US Congress threatens to cut funding for Philippines police and military

Tom Peters

In an extraordinary move that will further intensify the political crisis swirling around President Rodrigo Duterte’s government in Manila, the United States Congress will consider suspending funds for the Philippines police and armed forces.

The proposed “Philippine Human Rights Act” was introduced by Democratic Party congresswoman Susan Wild, co-sponsored by 25 other Democrats and backed by the AFL-CIO trade union bureaucracy. Wild introduced the bill on Wednesday, saying it was in response to the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020, signed into law by the “brutal regime” of President Duterte in July. The law, she said, had been used to “ramp up efforts targeting labor organizers, workers and political opponents. This law allows suspects to be detained by the police or military without charges for as long as 24 days and placed under surveillance for up to 90 days.”

The US military presenting the Philippine Marine Corps with a weapons shipment in 2017 [Credit: US Embassy in the Philippines]

Coinciding with the introduction of the bill, Facebook announced on Wednesday that it was removing “hundreds” of pro-Duterte accounts based in China and the Philippines, some of them allegedly linked to the Philippine military and police.

Duterte’s “anti-terror” law is extremely repressive and anti-democratic. It is part of the drive by governments around the world to strengthen the powers of the police, military and intelligence agencies in order to suppress rising working-class struggles against social inequality and war.

The Democrats, however, are indifferent to the many human rights abuses carried out by the Duterte regime. Wild’s statement to Congress, which ended with the words, “Let us make clear that the United States will not participate in the repression, let us stand with the people of the Philippines,” was profoundly hypocritical.

John Kerry, former Democratic Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, met with Duterte following his election victory in 2016 and pledged $32 million in US funding for the Philippines police and death squads to carry out a murderous “war on drugs.” The Commission on Human Rights estimates that as many as 30,000 people, overwhelmingly poor and working class, have been killed in Duterte’s reign of terror, which was also endorsed by President Trump.

Wild’s proposal exploits the pretext of “human rights” in pursuit of the strategic aims of US imperialism. The Trump administration, with the bipartisan support of the Democrats, is ramping up its provocations and preparations for war against China, which is seen as the major obstacle to US domination over the Asia-Pacific region and the world economy. Washington can no longer tolerate the wavering of its former colony, the Philippines, which would be on the front lines of a war between the nuclear-armed powers.

The Duterte regime has engaged in an extremely fraught balancing act, seeking to maintain the US alliance while strengthening investment and trade relations with China, in particular to encourage the building of infrastructure in the countryside to benefit sections of Philippine industry.

Duterte has also withdrawn from some US military exercises and in February responded to US economic sanctions by threatening to pull out of the Visiting Forces Agreement which has allowed US troops to be stationed in the Philippines for the past two decades.

These moves raised the ire of sections of the Philippine elite who are intimately tied to Washington, including the top military brass. These forces are coalescing behind Vice President Leni Robredo in a growing movement to oust Duterte. Robredo, despite being part of Duterte’s cabinet, is a political rival from the opposition Liberal Party.

From 2016 to 2019, the United States provided the Philippines with military assistance amounting to US$554 million, according to the Stratbase ADR Institute think tank. The US legislators’ threat to withdraw this money is calculated to either force Duterte to fully align against China or, failing that, to compel the military to oust him and install a more pliant pro-US regime led by Robredo.

Duterte, feeling the ground move from under him, sought to appease the US in his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. For the first time, he declared that the 2016 ruling by the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) that the Philippines had sovereignty over areas of the South China Sea also claimed by China, was “beyond compromise and beyond the reach of passing governments to dilute, diminish or abandon. We firmly reject attempts to undermine it.”

The Obama administration had urged the Philippines to seek the PCA ruling as part of its efforts to justify US militarisation against so-called Chinese “expansionism.” Current US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly threatened to “take firm action” alongside other countries against Beijing’s “unlawful claims” in the South China Sea. For the past four years, however, Duterte had shelved the territorial dispute in the interests of securing investment and loans from China.

US and Philippines troops conduct a joint exercise [Source: Wikipedia]

Duterte’s speech was denounced by pro-US opposition figures as four years too late. Senator Risa N. Hontiveros-Baraquel described it as “lip service to the idea of sovereignty,” telling a webinar: “We must resume operations against the poaching in our Exclusive Economic Zone, escort and protect our fishing vessels, reinforce our presence and facilities on the features we occupy, join joint patrols with other nations in the West Philippine Sea.”

Another opposition legislator, Manuel Cabochan III, a former Navy lieutenant, told the Manila Bulletin that Duterte’s words had to be followed by action, including participation in naval exercises in the South China Sea. In a xenophobic tirade, Cabochan attacked “illegal immigration and the employment of Chinese in our country” and denounced Duterte’s “preference for Chinese-owned or -linked firms in government projects.”

This elite opposition to Duterte is fully supported by the Stalinist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). After enthusiastically backing Duterte’s rise to power in 2015–2016, the CPP and its allied organisations are now playing a major role in channeling the widespread anger and hatred of workers and youth towards Duterte behind the rival, pro-US and anti-Chinese factions of the bourgeoisie, including the military.

In a statement yesterday the CPP “applauded” Wild and fellow Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes for backing the legislative threat to withdraw military aid to the Philippines. “They deserve the gratitude of the Filipinos who seek an end to the widespread killings, abductions, torture, village hamletting and other gross abuses,” a CPP spokesperson declared.

Far from opposing the Philippines armed forces, however, CPP founder Jose Maria Sison has repeatedly stated that he has “friends” among the top military brass, and has called on these “pro-US” and “patriotic elements” to intervene against Duterte. The CPP has also declared that it is preparing to enter negotiations for an end to the New People’s Army’s armed conflict and a possible coalition with Robredo if she replaces Duterte.

The Stalinists advocate a regime change operation that will install a new government resting on the military and determined to join the US in a war against China. This does not represent a progressive alternative to Duterte. The working class must decisively break from the CPP’s perspective and take up the fight for international socialism, which corresponds to workers’ own independent class interests, in opposition to every faction of the national bourgeoisie.

Washington continues to ramp up tensions with Beijing over Taiwan

Ben McGrath

Tensions are continuing to escalate between Beijing and Taipei, stoked by the United States’ provocative maneuvers in the region. Beijing has responded by sending dozens of fighter jets and bombers on multiple flights near Taiwan this month, with some travelling beyond the median line separating the mainland from the island. The crossing of this unofficial border demonstrates the growing potential for an armed conflict, even unintentional, to break out.

On September 22, Taipei accused two Chinese Shaanxi Y-8 anti-submarine aircraft of entering Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) for the fifth time since September 17. Taipei also denounced Beijing for allegedly sending two H-6 bombers and sixteen fighters across the Taiwan Strait’s median line on September 18. On September 9 and 10, China reportedly held drills with nearly two dozen aircraft and seven naval vessels inside Taiwan’s ADIZ, between the island and the Pratas (or Dongsha) Islands, claimed by Taipei.

