followed closely behind by those in Health Care and Social Assistance, Accommodation and Food Services, and Retail. In many cases, large firms continued to receive hefty payments despite making increased profits as a direct result.

As in the US, big business is benefiting also from record low interest rates on loans supplied by the central bank. Just before the recession statistics were published, the Reserve Bank of Australia said it would pump another $110 billion of “stimulus” into the economy through support for cheap loans, more than doubling its cash injections to $200 billion.

Regardless of these subsidies, corporate investment plunged—another indicator of a deeper crash to come. Private capital expenditure dropped by 6.9 percent, despite a small lift in the mining sector due to higher iron ore and gold prices. Investment in housing fell by 7.3 percent.

Ludicrously, the government and the corporate media tried to put a gloss on the June quarter crash by saying it was not as bad as comparable countries. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said gross domestic product fell by 20.4 percent in the UK, 13.8 percent in France, 11.5 percent in Canada, 10.1 percent in Germany and 9.1 percent in the US.

As in the Great Depression, however, the economic and social crisis in Australia is inextricably bound up with the global breakdown. Australian capitalism depends heavily on exports of raw materials, mainly to China, and foreign investment, primarily from the US.

The pandemic is not simply a biological event. Worldwide, its impact has been catastrophic because of years of cuts to medical research and healthcare, followed by indifferent and incompetent government COVID-19 responses and a homicidal rush to “reopen” economies.

The only response of the ruling class is to ratchet up its decades-long assault on working class conditions. Frydenberg confirmed that the government will use its delayed October 6 annual budget to fast-track personal income tax cuts, which will overwhelmingly benefit high-income recipients. It will also boost business investment subsidies, while trying to impose further “industrial relations reform”—that is, deeper cuts to workers’ wages and conditions.

Behind the scenes, the trade unions are collaborating with the government and employers in five “working groups” on industrial relations and other measures to boost economic output at the expense of workers. These groups are due to report this month also, underscoring the role of the unions and the Labor Party in propping up Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government and enforcing the attacks being inflicted on the working class.

Brazilian governor suspended for COVID-19 emergency contracts fraud

Miguel Andrade

On August 28, the governor of Rio de Janeiro, Wilson Witzel, was suspended from office for 180 days by Justice Benedito Gonçalves of the Brazilian high court in connection with alleged kickbacks on contracts between the state government and private service providers.

On the same day as Justice Gonçalves’ decision, Justice Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Court (STF) authorized Rio de Janeiro’s State Parliament to proceed with Witzel’s impeachment trial. The trial had begun in early June, with a 69–1 authorization vote, and was later suspended by STF President Dias Toffoli during Moraes’ recess period. The impeachment trial is now expected to proceed swiftly, and permanently remove Witzel from office next week.

At the center of the investigations are payments to several private service providers to build and operate field hospitals and other health infrastructure to treat COVID-19 patients in the state.

Field hospital at Rio’s Maracanã stadium [Credit: Agencia Brasil]

Brazil currently has the second highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the world, trailing only the United States, with more than 4 million cases and 126,000 deaths, and an average of more than 40,000 new cases and roughly a thousand deaths every day.

These figures are a direct result of the long-standing social abyss that defines every aspect of life in Brazil and Rio de Janeiro in particular, where 22 percent of the population live in so-called favelas or slums.

The payments under investigation were made under emergency legislation enacted in March to allow the fast-tracking of public bids. The most prominent contract, worth almost a billion reais (US$125 million), was granted to a so-called “Social Organization,” Labas, which also runs a field hospital and other health facilities in São Paulo. Labas was hired to build seven field hospitals in Rio de Janeiro, but only one was opened before the state government terminated the company’s contract in early June, after an investigation that implicated Governor Witzel had begun.

“Social Organizations” are companies constituted in Brazil with the goal of managing privatized public infrastructure and are ubiquitous across cities and states. The investigations now implicating Witzel started with schemes that dated from his predecessor, Sergio Cabral, currently serving a 282-year sentence after 13 guilty verdicts for corruption.

