Research into black holes awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics

Bryan Dyne

The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Roger Penrose for his theoretical work showing that the formation of black holes is a direct consequence of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, and to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for each discovering the supermassive black hole in the center of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

“The discoveries of this year’s Laureates have broken new ground in the study of compact and supermassive objects,” said David Haviland, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, in the organization’s press release. He continued, “But these exotic objects still pose many questions that beg for answers and motivate future research. Not only questions about their inner structure, but also questions about how to test our theory of gravity under the extreme conditions in the immediate vicinity of a black hole.”

A visualization of a black hole created in part as a result of the work of Penrose, Genzel and Ghez. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman

Roger Penrose began to make inroads into general relativity early on in his career. Penrose, born in Colchester, Essex in 1931, developed new methods of studying the the geometric properties and spatial relations of various shapes and figures, a field known as topology, in his early 20s. Penrose specialized in making objects that folded in on themselves and were cyclical in nature, and was so proficient that he inspired many of the most famous geometrical illusions of Dutch artist M.C. Escher.

During the next decade, Penrose applied these talents to studying the inherently curved nature of spacetime described by general relativity to answer a very basic question: can black holes exist?

The concept of a black hole, an object so dense and with such a large gravitational attraction not even light can escape, is not new to general relativity. The idea was first proposed by English astronomer John Mitchell in 1783, and by French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1796–1799. Using the framework provided by Newton during the previous century, they realized, with minimal assumptions, it is in theory possible to make an object so massive that no light can escape its gravitational pull.

This work was expanded upon by Einstein and many others in the months and years after Einstein completed his work on a theory of universal gravitation in November 2015. The very first solution to Einstein’s equations, derived by Karl Schwarzschild in January 1916 while deployed in the German army during World War I on the Russian front, suggested an object that has so much gravity that at some point, no matter, not even light, can escape it. Moreover, the result matched the Newtonian value proposed by Mitchell and Laplace. Schwarzschild died while still deployed as an artillery officer four months later and was unable to make further contributions.

While the mathematics was worked out, however, there was disagreement for decades as to whether or not such an object could actually be formed. American physicist Robert Oppenheimer suggested that a massive spherical ball of matter, such as a star, might be able to collapse into such an incredibly dense object, known as a singularity. Einstein himself disagreed, and the debate continued into the 1960s.

Enter Penrose in 1964 and 1965, who applied his understanding of topology to the concept of black holes. He found that he was able to connect the point of no return, the event horizon, to the theoretical singularity hidden within using a concept now known as trapped surfaces. Penrose showed that once beyond the event horizon, it is not that matter can’t escape, it’s that its motion is always directed toward the singularity.

Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez

This has a variety of implications. One of the most counter-intuitive is that trying to escape a black hole only makes the problem worse. To escape Earth’s gravity, for example, one can use a rocket to thrust above the planet’s escape velocity and visit other parts of the Solar System. In contrast, any such attempts to escape out of an event horizon actually speeds one’s descent toward the singularity, a sort of cosmic quicksand.

Such results have been central to our understanding of black holes since and provided a framework for the experimental discoveries that made up the other half of this year’s Nobel.

While Penrose and many others were establishing the theoretical underpinnings of black holes, a variety of experiments at the time were strongly suggesting that such supermassive objects exist and that they can be indirectly observed by their gravitational interactions with other pieces of matter. Observations in the 1950s and 1960s discovered astronomical bodies that were roughly the size of our Solar System but with an energy output one thousand times that of our entire galaxy.

As more of these objects—so-called quasars—were discovered, the only plausible explanation was that immense amounts of matter was spiraling into black holes, in turn emitting enough light to shine across hundreds of millions or even billions of light years. It was then postulated that these quasars were actually the initial stages of galactic formation, and that most if not all galaxies have a black hole at their center, forming the core of the most common visible structures in the Universe.

The most immediate difficulty studying black holes arose from the fact that the largest ones, and thus the most extreme, are so far away. The only suspected supermassive black hole near Earth, in cosmic terms, was the object at the center of our own galaxy, known as Sagittarius A*. The other option was that there could be a collection of large stars that are energetic enough to mimic the energy output of a black hole.

This led two observational teams, one led by Genzel at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany and the other by Ghez at the University of California, Los Angeles, to attempt to follow the orbits of stars near the galactic center starting in the 1990s. If the motion of the stars is generally random, that is evidence that there is no large central object. If, however, the stars speed up the closer they get to the galactic core, like comets orbiting the Sun, that is evidence of a black hole.

The task was daunting. Genzel and Ghez had to track individual stars in the most crowded region of the galaxy, and one which visible light does not easily pass through. As such, they had to use the latest and most advanced new optical techniques to pierce through the dust and gas clouds of such a dense area. Their efforts were supported and largely made possible by the hundreds of other astronomers, engineers and technicians who helped them make and operate some of the most advanced contemporary ground-based imaging equipment.

The results bore fruit after more than ten years of observations. One star in particular, labeled S2, had an orbit around a small region with high gravity once every 16 years. This immediately pointed to the existence of a supermassive black hole. Other studies published in the late 2000s ruled out other options, while at the same time establishing that Sagittarius A* is an object about 4 million times the mass of the Sun with a density well beyond what is theoretically needed to form a black hole. It is no longer postulated but now accepted that supermassive black holes are at the center of virtually every galaxy.

This experimental breakthrough is one of many probing black holes in recent years. The observations made by LIGO, which won the Nobel Prize in 2017, and the imagery of the accretion disk surrounding the supermassive black hole in galaxy M87 by the Event Horizon Telescope, are further confirmations both of the existence of black holes and the role they play in cosmic evolution. They also continue to confirm Einstein’s original theory, while at the same time opening up new avenues to study the cosmos.

The impact of “herd immunity” on youth and students in the US

Melody Isley

Universities, colleges and grade schools in the US have made international headlines in recent weeks as campus reopenings continue to lead to massive outbreaks of COVID-19 in the surrounding regions.

Within one month of reopening, almost three dozen universities in the US have reported over one thousand cases from their own campuses. Some universities have fared even worse. For example, Ohio State University reported more than 2,600 positive cases in the first month, and the University of Georgia has reported nearly 4,000 positive cases during that same period.

School administrations and media outlets have repeatedly blamed students’ “partying” and the supposed irresponsibility of young people for spreading the virus.

