The deliberate sabotage of online learning in the US (Part 2)

Chase Lawrence

Online education and austerity

States across the US are facing massive budget shortfalls as a result of the pandemic-induced collapse in tax revenue. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), K-12 districts in the US face a combined $1 trillion shortfall by the end of 2021. There have already been huge budget cuts in nearly every state, resulting in the elimination of at least 354,000 K-12 and 337,000 higher education jobs since last spring. The Wall Street Journal, noting that overall state budget shortfalls have already hit $434 billion, predicted that the shredding of education and social programs will “fuel social unrest.”

These gargantuan sums are a fraction of the $6 trillion handed over to Wall Street through the CARES Act, which was passed at the end of March in a near-unanimous vote by Republicans and Democrats in Congress, including Bernie Sanders. The CARES Act allocated merely $13.5 billion for schools, and both big business parties have made it clear that no federal rescue for education is being planned.

A student e-learning, wearing a mask. (Stock Image licensed via Envato)

While Joe Biden has falsely claimed that his administration will serve the interests of educators, one need only look to the massive austerity implemented while he was vice president under Obama to see what is in store in the coming period. Following the 2008-2009 financial collapse, the Obama administration bailed out the banks and escalated the attack on public education as part of an overall assault on the working class. By 2012, at least 350,000 teachers had lost their jobs and countless schools throughout the country were closed.

During the pandemic, districts have been forced to use rainy day funds to get by, scrambling to provide students with Chromebooks to accommodate distance learning. Education Dive reports that many districts have purchased low quality technology, writing, “where they’re able to cut corners, they cut corners. Some are opting for free online tools without the best track records or purchasing refurbished devices with substandard specs. … Those are more likely to break down, they’re more likely to experience trouble in an online learning environment so they might, for instance, have not enough memory.”

Other districts are finding it difficult to even get devices at all, including Denver Public Schools, which has 94,000 students. Trade war measures imposed by the Trump administration meant that 12,500 Lenovo devices manufactured by China and destined for Denver schools were seized at the border.

A Denver schools spokesperson noted in late summer, “We anticipate thousands of DPS students, including a large portion of our youngest students, will be forced to start the school year remotely, without access to technology, if we are unable to secure devices. This will put our most vulnerable further behind.” The district has been reduced to scouring warehouses and offices for computers and imploring alumni to mail in extra devices.

Moreover, significant declines in attendance will exacerbate the fiscal crisis in at least 20 states, as school funding in the US is largely predicated on enrollment. For example, Wisconsin has reported that student counts have fallen by 3 percent, the largest drop in decades, resulting in a funding loss of more than $23 million. These cuts also disproportionately affect poorer districts, which receive less revenue from local property taxes.

Inequality in online learning

Special education students, who under federal mandates are legally entitled to receive “free and appropriate education,” have faced particular difficulty with online learning. Approximately 7 million special needs students qualify for an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) that is tailored towards their learning needs. The pandemic has disrupted access to IEPs and there has been no significant effort on the part of the federal or state governments to aid in the transition to online learning or to provide the necessary safety equipment and medical personnel to ensure a safe learning environment for students who are incapable of learning online due to a disability.

Parents of special needs children, many of whom live in poverty, have had to set aside everything in order to assist their children in learning, since education specialists are unable to provide adequate services remotely. The dire conditions facing special needs students and their families has cynically been used as a pretext for sending some of the most medically vulnerable of society back to school in the middle of a pandemic.

The widespread switch to online learning has also exposed the huge disparity in internet access in the US and internationally. In 2019, only 56 percent of adults making less than $30,000 and 72 percent of those making between $30,000 and $50,000 had broadband internet at home. This impacts many students’ ability to access online learning, forcing large numbers to rely on smartphones alone. Seventeen percent of the US population is dependent on their phone for internet service and smartphones can have limited or even no access to districts’ online schooling applications.

Even when students have internet, oftentimes the service is inadequate for schoolwork. A 2020 FCC report noted the wide disparities between urban and rural access to 25 Mbps/3 Mbps broadband, which is considered adequate for electronic learning.

These disparities are far worse on a global level, with UNICEF reporting that 463 million children have been unable to access remote learning during the pandemic. “The sheer number of children whose education was completely disrupted for months on end is a global education emergency,” said UNICEF director Henrietta Fore, adding, “The repercussions could be felt in economies and societies for decades to come.”

In East, West, Central, and South Africa, almost half of all children are unable to access remote learning. In North Africa and the Middle East, 40 percent of students are unable to access remote learning, in South Asia 38 percent of students, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia 34 percent of students.

Speculators exploit the crisis

The financial oligarchy has massively increased their investment in the technology sector during the pandemic, while reaping the unprecedented growth in stock valuation. The wealth of America’s billionaires rose to $3.88 trillion as of October 13, a jump of $931 billion from March, with tech billionaires Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison amassing unfathomable wealth.

The sales of education technology has been a key component of the stock market climb. “There are tremendous opportunities to invest into EdTech, with strong growth in both venture capital and listed equity,” a senior fund manager at Credit Suisse Asset Management recently stated. He added, “The Coronavirus pandemic will accelerate investment, with many EdTech companies bringing forward investments into new functionalities.”

Like vultures picking apart a dying animal, the financial oligarchs are enriching themselves off of the crisis of education they created through years of bipartisan defunding. Both political parties are responsible for the assault on the fundamental right to high-quality education for all. For their part, the teachers unions have provided support to the politicians wielding the axe, while suppressing numerous strikes and protests of educators.

The class divide in education has widened to an abyss during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the fight for the universal right to free, high quality education, the first step forward for educators, parents and students is the formation of independent, rank-and-file committees. These committees must be completely independent of the Democrats, Republicans and unions, and fight to establish the political independence of the working class.