Witzel has been charged with being part of a scheme coordinated by well known businessman Mario Peixoto, suspected of funneling 500 million reais (US$70 million) out of fraudulent contracts since 2012, and one of the controllers of Labas. Witzel’s ties with Peixoto were initially raised during the 2018 election campaign. Prosecutors suspected that payments made by Peixoto to Witzel’s wife, a lawyer, were in fact a cover for kickbacks.

While the supreme court initially denied prosecutors’ request for Witzel’s arrest, it did authorize the arrest of the president of Witzel’s Social Christian Party, Minister Everaldo, as a key player in the scheme.

Minister Everaldo came to national prominence in 2016 for baptizing then-congressman and now President Jair Bolsonaro in the Jordan River, a fashion for moneyed Evangelicals in Brazil.

Witzel’s suspension from office and the impeachment trial underscore the deep crisis gripping the Brazilian ruling class, massively intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exposed the bankruptcy of the whole ruling establishment.

While Congress, including the Workers Party (PT)-led opposition, voted to bail out the financial markets with an unprecedented injection of 17 percent of the country’s GDP, a bare 15 percent of that money was directed to the so-called emergency relief of US$ 100, the only income standing between tens of millions of Brazilians and poverty. That relief has now been cut in half, as governors and mayors of every party push for a homicidal return to schools, and the ruling class piles pressure upon the unemployed to accept a return to work under conditions of a full-blown spread of the pandemic.

Witzel is one of a number of governors and officials facing similar charges. Four of his last five predecessors as governor of Rio have been convicted and sentenced on corruption charges.

The state of Rio de Janeiro became, from the beginning of the 21st century and the rise to national power of the Workers Party (PT), the center of a series of federally-sponsored infrastructure projects and poverty and violence-reduction schemes. The PT allied itself with the Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) and other old bourgeois-nationalist forces which retained their strength in Rio de Janeiro from the period when it was Brazil’s capital, promising to reverse the city’s decades-long social decay.

The city hosted the 2007 Pan-American games, and then was chosen to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. In 2014, it hosted several games, including the final match, of the Soccer World Cup in the iconic Maracanã stadium—turned into a field hospital during the initial months of the spread of the pandemic in Brazil.

The state also became a center of the industry that developed around the exploitation of newly-discovered “pre-salt” deep-sea oil fields, and suffered the worst crisis of any Brazilian state with the end of the China-fueled commodity boom in the middle of the decade.

The state is also the political base of the fascist Jair Bolsonaro. Witzel was initially elected as one of his key allies, along with São Paulo governor João Doria. Both promoted the same ultra-right law and order policies, giving the most fascistic elements within the murderous state police forces a blank check to carry out mass killings. In Rio de Janeiro, this resulted in a 14 percent rise in deaths caused by the police, to 881 last year alone. These police killings now account for 30 percent of the total number of homicides in the state.

Witzel’s Social Christian Party had been one of the foremost supporters of a Bolsonaro presidency, which motivated stunts like the Bolsonaro’s baptism by Minister Everaldo in 2016. Rio de Janeiro is also Bolsonaro’s main political base, from which he was elected seven times to the House, serving 28 years as a representative before the 2018 elections.

With the beginning of the pandemic, however, both Doria and Witzel distanced themselves from Bolsonaro’s blanket denial that COVID-19 posed any threat. They feigned concern for the spread of the disease, imposing partial quarantines in Sao Paulo and Rio that have now been almost totally lifted. Doria’s and Witzel’s distancing themselves from Bolsonaro in March came as the Brazilian president faced mounting opposition to his far-right policies, and also as corruption scandals began to engulf the president himself, with Rio state prosecutors charging that his son, Flávio, took part in corruption schemes as a Rio state legislator.

The investigation into Flávio’s corruption schemes uncovered links between Bolsonaro’s family and far-right Rio vigilante groups known as militias, and especially the “Crime Office” gang, suspected of murdering Rio de Janeiro city councilor Marielle Franco of the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) in 2018.