Krach with Douglas Hsu, director general of Taipei's Department of North American Affairs and Brent Christensen of the American Institute in Taiwan [Credit: Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs]

It is important to note that governments declare ADIZs unilaterally. They are not legally enforceable by treaties. Beijing’s flights and naval drills have therefore taken place in international airspace and waters. The US has made violating territory claimed by Beijing in the South China Sea a regular practice, on top of military exercises in the region, claiming “freedom of navigation.” No such allowance is made for Beijing, however, even when its operations are in international spaces.

On September 21, responding to complaints from Taipei, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Wang Wenbin stated that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory; there is no so-called median line of the strait.” This followed a statement by China’s defense ministry on September 18: “Recently the US and the Democratic Progressive Party (Taiwan’s ruling party) have stepped up collaboration and frequently stirred up trouble. Those who play with fire will get burned.”

Until 2019, Beijing and Taipei recognized the median line. Outside of an unintentional incident in 2011, Beijing had not crossed the boundary in two decades. This change is due to Washington’s moves to dangerously challenge the status quo over Taiwan.

Beijing’s recent military exercises were timed to coincide with the visit of Keith Krach, the US Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment. Krach arrived in Taiwan on September 17, ostensibly to attend the memorial service of former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui, who passed away on July 30.

Krach is the highest ranking US government official to visit Taiwan since 1979 when Washington ended formal relations with Taipei and recognized Beijing. His visit follows that of US Health Secretary Alex Azar in August, who was previously the highest ranking US official to visit the island in the past four decades. These visits are not coincidental, but are part of a calculated campaign to deepen Washington’s ties with Taipei. This agenda includes the bipartisan passage of the 2018 Taiwan Travel Act authorizing high-level US officials to visit Taiwan.

Krach met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who called the visit a “milestone for a deepened Taiwan-US relationship.” Krach also spoke with Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu and held a closed-door meeting with Economic Minister Wang Mei-hua and other officials.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated after the undersecretary’s departure on Saturday, “Krach fully utilized his time of less than 48 hours in Taiwan. He met with high-level government officials and people from various sectors and held discussions with them on many issues.”

The administration of President Donald Trump is also planning to sell an additional $7 billion worth of military equipment to Taiwan, Reuters reported on September 16. It would be the second largest military package to Taiwan following the $8 billion package last year. The new spend is in addition to the nearly $15 billion worth of weaponry already sold by the Trump administration to the island.

The package includes seven major weapon systems, from cruise missiles, to sea mines and drones. A US official claimed that Taiwan’s military build-up was necessary, while implying more sales could be coming in the future: “There is no equilibrium today [between mainland China and Taiwan]. It is out of balance. And I think that is dangerous.”

Washington is not concerned about defending so-called Taiwanese democracy, but in deflecting internal pressures outwards by scapegoating Beijing for the US economic and social crisis. While blaming China for the COVID-19 pandemic with no evidence whatsoever, Washington is utilizing phony human rights’ concerns over Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and most recently, Tibet.

A September 22 report authored by anti-communist researcher Adrian Zenz, an analyst at the US-based Jamestown Foundation, accused Beijing of forcing 500,000 Tibetans into labor programs throughout the first seven months of this year, with plans to send them to factories throughout China. Zenz has previously published similar reports on Xinjiang, all with very little evidence for their sensational claims.

These denunciations of China are highly selective and hypocritical. Washington has promoted violence against peaceful protesters in the US; attacked journalists exposing US war crimes, most notably Julian Assange, and forced immigrants to the US into jails and concentration camps. In the 20th century, Washington dropped atomic bombs on Japan, stoked barbaric wars in Korea and Vietnam, and backed police states throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

This included support for Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), who fled to Taiwan in 1949 after being defeated in the Chinese Civil War. Washington refused to acknowledge the Chinese Communist Party government in Beijing and allowed the dictatorial Kuomintang regime in Taipei to take China’s seat on the United Nations’ Security Council.

In the 1970s under President Richard Nixon, Washington made a tactical shift, recognizing Beijing in an effort to further undermine the Soviet Union. The US established formal ties with Beijing in 1979 and ended official diplomatic relations with Taipei, a de facto acceptance of the “One China” policy, under which the CCP regime is the acknowledged government of China.

However, in a bid to prevent China from challenging its economic and geo-political hegemony, and in an attempt to divert mounting domestic social tensions, Washington is fanning the flames of war. In August, the US announced that it was making “significant” adjustments to its Taiwan policy and would not be bound by the de facto interpretation of the “One China” policy that has governed relations over Taiwan since 1979.

Beijing has previously made clear that any declaration of Taiwanese independence would trigger a military response. In pursuing its Taiwan policy, Washington is dangerously testing just how far it can push up against Beijing’s red line.

Renewed mass arrests target Kurdish-nationalist HDP in Turkey

Ulaş Ateşçi

Escalating the ongoing crackdown on the Kurdish-nationalist Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), police arrested 20 people yesterday over the investigation launched by Ankara’s Chief Public Prosecutor in the 2014 “Kobani protests” case. The office declared that 61 more people are sought by police. Furthermore, it will demand the lifting of seven HDP deputies’ parliamentary immunity over this same investigation.

This anti-democratic political operation came just a few days after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met with the prosecutor.

HDP detainees include Kars Co-Mayor Ayhan Bilgen, former deputies Sırrı Süreyya Önder, Ayla Akat Aka, Emine Ayna, Beyza Üstün and Altan Tan, and HDP Foreign Relations Commission member Nazmi Gür. Önder was a member of “İmralı delegation” during Turkey’s so-called “peace process” with the PKK—a strategy to use the PKK to strengthen Turkey’s hand in Iraq and Syria. The “peace process” continued in fits and starts from 2009 to 2015, before collapsing when Washington made the Kurdish nationalists its main proxy force in Syria.

According to the Prosecutor’s Office, those arrested are accused of being leaders of the Kurdistan Workers Party: “An investigation was launched … against the so-called executives of the Kurdistan Workers Party/Kurdistan Communities Union (PKK/KCK) terrorist organizations and some executives and members of the party.”

Imprisoned former HDP co-chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ are also part of the investigation. They were in jail since 2016, when Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) passed a constitutional amendment stripping HDP deputies of parliamentary immunity, with Republican People’s Party (CHP) support.

The Prosecutor’s Office continued: “On October 6–8, 2014, in acts of terrorism generally known as the ‘Kobani’ incidents in our country; the so-called executives, youth organization, women’s organization and armed city organization of the PKK/KCK terrorist organization as well as the HDP Central Executive Committee members and co-chairs made several calls to the people to take to the streets and commit acts of violence via social media accounts and some media outlets.”

The “Kobani protests” erupted across the country over the Erdoğan government’s refusal to aid the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Syrian section of KCK, in Kobani during an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) offensive. During the protests, centred in predominantly Kurdish cities, more than 40 people have killed by police or lost their lives in armed clashes with Islamist militias. However, at the end of the month, the government allowed Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters to cross its territory to reinforce YPG militias—PKK’s allies—in Kobani against ISIS.