Teachers, education workers and students must advance a genuine socialist program in defense of public education. This entails seizing the massive bailout given to the financial oligarchy, nationalizing the multi-trillion-dollar tech corporations and converting them into public utilities, providing high-quality computer equipment and free broadband to all students, securing full funding for all levels of education, abolishing student debt, assuring mental health supports for students, and providing full financial support to parents and caregivers who must stay at home while schools are closed.

Coronavirus infections in Germany hit a new record

Markus Salzmann

The number of reported new coronavirus infections in Germany reached a record level on Saturday with 23,399 cases, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). The previous record of the day before was exceeded again by about 2,000 cases. The number of fatalities rose by 130 and now stands at 11,226.

The situation in hospitals, and especially in intensive care units, is becoming more dramatic day by day. As of Saturday, 2,839 patients were receiving intensive medical care. Exactly one month earlier, the figure had been 470. According to the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care (DIVI) register, the number of patients requiring ventilation rose from 233 to 1,534 during the same period.

People are ordered to wear mandatory face masks due to the coronavirus pandemic at a shopping street in Cologne, Germany, October 22, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Martin Meissner]

Doctors assume that intensive care bed capacity will be exhausted by the beginning of next month, at the latest. A concrete forecast is difficult to make, as many beds are reported as available, but there are no staff available to manage them. On average, five nurses are needed per intensive care bed.

The German Foundation for Patient Protection has expressed doubts that the correct number of available beds is being reported by hospitals. It is feared that hospitals report an appreciable number of beds as available, for which no nursing staff are available, reported Tagesschau.

A total of 642,488 infections have now been registered in Germany. At the end of September, Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) had warned that there could be 19,200 new infections per day by Christmas. This figure was already exceeded in October. Most recently, Merkel had to warn of a collapse of intensive care bed provision in Germany given the latest infection figures.

Laboratories are now increasingly overloaded with test evaluations. The RKI had reported a backlog of around 99,000 samples in 69 laboratories by November 1; two weeks earlier, it was around 21,000 in 52 laboratories. According to the RKI, an increasing number of laboratories reported they had reached the limits of their capacity in recent weeks.

This development was predictable and avoidable. All scientific forecasts and the experiences in other countries pointed to it. However, the federal and state governments made a conscious decision not to take effective measures. They did not impose a necessary lockdown, but only highly inconsistent and insufficient contact restrictions. Schools and daycare centres remain open so that production can continue in the factories.

In practice, this equates to the inhuman policy of “herd immunity,” which gives free rein to the virus in the hope that the population will eventually become immune. In Sweden, where herd immunity was official government policy, it led to a mortality rate nine times higher than in neighbouring Finland. Nevertheless, this policy has been adopted by Germany’s grand coalition of the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats (SPD) and all European governments.

The infection figures show how ineffective the current mild restrictions are. Despite the lockdown in Germany, a clear reversal of the trend is not yet in sight, as the RKI also noted in its report on Thursday. A further increase in community transmissions has been observed; the spread of the disease is diffuse, and the infection chains cannot be traced.

The situation is particularly tense in the capital. For the first time, Berlin is registering more than 15,000 active coronavirus cases. There were 697 new infections on Saturday alone, with two more deaths being added. Health Senator (State Minister) Dilek Kalayci (SPD), who is responsible for the disastrous pandemic policy of the Berlin Senate (State Legislature), is currently in quarantine.

To distract from his policies, Berlin’s governing mayor Michael Müller (SPD) called for a “month of personal responsibility.” He aims to blame the population for the rising number of infections, an effort which received the support of the Greens.

The Left Party even attacks the inadequate measures implemented by the Senate and speaks out against any restrictions being placed on the ability of big business to ensure the flow of profits. Last month, Left Party chairwoman in Berlin Katina Schubert openly opposed placing further restrictions on contacts. “Berlin must look at what is important for Berlin, just as Thuringia, for example, takes it upon itself to do. We don’t have to go along with everything,” Schubert told the media.

Schubert thus made clear that the positions of Thuringia’s State Premier Bodo Ramelow are widespread in the Left Party. Ramelow publicly praised the “Swedish model” and advocates herd immunity, i.e., the murderous infection of the population with the coronavirus.

In practice, Berlin’s SPD-Left Party-Green Senate advocates this policy of contagion as well as the grand coalition at federal level. The Senate Administration for Education published new figures on Friday on the number of infections in Berlin schools. Since last week, the number of cases has almost doubled, as the Berliner Zeitung reported. The number rose from 408 to 744 students and from 157 to 221 school staff members. Above all, the number of closed learning groups has reached an absolute peak of 326, the paper reports. At the end of October, it was 22 groups. In vocational schools, 207 students and 15 teachers tested positive.

The districts of Neukölln and Tempelhof-Schöneberg have each recorded 105 pupils proven to be infected. The COVID-19 infections are similarly high in Mitte, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and Reinickendorf. More and more students, parents and teachers are calling for regular operations in schools and learning establishments to be stopped, as there is no longer any protection against infection.

In doing so, they face all the parties in the Senate and the trade unions, which, with their usual ignorance and unscrupulousness, want to enforce regular classes. Only now, after the infection figures have exploded, is the GEW education union quietly demanding that some lessons be held online.

Even this proposal goes too far for the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party. A spokesperson for the education administration declared that the current situation in schools was by no means such that personal attendance at classes should be suspended. Schools were not hotspots, he said.

It is not only the obvious statistics from Berlin that prove this statement wrong, studies clearly show that children and adolescents are “key players” in spreading the virus and are “very efficient transmitters.” Stopping regular lessons at schools and closing daycare centres would be an effective way to stem the spread of the virus.

As throughout Germany, Berlin’s health authorities are completely overwhelmed by the situation. According to Public Health Officer Patrick Larscheid from the Berlin-Reinickendorf health department, many coronavirus infections ultimately remain undetected. “We are already seeing quite a lot of the iceberg: But I estimate that about four-fifths will remain under the water. That means: For every case we see, we don’t see about four cases.”