Despite the irresponsibility of some youth and the role risky social gatherings may have played in spreading the virus, such criticisms are founded on a lie. The unbridled spread of COVID-19 is not the fault of a relatively small number of students, but is a direct consequence of the criminal policies of the American ruling class.

Young workers and students are being put on the frontlines of the pandemic, acting as involuntary test subjects for the bipartisan policy of “herd immunity”—allowing the virus to spread rapidly and broadly among young people, their family and coworkers, and the whole population.

This policy has had a devastating impact on youth physically, emotionally, and economically.

Health impact: the myth of “immunity” among youth

The return to school has resulted, predictably, in the tragic and untimely deaths of both students and educators. While the disease is more lethal for older individuals or those with certain health conditions, young people contract the virus, many become hospitalized and some die—even among the healthy.

As the WSWS has reported, hundreds of educators and several college students have passed away due to COVID-19. These educators and students were forced to endure unsafe conditions in the return to face-to-face learning despite all credible scientific evidence indicating that reopening the schools would prove deadly.

It is a tragic and unforgivable consequence of this broken, decayed, inhumane system under which we survive that healthy and bright students like 19-year-old Chad Dorrill from North Carolina, or 20-year-old Jamain Stevens Jr. of Pennsylvania, or Jezreel Lowie B. Juan of Hawaii—to name only a few young people lost to this pandemic—are not alive today.

The policy of “herd immunity” means young people have been forced to play Russian roulette with their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Some have suffered immense consequences from the illness, and others have been put into early graves.

With so much yet unknown about the COVID-19 virus and its effects, it is impossible to say that any single person could be considered safe from the disease, even if they only suffer mild symptoms initially. COVID-19 has been linked to a wide array of long-term effects, ranging from difficulty breathing and chronic fatigue to neurological issues. The emotional strain among those recovering and those still healthy is also immeasurable.

Young workers and students report feeling constant dread. They fear for their own safety and livelihoods, but also that they could be unknowingly spreading the virus to their loved ones. These young people have no way to easily calm their fear; many cannot regularly afford a rapid test to confirm or deny their suspicions.

Most significantly, millions cannot afford to stop working. According to new studies released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in August of this year, mental health disorders among youth, such as anxiety, depression and suicide ideation, have all seen a sharp rise since the onset of the pandemic.

The economic consequences for young people

Students, teachers, and young workers are being put on the frontlines of the pandemic with minimal protection and few benefits through their precarious, low-paid jobs.

While the media talking heads, school administrations, and Democratic and Republican politicians continuously blame student partying for the rise in cases among youth, the reality is that those under 30 are the most likely to be low-paid “essential” workers—including health care workers, those in retail and food service, agriculture workers and baristas.

These essential workers are almost guaranteed to be exposed to the virus, either from the public or their coworkers, when an outbreak occurs in their area.

Many young workers have become the sole source of income in their homes. A PEW research survey on unemployment released September 24th reveals that adults younger than 30 are more likely than those who are older to say they or someone else in their household has been laid off or taken a pay cut because of the outbreak: 54 percent of adults ages 18 to 29 reported that their household has had one or both of these experiences.

In particular, working-class millennials, those aged 24 to about 40 years old, have been hard hit. Many of this generation entered into the COVID-19 era having not fully recovered from the 2008 financial crisis. The youngest workers in Generation Z, those under 24, had yet to build any safety net.

Millions of working-class youth were already living paycheck to paycheck. The majority of people under 30 years old had less than $1000 in savings, and one out of five young workers was living in poverty.

Fourteen percent of Americans, some 46 million people, say that since the virus was declared a pandemic, their emergency savings have been wiped out, according to a new CNBC + Acorns Invest in You survey. Another 11 percent of adults have had to borrow money to cover everyday expenses.

Over half of people under the age of 45 say that the one-time $1,200 payment from the government under the CARES Act covered less than two weeks of expenses. Roughly a quarter, or 26 percent, of those ages 25 to 34 say they had completely depleted their emergency funds.

Many cannot afford health insurance or pay for routine medical treatments even if they were partially covered by insurance. The cost of exposure for a young worker would mean weeks without a full paycheck, at minimum, even if they tested negative. A positive test, at best, could mean a month without a full paycheck, along with the severe emotional and physical toll of the virus. Due to their precarious financial position, young workers are being forced to work during the pandemic by economic blackmail.

The political impact on youth

Amid these dire conditions, one does not have to convince the younger generation of workers and youth that the world is in crisis. Young people are standing face to face with the defining social problems of this epoch: staggering inequality, record joblessness, lack of healthcare, climate change and the crisis of democracy, among others. The significant financial and emotional, distress from the pandemic has led many young people to draw broader conclusions about the responsibility of capitalist system.

The events surrounding the pandemic are accelerating a process of radicalization that has been developing among workers and youth over decades.

Throughout the present crisis, the political establishment, Democrats and Republicans alike, have treated young people, workers and the elderly with inhumane contempt, sacrificing the working class for the financial interests of the ruling class.

On the other hand, youth and workers have watched healthcare workers, service workers and education workers come forward to work on the front lines of the pandemic to save lives. This generation of youth has witnessed, and many have participated in, immensely powerful protests and demonstrations against the criminal policies of the Trump administration, in defense of the rights’ of immigrants and against police brutality, in recent months and years. These experiences have and will continue to define the political outlook of a whole generation of youth.

Students, youth, and workers are looking for a way to fight. They are increasingly identifying themselves as socialists and coming to understand that the problems they face are rooted in the capitalist system, which subordinates all aspects of life to private profit.

As Canada’s COVID-19 cases surge, unions and NDP expand their support for Trudeau’s reckless back-to-work campaign

Roger Jordan

In Quebec and Ontario, Canada’s two most populous provinces, the COVID-19 pandemic is spreading largely out of control. With new national, Quebec and Ontario daily infection records having been set this past week, health authorities acknowledge that they have been overwhelmed by the surge in novel coronavirus cases. Yet the entire political establishment is doubling down on its criminal back-to-work, back-to-school drive.

The crisis is expressed most sharply in Quebec, where the province’s health minister, Christian Dubé, felt compelled Tuesday to urge everyone to stay at home except for work-related or other necessary travel. Quebec recorded 1,364 cases that day, the fifth day in a row that new daily infections in the province exceeded 1,000. In Quebec City, infections have exploded, from about 100 per week just a month ago to more than 1,000 per week.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

In contrast to the spring, when the virus spread chiefly in Montreal and in long-term care facilities, infections are now occurring throughout the province. According to Dr. Matthew Oughton, a specialist for infectious diseases at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital, approximately 6 percent of all coronavirus tests are coming back positive. Generally, any rate above 5 percent is seen as an indicator that the virus is spreading out of control.

