Peru’s political crisis deepens with second motion to impeach President Vizcarra

Cesar Uco

A reactionary and disparate alliance of political parties in the Peruvian Congress has filed a second motion to oust President Martin Vizcarra, accusing him of moral incapacity in connection with alleged bribes. The charges are based on the testimony of an as-yet unidentified cooperating witness working with the attorney general’s office.

Vizcarra is accused of taking close to $300,000 from Obrainsa, a company seeking a construction contract, when he was governor of the department of Moquegua, a mining region in the south of Peru. Obrainsa was part of the “Club de la construcción” a consortium of 31 firms that included Brazilian giant Odebrecht—implicated in kickback and bribery scandals throughout the hemisphere—which received billions of dollars in public infrastructure contracts.

Vizcarra went on to succeed Pedro Pablo Kuczynski as president when the latter was forced to resign amid Odebrecht corruption charges in March 2018. Nearly every living Peruvian ex-president has been implicated in corruption probes, while one, Alan García, shot himself to death in April of last year rather than surrender to the police.

President Vizcarra, middle. (Credit: Galería del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores/Wikimedia Commons)

This is the second attempt to impeach (or seek a presidential vacancy against) Vizcarra in little more than a month. In the last vote, 32 legislators voted in favor of ousting the president, 78 against and 15 abstained. The opposition-dominated Congress required 87 votes for the motion to succeed out of a total of 130 legislators.

Given the track record of Peru’s presidents and other bourgeois politicians, the charges against Vizcarra are at least plausible. Those bringing them, however, are pursuing interests that have nothing to do with a crusade against corruption.

The latest motion has been presented by members of the Union for Perú (UPP) with the support of Podemos Perú, Frente Amplio, two Acción Popular congressmen and one independent.

Behind the new impeachment attempt lie a scheme by the president of Congress, Manuel Merino from the center-right Acción Popular party (AP), to take over the presidency, and a bid by Antauro Humala to gain his freedom. Antauro, an ex-army major and the brother of former president Ollanta Humala, who is also under investigation for illegal deals with Odebrecht, is serving a 19-year sentence in connection with an abortive nationalist coup in 2005.

It is known that Antauro Humala also has presidential ambitions if he gets out of prison. (Parties have begun to announce pre-candidates for the presidency in the run-up to April 2021 elections).

UPP, the main party promoting the impeachment, was founded by the late ex-secretary of the United Nations Javier Pérez de Cuellar, who unsuccessfully challenged then-president Alberto Fujimori, who is now imprisoned for crimes against humanity, in the 1995 presidential elections.

Currently, UPP is led by one of its co-founders, José Vega, an ex-union leader and delegate of the Stalinist-dominated General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP). In 2006, Vega entered an alliance with the nascent Peruvian Nationalist Party (PNP) of Ollanta Humala, who lost the presidential election that year, but became president after winning the 2011 election.

Vega is reportedly in talks with Antauro Humala’s ultra-nationalist supporters on changing his party’s name and running Antauro as its presidential candidate.

Frente Amplio, which represented the bourgeois “left” in the last elections, running former Humalista Veronika Mendoza as its presidential candidate, has demonstrated its reactionary character by joining with these right-wing parties in backing the impeachment.

Vizcarra criticized the Congress for considering a second impeachment motion in barely one month and with little more than five months to go until presidential elections.

“I do not know if it will be once a month, having so much to do, so much work, generating this type of distraction and confrontation when we are so close to the elections,” he said.

The new political conflict reflects the crisis of the entire Peruvian ruling class as it confronts the country’s worst recession in decades. In addition, the death toll from COVID-19 remains alarming. While the number of infections and deaths have decreased, a new wave of infections is expected following the resurgence of the virus in Europe and the US.

To date, the Ministry of Health (Minsa) has officially recorded more than 34,000 COVID-19 deaths, but the real toll is far higher. The National Information System on Deaths (SINADEF) puts the figure at 65,000. A Minsa worker who spoke to the WSWS put the estimate at 80,000, saying, “We know that Minsa is hiding the true figures. In my office we receive news that every day three to five Minsa employees die. It is a desperate situation.”

Peru has the highest per-capita mortality rate in the world, and is sixth in the number of infections, with more than 890,000.

Under conditions of the deepening economic crisis and the still uncontrolled pandemic, Vizcarra and a large sector of the bourgeoisie fear that an impeachment trial could further fuel the growing militancy of the working class.

Over the last two months, doctors have joined two 48-hour strikes and are threatening a broader indefinite strike. They have the support of the entire health sector and most of the population for their heroic sacrifice in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

With 199 deaths from the virus and more than 4,000 infected, doctors have been the most affected by COVID-19 and express the growing anger of the Peruvian working class over the response of the ruling class to the pandemic.

In addition, there is the Las Bambas mining conflict where protests have prevented the Chinese transnational mining company MMG Limited from transporting copper to the port of Matarani (Arequipa).

Members of the Peruvian congress have charged that the government will make use of the armed forces to prevent Vizcarra’s impeachment. Prime Minister Walter Martos said, “We will never use the Armed Forces in political acts.” That he is compelled to issue such a denial is telling. It is well known that Vizcarra and the armed forces chief of staff have been collaborating closely since the president dissolved the old congress in late September of last year.

The direct intervention of the armed forces is an increasing threat as the COVID-19, economic and impeachment crises coalesce.

British Columbia New Democrats win majority government buoyed by business, union support

Penny Smith & Roger Jordan

British Columbia’s trade union-backed New Democratic Party emerged the victor from Saturday’s provincial election. With a half-million mail-in ballots still to count, provisional results give the New Democrats 55 of the 87 seats in the provincial legislature and 45 percent of the popular vote,

Premier John Horgan called the election seven months early with the aim of securing a parliamentary majority for the NDP, which came to power in 2017 at the head of a minority government thanks to a “confidence and supply agreement” with the Green Party.