Due to the situation, the health authorities were no longer able to rapidly devote a lot of effort to every single case, Health Senator Kalayci said on Friday. After the establishment parties in Berlin, above all the SPD and Left Party, have enforced stringent cutbacks over the last decades, the public health bodies have broken down and are now unable to deal with the situation.

This is why, following an online conference with district health officials, Kalayci is now insisting those infected and their contacts take more “personal responsibility.” At the same time, she said possible infected contacts that did not belong to a risk group were not promptly being followed up. There, it will “take some time,” she said, knowing full well that this, in turn, can lead to numerous more infections and deaths.

Puerto Rico holds elections for new governor

Julio Patron

Although residents of Puerto Rico are denied the right to vote for the US president and have no voting representatives in the US Congress, elections took place in the US territory last Tuesday for governor as well as legislative and and mayoral posts, along with ballot initiatives. The results, which reveal a sharp decline in votes for the two main parties and an increase in third-party votes, reflect the growing distrust and contempt Puerto Ricans rightly have toward the entire political establishment.

Officials count early votes at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum where social distancing is possible amid the COVID-19 pandemic, during general elections in San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 3, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Carlos Giusti]

Pedro Pierluisi of the New Progressive Party (PNP) won the election with less than 33 percent of the vote, beating Carlos Delgado of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), who received nearly 32 percent, by barely 17,000 votes.

Voter turnout was very low for the island, with only 51 percent of the population participating. Significantly, for the first time since the establishment of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in 1949, neither of the two main bourgeois parties, the PNP and the PPD, received over 40 percent of the vote, and neither will have a majority in the legislature. Third party candidates received, as a whole, over a third of the vote for governor, almost doubling their share from the 2016 election.

Puerto Rico also voted on the issue of statehood, with 52 percent voting in favor, and nearly 48 percent voting against. The vote has been cast multiple times in the past and is binding neither on the island’s nor the US government. However Puerto Ricans vote, the decision as to whether Puerto Rico is admitted as a state rests with the US Congress, which has shown no inclination to pursue the matter. The vote therefore is essentially meaningless. The issue of whether Puerto Rico should remain a Commonwealth (PDD) or become the 51st state (PNP)—and in previous referendums whether it should seek national independence—has long served as a means of diverting intense class and social conflicts into safe political channels.

The new governor, Pedro Pierluisi, was involved in the corruption scandal that ignited mass protests in 2019, in which one-third of the island’s population took to the streets and overthrew Governor Ricardo Rosselló, also a member of the PNP.

Pierluisi was Puerto Rico’s non-voting member of the US Congress between 2009 and 2017. His brother-in-law was the chairman of the Financial Oversight Management Board (FOMB), popularly known as the junta, which oversees the island’s economy in the interests of Wall Street creditors. During his eight years in Washington, his wife ran a firm providing advice to vulture funds on how best to loot the island’s economy, and the couple increased their personal wealth 27-fold.

Before 2009, Pierluisi had worked 11 years for the law firm O’Neill & Borges LLC, whose top client became the FOMB. Pierluisi then returned to the firm to work as the junta’s top legal advisor.

In July 2019, private messages exchanged between Rossello, Pierluisi, and other officials were made public, exposing discussions of hiding emergency supplies, attempting to cover up the negligence of local politicians, and jokes about shutting down public utilities, dead Hurricane Maria victims and even killing political opponents. Pierluisi, who was briefly installed as governor after Rosselló stepped down, was himself ousted only five days later in the face of continuing mass protests, after which current Governor Wanda Vázquez came to power.

Pierluisi is widely despised by Puerto Rican workers and youth, and the election results do not reflect popular support. Rather, the vast majority of people either did not vote at all or voted against him, including for third-party candidates, who themselves benefited from the radicalization of workers and youth and aimed to keep the population tied to the ruling establishment.

Puerto Rico has been engulfed in a series of political, economic and social crises which have left the island in shambles, most recently intensified by the coronavirus pandemic and natural disasters.

Earlier this year, the island faced a string of earthquakes which damaged an already crumbling infrastructure, including schools and homes. In the face of the negligence and indifference of the Puerto Rican government, hundreds of workers from the northern region of the island, which was less impacted by the earthquakes, took it upon themselves to go to the south of the island with emergency aid for residents, bringing water, food and hygienic supplies. There has been no assistance for workers who have lost their homes, and many schools throughout the island are still closed.

Puerto Rico’s elections took place amid record-breaking daily reported cases of COVID-19. The pandemic has been allowed to spread by the malign neglect of the Puerto Rican government. Wanda Vázquez Garced, the outgoing governor of Puerto Rico, began reopening the economy in September.

Puerto Rico hit an all time high for daily recorded cases in the last two months, reporting over 1,000 new cases several days a week, with a current average of 772 cases a day. There are over 72,000 cases and nearly 900 deaths on the island as of this writing.

Even before the pandemic, the health care system in Puerto Rico had been decimated by underfunding, which has led doctors, nurses and other health care workers to leave the island over the years, creating the conditions for mass deaths due to COVID-19.

The real issues confronting the working class on the island, such as decaying infrastructure, the health care crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and immense poverty, will not be addressed within the confines of the existing political establishment. The only way out of the crisis is through the independent mobilization of the Puerto Rican working class against the capitalist system, uniting with workers on the mainland and internationally in the struggle for socialism.

US judge blocks shutdown of TikTok scheduled for November 12

Kevin Reed

On October 30, a Pennsylvania district judge blocked the Trump administration from implementing restrictions that would have shut down the Chinese video sharing app TikTok in the US as of November 12 unless it is sold to an American company.

