Police Violence: a Crisis of Masculinity?

David Rosen

The numbers tell the sad story.

As of September 2020, 721 people have been shot to death by the police and, of them, 96 percent (694) were male and 4 percent (27) were female. This was same percentage of police killings in 2019 when, out of a total of 1,004 people who were killed, 96 percent (961) were male and 4 percent (43) were female. A similar pattern is evident in the breakdowns of police killings for 2017 and 2018.

A similar pattern of police killings was evident during the period of 1980 thru 1998 when 98 percent of those killed were males. Of those killings, over half (56%) were White people while about two-fifths (42%) were Black people. During the period of 1976 to 1998, the FBI reports “8,578 felons were justifiably killed by police”; killings by police were referred to as “justifiable homicides” and the persons that police killed were referred to as “felons.”

A revealing study by two Columbia University law professors, Jeffrey Fagan and Alexis Campbell, examines the racial character of police killings. They found that between 2015 and 2018, there were 3,757 “police-involved fatalities.” They note that just over half (51.9%) of those killed were White and about one in four (25.2%) were Black. In addition, just under one in five (18.7%) were Latinx and the remaining 4 percent were Asians, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans and Others.

Killing of civilians is endemic to policing. But are police killings of males a social ritual or an expression of a deeper aspect of masculinity?

Aurelia Terese Alston points out, “Policing is a male dominated field with a culture of hyper-masculinity.” The FBI reports for 2017 there were a total of 956,941 “law enforcement employees” in the U.S and, of these, 73 percent were male and 27 percent were female. In 2013, 88 percent of full-time law enforcement employees were men.

More disturbing, as the American Psychology Association reports, “men commit 90 percent of homicides in the United States and represent 77 percent of homicide victims. They’re the demographic group most at risk of being victimized by violent crime.”

There is a tragic dialectic between masculinity and policing killings that has peculiar meaning today as the rate of police killings – especially of Black and Latino males — remain high. How this dialectic plays out may suggest the deeper changes now remaking American society.

***

Being a “man” today is a challenge. Once upon a time, American culture was grounded in a traditional notion of “hypermasculinity” that some have referred to as “hegemonic masculinity.” It has been defined as follows:

… a set of values, established by men in power that functions to include and exclude, and to organize society in gender unequal ways. It combines several features: a hierarchy of masculinities, differential access among men to power (over women and other men), and the interplay between men’s identity, men’s ideals, interactions, power, and patriarchy.

Some suggest that the concept derives from Antonio Gramsci and reflects “a position of dominance attained through relative consensus rather than regular force, even if underpinned by force.” It is a tension that is grounded in a belief that links masculinity to the traditional notion of the “breadwinning,” the family provider.

In the good-old days – which, of course, never truly existed – pure masculinity was grounded in patriarchy and the authoritarian power of the male, be he a god, king, warrior, boss, husband or simply the guy next door. In those days, the architype “man” was without question heterosexual, physically strong and muscular, sexually dominant, unemotional, stoic and non-communicative, and committed to the hierarchal power of the status quo.

However, the relentless, grinding commodification of daily life under capitalism has stripped most of traditional patriarchy of its power. The reducing of nearly all social relations to market-mediated exchanges contributed to the slow but determined rise female power that helped erode the once-mythologized and real power of the hyper-masculine male. One consequence is that the 21^st century male is “sensitive,” emotional, multi-sexual and questioning of the status quo. However, males often earn less than females and women are earning more higher education degrees then males.

Sadly, the traditional link between patriarchy and hypermasculinity has come to be represented by blue-collar or working-class men, represented by construction and factory employees, fireman and policemen. Frank Rudy Cooper, a law professor at University of Las Vegas, points out, “Working class men who take orders or lack status in other ways often resort to hypermasculinity in an attempt to regain social status.”

Cooper links masculinity to policing: “Not surprisingly, given the working-class backgrounds of most policemen, there is a close association between hypermasculinity and police work.” He warns, the “association is seen in the qualifications for the job: the size requirements, upper body strength prerequisite, and the ability to beat someone into submission.” Susan Martin, an authority of women and policing, adds, “Since a key element of policing — gaining and maintaining control of situations — remains associated with manhood, male officers do gender along with doing dominance.”

Some analysts note the same link between patriarchy and hypermasculinity among poor and working-class men of color. Ann McGinley, a law professor at University. of Nevada, notes that “young black men from poor urban neighborhoods who adopt the ‘cool pose’” expresses a version of hypermasculinity that “emphasizes toughness and invincibility.”

The link between patriarchy, hypermasculinity and policing is grounded in what Cooper identifies as “command presence.” “An officer has command presence when he projects an aura of confidence. … He demonstrates it [hypermasculinity] by showing people that he is in charge [that is] antithetical to policing based on negotiation and problem-solving.” In this way, he decisively shows that he is not acting in a “feminine” manner.

Hypermasculinity in policing is most clearly expressed through the “punishment of disrespect.” Cooper claims such punishment “stems from the fact that police officers demand deference to the badge. In doing so, they often act more out of a desire to preserve their authority to enforce the law.” Harlan Hahn grounds a police officer’s “authority” in his ability “to enforce a law.” Cooper argues that such notes that the “political opportunity to control other men to be a major attraction of the job.” He adds, a “policeman’s fear that a challenge to his authority is a challenge to his manhood ….”

***

During the Cold War era of the 1950s, masculinity was in flux. The old model of post-Civil War era notion of masculinity was based in a man’s ability to produce and declined in the wake of WW-II. It was superseded by the new “white collar” model of masculinity based on managerial authority, service-based output and family-oriented lifestyle. in influence. As Thomas Andrew Joyce observed, “One’s manliness was communicated to other men through visible success in the marketplace.”