India-China border tensions flare anew, posing threat of catastrophic military conflict

Deepal Jayasekera

The four-month-old border crisis between nuclear-armed India and China has escalated sharply in recent days, posing the danger of a military conflict that could have catastrophic consequences for the people of Asia and the world.

New Delhi and Beijing have accused each other of violating their de facto border, the Line of Actual Control (LAC), on the night of August 29–30, in the remote Himalayan region where Indian-held Ladakh meets Chinese-held Aksai Chin.

India’s Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, which is presiding over a COVID-19-triggered health and socioeconomic disaster, has been especially bellicose. Shortly before last weekend’s confrontation on the shores of Pangong Tso lake, India’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat, declared that India had a viable “military option to deal with transgressions by the Chinese Army in Ladakh … if talks at the military and the diplomatic level fail.”

India’s increasingly aggressive stance against China has been encouraged at every point by Washington, which is working to exploit the geopolitical rivalry between India and China to further integrate New Delhi into its military-strategic offensive against Beijing.

Even before the border dispute erupted into a violent clash in the Galwan Valley on the night of June 15, which left dozens of Indian and Chinese soldiers dead, the Trump White House and senior Congressional Democrats had demonstratively intruded into the dispute, labelling Beijing the “aggressor.”

Since then, Washington has repeatedly tied the Indo-Chinese border dispute to the US-incited South China Sea conflict, citing both as examples of Chinese aggression and key reasons why it must dramatically escalate its anti-China offensive.

Both India and China now have tens of thousands of troops, warplanes and tanks forward deployed at bases and camps near the LAC, whose exact location is itself in dispute at numerous points along their roughly 3,480-kilometer (2,160-mile) border.

Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar recently called the tense situation at the border “surely the most serious situation” since the month-long 1962 Sino-Indian border war. In making this assessment, Jaishankar noted that “the quantum of forces currently deployed by both sides at the LAC is … unprecedented.”

According to media reports, India has deployed three additional army divisions, comprising about 60,000-70,000 troops, in eastern Ladakh (which borders Aksai Chin), raising its total troop strength in the region to 80,000-90,000. More than 120 main battle tanks have also been positioned at strategic points. Newly purchased US-made lightweight howitzers, as well as various missile batteries, have also been deployed. China has similarly poured large numbers of troops, artillery, planes and missiles into the border area.

In a statement issued last Monday, India’s Ministry of Defence asserted that “pre-emptive” action by its troops on the southern bank of the Pangong Tso lake on the night of August 29 had prevented Chinese troops from securing a strategic position on the Indian side of the LAC. Its statement went on to repeat New Delhi’s position that the onus is on Beijing to deescalate the months-long crisis.

Underscoring that a military clash between India and China could rapidly involve other regional and great powers, New Delhi has accused Pakistan, a close ally of Beijing, of taking advantage of the war tensions with China, to escalate pressure on Indian-held Kashmir.

Yesterday, Chief of Defence Staff Rawat vowed that India is prepared for the possibility of a “two-front” war against China along its northern border and Pakistan in the northwest.

“Should any threat develop along our northern borders,” Rawat told a meeting of the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), “Pakistan could take advantage of that … and therefore we have taken adequate precautions to ensure that any such misadventure by Pakistan is thwarted… In fact, they may suffer heavy losses.” Pakistan, against which India has fought three declared wars and the Modi government has twice ordered provocative and illegal “surgical strikes,” is also a nuclear-weapons state.

Beijing has angrily rejected New Delhi’s claims that its troops violated the LAC last weekend and has accused India of responsibility for the ratcheting up of the border crisis and war tensions.

A Chinese Foreign Minister spokesperson told a press conference Wednesday, that India’s claim that it “pre-empted” Chinese aggression is in fact evidence that it was the one who had violated the LAC. “In China,” said Hua Chunying, “we have a saying about a guilty mind protesting conspicuously he’s innocent. That is what India did. It shows that the Indian troops illegally crossed the line in provocation and unilaterally changed the status quo and broke the two sides’ agreement and consensus.”