“This time is totally different, totally different,” Dubé said of the pandemic’s second wave. “It is very difficult to say where you got it.”

In neighbouring Ontario, infections are also rising sharply, and without authorities having a clear idea as to the source of many of the new infections. The seven-day rolling average of infections for the province is currently above 600, compared to less than 100 in early August. Hot spots are emerging in Ottawa and Toronto, with infections especially high in poor, working-class districts.

Canada’s health care system, which has been deliberately underfunded by all governments whatever their political stripe for decades, is buckling under the strain. Officials in Ottawa and Toronto admitted this week that contact tracing has largely collapsed, which will result in a further acceleration of transmission. Responding to the Trudeau government’s offer to provide a handful of federal officials to support local authorities in their contact tracing efforts, Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Eileen de Villa, remarked, “To be frank, I expect we could have another 700 people added to the ranks and still not be able to contact trace with the same reach and results as when infection rates were lower. It's an indicator of how serious the spread of infection is.”

Labs are also overstretched, resulting in long delays in obtaining test results. According to a CBC report Wednesday, labs in Ontario have a backlog of over 55,000 tests to process. Delays of more than a few days make the tests all but meaningless, since they make contract-tracing all but superfluous.

Painting a dire picture of the situation in Ottawa, the capital city’s Public Health Unit declared in a tweet, “Our health care system is in crisis. Labs are working beyond capacity, causing dangerous backlogs, which affects our contact tracing & case management. Hospitals are nearing capacity, and we’re seeing more outbreaks in LTC (long-term care) homes. Our system can’t handle much more of this.”

The catastrophic state of the health care system in the face of a second wave that all experts knew was inevitable is the responsibility of the entire political establishment. From the initial systematic downplaying of the threat posed by the pandemic by all levels of government to the refusal of the Trudeau Liberal government to take any steps to strengthen hospitals and other medical facilities during the critical months of January and February, the ruling class paved the way for a disastrous loss of life that has now risen above 9,500 people.

Even though the first wave of the pandemic starkly demonstrated the glaring inadequacies of the public health care system, virtually no funds were made available during the spring and summer months to expand and strengthen it in preparation for the pandemic’s anticipated fall and winter “second wave.” Instead, the federal Liberal government focussed on rescuing the investments of the financial oligarchy by funneling $650 billion into the financial markets, banks and big business; and then on spearheading a criminal back-to-work drive that is exposing workers and their families to the potentially deadly virus.

If the government has been able to press ahead with this mercenary agenda, it is above all due to the support provided by the trade unions and the social-democratic politicians of the New Democratic Party (NDP).

The unions have worked with the Liberal government and corporate Canada to enforce the back-to-work drive. This began with their endorsement of the state bailout of the big banks and financial oligarchy last March. Then, in a series of closed-door consultations with big business and the government in April and May, the leaders of the Canadian Labour Congress, the Quebec Federation of Labour, Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN), Unifor and other unions gave their full support to the ruling class’s drive to force workers back on the job, amid the pandemic, so that the process of profit extraction could be resumed.

Whenever worker opposition to this reckless course has emerged, the unions have worked to shut it down. Last month, as anger mounted to the Ontario Conservative government’s dangerous reopening of the province’s schools, Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation President Harvey Bischof said that the union would respond with “a flat out no” to any call for a strike, which he denounced as “illegal job action.” The OSSTF and other teacher unions then filed a complaint with the pro-employer Ontario Labour Relations Board, telling teachers that this capitalist state institution could be entrusted to uphold workplace health and safety. The OLRB promptly displayed its contempt for the health and lives of teachers and students by refusing to even hear the case.

While the unions have smothered all working-class opposition, the NDP has cemented its de facto partnership with the pro-war Liberal government, by repeatedly providing the minority Trudeau government with the votes it needs to stay in office. Canada’s social democrats have thus helped keep in power a government that during its five years in office has massively increased military spending, slashed transfers to the provinces for health care, collaborated with Trump in a vicious crackdown on immigrants and refugees, and further integrated Canada into Washington’s military-strategic offensives against Russia and China.

On Tuesday, the New Democrats ensured passage of the Trudeau Liberal government’s Sept. 23 Throne Speech, the principal purpose of which was to provide phony “progressive” political cover for the ruling class drive to force workers back on the job amidst the resurgent pandemic.

The Throne Speech spelled out the government’s determination to avert lockdown measures like those imposed last spring. In line with the remarks of Business Council of Canada CEO Goldy Hyder, who recently railed against the “catastrophic” impact of a further lockdown, the Liberals declared that any future COVID-19 restrictions should be “short-term” and limited to the “local level. In a pre-emptive slap on the wrist to any health care officials considering the prioritization of human lives over corporate profit, the speech declared that “local health officials know the devastating economic impact a lockdown order can have.”

The Trudeau government and its trade union and NDP backers are thus telling workers: “Your lives are worth nothing when weighed against the well-being of corporate Canada.

Under conditions in which the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers are at risk, the pseudo-left organizations of the upper middle class are playing a particularly criminal political role. According to Fightback, which styles itself as a “Marxist” faction within the NDP, the question of whether the New Democrats voted for the Liberals’ Throne Speech and facilitated the ruling class back-to-work drive is irrelevant. Writing ahead of last Tuesday’s vote, Fightback leader Alex Grant bewailed the fact that “all the options in front of the NDP are terrible,” before concluding that “it really doesn’t matter” whether they get involved in “propping up the Liberals.”

While workers across Canada are being forced to put their health and lives on the line by returning to unsafe workplaces as COVID-19 infection rates skyrocket, Fightback tells its readers that it is of no consequence whether the party of which it is a member plays a key role in abetting this murderous policy. Like the Democratic Socialists of America’s Jacobin magazine, which recently lent its support to Trump’s pursuit of “herd immunity,” Fightback shrugs its shoulders with indifference at the prospect of the mass infection of working people.

If this disastrous outcome is to be averted, everything depends on the independent intervention of the working class. Rank-and-file safety committees must be urgently established in every workplace, school and neighbourhood to fight for basic health and safety measures to curb the spread of the virus. These should include the immediate shutdown of all non-essential production, the closure of schools for in-person teaching, and the provision of tens of billions of dollars to strengthen the overstretched health care system. The ill-gotten gains of the super-rich must be seized in order to fund a comprehensive program of financial and social assistance for working people, including full compensation for all those without work or unable to work due to the pandemic.