This gambit paid off. The Liberals, who held power for 16 years beginning in 2001 and fell just one seat short of clinging to power in 2017, have been reduced to 29 seats, their worst result in a generation. The Greens took three seats, the same number as in 2017, and with a similar 15 percent vote-share.

Premier John Horgan (Credit: Flickr/Province of British Columbia)

The media is full of reports proclaiming an “historic” NDP victory. But Saturday’s results were not the result of any groundswell of popular enthusiasm for the Horgan government, which has pursued pro-big business policies and formed a close partnership with the Justin Trudeau-led federal Liberal government, while posturing as a “friend of working people.”

At 52.4 percent, voter participation was the lowest in any BC election since records began to be kept in 1928.

The NDP victory is attributable to two factors: broad support from the establishment, including large sections of business that until recently railed against the NDP as “socialist,” and widespread popular animosity toward the BC Liberals—a coalition of federal Conservatives and Liberals, and former Social Credit supporters—because of their long association with austerity.

In the lead-up to the election, Canada’s “newspaper of record” and the traditional mouthpiece of the Bay Street financial elite, the Globe and Mail, published an editorial endorsing the re-election of the BC NDP government. It praised Horgan for having “governed well” and pledging to keep “a steady hand on the wheel” with a “plan of only modest increases in spending over the next few years” despite the health and socialeconomic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yesterday, in a further editorial, the Globe again praised Horgan, calling him a “centrist on economic files” who has successfully parried Liberal attempts to paint him as “anti-development,” but added the warning that the mounting social crisis means “his second term is going to be a lot tougher.”

The NDP campaign trumpeted its supposed positive handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. “The last thing we should do now is go back to a government that puts the wealthy and well-connected before the needs of people,” Horgan declared in a typical campaign appearance. “Putting people first has been at the heart of our pandemic response and it will continue to be if our team is re-elected.”

This is a pack of lies. The Horgan government has been at the helm of the province’s criminal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has produced deaths in long-term care facilities, left homeless people and other vulnerable sections of society to fend for themselves, and has now triggered a mounting and potentially catastrophic “second wave” by recklessly pushing to reopen schools and businesses. In this it has had the full backing of the trade unions.

On March 16, when other provinces were adopting shelter-in-place policies, the BC NDP government refused to order a lockdown. British Columbia banned gatherings of over 50 people, but exempted a slew of vaguely defined “essential services,” including the lucrative construction and mining sectors, subordinating workers’ health to corporate profit.

When more than 100,000 furloughed and laid-off workers in the province were put onto federal emergency rations in the form of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, the NDP topped it up with a meagre one-time payment of $1,000. Meanwhile, it has offered billions in tax breaks and subsidies to the energy and infrastructure corporations.

With over 12,000 infections and more than 250 deaths recorded since the start of the pandemic, and more than 150 new COVID-19 cases now being reported daily, the NDP government has made clear that will not disrupt corporate profit-making with further social-distancing and lockdown measures. Nine months after the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over COVID-19, testing in BC remains extremely limited, with authorities routinely failing to screen asymptomatic people, even if they have been exposed to virus.

In line with their political counterparts throughout the country and capitalist governments around the world, the BC New Democrats are implementing a reckless back-to-school policy forcing students and teachers to return to overcrowded and often poorly ventilated classrooms. Opposed by many teachers, parents and students, this policy has already led to a rapid escalation in infections.

A majority of teachers have reported conditions in their school as either “completely inadequate” or “somewhat inadequate.” In the week prior to the election, over 800 parents across the province kept their kids home from school for a day to protest the disastrous conditions presided over by the NDP and its union allies.

Despite the deplorable conditions in senior care homes, and the long-known fact—well documented by the province’s chief medical officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry—that the low-paid, transient workforce employed by private long-term care facilities has contributed to the spread of COVID-19, Horgan has called the province’s combination of private

care and public care providers a “healthy mix.”

Many people were misled into believing that when the BC NDP formed a minority government in 2017, it would put an end to the hated big business Liberals’ 16-year reign of austerity and ultra-low taxes for big business and the rich; reinvest in health care and education; and take steps to reduce what is one of the country’s highest child poverty rates.

However, Horgan made clear from the outset that this would not be the case. On taking power, he boasted that his government’s spending plans were based on the fiscal framework that had been laid down by its Liberal predecessors.

The BC premier has served as a close ally of the federal Liberal government, which has cut tens of billions from health-care transfers to the provinces, committed tens of billions to purchasing new fleets of warships and warplanes, and integrated Canada even more fully in the US military-strategic offensives against China and Russia.

The BC NDP government and its union allies were quick to endorse the deal Trudeau struck with the Trump administration to refashion the North American Free Trade Agreement so as to make it a more expressly US-dominated trade war bloc aimed at challenging the economic and geostrategic rivals of US and Canadian imperialism, above all China.

The NDP has also proven its readiness to deploy state repression against protests. In February, it was Horgan and the NDP who ordered militarized RCMP units to raid a protest camp set up by the Wet’suwet’en First Nation against the construction of the Coastal Gas Link pipeline across traditional Wet’suwet’en territory. Horgan infamously insisted that the “rule of law” needed “to prevail,” citing a BC Supreme Court decision that in December granted the company an injunction for unimpeded access to work sites.

Canada’s financial elite also knows that Horgan can be trusted to keep a tight rein on public spending. Since 2017, his government’s balanced budgets have helped produce a worsening of the opioid epidemic, rising homelessness and increasing social inequality. The NDP has built less than 3,000 new affordable housing units out of its much-touted 10-year goal of 114,000.

Since the outset of the pandemic, Horgan’s NDP colleagues in the federal parliament have stepped up their close cooperation with Trudeau’s Liberals. With the unions’ enthusiastic support, they ensured passage of the Liberal government’s September 23 Throne Speech, which pledged to enforce the reckless reopening of the economy and offered state support to Canadian capitalism so it can remain “globally competitive” in a post-pandemic world.

