Hospitalization crisis across the US as coronavirus infections surge

Benjamin Mateus

Using 10 modeling groups’ data, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its four-week hospitalization forecast for Nov. 30. They estimated that there would be 2,600 to 13,000 new COVID-19 hospitalizations per day by the end of this month. Over the last seven days, the national rate of admissions to hospitals has been just over 1,200 per day. In other words, the CDC is expecting the rate to climb two to 10 times in the next three to four weeks.

This is an astounding rate that should force local and state governments to pause and give immediate considerations to their response to the pandemic. This is no longer a speculative matter. The need for greater mitigation efforts is becoming necessary to stem the tide of infections to provide relief to health care systems.

Nurses and physicians on a COVID-19 unit in Texas (Credit: Miguel Gutierrez Jr.)

Even the mainstream news and local media outlets have been raising repeated concerns over the alarming rates of hospitalizations from COVID-19 infections that are bringing health systems to the brink. Unlike testing and case numbers, which can be quite variable, hospitalization numbers are a reliable metric for the state of the community transmission as it represents people sick enough to seek care.

Europe’s health system, which is in a dire predicament, faces significant challenges and should provide the US with a terrifying perspective. Germany, which has twice the per capita ICU capacity on average compared to Europe as a whole, has reached 75 percent of its total capacity. Belgium is currently transferring patients to Germany as their ICU capacity has filled.

Dr. Susanne Johna of Saint Josef’s Hospital, an internist in Germany, speaking to DW News TV, said peak ICU capacity is usually reached two weeks after the peak in infections. Responding as to when she expected the peak to arrive, she answered, “nobody knows.” Due to significant staff shortages, nurses and physicians in Belgium and the Netherlands are being asked to keep working. The country’s health minister, Frank Vandenbroucke, described the situation as a “tsunami of infections where the authorities are no longer in control.”

There are currently 55,817 hospitalized patients in the United States, up from a low of 28,608 on Sept. 20. Of these, 11,078 are in the ICUs and 2,943 are on ventilators. The previous peaks in hospitalization in April and July reached close to 60,000. The breakdown by age group (which has remained consistent throughout the pandemic) reveals that 75 percent are over age 50, with the majority in this group being over 65. Those between 18 and 49 account for 24 percent of hospitalizations.

El Paso Health Department hospitalizations

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus taskforce coordinator, sent an election-eve memo to President Trump warning that “we are entering the most concerning and most deadly phase of this pandemic … leading to increased mortality.” Dr. Anthony Fauci, blatantly opposing Trump, told the Washington Post, “We’re in a world of hurt.” These assessments are quickly being realized.

El Paso, Texas, which has been the center of the state’s hospitalization crisis, saw a record of 1,064 people hospitalized with the virus on Saturday, 315 in ICUs and 169 on ventilators. Over 660 people have died from COVID-19 in the metropolitan area. There are currently 24,562 active cases, with 10,000 cases reported in just one week. The weekly death toll has climbed back to its summer peaks.

El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego’s shutting down of essential businesses issued on Oct. 29 was allowed to stand by District Court Judge William Moody for lack of precedent for or against the shutdown. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had argued Judge Samaniego’s order was unconstitutional, infringing on the limits placed on private businesses. Meanwhile, non-COVID patients are being airlifted to other cities to free space in local hospitals as a fourth mobile morgue has been brought in and health workers are being deployed to El Paso. Apparently, the restrictions are beginning to turn the curve of new cases.

Hospitalizations throughout the midwest

Though the surge is evident throughout the US, the Midwest has been particularly ravaged during this phase of the pandemic. In Minnesota, where cases have been rising exponentially and positivity rates have climbed over 12 percent, the hospital systems reported that they were treating more than 1,000 patients each day with COVID-19, their highest volume so far in the pandemic. Despite the adjustments hospitals are making, Dr. Mark Sannes, an infectious disease doctor at the Bloomington-based HealthPartners, admitted, “This is the most concerned, I think, we have been in regards to the capacity of the system to be able to handle what’s coming.” Additionally, health care workers are falling ill or self-quarantining from possible exposures.

The state of Illinois has seen cases rocketing over the last two weeks, reaching a peak of nearly 12,500 new cases on Saturday. Governor J.B. Pritzker, speaking to reporters on Thursday, provided a disturbing assessment, saying, “We are going to experience a surge in hospitalizations much higher than where we are now. And in some areas of our state, that will mean that you’ll run out of hospital beds, and nurses and doctors who can treat you.”

With over 4,000 “daily bed usage,” the state is poised to surpass its April peak next week. Illinois has caught up with neighboring states, and the contagion is returning into more populated regions of the greater Chicago area. In Will and Kankakee counties, hospitalization rates have tripled. Amita Health Saint Joseph in Joliet, where nurses were on the picket lines striking for safer conditions several months ago, have seen numbers return to their previous highs.

With over 900 confirmed patients on Friday, Colorado Governor Jared Polis said that hospitalizations in the state are the highest they have ever been. Dr. Eric France, Colorado’s chief medical officer at the health department, said, “As I think about this pandemic and these eight months I’ve been working on it, I’d say I’m most worried today.”

Wisconsin saw a record 7,000 new cases Saturday as their Chief Health Officer Stephanie Smiley tendered her resignation. The positivity rate now exceeds 15 percent. With a record of 3,931 cases on Friday, Missouri has 1,925 people in hospitals throughout the state. The Kansas City region may reach capacity in the next few weeks.

COVID-19 cases in the US and Europe

More than 40 states are reporting a rise in COVID-19 cases as colder weather has driven many people indoors again. Burnout and fatigue are being expressed by physicians and nurses that dare to speak to the media. Health officials fear that Thanksgiving and then the Christmas holidays will only pour gasoline atop a raging fire.

States across the nation are resisting lockdowns and strong mitigation measures that could quickly stem the coronavirus while feigning concern and blaming the population for failing to follow safe practices. Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s remarks encapsulated these sentiments when she said, “If we need to take further steps and move back into phase three or even going back to shelter in place, I’m not going to hesitate to do that. I hope that won’t be necessary, but it is all in your hands.”

With Illinois ranking number one among states with the newest cases of COVID in the past seven days, one must ask how much worse it needs to get? Despite the limited restrictions already imposed across the state, Governor Pritzker has offered mild rebukes of county and city leaders for not enforcing them.

As a trigger event, the pandemic has exposed the political establishment’s allegiance to finance capital regardless of the health catastrophe that is running roughshod over the population. The push to reopen schools and workplaces during the pandemic, by not only Trump but also Democratic governors as well, is a reflection of a political system that supports the financial oligarchy at every turn. The election of Biden will do nothing to change this situation.

