The Earth on Fire

Evaggelos Vallianatos

The Greeks thought the Earth was the oldest of the gods. Demeter, sister of Zeus, was the closest of the Olympian deities that resembled Gaia (Earth). Every fall the Athenians sponsored the Eleusinian Mysteries in Eleusis, a small polis near Athens. Greeks from all over the Greek world participated in the Eleusinian celebration of Demeter, goddess of wheat and agriculture. Those who entered the place of worship took an oath not to reveal the secrets of the mysteries. None did.

However, what has come down to us is that Demeter-Earth blessed the wheat seeds in the ground for a prosperous harvest. The Greeks were convinced that the land and the natural world were sacred and indispensable for civilization.

The Greeks were not alone in worshipping the natural world. Other civilizations like the Egyptian, the Babylonian, the Persian and the Chinese considered the natural world and the Earth sacred.

Clash of civilizations

The blow against this view of life came from the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The resurrection of Greek science during the Arabic and Western Renaissance of the eighth-tenth and fifteenth-sixteenth centuries respectively took place in a Moslem and Christian world wedded to the pernicious one-god injunction that man could do as he pleased in the natural world. Thus the more power science and technology gave man, the more destructive his footprint among animals, plants, trees and waters.

The twentieth century ecocide

The twentieth century saw the apotheosis of the human control of planet Earth. The two world wars spread man’s merciless mechanical and chemical ferocity to forests, deserts, mountains, land, animals, birds, seas and oceans.

The golden bullet of the war chemistry was DDT: a weapon against insects that nearly abolished the majestic eagle and contaminated nature and human food for decades.

But what has been exacerbating the destructive human footprint on the planet is the excessive and thoughtless burning of fossil fuels for energy.

Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other greenhouse gases from fossil fuel burning capture solar heat, preventing it from escaping to space. The result has been the slow but inexorable rise of global temperature above the limit of pre-industrial age. This global warming comes from climate change caused by anthropogenic (human-induced) actions like the burning of petroleum, natural gas, and coal.

Scientists have been studying climate change for decades. They keep warning policy makers the world over. They tell them in diplomatic but unambiguous language that continuing with their countries’ addiction to fossil fuels is a prescription to dire ecological and public health effects. They point out that  human presence has been detrimental to plants, crops, insects, birds, animals, and fish. The resulting extinction rates are uncomfortably high and definitely unsustainable. Ecosystems are threatened with collapse.

It’s like the Earth is on fire: taking decades to engulf the continents and countries with violent storms, floods, hunger, pathologies of harm and higher temperature.

Even the vast oceans are getting warmer because they absorb most of the greenhouse emissions of the industry, petroleum-fueled militaries with thousands of warplanes and tanks, billions of civilian cars, millions of factories, including the cruel animal farms for billions of food animals and industrialized agriculture.

This climate crisis or climate change or global warming is like a gigantic Earthquake shaking people up and threatening their civilizations. Its effects have been seeping into people’s homes through television or surging droughts, intense rains, waters and winds of storms and hurricanes, and near apocalyptic forest fires burning for weeks and months and destroying gigantic groves of trees and towns or homes near them.

Despite the violent message coming from the disrupted, exploited, poisoned, and warmer natural world, the United States under Trump and most other countries are locked into a dangerous routine of business as usual.

The fossil fuel companies are primarily responsible for this suicidal orbit. They care less about our lives, the life of the Earth, much less the lives of our children and grandchildren.

America’s environmental crisis

The story of how and why a country like the United States is paralyzed by climate change and those who own fossil fuels is of great import. It has found space in newspapers and, sometimes, television. There are even some great books denouncing the corruption that keeps the fossil fuel companies so strong.

One of the eloquent voices against petroleum is Larry Schweiger, for decades an environmental insider from Pennsylvania. He presided for ten years over the National Wildlife Federation, and managed PennFuture, and Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.

His book, Climate Crisis and Corrupt Politics: Overcoming the Powerful Forces that Threaten Our Future (Universal Publishers, 2019), is timely and urgent. It tells a personal and national story of enormous interest.

In the mid-1960s, Schweiger came across the horrendous pollution of Lake Erie and decided to dedicate his life to understanding the environmental crisis and fighting those who were destroying the natural world. His decades experience with environmental organizations gave him a unique opportunity to see behind appearances.

He denounces the deceit and irresponsibility of the fossil fuel companies that purchase the enemies of the environment (natural world and public health). These include the US Chamber of Commerce, the Club for Growth, the American Petroleum Institute, the Cato Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council and politicians at state and federal government. He is even unhappy with the apathy of environmentalists.

 

“America has denied the climate crisis for decades and delayed meaningful action for far too long, and now we are out of time,” he says.

 

Yet he does not give up or wish others to give up by delusions that it’s too late to save the planet. He is a fighter for his children and grandchildren. He wants to leave then a better place than the one he inherited.

 

“This is our legacy moment, and perhaps our last chance to right a stupendous, and persistent wrong. Regardless of your faith tradition or worldview, we must all agree that wrecking the climate system is a profoundly moral, profoundly spiritual, and intensely ethical issue. There has never been an environmental threat in the history of humankind as profound, and far reaching as the climate crisis. Yet with dimwitted cruelty, a climate denying Congress has been parading itself as acting responsibly,” he wrote.