A smartphone with TikTok and WeChat apps [Credit: AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File]

Judge Wendy Beetlestone of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled in favor of a lawsuit filed by the TikTok users Douglas Marland, Cosette Rinab and Alec Chambers who said the scheduled ban would cause them to “lose the ability to engage with their millions of followers on TikTok, and the related brand sponsorships.”

The three TikTok users each have more than 1 million followers on the short-form video sharing social media platform. They argued that they would lose access to “professional opportunities afforded by TikTok” if the White House ban were to take effect on Thursday and the judge agreed that they would face “significant and unrecoverable economic loss caused by the shutdown of the TikTok platform.”

In August, the White House issued an emergency executive order stating that Beijing-based ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok—as well as the ownership of WeChat by Tencent Holdings—was a threat to national security threat and the company must divest itself of the platform or be shut down.

The White House campaign—which has bipartisan backing in both houses of Congress—to force the TikTok divestiture has been aimed at whipping up anti-Chinese sentiments. It is based on the completely unproven assertions that the firm has been sharing the personal data of 100 million US users of the platform with Chinese state intelligence.

An initial deadline for TikTok to be sold by September 27 was set by the US Commerce Department after which the app would no longer be available for download on Apple and Android devices. This measure was also blocked in court by a Washington D.C. federal judge, who ruled in favor of TikTok itself. Judge Carl Nichols said that President Trump’s executive order was an unconstitutional violation of First (free speech) and Fifth (due process) Amendment rights.

The measures scheduled to be taken against TikTok on November 12 would have completely shut down the platform. They included the halting of the following transactions: (1) any provision of “any internet hosting service” enabling the functioning of the mobile TikTok application; (2) any provision of “any content delivery network service” enabling the functioning of the mobile TikTok application; (3) any provision of “directly contracted or arranged internet transit or peering services” enabling the functioning of the mobile TikTok application; and (4) any utilization of the TikTok mobile application within “the land and maritime borders of the United States.”

Judge Beetlestone noted in her ruling that TikTok user Rinab has 2.3 million followers and creates videos for fashion brands and other companies and earns between $5,000 and $10,000 per video from sponsoring companies. TikTok user Chambers has 1.8 million followers and has earned $12,000 making videos for Extra gum brands. User Marland makes comedy videos and posts about his life, and partners with record labels to promote music and has 2.7 million followers.

“For so many people, me included, their entire job and livelihood is TikTok and to have that taken away based on random speculation really does not make sense,” Marland told the Washington Post .

Hilary McQuaide, a TikTok spokeswoman, said the company was “deeply moved” by the support from creators. “We support our creative community in continuing to share their voices, both through the platform and the legal options available to them, and we are committed to continuing to provide a home for them to do so,” McQuaide said.

TikTok has 700 to 800 million monthly active users worldwide and it is published in 39 languages. It is one of the most popular and fastest growing social media apps in the history of similar technology. A major feature of the software and a key to its popularity is the proprietary recommendation engine that is able to learn quickly what kind of videos each individual user is attracted to and then serve the up such that the amount of time spent on the platform is extended.

In addition to the ramping up of anti-Chinese propaganda, another aim of the Trump administration has been to pry a lucrative social media property—ByteDance has recently been valued at $180 billion—from the hands of its Chinese owners and give it to his supporters from among the American business elite.

There was an initial frenzy of secret corporate meetings following the Trump administration’s emergency executive order, first involving Microsoft and then Oracle and Walmart. Microsoft’s offer was ultimately rejected and then a deal was announced on September 19 involving a “technology partnership” with Oracle and Walmart which left a majority ownership of TikTok in the hands of the current ByteDance executives.

President Trump was also attempting to force any acquisition deal to funnel a $5 billion “contribution” into what the White House called an “education fund” for American young people, the details of which have never been published or talked about since. When ByteDance executives were asked about Trump’s education plan the day after he made the idea public, they told reporters that it was the first time they had heard anything about it.

Going back to the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, the Democrats in Congress have pushed for a ban of the use of TikTok among US military and law enforcement personnel. On July 20, the House of Representatives voted 336 to 71 to bar federal employees from downloading TikTok as part of the $741 billion defense spending bill. On August 6, the TikTok ban was adopted unanimously by the US Senate.

It was this bipartisan support for the anti-Chinese xenophobia that was picked up on by the White House at the end of the summer and into the fall as part of the effort to boost the Trump reelection campaign.

On this question, it is clear that Democratic Party President-elect Joe Biden will continue to pursue the same or more aggressive anti-Chinese stance. In a review of tech policy of the presumptive incoming president on Monday, National Public Radio (NPR) said, “the scrutiny of the popular video-sharing app reflects a growing wariness in Washington about China's involvement in the tech industry—a sentiment shared by members of both political parties.”

NPR quoted Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who said, “The era of permissionless innovation is over. There’s going to be more public engagement, more public oversight and public regulation of the technology sector.” West went on to say, “Biden will take a tough stance on China and Biden will actually have a strategy. Trump had neither a process nor a strategy.”

Trump escalates defiance of the 2020 election outcome

Patrick Martin

In a series of actions Monday, President Trump and his closest aides and political accomplices demonstrated that they do not accept the vote of the American people to remove him from office, and that they will do anything in their power to prevent the victorious Democratic Party candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, from taking office on January 20.

On Monday afternoon, Trump fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper in a tweet because Esper had opposed using troops to suppress demonstrations in American cities—a “failing” Trump hopes to remedy with his next Pentagon chief.

The Trump-appointed chief of the General Services Administration (GSA), which handles logistics and infrastructure for the federal government, said she would not move forward with the legally required assistance to the Biden transition team until the outcome of the election was known.