The postwar period saw a second challenge to traditional notions of masculinity. The sociologist Michael Kimmel, in “Masculinity as Homophobia,” identifies this challenge as “homophobia.” It was not a fear of homosexuality but “the fear that other men will unmask us, emasculate us, and reveal to us and the world that we do not measure up … the fear of being seen as a sissy dominates the cultural definitions of manhood.”

A half-century late, masculinity is being increasingly split between hypermasculinity and the more “sensitive” male. This tension seems to be reverberating within the law-enforcement establishment as reflected by the high level of police killings and the growing efforts to humanize policing. These efforts are being promoted by those championing such efforts as “community policing” and “defunding police.”

However, without humanize the “masculinity” associated with policing, with uphold “law and order,” police killing of other men will not fundamentally change.

U.S. is Doing Its Best to Lock Out China From Latin America and the Caribbean

Vijay Prashad

On August 20, 2018, El Salvador’s leftist president Salvador Sánchez Cerén announced on national television that El Salvador would break its ties with Taiwan and recognize the People’s Republic of China. This was in accord with international law, said Sánchez Cerén, and it would bring “great benefits for our country.”

Not long after, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio took to Twitter to announce that this move “will cause real harm to relationship with U.S. including their role in #AllianceforProsperity.” Earlier, both the Dominican Republic and Panama had made the shift, but Rubio said that El Salvador would be specially punished because it was ruled by the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). It did not seem to matter to Rubio that his own country, the United States, had shifted its ties to China from Taiwan in 1979.

The “Alliance for Prosperity,” which was Rubio’s hashtag, referred to U.S. President Barack Obama’s deal with several Central American countries to provide some modest development aid in exchange for a beefed up police force and the prevention of transit of migrants toward the United States; this was border enforcement dressed up as development. Rubio’s threats were inconsequential; the money was too little, and the price paid by the populations of Central America was too steep.

In November 2018, Sánchez Cerén went to Beijing where he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trade relations were front and center of the discussion, including encouragement for El Salvador to participate in China’s growing Belt and Road Initiative. A year later, in December 2019, Sánchez Cerén’s successor—Nayib Bukele—arrived in Beijing to reaffirm the ties between El Salvador and China, as well as the desire of his center-right government to develop Belt and Road projects. It did not seem to matter if the president of El Salvador was from the right or the left; both were eager to acknowledge the importance of China’s role in the region, and both were willing to “harm”—as Rubio put it—their relationship with the United States.

As news of the Chinese deals were announced, Bukele was criticized for getting El Salvador into a “debt trap.” He responded firmly on Twitter. “What part of ‘non-refundable’ do you not understand?” he asked, referring to the fact that China was giving El Salvador grants and not loans.

America Crece

But the game was not over. On January 30, 2020, Bukele stood beside Adam Boehler, the head of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), to sign an agreement to implement “America Crece” in his country.

En route back to El Salvador from China in December, Bukele stopped in Tokyo, where Prime Minister Shinzo Abe warned him not to allow Chinese companies to invest in the La Unión port. China’s Asia Pacific Xuan Hoa Investment Company had been in talks to invest a considerable amount of money in the port. The U.S. government had campaigned against this, and now Abe whispered the U.S.’s warning into Bukele’s ear. The chill of the tensions between Washington and Beijing stopped Bukele’s hand; it was inevitable that he would seek to placate the United States as far as possible without breaking with China.

The instrument used is America Crece, or “Growth in the Americas,” a U.S. project that was launched in 2018. The U.S. says that China is not transparent with its deals, but there is almost nothing available on America Crece (and the U.S. State Department and the DFC did not immediately respond to requests for comment). An FAQ on the U.S. State Department website says that the program “seeks to catalyze private sector investment in infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean.” The U.S. government will operate to open doors for U.S. (and at least in one case, Israeli) companies.

In October 2018, the U.S. Congress passed the Better Utilization of Investment Leading to Development (BUILD) Act, which joined the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Development Credit Authority into the DFC. U.S. President Donald Trump placed Boehler—Jared Kushner’s former roommate—as its head. The budget for the agency is $60 billion. In September 2020, a bipartisan consensus drew up the America Labor, Economic Competitiveness, Alliances, Democracy, and Security (America LEADS) Act to undermine Chinese investments. Both Democrats and Republicans are committed to this anti-China agenda.

One of the main DFC projects in El Salvador is the construction of a natural gas plant in Acajutla, which is owned by the U.S. energy firm Invenergy and its Salvadorian subsidiary Energía del Pacífico. U.S. Ambassador Ronald Johnson said that the DFC will provide financing for the project (it will be about $1 billion). Eyebrows have been raised in El Salvador about the lack of concern for the environmental impact of the plant as well as the subsea pipeline on marine life and on the coastal habitat.

Ugliness of America Cerce

America Cerce funds have been promised across the border in Honduras to build the Jilamito hydroelectric plant. On August 13, 2020, U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar and 27 other representatives wrote a letter to Boehler, in which they pointed out that the project “has met a sustained campaign of opposition from affected local communities since it was announced.” An attorney for the communities—Carlos Hernández—was assassinated in April 2018, following the attacks that killed activist Ramón Fiallos in January 2018.

In late July 2020, armed men entered the home of Sneider Centeno in Triunfo de la Cruz and abducted him. They did the same to three other leaders of the Garífuna community. The U.S. representatives wrote that the DFC is cutting deals with Honduras’ President Juan Orlando Hernández who “has a record that includes gross human rights violations, credible accusations of electoral fraud, deep connections to narcotrafficking and organized crime, and corruption.” There is ugliness in America Cerce.