These necessary demands will only be realized through an unrelenting political struggle against the pro-capitalist unions, the NDP and their pseudo-left backers. Above all, they require the mobilization of the working class as an independent political force in the fight for a workers’ government and the socialist reorganization of socio-economic life.

Fed officials warn of “recessionary dynamic” setting in

Nick Beams

The US Federal Reserve has stepped up its calls for Congress and the Trump administration to enact further economic stimulus measures, with chairman Jerome Powell forecasting “tragic” consequences if that did not happen.

In a major speech to a business conference on Tuesday, he warned of the risks to the US economy, saying “a prolonged slowing in the pace of improvement over time could trigger typical recessionary dynamics as weakness feeds on weakness.

“A long period of unnecessarily slow progress could continue to exacerbate existing disparities in our economy. That would be tragic…”

Powell made it clear that in his view avoiding such an outcome depended on increased government stimulus measures.

Federal Reserve Building on Constitution Avenue in Washington (Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file)

“I would argue that the risks of policy interventions are still asymmetric. Too little support would lead to a weak recovery, creating unnecessary hardship for households and businesses. Over time, household insolvencies and business bankruptcies would rise, harming the productive capacity of the economy and holding back wage growth.”

However, in the light of these remarks, it would be a serious mistake to consider that the Fed has stepped forward as the defender of the American worker.

Its overriding concern is that while it has used its financial powers to boost the stock market by pumping in trillions of dollars, enabling billionaires to increase their wealth by $854 billion since the onset of the pandemic, by itself this would not be enough to prevent the development of “recessionary dynamics” that will ultimately impact on Wall Street and the financial system more broadly.

However, just hours after Powell had delivered his most forceful call to date for increased stimulus, Trump appeared to rule it out, declaring in a tweet that negotiations with the Democrats were off the table.

Wall Street responded with a sharp fall following his remarks with the Dow, the index most closely followed by Trump, falling by more than 500 points. Trump responded by declaring he was in favour of sending out a $1200 cheque to “our great people” and indicated he was ready to approve direct assistance for the airline industry and possibly small businesses. The markets duly rose with the Dow up by more than 500 points.

In an interview with the business channel CNBC on Wednesday, the Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari entered the fray even more strongly than Powell, warning of “enormous consequences” for the US economy if there was not a new stimulus package and that “the downturn will end up being much worse.

“If we don’t support people who have lost their jobs, then they can’t pay their bills and then it ripples through the economy and the downturn is much worse than it needs to be.”

One of the reasons cited by Trump for pulling out of talks on a stimulus package was his claim that the Democrats were seeking money to “bail out poorly run, high crime, Democrat States” and the money they were seeking was “in no way related to COVID-19.”

Kashkari, however, insisted they had to be provided with additional funds. Assistance to individuals who had lost their jobs as well as to small businesses was important as well as providing support for “state and local governments, whose revenues have been hammered by the COVID crisis, that is also important, because they employ a lot of people.”

While his remarks were couched in terms of aiding American workers and households, Kashkari, pointed to the longer-term consequences of “this continuing wave of bankruptcies across the country” and the underlying concerns of the Fed.

He said that so far Americans have been able to continue to pay their bills because of the support provided by Congress. “If they don’t continue that, these losses roll up into the banking sector, and nobody knows how big these losses will ultimately be, and whether or not the banks will need more direct support.”

Evidence of the impact of the severe reduction in income support, when emergency unemployment relief for millions of Americans lapsed at the end of July, was provided in data from the Commerce Department. It revealed that US personal income dropped by 2.7 percent in August.

The total drop in income amounted to $543.5 billion, a larger hit than economists were expecting. It was accompanied by a slowdown in consumption growth for the month to 1 percent and a drop in the savings rate.

The chief US economist at Oxford Economics, Greg Daco, warned in a note that “the main engine of economic activity” was at the risk of stalling. “With compensation growing at a slower pace and government transfers diminishing, consumers dipped into their savings to finance their outlays—this is not a sustainable reality.”

The lack of further economic relief has led to a downgrade in the forecasts for growth in the fourth quarter.

The Wall Street Journal reported that economists at the US tax, audit and consulting firm RSM US downgraded their growth forecast for the last three months of the year from 5.1 percent to 2.2 percent on the back of Trump’s tweet calling off the stimulus negotiations. Goldman Sachs economists had already reduced their forecast to 3 percent from 6 percent last month on the basis that another stimulus bill would not pass Congress.

The minutes of the policy making Federal Open Market Committee of September 15–16, released earlier this week, reveal that the concerns expressed by Powell and Kashkari over the need for further stimulus are widespread.

The meeting was generally upbeat over the prospects for a recovery but as the minutes reported “many participants noted that their economic outlook assumed additional fiscal support” and that if that was less than expected “the pace of recovery would be much slower.”

The minutes also reported concern about the effect of additional virus outbreaks that could lead to further “increases in bankruptcies and defaults, put a stress on the financial system, and lead to a disruptions in the flow of credit to households and businesses.” It said that “most participants raised the concerns that fiscal support so far for households, businesses, and state and local governments might not provide sufficient relief to these sectors.”

In the three weeks since the meeting, the situation has only got worse. Coronavirus cases are continuing to rise in a large number of states—putting some of them back at their previous record highs—and the position of American workers continues to deteriorate.

No relief for unemployed in sight as 840,000 in US file new jobless claims

Shannon Jones

The dire economic hardship faced by millions of American workers shows no sign of easing as unemployment claims continue at historically unprecedented levels, job cuts mount and the Trump administration and Congress refuse to authorize any relief.

The US Labor Department reported 840,000 new claims for unemployment insurance last week, only a slight decline from the previous week, but still well ahead of the pre-pandemic record of 695,000 weekly unemployment claims. The latest numbers do not yet reflect massive airline layoffs after the September 30 expiration of prohibitions on permanent layoffs, which were contained in the CARES Act bailout of the industry.

A Southwest Airlines plane on May 24, 2020. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

On October 1, American Airlines started to send out furlough notices to 19,000 workers and American Airlines sent out another 13,000. Alaska, Allegiant, Hawaiian and Spirit have also announced jobs cuts, bringing the total to some 50,000 in the airline industry. Other layoffs included Disney, which slashed some 28,000 jobs, while insurer Allstate said it was cutting 3,800 jobs.