Attorney General William Barr sent a circular to all US attorneys authorizing them to initiate investigations into vote fraud if it “could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election,” effectively lining up the Justice Department behind Trump’s bogus claims that the election has been stolen from him.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., talks with reporters after he spoke on the Senate floor Monday, Nov. 9, 2020, at the Capitol in Washington [Credit: AP Photo/Susan Walsh]

Barr held a closed-door meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on the same afternoon that McConnell delivered his first public remarks on the 2020 election. Speaking from the floor of the Senate, he upheld Trump’s “right” to file lawsuits over alleged irregularities in half a dozen states won by Biden.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, Trump kept up a stream of denunciations of supposed fraud in the election, with baseless claims that elections overseen by Republican state officials, as in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, and vote tallying conducted mainly by Republican local officials, as in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, were rigged in favor of Biden and the Democrats.

The firing of Esper is the most ominous step, coming only days after an interview given by the Pentagon chief to the Military Times, in which he recalled his well-publicized dispute with Trump last June, when the president threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy active duty federal troops against the millions demonstrating against police violence after the murder of George Floyd.

In response to pressure from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other top officers, concerned that such an openly repressive intervention was inadequately prepared and likely to discredit the military in the eyes of the American population, Trump backed down temporarily. But he is clearly aware that he can overturn the results of the November 3 election, clearly won by Biden, only through the use of military force.

Esper did not discuss this subject directly, but he told the Military Times that he had prepared a letter of resignation and then decided against sending it, concerned about what might come next. “Who’s going to come in behind me?” he asked. “It’s going to be a real ‘yes man.’ And then God help us.”

The undeniable implication of Esper’s firing is that Trump wants a Pentagon chief who will say yes to the deployment of troops into American cities to deal with the mass unrest that would undoubtedly follow an attempt by the president to defy the election results.

Trump named Christopher Miller, director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC), as Esper’s replacement to head the Pentagon on an “acting” basis. Miller retired in 2014 after a 31-year career as a Special Forces officer. He joined the White House staff in 2018 at the National Security Council (NSC), working on counterterrorism under John Bolton, then the national security advisor.

Soon after Bolton left the White House in September 2019, Miller came to Trump’s attention as the NSC liaison to the Pentagon during the Special Forces operation in which ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was assassinated. Miller subsequently moved to a counterterrorism position at the Pentagon, before being selected by Trump to head the NCTC.

At least one senator, Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon, voiced objections to Miller’s appointment because he indicated at a confirmation hearing that he would not oppose the NCTC supplying information on American citizens to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, to assist in the suppression of ongoing protests against police violence in Portland, Oregon.

Trump repeatedly denounced the Portland protesters as terrorists and sent federal paramilitary forces into the city. Miller was confirmed by the Senate on August 6 in a voice vote, indicating that no Democrat felt strongly enough even to demand a roll-call vote.

The decision by GSA Administrator Emily Murphy not to begin formal cooperation with the Biden transition team has both political and practical significance. A spokeswoman for Murphy told Reuters that she was waiting until “a winner is clear,” although the traditional practice at the GSA has been to begin liaison efforts as soon as a winner is called by the major television networks and other news organizations.

Trump and his congressional backers have demagogically attacked Saturday’s announcement of a Biden victory by the Associated Press, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, the New York Times and Washington Post as though it was a usurpation of the popular will by “giant corporations,” although Trump made no such objection when the same organizations called him the winner the morning after the polls closed in the 2016 election.

It would be unprecedented for the transition to a new administration to be delayed until after formal certification of the results of the election by the authorities in 50 states and the District of Columbia, a process that will take two or three weeks, given the slow arrival of mail ballots, particularly from overseas and military voters, and the time required for recanvassing and recounting in those states where the contest is close enough to warrant such action.

The Electoral College does not meet until December 14 to cast the electoral votes for the rival presidential tickets. And this process could well be disrupted if, as some state legislators and right-wing pundits have suggested, Republican-controlled state legislatures in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona intervene and attempt to impose pro-Trump electors rather than the pro-Biden slates elected by the voters.

Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has called for a wide-ranging investigation of the election—Trump lost the state by 20,000 votes—citing “concerns surfacing about mail-in ballot dumps and voter fraud.” In Pennsylvania, there has already been discussion among Republican legislators about how to go about appointing pro-Trump electors.

The letter from Attorney-General Barr to federal prosecutors authorizes them to investigate “if there are clear and apparently credible allegations of irregularities.” In the context of Trump’s open defiance of the election results, the directive amounts to making the resources of the Justice Department freely available to the Trump campaign. It also supersedes a longstanding policy that federal prosecutors not involve themselves in election-related cases until after states certify the results.

In his statement on the election, Senate Majority Leader McConnell made no mention of the Democratic president-elect, a former senator and supposed “friend,” according to the pro-Biden media. McConnell’s brief speech made no reference to allegations of vote fraud or ballot stuffing.

But other Senate Republicans were far less constrained. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, appearing on Fox News, demanded that losing Republican Senate candidate John James in Michigan also refuse to concede. “If Republicans don’t challenge and change the US election system, there will never be another Republican president elected again,” he declared.

A Trump legal adviser revealed the strategy behind the state lawsuits, telling Fox News last week, “We’re waiting for the United States Supreme Court—of which the president has nominated three justices—to step in and do something. And hopefully Amy Coney Barrett will come through.”

Only a handful of top Republicans in Congress or around the country have acknowledged Trump’s defeat and the victory of Democratic candidate Biden. This includes three governors—in the heavily Democratic states of Maryland, Vermont and Massachusetts—four of the 53 Senate Republicans, and only a dozen of the nearly 200 members of the House of Representatives, including four who are leaving office.

In all these reactionary machinations, there are elements of both desperation and delusion. The bulk of the Republican Party has embarked on a political course to deny the results of an election in which 75 million people voted for the Biden-Harris ticket. While the Democratic Party might well capitulate to such a political coup, there is no chance that the American population as a whole will passively accept the usurpation of the presidency. Trump can maintain power only through methods of mass repression and violence.