$1 Trillion Versus $60 Billion

The U.S. has committed $60 billion to the DFC. Meanwhile, China plans to spend at least $1 trillion on the Belt and Road Initiative. Part of the Chinese money comes, as Bukele wrote when he left Beijing, as grants.

All of this irks Washington. David Malpass, U.S. undersecretary for international affairs, said in February 2018 that the U.S. faced a serious challenge from “China’s non-market activities.” China invests and provides grants, Malpass said, with no insistence that the recipient countries “improve” their “macroeconomic policies”; in other words, China does not make it a habit to place conditions on the loans such as to undermine labor laws or to cut subsidies for health and education (as the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury Department often do); nor does China privilege the private sector. These are the “non-market activities.”

In a recent article, Professor Sun Hongbo of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences wrote that the U.S. government “pressure[d] Latin American countries to cooperate with the U.S. global policy agenda,” so that these countries—such as El Salvador—would have to choose between Beijing and Washington. No such pressure comes from China, wrote Sun.

This is a view echoed in Latin American and Caribbean capitals; they face pressure from Washington to break ties with China, something loathsome to most of the countries, as it has been for El Salvador’s Bukele.

African Women in Media (AWiM) Labour Migration Reporting Programme 2020

Application Deadline: 20th November 2020

About the Award: The programme features the Labour Migration Media AWards, Labour Migration Reporting Training Programme, and research into the lived experiences of labour migration journalists in Africa. As part of our Visibility Project, AWiM is also working with Wikimedia communities in Nigeria, Uganda, Cameroon and Algeria, to train women journalists on how to write on Wikipedia, and create more profiles and articles on labour migration in Africa.

With labour migration becoming an increasingly important policy issue, the Labour Migration Media Awards aims to celebrate and honour African journalists committed to labour migration issues in their reportage. It is envisaged that the project will culminate in the establishment of a community of practice of journalists reporting on labour migration in Africa.

Eligible Fields: The awards are open to all African journalists, and entries must be published or broadcast with an Africa based media organisation. As such, in recognition of the important contributions of journalists to Labour Migration Reporting, we are pleased to announce the following award categories:

1. Migrants’ Rights,
2. Remittance and Diaspora Contributions to Development,
3. Governance of Labour Migration,
4. Gender-based Migration,
5. Economic Impact of Migration,
6. Migration and Health,
7. Intra-African Migration,
8. Fair recruitment, forced labour and human trafficking of migrant workers
9. Labour Migration News Team of the Year

Type: Training, Award

Eligibility:

1. Professional journalists are invited to submit works published/broadcasted between 01 January 2019 – 20 November 2020
2. Participants must have the nationality of a member state of the African Union, and be at least eighteen years of age. They can live anywhere in the world
3. Only works published/broadcast with a media organisation in a Member State of the African Union are permitted.
4. Applicants can submit up to two entries across all categories
5. Joint submissions are permitted provided the submissions are authored by the entrants
6. Participants must be the author(s) of the works submitted in her/his/their name, and own copyright or have been authorized by the copyright holder(s) to submit the entry(s)
7. Submitted works can be in any journalistic format (text, photojournalism, audio, audio-visual, data etc.)
8. Photographic entries must be free of any name or text on the image itself, instead a clear caption, in English, must be provided on submission
9. No entry fee is payable.
10. Only entries submitted between 19 October 2020 – 20 November 2020 will be considered
11. All entries must be submitted via the official contest form, and must comply with the rules and eligibility criteria set. Entries sent in other ways, and/or that do not comply with the rules and eligibility criteria, will not be accepted.
12. Any entries that are late, illegible, fraudulent, or which bring/would be likely to bring the reputation of African Women in Media, African Union, International Labour Organisation, and/or International Organisation for Migration into disrepute will be rendered ineligible to participate in the Awards and will be disqualified.
13. You will grant African Women in Media, African Union, International Labour Organisation, and/or International Organisation for Migration unrestricted, unfettered and irrevocable non-exclusive rights in all works submitted for entry into the Awards (or where such rights are owned by a third party, you shall procure that such third party grants such rights) for African Women in Media, African Union, International Labour Organisation, and/or International Organisation for Migration to use such works in any way it determines in relation to the Awards.
14. The panel of judges will be determined by African Women in Media, African Union, International Labour Organisation, and/or International Organisation for Migration in its/their sole discretion and will meet in November 2020.
15. Judges reserve the right to not select entries that do not meet the required standards.
16. Judges reserve the right to transfer entries for consideration in other categories at their discretion.
17. The judges uphold the integrity and reputation of the Labour Migration Media Awards and, as such, reserve the right to disqualify any piece of work and/or finalist if, in the judges’ opinion, there exists reasonable doubt about the authenticity and/or ownership of the submitted entry and/or the integrity of the finalists.
18. The judges’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
19. Categories and sponsors of the awards may be subject to change.
20. Finalists will be required to sign affidavits of eligibility, confirming amongst other things copyright ownership and/or clearance of all works submitted, and containing releases granting African Women in Media, African Union, International Labour Organisation, and/or International Organisation for Migration and all sponsors of the Awards, the right to use their names, voices, pictures and work submitted, without compensation, in any media for the purposes of advertising/public relations, training, exhibiting and promotion of all matters related to the Awards
21. You hereby consent that African Women in Media, African Union, International Labour Organisation, and/or International Organisation for Migration may share the information you provide with the partners and judges of the Awards.
22. Three finalists will be announced per category and one winner will be selected per category
23. African Women in Media, African Union, International Labour Organisation, and/or International Organisation for Migration and all sponsors of the Awards disclaim any liability for loss to any person or property relating to the delivery and/or subsequent use of, or participation in, any of the prizes awarded. The winners agree to abide by any and all terms and conditions of the supplier(s) of the prizes. The promoter is AWiM.
24. The Competition shall be covered and construed with international law.
25. You acknowledge that this is only a Competition and the awarding of any prize does not give rise to an employment, agency or joint venture relationship or arrangement between you and African Women in Media, African Union, International Labour Organisation, and/or International Organisation for Migration

Click here to find out more on the awards rules and eligibility

Eligible Countries: African countries

Number of Awards: 200

Value of Award: Winners will be announced on 7 December 2020, and receive a cash prize of $500 each, and access to the five courses under the Labour Migration Reporting Training Programme on AWiMLearning.

