German teachers, students and parents oppose keeping schools open as pandemic spreads

Gregor Link

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s main disease control agency, reported 17,214 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday. According to statistics from Johns Hopkins University, daily infections in Germany rose well above 19,000 in recent days.

In neighbouring Austria, daily infections have risen above 5,000, with hospitals on Monday reporting a 78 percent increase in patients requiring intensive care treatment within a week.

Parents wait with their children for the start of their first day of school in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (Image credit: AP Photo/Martin Meissner, File)

In late September, students in Greece occupied over 700 schools to protest the unsafe restart of in-person teaching and demand safe education for all. A few days later, similar nationwide protests erupted in Poland after two teachers and a student died of COVID-19. Students in France have been striking and protesting since Monday against the unsafe return to schools following the end of the autumn holidays. A parent organization in the UK has called a strike for Thursday to oppose the Johnson’s government’s refusal to close schools.

Under conditions of an explosion in new infections, which is the direct product of the German government’s deliberate policy of mass infection, strong opposition to keeping schools open is also developing among students, teachers, and parents in Germany. After a rank-and-file safety committee was founded by students in Dortmund in August, students in Karlsruhe and other cities are now calling for such committees to be established and the closure of schools to be organised.

There is growing support for the call by the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei and International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) for the building of a network of rank-and-file safety committees and the preparation of a Europe-wide school strike against the policy of mass infection.

Tensions are running especially high in Bavaria, where the state government will hold a school conference today with students, parents, and teacher representatives. As in other German states, hardly any local authorities in Bavaria are dividing up classes to keep groups small, even though most regions have a seven-day incidence of 100 infections per 100,000 inhabitants. Even though the RKI published guidelines two weeks ago advising that regular in-person teaching should be halted when infection levels reach such heights due to medical risks, the ministers of education in Germany’s states simply ignored them.

In an open letter to the Education Ministry, the Bavarian State Student Council referred to a “grading spree” of up to four tests per week. This puts students “under incredible pressure to perform, which shows no regard for the current situation.”

An open letter from the State Association of High School Parents and the Bavarian Parents Association complained that the “pace of performance assessment” has been “massively increased since the beginning of the school year,” with the result that “children and their families are groaning.” Hygiene conditions are also catastrophic: “Despite extra buses, students from different classes and different schools are still standing side-by-side. This contradicts all of the regulations we have been asking our children to follow since the beginning of the pandemic.”

The letter continued, “Across Bavaria, the second wave of the pandemic is overwhelming many families. Children are at risk of being left behind. One quarter of Bavarian parental households are affected by short-term work or unemployment. The worry about incomes and jobs is oppressive…Financial resources are inadequate. The four walls of many homes are shaking.”

Instead of easing the pressure placed on students to perform amid this unprecedented social crisis, it is being intensified. “How is it possible to learn the material that was missed out last year and still internalise new content—effectively learning twice as much material?” continued the letter. Rules that previously applied to “regulate schoolwork are being tossed aside without any consultation in the school forums.”

The order for teachers to continue academic testing as if there is no state of emergency is leading to further social turmoil for children and poor families. “The teachers are supposed to dance around the golden calf of awarding grades and are not able to concentrate on that which is the essence of education. As a result, many children are losers of the pandemic…Social relief for the disadvantaged is essential but is neither being considered or granted.”

With the words “that’s enough, this far and no further,” the letter from the parents’ associations concluded with the appeal for “statewide assessments of learning progress without the awarding of grades,” “the repetition of the pandemic year without consequences,” and centrally coordinated digital learning material and significantly reduced learning plans.

In October, 20 parents’ associations from across Germany protested against the brutal policy of reopening schools and the efforts by health authorities to cover up cases. In a joint letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and several other federal politicians, they expressed their alarm “that the entire class or year group does not need to go into quarantine, but only often the person who was sitting next to the infected person.”

The signatories also pointed out, “But the ministries don’t allow the infection chains to be examined by scientific analysis. Due to the fact that there are many cases in which entire cohorts are not tested, asymptomatic infections can neither be pursued nor proven.”

This has resulted, according to the RKI, in the origin of 75 percent of all infections being “unknown.” This “diffuse spread” serves as a pretext for governments to adopt totally ineffectual measures, while schools, kindergartens, and factories and other business sites remain open.

Another report from Bavaria shows the disastrous consequences of the conscious policy of mass infection. A recent study by scientists at the Helmholtz Centre in Munich suggests that six times as many children and young people have been infected than were officially recorded in government statistics. The research led by Markus Hippich and Dr. Anette-Gabrielle Ziegle examined 12,000 children and young people between the ages of 1 and 18 for antibodies against the virus.

The scientists discovered that between April and July, an average of 0.87 percent of children and young people had antibodies, six times higher than the positive tests recorded in official statistics. Given the fact that around half of all infections among children are asymptomatic, and that health authorities have a policy of only ordering tests for the students who are directly affected, the virus was able to spread undetected.

Last month, the Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI), Johns Hopkins University, and the University of California at Berkeley published the largest contact tracing study to date in the journal Science. Working with the health authorities in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Andra Pradesh, the authors analysed the infection chains and death rate of close to 600,000 residents, who came into contact with close to 85,000 infected people.

The study once again shed light on the importance of “super-spreader” events, and concluded that environments like “offices, households, schools” and party-like indoor events are particularly dangerous. According to the researchers, children and young people play a “key role” in spreading the virus and are “very efficient transmitters.”

The research results confirm the warnings made by the World Socialist Web Site since the beginning of the pandemic: unsafe in-person teaching is part of the campaign of capitalist governments for the deliberate mass infection of the population. International studies have repeatedly proven that the closure of schools, kindergartens and industrial facilities is the most effective way to combat the pandemic. But this can only be achieved through the mobilization of the working class in opposition to the “herd immunity” policy of the ruling class.