The atmosphere in the White House itself appears to be that of a besieged fortress. According to an unnamed official who spoke with CNN, “John McEntee, director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, is spreading the word throughout the administration that if he hears of anyone looking for another job they will be fired.” The administration has also been shaken by a third wave of COVID-19 infections that has hit Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, and top Trump campaign adviser David Bossie.

Possible COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough makes measures to stop virus spread now more urgent

Andre Damon

The announcement from Pfizer and German partner BioNTech Monday that there has been progress in the development of an effective vaccine against COVID-19 is a promising and encouraging development. It makes all the more necessary urgent measures to contain the spread of the virus and save lives until a vaccine is widely available.

Pfizer announced that patients in clinical trials who received two injections of the vaccine, spaced three weeks apart, had 90 percent fewer cases of COVID-19 than a control group. By way of comparison, the typical yearly flu vaccine is only 40–60 percent effective.

Pedestrians walk past Pfizer world headquarters in New York on Monday Nov. 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

The findings were based on initial data from a clinical trial of over 43,538 participants, which were reviewed by an independent board, but which have not yet been made public. The company intends to file for an emergency use authorization once half of the participants in the study have been observed for safety issues for at least two months, sometime in the third week of November.

If approved, Pfizer’s vaccine (as well as that being developed by rival Moderna) would be the first mRNA vaccine in widespread use. This would open a new age for the rapid treatment of infectious diseases with a whole new class of low-cost vaccines.

The progress toward a vaccine should be greeted with enthusiasm by workers throughout the world. However, significant questions and issues remain.

In its report on the vaccine, medical journal Stat noted that “there is no information yet on whether the vaccine prevents severe cases, the type that can cause hospitalization and death. Nor is there any information yet on whether it prevents people from carrying the virus that causes Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2, without symptoms.” The latter would be critical in determining how effective the vaccine is in preventing transmission rates.

It is also still too early to say how long the virus protects against infection. Stat also noted that the results announced by Pfizer and BioNTech have not yet been peer reviewed by scientists or published in a medical journal.

Provided that the initial results hold, even under the best of conditions Pfizer said that only 50 million doses will be available by the end of the year, with 1.3 billion produced in 2021. The vaccine must be stored at super-cold temperatures, which could make it extremely difficult to deliver to many places.

The availability and distribution of the vaccine, moreover, will be hampered by the subordination of production to the profit motives of the giant pharmaceutical companies and the conflicting interests of competing nation-states.

That being said, it does appear that progress is being made. Director of the US National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, noted that the initial results from Pfizer also bode well for the vaccine being developed by biotechnology firm Moderna and the National Institutes of Health based on similar technology. The Russian health ministry issued a statement indicating its Sputnik V vaccine would also be over 90 percent effective.

All of this means that an effective vaccine will likely be available for broad distribution sometime next year.

The progress toward a vaccine makes all the more criminal the policy of “herd immunity” that is being implemented by governments throughout the world. Just as one begins to see a light at the end of the tunnel, the argument that it is necessary to “live with the virus” becomes absolutely unacceptable.

News of the vaccine comes as the pandemic is surging in the United States and Europe. The US has surpassed 10 million cases, and, within a matter of days, a quarter million people will have died in the United States alone. As of Monday, 43 states reported 10 percent more new COVID-19 cases than the week before.

Despite this disaster, there is no plan to contain the pandemic. US President Donald Trump, who remains in office for at least two and a half more months, has publicly advocated for “herd immunity,” declaring that the spread of the disease is a positive good. President-Elect Joe Biden has rejected calls for more widespread lockdowns.

While the UK, France, and Germany have announced minor restrictions on bars and gyms, they have categorically refused to close non-essential workplaces like factories and schools.

The current catastrophic state of the pandemic is the direct consequence of the fact that government policy has been determined not by public health but by the interests of profit. Once the bailout of the banks was secured in March, the ruling class worked to implement its back-to-work policy.

As a result, hundreds of thousands have died. If emergency action is not taken now, hundreds of thousands more will die before a vaccine is widely available.

The senseless loss of life must be stopped! Non-essential businesses must be closed, with full compensation for all lost wages for workers and earnings for small businesspeople due to the pandemic. The terrible trade-off between risking one’s life and one’s livelihood cannot be accepted.

Where production is essential to the functioning of society, safe working conditions must be overseen by workers’ 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. Once a vaccine is available, it must be freely distributed and not subject to the profit interests of private corporations or the competition of nation-states.

The working class must now intervene to ensure that hundreds of thousands do not needlessly die in the coming weeks and months because the capitalists must have their profits.

Biden coronavirus transition task force to continue back-to-work drive

Kate Randall

President-elect Joe Biden on Monday announced the members of his coronavirus task force. The convening of the panel comes as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to soar across the US, with predictions that the coming winter will see a dramatic rise in cases and deaths.

President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris listen during a meeting with Biden's COVID-19 advisory council, Monday, Nov. 9, 2020, at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del [Credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster]

The US has now seen more than 10 million coronavirus cases and is approaching 240,000 deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now estimates that there will be 2,600 to 13,000 new COVID-19 hospitalizations per day by the end of November.

As had been expected, the transition task force will be co-chaired by three familiar figures in government and academia: David Kessler, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration in the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations; Dr. Vivek Murthy, surgeon general under Barack Obama; and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a professor of public health at Yale University.

The 13-member Biden-Harris coronavirus transition team has been hailed by Democratic Party-leaning news outlets as a dramatic departure from the performance of the Trump administration’s White House Coronavirus Task Force.

While it is true that the Democrats’ virus transition team is not populated by open advocates of “herd immunity” like Dr. Scott Atlas, an examination of both the team and the president-elect’s policies reveals that the next administration’s approach will be based on the drive to reopen schools and businesses, and will continue to subordinate the government response to the pandemic to the defense of corporate profits at the expense of the health and lives of America’s working population.