Simultaneously, police arrested 24 people in several cities in a separate investigation of the “Movement of the Nameless,” an anti-government social media protest movement. According to the state-owned Anadolu Agency, they were arrested over “provocative social media posts” that allegedly “incited people into enmity and hatred, degraded state officials and attempted to erode the elected government.”

While Gazete RED writer Hakan Gülseven was later released, others remain in custody: they include author Temel Demirer, journalist Zeynep Kuray, attorney Tamer Doğan and Social Freedom Party (TÖP) spokeswoman Perihan Koca.

These two simultaneous operations, while nominally related to separate investigations, come amid mounting social anger among workers against the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In neighbouring Greece, mass protests have erupted against Athens’ homicidal herd immunity policy towards the disease.

The Erdoğan government’s other concern is a potential alliance developing between the bourgeois opposition parties, including the HDP, aiming to oust Erdoğan and replace him with a regime more openly aligned with Washington and the European Union (EU) imperialist powers.

While the EU acquiesced to the Spanish state’s crackdown on the Catalan independence referendum in 2017 and its subsequent jailing of Catalan-nationalist politicians, European Commission spokeswoman Ana Pisonero hypocritically denounced Erdoğan’s crackdown on the HDP. She said, “We are waiting for a more formal, high level reaction.”

CHP’s leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has repeatedly declared that “We will come to power together with our friends in the first elections.” These “friends” includes not only its far-right electoral ally, the Good Party, but potentially the HDP as well as two recent AKP split-offs, the Future Party of former AKP Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA).

While jailed former HDP leader Demirtaş has recently called for “broader and more open alliances for democracy, freedom, peace and economic prosperity,” the party announced last week that it “has launched a struggle to create an anti-fascist bloc.”

Mithat Sancar, current co-chair of the HDP, stated yesterday: “These operations constitute the government’s response to our Call to Peace Declaration and to our anti-fascist bloc work.”

Kılıçdaroğlu, one of the HDP’s potential supposedly “anti-fascist” allies against Erdoğan, called him to state the CHP’s “solidarity,” declaring: “Such attacks and operations against the opposition are linked to the fact that that government is trapped, whichever way it turns.”

Although Davutoğlu was the prime minister in 2014, his newly founded Future Party’s spokesperson hypocritically denounced the crackdown on the HDP, stating: “Regardless of our political views, we must stand firm in the face of injustice and cruelty.” As for the DEVA, it said that such lawless conduct would only benefit “terror organizations.”

However, the AKP government’s increased crackdown on the opposition is also bound up with broader conflicts between Ankara and its NATO imperialist allies, especially over the Syrian war.

Last Sunday, Washington’s special envoy on Syria, James Jeffrey, visited a US military base in northeastern Syria to oversee unity talks between two rival Syrian Kurdish factions, to carve up a Kurdish “autonomous authority.” This would serve as a political façade for a permanent US military occupation of Syria’s oil-producing region.

The negotiations involved the Kurdish National Council in Syria (ENKS) and the Kurdish National Unity Parties led by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the political arm of the YPG. Previously, Ankara accused Washington and Paris, the initiative’s two main backers, of aiming to “legitimise the YPG-PKK” and to build a “terror state” in Syria. Ankara has repeatedly invaded Syria in recent years to drive US-backed Kurdish forces from Turkish-Syrian borders.

There is growing speculation that the Turkish government is a preparing new military operation against the Kurdish nationalist forces.

Commenting on this issue, PYD spokesperson Sama Bakdash told Rudaw that Jeffrey said “Turkey should not attack the Eastern Euphrates or any other part that is currently not under its control. If it does, the US will prevent and sanction it, like it didn’t in the past.” According to the BBC Türkçe, PYD leader Salih Müslim warned: “With the last operation against the HDP, the door to civil war has been opened.”

The direct link between war abroad and police-state policies at home shows that democratic rights, including those of the Kurds, cannot be defended without opposing imperialist war. However, bourgeois opposition parties like the CHP and the Kurdish-nationalist parties are deeply tied to imperialism and are as incapable of waging such a struggle as the Erdoğan government itself. The only force capable of undertaking this struggle is the international working class, mobilized and unified on a socialist and internationalist program.

A murderous pact: The European Union to deport refugees

Peter Schwarz

The “Asylum and Migration Pact,” which the EU Commission presented on Wednesday, is so cynical and inhumane it is hard to find words to describe it. Wrapped up in sugary phrases about “values,” “responsibility” and “solidarity,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has presented a plan that means deportation, misery and certain death for hundreds of thousands.

Günter Burkhardt, the managing director of charity Pro Asyl, called the plan “a diabolical pact of disenfranchisement.” “Driven by right-wing populists, the EU Commission is betraying the right of asylum and the human rights of people seeking protection,” he commented.

Von der Leyen described the pact as a “new beginning” after the dealings with those seeking refuge in Europe from the wars in the Middle East and Africa had repeatedly led to fierce disputes within the EU. “Europe must move away from ad hoc solutions to problems and towards a predictable and reliable system for migration management,” said the EU Commission president.

This “management” is focused on throwing out refugees who have managed to cross the borders of Fortress Europe at the risk of their lives. Elementary principles of the right of asylum and human rights fall by the wayside.

“No refugee quotas, but harsh deportations,” was how news weekly Der Spiegel summed up the core of the plan. The pro-Green Party taz writes, “Faster registration, faster decisions, faster deportation, if possible already at the external borders—these are the most important innovations proposed by the EU Commission in its ‘Migration and Asylum Pact.’” Migration Commissioner Ylva Johansson, who presented the pact together with von der Leyen, said, “The message is: You will return.”

To achieve this, the plan provides for two main innovations: “screening” procedures and “deportation partnerships.”

In the screening procedure, refugees arriving on European coasts are registered and pre-sorted (“screened”) within five days. Those who come from a country from which less than 20 percent of asylum seekers have been recognised so far are placed in the so-called border procedure and are deported again within 12 weeks.

In practice, this is tantamount to abolishing the right of asylum. During the screening and border procedures, refugees are considered not to have entered the country. They have no access to European courts and cannot appeal against a negative decision. The decision is left to the arbitrary rulings of immigration officials, who are often politically right-wing and subject to the instructions of their government. A fair asylum process is not guaranteed.

To make these screening and border procedures possible, reception camps on the European border will be transformed into huge prisons from which there is no escape. The burnt down Moria camp on Lesbos in Greece, which is currently being rebuilt as a tent city, serves as a pilot project. A “task force” from Brussels is to set up a “model project” on Lesbos, where the Commission’s plans will be the first to be applied. Greece has already agreed to a “joint pilot project,” said von der Leyen.

The new camp Moria is a legal no man’s land. Journalists are denied access, as are lawyers. Inmates are not allowed to leave the camp and must live in indescribable conditions. Water is rationed in bottles; there are no showers. Access to the sea next to the camp is blocked by barbed wire.