The trade unions, which have responded to the greatest crisis of global capitalism since the 1930s by suppressing working-class opposition and deepening their corporatist ties with big business and the federal Liberals, joined with the Globe in calling for an NDP election victory in BC. Horgan is “the right leader to help navigate British Columbians through challenging times,” declared Unifor President Jerry Dias. A union release demagogically added that the NDP’s platform offers “a vision for BC’s future that leaves no one behind.”

The NDP’s BC Economic Recovery Plan tells a different story. The province brags that 250,000 jobs lost due to COVID-19 have been restored. However, there were more than 350,000 losses since the pandemic began. The unemployment rate in Metro Vancouver has climbed to 12.5 percent from 4.6 percent before the pandemic. Small businesses have been battered, as government aid packages have proven woefully inadequate. Since February, 8,000 have closed in Metro Vancouver alone.

Horgan is promising a Recovery Benefit Fund that would make available $3 billion per year to build schools, hospitals and other capital projects. Included in the fund is a one-time rebate of $1,000 for families and $500 for individuals that would come from the price-gouging car insurance monopoly, ICBC, an obvious election bribe.

Even if these paltry commitments were made good on, they are a drop in the bucket.

Another main plank in the NDP election platform was more investment in building up Canada’s imperialist war machine. Horgan announced that a re-elected NDP government would subsidize the construction of Canada’s next Polar Icebreaker. Commissioned for the Navy and Coast Guard, the Polar Icebreakers were a key element in the National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy announced by federal Harper Conservative Party as part of its Canada First rearmament program. The government investment in the $1.3 billion project “will keep BC shipyards modern and competitive,” claimed Horgan.

Vietnam suffers through a “new normal” of extreme weather events

Robert Campion

Vietnam is being pummeled by ongoing tropical storms causing major flooding and landslides in its central regions. As of Monday morning, the death toll had reached 130 with 18 people missing, according to government figures. This was up from 119 fatalities on Saturday, with most occurring in the central provinces of Quang Tri, Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam.

Close to a million people have been severely affected, with many in desperate need of shelter, food, clean drinking water and income support. According to the UN, as of last Thursday, at least 178,000 homes were currently under water.

Flood levels eclipsed the 1979 record by 0.98 metres, hovering at 4.89 metres for several consecutive days in the province of Quang Binh. The amount of rain that fell between October 6 and 13 was two to six times higher than normal in some regions.

Most of the hardest hit have been poor farmers. Agricultural damage has been extensive, with 1,500 hectares of rice fields and 7,800 hectares of other crops being either flooded or damaged. Close to a million head of cattle and poultry have also been killed or swept away.

Relief workers attempting to provide supplies to a flooded area. (Image Credit: Twitter/UNOCHA)

The government has stated that the damage caused has been “the worst in five years”. Several highways and local roads are blocked with rocks the size of cars, hampering rescue efforts.

About a third of deaths have been of military personnel.

In one instance, a team of 21 rescuers, most of them military officers, was sent to verify reports of 17 workers buried by a landslide at the Rao Trang 3 hydroelectric plant deep in the jungle. The workers were reportedly asleep when they were buried on October 12.

The rescue team stopped at a ranger station for the night and were buried in a rocky landslide. Of the 13 deaths, 11 were from the military. Only four of the 17 workers at the dam have been recovered thus far and authorities have deployed more rescue forces to the scene.

Days later, a barracks in Quang Tri was consumed by a mudslide in the early hours of the morning, killing 20 military personnel, likely the largest number of military casualties suffered in a period of peace, according to officials.

Scientists believe flooding in central Vietnam is the result of a “new normal” of weather patterns driven by complex processes.

On an international scale, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDDR) reported recently a 75 percent increase in natural disasters in the last 20 years. Between 1980 and 1999, there were 4,212 major natural disasters. Between 2000 and 2019, 7,348 major disaster events were recorded costing 1.23 million lives, affecting 4.2 billion people and costing the global economy USD$2.97 trillion.

The increase is largely attributed to climate related events such as floods, droughts and storms.

Speaking at a virtual conference, UNDDR chief Mami Mizutori accused governments of abandoning effective measures to deal with climate change, “It is baffling that we willingly and knowingly continue to sow the seeds of our own destruction,” he said, “despite the science and evidence that we are turning our only home into an uninhabitable hell for millions of people.”

In the Asia Pacific, the cyclical la Nina phenomenon is intensifying storms in the region, and is expected to continue until early next year. Cambodia has reported 39 deaths from flooding, with hundreds of thousands affected and 46,216 people evacuated to safer ground.

Vietnam has been hit by three tropical storms and a depression in the month of October. Typhoon Mojave, at present travelling westwards over the Philippines, is also likely to impact in the weeks ahead. It is currently bringing heavy rain and strong winds of 130 kilometres per hour. About 9,000 people in the Philippines have fled their homes.

Professor of human ecology at Rutgers University, Pamela McElwee, told the New York Times that the sheer volume of rainfall in Vietnam was, “so extraordinarily out of the normal” that it shattered the government’s midrange predictions of how climate change might increase precipitation in its central regions by the end of the century.

She also stated that the construction of hydroelectric dams and poor mountain roads had weakened the soil. “The earth is just soaked with water and has nowhere to go.”

Christopher Rassi, Director of the International Federation of Red Cross, warned of the economic fallout: “We are seeing a deadly double disaster unfold before our eyes as these floods compound the difficulties caused by COVID-19. These floods are the last straw and will push millions of people further towards the brink of poverty.”

The Vietnamese economy relies heavily on its tourism industry which has been drastically cut back during the pandemic. Borders were virtually closed in late March. Apart from an outbreak in Da Nang Hospital in late July, total cases have been kept low and contained at under 1,500, with 40 deaths.

The Asian Development Bank assessed in September that Vietnam’s economy would grow at around 1.8 percent in 2020, its slowest rate in 35 years and significantly lower than pre-pandemic levels.