Israel’s Contribution to the Destruction of Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh

David Davidian

Every state makes decisions and enacts policies based on its interests and security perceptions. Some state decisions are more insidious than others in that the secondary effects can be devastating, especially by those states that can project sovereignty outside their own borders.

Undoubtedly, Israel’s decision to create a relationship with Azerbaijan was a well-thought-out process. Not that Israel has any long-term stratagem with Azerbaijan, but Azerbaijan having a border with Iran speaks for itself. Azerbaijan’s horrid human rights record, its oligarchic ruling structure, and money-laundering propensity culminated with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev being awarded the moniker “Corrupt Person of the Year.”

Regardless, Azerbaijan is the only state bordering Iran that Israel found compliant enough with whom to create an alliance of convenience. Azerbaijan doesn’t even have an embassy in Israel, yet both engage in trade in the billions of dollars. An embassy in Israel would not be welcomed by either Iran or a wide swath of Azerbaijani society. While no public documents exist detailing what synergistic relations exist between Azerbaijan and Israel, Aliyev described the relationship, “like an iceberg, nine-tenths … below the surface”. Over the past decade, Azerbaijan received well over an estimated six billion dollars (five billion as of the end of 2017) of Israeli high-technology weaponry. Israel receives about half of its crude oil supply from Azerbaijan. The same reference notes many military air flights occurring between Israel and Azerbaijan since the start of the war Azerbaijan inflicted on the Armenians.

So, suppose Israel wants a facility on Iran’s border to gather intelligence on Iran, or further, airbases with the ability to launch a strike on Iran without having to refuel its fighter jets. In that case, it has to give something to Azerbaijan in return. When asked about Israel’s activity in Azerbaijan during an interview on Russian TV, Yaakov Kedmi, the former Head of the Israel Defense Forces Program “Nativ” and, now a military and political expert, said, “I will answer carefully. There were reports in the Western media that very often drones flying from Azerbaijan fly over Iran. These are not Turkish drones. And for a reason, not out of love for aeronautics, Azerbaijan allows drones from Luxembourg to use Azerbaijan to fly over Iran,” Kedmi smiled as Luxembourg is the metaphor for Israel. Azerbaijan allows “Luxembourg’s” UAVs to fly over Iran, and in return, Azerbaijan is sold military hardware that it has clearly stated would be used to kill Armenians. In the current Azerbaijani offensive to capture Nagorno-Karabakh, Israeli-manufactured cluster bombs were used by Azerbaijan. It is still unclear where Azerbaijan purchased outlawed white phosphorus bombs that it has begun raining over Armenian Karabakh. Yet we know who manufactures them.

As reported in the Israeli media, Israel has access to at least one former Soviet airbase in Azerbaijan. The English-language version of this Israeli-media report is slightly different from the original Hebrew and refers to several Azerbaijani bases made available to Israel. In Figure 1, the pink balloon “A” is a former Soviet airbase in Sitalchay, Azerbaijan. Figure 2 is a satellite image with a caption claiming Sitalchay could be an Israeli base. Of course, publicly available documents that confirm any of this don’t exist.

Quoting Haaretz, in 2012,

“U.S. officials told  Foreign Policy that they believe Israel has been granted access to these air bases through a “series of quiet political and military understandings. I doubt that there’s actually anything in writing,” said a former U.S. diplomat who spent his career in the region. “But I don’t think there’s any doubt – if Israeli jets want to land in Azerbaijan after an attack, they’d probably be allowed to do so. Israel is deeply embedded in Azerbaijan, and has been for the last two decades.”

As expected, Azerbaijan denies any of this.

 Figure 1 המרחק בין בסיס סיטאלקיי לאיראן (צילום: Google)

Figure 2 בסיס סיטאלקיי באזרבייג’ן. עשוי לשמש את ישראל (צילום: Google Earth, GeoEye)

Just as it was in Israel’s interest to covertly (Iran-Contra) sell arms to Iran during Iran’s battle with Saddam Husayn’s Iraq, Azerbaijan and Israel cooperate as their varied interests complement each other. Israel requires surveillance of and staging grounds for any potential offensive against Iran. Azerbaijan needs state-of-the-art offensive military weaponry from Israel. During September 2015, in one of many visits to Baku, Azerbaijan by Israeli Knesset members, the chairman of the parliamentary security commission Oren Khazan and the head of the Safadi International Diplomatic Center, Israeli politician Mendi Safadi brought a package of proposals to fight the Armenian lobby. Safadi stated, “I have always been on the side of Azerbaijan, and we are ready to provide protection and assistance to the Azerbaijani side in neutralizing the influence of the Armenian lobby in the U.S. Congress, EU structures and international organizations.” From this point on, an organized anti-Armenian media and political campaign strengthened.

Israeli policymakers had to weigh the potential benefits of a covert agreement with Azerbaijan that factored in billions of dollars-worth of arms sales, a crude oil supplier, and a base of operations against Iran versus any potential off-setting benefits that would take into account Armenia’s current status. Armenia lost. Could Israel have stipulated that its weapons sold to Azerbaijan could not be used against Armenia? It could have, but Azerbaijan would reject such conditions. Israeli calculations put Armenians and ethical matters at the bottom of the priority pile.

Israel has seen the usefulness of Turkey’s expansionist neo-Ottoman policy. Turkey itself and its use of Islamic jihadists against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad serves an Israeli goal of sending Syria decades back in development. Turkey’s Erdogan makes many anti-Israeli claims, including that Jerusalem is Turkey’s, but Israeli-Turkish trade has not suffered; instead, it has expanded.