The “deportation partnerships,” the second innovation of the EU Pact, are a newly devised, perverse form of “European solidarity.” States which refuse to accept a fixed quota of recognised refugees can buy their freedom and show their “solidarity” by deporting a corresponding number of non-recognised refugees in exchange.

In future, states would be able to “choose between reception and assistance with deportation,” said Migration Commissioner Johansson. If they fail in deporting the refugees within eight months, for example, because of illness or refusal by the country of origin, they must take them in themselves.

In practice, this means that states like Hungary, which has been the most brutal in dealing with refugees so far, take on the role of security guard and doorkeeper for Fortress Europe. It is easy to imagine what this portends for the refugees concerned—no means will be too barbaric to put them outside the EU. And the EU itself wants to take the lead in this. To this end, an “EU coordinator for repatriations” is to be appointed.

Von der Leyen’s Migration Plan, which has yet to be approved by the EU Parliament and the member states, leaves all the mechanisms in place that have condemned tens of thousands of refugees to face drowning in the Mediterranean, dying of thirst in the Sahara or enslavement by EU-funded human traffickers in recent years. It does not provide for a resumption of sea rescue operations or an end to cooperation with the notorious Libyan coast guard. Instead, the border management agency Frontex is to be further strengthened to seal Europe’s external borders even more hermetically.

In 2019, only 140,000 refugees had managed to apply for asylum in the EU, of whom at best, a third will be recognised. But even this number—one asylum seeker per 1,000 inhabitants—is too much for the EU.

Officially, the “Asylum and Migration Pact” originates from the EU Commission, but the actual authors are based in the Berlin Chancellery and German Interior Ministry. The proposals were agreed upon with Chancellor Angela Merkel, who currently holds the EU presidency. The Commission is thus essentially adopting a concept of the German EU Council Presidency.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer had already circulated a paper to this effect last November, which was regarded as a kind of roadmap for the German EU Council presidency in the second half of 2020. It advocated “binding preliminary examinations” of asylum applications in detention camps at the EU’s external borders, from where refugees with “unfounded applications” would be directly deported again. The camps should have an extraterritorial character. The EU should participate directly in the preliminary examination and deportation with its own asylum authority and Frontex. These plans are now reflected in the EU paper.

The ruthlessness with which Berlin and Brussels are ignoring elementary fundamental rights and the lives of refugees must be taken as a warning. They are demonstrating the same ruthlessness towards human life in the coronavirus pandemic, where they deliberately accept the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Although infection rates are exploding, businesses and schools remain open so as not to jeopardise the profits of the economy and the assets of the rich.

Faced with the deepest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s and growing resistance from the working class and youth, the ruling class everywhere is turning to authoritarian methods of control. Von der Leyen’s “Asylum and Migration Pact” could also have been written in the party headquarters of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Italian Lega or the French Rassemblement National. It is implementing everything that these extreme right-wing and neo-fascist organisations have been demanding for years.

The working class must unconditionally defend all refugees and their fundamental right to asylum. Only then can workers defend their own democratic and social rights. This requires the construction of an independent movement of the international working class, which fights for the overthrow of capitalism—the cause of fascism, war and poverty—and for a socialist programme.

New bailout for UK corporations as COVID-19 infections rocket

Robert Stevens

Friday saw the highest ever number of daily COVID-19 cases in the UK throughout the pandemic, 6,874, with 34 deaths announced. This topped Thursday’s record of 6,634 new infections, along with 40 deaths. These infection rates are double those recorded a week ago.

Yesterday’s total would have been higher still, but Scotland’s figures, which has seen a huge surge in infections fueled by children and students returning to classroom and lecture halls, were not available due to a power cut at the National Records of Scotland. The government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) upped its estimate of the R (Reproduction) value of the virus to between 1.1 and 1.5. London joins the North East and North West of England as having the highest growth rates of the virus in the country

Separate data from Kings College London (KCL) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed a more realistic 9,000 to 16,000 newly infected each day. KCL runs the COVID Symptom Tracker mobile app, which estimates at least 16,310 daily COVID-19 cases in the last week—more than double last week’s estimate.

London, with a population of nearly 10 million, is on the brink of being locked down and will be added to the COVID-19 watch-list, with its 32 boroughs classed as “areas of concern.” Hospitalisation rates for COVID-19 in the capital tripled within a fortnight to 33.4 by September 18.

Over 13 million people are living under local lockdown. Wales’ two largest cities, Cardiff and Swansea, will go under lockdown on Saturday. This will bring half the Welsh population (1.5 million people) under lockdown. In England, different households were banned from meeting in private homes or gardens from midnight Friday in Leeds, Stockport, Wigan and Blackpool.

COVID-19 is on the rise among all age groups. The highest rates of infection, unlike the initial months of the pandemic, are among those aged 17–24. An 18-year-old was among those who died on Thursday.

Food processing plants have been some of the main vectors for the spread of the virus. On Thursday, a factory worker at the Aunt Bessie's factory in Hull was confirmed to have died, with coronavirus suspected as the cause, only two weeks after a coronavirus outbreak among the 400-strong workforce. The following day the entire East Yorkshire region of England, including Hull, was put at “amber level” after a leap in cases.

The Daily Mail reported Friday, “It is understood another [Aunt Bessie's] employee told bosses that they were feeling unwell on Thursday, September 3—the day before a second staff member reported also being ill.” Despite the worker’s death and others falling ill, including one who is “seriously ill,” the factory remains open.

An outbreak forced the temporary closure, earlier this week, of a Greggs bakery factory in Newcastle. This is just a few weeks after Greggs was forced to temporarily shut its distribution centre, in Bramley, near Leeds, after 20 workers out of 150 tested positive for COVID-19. Three weeks ago, six workers were sent home at the Stoke on Trent factory of another of the largest bakery firms, Mr. Kipling.

Following the pathetic measures outlined by Prime Minister Boris Johnson Tuesday that will do nothing to prevent the spread of the virus, Chancellor Rishi Sunak delivered his delayed budget Thursday, recast as the “Winter Economic Plan.” Having flung open the economy, schools and universities, solely to allow the corporations to continue profitmaking, the government had no plan in place in the face of a public health catastrophe. Until a few weeks ago, Sunak was confidently stating that the government’s jobs furlough scheme would be ending as planned, at the end of October.

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak (centre) with Frances O'Grady, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (left),and (right) Dame Carolyn Julie Fairbairn, Director General of the CBI, London, September 24, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Frank Augstein]

Sunak has now announced a new Job Support Scheme (JSS) in its place. But this is not being implemented for the benefit of millions of workers, whose jobs are on the line, but because big business was screaming for more state subsidies.

The UK scheme will be a watered-down version of Germany’s long-established Kurzarbeit (short-time working) system, which in that country can pay up to 87 percent of net wages to prevent layoffs. On the day of the UK’s lockdown, March 23, the Financial Times lauded it with an article, “Kurzarbeit: a German export most of Europe wants to buy.” The benefits of such a state funded bailout were laid out: “Under the scheme, companies hit by a downturn can send their workers home, or radically reduce their hours, and the state will replace a large part of their lost income.”