The Stalinist regime in Vietnam has ruthlessly pursued a policy of capitalist restoration for decades. According to its own estimates, economic inequality is worsening. Between 2014 and 2018 the GINI index of Vietnam, a standard measure of income inequality, was 0.4 [where 0 represents absolute equality and 1 absolute inequality]. The figure is regarded as a tipping point with higher numbers frequently associated with social unrest and political instability.

Out of fear of social unrest, the regime has sought to suppress criticism from workers and the peasantry. According to the UN, hundreds of people have been interrogated so far over COVID-19 related Facebook posts. In the lead up to the congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party in January 2021, the government has begun a campaign of censoring dissident and left-wing publications.

As COVID-19 floods hospitals, Macron debates second lockdown in France

Alex Lantier

French President Emmanuel Macron is to give a national televised address this evening to announce new policies as the pandemic erupts out of control in France and across Europe.

Health authorities are warning that without immediate, decisive action, the onrush of patients will first flood and then overwhelm France’s medical system. Europe is recording at least 200,000 new cases each day, with France among the worst-hit at 30,000 to 50,000 new cases per day. Moreover, these numbers are doubling every 10 days. Already, 2,900 of France’s 5,800 ventilator-equipped beds are currently occupied by COVID-19 patients. Daily deaths from the virus are also rising sharply, with 2,693 deaths across Europe yesterday, including 523 in France alone.

Together with other European countries like Spain, Belgium and the Czech Republic, France is one of the first countries passing through what is a global upsurge of COVID-19. While daily new cases worldwide oscillated from 200,000 to 300,000 from July to early October, they have this month exploded to nearly 500,000.

Emmanuel Macron (en.kremlin.ru)

Even though the World Health Organization (WHO) warned three months ago that the premature ending of lockdowns in spring was leading to a resurgence of the virus in Europe, the Macron administration and other European governments opposed implementing a shelter-at-home order. As millions contract the highly contagious and deadly virus, they still refuse to allow non-essential workers and youth to shelter at home.

Amid mounting public concern and anger at the upsurge of the virus, Macron held a meeting of France’s national security council from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. yesterday, after which Prime Minister Jean Castex met with the leaders of France’s main parliamentary parties. Macron will hold another national security council meeting before speaking tonight.

Leading doctors have given interviews on major media in recent days to warn of the imminent collapse of the country’s health system in a surge of COVID-19 infections and deaths even more devastating than in the spring.

Professor Gilles Pialoux, the head of the infectious diseases section at Tenon hospital in Paris, told BFM-TV “this is a war situation” and that he “unambiguously calls for a shelter-at-home order.” He warned of a “more rapid, more critical and stronger second wave” than the earlier spike in deaths during the spring. “We probably lost control of the spread of virus as early as August,” he said.

Pialoux bluntly criticized those, such as the Macron government itself, who claim that a general shelter-at-home order is economically impossible, saying: “You can bring back the economy, but you can’t bring back someone who did not get access to life support.”

Pialoux’s statements were echoed by Eric Caulmes, the head of the infectious diseases section of the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, after the emergency meeting yesterday. “The virus is so widespread among us that now, I think today we have no choice. We will have to give a new confinement order,” Caulmes told France Info. “We lost control of the epidemic some weeks ago. The prime minister recognized this, the health minister also.”

Caulmes criticized Macron’s current 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew measure as “a risky bet,” adding: “From an epidemiological point of view, this is not a method whose effectiveness is well established.” He also criticized the government’s “telling people to stop working from home in September, I think that was a mistake. We need to work from home as much as possible. It is a weapon in the struggle against the pandemic.”

Caulmes warned that the explosive rise in cases threatens to swamp hospitals: “Soon we will only have COVID-19 patients in ventilator beds, we will no longer be able to handle other patients if the medical system is overrun with COVID-19. And one should recall that the longer one waits to take the right decisions, the longer they take to show effects.”

The resurgence of the virus is the product of the politically criminal subordination of health policy to the profit interests of the financial aristocracy by capitalist governments around the world. The European Union (EU) reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic by passing an unprecedented €2 trillion in bank and corporate bailouts. However, only a tiny fraction of these public funds went to fund miserly unemployment insurance programs and loan programs for small businesses.

Instead, the banks demanded youth return to school so their parents could return to work, to produce profits on the massive riches that the ruling class had taken from the public purse. Governments advocated criminally irresponsible policies—like going to the workplace even when this was not strictly necessary, as Caulmes mentioned—in an attempt to lull workers to sleep with a false sense of security. As a result, COVID-19 has spread widely.

Broad sections of the ruling class still cling to this tissue of murderous lies. Yesterday evening, French media outlets floated possibilities for the measures Macron might propose tonight, all of them insufficient to halt the contagion. These included a shelter-at-home order on weekends combined with a nighttime curfew, a shelter-at-home order in a few of the worst-hit cities, or a four-week national lock-down in which elementary and junior high schools would remain open, so parents could keep going to work.

These measures have one feature in common: they all force workers and youth to keep reporting to work and school, where two-thirds of COVID-19 transmission clusters occur. Thus, they ensure profits will continue pumping into the pockets of the financial aristocracy, by ensuring the virus continues to spread among working people.

The president of the French Business Federation (Medef), Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, told RMC that France cannot afford a shelter-at-home order as in the spring. “If we do a total lockdown as in March, it won’t be a 10 percent fall in the economy, it will simply collapse,” he said.

There is no reason to be particularly interested in what Mr Roux de Bézieux believes he can or cannot afford. The funds needed to protect the health system and allow workers, the self-employed and small businessmen to shelter at home until the pandemic is under control should be taken from the vast sums of public wealth that EU authorities have illegitimately given to the super-rich. The survival of hundreds of thousands or millions of people cannot be subordinated to the selfish interests of a parasitic ruling class that has outlived itself and is no longer fit to rule.