Included among the Biden team’s members are advocates of the rationing of health care and proponents of the further privatization of health care delivery. The selection of the panel’s top officials also signals that, in keeping with the Democratic Party’s focus on identity politics, a Biden administration will seek to present the inequities in health care primarily as a racial, rather than a class, question.

Of particular note is the inclusion on the panel of Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and brother of Rahm Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago and White House chief of staff under Obama. The World Socialist Web Site has written extensively on Dr. Emanuel’s promotion of class-based, rationed medical care for the majority of Americans, particularly the elderly.

In an especially foul piece published in the November-December 1996 Hastings Center Report, Emanuel wrote that “services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”

An article appearing in the January 2009 Lancet spelled out Emanuel’s attitude toward limiting “scarce” medical resources for the elderly: “Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination: every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age.”

He explained further why adolescents might receive care at the expense of infants, arguing: “Adolescents have received substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments. … It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old child dies, and worse still when an adolescent does.”

Emanual penned an article in the Atlantic in September 2014 titled, “Why I Hope to Die at 75,” in which he made the sinister argument that the elderly are a drain on society due to the dollars spent to keep them alive that could otherwise be used to line the pockets of the rich.

We wrote at the time:

While admitting that seniors today are less disabled and more mobile compared with their counterparts 50 years ago, he notes that, “over recent decades, increases in longevity seem to have been accompanied by increases in disability—not decreases.” He stresses, therefore, that “health care hasn’t slowed the aging process so much as it has slowed the dying process ” (emphasis added). One can only assume that he advocates an acceleration of this “dying process.”

Under conditions of a pandemic, the sinister implications of these conceptions become all the more apparent. As hospitals are overwhelmed with patients, doctors will be forced to make wrenching decisions about who is to receive a ventilator—an 82-year-old Alzheimer’s patient, who is less likely to survive, or a previously healthy 20-year-old college student?

Disability advocates in the UK have already documented how the disabled have been denied ventilators and other life-saving treatments on the basis of their “frailty” score.

Another noteworthy member of the coronavirus transition team is Atul Gawande, a professor of surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. In May, the surgeon and writer left his job as CEO of Haven, the joint venture of JPMorgan Chase billionaire Jamie Dimon, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. The aim of the venture is to set up a self-sufficient private health care system for the employees of the three companies.

Then there is co-chair Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, the founder of the Yale School of Medicine’s Equity Research and Innovation Center (ERIC), which has investigated COVID-19 mortality data across the United States by race and ethnicity. ERIC has investigated the very real issue of higher death rates for Latinos and blacks in the US in the course of the pandemic. Her inclusion on the task force, however, will undoubtedly be used promote a narrative that shifts attention away from the class inequities suffered by all ethnicities in the pandemic.

Rounding out the 13-member team are Dr. Richard Bright, the former head of the government vaccine development agency BARDA who was fired by the Trump administration; Julie Morita, a former Chicago health commissioner; Dr. Eric Goosby, founding director of the federal government’s Ryan White HIV/AIDS program; Dr. Celine Gounder, physician and medical journalist; Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota; Loyce Pace, executive director of Global Health Council; and Dr. Robert Rodriquez, professor at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine.

The program to fight COVID-19 set forth on the Biden-Harris transition web site is filled with modest and vague pledges that will likely go unfulfilled. It promises that the administration will set up a Pandemic Testing Board, “Fix personal protective equipment (PPE) problems for good,” and “Ensure everyone—not just the wealthy and well-connected—in America receives the protection and care they deserve, and consumers are not price-gouged as new drugs and therapies come to market.”

While the statement asserts that a Biden administration will “provide guidance for how communities should navigate the pandemic—and the resources for schools, small businesses, and families to make it through,” there is no talk of providing the funds needed now or in the future for the millions of people who are facing poverty, hunger and eviction as a result of the pandemic.

There are no demands for emergency measures to be taken over the coming weeks and months to deal with a sharply expanding health care catastrophe.

For good measure, the program makes the nationalist threat to “Rebuild and expand defenses to predict, prevent, and mitigate pandemic threats, including those coming from China.”

It pledges to work with governors to implement a mask mandate, a call that will likely be ignored by most Republican governors.

The great unmentionable in this program is how these measures will be financed. Biden-Harris say they will “ensure that the millions of Americans who suffer long-term side effects from COVID don’t face higher premiums or denial of health insurance because of this new pre-existing condition.”

They also say they will work to defend the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and “lower health care costs and expand access to quality, affordable health care through a Medicare-like public option.”

It is a fact that the program known as Obamacare has nothing in common with socialized medicine and has resulted in the funneling of premium payments to private insurers. The fig leaves of reform in the ACA have long since evaporated, and the legislation itself is now threatened by Trump’s Supreme Court, stacked with reactionaries.

The Biden-Harris transition team is well aware that health care costs will not be lowered, during the pandemic or otherwise. Having attacked any and all references to socialism, the incoming administration rejects the only policy that can resolve the health care crisis that has been disastrously exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic—genuine socialized medicine.

This requires the expropriation of the giant health care chains, insurance companies and pharmaceuticals to free up the resources to provide for the health needs of the population. Such a program requires the mobilization of the working class in a struggle independent of and in opposition to the two big business parties.

New Hampshire report raises concerns on evolving 5G technology

Rosamma Thomas

On November 1, the Commission to Study the Environment and Health Effects of Evolving 5G Technology in the US state of New Hampshire submitted its report to the governor of the state. It noted that the permissible radiation exposure rates in the US are among the highest in the world, and recorded that research within the country exists to show that regulatory agencies are “captured” – packed with individuals who have strong industry ties. This report went largely unnoticed, given it was submitted so close to Presidential elections in the US.