The deliberate sabotage of online learning in the US (part 1)

Chase Lawrence

Tens of millions of students, parents and teachers across the United States and internationally are struggling through a semester unlike any other in modern history. The policy of closing school buildings and implementing online learning—the result of brave protests and strikes by teachers, parents and students—has saved an untold number of lives throughout the world.

In the US, the deliberate defunding of public education by both Democrats and Republicans, and years of a growing “digital divide” between the haves and have-nots, has meant that online learning is often bare-bones, unengaging or even completely inaccessible for millions of young people. It is no surprise that 60 percent of teens say that online learning is worse than in-person learning, and nearly one-fifth say it’s “much worse,” according to a recent survey by Common Sense Media.

The motives behind the sabotage of online learning

The unfolding disaster in the transition to online learning is both the cumulative effect of the decades-long defunding of public education and the intentional deepening of this policy amid the pandemic.

Student attending class online. (Image Credit: Twenty20.com)

The disregard of the ruling elites for the lives and education of young people has been made apparent in the chaotic implementation of distance learning done “on the cheap.” Students have experienced uncertain schedules, rotating between fully- and partially-online learning. Meanwhile, parents, teachers, and students have been left with little or no assistance and resources. The net result is the deliberate blackmail of a generation—to get a semblance of an education, they are being forced into deadly school buildings.

The ruling elites are attempting to force schools to reopen so that parents can be forced back into unsafe workplaces, pumping out profits for the major corporations. The last thing big business wants is a quality online education alternative which would cut across the demand that parents be on the job.

According to CISION PRWeb, over 60 percent of K-12 students now attend schools in-person at least part of the week, with 35.7 percent of schools offering in-person learning every day, 26.5 percent in a hybrid schedule of two-three in-person days per week and 37.8 percent of schools only offering virtual learning.

The unplanned character of online learning under capitalism

As the pandemic wore on over the summer and government officials at every level moved to embrace “herd immunity,” no financial support was forthcoming to assist schools in the creation of innovative new distance learning plans for the fall school year.

The consequences of this policy have been devastating for everyone involved. School children from the youngest ages through high school are forced into six-hour days of nearly continuous screen time online with little social interaction.

Educators were plunged into distance teaching and mostly left to completely redesign their lesson plans with no assistance. Teachers are consumed with fixing technical problems and managing large classes, while in many cases being directed to impose punitive policies for student “absenteeism.”

A pittance of resources were made available through the CARES Act, and most school districts chose to use these funds to pay for minimal PPE and community meals programs, instead of deploying them to assist with the transition to online education. This meant no significant funding on the part of the federal, state, or local governments—whether controlled by Democratic or Republican officials—to address this qualitative change in education.

Andrew, a Houston educator, told the WSWS, “Students were burned out from being on the computer all day. Students acknowledge that it’s boring, they will start searching TikTok and Instagram and stuff like that. In my class they are literally not there, they don’t show up. It wasn’t thought through about how to make this work.

“It was apparent to me that a lot wasn’t planned, it was just by ear. Even following up with missed work is too much, with the amount of students I have, especially with teaching both in-person and online simultaneously. It’s not possible to create an individualized learning experience with the amount of kids in a typical public school class. We have to manage 200 students.”

Another Houston teacher, Brandon, added that the transition was “rushed.” He emphasized, however, “Educators who know the facts about COVID-19 are for distance education. People saying that they want face-to-face are probably wanting to please their boss; most educators want to stay in online-learning.”

While there is certainly no substitute for in-person learning, saving lives must take priority in a pandemic, especially with no vaccine or reliable therapeutics. Young people overwhelmingly agree. In fact, nearly seven in 10 teens are worried—either somewhat or very—that they or someone they know will get sick with COVID-19 because of in-person schooling, reports EdWeek .

But instead of tapping into teachers’ creativity and public resources to envision new ways to enliven lessons, the government poured trillions of dollars into Wall Street, including the tech industry, which promptly handed out vast payouts to CEOs, owners and venture capitalists. The tech giants have amassed record profits during the pandemic, while leaving large sections of the US poorly-connected or charging fees unaffordable to many.

The deliberate sabotage of online learning is increasingly generating frustration and exhaustion among both teachers and students. These inevitable results are being cynically used as a battering ram to put students “in seats” even as the pandemic rages out of control in nearly every state.

Andrew explained the myriad difficulties faced by educators, saying, “I still can’t say there has been an effective transition from what we used to do to what we are doing now. A lot of the teachers are still struggling with it, a lot of the students have been struggling. At first it was kind of exciting and invigorating to have a new challenge, but it turns into a struggle to survive and you feel like you are just scrambling and don’t have enough time to do your job properly.”

There was a “slew” of back-to-back professional development courses, Andrew related, but not enough time to master the online learning tools. When asked about online learning tools for students, Andrew said, “I don’t know that there was any instruction or orientation for students.” He said he got the feeling that students were left to “learn as you go, by asking questions, and hoping that your teacher or one of your teachers knows the answers.”

Brandon noted that much of the software and hardware being used is ad hoc or of poor quality, saying, “The technology as it exists right now is not very student-friendly, students are not able to use cellphones and laptops interchangeably. Sometimes they have certain problems getting kicked off the system.”

He added, “One of the problems students and teachers have is the audio portion of the class or meeting is horrible. Some have good quality and some have terrible quality. Even if they want students to answer questions in class, there is no way to tell what their answer is.”

Noting that teachers are essentially being asked to do two jobs at once, Brandon emphasized, “Hybrid is a lot of work. There are four different systems for tracking attendance. You have to follow up with every attendance issue or else you end up with this huge roster of students who may not be attending. You have to go back, record all the work, make sure you have two grades and that there is no missing work.”

A further complication is added for students who are learning English as a second language. Brandon added, “There is a huge population of English language learners, and none of the technology is in dual language version. Not all of them are able to read or decipher what is going on with their technology. Teachers are left to deal with it, and not every teacher is qualified to teach dual language.”

Many teachers have reported working 12- and even 15-hour days, sometimes working 90 hours or more a week, rarely getting enough sleep or time to spend with their families in order to keep up with working both online and in-person teaching. Unsurprisingly, thousands of teachers have quit their jobs as a result. Cash-strapped school districts are leaving these as unfilled vacancies, creating even larger classes for teachers that stay in the profession.

As COVID-19 surges around the world, governments put profits ahead of lives

Andre Damon

This weekend, the world hit 50 million reported cases of COVID-19, and deaths surpassed 1.25 million, as the Americas and Europe faced the worst stage of the pandemic to date.