The only way to halt the devastating resurgence of COVID-19 is a general shelter-at-home order for all youth and non-essential workers until responsible medical authorities judge the pandemic is under control.

Workers cannot however rely on capitalist politicians like Macron, a former investment banker, or on the negotiations between Roux de Bézieux and France’s bought-and-paid-for union bureaucracy to obtain such a policy. Regardless of what Macron decides today, he will seek to defend the same fundamental class interests, which are inimical to the health and lives of the broad majority of the population. The lockdown this spring, it must be recalled, left millions of workers and small businessmen without financial protection or, in many cases, sufficient food.

The only way forward, as the Parti de l’égalité socialiste and its sister parties of the International Committee of the Fourth International have explained, is the organization of the working class and youth independently of the union bureaucracies and the preparation of general strike action. Such a struggle, waged on an international basis in order to transfer power to the working class and seize the necessary financial and industrial resources to implement a scientifically-based policy against COVID-19, is the only way to stop the pandemic.

Far right attacks scientists as coronavirus infections explode in Germany

Gregor Link

Over recent days, well over 11,000 people have been infected each day with coronavirus in Germany. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s disease control agency, reported 14,714 cases on Saturday on the basis of data supplied by local health authorities. Both previous days saw over 11,200 new cases registered, while there were 11,176 on Sunday and 8,685 on Monday. However, due to the reduced processing of tests in some local health authorities over the weekend, the real number of infections on Sunday and Monday is likely much higher.

Overall, average new infections are twice as high as they were at the end of March and beginning of April when the pandemic reached its initial high point with between 5,000 and 7,000 daily cases.

The available data shows that the drive by the federal and state governments to reopen the economy and systematically encourage the mass infection of the population is threatening the health and lives of hundreds of thousands. It will culminate in a matter of weeks in a catastrophic collapse of Germany’s hospital networks unless a sharp change of course is initiated with the shutdown of schools and the economy.

Central train station in Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

In its situation report on Sunday, the RKI noted that 71 cities and districts had infection rates of 100 per 100,000 inhabitants or higher and are therefore potential hotspots. The share of those infected who have died in Germany was calculated by the RKI at 2.3 percent.

The current lower empirical death rate of 1 percent, the institute added, threatens to rise sharply in the coming days. The situation report commented on this, “However, the infections among elderly people is increasing. Because they tend to experience more serious symptoms from COVID-19, the number of serious cases and deaths will also rise.” The institute called for the spread of the coronavirus to be prevented.

As Der Spiegel reported last week, the actual number of infections in Germany is systematically underestimated by the RKI’s published figures. “The most important number in the pandemic, the new infections within the past seven days, is often falsely recorded by the RKI,” wrote the newsmagazine. In the time period under review, at least 30 percent of these figures were incomplete and therefore flawed, because “the data from at least one day were completely” missing. The differential varied across states but was as high as 25 percent, an effect that can under-represent the exponential spread of the pandemic.

With the explosion of new infections, the number of patients being brought into intensive care units is also increasing. As the Tagesschau reported, the number of intensive care patients has almost doubled from 690 to 1,121 in just a week. The figure two weeks ago was 510, and just 293 patients one month ago. This is typical of exponential growth.

Of the 487 patients currently on ventilators nationwide, statistics suggest that more than half will die. Coronavirus patients now account for 4 percent of all patients in Germany. Just 26.4 percent of intensive care beds remain unoccupied.

Speaking to the Tagesschau, Uwe Jansens, president of the German Interdisciplinary Association of Intensive and Emergency Care (DIVI) warned that there will be a shortage of health care staff during the winter. In fact, this shortage could be reached much more quickly. In France, where developments are approximately two weeks ahead of Germany, approximately 2,000 patients are being brought into hospital each day.

Health Minister Olivier Veran stated on Twitter that one coronavirus patient is hospitalized every minute. Tagesspiegel reported on figures from a study by the French professional association of nurses, which showed that 57 percent are on the verge of burnout. Prior to the pandemic, this figure was 33 percent.

Attack on the RKI

Regardless of the record spread of the virus, officials at the RKI and other scientists warning about the rapidity of the pandemic’s spread are increasingly being targeted by right-wing extremist forces. Between March and July alone, the RKI received at least 200 emails with “threats, insults, and slanders.” Among other things, the scientists were threatened with extermination in a gas chamber.

On Saturday night, the RKI was the target of an arson attack. According to the police, unknown assailants attacked an institute building in Tempelhof-Schöneberg with several flammable objects. A bottle full of flammable liquid was thrown through a window, triggering a fire inside a room. A security worker observing the attack was able to extinguish the fire.

Although there is much to suggest right-wing extremist forces were behind the attack, the division of state protection at the bureau of criminal investigations for the state of Berlin said that they are “investigating in all directions.” A political motivation for the attack is being “reviewed.”

The threats and attack on Germany’s main disease control agency amid a global pandemic, which has already claimed the lives of at least 1.1 million people, is a serious warning. Just like in the United States, where far-right militias with close ties to President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign have plotted to kidnap and kill governors who implemented limited lockdown measures, attacks on politicians, scientists and critical journalists have all been increasing in Germany over recent months.

Benjamin Piel, editor-in-chief of the Mindener Tageblatt, published a photo on Twitter showing a puppet that had been hung. A sign was attached to it reading “COVID-press,” and it was hung from a bridge over the Weser river by unknown people.

On the same day in Berlin, there was another march by far-right forces against public health orders. According to police sources, 2,000 people participated, with many disregarding social distancing regulations. Although videos show that the police initially allowed the protesters to proceed and later persistently protected them against counterprotests, at least 18 officers were reportedly injured.

RBB journalist Olaf Sundermeyer reported from the demonstration that death threats were made against the virologist and government adviser Christian Drosten and Social Democrat health expert Karl Lauterbach, as well as demands to visit the home of health Minister Jens Spahn, who is currently infected.