How to Apply: Click here to submit your entry

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

The link between tobacco and cancer

Pradeep Krishnatray

One in four cancer patient is a tobacco consumer in India. And if you honestly say that you have not seen any smoker suffer from cancer, as is likely, you may still be right because you have seen the other three.

You may even agree with Mr. Shyam Charan Gupta, a beedi baron, one of the BJP MPs, and the former head of the parliamentary committee of subordinate legislations that examined the provisions of Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act 2003. In 2015, Mr. Gutpa had said that he could produce a lot of people who are chain smokers of beedi and have had no disease.

However, lack of exposure to tobacco-related cancer does not mean absence of such cases. The recently released ICMR’s 2020 Report of National Cancer Registry Programme (NCRP) estimates that by the year 2025 the number of tobacco-related cancer cases will exceed 4 lakhs and will constitute 27 percent of all cancers in India. In fact, tobacco-related cancer cases will exceed all major forms of cancer such as cervical, breast and gastro-intestinal tract, etc.

NCRP is a repository of data for surveillance of cancers in the country. The 2020 report includes data for four years (2012 – 2016) from 28 Population Based Cancer Registries (PBCRs) and 58 Hospital Based Cancer registries (HBCRs) in India.

The population based cancer registries shows that South India performs better than other parts of the country. Among males, with slightly over 40 percent relative proportion of sites of cancers associated with tobacco use, Hyderabad district and Chennai fall much behind most other parts of the country. Similarly, among females, lower proportion have cancers associated with tobacco use in Hyderabad district and Chennai (about 14 percent) than in cities such as Ahmedabad (urban), Bangalore, Bhopal, Kolkata, Mumbai, Nagpur and Pune.

Broadly speaking, tobacco consumption is of two types: Smoking and smokeless. In India, people smoke tobacco in the form of cigarettes, bidis, hooka, hookli, chillum, chutta, and dhumti. While cigarette and bidi are predominant forms of tobacco smoking, hooka use is catching up in the form of hooka bars, especially in urban areas.

According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an hour of smoking hookah is even more harmful than that of cigarette. This is mainly because an hour-long session of hookah involves 200 puffs as compared to cigarette which requires 30 puffs in an hour. In August 2020, Covid 19 forced the Delhi government to ban belatedly the use of hookahs, with or without tobacco, in all public places, including hotels, restaurants and bars.

Dhumti, on the other hand, has a gender twist. Used mostly in Goa, both male and female smoke it. However, males smoke dhumti in conventional manner, but females smoke it in reverse manner — by keeping the burning end inside the mouth.

The smokeless form of tobacco use in India includes betel quid chewing, mawa, mishri, khaini, gutka, snuff, and as an ingredient of pan masala.

Whether smoking or non-smoking type, tobacco-induced cancer affects several parts of the body: Lip, tongue, mouth, pharynx, oesophagus, larynx, lung and urinary bladder. However, the picture is not as clear as may seem.

Cancer adversely affects different parts of the male and female body depending on where the person lives. In the south, north and east, lung is the most common site of cancer among males. Of the total number of cancer cases in these regions, lung cancer affects around 30 percent of males. In the western and central regions, cancer mostly affects the mouth. In the northeast, the site is the hypopharynx — part of the throat (pharynx) that lies beside and behind the larynx.

However, among females in the central, east and western regions of the country, tobacco-induced cancer affects the mouth. In the north, cancer oesophagus and cancer lung have the highest proportion among the cancers associated with use of tobacco. Cancer oesophagus is common in the north eastern region.

In all of this, the villain of the piece is the tobacco. It is one of the top 10 risk factors driving both death and disability in the country. It is a behavioural risk meaning if they will it, tobacco users can stop its consumption.

India is the third largest producer of tobacco in the world. With revenues exceeding $6 billion in 2019, ITC, an Indian multinational conglomerate, is part of the top 10 leading tobacco companies in the world in terms of net sales. Besides cigarettes, the company has diversified into several product lines and services. However, cigarettes constitute only a very small percentage of total tobacco consumption in the country. Despite this, the increase in (real) price of cigarettes is much larger than increase in the price of chewing tobacco and bidis that are consumed in far greater quantity. Since 2008, the price of a packet of cigarette with 10 sticks has increased by over Rs. 20 but a bundle of bidis of 25 sticks has increased by about Rs.6 and that of chewing tobacco (10g) by about Rs. 2.

Tobacco use contributes to more than 13 lakh deaths in the country. Although tobacco-related morbidity and mortality continue to be high, the prevalence of any form of tobacco use has decreased by six percentage points in the last 10 years or so. This is mainly due to aggressive government action in the form of increase in the price of cigarettes and prominent display of pictorial health warnings on packs.

About 29 percent of Indians consume tobacco either in smokeless or smoke form. Nineteen Indian states have tobacco consumers less than 29 percent. The five southern states — Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Kerala belong to this category.

In Tamil Nadu, 20 percent of adult population consumes tobacco. In nearby Puducherry, that number declines to almost half of that in Tamil Nadu. The worst off are the seven northeast states with Tripura topping them all with 65 percent of population consuming tobacco.