Meanwhile, the state-owned Global Times issued a stern, threatening warning to New Delhi in an editorial published Wednesday. “ China,” it declared, “is an immovable neighbour and much stronger than India. The two countries are suitable to be partners in seeking common development. But if New Delhi wants to label Beijing its long-term strategic rival, it needs to be prepared to pay a huge cost. In the meantime, it will never manage to get one more inch of land at China-India border areas.”

The reference to “strategic rival” is a pointed reference to US imperialism’s drive to harness New Delhi to its strategic agenda and transform India into a “frontline” state in its reckless, incendiary confrontation with Beijing.

Speaking at the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum conclave the same day that New Delhi levelled its latest charge of Chinese “aggression,” US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun called for a NATO-style Indo-Pacific alliance to counter China, adding that India is critical to US domination of the region. “So as important as I’d like to think the United States is to this strategy,” said Biegun, “it’s not going to be successful for us without India also standing side by side.”

Publicly, Foreign Minister Jaishankar and the BJP government maintain that India will not become a treaty ally of Washington so as to preserve its “strategic autonomy.”

The reality, however, is that Modi—continuing on the path blazed by the previous Congress Party-led government, which forged an Indo-US “global strategic partnership” in 2005—has integrated India ever more completely into the US strategic offensive against China, in pursuit of the Indian ruling elite’s own predatory ambitions.

This has included opening Indian air bases and ports to routine use by US warplanes and warships, and establishing a web of bilateral, trilateral and quadrilateral military-security partnerships with the US and its most important Indo-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia.

According to Indian government sources, India will join the other members of the Quad—a US-led military security “dialogue” consisting of India, Japan and Australia—in signing a new intelligence-sharing agreement at a forthcoming meeting of the Quad. That meeting, likely later this month, will reportedly be timed to coincide with the annual joint meeting of the US and Indian foreign and defence ministers. New Delhi is also expected to invite Australia to join the US and Japan as a regular participant in the annual Indian-sponsored international naval exercise, Malabar.

In what was an unprecedented message to Beijing from Washington and New Delhi as to the closeness of their ties, they arranged an impromptu naval “passage” exercise when a US naval battle group led by the USS Nimitz, the Pentagon’s biggest aircraft carrier, passed near India on July 20–21. Highlighting the exercise’s significance, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper tweeted, “The strength of US navy aircraft carriers includes the friendships they build.”

The Modi government, abetted by the corporate media and the opposition parties, is using the border crisis with China to whip up a bellicose atmosphere so as to divert attention away from the catastrophic social crisis—India is now leading the world in new COVID 19 cases, and its economy contracted by 23.9 percent between April and June—and so as to push politics further right.

In this the Congress Party is playing a particularly foul role. Throughout the current border crisis, it has attacked Modi and the BJP from the right, accusing them of failing to aggressively oppose China. In a statement issued on Monday, Congress spokesman Randip Surjewala said: “Every few days there are attempts on India’s sovereignty and news of China’s aggression is coming to the fore. They are attacking on our country and capturing our land, but where is the Modi government?”

The catastrophic fate of Belgium’s elderly in the coronavirus pandemic

Jacques Valentin

An article published last month in the New York Times paints a chilling picture of the abandonment of medical care for residents in retirement homes in Belgium throughout the coronavirus epidemic. It led to a national mortality rate of 853 deaths per million inhabitants, which remained the highest level in the world until it was recently overtaken by Peru (871).

As the European ruling class advocated the criminal policy of allowing the virus to spread and arrive at “herd immunity,” the same policy has been seen in country after country. The deaths of care home residents represent often half or more of the virus’ victims. While the elderly are the most vulnerable to the virus, many deaths would have been avoided if appropriate health measures were put in place.