In France and Italy, hospitals are once again overwhelmed, prompting them to transfer patients to nearby countries, including Germany. On Saturday, France logged a record 86,852 cases.

Photos and video have circulated of the hallways of Italian hospitals crammed with people on ventilators, with some even lying on hospital floors, as the country’s health system is stretched to the brink. On Saturday, Italy’s health ministry reported 39,811 new coronavirus infections over 24 hours, the country’s highest daily tally. The total number of deaths related to the virus has reached over 41,000 in the country.

Medical personnel work in the intensive care ward for Covid-19 patients at the MontLegia CHC hospital in Liege, Belgium, Friday, Nov. 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

The United States logged record daily new cases on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, reaching over 132,000. The daily new case count in the US is now higher than the total number of COVID-19 cases in China during the entire pandemic.

The average number of daily new cases in America has surged by a staggering 30 percent over the past week. Nineteen states are reporting a record number of people hospitalized with COVID-19, and 43 states are reporting rising cases. This includes states in the country’s rural heartland, where health care systems are chronically underfunded.

Texas now has more cases than any other state, with over one million. The Department of Defense sent three emergency medical teams to El Paso, and the city has set up temporary emergency medical facilities to buttress its inundated hospitals.

The US now has 10 million COVID-19 cases, or one fifth of the world’s total, and nearly a quarter million people are dead. Epidemiologists have warned that the death toll could rise to up to 400,000 by the end of the year.

While in March, governments were forced to temporarily close non-essential businesses after spontaneous walkouts by workers in auto plants and other facilities. But amid the latest wave of the pandemic, which is far worse, governments have made clear that they will not close schools or factories.

While France, Britain, and Germany have implemented minor restrictions, including closing bars and gyms, they have not taken any measures to close schools or shut down production in non-essential manufacturing facilities.

In the United States, the Trump administration has openly embraced the doctrine of “herd immunity,” which holds that the spread of the pandemic is a positive good and that governments should do nothing to stop it.

Opposition from the ruling class to the closure of schools and factories comes amid new evidence of the role of workplaces in spreading the disease. A recent report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that adults who tested positive for coronavirus were twice as likely to work in an office or factory compared to those who worked from home.

Democratic Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential elections was driven by a broad popular repudiation of Trump’s disastrous handling of the pandemic. But Biden’s first order of business was to reassure major corporations that there will be no fundamental change in course from the current administration.

In his first speech since the major television networks called him as the victor in the election, Biden devoted only a single paragraph Saturday to the pandemic. He pledged to create an “action blueprint” to “turn around this pandemic,” without mentioning a single specific policy.

His transition team website does not call for the allocation of any additional funding to fight the pandemic. Its vague suggestions for “regular, reliable” testing and getting states “the critical supplies they need” are indistinguishable from those of the outgoing Trump administration. While Biden had called for a national mask mandate during the campaign, his website has dropped this demand, instead leaving such measures, as Trump did, to the governors.

Most importantly, the Democrats do not propose the closure of non-essential businesses, instead making vague statements like “Social distancing is not a light switch. It is a dial.” They likewise propose nothing to compensate workers and small businesses impacted by the pandemic, putting the burden of complying with recommended quarantine measures entirely on individuals and guaranteeing that workers will be forced by economic circumstances to work in conditions that are unsafe for themselves and others.

Millions of workers and young people who voted for Biden no doubt did so in the hope that he would carry out a coronavirus policy diametrically opposed to that of Trump. They are in for a rude awakening. A Biden presidency will be no less governed by the dictates of major corporations, which see any effort to contain the pandemic as antithetical to their social interests.

The pandemic is raging on both sides of the Atlantic because the response of governments is determined by the profit interests of the corporate and financial oligarchy, not by public health. The substitution of one capitalist ruling party for another cannot and will not fundamentally alter the direction of this policy.

Throughout the course of this year, the World Socialist Web Site has raised the alarm about the dangers posed by the pandemic, even as capitalist governments downplayed the threat and allowed the pandemic to spread. These warnings have been confirmed.

Containing the pandemic, the greatest health disaster in over a century, requires a radical social response.

Schools and non-essential workplaces must be shut down, and there must be a massive allocation of social resources to compensate workers for lost wages and to ensure children have the support they need for remote learning. Where production is essential to the functioning of society, safe working conditions must be overseen by rank-and-file safety committees and health care professionals, with no concern for corporate profit.

There must be a massive investment in public health care infrastructure, including universal testing, contact tracing and free treatment for all. This requires a vast public works program to build up health care infrastructure and hospitals.

A massive, global public effort is required to develop and freely distribute a vaccine. This vital effort cannot be subordinated to corporate profit interests and nation-state competition.

The implementation of such a rational and scientific response to the pandemic is blocked by the private ownership of production and the subordination of all of society to the interests of the financial oligarchy. The struggle against the pandemic, in other words, is not fundamentally a medical issue. It requires a political struggle of the international working class against the capitalist system.

Islam, freedom of religion and recent Jihadi attacks

Irfan Engineer

It is generally believed that Islam is a backward religion, reinforcing the beliefs of medieval period, if not of the ancient period, it is conservative and even fundamentalist in its outlook, and it motivates its followers to be intolerant and violent.

Islam, it is further believed, is incompatible with modern values and political systems, including, secularism, freedom of religion, human rights and democracy. Samuel Huntington suggested that there would be civilizational clash between the west and Islam.

The recent spate of violence in France further reinforces this belief. The latest bout of violence began with brutal beheading of Samuel Paty (47), a school teacher, who showed the cartoons caricaturing Prophet Mohammad, which were published in Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine, to his students in order to explain the value of freedom of expression.

Paty was beheaded by an 18-year-old Chechen Muslim youth Abdullakh Anzorov who was allegedly in contact with the jihadists in Syria. The brutal and inhuman beheading led to French President Emmanuel Macron defending “the French way of life” wherein freedom of expression was sacred. Macron went much beyond condemning the inhuman beheading of Paty which has been condemned by most Muslims, including the ‘French Council of the Muslim Faith’ and categorised it as a terrorist attack.

“Islamists want to take our future,” Macron said, adding, “They will never have it.” Macron blamed Islamists and posited the beheading as a threat from Islamists in general to the French way of life. This escalated the conflict to an undesirable level.