Interestingly, over 90 percent of the 76, 750 adult respondents of the all-India Global Adult Tobacco Survey-2 survey said they believed that tobacco causes serious illness. This fact indicates that many of such people are ready to change their behaviours. The question who will nudge them to lead a cancer-free life.

Macron’s Incitement: ‘Crisis in Islam’ or French Politics?

Ramzy Baroud

There is no moral or ethical justification for the killing of innocent people, anywhere. Therefore, the murder of three people in the French city of Nice on October 29 must be wholly and unconditionally rejected as a hate crime, especially as it was carried out in a holy place, the Notre Dame Basilica.

However, we would be remiss to ignore the political context that led a 21-year-old Tunisian refugee to allegedly stage a knife attack against peaceful worshippers in Nice. While it is fairly easy to recognize the individual culprit behind such a violent event, it takes much introspection, let alone honesty, to identify the true culprits, who, often for political reasons, fan the flames of hate and violence.

Since his advent to the Elysée Palace, in May 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron, has led an aggressive foreign policy abroad and an equally contentious domestic agenda. These choices were not random, as Macron was dogged by numerous domestic challenges: rising inequality and unemployment, mass protests led largely by the ‘Gilets Jaunes’ – Yellow Vests –  Movement and the unhindered rise of right-wing, anti-immigrant populist movements, such as the National Front (FN) of Marine Le Pen.

It is important that we recall the political atmosphere through which Macron was elected, for the man was meant to be the sensible choice propelled forward by the once-ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP).

The latter’s candidate, François Fillon, failed to acquire the necessary votes to decisively win the elections on April 23, 2017. Instead, it was Macron, a relative political ‘outsider’ from the one-year-old En Marche (EM) Party that had the chance to stop the progress of Marine Le Pen’s racist and chauvinistic FN. Indeed, Macron won the second runoff elections on May 7. His victory was decisive.

Judging by the mass protests that soon followed Macron’s election, later exacerbated by the economic crisis that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic (which, thus far, has killed over 36,000 people in France alone), Macron is no longer popular among his people.

With new elections scheduled for early 2022, Macron and France’s ruling elites are quite nervous. The French economy is unlikely to recover anytime soon, not only because of the coronavirus pandemic – the destructive impact of which is expected to persist over the coming months and years – but also because, in the last three years, there has been no serious structural overhauling of the French economy with the stated aim of sting the pandemics of inequality, unemployment, racism, and political corruption.

As is often the case with inept leaders, Macron has invested in creating political distractions at home and abroad, manufacturing crises and provoking unnecessary confrontations.

The French leader has seized on the opportunity presented to him as a result of the American retreat from various Mediterranean conflicts, namely Libya, Syria, Lebanon, and the East Mediterranean gas dispute. The shift in US foreign policy priorities, coupled with the British abandonment of the European Union – scheduled to go into full effect at the end of this year – led Macron to behave as if the de facto leader of Europe.

Racism in France is rife, and the electoral successes of the various right-wing nationalistic parties are a testament to this assertion. Instead of confronting this protracted disease which has afflicted the French body politic for far too long, Macron has labored to find some kind of a balance, where he continues to appeal to the liberal forces in his country without fully alienating the right-wing chauvinistic constituency. To achieve this delicate balance, Macron has opted for the most politically – and, to state bluntly,  cowardly –  convenient option: targeting France’s most marginalized and impoverished French Arab and African communities in the name of fighting for the ‘values’ of the Republic against ‘Islamic terrorism’ and the dark forces that are lurking within his country.

This is not to argue that domestic terrorism is not a major problem deserving attention and counter-strategies. However, judging by recurring statements made by French officials and media – which tend to demonize entire groups of mostly immigrant populations and their religious values – it seems as if the French government is leading a crusade of sorts against its own Muslim population. It appears as if Macron, himself, is leading a populist march against Islam and Muslims in France and elsewhere. This pathetic display of bad, opportunistic leadership was the true catalyst of today’s crisis.

This brief timeline is sufficient to link Macron to France’s latest violence:

On October 2, Macron assumed the role of the scholarly theologian lecturing his countrymen on Islam. “Islam is a religion which is experiencing a crisis today, all over the world,” he said, laying out a plan to combat Islamic “separatism” in France. This provocative statement had an international dimension which, expectedly, raised the ire of Muslim governments and populations the world over. The domestic component of his comments was even more dangerous, as he practically declared French Muslims a fifth column, whose ultimate aim is to destabilize and to break up the French Republic.

More provocations followed, once more the berating of Islam and the mocking of Prophet Mohammed, African and Arab immigrants and so on, in the name of French values, democracy and freedom of expression. Judging by the bloody attack on the Charlie Hebdo’s magazine in January 2015 and the violence and mosque burning of over 30 mosques in its wake (though the latter received little or no media attention), it should have taken no particular genius to deduce that the latest government-led provocations and anti-Muslim incitement were also doomed to result in violence and counter-violence.

Indeed, on October 16, a French teacher, who displayed images that mocked Prophet Mohammed, was reportedly killed by an 18-year-old Chechen Muslim refugee. The teacher was later declared a French hero and celebrated for his supposed sacrifice for French values.

More mockery and insults of Islam and Muslims continued, this time on a much larger scale. The anti-Muslim incitement was accompanied by acts of violence against French Muslims, particularly women. Again, this kind of violence received little attention in the international media and was hardly seen in France as an expression of a mass movement reflecting religious or nationalistic ideas.

With Turkey, Pakistan and political movements representing every Muslim-majority country in the world jumping into the fray, Macron has managed to make himself the center of international attention as the indefatigable fighter for Western values and democratic ideals – with a subtle emphasis on being the champion of Christianity, as well.