Sunak’s scheme is aiming at ensuring corporations can retain their most experienced workers. To qualify, employees will need to be working at least a third of their normal hours, to be paid fully by their employer. For the hours they do not work, the government and employer will each pay a third. The government’s contribution is capped at just £698 per worker per month. The scheme will last for only six months.

For many in the hospitality and service sector, where millions of young people are employed on precarious contracts, the JSS will see their jobs gone. Three million people remain on the furlough scheme, with estimates that more than a million of these could lose their jobs when it ends.

Sunak told the press, “Unemployment is already rising and will continue to rise. We have already lost 700,000 jobs this year …” Asked if unemployment could reach four million in the period ahead, Sunak said, “Independent forecasts don’t make for good reading,” referring to estimations of unemployment rising to almost 16 percent—from almost 4 percent now.

The Tories house organ, the Daily Telegraph, was ecstatic about the furlough scheme being “killed off” and its replacement by JSS. It editorialised that the new scheme only “supports employment that businesses judge has a long-term future. By implication, it won’t support those jobs that aren’t viable even after some subsidy.” Sunak had responded well to what the newspaper described as “capitalism’s process of creative destruction.” A “huge and devastating increase in unemployment … is about to engulf Britain, and the solution to that lies in stimulating private sector growth.”

The most important political feature of Sunak’s announcement was that he unveiled it outside his office in Downing Street, flanked by Trades Union Congress (TUC) General Secretary Frances O'Grady and Confederation of British Industry (CBI) Director General Dame Carolyn Fairbairn. The event epitomised the role of the trade unions as a de facto governing partner of the Tories, in alliance with big business. From the beginning of the pandemic, the unions have worked intimately with the government in organising its multi-billion bailout for business and then overseeing what it described as a “mass return to work” on behalf of the bosses.

At the TUC Conference last week O’Grady stated, “My message to the chancellor is this: We worked together once before. We are ready to work with you again—if you are serious about stopping the catastrophe of mass unemployment.” The TUC described the JSS as “a win for unions” as the government had “bowed to pressure from trade unions and others … A National Recovery Council should now be convened, bringing together government, business and unions.”

The Daily Telegraph’s two page spread shows Sunak, O’Grady and Fairbairn sharing a joke together in Downing Street, with its headline reading, “Wave of job losses is ‘inevitable’ in Sunak’s winter economic plan”

The profit interests of the capitalists and those of workers are diametrically opposed. The Telegraph painted the real picture, with its editorial concluding, “The next few months are going to be tough: the number of hospitalisations is increasing and unemployment will rocket, inflicting mass misery.”

They say a picture paints a thousand words. The two-page spread the Telegraph devoted to Sunak’s talks in Downing Street with O’Grady and Fairbairn includes a shot of them sharing a joke together, with the newspaper’s headline reading, “Wave of job losses is ‘inevitable’ in Sunak’s winter economic plan.”

Brazilian educators call strikes against homicidal reopening of schools

Tomas Castanheira

The efforts of Brazil’s ruling elite to reopen schools amid the catastrophic spread of the COVID-19 pandemic are being met with a growing wave of resistance from education workers. On Thursday, teachers in the state of Pernambuco, in northeastern Brazil, voted massively in favor of a strike against the return of on-site classes.

Teachers’ strike against starvation wages in Recife, capital of Pernambuco, in March of this year [Source: Facebook]

Brazil has recorded close to 4.7 million coronavirus cases and more than 140,000 deaths. Roughly 30,000 new cases are being reported daily.

At the beginning of the week, Pernambuco’s coalition government of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) and the Maoist Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) announced a sudden reopening of schools in the state, beginning next week. Angered by this decision, some 2,000 educators participated in an online meeting of the Union of Education Workers in Pernambuco (SINTEPE) and 94 percent voted in favor of the strike.

The decision to strike was reported with enthusiasm by workers on social media. One of them said: “The voice that echoed today in the meeting was historic, greater than any note or pronouncement by governmental leaders. In the face of the participation of each education professional today, it is easy to see that we have an overwhelming majority, and it is a fact that the teachers say NO to on-site activities!”

SINTEPE, however, is already preparing to conciliate with the government and indicating its plans to betray the strike. The president of the union, Fernando Melo, declared that workers’ dissatisfaction was related to the “way in which the announcement of the return was made” and to the conditions in the schools that they “understand” as unsafe. And he said that the realization of the strike will depend on a meeting between the union and the government, scheduled for next Monday, and on a new vote following that.

The reopening approved by the PSB/PCdoB government in Pernambuco is aligned with the homicidal policy promoted not only by Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro, but by their political partners in the Northeastern states, such as the governor of Maranhão, Flávio Dino of the Maoist PCdoB, and the governor of Ceará, Camilo Santana of the Workers Party (PT), who have already approved the reopening of part of the schools. In Maranhão, at least seven private schools were closed with COVID-19 infections after they were reopened by a decree of Flávio Dino authorizing their return.

The actions of Pernambuco educators, on the other hand, follow other recent strike votes by Brazilian educators in the states of Paraná and Amazonas, and by civilian teachers of the Military College of Rio de Janeiro, who prevented its reopening last week.

In Manaus, capital of Amazonas, the Union of Education Workers of Amazonas (SINTEAM) kept teachers inside deadly classrooms for weeks, even with coronavirus outbreaks being reported in dozens of schools, before calling a meeting that voted in favor of a strike. But only a few days later, SINTEAM buried the strike arguing that the government could legitimately cut the strikers’ salaries and the courts could fine the union.

After the union’s betrayal, the governor of Amazonas, Wilson Lima of the Christian Social Party (PSC), announced this week the expansion of the reopening of schools, even in the face of increased COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations, which he hypocritically attributes only to crowds in bars, and not to hundreds of thousands of students in classrooms.

In Paraná, the government of Ratinho Junior of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), seeking to pave the way for the reopening of schools, announced on Thursday that teachers will receive absences and cuts in their salaries if students do not attend their online classes at Google Meet. The government has provided neither computers nor internet to students and teachers. Outraged, the educators demanded on the social media that the strike start immediately, and not wait for a government decree to reopen classrooms.

On Wednesday, the government of Minas Gerais authorized the resumption of in-person classes from October 5 in private and municipal schools throughout the state. On the same day, Minas registered 133 COVID-19 deaths, more than three times the previous day’s toll. Teachers on social media denounced the United Education Workers of Minas Gerais (Sind-UTE/MG) union for blocking a meeting to take a strike vote and for directing educators to trust in the courts to block the government’s decision.

Brazilian educators are demonstrating an immense willingness to fight against the homicidal campaign to reopen schools and are finding broad support among the working class as a whole. This is part of a global wave of resistance among educators and youth against these same policies being implemented by the ruling classes in all capitalist countries.