One of the most shocking elements of the Times’s inquiry was that “the paramedical ambulance crews and hospitals categorically refused on several occasions to administer treatment to the elderly, even though hospital beds were available.”

A typical example was a retirement home in Brussels, where the newspaper reconstructed the evolution of the epidemic. A resident was refused hospitalisation by medical personnel who were responding to repeated requests from her family. The medical team blatantly announced to the patient’s son that his mother was going to die and that was all. She was sedated with morphine, and the nursing staff left. She died eight hours later, while the nation’s intensive care beds were at 55 percent capacity.

These cruel refusals of care have been repeated and continue to be the case everywhere in Belgium. The number of elderly deaths in retirement homes without hospitalisation is enormous in Europe, as in the United States. In many cases, the decision not to hospitalise them could not be justified as the outcome of saturated intensive care units.

The Times writes: “Belgian officials say denying care for the elderly was never their policy. But in the absence of a national strategy, and with regional officials bickering about who was in charge, officials now acknowledge that some hospitals and emergency responders relied on vague advice and guidelines to do just that.” In fact, diverse forms of incompetence and criminal negligence have been observed in all countries affected by the pandemic.

The lack of preparation was felt right at the start of the pandemic, as seen by the absence of personal protective equipment. This encouraged the infection of staff and care home residents. Because sick residents and staff were not frequently tested, conforming with irresponsible official directives that were also in place in France, it was impossible to break the chain of contamination.

In Belgium, as in France, this criminal policy was maintained during the epidemic, even though there were sufficient tests available to cover a wider public.

Retirement homes were not prepared for the epidemic shock. Although they accommodate a particularly vulnerable section of the population, the threat to retirement homes had not been evaluated by the health authorities in risk simulations. As elsewhere, official reports had long referenced their vulnerability to infectious diseases, without any corresponding measures taken to stockpile personal protective equipment (PPE) or establish emergency procedures in collaboration with hospitals.

The Times wrote that “only about a third of European nursing homes had infectious disease teams before the Covid-19 pandemic. Most lacked in-house doctors and many had no arrangements with outside physicians to coordinate care.”

Doctors without Borders (MSF), which typically intervenes in historically oppressed countries during health emergencies, and which normally only intervenes in western Europe to aid the most vulnerable segments of the population such as refugees, was obliged to refocus its Belgian interventions to support retirement homes during the pandemic.

Its intervention in the third week of March lasted three months, covering 135 retirement homes. It presented a report to the authorities: “The observations made are catastrophic. … First of all a damning figure: 64 percent of deaths due to Covid-19 in Belgium are from care homes. That is 6,200 people.” In 2015, there were 130,000 people in Belgian retirement homes.

MSF noted in its report that 4,900 people “died in these establishments, sometimes in atrocious conditions.” The attitude of the authorities forced care homes “to assume the functions of hospitals without any means to do so.” The results were terrible, transforming retirement homes into hospices.

In the absence of reliable medical staff working in partnership with retirement homes, the line of contact that connected retirement homes to family doctors was often broken. Even in the structural composition, “The number of nursing and technical staff, already precarious before the crisis due to general underfunding of the sector” was insufficient. “These factors took their toll on the capacity of retirement homes to handle the epidemic wave in their communities.”

According to MSF, hospital admission refusals occurred at 30 percent of retirement homes where it had assisted.

According to the Times, “During the first weeks of the crisis, nearly two thirds of deaths among retirement home residents occurred in hospital. But as the crisis worsened and the directives of geriatric services started to circulate, this number fell. … Hospitals still had available space. Even at the height of the pandemic, 1,100 out of 2,400 intensive care beds in the country were available, according to Niel Hens, government advisor and professor at Anvers University.”

In the interviews conducted by the Times, hospital directors denied any error or fault, responding with insulting arguments, declaring that nursing-home staff were seeking treatment for terminal patients who only needed to be comforted in the face of death.

Belgium’s National Health Minister, Maggie De Block, refused to be interviewed and did not reply to the Times’s written questions.