On November 2, a lone 20 year old heavily armed attacker – Kujtim Fejzulai – shot down four people in central Vienna’s nightlife area known as the Bermuda Triangle: Seitenstettengasse and nearby Morzinplatz, Salzgries, Fleischmarkt, Bauernmarkt and Graben. Islamic State (IS) claimed the responsibility for the attack.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz claimed that the attack was “on our way of life.” However, he made it clear that, “This is no fight between Christians and Muslims, or between Austrians and migrants. This is a fight between civilization and barbarism.” He urged citizens to remember that “our enemy is never all those belonging to a religion, our enemy is never all the people that come from a particular country” but rather “our enemy is extremists and terrorists.” ( Bennhold, Eddy, & Schuetze, 2020)

Erdogan, the President of Turkey, who is nurturing an ambition to revive the Ottoman Caliphate and become leader of the Muslim world, although with little success due to dipping popular support and growing economic crisis in his country, escalated the conflict further by asking that Macron get his mental health check-up done.

Pakistani Prime Minister, who is facing massive demonstrations in his country and charge of being a ‘selected PM’ by the military rather than elected by the people of Pakistan, also saw an opportunity in posing as a defender of Islam. Former Malaysian PM, Mahathir Bin Mohamad said that Muslims had a right to kill French millions.

On October 30, there was a further attack on Christian worshippers in the French city of Nice killing 3 people allegedly by a Tunisian who had arrived a night before, according to BBC. The terrorists shoot and scoot, while the brunt of their attacks is faced by the ordinary Muslim residents who live in peaceful co-existence with others and practice their faith.

However, the retaliatory violence by the state and the non-state actors on the Muslims helps the terrorists as it leads to polarization and ghettoization of the community. The ghettoization of the Muslim community living with a sense of insecurity is fertile ground on which the jihadist step in with their propaganda and can cut off the community from other sources of information, ideas and knowledge.

The murders of Samuel Paty and the three Christians in the city of Nice must be condemned absolutely and without any reservations or pointing to any contributory factors whatsoever, particularly by all the Muslims as the attacks invoked their faith.

Is Islam a violent, intolerant, backward looking, fundamentalist religion as the jihadist represent it to be? Do all Muslims support killing of non-Muslims on grounds of religion whether for blasphemy or any other reason?

The answer to all these questions is a big NO.

Overwhelming majority of the Muslim world have not supported the beheading. Do Erdogan, Imran Khan and Mahathir Mohamad represent the sentiments of their countrymen? The demonstrations against Imran Khan are continuing, Erdogan has not been able to leverage his popularity and Malaysian opposition which advocates for Islamic law are unpopular.

The Arab countries, Iran and Indonesia with largest Muslim population have not come out in support of the attack, and even condemned it. Muslim political leaders and the civil society across the board in India have condemned the attack.

A very miniscule minority among Muslims believe that Islam requires the faithfuls to not only follow the sharia law as propounded by them, but also enforce it upon non-Muslims at gun point. Revenge and retribution, even targeting innocent persons, using violence and terrorism is a legitimate method, and establishment of a caliphate their political objective. They target not only non-Muslims, but also Muslims and strike fear in their hearts.

Shias and Ahmadiyas in Pakistan, women in the entire Muslim world and others whom they proclaim to be non-conformist Muslims are their targets too. The Sunni Muslims too do not have choice to follow their Islam as they deem right. A section of western media uses these violent incidents to represent it as a threat to “western” or “modern way of life” and to the world order and peace by amplifying its potential threat.

The spate of mob lynching and communal riots in India may have killed more than the terrorist attacks in the entire world, but that is treated as a ‘minor law and order’ problem or freedom of religion problem that does not warrant ‘we’ and ‘they ‘divide’, although it is also threat to the freedoms, democracy and rule of law. Gun wielding teenagers have killed more Americans in schools and other places than the Muslim terrorists. However, the “threat to American way of life” is perceived only from the “jihadists” and Islam in general.

Islam and the freedom of religion

The Quran on the other hand is a book for guidance of the entire humanity and gives freedom of religion or beliefs. Only the all forgiving, merciful and compassionate God can judge the conduct of human beings, not any human agency. To God alone humans are called upon to turn to for guidance and not to any human agency, institution or state.

There isn’t enough space to recall numerous verses in the Quran that are about freedom of religion and recall the rich traditions and debates. We would mention a couple of verses in the passing. The central values of Islam are truth (Haq) justice (Adl), compassion (Raham), merciful (Rahim), most forgiving (Ghafoor) and wisdom (Hikma).

The most righteous are the ones who do justice in their dealings with everyone. Quran (5:8) states – “O believers! Stand firm for Allah and bear true testimony. Do not let the hatred of a people lead you to injustice. Be just! That is closer to righteousness…”. Hatred for anyone belonging to any religion is not being just and therefore not being righteous. Quran (5:32) lays down that if you kill any innocent, it is as if you kill entire humanity, and saving one life is like saving entire humanity – it may be the life of a person belonging to any religion or faith or even a non-believer.

In several verses, Quran enjoins the believers to do good and forbids evil deeds – “Amr bil maroof wa nahi ‘anil munkar” (3:111). There is no compulsion in religion, Quran (2:256) lays down – truth stands out from error. In chapter 109, Quran addresses those who reject faith and tells them – “To you your way and to me mine.”

There is no mention of blasphemy in Quran, let alone any punishment for the offence. The Prophet himself faced a lot of insults during his lifetime. A woman would throw dirt on him regularly. He would peacefully pass by without a word. When the prophet Muhammad learnt that she was sick and bed ridden, he visited her and prayed for her speedy recovery. Due to lack of space, we are just mentioning a few instances from the Islamic history to recall the rationalist thoughts in Islamic history.

During the Umayyad period, there was a rich debate between the two broad schools within Islam – the Jabariyas and the Qadariyas. The followers of Jabariya School believed that all events and activities are predestined, they are just played out here in the world. The Umayyad rulers patronized the Jabariya school which called upon the faithfuls to submit to the rulers as fate was predestined and the Ummayad Caliph was merely implementing the measures and policies already predestined, including their luxurious lifestyle and the poverty of the rest.

The Qadariya school on the other hand disputed this notion and argued that God guided human beings as to what was the righteous path (sirat al mustaqeem) and left it to the individuals to be guided by God or by the satan. God then left it to the individuals to discern what was the righteous path based on the revealed scriptures and tread on that path or entirely ignore that guidance.

Quran describes God as compassionate, merciful and just, argued the Qadariya followers, and it would go against the Quranic revelation if God were to pre-determine the conduct of the human beings and then punish them for their misbehavior and misdemeanors. The Abbasid period (750-1258) was known as the Golden period of Islam when the books of knowledge from all over the world, including India and Greek philosophy were translated in Arabic and collected in Baghdad in a grand library called House of Wisdom, or Bayt al Hikmah.