Israel’s policymakers could see the writing on the wall after Azerbaijan demonstrated its military incompetence during last July’s border flare-up with Armenia. Immediately, Turkey took the initiative and engaged in substantial war games with Azerbaijan, keeping an unknown amount of material and advisors on the ground. On September 27, Azerbaijan began its most massive offensive against Nagorno-Karabakh and its indigenous Armenian population. Some Israelis pronounced support for Armenia; most others did not.

Some Israelis and agents of Israel still claim that Armenia supports Iran or visa-versa. Yet trade between Iran and Azerbaijan has expanded to well over twice that of Armenia’s and Iran’s. In any event, just as Erdogan claims Jerusalem, talk is cheap. Israeli arms and Turkish-Azerbaijani-Israeli-sponsored PR are destroying Nagorno-Karabakh and its people. The silly arguments that “guns don’t kill people, people do,” also breaks down as quickly as guns intercepted in tunnels under Gaza.

Erdogan’s lip service to the Palestinian Cause while discriminating against them is one thing, while his claim made on July 14, 2020, that “we will continue to fulfill this mission, which our grandfathers have carried out for centuries, in the Caucasus again,” is something else. Erdogan’s outburst is a reference to the Turkish genocide of the Armenians. Turkish arms and soldiers are killing Armenian civilians and not just military personnel. Turkey’s import of Islamic Jihadists from Syria and Libya into Azerbaijan are decimating Armenians with Israeli weapons and communications gear.

Without Turkey and its imported Jihadist thugs, Azerbaijan would never have attacked Nagorno-Karabakh, thus defining the limits of its sovereignty. Does Israel hope Turkey militarily penetrates the Caucasus, both cutting off Russia and perhaps fomenting an Azerbaijani-speaking Iran insurrection in Iran’s northwest? Perhaps.

Aliyev thought his blitzkrieg on the Armenians would be over in less than a week, yet the attempted Azeribaijani incursion has dragged into its fifth week. The Turks planned for at most two months of attacks. Perhaps with the Armenians fighting for their very existence, the result will be a government collapse in Azerbaijan. Sun Tzu, the renowned author of The Art of War, wrote, “There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.”

We might never know if Israel is directly providing intelligence to Azerbaijan in its war against the Armenians. The truth will eventually be revealed, as such secrets are the most fleeting.

In 1992, when I was an avid user of an early version of social media (the term hadn’t been invented yet) called UseNet, I was approached by an ex-coworker who was the chairperson of a local Zionist Council, just west of Boston, MA. I was asked why I still posted eyewitness accounts of Azerbaijani pogroms against Armenians in Soviet Azerbaijan that occurred two years earlier. I found this question odd and the tone arrogant, considering that we both spent much of our free time at work discussing common aspects of the Holocaust and the Turkish genocide of the Armenians. I told this person I was informing the world about what was happening to my people, just the way I thought she wished the world knew about what was happening to her people in Poland during WWII. In response, I was told that my postings had a harmful impact on Azerbaijan, which was developing a relationship with Israel. What was a friendship between us, in one phone call, degenerated into “we both will go our separate ways.” A rather foreshadowing incident.

Turkish government rejects lockdown as pandemic spirals out of control

Barış Demir

As the COVID-19 pandemic explodes across Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government is insisting on a back-to-work and back-to-school policy, rejecting calls for lockdown measures. As the official death toll surpassed 10,000 last week, the Health Ministry recorded more than 2,300 cases of COVID-19 and around 75 deaths each day.

The Erdoğan government is effectively imposing a “herd immunity” policy in the interests of the Turkish ruling class, making an arbitrary, unscientific distinction between “cases” and “patients,” with patients including only those who are hospitalized. It is hiding the real data so as to force workers back to work to produce profits, and students back to school—a homicidal policy supported by the bourgeois opposition parties and the trade unions.

The back-to-school campaign intensified this week, with fifth and ninth grade students forced back into in-person learning. More than 10 million students have begun in-person learning since September, predictably spreading the virus massively among children.

The banner reads “As They Tell A Success Story, We Are Dying.” Doctors of the Istanbul Medical Chamber stand in homage to Dr. Salih Kanlı who died of COVID-19, October 20, 2020, Istanbul. [Credit: Istanbul Medical Chamber]

Prof. Dr. Elif Dağlı has explained the increasingly dangerous situation among children: “In the week of September 14-20, the number of patients in the 5-14 age group was 2.9 per 100,000, but it increased to 4.3 per 100,000 in the same age group by the week of October 19-25. On October 29, the last time a daily report was available, this rate was 6.7 per 100,000.” This constitutes an indictment against the trade unions, such as the pro-opposition Eğitim-Sen, which have supported reopening schools.

The disastrous situation with the pandemic in Turkey can only be understood by interpreting official data and statements. An unnamed Turkish senior official recently told Reuters: “It appears the number of cases is around five times the number of patients.”

In addition, statistics show that the actual number of deaths from COVID-19 could be almost twice the commonly-cited figure. According to official data from the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, from 11 March to 13 October, 7,024 excess deaths occurred in Istanbul compared to the 2015-2019 average. However, according to Health Ministry data, as of September 27, 2020, the total number of deaths due to COVID-19 in Istanbul was only 3,135.

Moreover, Turkey is in fourth place in Europe in terms of the number of severely ill patients with 2,341. However, Emrah Altındiş from Boston College’s department of biology has raised a question about the official number of severely ill patients: “The minister [of Health, Fahrettin Koca] says ‘66 percent of nearly 9,000 intensive care beds in Istanbul are full.’ This makes 6,000 intensive care patients in Istanbul alone.”

However, the government is not even considering the inadequate, token restrictions various countries in Europe are now applying in the face of growing popular anger, even as the pandemic is exploding out of control in Turkey—particularly in Istanbul with a population of more than 16 million. The Istanbul Medical Chamber has recently underscored that Istanbul will face a chaotic situation if effective and appropriate measures are not taken.