The true crisis is not a crisis in Islam, but in French politics. If anyone deserves mockery, it is not Prophet Mohammed – whose message of nearly 1,500 years ago was that of peace, justice and equality – but, rather, Macron himself, who continues to distract from his unmitigated failure as a politician by pitting the French people, religious or otherwise, against each other. Hopefully, Charlie Hebdo will be satirizing that reality sometime soon.

As Boris Johnson’s partial lockdown begins: The working class must intervene to prevent COVID-19 catastrophe

Thomas Scripps

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been forced to impose a second one-month “lockdown” after his government was confirmed as a cabal of mass murderers.

For months, the working assumption in ruling circles has been that 85,000 more lives would be lost to COVID-19 this winter in a “reasonable worst-case scenario”. New projections leaked Saturday showed this appalling toll to be an underestimate. The UK confronts a surge of COVID-19 infections and deaths far worse than the initial wave suffered in the spring.

This catastrophe has been prepared by the policies of the Conservative government and its co-conspirators in the Labour Party and the trade unions. It falls to the working class to take control of society out of the hands of these criminals and prevent a terrible loss of life.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson holds a Covid-19 Press Conference on Saturday October 31 in 10 Downing Street. (Picture by Pippa Fowles / No 10 Downing Street)

While admitting to MPs on Monday that deaths this winter could be “twice as bad or more compared with the first wave”, Johnson made clear that the British ruling class has no intention of seriously suppressing the virus. His announcement last Saturday of a month of new national restrictions was coupled with a defence of the government’s record. Plumbing new depths of political cynicism, he explained away projections of multiple thousands of deaths a day and overflowing hospitals as proof of the need “to be humble in the face of nature.”

The pandemic is not a natural disaster. Johnson is covering for his repugnant actions in encouraging the spread of the virus, but he speaks for the whole capitalist social order. More than 1.2 million people are dead because human life is considered expendable in the ruthless pursuit of profit. This fact is so explosive that its consequences must be passed off as the work of irresistible natural forces—in the style of Thomas Malthus’s eighteenth-century assertion that hunger and disease are the inevitable fate of the “surplus” working class.

What is the real record of the past year? From the start, the Tories had no intention of combatting the virus. Their declared policy was one of “herd immunity”, allowing the virus to rip through the population with the pseudo-scientific justification that this would eventually confer immunity to the population—after the death of hundreds of thousands. This murderous plan was only altered by Johnson out of fear of a wave of strikes against unsafe conditions which began to spread across Britain and Europe, and of the threat that popular revulsion at his response to the pandemic might turn into mass political opposition.

Together with similar shutdowns across Europe, the forced imposition of the March 23 lockdown saved millions of lives. But from May to June, Johnson returned to his original strategy, prematurely ending the lockdown and actively encouraging behaviours which spread the virus.

Millions were ordered back on public transport and to work, with no test, track and trace system to speak of and zero health and safety inspections conducted. Johnson reopened the hospitality, entertainment, and leisure industries, with the instruction, “I think people need to go out and enjoy themselves.” Chancellor Rishi Sunak organised an “Eat Out to Help Out” subsidy scheme to encourage millions back into pubs and restaurants. Quarantines were scrapped to encourage holidays abroad, including to COVID hotspots France and Spain.

Schools and universities were fully reopened to millions of pupils, students and staff in September. Johnson and Education Secretary Gavin Williamson shot down any suggestion of online instruction.

A series of farcical restrictions were introduced—including “local lockdowns”, the “rule of six”, and a regional “Tier system” of regulations—whose main effect was to sow confusion and discredit the legitimacy of public health interventions.

The government’s overwhelming priority has been to keep open the economy to ensure a continued flow of profits to the super rich. Deaths, concentrated among older layers of the population considered as an unproductive drain on state finances, are considered an economic bonus.

Once again, it is only the fear of mass opposition which has forced Johnson to enact new measures. The Tories have created the conditions where the spread of the virus threatens mass deaths and a collapse of the National Health Service, raising the prospect of a popular backlash. That is why the government has said protests are no longer exempt from lockdown restrictions, whether COVID compliant or not.

The new lockdown is significantly more limited than the first. All those who cannot work from home—except hospitality, entertainment, leisure, and non-essential retail employees—will be expected to work on-site. Schools, colleges and universities will remain open. These exemptions, leaving millions of people exposed to the virus, will severely reduce the effectiveness of the lockdown. Scientists suggest that the month of restrictions might only reduce infections by as little as 10 percent. The virus will therefore continue to spread exponentially.

Even this limited intervention is opposed by a substantial section of the Tory Party and its allies in Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party—soon to be rechristened the anti-lockdown “Reform” party. Led by Sir Graham Brady, Chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, they are demanding an end to all pretences of controlling the virus.

Opposition to the government is growing, but it can only go forward by developing a new political programme and leadership.

The Labour Party and the trade unions stand exposed by this crisis as accomplices of the Johnson government. In the first days of the pandemic, the unions demobilised industrial struggles and workers’ protests for safe conditions, pledging to collaborate with Johnson “in the national interest.” They oversaw the unsafe reopening of workplaces and education settings, jettisoning all previously declared “tests” and “red lines”. With anger mounting among their memberships, they are now doing everything possible to prevent strike action by supporting the latest measures or at best politely asking for an extension to partially cover education settings.