Greek philosophy influenced the Islamic theologians which gave rise to two schools of theology within Islam – the Asharites and the Mutazilites. The Mutazilites were rationalists. They believed in the createdness of the Quran as temporal and not eternal and uncreated. They held that good and evil are objective and that the moral values of actions are intrinsic to them and can be discerned by human reason. The Asharites on the other hand believed that the Quran was uncreated and eternal. The Mutalizilies argued that the reward and punishment which God metes out must be merited by creatures endowed with free will. With regard to our acts in this world, God creates in us the power to perform an act but we are free to choose whether or not to perform it.

In India Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817-1898), a reformist and a rationalist philosopher, in his commentary on Quran wrote that there could be no contradiction between the word of God (Quran) and work of God (natural world). Exploring and understanding laws of nature was the domain of science and equally necessary. Maulana Shibli Nomani (1857-1914) on the other hand explained that science and religion operated in two different circles.

One explored natural laws and the other moral laws. Science would measure weight of air e.g. and the energy generated from nuclear fusion and fission. However, for what purpose to deploy that energy was the domain of religion – whether to prepare destructive bombs or to harness it for better purposes. The moral laws and life after death was the religious domain. They were not contradictory.

Muhammad Iqbal, the poet philosopher gave series of lectures in Lahore arguing for ijtihad and rejuvenation of Islam. Each generation had to understand Islam with its own experiences and views. These are some of the rational heritage of Islam.

This rich heritage is product of freedoms and liberties which are part of tradition of Islam. The covenant of Medina which was the constitution of the first state established by the Prophet granted freedom to practice religion to the Christians, Jews and Muslims in accordance with their traditions. The first Caliph after the Prophet was elected by consensus and so were the other three rightly guided caliphs.

It is only with the Umayyad and subsequent dynasties and empires that the illiberalism, closing the doors of ijtihad or reinterpretation and dynamism in understanding the Quran was lost. Dynamism in knowledge and Quranic interpretation was considered a threat to the dynasties.

 It is during this period that the term jihad was used more for the political wars between dynasties and not for striving to be guided by the righteous path of justice and taking care of the neediest in society.

As change in religious beliefs could signal revolt and rebellion against the dynasty, religion and religious doctrines were forced on the populace and blasphemy laws were promulgated to protect the regimes. Gradual colonization of the Muslim world and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the first world war led to colonization of large part of the Muslim world under the west. The Muslim world did not emerge from the colonization and went into a conservative shell to protect its beliefs. It is time to come out of the shell, embrace knowledge, continue the rich heritage and openness and work for the betterment of the humanity and moral teachings of Islam.

There are intolerant, extremists, fundamentalists and violent people in every religious community. Muslim community also has its share. However, in case of non-Muslims, the entire community is not blamed for the act of extremist individuals. Any act by a Muslim extremist, which should rightly be condemned, attracts global coverage in media holding the entire community responsible for the offence subtly through the prominence accorded to it, length of coverage, choice of words and headlines.

In India we have our share of extremists – the cow vigilantes who lynch innocent Muslims to death if they are transporting animals, and often force them to proclaim victory to Lord Ram against the teaching of their faith. The Chechen youth, the jihadists and the cow vigilantes are not only against freedom of expression and democracy, they act against the teaching and values of their own religion.

Let us come together and condemn all such inhuman brutal and violent actions irrespective of to which religion the offender belongs. Law must take care of such offences rather than castigating the entire community.

Let religious ideas be diverse and let all of them be expressed with sensitivity and humility so that it leads to greater understanding of truth. If they are expressed in offensive manner, sensible people should leave it to the law to deal with it if it constitutes any offence. Graham Staines wife Gladys Staines forgave those who killed her husband and two sons who were sleeping in a station wagon on the basis of false accusations. They are more of heroes of humanity than the killers of Samuel Paty.

Ideology Behind Character Assassination

Bhabani Shankar Nayak

What is character? Character indicates totality of feature of an individual’s personality, courage, commitment and outlooks from righteousness to humility. The material or physical representations or moral frameworks are not character. Class, gender, race, sexual orientations, religious practice and moral values do not represent character. Character is a commitment to one’s own self, to one’s own family, friends, society, state and beyond. And character assassination is as old as human civilisation.

The character assassination manifests itself in different ways by spreading factually incorrect information, rumours, lies, misquoting, misrepresentation, silencing, acts of vandalism, name-calling, mental illness, creating false perceptions, and sexual deviance. These are discussed in detail in Martijn Icks and Eric Shiraev’s edited volume on “Character Assassination throughout the Ages”. The criminal tribes, underdeveloped rural poor, dirty working classes, unhygienic lower castes, characterless women and brainless blacks are some of the examples of stereotypes-based character assassination campaigns against different groups of populations in the world. The Nazi regime has flourished by discrediting Jewish population. The anti-terrorism campaign has shaped post 9/11 world by demonizing Muslims. It is often used against women, working classes, minorities, and revolutionaries to tame their creativities and emancipatory potentials.

Why do people follow the strategy of character assassination? Is it for the sake of defeating or winning in an argument? What are the aims and objectives of character assassinations? Is it spontaneous or pre planned?  Is it a mechanism of self-defence? Is it a product of anger, revenge, frustration and jealousy? Who fears character assassination and why? Who are the victims of character assassination? These are some of the questions central to understand the ideology behind character assassination. The time, place, people and their social, political, cultural and religious conditions shape the ideology of character assassination. From politics to personal lives, from villages to cities, from corporate world to literature, character assassination continues to be an intoxicating strategy adopted by both opponents and friends alike in different stages of life.

Character assassination as a form of smear campaign is an old and powerful strategy of social, political and cultural control of individuals and their freedom. Character assassination is a deliberate attempt to demoralises a person or a community by destroying their image with the help of spreading rumours, lies or facts to reduce their abilities to actively engage with themselves and with their fellow beings. It hurts the victims by diminishing their reputation and achievements in public eye, which disables the victims to achieve their goals successfully. In 1950, Jerome Davis published a book called “Character Assassination” which outlines “fear, ignorance, envy, suspicion, malice, jealousy, frustration, greed, aggression, economic rivalry, emotional insecurity and an inferiority complex” as reasons behind character assassinations. Jerome Davis was a sociologist and a labour organiser. His book is an autobiographical reflection on self-defence against personal attacks.

There are different types of character assassinations but the objectives are very similar. The idea is to discredit the abilities, integrity, charisma, intellect and power of an individual, a group or an institution. It often leads to deaths and destitutions. Character assassination is a dangerous strategy of demonization, which silences people and their voice of reason. Therefore, it is important to understand it and fight back to ensure truth to prevail. Silence is not an option in the age of post truth world dominated by the mass production of fake news. The reactionary ruling classes run character assassination campaign against the alternative forces to control and monopolise state power and control the society without facing any radical challenges of transformation.