The MSF staff were struck by the frequent signs of psychological trauma among personnel; they often gave priority to psychological help at the start of interventions in retirement homes. They report that the conditions were similar to those of war and disaster zones.

The lack of preparation and means of handling the crisis in retirement homes reveals the openly criminal character of official policy towards workers and retirees in Belgium and across Europe. The ruling class has submitted the health care system to decades of permanant financial austerity, particularly targeting the elderly, those whose labour power can no longer be exploited by the capitalist class. The ruling class proceeds with an open contempt for human life.

SUNY Oneonta orders thousands of students to return home after more than 500 test positive for COVID-19

Alex Findijs

On Thursday, the State University of New York (SUNY) at Oneonta suspended all on-campus activities after a widespread outbreak of COVID-19 on campus. In a drastic reversal of policy by the university, all classes have been transitioned to online learning for the duration of the semester.

The decision to close the campus by SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras comes just 11 days after the start of classes. As of Thursday night, a staggering 507 people had tested positive for COVID-19, nearly 17 percent of the student body on campus.

Against the direct advice of Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the university has ordered all students living on campus to leave the dorms by Monday and return to their homes. In other words, thousands of students, some of whom may be carrying the virus, will be traveling throughout the county back to their homes, possibly taking the virus with them.

On Monday, Dr. Fauci told NBC’s “Today” show that the absolute worst thing colleges can do during coronavirus outbreaks is to send students home where they may unknowingly spread the virus to new areas of the country.

It should be said in no uncertain terms that the decision by the administration to reopen for in-person learning, under conditions in which the pandemic continues to rage unabated, was reckless and criminal.

The full extent of the consequences caused by this decision is still to be determined.

On top of the fact that hundreds of students have already become ill, it is quite likely that the reopening of SUNY has led to the spread of the virus to the surrounding communities. Now, as thousands of students begin to pack their bags and travel home, there is no doubt that some students will unknowingly be bringing the virus home with them, leading to an increase in outbreaks throughout the country.

The case of SUNY Oneonta is just one example—though a particularly sharp one—of just how disastrous the policy of reopening of schools is to the lives of students, parents, and workers.

Prior to the outbreak, Ostego County had the lowest infection rate in the state. Now it has seen a jump from at most two positive cases per day to more than twenty. The infection rate in the county has reached 4.5 percent of those tested each day, several times greater than the 0.5 percent positivity rate of August 27.

The explosion of cases at SUNY Oneonta should stand as a sharp warning to colleges and public schools across the country which are preparing to reopen for in-person learning in the coming weeks. It is not possible to reopen schools safely while the pandemic continues to spread across the country. To do so will only lead to a resurgence of the contagion and more death.

Naturally, the SUNY system and the Democratic Party-controlled state government have refused to take responsibility for the catastrophe they created.

SUNY Oneonta President Barbara Jean Morris told the Otsego County Board of Representatives on Wednesday in a remarkable state that: “I don't think our plan actually did fall short.” She went on to say that the high viral load among students meant that “all plans would have broken down.”

What a sordid excuse! Well before the opening of SUNY, there existed an immense body of scientific research showing the centrality of keeping schools closed as part of any plan to contain the pandemic. There was and continues to be scientific data showing a drastic surge of infections among small children and adolescents throughout the course of the pandemic. Just a brief collection includes the following:

• A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA ) in late July concluded that the widespread closure of schools in mid-March saved at least 40,600 lives over a 16-day period and resulted in an estimated 1.37 million fewer infections over a 26-day period in the spring. Those states that closed earliest saw the largest relative reductions in infections and deaths.

• Another JAMA study released around the same time found that babies and young children infected with COVID-19 could carry high viral loads in their throats and airways—up to 100 times the amount of adults.

• The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association released a report on August 3 which documented an extensive compilation of data from states on child COVID-19 cases. It found that while children represented only 8.8 percent of all cases in states reporting cases by age, over 338,982 had tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic.