In relation to the American Airline job cuts, one worker noted bitterly on social media, “The economy is not recovering, it bounced due to trillions in free money stimulus that's gone now, and if you think the [government] is going to give money away forever you're a tad naive. Welcome to your new reality, your old one is gone for good.”

A flight attendant at Delta Air Lines told the World Socialist Web Site, “I just saw Doug Parker, the CEO of American Airlines, on the evening news demanding more money for the airlines as if he cared about the flight attendants that are about to be furloughed. United and American are blackmailing the country. They say they're going to layoff 32,000 workers between them if they don't get more stimulus money.”

While ignoring the jobless, Congress is currently discussing another $25 billion bailout for the airline industry, rewarding the same companies that are carrying out massive cuts.

“The companies are all pushing for another Cares Act,” the Delta flight attendant said. “They say, ‘We will be forced to cut more routes without additional aid.’ But what good did the last bailout do? We are right back in the same situation, facing layoffs.”

Flight attendants have little confidence in their union, the Association of Flight Attendants, which campaigned vociferously for the CARES Act and is pushing for more money for the Payroll Support Program, which amounts to little more than a multi-billion dollar slush fund for the airline companies and manufacturers.

Another flight attendant posted on Facebook, “AFA will lose $332,000 a month from United flight attendants. That’s why AFA wants it (PSP) extended."

With less than one month until the US presidential election, there is no relief in sight for the unemployed as well as millions of workers on short hours. The economic suffering in the US was never broached in the presidential and vice presidential debates, and neither the Trump administration nor the Democrats and Republicans in Congress have shown any sense of urgency in restoring supplemental unemployment benefits that ran out at the end of July.

According to the Labor Department, 3.8 million workers lost their jobs permanently in September, about twice the number of permanent job cuts in April. Education was hard hit. Even as many schools reopened, employment at public educational institutions fell by 280,000, and another 69,000 at private schools were impacted.

While the number of workers receiving unemployment pay fell to 11 million—down from 12 million the previous week—that partly reflects the fact that workers are exhausting their benefits, which are limited to 26 weeks in most states. In addition, over 11 million workers continue to receive aid under a special pandemic assistance program targeting self-employed or “gig economy” workers.

Commenting on the relentless pace of layoffs, Eliza Forsythe, an economics professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign told the Wall Street Journal, “It’s more of the same, but it’s also still jaw-dropping that we have that many new claims even now as we’re six, seven months into this whole recession and recovery.”

This week’s unemployment data was compromised by the fact that California, the most populous state, stopped processing claims last week due to an extreme overload of its system. This forced the Labor Department to use an estimated figure based on California’s prior week report.

In addition to the 26 million people receiving some form of unemployment aid, more than 5 million small businesses relied on some form of federal relief over the summer.

According to the National Federation of Independent Business, one in five small businesses said in August they would have to close in the next six months without a significant improvement in the economy or more government assistance. This included 40 percent of restaurants, a sector that has been particularly devastated by the pandemic. Many only were able to hang on during the summer due to outdoor dining, which will end soon as the weather changes in most areas of the country.

Adding to social anger is the obvious fact that the pandemic, which has claimed more than 217,000 lives in the US and created such disruption and hardship, has proved a boon to the super wealthy. The vast bulk of the $4 trillion handed out by Congress in pandemic relief has found its way to the bank accounts and stock portfolios of the corporations and the rich.

While the US has been the developed country hardest hit by pandemic-related job losses, US billionaires now hold 36 percent of the world’s total billionaire wealth, or $3.6 trillion.

According to one report, the 643 wealthiest Americans saw their wealth rise by $845 billion between March 18 and September 15. During that period, some 62 million US workers applied for unemployment benefits.

The social crisis afflicting tens of millions in the US has not been mentioned in the presidential debates. Nevertheless it dominates the thinking of the ruling class. Both the Democrats and Republicans are terrified of the potential for a mass eruption of social opposition that could eclipse the protests over police violence. This is behind the open moves by the Trump administration to establish a presidential dictatorship with the support of right-wing militias and elements within the police and military.

It should be pointed out of the $4 trillion allocated under the CARES Act, only 16 percent went to actually fighting the pandemic, including testing and contact tracing. Meanwhile, big corporations gobbled most of the $2.3 trillion in aid to business, with few or no strings attached. Small businesses, however, were mostly left out. For example, only 20 percent of small businesses in the state of New York, among the areas hardest hit by the pandemic, received federal aid.

With the end of the federal $600 weekly supplemental unemployment insurance at the end of July as well as the expiration of bans on foreclosures and utility shutoffs, millions are being threatened with destitution.

According the US Census Bureau, one-third of US adults say they have difficulty meeting household expenses. In addition to lack of food, families face the pressure of paying rent and basic utilities like heat, gas and water.

Another Census Bureau survey found that 22.3 million US adults reported they sometimes or often did not have enough to eat in the previous week. Fourteen percent of adults with children faced the same dilemma.

There has been a 50 percent increase in demand faced by food banks since the start of the pandemic and many are overstretched. According to Michael Ledger, CEO of Feeding the Gulf Coast, hunger has skyrocketed during the pandemic, impacting one in five adults and one in three children.

“Our child nutrition program has been working around the clock. As a matter of fact, right now, all four of our programs typically wouldn't be running—we currently are running simultaneously right now,” Ledger said in a recent interview with PBS.

Moratoriums on utility shutoffs have expired in all but 21 states and the District of Columbia. During the pandemic families have been accumulating debts to the utility companies that now could total $24.3 billion by the end of the year, according to one estimate reported by the Washington Post. The critical issue facing the working class is to develop a mass movement in opposition to austerity and the threat of dictatorship. We call on workers and young people to support the campaign of our candidates Joseph Kishore for president and Norissa Santa Cruz for vice president and help advance the program of the Socialist Equality Party. Capitalism has failed. The vast wealth created by the labor of millions of workers must be redirected to fighting the pandemic and meeting social need, not fattening the bank accounts of the super wealthy.

As COVID-19 infection rates skyrocket, hundreds of Missouri schoolchildren quarantined

Cole Michaels

On Thursday, Missouri reported more than 1,500 new COVID-19 cases and the greatest number of hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic. Neighboring Illinois reported the highest daily confirmed new cases, 3,059, since the state’s peak in May.