The fascist forces indulge in character assassination of the past leaders to legitimise their politics of otherness and hegemonize their power over public.  Harriet Flower has coined a concept called “memory sanctions,” in her book “The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture”.  The idea of ‘memory sanctions’ is “deliberately designed strategies that aim to change the picture of the past, whether through erasure or redefinition, or by means of both”. The forward march of neoliberal authoritarianism led by the right-wing forces use this strategy by rewriting history and abusing progressive past and defame radical leaders to establish their reactionary rule. The collective memory is a threat to neoliberal authoritarianism. Therefore, the world is witnessing erasure of history, humanities and social sciences, weakening of scientific research, and onslaught on reason as non-merit goods. Character assassination of people and their past is the best way to domesticate them as per the needs and desires of the powerful. Character assassination as a tool, it has served the ruling and non-ruling elites and powerful for centuries to limit alternatives to flourish.

In the age of digital platforms, social media enables speed assassination of character without any time lapses. It is dangerous for peace and prosperity. Truth is the greatest causality of character assassination. It is a big business today. The public relations agencies, advertisement industries, mass media and other propaganda machines are net beneficiaries and enablers of character assassination to generate revenue. Therefore, it is apt to call character assassination is a self-help product and tool of patriarchal capitalism to control, domesticate and emasculate individual freedom and creativity. It tames the voice of science and reason within the cacophony of mass media; the voice of ruling and non-ruling classes.

Therefore, the radical politics and progressive ideology need to conceptualise ‘character’ as commitment for fellow human beings, nature and animals. Such a conceptualisation and its praxis can fight and defeat the character assassination as a reactionary and ruling class strategy to uphold individual dignity and collective spirit of human essence.

Fur Trades and Pandemics: Coronavirus and Denmark’s Great Mink Massacre

Binoy Kampmark

“The worst case scenario is a new pandemic, starting all over again out of Denmark,” came the words of a grave Kåre Mølbak, director of the Danish health authorities, the State Serum Institute.  According to the Institute, COVID-19 infections were registered on 216 mink farms on November 6.  Not only had such infections been registered; new variants, five different clusters in all, were also found.  Mink variants were also detected in 214 people among 5,102 samples, of whom 200 live in the North Jutland Region.

A noticeable tremor of fear passed through the public health community.  It was already known that mink are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2.  On April 23 and 25, outbreaks linked with mink farms were reported at farms in the Netherlands holding 12,000 and 7,500 animals respectively.  The mink had been infected by a farm worker with COVID-19 and, like humans, proved to be either asymptomatic, or evidently ill with symptoms such as intestinal pneumonia.  In time 12 of the 130 Dutch mink farms were struck.  What interested researchers was the level of virulence in the transmission of the virus through the population.  “Although SARS-CoV-2 is undergoing plenty of mutations as it spreads through mink,” writes Martin Enserik for Science, “its virulence shows no signs of increasing.”

The Danish discoveries, however, fuelled another concern: the possibility that the virus from cluster 5, as identified by the Institute, was more resistant to antibodies from humans infected with SARS-CoV-2 when compared to other non-mutated SARS-CoV-2 viruses.  Potential vaccines, in other words, could be threatened with obsolescence.  “This hits all the scary buttons,” claimed evolutionary biologist Carl Bergstrom.

In her November 6 briefing, Tyra Grove Krause, head of the department of infectious disease epidemiology and prevention at the SSI, did not wish to strike the doomsday register.  But she was none the less abundantly cautious.  “We definitely need to do more studies on this specific variant and its possible effect on future vaccines, but it takes a long time to do these kinds of studies.”  But she was in no mood to wait to “get all the evidence” given the possible risks.  “You need to act in time to stop transmission.”

The World Health Organization is attempting to provide some reassurance, and while this is welcome, that body’s public image has been often unjustly frayed by its initial approach to the novel coronavirus.  In a statement to National Geographic, the WHO admitted concern “when a virus has gone from humans to animals, and back to humans.  Each time this happens, it can change more.”  But Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO’s chief scientist, refrained from drawing any conclusions from the current crop of revelations from Denmark.  “We need to wait and see what the implications are but I don’t think we should come to any conclusions about whether this particular mutation is going to impact vaccine efficiency.”

Francois Balloux, director of University College London’s Genetics Institute, is also making his own infectious disease wager, thrilled by this “fantastically interesting” scenario.  “I don’t believe that a strain which gets adapted to mink poses a higher risk to humans.”  This comes with qualification, of course.  “We can never rule out anything, but in principle it shouldn’t. It should definitely not increase transmission.  I don’t see any good reason why it should make the virus more severe.”

In Denmark, no scientific chances are being taken on either the issue of virulence or the matter of vaccine effectiveness. The entire mink herd of 17 million is being culled.  The Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, attempted to see the problems of her country and its mink industry in humanitarian terms.  “We have a great responsibility toward our population,” she explained on Wednesday, “but with the mutation that has now been found we have an even greater responsibility for the rest of the world as well.”  Residents in seven areas in North Jutland have also been told “to stay in their area to prevent the spread of infection …. We are asking you in North Jutland to do something completely extraordinary.  The eyes of the world are upon us.”

Despite the immediate and effective destruction of an industry, Mogens Jensen, Minister for Food and Fisheries, stated that this would be “the right thing to do in a situation where the vaccine, which is currently the light at the end of a very dark tunnel, is in danger.”  Magnus Heunicke, the Minister for Health, also reiterated the point that “mink farming during the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic entails a possible risk to the public health – and for possibilities to combat COVID-19 with vaccines.”

The inevitably callous and brutal measure means that both the animals concerned and an industry, are being confined to history.  Animal welfare advocates see mixed promise in the measure: cruelty in the culling, but hope in the eradication of a trade.  “The right decision,” according to Animal Protection Denmark, “would be to end mink farming entirely and help farmers into [another] occupation that does not jeopardize public health and animal welfare.”

Joanna Swabe, the senior director of public affairs for Humane Society International/Europe, did express some pleasure at what was otherwise a grim end to Denmark’s mink population.  As one of the largest fur producers in the global market, the “total shutdown of all Danish mink fur farms amid spiraling COVID-19 infections is a significant development.”  She even went so far as to congratulate the Danish prime minister for the “decision to take such an essential and science-led step to protect Danish citizens from the deadly coronavirus.”

Fur lobbyists and traders, while accepting of the health risks, have had reservations at the absolute nature of the Danish response.  Magnus Ljung, CEO of Saga Furs, noted how control of COVID-19 infections in mink populations was achieved in the Netherlands and Spain without a need to resort to mass culling.  Mick Madsen of the Brussels-based industry group Fur Europe accepted that “public safety must come first” but urged Danish authorities to “release their research for scrutiny amongst international scientists.”