Koca announced on October 28 that the rate of increase in cases in Istanbul in the last week was 62 percent, adding, “the number of cases in Istanbul has reached 40 percent of all cases in Turkey. Four out of 10 people who tested positive for COVID-19 are in Istanbul.”

Dr. Osman Elbek from the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) criticized the lack of public measures to contain the pandemic: “The pandemic cannot be left to individual initiatives … I have not heard anything other than ‘No one should leave their house, pay attention to the mask and hygiene.’ It is seen from the increase in the pandemic that these are not enough. People should be careful, of course. But no public measures are taken.”

Dr. Cavit Işık Yavuz, another TTB official, said: “39 percent [of new patients] were determined in the last week [19-25 October]. Looking at the chart, the trend is clear. Why are we still waiting to take new measures?”

The government’s only “measure” has been to ban resignations and vacations by health care workers. In fact, it has put the burden of the pandemic entirely on these workers’ shoulders, hiding the true extent of the situation and not taking adequate measures. This fuels anger against government policies among health workers.

Health workers are employed for excessive periods of time, and many who test positive but do not show symptoms reportedly are forced to continue working. More than 40,000 health workers have been infected, and nearly 120 have died.

Although the health minister has admitted that “If we do not control the situation in Istanbul, the pandemic will cease to be manageable,” he insisted the government would not take any new measures, continuing what is effectively a “herd immunity” policy.

When Koca admitted that “public transportation” used by the working class to get to work is “one of the major sources of risk,” his statement revealed the capitalist profit drive behind state policy. He added, “I appeal to employers: do your best to switch to a flexible working system, work in shifts if your conditions are suitable.”

Istanbul Governor Ali Yerlikaya has openly acknowledged that the national government and local municipalities pursued a “herd immunity” policy, prioritizing profits over lives. Stating that there are 400,000 public employees and 5 million private sector workers in Istanbul, he said: “Istanbul residents go to work even though they are infected. They are afraid of COVID-19, but more afraid of being fired. There is a problem at this point.”

Underlining his collaboration with Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu from the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Yerlikaya’s proposed solution for this ongoing outbreak among workers in Istanbul is flexible working. He said all the trade union confederations reacted positively to this proposal, exposing the reactionary collaboration between the political establishment and the unions at the expense of workers’ lives.

The Erdoğan government has transferred hundreds of billions of Turkish liras to the bourgeoisie during the pandemic. In October, the parliament doubled the Treasury’s borrowing limit for 2020. According to Treasury data, borrowing on financial markets for the first eight months this year was over 250 billion liras. As around the world, with billions being pumped into the coffers of the ruling class with low-interest loans and stimulus packages, this debt has to be paid by the working class with increased exploitation and elimination of its social rights.

The government recently proposed a law to expand flexible and temporary work, especially among workers age 25 to 50, effectively eliminating their right to severance pay. This is a massive attack on the social rights of the working class, long demanded by the ruling class.

Three main union confederations issued a statement on this bill, calling on the government to use “social dialogue mechanisms.” In fact, the main concern of these pro-capitalist organizations is to keep growing anger in the working class under control and to block any independent struggle against this reactionary law.

Their open collaboration with the ruling class on its “herd immunity” policy and back-to-work campaign has made clear that the only way forward for the working class against the pandemic and in defending social rights is to organize and mobilize internationally, independently of the unions.

Record-setting Hurricane Eta batters Central America

Andrea Lobo

Hurricane Eta intensified at an almost unprecedented pace Tuesday, reaching winds surpassing 150 mph before hitting Puerto Cabezas, the largest town in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region of Nicaragua, with a population of over 60,000.

The Nicaraguan authorities have already reported significant flooding, along with damage to homes and public infrastructure. More than 30,000 people were evacuated from Puerto Cabezas and other coastal communities.

Hundreds have already been evacuated in neighboring Honduras due to severe flooding as the hurricane drops massive quantities of water from the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean on the impoverished Central American isthmus. The Honduran chief of emergency operations, Marvin Aparicio, reported the death of a child due to a landslide, which is still being investigated.

In an already record-setting 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, Hurricane Eta neared Category 5 (157 mph or higher). Some models indicate that it might have reached this category before landfall, which would make it the first Atlantic storm to reach Category 5 in November since 1932.

Flooded homes in the Rosita district of the Northern Caribbean Autonomous Region, November 3 (Credit: CD-SINAPRED)

Eta matched the 2005 record as the 28th named storm in the Atlantic hurricane season, which specialists indicate is far from over. This season has been particularly exacerbated by higher-than-average sea surface temperatures in the Caribbean and Atlantic due to global warming. Conditions from the Pacific caused by the La Niña have also contributed.

After reaching Category 1 late Sunday night, the US National Hurricane Center forecasted that it would hit the coast as a Category 2 storm, but it picked up energy from the warm Caribbean waters at such speed that it reached almost Category 5 in just one day. Its pressure fell to the lowest in this hurricane season, another measure of its strength.

Princeton University climate scientist Kieran Bhatia found that Eta’s last three 24-hour intensity changes were “off the chart” compared to the Atlantic November storms since 1982.

Awestruck Brian McNoldy, senior research associate at the University of Miami, tweeted Monday night, “Absolutely unreal. Rarely do we witness this anywhere in the world. Eta became a monster today.”

The storm follows Hurricane Zeta last week, which left millions without power and killed six in Louisiana, after reaching Category 2. On Sunday, on the Northwestern Pacific Ocean, Typhoon Goni reached the Philippines with 195 mph winds, making it the strongest landfalling tropical cyclone in recorded history. It left widespread flooding and destruction, with at least 20 dead reported so far.