Despite the sharp rise in cases, hours are being cut for Missouri’s COVID-19 information hotline. It will continue to operate seven days a week, but new hours effective Oct. 1 are 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., down from 24 hours a day. Furthermore, Oct. 10 will be the last day Missouri residents qualify for extended unemployment benefits, which the state has cut even as long term unemployed figures rise due to the economic impact of the pandemic.

The entire state is considered a “red zone” for COVID-19. The rate of new cases and positive tests in the state was one of the highest in the country for September. Despite this, Republican Governor Mike Parson refuses to implement further restrictions or impose mask mandates.

While the state recently launched a COVID-19 dashboard that tallies statistics including infections and deaths in each region, the Department of Health and Senior Services announced that it will no longer provide daily updates on social media of COVID-19 spread. The DHSS was previously giving daily updates on Facebook and Twitter. The new dashboard reports numbers that are three days old. It shows seven-day averages for hospitalizations instead of daily updates. This will make it more difficult to spot the emergence of hot spots and plan effective responses to virus spread.

The White House task force has taken note of the situation in Missouri and warned that it is in a dangerous position to see increased rates of infections and deaths through this fall and winter. Jefferson County, a rural portion of the St. Louis region, has in total nearly 4,600 positive cases reported and 65 deaths.

Governor Parson has returned to the State Capitol in Jefferson City as of this Monday after announcing that he and First Lady Teresa Parson tested positive on Sept. 23. Four of the governor’s aides had also tested positive.

As is the case through the US, the bipartisan policy of reopening schools and businesses is driving the outbreak in Missouri. As of this week 499 students have been quarantined in the Fort Zumwalt School District in St. Charles County after being exposed to the virus.

KMOV reported that Rockwood School District (St. Louis County) reopened last Wednesday to children in phases, sending 3,000 kindergarten through second grade students back to class. Parents of children in third through fifth grade are being made to decide by Oct. 6 whether they want to do in-person or all-virtual learning, beginning Oct. 14. Brittany Anderson, a mother of a fourth-grader, said, “I really wish that we could at least see how it’s gonna go with the younger kids before we’re forced to make a choice that’s going to impact the next several months. Just two weeks to see how the younger kids do in-classroom would make me feel so much better.”

Missouri has been steadily breaking records for COVID-19 hospitalizations as 1,158 were recorded on Friday, Oct. 2, by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. As of Sept. 30, a total of 372 patients were on ventilators in the St. Louis region, meaning 36 percent of area ventilators are currently in use, the highest percentage for any region in the state.

State hospitals and laboratories are predicting a tragic increase in cases through the rest of the year, as COVID-19 coincides with flu season. “The symptoms are going to be essentially the same; how does a clinician know whether they have flu or COVID-19? We anticipate that this will be a horrible, horrible fall and winter,” State Health Labs Director Bill Whitmar told Missourinet. State agencies are encouraging residents to get a flu shot.

Dave Dillon of the Missouri Hospital Association recently noted, “Missouri has been in the top 10 for probably a month nationally in the number of positive cases.” He pointed out to KSDK, a local NBC affiliate, that the virus is spreading most quickly through rural counties. “In the metro those numbers are flat and where they’re growing is upstate Missouri and rural counties. It’s rural Shannon County that has the highest rate in the state.” Rural hospital networks are subject to being overwhelmed to the point at which patients are sent to hospitals in more populated counties for treatment.

Without action by the state, it is up to individual counties and municipalities to impose a patchwork of restrictions like indoor capacity limits and mask mandates. On Oct. 2 St. Louis City banned evictions until Nov. 6 by order of circuit court Judge Rex Burlison. The city had been under a previous eviction ban that was set to expire the same day. The nationwide federal eviction ban in place until Jan. 1 has loopholes that still leave millions of renters vulnerable to losing shelter. Kansas City’s Jackson County filed an administrative order Sept. 4 allowing evictions, in violation of the federal eviction ban. The ACLU is suing Jackson County’s 16th judicial circuit court over the matter.

St. Louis County executive Sam Page announced a further rollback of restrictions on Monday. High school students are now recommended to return to in-person instruction, as well as youth sports such as hockey, football and basketball. Businesses will be allowed 50 percent capacity, up from 25 percent. Self-service fountain drink stations will be allowed to be in use again. The county’s mask mandate remains in effect.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that over 1,800 Missouri state workers have tested positive so far for COVID-19. The largest portion of these state workers to have contracted the virus are those with the Department of Corrections, with 646 cases.

Despite the urgency of the situation, Missouri State Auditor Nicole Galloway has admitted that the state has spent only $1.6 billion of the $2.9 billion granted by the federal government for Missouri’s coronavirus response. $2.1 billion of the federal grant was from the CARES Act.

Missouri will inevitably see additional economic turmoil and job losses as the weather cools and cases spike. Businesses, such as restaurants which have depended on outdoor seating to make up for indoor seating restrictions, will lose that income during winter.

With Trump scuttling negotiations over a second stimulus this week, federal assistance is not coming any time soon for these small businesses. The national Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and CARES Act assistance programs have been wholly inadequate to address the financial losses of small businesses. However, the ruling class has seen its fortunes rise this year in terms of the financial bailouts and the stock markets.

The state’s third largest metro, Springfield, is dealing with rising cases in the city limits and in the many small rural communities from which residents commute to Springfield for work. Steve Edwards, CEO of local CoxHealth, said, “We’re trying to balance protecting our community with protecting our staff, and not exhausting our staff who are working so hard right now to care for all these patients.” Explaining the challenges of controlling virus spread in his area, “Springfield is an entity that’s masking in a sea of surrounding areas and counties that don’t mask.” Springfield has a mask mandate but surrounding counties do not.

DHSS director Randall Williams responded to concerns about the inconsistency in mask requirements by declaring, “We just have to double down on our message that no matter where you are in Missouri, if you can’t social distance, you need to wear a mask.” The state organizations nominally tasked with protecting the health of the population are putting it on individuals to guard themselves against the virus, a strategy that has already failed.

Howell County (population 40,000) has 830 confirmed cases and eight deaths as of Oct. 2. Boone County reported three deaths from the same long-term care facility Sept. 29. The county refuses to disclose the victims or the name of the facility to the public, using the excuse of privacy reasons. A story from the Southeast Missourian reported that Cape Girardeau County also has four deaths as of Oct. 1 in long-term care facilities. In the county there have been 174 cases and 21 deaths in such institutions. For the city of Cape Girardeau (population 40,500), the average has been almost six new cases a day per 10,000 residents.