In the United States, mass culling is yet to take off.  The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention remains cool to any drastic measures, despite cases of contracted coronavirus at mink farms in Utah, Wisconsin and Michigan.  Transmission to humans had yet to be documented, though spokesperson Jasmine Reed noted “ongoing” investigations.

Some scrutiny from international sources regarding Denmark’s decision has been forthcoming, though it is more in the order of modest scepticism.  Marion Koopmans of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, recalling the research into mink outbreaks in Dutch mink populations, considered the claim on a resistant mutation a bold one.  “That is a very big statement.  A single mutation, I would not expect to have that dramatic an effect.”  Emma Hodcroft, a molecular epidemiologist based at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine in Bern, Switzerland, was also doubtful.  “It’s almost never the case that it’s such a simple story of one mutation and all your vaccines stop working.”

After the great Danish mink massacre, it may well transpire that Prime Minister Frederiksen’s decision might have been less “science-led” as was presupposed.  This does not dishearten Hodcroft, who warmly embraces the Danish approach to “take a step too far rather than a step too little”.  Pity about the mink, then.

In face of rising coronavirus infections, teachers, students, and parents express support for European-wide school strike

Gregor Link

Hospital bed shortages, overloaded test laboratories and health authorities that can no longer reliably track contacts are threatened everywhere. As throughout Europe, the ruling class’s herd immunity policy has set the course for an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe in Germany. On Friday, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported over 21,500 new coronavirus infections in the previous 24 hours—another record figure.

French students studying German (posted by a teacher on Facebook)]

The importance of schools and day-care centres as breeding grounds for the virus has long been comprehensively documented scientifically. Just two weeks ago, researchers from the University of Edinburgh demonstrated that opening up schools had been accompanied by a 24 percent increase in the transmission of infections within a month. The study analyses data sets from 131 countries and was published in The Lancet Infectious Disease journal.

Although the health authorities are completely overloaded, and three-quarters of infection cases cannot be traced due to the German government’s “testing strategy,” schools and day-care centres were themselves among the relevant “infection environments,” according to official reports. Current data from the health authorities show at least 11 percent of traceable chains of infection begin in educational institutions.

Inquiries by tagesschau.de have brought to light menacing figures from several German states. For example, when asked, Rhineland-Palatinate reported that the number of infected schoolchildren in the state had increased more than fivefold in the past week. The number of affected teachers had also multiplied: from 16 to 71. Four hundred eighty-five infected pupils were registered in Lower Saxony in the weeks from October 12, followed by 686—and in the week from October 26, there were as many as 1,255 cases. In the current week, there were 366 cases from Monday to Tuesday morning alone.

In Bavaria, according to a report by tagesschau.de, more than 2,000 pupils were infected on October 30, the last day of school before the autumn vacations. In Hamburg, almost one in four current cases relates to a school context.

Workers and young people are reacting with consternation and anger to the murderous decision of the federal and state governments to keep schools, businesses, and day-care centres open. Given the “almost 20,000 new infections,” Christine D. from Karlsruhe, for example, commented on Facebook, “It won’t be long before hospitals are overwhelmed. Schools should be closed immediately because infections will only go down after weeks. I’m afraid that we’ll wait too long and then feel the same as everyone else in Europe. There were 500 coronavirus deaths in the UK alone yesterday.”

Deutsche Presseagentur reports that more and more laboratories are reaching their limits in evaluating tests. According to the RKI, 69 laboratories reported a backlog of 98,931 samples still to be processed in the past calendar week (up to November 1). Two weeks earlier, there were 52 laboratories with 20,799 outstanding unprocessed samples. According to the RKI, 55 laboratories recently reported delivery problems for reagents needed for evaluating the tests, plastic consumables, and pipette tips, among other things.

Because of backlogs in the laboratories, residents of old people’s homes were having to wait up to five days for test results, the German Foundation for Patient Protection warned the press on Tuesday. At the same time, according to board member Eugen Brysch, there was a demand “that overstretched laboratories must deliver results several times a week to keep the Bundesliga [football league] going.” This policy was “unacceptable.”

As is widely known, this completely predictable overload means the infection process can no longer be reliably monitored and is increasingly out of control. Christine continues on Facebook, “Due to congestion in the laboratories, 100,000 tests have not yet been evaluated—so who knows how high the numbers really are? We could already be at 30,000 or more new infections without knowing it. The only certainty is that it’s increasing.”

The COVID-19 research team at Johns Hopkins University in the US reported a new infection rate of 31,480 and 232 deaths Thursday, warning of another exponential increase.

Meanwhile, the rate of positive coronavirus tests in Germany has increased more than tenfold from 0.7 to 7.3 in the past two months. In some regions of Austria, one in six tests is now positive. According to WHO Regional Director Hans Kluge, the mortality rate of infected persons is also increasing in Europe. Kluge spoke to the press in Copenhagen on Thursday about an “explosion” in case numbers across the continent, which had once again become the global epicentre of the pandemic with 293,000 deaths.

Throughout Europe, massive resistance is developing against the herd immunity policy and the associated enforced keeping of schools open. After mass movements for safe education by students in Greece and Poland a few weeks ago, thousands of young people took to the streets in France on Wednesday. At more than a dozen schools, they protested for school closures and blocked school entrances. The Macron government reacted with massive violence and sent riot police to deal with the student protests, using truncheons and tear gas.

On Twitter, Tatjana, from Bavaria, who has four children herself, commented on the pictures on the Internet, “I am extremely disgusted by what is going on here in Europe and how children, parents, teachers, educators who are afraid are being treated. Not even violence seems to scare them away. I am speechless with outrage.”

In the last week, students in several German states have set up action committees to coordinate the coming struggles in this country as well. Like Britain, where over a thousand parents took part in a coordinated school strike action, more and more parents in Germany support the fight for safe education for all.

“Children and teenagers are to be sent to schools come hell or high water,” said Anita, a mother from southern Germany. “Collateral damage must simply be accepted,” she adds bitterly. “Protect patients at risk? Certainly not inside families.”

“My daughter is in eleventh grade, sits in packed trains and buses every day and can’t maintain [a safe] distance,” says Ulrike from Mönchengladbach on Facebook. “At school, she is then in a class with 30 students. She would be happy if there were online lessons and she didn’t have to expose herself to this risk every day. There are already dozens of students who have fallen ill and yet students must still go to school—I wonder what else has to happen to protect students. In many cases, father, mother, or siblings are high-risk individuals. Does it make no difference if our children become sick or carriers?”