To advance this struggle, however, it is necessary to confront the reactionary structure of the unions that, in alliance with the governments, turn against the workers, seeking to isolate them locally and repress their strikes or lead them to defeat. Workers need to form new democratic organizations that are suited to the demands of the objective situation, a network of rank-and-file educators committees throughout Brazil and the world that allow the unification of these strikes to defend the lives of educators, students and their families and defeat the murderous policy being advanced in the interests of the capitalist oligarchy.

Killing by Colombian military escalates protests against state violence

Andrea Lobo

The killing of 38-year-old Juliana Giraldo Díaz by troops in the northwestern Colombian department of Cauca has fueled an escalation of demonstrations against state violence across the country.

Juliana Giraldo, murdered by the Colombian army

A video of her husband, 29-year-old Francisco Restrepo, shouting to soldiers, “We have no guns, no drugs, nothing,” soon became viral. Demonstrations followed and continued into the night in Popayán, capital of Cauca; Cali, in the neighboring Valle de Cauca Department; and Medellín.

In an interview with Semana, Restrepo explained that he was driving with to Giraldo and two friends in the backseats to a nearby town to buy spare car parts when he saw a group of soldiers on the road stopping vehicles without the usual signs of a checkpoint.

Having left the car’s papers at home, he turned the car around. At that point, two soldiers jumped out of the bushes and shot a volley of bullets toward the car without warning, he said, striking Giraldo in the head. “The four of us could’ve been killed,” he said, adding that soldiers immediately tried “to cover it up, picking up the casings, gathering the rifles and taking away the actual perpetrator of the crime.”

Giraldo was a computer engineer who had a beauty parlor in Miranda, Cauca. She lived with Restrepo in his parents’ home. He explains that they also made a living raising and selling chickens, a common activity among families of more limited means.

Anticipating the rehearsed official apologies, Restrepo stated: “Now the army can make a statement, the president can make a statement, so what? Could they ever compensate for losing my partner? They will never be able to pay for what someone does for you; she was my happiness.”

Minutes later, Duque and his military chiefs condemned the killing in perfunctory tweets. The Army itself issued a statement pledging to cooperate with the investigation. Such statements are made as the country stands on the verge of a social explosion.

Colombian Army troops

Mass protests on September 9 in Bogotá triggered by the police killing of worker Javier Ordóñez were crushed by the National Police with gunfire, massacring 14 people. This led to a national strike on Monday which saw demonstrations in all major cities and towns across the country, with riot police violently attacking protesters in Bogotá and Medellín.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court issued a ruling confirming that, based on a review of evidence from the mass demonstrations in Bogotá, Cali, Medellín and Barranquilla in November 2019, “there existed—and this might continue—a repeated, constant and disproportionate aggression by law enforcement against those who peacefully demonstrated.”

The ruling orders the government in 14 separate points to guarantee the right to peacefully protest. The court adds that repression by the specialized Mobile Anti-disturbance Squadron (ESMAD) is acceptable, but only for “extreme situations.”

The Defense Ministry dismissed the findings and ruling stating “peaceful protests are guaranteed,” while president Duque added, “The Colombian state has always been respectful of peaceful freedom of expression by citizens.”

On Thursday, however, the ESMAD was deployed to attack peaceful protesters in Cali and Popayán. During a confrontation with protesters outside of military barracks in Cali, a police officer shot a concealed firearm against the demonstrators and was filmed subsequently putting it back in his vest. This shows that deadly force will be used again at a moment’s notice.

The armed forces and ruling elite are gradually upping the ante with greater violence, recognizing that the increased popular resistance to state violence is rooted in class tensions greatly exacerbated by their criminal response to the coronavirus pandemic. In Colombia, this has led to the fifth highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and nearly 25,000 deaths, rampant poverty and 25 percent unemployment.

Contrary to what the official “opposition” claims, the turn to authoritarianism is due not merely to the particularly fascistic outlook of President Ivan Duque or his close ally in the White House. It is rooted in the deepening social and political crisis of global capitalism.

All factions of the ruling class internationally have centered their response to the pandemic on protecting their wealth and assigning greater resources for war preparations, all at the expense of workers’ lives and livelihoods.

This is confirmed by the efforts of all pro-capitalist parties and trade unions in the “opposition” working to contain social opposition and channel it behind appeals to the military and illusions in “police reform” and rotten bourgeois democratic politics.

Thursday’s events in particular reveal that the wave of social unrest is merging with opposition to the devastation caused by the state’s counter-insurrectionary war against the peasant-based guerrillas. These operations have resulted in the killing of more than 200,000 civilians and the displacement of 7 million people since the 1960s.

The war has been driven by US imperialism’s efforts to build up the Colombian security forces as a bastion of US military control over Latin America. Currently, these efforts have focused on the drive to overthrow the Venezuelan government and install a US puppet regime. Washington has long justified its support for the war in Colombia on the basis of fighting “narco-terrorism,” a catch-all term to refer to peasant-based guerrillas, drug cartels and any organization or government critical of Washington.

However, evidence abounds that US officials ignore the close ties between the Colombian security forces and oligarchy and the drug cartels. In fact, a 2017 White House memorandum noted that Trump considered designating Colombia in noncompliance with drug trafficking norms. “Ultimately, Colombia is not designated because the Colombian National Police and Armed Forces are close law enforcement and security partners of the United States,” it states.

Now, the Colombian government and the compliant media are justifying a further crackdown and online censorship, based on the claim that protests are being organized by “criminal organizations” on social media.

Miranda has long been one of the hotspots of military operations against the guerrillas and peasants.

As of 2010, 176 “false-positive cases” were documented in El Cauca by the human rights group Coordinación Colombia-Europa-Estados Unidos. The chapter on Cauca explains:

The public forces have acted systematically to enforce their control over the different populations in the department using blood and fire, employing the accusation of “guerrilla collaborators”—meanwhile showing their “successes” to their superiors as well as national and international opinion—to present “battle casualties” of citizens from humble backgrounds.

The report also cites the killing of a 23-year-old demonstrator by the ESMAD in 2007 on the same road as Giraldo.

In August 2019, three indigenous people were killed in a bus on that same road in an alleged crossfire, but the case was never resolved. Just last week, a few kilometers south of the area, five civilians on a public bus were hit by bullets but survived.

A wave of roadblocks and demonstrations in 2012 demanding the closing of the military base in Miranda led the Ministry of Defense to threateningly insinuate that “a terrorist organization” was behind the protests.

Between 2000 and 2010, thousands of impoverished workers and peasants across the country were victims of the deliberate “false-positive” killings in which civilians murdered by the military were made to look like guerrillas in order to inflate body counts. Cables show that the Pentagon was fully aware of this barbaric practice but continued its collaboration and aid as usual.

The brazen and reckless attack on Juliana Giraldo was the outcome of the capitalist state’s total disregard for life and its terror tactics against the impoverished masses at the behest of the Colombian capitalist class and US imperialism.