Across the state, farmers are seeing a significant reduction in income this year due to the global economic slowdown triggered by the pandemic. Adam Jones, a St. Charles County soybean and corn farmer, told KMOV, “Global events affect us dramatically because we export so much of our crop, especially soybeans, and a large amount of those soybeans actually go to China. So with the coronavirus and with the issues with China with trade, we were dramatically affected by prices.” Low crop prices this year means less in income for these farmers. Jones further commented, “There’s not a whole lot of margin in farming right now, so when you take twenty percent off it puts a lot of people underwater.”

After the Assange hearing—the fight against imperialism

Thomas Scripps

The four weeks of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition hearing were a watershed in the collapse of democracy and the descent of world imperialism into abject criminality. Three decades after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the unchecked explosion of US militarism, and two decades after the declaration of the “war on terror,” not a single legal principle, democratic or basic human right is left standing.

Assange was subjected to a filthy show trial. Sham legal arguments aside, what took place at London’s Old Bailey was a process of vicious retribution against a journalist who exposed the barbarism of the ruling class before the world.

Julian Assange

While Assange sat in the dock charged with “espionage”, the crimes he exposed were recounted by defence witnesses. Their phrases hung in the air of the courtroom, an indictment of the whole capitalist order: “collateral murder” (the wilful killing of unarmed and injured civilians); “extraordinary rendition” (the illegal seizure of untried persons and their disappearance into “CIA black sites”); “enhanced interrogation” (with torture delivered against “hooded and chained” subjects, via beatings, “sodomy”, “controlled drowning” and the use of “coffin boxes”); and “wars of aggression”—the crime for which the Nazi leaders were indicted at Nuremburg—leading to the sociocide of Afghanistan and Iraq and the deaths of up to one million people.

Professor John Sloboda of Iraq Body Count spoke to the 15,000 civilian casualties which would never have been recorded if not for WikiLeaks’ releases. Famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg referred to the organisation’s exposure of “torture… death squads and assassination” and the way these were “normalised.”

Journalist Andy Worthington described the case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, captured in Afghanistan and illegally renditioned by the CIA to Egypt, “where under torture he falsely confessed that Al-Qaeda operatives had been meeting with [the Iraqi president] Saddam Hussein to discuss obtaining chemical and biological weapons. Although this false confession was retracted by al-Libi, it was used nevertheless by the Bush Administration to justify the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.”

These and countless other revelations sparked mass movements against US-backed dictators in the Arab Spring and gave a spur to anti-war and anti-imperialist sentiment across the globe. That is why an example is being made of Assange. In the words of former CIA director Leon Panetta, aired during the hearing, the case is about “send[ing] a message to others not to do the same thing.” The imperialist powers intend to make truth the first casualty of new and even bloodier wars and regimes to come.

No honest observer was fooled by the prosecution’s contemptible lie that Assange’s case has “nothing to do” with the exposure of war crimes and human rights abuses, or by their dismissal of evidence which spoke to them as “irrelevant.” A total of 40 defence witnesses—including legal professionals and scholars, esteemed journalists, doctors, computer science experts, and torture victims—tore apart the threadbare frame-up of Assange as a “hacker” who “failed to redact” and “placed innocent lives at risk.”

That such a fraud could be maintained by the representatives of the US government was testimony to the lawless character of proceedings in London’s Old Bailey and their blackout in the corporate media. The growth of rampant militarism and imperialist oppression abroad has advanced in lockstep with a turn to dictatorship at home. Assange’s hearing built on and extended this process as his every legal right was trampled.

The WikiLeaks founder arrived at the court having spent a year-and-a-half in Belmarsh maximum security prison, in conditions which medical witnesses attested have caused serious psychological damage. He was woken at 5 a.m., strip-searched and shackled every day of the hearing. While in the dock, he was forced to kneel and whisper instructions to his lawyers through narrow slits in the glass wall separating him from the body of the court—his words audible to the prosecution team and unidentified representatives of the US government.

On the first day of proceedings, the court rearrested Assange based on a superseding indictment brought by US prosecutors at the eleventh hour, and then refused to grant his defence team time to prepare a response. Assange saw his lawyers in person for the first time in six months that morning and got his first look at key legal submissions.

In evidence to the hearing, witnesses testified that his legally privileged documents and conversations with lawyers have been seized and spied on by the CIA, who also considered plans to kidnap or murder him. Others explained that Assange, if sent to the US, will follow a path laid down by previous US prosecutions of terrorist suspects and be disappeared into a system of segregated prison cells and special administrative measures. His ultimate destination will likely be the ADX Florence in Colorado, where US officials have refined the process of psychologically destroying human beings.

District Judge Vanessa Baraitser allowed the prosecution ample time to refute this testimony with cynical assurances from US officials that Assange has and will be treated fairly and humanely. Findings by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention that Assange has been subjected to years of psychological torture and arbitrary detention were openly ridiculed.

Judge Baraitser was appointed and is managed by Chief Justice Emma Arbuthnot, married to a senior Tory MP whose close links with the UK military were exposed by WikiLeaks.

This pseudo-legal travesty was instigated by charges under the US Espionage Act, effectively criminalising journalism hostile to the interests of the American state and dealing a death blow to the First Amendment. Yet barely a murmur of protest has been registered in the corporate media. The hearing made clear that organisations like the Guardian and the New York Times initially worked with WikiLeaks to control the release of information, before stabbing Assange in the back when he refused to retreat from his belief in the public’s right to know. The prosecution used their shameful denunciations of WikiLeaks as supposed proof that Assange “is not a journalist.”

The media’s role in his persecution was crowned by their deafening silence on the hearing. Daniel Sandford, Home Affairs Correspondent for BBC News, justified this by tweeting, “I have been in a few hearings, and it is slightly repetitive at the moment.” These vetted and well-heeled reporters made their peace with the criminality of the ruling class long ago and have integrated themselves fully with their respective governments and security services. They understand the “Assange precedent” is not meant for their embedded journalism.

Through the Assange case, workers have been given an object lesson in imperialism—a system of violence and repression perpetrated against the world’s people by the most powerful states and their adjuncts on behalf of the ruling financial oligarchy. That lesson has proved the utter bankruptcy of the perspective which claims Assange’s freedom can be won through appeals to dissident voices within the establishment, either in the press, the judiciary, or parliament.