• The same report noted that the overall rate for COVID-19 among children is 447 cases per 100,000 in the population. Moreover, 97,078 new child cases were reported from July 16 to July 30, a 40 percent increase from the previous period.

The fact of the matter is that the disaster at SUNY, like many others, was entirely predictable and preventable. Hundreds of schools and universities across the country opened for in-person learning knowing full well the dangers the policy posed to students, teachers, and faculty. They did so under direct orders from the Trump administration and with the full support of the Democratic Party.

This reality is underscored by the fact that SUNY regulations, in coordination with the Democratic state government, do not require any schools to conduct mandatory testing. Of the 64 schools in the SUNY system, only three required coronavirus testing before or upon arrival. SUNY Oneonta only requested that students self-isolate for at least seven days before returning to campus.

This policy is not an oversight or simply poor planning. Cuomo has referred to college students and staff as the “canary in the coal mine.” Now he is utilizing the outbreak in Oneonta to temper the state for the horrors that are about to unfold in public schools.

Cuomo stated during a press conference that “what we're seeing in colleges I think is going to be replicated in K-12.” Referring to the plans of public schools for reopening, he elaborated that “if they are not followed, you will see students get infected, you will see the transmission rate go up, you will see schools close. Some of that is inevitable.”

In other words, Cuomo expects large outbreaks to occur at schools and he accepts this fate as an inevitable outcome. The infections and deaths of thousands of people are of no consequence to the Democratic Governor of New York.

The claim that thousands of people must become infected and potentially die is an outrageous lie. The working class must not accept any amount of infection or any number of deaths as inevitable. The working class and youth are not test subjects or human sacrifices for the profits of capitalists.

Workers and youth must be warned: there exists no constituency within the ruling class that will fight in the interests of workers’ lives and livelihoods.

Students, educators, and school staff must organize together, independently of both big business parties and the corporate-controlled unions to oppose the deadly reopening of schools. The resources are available to provide all educators and students with high-quality technology and educational material for distance learning.

Opposition to school reopenings mounts across Florida as spread of COVID-19 deepens

Matthew Taylor

Opposition to the forced reopening of schools across Florida is building each day, as this policy has already produced over 1,200 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at dozens of schools. In just the first three days after reopening schools Monday, Hillsborough County School District, which encompasses Tampa, Florida, reported 28 cases involving 23 schools and the district office, bringing the total cases in Hillsborough to 37,821.

More broadly, the spread of COVID-19 continues to deepen throughout the state, with 637,013 confirmed cases and over 11,800 deaths as of September 4. Both figures likely represent only a fraction of the total as a lack of testing and an official misinformation campaign on the part of the right-wing Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and the Trump administration have deliberately concealed the true spread of the disease.

On Friday, students in Leon County, home to the state capitol Tallahassee, protested the deadly conditions under which they are being forced to learn.

Announcing their walkout on Facebook, the group of students stated: “During the summer Florida Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis released a statewide executive mandate overriding local rule and forcing Florida school boards to open brick and mortar schools in August despite local COVID testing positivity rates and despite Florida remaining one of the top three states for community spread of the coronavirus in the nation.”

The statement added, “Students, teachers, and parents across the state spoke out all summer. Florida Education Association filed a lawsuit that has constantly been tripped up by judges that are playing politics with people's lives.”

The demonstration took place shortly after the Leon County School district confirmed that seven cases of COVID-19 had been confirmed within the first week of reopening schools.

Maddelina Kaji, a senior at Leon High School digitally, told local news station WCTV: “This means so much to me because my grandfather died in April because of coronavirus. So, since then, trying to prevent the spread has been my number one priority and really how I’ve been dealing with that trauma. So that’s why I’m here today. I don’t want anyone else to ever experience what I experienced.”

Florida educators have continued to organize opposition to reopening. In Jacksonville on Tuesday, the Duval County school board was addressed by multiple teachers throughout the district including Bradley Fisher, a member of the newly formed Duval County Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee.