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned of a massive 14- to 21-foot storm surge in Nicaragua and “catastrophic, life-threatening flash flooding” across portions of all of Central America, as well as heavy rain in southern Mexico, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and southern Haiti through Friday evening.

Costa Rica had reported 32 floods and eight landslides in the southwest due to the indirect impact of Hurricane Eta, with hundreds forced to go into shelters.

The danger of landslides and flooding is especially high in Guatemala and El Salvador. Just last Thursday at midnight, about 100 families were caught unawares by a landslide in the Salvadoran town of Nejapa, killing nine. According to El Faro, the government failed to communicate a warning of flooding upstream. El Salvador raised its emergency status to “red” over Hurricane Eta.

As the NHC warned on Monday night that “preparations to protect life and property should now be complete” in Northeastern Nicaragua, residents in Puerto Cabezas were reporting on social media that they were being rejected from the scarce 17 shelters. Residents were seen scrambling around town in the dark with their belongings in search of shelter.

Several videos showed dozens of families crammed into churches and schools reporting that they had no mattresses, food, face masks or any means of preventing the spread of COVID-19. The town lost power early afternoon Monday due to falling trees and power lines.

Eta is expected to lose force rapidly after landfall, becoming a tropical depression as it cuts a path through Honduras. It will then turn to the northeast toward Cuba and the Gulf of Mexico, potentially returning to hurricane intensity.

Last year, the Germanwatch Global Climate Risk Index ranked Honduras and Nicaragua as the second and sixth countries most affected by extreme weather events, signaling vulnerability “where extreme events will become more frequent or more severe due to climate change.”

The floods, landslides, hurricanes and droughts that have ravaged the isthmus in recent years have greatly intensified social inequality and the resulting struggles of workers, peasants and youth against these social conditions. Especially since 2018, hundreds of thousands have joined mass caravans to migrate to the United States or participated in mass protests, roadblocks and strikes against the authoritarian regimes of Juan Orlando Hernández in Honduras and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, both of which have responded with police-state repression.

From the displacement to more precarious territories by landed oligarchs, mining, energy and agricultural corporations, to social austerity, the capitalist ruling elites across the region have long increased the vulnerability of the impoverished masses to extreme weather events by subordinating every aspect of social life to the profits of foreign and local investors.

Billions of dollars have been spent in the region by US imperialism to finance brutal regimes and paramilitary forces to crush any popular challenge to the super-exploitation of the Central American working class and the plundering of its natural resources and public coffers. At the same time, bourgeois nationalist fronts and petty bourgeois guerrilla movements oriented to striking a better deal for the local elites with imperialism have thwarted an international struggle of workers against capitalism and for socialism.

As the COVID-19 pandemic runs rampant, all Central American governments are ending whatever economic assistance they provided and lifting economic restrictions. Honduras has reported 2,688 deaths and seen a continuous increase since early September, while the Sandinista administration in Nicaragua has brazenly sought to cover up the extent of the pandemic, reporting only 156 deaths.

There is no reformist solution within the capitalist nation-state system to lifting Central America out of its wrenching poverty, just like there is no magic bullet, like carbon taxes or profit incentives in renewable energies, to end global warming induced by greenhouse gas emissions, not to speak of sheltering the hundreds of millions that will inevitably be impacted in the short-term by its effects.

The blaming of the shortsightedness or venality of “human nature” by pseudo-left tendencies influenced by the Frankfurt School and other forms of anti-Marxism are only formulas used by affluent layers to conceal the fact that responsibility lies with capitalism and its division of a globalized economy and the global ecosystem into nation states competing to accumulate profits for their respective oligarchies.

These urgent issues can only be solved by the international political mobilization of the working class to expropriate the fortunes of the financial elites and major banks and corporations globally. Trillions of dollars from this social wealth must be used in programs to rebuild Central America, develop clean, safe and efficient energy and transportation systems and abolish all forms of social inequality.

Bipartisan assault on US public education intensifies amid COVID-19 pandemic

Alberto Escalera

Several recently published reports have drawn attention to the unrelenting assault on public education being carried out by Republicans and Democrats across the United States. Under conditions of a deepening pandemic, which is exacerbating the broader economic and social crisis for the working class and poor, the bipartisan gutting of school district budgets across the US is projected to reach an unprecedented scale.

According to a recent Economic Policy Institute (EPI) study, K-12 districts across the US are facing a $1 trillion shortfall by the end of 2021. The sharp decline in state and local tax revenue comes in the aftermath of decades of systematic disinvestment in public education. State and local funding constitutes the majority source of K-12 public school budgets in the US.

While corporate profits quickly rebounded in the period following the Great Recession, surpassing 2008 levels by nearly 80 percent within six years according to many conservative estimates, spending on public education was consistently slashed during the same period under the Obama administrations. Average state and local funding for public education only returned to 2008 levels in 2016 and remained flat from that year until the onset of the pandemic. The Center for American Progress estimates that near-term state and local spending on education will drop as much as 50 percent due to the pandemic.

An empty classroom

The further evisceration of state and local budgets for education will have a devastating impact on education workers and public school students alike.

Recent Bureau of Labor Department data reveals that nearly 1 million K-12 education jobs were cut during the first four months after the onset of the pandemic. Another 350,000 education jobs were slashed this past September alone. The mass layoffs in public education, which is aggravating residual staffing shortages stemming from pre-pandemic layoffs, is taking place amid a general rise in K-12 student enrollment across the US.

In addition to job cuts, the decades-long, bipartisan effort to drive down wages among education workers has continued full force. A Southern Regional Education Board study published in September details how average teacher salaries across the US have sunk so low that mid-career educators in 38 states, both Democrat and Republican-led, qualify for federal assistance programs such as food stamps. One out of five teachers in the US is forced to take on a second job to make ends meet.