Labour embraced the Tory government from the start of the crisis, with first Jeremy Corbyn and then Sir Keir Starmer pledging only “constructive opposition”—a euphemism for collusion. Starmer—infamous for his insistence that schools should reopen, “no ifs, no buts”—made a pathetic attempt to cover his criminal record last month by issuing a belated endorsement of a two-week “circuit breaker” lockdown. He did so based entirely on arguments for minimising the disruption to UK businesses by an uncontrolled explosion of the virus. Labour supports Johnson’s limited lockdown, including keeping schools open.

Corbyn and the “Labour left” are just as guilty. Corbyn even admitted in an August interview to having been told of the government’s “herd immunity” plan ahead of time, while he was still leader of the Labour Party. Forewarned of this policy for mass death, he alerted nobody.

Since then he has never once opposed the reopening of the economy. He and his allies, John McDonnell, Dianne Abbott et al, are directing all their energies into getting Corbyn’s suspension from Labour reversed. They are appealing to rank-and-file members not to quit the party witch-hunting them as anti-Semites and colluding with Johnson.

A political break with these organisations is a life and death question for the working class. Wildcat strikes of students and teachers have already broken out in Greece, Poland and France against the unsafe reopening of schools. The same sentiment exists in the UK, but workers and youth must become conscious of the fight they are engaged in.

The tremendous challenges posed by the pandemic cannot be addressed without a frontal assault on the capitalist profit system and the monopolisation of social wealth by the super-rich. This is an international struggle against a global pandemic and a global economic order. It demands an international movement of the working class across all artificial national borders, acting through its own independent organisations.

This is the programme fought for by the Socialist Equality Party (UK) and its sister parties in the International Committee of the Fourth International.

On May 27, the SEP issued a statement calling for the formation of “rank-and-file safety committees in every factory, office, and workplace. These committees, democratically controlled by workers themselves, should formulate, implement, and oversee measures that are necessary to safeguard the health and lives of workers, their families, and the broader community.”

The statement explained, “the pandemic is inseparably linked to a struggle of workers against the ruling class—the corporate and financial oligarchy—and its dictatorship over economic and political life. It is, therefore, a fight against capitalism and for socialism, the restructuring of society based on social need, not private profit.”

After delayed and inadequate lockdown measures, COVID-19 second wave overwhelms France

Jacques Lidin

With the Macron administration’s latest coronavirus lockdown measures that are both inadequate and too late, epidemiologists now predict a second wave of the pandemic in France even larger than the first. But the Macron government is determined to maintain economic activity, with no regard for the safety of the population.

The disastrous and criminal impact of these policies can already be seen in the accelerating death toll in France. On Tuesday alone, 854 people died from the virus, the highest number since April, and up from 416 the day before.

A nurse holds a phone while a COVID-19 patient speaks with his family from the intensive care unit at the Joseph Imbert Hospital Center in Arles, southern France, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

In an October 28 speech announcing partial lockdown measures, Macron emphasized the European character of the second wave of the pandemic in order to minimize his government’s responsibility. “We are all, in Europe, surprised by the evolution of the virus,” he said. It is as though the continent’s population was bound to a fate independent of any of the actions taken by governments, which, according to Macron, have all been made on the basis of the best available information.

This is a clear lie, since a renewed upsurge of the pandemic was noted weeks ago by epidemiologists. But nothing has been done. If the upsurge is now taking place across the continent, it is because every European government has followed essentially the same policy of returning the population to work at all costs.

As the virus began to accelerate rapidly, Macron announced curfews in some regions on October 14. Not only did these measures fail to stem the spread of the virus, but it accelerated from a 38 percent increase from October 12 to 18 to an additional 52 percent the following week.

Revealing his contempt for the safety of workers and the social interests standing behind his policies, Macron criticized working from home as harmful to the functioning of business.

The government’s policies are dictated by its willingness to tolerate catastrophic levels of death. Speaking on October 28, Macron warned that without a new lockdown, “In a few months we will have to mourn at least another 400,000 deaths.” He added that “even if we could open many more beds, and despite our doubling of capacity, who would seriously want thousands of our compatriots to spend weeks in intensive care with the medical consequences that this entails?”

Yet that is precisely what Macron has done. The government has allowed cases to increase rapidly, only taking responsive measures when the hospital system and intensive care units were already on the verge of being overwhelmed. It is not humanitarian concerns that led him to announce these measures, but fear of a working-class upsurge bringing down his government.

“At this stage, we know that whatever we do, nearly 9,000 patients will be in intensive care by mid-November, almost all of France’s capacity,” Macron said. It is unclear what data Macron was basing this on, since the scenarios discussed by the scientific council and referred to in government defence counsel meetings are kept secret.

Since Macron’s speech, two possible scenarios developed by the Pasteur Institute for the evolution of the pandemic have been referred to in the media. The first foresees “only” 5,400 to 6,020 patients in intensive care on November 15, compared to 7,148 reached at the last peak on April 8. But this assumes that the confinement policies are as effective as those implemented in the spring.

If the current measures are now less effective, the Pasteur Institute predicts the number of patients in intubation to exceed 6,600 (between 6,300 and 7,050) by mid-November, with a peak between 8,200 and 9,100 several weeks later.

The recently announced lockdown measures are very limited. To keep the economy open, and ensure that corporate profits are not damaged, millions more workers are being kept on the job than during the first lockdown. Only businesses that accept customers in person, including in retail and hospitality, must close. Twelve million students are also continuing to attend school, not—as the government cynically asserts—because the well-being and education of the youth is a priority—but to ensure that workers who would otherwise be minding their children are not removed from the labour force.

Schools with overcrowded and poorly ventilated classrooms are particularly conducive to the spread of the virus. Studies show that children over the age of 10–11 are as contagious as adults. There is great uncertainty about the contagiousness of younger children, but even serious studies showing a high risk for young children have been ruled out by the government.