In addition to parents, hundreds of teachers in France joined the students’ struggle in nationwide strikes. On Monday and Tuesday, shortly before 9 am, teachers held local meetings in dozens of schools and voted not to enter classrooms until measures were in place to contain the spread of the virus.

“In France, parents and teachers are on strike—rightly so, because their lives are at stake,” says Teja H. from Soest, who works as a photographer and has a girlfriend in France. “What the teachers are doing is the only right thing. While restaurants and cultural institutions are closed without any significant support, millions of people continue to meet at work and school.”

French students on the first day of school after the vacations (posted on Facebook by a student)

This policy is “madness, especially for at-risk people in families.” Given the increase in eugenicist positions in the media and official politics, he adds, “This is how the pension system is being restructured. It is only a matter of guaranteeing production and profits, which is why the schools remain open in our country.”

Pictures from French schools, which show dozens of young people in rundown classrooms without infection protection, are also meeting with a big response among teachers in Germany.

“It’s the same at our schools,” writes Gabriele, a teacher from Frankfurt, on Facebook. “Every day, we are in small classrooms with thirty children without safe distancing—and I am a high-risk person!” In Germany and other countries, too, a strike by teachers must be organized, she says, but media coverage gives the impression that teachers have “no support in society” for such a programme of action.

The significance of this propaganda campaign —which goes hand in hand with a targeted trivialization of the virus—is confirmed by Gabriele’s colleague Anja. She writes in a comment for the World Socialist Web Site :

“It is really unbelievable that the risk—which is currently serious in my school—is being ridiculed and trivialized in such a way. Teaching with thirty students is simply not sustainable because infection pathways can’t be traced. Wherever infections can be prevented—for example, by attending classroom and home-schooling alternately on a daily basis—this should and must be done. There were solutions even before the vacations—and they worked. But this level [of infection prevention measures] is simply not being activated, even though it is long overdue given the current number of cases.

“Employers must provide protective clothing, must take protective measures using [air] filters,” says teacher Anja. “But nothing happens. In our case, the college has now been hit because we couldn’t protect ourselves. Students from different classes were hit with positive cases. The remaining students in classes were neither sent into quarantine nor were tests ordered. After more than a week, several classes are now in quarantine—much too late. Several teachers now have symptoms. The infection occurred after teaching in the affected classes. The affected colleagues were not even informed about the infection of the students at that time.”

MAS denounces dynamite attack against Bolivia’s President-elect Luis Arce

Tomas Castanheira

The Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) has charged that newly elected president Luis Arce was the target of a bomb attack on Thursday night while attending a meeting at the party’s headquarters in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. The explosion left no one injured.

Luis Arce (Credit: Casa de America)

The episode was reported this morning by MAS spokesman Sebastián Michel to the national television networks Televisión Universitaria and Red Uno. He stated: “We were victims of a group that planted dynamite in the campaign headquarters where our elected president, Luis Arce, was attending a meeting.”

Only days before Arce’s inauguration ceremony this coming Sunday, the coup regime of self-proclaimed president Jeanine Áñez issued no statement on this grave episode, which appears to have been an assassination attempt against the elected president.

According to Michel: “We have not seen any statement from Government Minister Arturo Murillo; thus, we feel that we are at the mercy of ourselves, totally unprotected and nobody gives us the necessary guarantee for the security of our authority.”

The Bolivian media has also barely reported the event. In an effort to summarily dismiss the accusation made by MAS, the newspaper of Santa Cruz, El Deber, published an article with the title: “Police rule out use of dynamite in ‘attack’ on MAS campaign headquarters.”

In the article, El Deber reported the case closed on the basis of a completely vague statement by the departmental director of the Special Force to Fight Crime (Felcc), Alfredo Vargas. Vargas declared that “there is a report from firemen mentioning that if it is not an explosive device, it would be fireworks.”

The attack on Arce occurred on the same day that fascist and extreme-right groups initiated new rounds of protest and “civil stoppages” demanding the overturning of the presidential elections and the repeal of a recently approved measure that lifts the requirement of a two-thirds majority for certain votes in the Legislative Assembly.

The protests were called in the cities of Santa Cruz, Cochabamba and Potosí by the Civic Committees of each of these cities. In La Paz, where a demonstration of about 300 people took place, Página Siete reported that “a group protesting against the election result passed in front of the place [where the explosives would have been planted].”

The demonstrations this Thursday and Friday continue the protests that have been taking place since last week, headed by the Civic Committees and, especially, by their armed branches, such as the Cruceñista Youth Union (UJC) and the Cochala Youth Resistance (RJC).

In Santa Cruz de la Sierra, the largest city in Bolivia and center of the right-wing opposition, the coup protests gained direct support from the departmental government. The government’s general secretary, Roly Aguilera, declared: “The government will not only comply, but will be an active part of the Committee’s mobilization. We reject any attempt to undermine democracy. We have to redirect ourselves in Santa Cruz as a single voice.”

The right-wing coup mobilization, which is based on completely unfounded accusations of electoral fraud, received another strong boost coming from the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) itself. The TSE spokeswoman, Rosario Baptista, sent a letter on Thursday to the Organization of American States (OAS), demanding an audit of an alleged “alternative data block … beyond the reach of those who have verified the integrity of this record so far and which, in this and other elections, may have induced or conditioned the final result.”

Rosario retracted her absurd remarks the following day, sending a new letter to the OAS today saying that she “does not specifically question the outcome of the October 18, 2020 election process.” Her action, however, served to fuel the fascistic conspiracies and violence.

The response of the MAS to the escalation of political violence in the post-election period—which included the assassination of miners’ union leader Orlando Gutiérrez, according to every indication, by the far right—is to reinforce its calls for “national unity” and the “pacification of the country.”

On Wednesday, while the fascists were organizing demonstrations to overthrow his presidency, Arce tweeted: “This is a time for unity, to reconstruct and live in peace. Let us not respond to provocations.” This appeal was seconded by Evo Morales, responding to the attempt on Arce’s life. Morales wrote on Twitter: “Small groups are trying to generate a climate of confusion and violence, but they will not succeed. Let’s not fall into any provocation.”

The MAS also showed great nervousness in the face of reports that a sector of the party, in El Alto, had proposed the creation of “armed militias” within legal frameworks to defend itself against “people in Santa Cruz who are convulsing” the country. In his interview denouncing the dynamite attack, Sebastián Michel stressed that Arce will not allow any irregular armed group and will not allow the use of weapons.

The objective of the MAS is to prove to the Bolivian bourgeoisie, its true social base, that it is ready to suppress any attempt at resistance by the working class, whether against fascistic violence or the austerity measures that the Arce administration itself will enforce on behalf of the entire ruling class and international capital.