Massive job cuts, stagnant wages and worsening school conditions, including increased classroom overcrowding, crumbling school infrastructure, as well as antiquated and inadequate instructional materials, form the objective conditions that have compelled teachers across the US to engage in an ongoing series of strikes since the February 2018 statewide wildcat strike by West Virginia teachers.

Despite the initiative and courage of rank-and-file educators, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Education Association (NEA) and their state and local affiliates have continuously worked to isolate and wear down striking teachers in an effort to subordinate their struggle to the Democratic Party, which has played an equally active role in gutting education.

Significantly, many of the education jobs that are being eliminated are concentrated among special education teachers, teacher assistants and other support staff, guidance counselors and school nurses. Reduced staffing in these areas has been shown to aggravate the negative impact of cuts to education for those students most in need of support. Additionally, school districts across the country are slashing enrichment programs in areas such as arts and foreign language study.

The response to the deepening crisis in education from both major parties has been to further shift the burden of the catastrophe onto the backs of the working class while seeking to ensure that the obscene accumulation of wealth by the ruling oligarchy continues uninterrupted. While the precipitous decline in tax revenue owing to the pandemic has impacted all 50 states across the US, it is particularly illustrative to examine how areas under Democratic administrations are using budget deficits to further weaken public education.

In New York state, Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo has cynically sought to use the pandemic to build a national profile for himself by feigning opposition to Trump, while repeatedly rejecting even modest proposals to increase taxes on the wealthy to address an estimated $14.5 billion budget deficit. In the midst of the pandemic, Cuomo is withholding 20 percent of state K-12 education funding, resulting in a combination of draconian cuts and ballooning indebtedness in local school districts.

The Schenectady City School District, located in the Mohawk Valley roughly two hours from New York City, relies on state aid for nearly 70 percent of its operating budget. Due to Cuomo’s withholding of funding, the district was recently forced to eliminate 400 positions, including 79 teachers, 14 social workers and 231 paraprofessionals.

Even before the pandemic, school district debt in New York averaged $9,267 per student, compared to $8,500 per capita for the US as a whole. Currently, the total debt of school districts in the US amounts to just under $500 billion.

In New York City, Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio has used a $9 billion municipal budget deficit to cut over $700 million in education spending for the current year. Rather than encroach even minimally upon the obscene levels of wealth accumulated by the financial oligarchy on Wall Street, the self-styled “progressive” Democrat has resorted to austerity measures such as layoffs, wage cuts, the slashing of programs and a new municipal bond issue.

After weeks of threatening to lay off 9,000 education workers, de Blasio, with the connivance of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), used the budget crisis to carry out a brazen act of wage theft by reneging on $450 million in deferred wages owed to city teachers from 2009–2011. At the same time, de Blasio and other city Democrats have stepped up lobbying efforts to convince state lawmakers to allow the city to issue $5 billion in new municipal debt, for which working class residents of the city will be made to pay to the financial oligarchy.

In California, where years of defunding education has resulted in some of the highest class sizes and fewest numbers of guidance counselors per capita in the country, as well as drastic reductions in course offerings and other student supports, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed a budget that essentially guarantees the long-term indebtedness of local school districts.

After reducing the current education budget by $10 billion from the previous year, the state is deferring over $12 billion in K-12 funding to local school districts. In order to cover short-term expenses, local districts are now being forced to issue municipal bonds on the off-chance that a new federal stimulus package will allow the state to make up for withheld funding in the spring.

Even if a new federal stimulus package makes its way through Congress, by no means a forgone conclusion even under a Biden presidency, the scale of education funding is likely to fall significantly short of even the most conservative estimates of what is required to stabilize local school districts.

The multitrillion-dollar CARES Act—which was passed with unprecedented speed on a bipartisan basis last March in order to prop up the stock market—allocated a paltry $16.5 billion in total education funding. Subsequent legislative proposals to provide funding for modest relief measures, including direct assistance to workers and the poor as well as education aid to states, have been met with bipartisan indifference.

There is no section of the ruling elite capable of resolving the education crisis or any of the fundamental social or economic problems facing the broad masses. The bipartisan campaign to use the pandemic in order to further dismantle K-12 public education underscores the hypocrisy behind all of the current claims that the back-to-school drive is intended to address the needs of children.

The herding of school-aged children and teachers back into understaffed and insufficiently resourced school buildings as the deadly coronavirus is allowed to “rip through the population” is perhaps the clearest testimonial of the criminal indifference that characterizes the capitalist class.

Yet, a growing number of education workers, along with working class parents and youth, are taking up the struggle to oppose the decades-long bipartisan attack on public education and the homicidal policy of unsafe school reopenings. Education workers across the US and internationally are forming rank-and-file safety committees to fight for safe working conditions amid the deadly pandemic as well as the right of working-class youth to a quality education and culture.

Fascist protests in Bolivia demand overturning of presidential election

Tomas Castanheira

With less than a week to go before the inauguration of the MAS party’s Luis Arce as president of Bolivia, extreme right-wing and fascistic groups are promoting demonstrations throughout the country demanding the overturning of the recent election and a military takeover.

Last night, a street council called by the fascist Cruceñista Youth Unon (UJC), gathered thousands of people in the center of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia’s largest city and the main center of the country’s right-wing opposition. The council adopted the following points: annulment of the elections and auditing the electoral process, blocking the inauguration of the new president, blocking state institutions and demanding that the military “fulfill its constitutional role,” i.e., that they take control of the state institutions.