While threatening rallies have been held in front of schools in Baden-Württemberg, Hesse and Schleswig-Holstein, a growing number of reports on social media say that workers in restaurants, on public transport and other sectors have been exposed to increased insults and physical attacks by right-wing provocateurs.

The right-wing attacks are part of an international wave of far-right terrorism, which is being encouraged by the lurch to the right of the entire political establishment. The right-wing dregs of society are being mobilized in order to intimidate the opposition to the reckless policies of reopening the economy and promoting mass infection.

The Augsburger Algemeine Zeitung reported on Monday that 20 protesters forced their way into the office of the local district to demand the abolition of the requirement to wear a mask, which had just been imposed in the face of exploding infections. The incident has striking parallels with similar developments in the United States, such as when armed right-wing extremists made their way into the State Capitol in Michigan.

Profit interests

As in every country, the political measures and edicts issued by the federal and state governments and local authorities are dictated by the profit interests of big business. While growing numbers of workers view with astonishment the inactivity of the government, which is refusing to invest anything in the health care system, the politicians incessantly declare that a life-saving shutdown of the economy and closure of schools must be avoided at all costs.

Yet there can now be no doubt that the opening of schools and businesses is the main cause for the exponential growth of the pandemic. Leading virologists and epidemiologists around the world have repeatedly demonstrated that crowded spaces with poor hygiene and air ventilation create perfect conditions for the virus to spread.

According to the RKI, outbreaks are growing in elderly care homes, hospitals and institutions for refugees and asylum seekers, community centres, kindergartens and schools, as well as “various professional settings and in connection with religious activities.”

The scientists thus refute the claim made by the federal and state governments of all political stripes, according to which infections do not occur in schools.

After school students in Greece and Poland organized school occupations and boycotts, mass opposition to in-person learning is also growing in Germany. On Sunday, the hash tag #BoycottSchools was among the widely discussed hashtags on Twitter.

Teachers, students and parents increasingly realize that the federal and state governments will not lift a finger to contain outbreaks at schools and in kindergartens. As the ARD program Monitor reported, even the installation of air filters by the responsible education ministries was rejected as too expensive. This was in spite of the fact that they are proven to reduce virus-bearing aerosols from the air.

The policy of “herd immunity” pursued by governments in Germany, Europe and other countries, as well as the growth of right-wing terrorism bound up with this, once again make clear that the working class confronts tremendous political challenges. While the opened schools spread the virus increasingly undetected among ever larger sections of the population, workers are being forced to keep slogging away under dangerous conditions to boost corporate profits.

Elite factions struggle for control of Philippine legislature

John Malvar

In mid-October, two rival factions in Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's super majority in the House of Representatives fought for control of the legislature. At stake in the dispute was political patronage, control over the distribution of committee appointments and of funds, which both sides were looking to secure as an opening salvo in the 2022 presidential race.

During his four years in office, Duterte has engaged in the gradual expansion of authoritarianism. He has encroached upon the legislature, shut down major media outlets, declared martial law in the southern island of Mindanao, and launched a fascistic campaign of police and paramilitary violence against the poor in the name of a "war on drugs."

Throughout this period, as he has stripped away basic constitutional and democratic rights, Duterte has received the support of a historically unprecedented super majority in the legislature. Duterte's own party, PDP-Laban, is a minority party and has been losing members. His hold on power rests upon the support that has been given to him by nearly every faction of the ruling elite and their various political parties.

Duterte reviewing troops (Credit: Presidential Communications Operations Office)

The super majority behind Duterte expresses the consensus in the Philippine ruling class that authoritarian and fascistic forms of rule are necessary to preserve their interests against the threat of unrest. The staggering levels of social inequality in the country, now compounded by the mass suffering produced by the Covid-19 pandemic, have created the conditions for an explosion of mass anger.

There is likewise, at present, consensus within the super majority for Duterte's policy of improved ties with Beijing at the expense of relations with Washington. Duterte has launched a massive infrastructure program, under the name "Build, Build, Build," looking to better integrate the country's regional economies for international investment. He is looking to secure investment from Beijing to fund these projects and has distanced himself from Washington's aggressive military and diplomatic offensive against China.

As the social crisis sharpens and as the apparatus of authoritarianism expands, tensions have mounted within the super majority, which comprises rival sets of capitalist interests. None of them is opposed to dictatorial forms of rule, but they are all looking to have their hands on the helm of the state. The question of the May 2022 presidential election looms large.

Over the past year, two significant blocs emerged within the super majority forming behind rival contenders for Speaker of the House of Representatives: Alan Peter Cayetano and Lord Allan Velasco. Lord is in fact his name and not his title.

Cayetano has presidential aspirations and is poised to run in 2022. Behind Cayetano is the support of Manny Villar's Nacionalista Party and the National Unity Party. Villar is a billionaire real estate tycoon whose economic interests are clearly expressed in Duterte’s infrastructure policy and geopolitical rebalancing.

Duterte sought the support of this faction of the elite in 2016 when he made Cayetano his running mate. Cayetano was defeated in the Vice Presidential race and Duterte appointed him Secretary of Foreign Affairs. With his eye on the presidential palace of Malacanang in 2022, Cayetano resigned as Foreign Affairs Secretary in 2018 and ran for Congress, looking to become Speaker of the House.

Cayetano’s rival Velasco has the support of the Nationalist People's Coalition, behind which stands Ramon Ang, a billionaire tycoon and head of the powerful San Miguel Corporation. The San Miguel Corporation is largest corporation in terms of revenue and controls a substantial portion of food and beverage production, real estate and infrastructure.

Seeking to hold the super majority together, and demonstrating his control over the pliant legislature, Duterte brokered a gentleman’s agreement in 2019. Cayetano would serve as Speaker of the House for 15 months and Velasco would follow him for the remaining 21.