In July last year, the state passed a law constituting this commission, comprising 13 members with diverse areas of expertise: physics, engineering electromagnetics, epidemiology, biostatistics, occupational health, toxicology, medicine, public health policy, business and law. (This range of areas of expertise on this commission should come as a good lesson in public policy formulation for the Government of India). The commission received representations from the telecommunications industry and began work in September 2019.

“Fifth generation of 5G wireless technology is intended to greatly increase device capability and connectivity but also may pose significant risks to humans, animals and the environment due to increased radiofrequency radiation exposure. The purpose of this study is to examine the advantages and risks associated with 5G technology, with a focus on its environmental impact and potential health effects, particularly on children, fetuses, the elderly and those with existing health compromises,” that law read.

In its report, the commission notes: “So as the presentations and discussions went on, the Commission concluded that all things emitting radio frequency (RF) radiation needed to be considered together because of the interaction of all these waves.” There were also different meanings accorded to 5G, from how the antennae interact with other generation antennae to whether small cell towers would be needed. Ultimately, 5G was seen as a marketing concept centered around speed of data transmission.

“There is mounting evidence that DNA damage can occur from radiation outside of the ionizing part of the spectrum. The Commission heard arguments on both sides of this issue with many now saying there are findings showing biological effects in this range. This argument gets amplified as millimeter waves within the microwave range are beginning to be utilized,” the report notes.

The Commission noted that the US Telecommunication Act of 1996 says that siting of antennae cannot be denied on grounds of health concerns. Given this reality could not be altered, “As the New Hampshire Commission, we moved through the Commission process, many of the members concluded we could first encourage our federal delegation to enact changes and second, assuming the federal realities cannot be changed, recommend protective measures…”

Here is a list of the eight questions that the Commission set out to answer:

“1. Why does the insurance industry recognize wireless radiation as a leading risk and has placed exclusions in their policies not covering damages by the pathological properties of electromagnetic radiation?

2. Why do cell phone manufacturers have the legal section within the device saying keep the phone at least 5 mm from the body?
3. Why have 1000s of peer-reviewed studies, including the recently published US Toxicology Program 18-year $30 million study, that are showing a wide range of statistically significant DNA damage, brain and heart tumours, infertility and so many other ailments, been ignored by the Federal Communication Commission?
4. Why are the FCC-sanctioned guidelines for public exposure to wireless radiation based only on the thermal effect on the temperature of the skin and do not account for non-thermal, non-ionizing, biological effects of wireless radiation?
5. Why are the FCC radiofrequency exposure limits set for the United States 100 times higher than countries like Russia, China, Italy, Switzerland and most of Eastern Europe?
6. Why did the World Health Organization (WHO) signify that wireless radiation is a Group B Possibly Carcinogenic to Humans category, a group that includes lead, thalidomide and others, and why are some experts who sat on the WHO committee in 2011 now calling for it to be placed in Group 1, which are known carcinogens, and why is such information being ignored by the FCC?
7. Why have more than 220 of the world’s leading scientists signed an appeal to the WHO and the United Nations to protect public health from wireless radiation, and nothing has been done?

8.Why have the cumulative biological damaging effects of ever-growing numbers of pulse signals riding on the electromagnetic sine waves not been explored, especially as the world embraces the Internet of Things, meaning all devices being connected by electromagnetic waves, and the exploration of the number of such pulse signals that will be created by implementation of 5G technology?

“The rollout of wireless services and new products … can be key to enhancing public safety, economic opportunity and healthcare. Regardless of the evidence presented and the risks associated with RF electromagnetic field effects, business and residents alike want 100% coverage and seamless connectivity. The majority of the Commission believes that some balance can be struck to achieve the benefits of technology without jeopardizing the health of our citizens,” the report notes.

The Commission heard from experts from 10 different fields, including toxicology and public policy, and ONLY the presenter representing the telecommunications industry did not acknowledge the deleterious effect on humans and the environment from RF radiation from wireless devices, the committee noted.

The Commission noted that radiation exposure limits established by law may need to be revised: “Most of the federal regulatory agencies’ radiation exposure limits were established in the mid-1990s before the studies were carried out, so they did not take those studies into account when setting exposure limits. In addition, the initial exposure limits were developed at a time before wireless devices, and the radiation associated with them, became ubiquitous…Because of the large number of radiating devices in today’s environments, exposure for people is many times greater than when radiation thresholds were established, and the nature of today’s radiation (highdata-rate signals) has been shown to be more harmful than the lower data-rate signals that were prevalent before.” The report notes that there is only one country in the world with a higher exposure rate permissible under law than in the US – Japan.

Citing a Harvard University publication, “Captured Agency: How the Federal Communications Commission is Dominated by the Industries It Presumably Regulates,” the report notes that the priority of such bodies is then the interests of the industry rather than the health of citizens. The Commission calls for a reassessment of these agencies.

The Commission has called for an independent review of standards already set. Public service announcements should warn of health risks in using the devices, the report suggests.

The Commission has also recommended that schools and public libraries, given the evidence of young children being more susceptible, should migrate from RF wireless connections for computers and laptops to hard-wired or optical connections.

“The majority of the Commission believes that fiber optic transmission is the infrastructure of the future. When compared, RF wireless transmission lacks fiber optic characteristics: speed, security, and signal reliability while avoiding biological effects on humans and the environment,” the report notes. Three members of the Commission submitted a minority report stating that there were “no known adverse health risks from levels of RF energy emitted at the frequencies used by wireless devices”.

Meanwhile, there are reports that China has now leapfrogged into 6G – “the 6G frequency band will expand from the 5G millimeter wave frequency to the terahertz frequency,” this report noted. There are concerns that increased integration of space-air-ground-sea communications and the new frequency range might affect astronomical instruments or public health.