The coup assembly held in Santa Cruz was greeted by the self-proclaimed president, Jeanine Áñez, who tweeted this morning: “The Santa Cruz Council is a lesson for the Masistas: Arce has won but will not be able to govern through abuse.” This is a dangerous threat coming from someone who prepared the military for a possible coup during the elections, and it expresses the degree of political instability that remains in Bolivia.

Right-wing ally in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, November 2 (Credit: Twitter)

Accusations of electoral fraud, made only by the so-called Civic Committees and their “shock groups,” like the UJC, were insufficient for mobilizing forces immediately after the vote, which took place on October 18. Luis Arce’s clear victory was recognized almost immediately by the coup regime of Áñez and later even by the ultra-right presidential candidate from Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho.

Demonstrations for the annulment of the elections called by the UJC did not have any initial turnout, but suddenly gained strength last Wednesday, after a decision taken in the Legislative Assembly. Having a large majority of MAS deputies, the assembly voted to modify its own rules, overturning the requirement for a two-thirds majority, replacing it with a simple majority, for the approval of a series of measures, among them the promotion of police and military officers.

First denounced by the Unidad Demócrata (UD) caucus, the decision soon became the focal point of the right-wing opposition as a whole. UD Representative Claudia Mallón said that the MAS was seeking to unleash “a vendetta against the police and the military.”

The second-place candidate in the presidential elections, Carlos Mesa of Comunidad Ciudadana (CC), announced that if the MAS does not back down on the “two-thirds decision,” he will not attend Arce’s inauguration ceremony, virtually delegitimizing the new administration. The lawyer for the CC, Carlos Alarcón, stated that the modifications “are a blatant attack on democracy and the rule of law.”

Camacho once again took the offensive and recorded a statement saying: “The withdrawal of two thirds [rule]… is a clear indication that Luis Arce will govern according to the same authoritarian style of Masismo .” And he warned that “new struggles are coming to defend the democracy that MAS is once again hurting and trampling.”

The current president of the Santa Cruz Civic Committee, Rómulo Calvo, Camacho’s successor in this post, characterized the measure as another “coup” of the MAS and announced a hunger strike in front of the Legislative Assembly.

Boosted by this political support, protests headed by fascists in Santa Cruz and other big cities like La Paz and Cochabamba began to demand not only the annulment of the vote that overthrew the “two-thirds” requirement, but the annulment of the presidential elections. Led by the UJC and their counterpart in Cochabamba, the Cochala Youth Resistance (RJC) protesters shouted slogans like: “If there is no annulment, there will be no inauguration!” and “No, no, I don’t feel like living in a dictatorship like one in Venezuela.”

In Santa Cruz, a vigil at the gates of the Eighth Army Division headquarters demanding the military seize power, which had been going on for days, grew large last Wednesday, according to the newspaper Página Siete. Blockades were also erected at dozens of points in Santa Cruz and some places in Cochabamba.

The protests intensified and were more violent on Friday. In Cochabamba, demonstrators, supposedly members of the RJC, tried to bring down the gate and occupy the Specialized Operations Tactical Unit of the police, where a police riot was started during the 2019 coup against Evo Morales.

That same night, a group of seven journalists from different broadcast networks reported being verbally attacked and detained for about 10 minutes by these protesters. Journalists from Opinión also said they had been surrounded and threatened by members of the RJC. The next day, eight members of the RJC were arrested for a third incident, involving the destruction of vehicles of alleged supporters of the MAS. The detainees carried explosives, a homemade bazooka and other weapons.

While their paramilitary branches were acting in the streets, the Civic Committees launched an appeal for an international audit of the electoral process, which was supported almost immediately by the Catholic Church, also a supporter of the 2019 coup. This demand, completely unfounded, serves only as a means of legitimizing the fascistic demonstrations demanding a new coup.

Significantly, an important member of Áñez’s government backed the call for a review of the election results. Minister of Public Works Iván Arias declared Saturday: “What Santa Cruz and, I think, the whole country is asking for is an audit. I think it is best that the Electoral Body orders a prompt and quick audit with international observers.”

In yet another political provocation, Áñez invited to Luis Arce’s inauguration ceremony the US-backed puppet, self-proclaimed “interim president” of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó. Ousted MAS president Evo Morales was not invited.

The growing climate of political violence that marks the post-election period in Bolivia manifested itself in the assassination of Orlando Gutiérrez, executive secretary of the Federation of Bolivian Mineworkers Union and a militant of the MAS. Gutiérrez, who had suffered previous attacks, was beaten as he returned home in the days following the elections, in what appears to have been a premeditated killing by the extreme right. He was hospitalized with head trauma in a clinic in La Paz on October 22 and died days later.

The minister of government, Arturo Murillo, one of the most brutal figures of the coup regime, spreading slanders to cover up the real motives of the assassination, said that Gutiérrez “was partying for two days and then was attacked.” Murillo continued: “There is talk that he was with other miners leaders, many say … that they were fighting over positions in the ministry they were offered, and then the aggression occurred.”

This fascistic violence is able to grow thanks to the politics of the MAS. Since the November 2019 coup, the MAS leaders have worked to quell workers’ and peasants’ resistance in the streets, and for an agreement with the military and the most reactionary layers of the Bolivian bourgeoisie.

In a recent interview with their pseudo-left middle-class supporters of Jacobin, a prominent leader of the MAS, Andrónico Rodriguez, made it clear that, having won the election, his party will maintain the same cowardly attitude and continue its betrayals of the working class. He stated that the Arce government “is representing all sectors,” including the “extreme right wing.” He said: “Let’s hope that a kind of unity will be achieved among all of us, that state policies will be established and constituted so that, finally, Bolivia will win, irrespective of each one’s political colors.”

The electoral victory of the MAS, as recent events make clear, has not eliminated the dictatorial threat posed by the fascists. Arce is coming to power promising to form a government of “national unity” and to work for the “pacification of the country,” that is, to suppress the struggles of the Bolivian working class, while accommodating his administration to the political forces that will seek, from now on, to overthrow his presidency.