The available data on school contaminations are incredibly sparse. For example, the Public Health France website provides a list of clusters in schools and universities without breaking them down by age group or establishment. It would be simple with current technology to provide mappings of outbreaks in schools and other institutions. This essential information for fighting the epidemic is kept hidden.

The situation is moving towards the most catastrophic scenario, with an overflow of the hospital system that will last longer than in the spring, with a very high mortality linked to COVID-19 and a significant excess mortality for other pathologies that cannot be properly managed for several weeks.

Macron can only carry out this criminal policy because he does not face any serious political opposition. All the establishment parties represent the interests of the capitalist class and have supported the return to work and the reopening of the school system. The trade union apparatuses have also supported the return to work, presenting themselves and acting as reliable partners and advisers to business and the state.

The pseudo-left parties such as the New Anti-capitalist Party did not organize any opposition to the economic reopening. They sought to confuse the issue by demanding only additional resources for the health and education system, to facilitate a reopening. But such measures, even assuming they were accepted by Macron, would not have solved the health situation.

Hospital fire in Brazil exposes criminal neglect of workers’ lives

Brunna Machado

An October 27 fire at a hospital in Brazil’s state of Rio de Janeiro resulted in the deaths of eight people, at least three of them COVID-19 patients. All had suffered some kind of complications after a rushed transfer to escape a blaze on the underground floor that spread dense smoke through several sections of the hospital.

Disoriented by the lack of any emergency plan, nurses, doctors and other workers were forced to improvise, even using a nearby tire store to temporarily relocate some of the patients. One of those who lost their lives was Núbia Rodrigues, 42. She was a radiologist and had been hospitalized a few days before, after having already passed through two other public health care units. She was carried out on a sheet by her colleagues and taken to another facility, but died on the way inside an ambulance. Of the 44 patients who were transferred on the day of the fire, 21 are still hospitalized.

Patients and workers outside of the Bonsucesso Hospital during fire. (Credit: Tânia Rêgo/Agência Brasil)

The fact that a fire occurred at the Federal Hospital of Bonsucesso (HFB), the largest hospital complex in the state of Rio’s public health network, is the criminal outcome of the precarious conditions plaguing the whole of Brazil’s public health care system.

At the beginning of the pandemic, this same hospital was considered as a possible center for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. The facility, which has on average 1,300 hospitalizations per month, was to be adapted with about 200 new beds for COVID-19 cases, but the plan was not realized due to a lack of equipment and health care professionals.

The then Minister of Health, Nelson Teich—one of the three who has held the position this year alone—made a visit to the hospital and found that the facility was underutilized due to a lack of basic supplies and respirators. At the time, the workers staged a protest demanding the purchase of PPE (personal protective equipment) and decent working conditions. After this visit, the hospital was discarded as a COVID-19 center and was forced to face increasingly precarious conditions.

Bonsucesso Hospital on fire. (Credit: Tânia Rêgo/Agência Brasil)

According to a survey by the Open Accounts Association, the hospital’s budget has been cut by almost 40 percent since 2010, from 218 million reais (about US$38 million) to 131 million reais (about US$23 million) per year. The deterioration of the hospital, therefore, was predictable. A survey conducted in 2019 pointed to serious flaws in the fire prevention system and “high risk of explosion” due to the overheating of two transformers.

The failure to act on this warning, as well as the rejection of the demands made by the workers, is part of a deliberate policy of capitalist governments on both the national and a state level. This is already the fourth hospital fire in Rio de Janeiro since September of last year. And although Rio’s cases are particularly serious because of the deaths, the same problems are present in all of Brazil’s states. Since the beginning of 2020, the Sprinkler Brazil Institute has counted 45 fires in public and private health facilities throughout the country, an increase of 96 percent compared to the same period last year. And it is estimated that the real number is higher, as quickly controlled fires are often not reported.

The precarious infrastructure of the public health care system, upon which 70 percent of the population depends, has an even more tragic effect due to the coronavirus pandemic. The “fight” against the pandemic was marked by the installation of provisional and precarious sites for the treatment of COVID-19 cases, which served to systematically divert public resources, while already existing hospitals remained virtually abandoned.

Under these conditions and under the herd immunity policy promoted by President Jair Bolsonaro and the ruling class as a whole, Brazil has already recorded more than 160,000 COVID-19 deaths and over 5.5 million cases. The rate of coronavirus transmission in Brazil has risen again, according to monitoring by Imperial College (United Kingdom). Its report, released last Monday shows that the index increased to 1.01 (in August, it had fallen for the first time to below 1).

Bonsucesso Hospital on fire. (Credit: Tânia Rêgo/Agência Brasil)

Even in view of the high number of cases and the increase in the transmission rate, the already insufficient hospital infrastructure is being dismantled. In the state of Para, some 300 workers were laid off last month after the closure of the Castanhal Regional Hospital. The workers responded with a protest on October 15, and again on October 28, after not even receiving their overdue salaries and severance pay.

In addition, most of the temporary beds in different states, including in the field hospitals that had been set up in soccer stadiums, have been deactivated, overloading other health facilities.

After the fire at the Bonsucesso Federal Hospital, the administration announced that the hospital would be completely closed and that all of its employees would be placed on vacation. The hospital workers responded with a protest, arguing that at least the wings not affected by the fire should continue to function. After that, the administration reversed itself, deciding to partially reopen the hospital.

Each of these cases demonstrates that the defense of basic health care and the fight against the deactivation of beds, the cutting off of resources and a state of deterioration in which Brazilian public hospitals are literally burning can only be guaranteed by the independent action of the working class. The mass infections and deaths in the COVID-19 pandemic have laid bare the preexisting condition of the complete incompatibility of capitalism with the essential social needs of the working class, including free quality health care.