“State of Emergency” declared in three states as protests continue over cover-up of Breonna Taylor slaying

Jacob Crosse

Undeterred by unconstitutional curfews, vehicular assaults, mass arrests, National Guard soldiers and fascist militia—abetted by militarized police departments—thousands of protesters in major US cities continue to demonstrate against police murder and judicial injustice. The latest round of protests was touched off by the refusal of a Kentucky grand jury to bring charges against the police who murdered 26-year-old Breonna Taylor, an African American emergency medical technician, shot in her own bed last March.

As of this writing Democratic governors Kate Brown (Oregon) and Andy Beshear (Kentucky) as well as Republican Governor Mike Parson (Missouri) have declared states of emergency in response to ongoing or planned protests. In Illinois, Democratic Governor J. B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot have confirmed that hundreds of National Guard troops remain on standby to respond to any allegations of “violent” protests.

In New York City, five UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters with the Massachusetts National Guard, infamous for their role in ferrying US Army Rangers and special forces soldiers to battlefields around the globe, menaced thousands of protesters in the Bronx and Queens boroughs of New York City Friday evening, hovering and collecting intelligence on protesters.

In addition to military helicopters, Republican Governor Charlie Baker also called up 1,000 members of the Massachusetts National Guard on Thursday in anticipation of quickly growing protests. Soldiers were seen deploying military equipment and erecting barriers on Friday night as over 1,000 protesters gathered in nearby Gourdin Veterans Memorial Park in Roxbury, in support of Breonna Taylor. In addition to community members who have held ongoing protests throughout the summer, Friday’s demonstrations were joined by hundreds of recently returned Boston University college students.

In Oregon, Governor Brown declared a state of emergency and ordered the deployment of hundreds of Oregon state troopers ahead of a planned rally by the fascist Proud Boys today. As part of the deployment, Brown waived any restrictions on police use of CS or tear gas. The far-right group was denied a permit by the city but plans to mass hundreds of fascist sympathizers on Saturday. The Proud Boys, along with the far-right Patriot Prayer group, have routinely engaged in drive-by attacks on left-wing protesters, shooting paintballs and spraying bear mace in an attempt to provoke violence.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Enrique Tarrio, the “international chair of the Proud Boys” thanked Brown for providing security for his group, “I think it’s great given the fact that Portland has seen over 100 days of nonstop riots.” Tarrio continued, “it looks like the governor is finally getting the message. And it excites me that they’re allowing us to practice our freedom of speech unimpeded by the domestic terrorists we’re coming to protest.”

Tarrio added, “at the end of the day, we support our boys in blue and want to make this event as safe as possible.” Just over a month ago in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Proud Boys were allowed by police to violently attack protesters and at least one homeless resident.

In Los Angeles on Thursday, two protesters were injured in two separate vehicular assaults. In each case, the driver fled the scene before being briefly detained by police and released. No charges have been announced at the time of this writing. Less than a week ago, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis proposed the “Combating Violence, Disorder and Looting and Law Enforcement Protection Act,” which included a “prohibition on obstructing roadways.” The proposed law states that a “driver is NOT liable for injury or death caused if fleeing for safety from a mob.”

Despite ongoing state violence and hit-and-runs, protests and marches have continued for the third night in a row with more scheduled throughout the weekend following Wednesday’s announcement by Kentucky’s Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who is African American, that there would be no charges brought against two Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) cops, Myles Cosgrove and Jon Mattingly, responsible for the murder of Breonna Taylor on March 13.

The protests against the blatant hypocrisy and injustice perpetrated by the state against working-class victims of police violence show no signs of receding, despite the best efforts of the Democratic and Republican parties to snuff them out through their armed agents of the state and poisonous racial politics, which aim to blame police murders on “white racism” and thus cover up the class role of the police.

While it is true that the police recruit and foster racist, chauvinist and reactionary tendencies within their departments, their purpose is not to enforce a racial code, but to protect and defend the interest of capital and the ruling class, regardless of skin color, against the working class. Recent examples of police violence towards non-African Americans include Hannah Fizer, Jared Lakey, Andres Guardado and 13-year old Linden Cameron.

It is not a coincidence that neither Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, nor his running mate, former “top cop of California” Kamala Harris, who made her career by jailing working-class youth and expanding the use of state prisoners as virtual slave labor, have made note of any of these heinous assaults and killings of non-African Americans, it is because it cuts across their racialist interpretation of police violence, which they, no less than the Republicans, uphold to maintain the rule of the capitalist class.

Louisville police once again played this role during Thursday night’s protest. Over 100 protesters were menaced by police and at least one agent provocateur after police declared an “unlawful assembly” prior to the 9 p.m. curfew in. Protesters sought sanctuary from riot cops and their fascist Oath Keeper militia allies at the First Unitarian Church, which is exempt from the curfew imposed by Democratic Mayor Greg Fischer.

Despite the fact that the protesters were granted refuge by the pastor, police maintained a perimeter around the group for over two hours. Sheri Wright, an independent journalist based in Louisville, in an interview with the Associated Press, commented on the forces arrayed against the multiracial nonviolent youth.

“I’m tired, I’m in fear for my life, especially last night. Right now, we’re sitting here. Not only from LMPD and all other law enforcement authorities that have been brought in, but there are lots of white supremacists,” she wrote. Wright noted the abuse she’s suffered personally by police: “I’ve been shot at, as a member of the independent press, I’ve been shot at by pepper balls.”

While surrounded by police, protesters noticed a white man, who approached a section of the group and according to protester Eliza Thompson, who spoke with the Washington Post, began badgering them with strange questions.

Thompson said he kept asking them, ‘Why are you here? Where are we? Why are y’all march?’ and also, ‘Who’s Breonna Taylor?” The unidentified man then pulled out a pair of brass knuckles and attempted to start a fight with members of the group. “I think he was trying to instigate something so the police could come into the sanctuary and start arresting people,” Thompson said. “They just need a reason to come in. If we fought, they would roll in heavy.”

After protesters surrounded the man and drove him out of the parking lot, he continued to linger, well after curfew, and even spoke to another reporter. He claimed to be a nurse who lived nearby. “I’m friendly” and “on the left,” the unidentified man said, before leaving shortly thereafter, walking through a line of riot police, unmolested.

On Friday at Jefferson Square Park in Louisville, the Taylor family and their attorney Benjamin Crump, held their first press conference since the Kentucky grand jury decision was announced by Cameron.

Crump denounced the whitewash and demanded that the transcripts of the secretive grand jury be released. “Breonna Taylor's entire family is heartbroken ... and confused and bewildered, just like all of us, as to what did Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron present to the grand jury,” he said.

Crump then urged the family and supporters to place their hopes for justice in the hands of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with Crump tweeting: “I hope the FBI investigation finally gets justice for Bre and her family.”

Tamika Palmer, Breonna’s mother, offered a much more sober appraisal of the role of the police and bourgeois courts, writing in a letter that was read aloud during the press conference, “I was reassured Wednesday of why I have no faith in the legal system, in the police, in the law…

Speaking on Cameron’s decision not to bring charges against either Cosgrove or Mattingly, Palmer wrote, “He [Cameron] helped me realize that it will always be us against them—that we are never safe when it comes to them.”