French police assault students demanding school shutdowns to stop coronavirus spread

Will Morrow

Yesterday, French riot police tear gassed and broke up protests by high school students calling for the closure of their schools to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

Protests and blockades of school entrances were reported in over a dozen schools. They were organized the day after a wave of teacher strikes that began Monday with the resumption of classes after the holiday break. Teachers at dozens of schools held local meetings shortly before 9 a.m. and voted not to enter classrooms under conditions where there were no protocols to realistically prevent the spread of the virus.

In Paris, students held protests outside the Hélène-Boucher, Maurice Ravel, Sophie Germain and Colbert schools, blockading the entrances with bins. A large protest of 300 students blocked the entrance to the Aristride-Briand school in Saint-Nazaire. Thirty students protested outside Pasteur school in Besançon, and students picketed outside the gates of the Delaune school in Bobigny, northeast of Paris.

Image posted by a teacher on the Red Pens Facebook group showing students in her German language class.

“We are still just as crammed together in the corridors and stairways at 8 a.m. It’s the same,” a student told France Info. “We are still 36 in a class with all the windows closed,” said another.

A student at Hélène-Boucher told Actu Paris that they were blocking the school entrance “to denounce the absence of measures against the coronavirus. We should not be here. We are at risk of getting the virus and passing it on to our parents.” He denounced what he called a “farcical confinement.”

Jean, a Parisian student, told RT journalist Charles Baudry: “We still have the same classes, filled with students side-by-side. We are demanding the reduction of student numbers by half, and the putting in place of appropriate social distancing measures, to be safe at school because this is putting everyone in danger.”

Another student told France Info: “We are still doing physical education without a mask, although all our sports teachers have had coronavirus. The canteens are not closed. We are at least 500 people inside the canteen, and we eat right next to each other.”

Teams of dozens of heavily armed riot police with shields were sent in to break up the protests. At Colbert, police used tear gas against 15- and 16-year-olds. Up to 60 students reportedly now facing fines for having refused police orders to break up.

The police also tear-gassed journalists who were filming the assault. Clément Lanot, a freelance journalist, tweeted: “I’ve just been tear-gassed by a policeman (with other journalists) although I am identifiable (press badge + camera). Elbowed and threatened with being run over by a car. We were outside the perimeter of the police intervention; not all the police were wearing masks.”

The Macron administration’s police assault demonstrates the diametrically opposed class interests involved in the response to the coronavirus pandemic. Students and teachers are demanding a scientific policy involving the closure of schools and health protocols, to stop the spread of the deadly virus and save lives.

A fictional classroom image produced for the cover of the government's school healthcare guidelines.

The Macron administration, acting on behalf of the corporate elite, is determined to keep schools open to force parents to remain on the job so that corporate profits can continue to flow. In all but name, the Macron administration and its counterparts across Europe are pursuing a policy of “herd immunity,” allowing the schools to spread the virus. It is determined to suppress opposition to this criminal policy including through police repression.

Teacher strikes also continued yesterday. As on Monday, the strikes are being organized by teachers themselves from below. The national union federations published a formal in-advance notice last Friday, in order to sanction the growing opposition among teachers and prevent it from developing outside their control.

Strikes were particularly concentrated in the outer northern suburbs of Paris, which have higher levels of poverty, lack of resources and understaffing. Sixty percent of teachers are on strike at the Triolet middle school in Saint-Denis. At the nearby Pablo Neruda middle school in Stains, 38 teachers were on strike on Tuesday, up from 20 on Monday.

In Hérault, in the south of France, strikes are taking place at the Jean Moulin, Poussan, Gignac, Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone and Pierre Mendès France schools.

Hundreds of teachers have posted, liked or shared comments and photos on the Red Pens Facebook group protesting against the conditions in their classroom. One teacher posted a photo of her class, with students side-by-side with no social distancing, with the comment, “Here is a class in a room that was provided for the official health protocols.”

Morgane, another teacher, commented: “So no more than 30 are allowed at a funeral, six for a marriage, but 32 in a classroom??? Making small children wear a mask while visits to aged care homes are allowed? It’s nonsense and even institutional abuse of our children.”

Bérenice added: “In my school we aren’t allowed to mix red chairs and blue chairs. Otherwise everything is the same [as before the confinement].” Olivier said, “This minister bears a significant responsibility for the propagation of the virus.” Another teacher, Anissa, said, “I wanted to do the same [take a photo of her class] but I didn’t dare.”

Geneviève said: “Same in our class of CM2 [second year of primary school] where there are 31…soon 32! Yet the healthcare minister says that the majority of classes have a maximum of 25 students. … The exceptions surpass the rule.”

Grégoire noted that the cover of the recently updated health care protocols released by the Macron government included a picture of just four students in a classroom, with more than a meter separation between them. “A nice provocation and judicious choice of illustration for the page of the ‘strengthened’ protocol,” he wrote.

Students wait in line to enter the canteen at a school yesterday.

To organize their struggle for a scientific policy against the coronavirus pandemic, students and teachers should form committees of action inside schools to monitor health and safety conditions and prepare a counteroffensive against herd immunity policies. These committees must be independent of the trade union bureaucracies, which have collaborated with the Macron administration in the systematic de-funding of education and the reopening of the economy that has created the conditions for the second wave of the pandemic.

An appeal must be made to students, parents and teachers in France and across Europe for joint strike action, to demand the closure of schools and the enforcement of health care protocols by school committees themselves. The fight against the pandemic is a fight against capitalism, and the ruling class’s herd immunity strategy of sacrificing the lives of millions upon the altar of its own profit interests.