October 2020 marked the agreed upon transition between Cayetano and Velasco, in the midst of ongoing deliberations over the 2021 national budget. Whoever controls the speakership in 2021 will be able to appoint the heads of various influential legislative committees and oversee the doling out of pork barrel funds. This sort of patronage is a critical component of the preparations for the presidential election of 2022.

One the leading aspirants for Malacanang is Sarah Duterte, the influential daughter of the president and current mayor of Davao. Velasco is lining up behind Sarah Duterte’s campaign, while Cayetano is looking to head his own ticket. Factions are beginning to form behind these two rivals.

Former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, herself long associated with realigning Philippine foreign policy toward Beijing, is lining up behind Sarah Duterte.

In early October, looking to extend his control of the speakership in defiance of the gentleman's agreement of 2019, Cayetano abruptly concluded the House’s second reading of the budget and sent the legislature into an early recess. It was not scheduled to reconvene until November 16 and the budget, with its emergency Covid-19 provisions, remained unapproved.

Duterte gave a speech on October 8 declaring that if Congress did not resolve its impasse and “pass the budget and constitutionally” he would “do it for them.” Duterte was openly threatening to suspend the constitution.

With the legislature padlocked, Velasco convened 186 legislators out of the total 299 members of the House, at the Celebrity Sports Club, where they voted to make him Speaker of the House. Arroyo’s Lakas-CMD party proved to be the decisive swing vote in securing a majority for the speakership for Velasco.

Deputy Speaker Neptali Gonzales II, aligned with Cayetano, declared that the gathering was a “rump and illegal session” in which the rules of the House did not apply.

Duterte intervened and declared his support for Velasco as Speaker. Recognizing which way the wind was blowing, the minority opposition Liberal Party of Vice President Leni Robredo, looking to not be completely cut off from the spoils, threw its support behind Velasco.

Duterte summoned a special session of Congress from October 13 to 16 to resume deliberations on the 2021 national budget, which voted for the budget to go on to the Senate.

Both Velasco and Cayetano issued public apologies, not to the Filipino people, but to the President. Velasco declared that he was upholding “the word of honor of our beloved President Duterte.” Cayetano groveled, “Mr. President, if I made a mistake, my reading was wrong, I misunderstood that you want to continue and finish the budget, I apologize. It was not my intention—not to follow you.”

Velasco then staged a photo op with his majority bloc posed with the fascistic raised fist salute of Duterte.

There is no democratic content to the faction fight in the Philippine legislature. Neither side of the super majority, nor the minority bourgeois opposition, is opposed to Duterte’s authoritarianism. Rival factions of the elite are engaged in a struggle over patronage rights in the year before an election. The stakes are particularly high because everyone knows that dictatorship may be imminent. Whoever secures Malacanang in 2022 may stay there for a very long time and may turn the apparatus of the state against their political rivals.

New York City workers and students reject school reopenings through mass absenteeism

Alberto Escalera

The massive opposition of New York City parents and students to Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio’s school reopening plan has found expression in high rates of absenteeism throughout the largest school district in the United States.

According to newly released attendance data, only 26 percent of the city’s 1.1 million public school students are attending in-person classes. This figure represents a significant drop from the estimated 500,000 families the city Department of Education (DOE) officially counts as participating in its so-called “blended learning” models. These models bring students into school buildings between one and three days a week and are highly unsafe, exposing hundreds of thousands to possible infection from COVID-19.

This mass absenteeism does not represent an organized movement. Rather, it reflects the spontaneous repudiation by the vast majority of working class families with school-aged children of the fraudulent claim advanced by city Democrats, and supported by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), that schools can safely reopen with in-person classes in the midst of a pandemic.

Salome Urena Henriquez School (Credit: Wikimedia)

Noemi Peña, a parent of a public school student, told the New York Times, “Parents in NYC voted and spoke with their feet.” This assessment coincides with descriptions by city educators of school buildings as “ghost towns,” particularly at middle and high schools.

Despite confronting mass opposition from educators, parents and students, de Blasio has doubled down on his efforts to cast New York City as a model for other large urban districts throughout the country to reopen with in-person classes. Commenting Monday on the low numbers of students showing up to school buildings, de Blasio stated, “A lot more kids could be attending in person and we want to make sure that their families know.”

These comments follow a recent media blitz in which de Blasio appeared on several news outlets last week in a cynical effort to use the city’s woefully inadequate testing regime to highlight low positivity rates within city schools and push for in-person classes.

Even if one were to solely consider the 26 percent of students that are actually attending in-person classes along with the teaching staff currently reporting to school buildings, the 16,000 people currently receiving weekly tests in schools would only account for five percent of the in-person school population, well below the 10-20 percent to which the city committed. Additionally, the low positivity rate data within city schools recently touted by the Mayor omits nearly 400 DOE staff and students that tested positive before limited weekly testing began on October 9.

Significantly, school safety agents, cafeteria workers, custodial staff and bus drivers are not included in school-based testing, despite coming into regular contact with students and all other staff.

Equally revealing is the accuracy of the tests being used. According to one worker with the NYC Test & Trace Corps who recently oversaw the administration of nasal swab tests to students and school staff at a high school in Queens, the tests being used by the DOE are only 35-55 percent accurate.

De Blasio promoted these misleading statistics amid a sharp rise in infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths throughout the US and the world, as well as the resurgence of hot-spots within New York City and its surrounding areas. Forty-five schools in Brooklyn remain closed because of high positivity rates in their neighborhoods. De Blasio, nevertheless, intensified his push for students to return to school buildings on Monday with the announcement that the DOE would initiate an opt-in period for families to switch from remote to in-person learning between November 2-15.

In an email the same day to principals announcing the opt-in window, top DOE officials made clear their intent to herd students back into unsafe schools, stating, “Superintendents, Executive Superintendents and Central DOE will begin supporting schools to ensure as many students as possible are accommodated for blended learning. We will also be sharing this information widely with families and we ask that you please share the information with families as well.”