After the exoneration of Breonna Taylor’s killers: The way forward in the fight against police violence

Niles Niemuth

Once again, demonstrations have erupted through the United States in response to a brutal police murder that has been whitewashed by the state. In this case, the popular anger is in response to the announcement Wednesday that there would be no charges against police officers for killing Breonna Taylor in her Louisville, Kentucky home in the early hours of March 13.

The protests come four months after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota sparked massive multi-racial and multi-ethnic protests over police violence, and one month after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

According to Kentucky’s Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who acted as a special investigator in the case and presented evidence to the grand jury, no charges could be brought against the two officers who unleashed the hail of bullets that killed Taylor because her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired first. Walker maintains he was acting in self-defense against police who stormed into the home without identifying themselves.

The only charge in the case is for “reckless endangerment” by one of the police officers, not for shooting Taylor, but for firing bullets that entered another apartment where a family was sleeping. In other words, police have impunity to burst into workers’ homes in the middle of the night and kill anyone they find.

Once again, police in riot gear and in heavily armored vehicles have fired tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets at protesters and journalists. Hundreds of protesters have been arrested and brutalized by the police in Louisville and across the country. In Portland, federal police agents, as they have done for most of the summer, aided the police in assaulting protesters Thursday night, firing pepper balls and mace well beyond federal property.

The downtown area of Louisville was placed on lockdown on Monday and a state of emergency declared ahead of the decision. Kentucky’s Democratic governor placed the National Guard on alert, and Louisville’s Democratic mayor has implemented a 9 p.m. curfew.

The whitewash of Taylor’s murder raises fundamental political issues for the working class in the US and internationally.

First, the incitement of police violence and the brutal crackdown on opposition is an integral part of the Trump administration’s coup plotting. On June 1, Trump seized on the mass protests over the killing of Floyd in an attempt to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy military forces throughout the United States against domestic opposition. Trump subsequently mobilized federal police in the Department of Homeland Security to kidnap protesters in Portland.

Last month, Trump openly defended the 17-year-old militia member Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two protesters in Kenosha. Earlier this month, Trump praised the targeted assassination of Portland protester Michael Reinoehl, urging his supporters to carry out similar forms of “retribution.”

Trump is now attempting to turn the elections, just over five weeks away, into a coup d’état, declaring that he will not accept results that go against him. On the streets of Louisville and other cities, there is the testing out of measures the administration is planning to deploy on and around Election Day—including the mobilization of far-right vigilante organizations and the instigation of violent confrontations.

Second, there is the role of the Democratic Party, which responded to the massive eruption of popular protests following the murder of Floyd by hijacking them and diverting popular anger behind the politics of race and ultimately into the election campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden.

Claiming that police violence is the outcome of “white supremacy” and “systemic racism” which can be resolved through the hiring of more minority officers and police chiefs as well as the election of more black officials. At the same time, Biden and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, have made clear their unyielding support for the police, rejecting demands for “defunding the police” and launching a law-and-order campaign, denouncing protesters as “anarchists” and “arsonists.”

The promotion of the politics of racial division goes hand-in-hand with the effort of the Democrats to prevent any mobilization of the working class that threatens the interests of Wall Street. While Trump is actively plotting a coup, the Democrats are seeking to derail any mass movement against the administration.

The racialist politics of the Democratic Party and the organizations that surround it is aimed at obscuring the basic class issues involved. The problem of police violence plagues the working class around the world, from South Africa and Kenya, to Brazil and the European Union. The persistence of police violence and its global character speaks to the nature of the capitalist state and the class reality of society, which the police as special bodies of armed men are tasked with upholding.

There is no doubt that African Americans are disproportionately the victims of police violence. This is a result primarily of the fact that they make up a disproportionate section of the most oppressed and impoverished layers of the working class.

Racism plays a role, and it is well known that fascistic elements are recruited into and nurtured among the police forces at the local and federal level. However, the idea that electing more black politicians will solve the problem is refuted by the role of Kentucky Attorney General Cameron, who is African American and a rising star in the Republican Party, in leading the grand jury to its decision. Trump praised his handling of the Taylor case as “fantastic.”

Under President Barack Obama, the first black president, police violence continued unabated. Protests in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown in 2014 were viciously suppressed by police with the aid of the federal government.

Senator Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ first African American pick for vice president, has a long record—first as a San Francisco’s District Attorney and then California’s Attorney General—of not prosecuting killer cops and of defending the state’s overcrowded prison system. Most notoriously, she refused to investigate the 2014 murder of Ezell Ford by Los Angeles police and the 2015 killing of Mario Woods in San Francisco, deferring to local Democratic Party prosecutors who decided against bringing charges against the officers involved in either case.

In line with the narrative that the issue of police violence is one of “trust” between officers and “communities of color”—and a conflict between “white America” and “black America”—in the media reporting there is an exclusive focus on police brutality against African Americans, ignoring violence against people of other racial or ethnic backgrounds.

The shooting of 13-year-old autistic boy Linden Cameron in Salt Lake City and the killing of 26-year old convenience store attendant Hannah Fizer by a sheriff’s deputy in Missouri, both white, have received scant national attention, despite protests by family members and supporters. Regardless of their race, those who are killed and brutalized are overwhelmingly likely to be among the working class.

The ubiquity of police violence in the US, with approximately 1,000 people killed every year, is bound up with the growth of class tensions and social inequality to unprecedented heights. The police are the first line of defense of the state and of capitalist property relations.

The intensity of protests against police violence over the last four months cannot be understood outside of the growing anger and opposition in the working class and among youth. A social and economic catastrophe is overtaking the United States. Millions are unemployed and face poverty and eviction. The pandemic is raging out of control, as a result of the “herd immunity” policy of both parties. There is growing opposition among teachers and students to the efforts to reopen the schools under unsafe conditions.

Opposition to police violence cannot be quarantined from the broader class issues. The struggle against police violence is the struggle against capitalism, which requires the unification of the working class across racial, ethnic and gender lines to fight for socialism.

AfyaBora Fellowship in Global Health Leadership for 2021/2022

Application Deadline: 9th October 2020

Eligible Countries: Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania, or Uganda

About the Award: The 9-month training program has two components:

• Distance learning modules
• A mentored, project-based assignment to an attachment site at academic, local government, or non-governmental health organizations in partner African countries

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: In order to be eligible to apply all applicants MUST meet the following criteria:

1. Be a citizen or permanent resident of Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania, or Uganda

1. AND
   
2. Meet ONE of the following education requirements:

• Medical applicants need to have a M.D. or MBChB with a MMed or Master’s degree in related field.
• Nursing applicants need to have a Master’s degree in nursing, public health or a related field (PhD preferred), or substantial work experience.
• Other public health professionals (those without a clinical degree) must have a Doctoral degree in public health or a related field.

Number of Awardees: 20 approximately

Value of Fellowship: The Afya Bora Fellowship will provide the following to each African fellow:

• A monthly stipend.

Duration of Fellowship: 9 months

How to Apply: Apply below

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details