This was summed up at a “Belmarsh Tribunal” event staged after the hearing by the Progressive International—a collection of political scoundrels including Yanis Varoufakis and John McDonnell—and the official Don’t Extradite Assange (DEA) campaign. Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn declared that Assange would face years more of incarceration as legal appeals were fought in the British, European and US courts. The only alternative, he said, was “for the British government to simply say, that they do not believe [Assange’s extradition] would be legally just or proper… It’s within their hands to do it.”

Corbyn and the DEA are appealing to the most right-wing government in British history, on whose orders the extradition is being carried out and whose leader Boris Johnson hailed the Metropolitan Police’s illegal seizure of Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy by congratulating Foreign Office officials for their instrumental role in ensuring that Assange “faces justice.” These pleas are worse than useless. Their only effect is to demobilise the social force against which Assange’s persecution is targeted and on which his freedom depends.

The precedents for Assange’s trial under the Espionage Act are the mass roundups of socialists and anarchist groups carried out in the years after the law was first established in 1917. Fearful of the revolutionary movements swelling across the world, the US government outlawed political opposition to the First World War and agitation for workers’ strikes and protests.

Assange’s case is preparation for a similar assault on the working class. President Donald Trump, who ordered Assange’s arrest and is orchestrating his extradition, is now aping Adolf Hitler in a rapidly developing plot for a presidential coup and the consolidation of a fascist power base in sections of the American state. Republican and Democratic officials alike are organising the savage repression of protesters, with Trump openly agitating for far-right violence. There is every chance that the president could launch a catastrophic military adventure as a gambit to swing the November presidential election or cancel it.

These actions cannot be taken without prompting mass resistance in the American and world working class. As that movement becomes conscious, through its education by the revolutionary party, that it is engaged in is a life-or-death fight with decaying capitalism and imperialism, it will come to recognise the campaign to free Assange as an essential part of that struggle.

India’s Future Oriented Strategy for a Post-poll Myanmar

Sripathi Narayanan

Weeks before Myanmar elects its new parliament and provincial assemblies on 8 November, India’s Army Chief, Gen MM Naravane, and Foreign Secretary, Harsh Vardhan Shringla, paid a two-day visit to the country (4-5 October). This was one of the rare instances of the Indian military and diplomatic establishments jointly advancing the country’s foreign policy priorities. Keeping in line with regular high-level engagements between New Delhi and Naypyidaw, the Indian delegation called on Myanmar’s State Counsellor, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and Tatmadaw Commander-in-Chief, Sr Gen Min Aung Hlaing. Gen Naravane also interacted with Myanmar’s Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Vice Sr Gen Soe Win, and the foreign secretary met with the Myanmar’s Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, U Soe Han.

For India, the bilateral relationship is important for reasons that go beyond good neighbourliness. One, the India-Myanmar border region is a hotbed of militant/insurgent groups that pose security concerns to both countries. There also exists shared concerns over smuggling of contraband like narcotics and small arms by these militant groups and other players. Second, for New Delhi, Myanmar is not only a corridor of connectivity at the heart of its Southeast Asia outreach—‘Neighbourhood First Policy’ and ‘Act East Policy’—but is also relevant for developing India’s north-eastern regions.

The Visit
During the visit, both sides reviewed ongoing areas of engagement. As part of the effort to address the COVID-19 pandemic and as a display of New Delhi’s commitment to the neighbourhood, the Indian delegation presented a symbolic gift of 3,000 vials of Remdesivir to State Counsellor Suu Kyi. Myanmar expressed appreciation of India’s decision to provide debt service relief till the end of 2020, under the G-20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative.

The two sides also reviewed India-assisted projects like the Trilateral (India-Myanmar-Thailand) Highway; Trilateral Motor Vehicles Agreement; Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project; Rakhine State Development Programme (RSDP); and finalising Phase III of the RSDP. New Delhi has committed a grant of US$2 million for the construction of border haats (markets), to help improve trade between India’s Mizoram and Myanmar’s Chin states. The two sides also discussed new initiatives like the upgradation of Yamethin Women's Police Academy, Basic Technical Training School and the Myanmar Institute of Information Technology.

While the Sittwe Port in Rakhine State is expected to be operationalised in early 2021, the Centre of Excellence in Software Development and Training in Myitkyina was inaugurated virtually. On the power sector, the two sides discussed the possibility of High Capacity High Voltage Grid Interconnection. India has also proposed to construct a petroleum refinery at an estimated cost of US$6 billion in Thanlyn area, near Yangon.

Decoding the Visit
Being one of the few instances where the Indian army chief and the foreign secretary have jointly undertaken an overseas visit, the significance is not only about the composition but also the timing.

First, the upcoming election in Myanmar is important not only for stabilising the country’s nascent democracy but also for charting its future political trajectory. Under Myanmar’s constitutional and political framework, the November 2020 parliamentary polls will also set the stage for the indirect presidential election in March 2021—and thereby that of the next government.

Second, in Myanmar, a quarter of the seats in the national and provincial legislatures are reserved for representatives of the armed forces, who are nominated by the Tatmadaw chief. At the executive level, the defence, home and border affairs ministers are also appointed by the Tatmadaw. Given the military’s existing role in the affairs of the state, a split mandate in November could accentuate the role that the military could play in the shaping the future, including the presidential election next year.

Third, the incumbent Suu Kyi-led administration’s initiative to address the decades-old ethnic strife is still far from any meaningful resolution. As such, armed insurgent groups and a plethora of small ethnic political entities too would be watching the elections closely. In an event of a split mandate in the parliamentary polls, the Tatmadaw could play a key role, both on the matter of ethnic reconciliation and that of engaging ethnic political players.

Fourth, even though many in India view (for the right reasons) New Delhi’s engagement with Myanmar though the China prism, this visit has gone to reinforce the strength of bilateral ties between the two countries. Given the host of issues that were discussed, India’s ties with Myanmar are no longer limited to traditional processes but has taken the form of a joint military-diplomatic engagement. With regard to Myanmar, such an approach would not only insulate bilateral ties from possible domestic political shocks but would also go on institutionalise existing mechanisms to check against even external jolts in the future.

Much of the international community has held on to their adverse opinion about Myanmar from the days of the erstwhile junta, an opinion that was revived not long after their favourite leader, Suu Kyi, came to power, this time over the Rohingya issue. Given this backdrop, this military-diplomatic engagement following the 1 October bilateral foreign office consultations between Shringla and U Soe Han is not only a reiteration of India’s commitment to bilateral ties but also a reassurance to the north-eastern neighbour of continuing in the same mode, post polls.