The promotion of in-person classes has coincided with systematic efforts to undermine remote learning. Seven months after city schools initially closed in March, the DOE was forced to recognize that nearly 200,000 students remain without laptops and other equipment necessary for remote learning. Problems with internet access persist as well, particularly among the 115,000 public school students currently living in the city’s shelter system.

Many students and teachers also report remote class sizes in excess of 40 pupils, with some that reach 60 students. Recently released statistics show that only about 85 percent of students registered for remote learning are logging into virtual classes.

The pandemic cannot be contained while school buildings are opened, and education cannot proceed with inadequate, underfunded remote learning that puts intolerable pressure on educators.

The dismal attendance rates show that New York City’s working-class parents and youth have rejected the “herd immunity” program of the Democrats, Republicans, and the trade unions to force people back to work and into schools to maintain the profits of the very wealthy. The city, state and federal governments will do the bidding of the corporations and seek to force students back to school and parents back to work.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in India-China Nuclear Relations

Manpreet Sethi

India-China nuclear relations are unique and complex. China refuses to recognise India as a nuclear weapons state (NWS), though there is no denying the reality of India’s nuclear weapons. In fact, this has been accepted by the international community as illustrated by India’s accommodation into the non-proliferation regime. So, China’s objections to India’s nuclear status is a political issue. However, the geopolitical circumstances of the two countries—conjoined by geography and separated by historically incomplete border demarcations—add a risky dimension to their existence as nuclear neighbours. Unresolved territorial disputes result in frequent border skirmishes that have the potential to escalate.

It is therefore in the interest of both to acknowledge the nuclear relationship and find ways to address risks. Can they do so? The answer to this question lies in understanding the good, bad, and ugly dimensions that simultaneously characterise this relationship.

The good in India-China relations can be seen in the sense of nuclear stability that both countries are able to engender despite tensions created by territorial issues. This is evident in the current military stand-off that has been ongoing for almost six months now. Yet, neither has drawn attention to their nuclear weapons despite the unprecedented violence that broke out at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in June 2020, in which both sides lost lives for the first time in decades. Considering this as a serious inflection point, New Delhi has decided to significantly scale-down its economic engagement with China, fast-track conventional capability build-up, strengthen partnerships with other like-minded countries (fortunately there are many that have been rankled by China’s aggressive posture), and re-examine positions on Tibet, Taiwan, and the Quad.

Are any ripple effects expected on either side’s nuclear positions? It does not seem so. India has not announced any changes to its nuclear positions, though the suggestion of changing to a more offensive nuclear strategy owing to the conventional asymmetry with China has surfaced. However, policy changes are not deemed to be warranted given the understanding that it makes little sense to use nuclear weapons first in situations where the adversary has a secure second-strike capability. It could only lead to nuclear escalation by inviting similar retaliation without necessarily making a dent in the adversary’s conventional conflict.

Meanwhile, for China, changes in its nuclear capability and strategy are driven by its threat perception from the US. Its nuclear modernisation is in response to US ballistic missile defence and long-range conventional strikes that are seen to have the ability to degrade Beijing’s nuclear retaliatory capability. Debates in China about increasing nuclear numbers, revising alert levels or no first use (NFU), and deploying hypersonics or dual-use missiles are aimed at enhancing nuclear deterrence vis-a-vis the US. India does not figure in these calculations.

The officially declared Indian and Chinese NFUs, as well as a similarity in their approach towards nuclear weapons as instruments of deterrence and not war-fighting, have helped maintain a sense of nuclear stability while dialogue mechanisms try to resolve the ongoing impasse diplomatically. In fact, their nuclear behaviour is a practical demonstration of the value of NFU in adversarial nuclear dyads. It is a good example of a risk reduction measure worthy of emulation by other dyads.

The bad dimension of the India-China nuclear relationship can be found in the huge perception gap on nuclear motivations and threat perceptions, exacerbated by a largely blind acceptance of Western analysis and writings about each other. For instance, the recently released US Department of Defense (DoD) report on China’s military and strategic developments, which predicts significant nuclear growth in numbers and capabilities, has caused much concern in India.  However, India’s sense of alarm needs to be tempered by the appreciation that there could be an inflation of the Chinese threat by the US for its own budgetary battles. Similarly, on the Chinese side, too, there is a tendency to echo Western scholars who perceive India’s nuclear weapons from the prism of prestige and status, and hence believe an inevitable technological progression towards counterforce capabilities and increased numbers. Given the West’s lack of understanding of the NFU’s military logic, many cast doubts on India’s continuing adherence to it.

A tendency to rely on such Western writings to learn about each other’s nuclear positions and perspectives creates room for misunderstanding and worst-case thinking between China and India. This is ironic because both sides in fact are consonant in several ways on nuclear philosophy. New Delhi and Beijing must have direct, bilateral dialogues on nuclear doctrines, force structures, and postures. The risks are only growing with the induction of new technologies, and China needs to get over its outdated attitude so meaningful engagement on nuclear issues can take place. Inadvertent escalation in future stand-offs will not be in either’s interest.

Finally, the ugly dimension of this relationship is found in China-Pakistan nuclear and missile proliferation. Knowledge of China’s material help to Pakistan is well-known. However, Chinese psychological and moral support to Pakistan’s use of terrorism is less understood. For instance, the larger international community has called out Pakistan for its support to terrorism, as evident in Pakistan having stayed on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list for so long. China, however, still continues to extend economic, political, and moral protection. This has not allowed or incentivised Rawalpindi to change its behaviour. By acting as benefactor towards Pakistan’s irresponsible nuclear behaviour, China helps create an ugly instability in the triangular relationship.

There is much in the India-China nuclear relationship that can be useful—bilaterally, regionally, and globally. These are the only two countries that offer an alternate perspective on nuclear weapons and deterrence, and demonstration of concepts such as NFU and low alert levels. Both eschew limited nuclear war. It will be a pity if they, too, are compelled by circumstances and misperceptions to sway from their sane nuclear policies of minimalism and defensiveness.