Fisher told the assembled board members, “I think it’s appropriate tonight that the board meeting started with a discussion of how many students are enrolled and how that will affect money. Because clearly that is at the heart of the decision to reopen these schools so unsafely. Dollars and cents before the lives of our children.”

Fisher was referring to a figure presented in Duval County Superintendent Dr. Dianne Green’s opening report. She stated that student enrollment in the county, currently at 108,041, was off by 3,416 students. If those students are not enrolled in classes by mid-October, the district stands to lose $23,376,464 in state funding.

Fisher went on to state the demands issued by the safety committee. He was followed by more local educators who criticized the safety measures in place as grossly inadequate to prevent the spread of the virus, including a science teacher who described the ineffectiveness of desk shields and other token items to contain the aerosolized virus.

The teachers were followed by three local doctors who strongly criticized the reopening of schools and called for any further decisions on reopening schools to be guided by genuinely scientific data.

The DeSantis administration has remained intransigent in fighting efforts by educators and students to reverse the reopening of schools. It was reported this week that the governor’s office will spend at least half a million dollars to pay private attorneys to represent the state in its court battle against the Florida Education Association (FEA) and the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, who filed a lawsuit last month challenging Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran’s July 6 order requiring all schools to be open five days a week for in-person classes at the beginning of the school year. If districts do not comply with the Commissioner’s order, they face the elimination of state funding.

In hearings last week, a Leon County judged sided with the unions and issued a preliminary injunction against the commissioner’s order. However, that order was later blocked by the state court of appeals, which placed a stay on the injunction. In rejecting the plaintiffs’ claim that Corcoran’s order violated the Florida state constitution’s guarantee of safe and secure public schools, the appellate court made the outlandish claim that “Nothing in the emergency order requires any teacher or student to return for in-person instruction at a brick and mortar school.”

DeSantis has also moved to reduce testing in Florida. Earlier this week, DeSantis eliminated the state’s contract with Quest Diagnostics to conduct COVID-19 testing after the company had delayed reporting the results of 75,000 tests to the Florida Department of Health due to a technical error.

Though the individuals who had taken the tests were informed of their results in a timely manner, DeSantis cited the negative impact the newly released figures would have on the state’s COVID-19 Dashboard, which had initially reported 3,773 new cases last Monday, with a 5.9 percent test positivity rate. When the new data is included, the number of new cases more than doubled to 7,643, with a 6.8 percent positivity rate.

Before the contract with Quest was eliminated, the company had conducted approximately 1.4 million tests since the start of the pandemic, roughly 30 percent of the total in Florida. DeSantis is evidently seeking to exploit the company’s recent failure to promptly report test results in order to dramatically reduce overall testing in Florida and facilitate the further reopening of the economy.

The governor’s contempt for the lives of those he represents was displayed earlier this week, when he met with representatives of bars and nightclubs and pledged to lift the ban on their operations soon. DeSantis also lifted the state’s ban on personal visits to nursing homes, a move that will further imperil the state’s most vulnerable population. Approximately 80 percent of COVID-19 deaths in Florida have occurred among residents 65 or older.

In order to fight back against the thoroughly reactionary DeSantis administration, which is dutifully implementing the policies demanded by Trump and the entire ruling class, the working class must assert its own independent interests by organizing the vast opposition that exists throughout the state and country. The urgent task is to unite across district and state lines through the formation of a network of independent, rank-and-file safety committees.

No confidence can be placed in the FEA and its parent organizations, the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which are intimately tied to the Democratic Party and fully support the capitalist system that is responsible for mass deaths and suffering from the pandemic. The legal maneuvers of the FEA—which even if successful would still allow districts to reopen at their discretion—are meant to cover up the fact that they refuse to mobilize their 137,000 members to halt the homicidal drive to reopen schools across Florida.

There is growing sentiment for a broad-based struggle to halt the opening of schools, stop the spread of the pandemic, and save lives. What is required is the building of a conscious leadership to orient educators, parents and students to the broader working class, and to coordinate this struggle on a national and global scale.