Read Larry Schweiger’s book. It’s a passionate telling of America’s environmental history, which gave Schweiger  facts and wisdom. He is convinced the scientists are right about the climate monster unleashed by fossil fuel burning and political corruption funded by the petroleum, coal, and natural gas companies.

Capitalist ideology of putting money above every virtue does not make things any easier. In fact, that’s the engine that explains the abomination of Trump and the Republican Party that would rather cripple the future for millions of children than tax and put out of business the fossil fuel killers of our beautiful and sacred Earth.

How Racist Capitalism Fuels COVID

Scott Weinstein

Long before Donald Trump, racial capitalism had doomed North America’s attempt to meet the challenge of the Covid pandemic. Yet in the middle of the pandemic when Black Lives Matter protests broke out, it seemed reasonable to demand the impossible – an end to profit-driven white supremacy. These two pivotal events graphically reveal our competing realities.

Why did advanced capitalist countries, after fair warnings from a history of earlier pandemics, respond to this time around first with denial, followed by ignorance and panic, resulting in chaos, fragmentation, and now a deadly second surges in cases?

As a Health Worker and Nurse…

I became angry with the “We are all in this together” hype when I looked around the ICUs in my major high-tech Washington, DC hospital. I am proud to work with staff truly fighting for our patients’ lives. But in gentrified Washington, now a majority White city, just about every Covid patient was Latino or Black. My union battles management for more single-use N95 masks that we are forced to reuse for days, because there is no national plan to provide personal protective equipment.

Why don’t media images illustrating super-spreader events show immigrant Latino and Caribbean farmworkers, Somalis working in slaughterhouses, Haitians staffing nursing homes, or the hundreds of thousands of poor people stuffed in prisons?

Moreover, why is the West denying the successful strategies and logistics by African and South-East Asian countries who still have dramatically limited pandemic transmission, illness and death while we experience a deadly second and third surge?

The Covid crisis is an opportunity to undo White supremacy. Understand that our focus on Sweden’s experiment instead of studying Africa’s proven strategies to manage the Covid pandemic is how White supremacy deploys information. We need to discard the assumptions of our white civilizational heritage delivers the gold standard. We ought to recognize capitalist and imperial intent that lurks behind the glorification of White heritage and accomplishments.

Another Approach

If we look at African and the SE Asian countries, we see national mobilizations guided by prepared plans and a willingness to act – together.

What can Palestine teach us? Palestine limited Covid death rates to half of Israel’s and Canada’s, and 1/5^th of the US – despite Israel’s active sabotage of their health care services and killing of their health care workers.

Decades of public health defunding through austerity budgets has been prosecuted by neoliberalism, a predatory capitalist ideology that attacks the core value of government services and social solidarity. Margaret Thatcher famously proclaimed, “There is no society – only individuals”.

Anti-capitalists can use the pandemic to mobilize against neoliberal agendas of undermining, then privatizing public health care, imposing private insurance and selling off public medicine manufacturing, while simultaneously cutting taxes and free access. We must de-mythologize a system where billionaires plunder $2.75 trillion during the pandemic from our work and our communities. In the meantime millions of Americans go hungry, and cannot afford running water to wash their hands or flush their toilets, and public health departments are forced to operate on a shoestring.

Ironically, the pandemic crisis gives us a glimpse of the possibilities of a just economy. After shutting down, nations suddenly panicked and spent billions (indeed trillions) to rescue their stock markets and economies. People received survival money. Evictions for those unable to pay their rents and mortgage defaults were suspended. Public transportation was free. All this without bankrupting our economy or rocketing us into inflation. Lesson learned – austerity economics is a predatory capitalist weapon.

Now is the moment to attack centuries of punishing racial capitalism that has so jeopardized Black, Indigenous American and Latino lives with higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and kidney disease – the “co-morbidities” that turn Covid infections so deadly. Poor and racialized communities are systemically toxified by the other co-morbidities: polluted air, water and soil.

Individualism and the Spawning of Distrust

We now end up sacrificing ‘unproductive’ seniors. Society is not expected to prevent or treat illness – it is the individual’s responsibility. Propaganda blames our ‘personal behavior’ for Covid surges.

Neoliberalism’s class war tactics have us distrusting public health officials and scientists. Not surprisingly health officials and scientists distrust us.

“I am troubled by just how little the health profession has done to address the persistent misperceptions arising from the nation’s history.” Writes – Reed V. Tuckson – Former Commissioner of Public Health for Washington, DC. “This should be the last time our society has to struggle against the legacy of the past as we fight persistent disparities in health outcomes and tackle this pandemic and the challenges to come.”

Given our history of racist, colonialist and sexist medical practices, to say nothing of funding greedy pharmaceutical corporations, perhaps we ought to see how easily neoliberalism motivates the individualism of Covid-deniers, anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers.

A radical way out of pandemic conditions demands a just and effective response: –

1. Directed help to communities and essential workers at risk. We as a caring society owe them support if they refuse to work in an unsafe workplace, and adequate pay and protection when they do work.

2. Demand the West cancels African debt. Due to predatory lending practices, Africa owes $500 billion in Western debt. In 2019, many African countries spent more money servicing their debts than they did on health.

3. Abolishing prisons and immigrant detention is medically and socially healthy.

4. Stop the refusal to spend on school safety measures such as ventilation and extra staff, and oppose jerking kids, parents and teachers around with politically decided in-class vs. online teaching mandates.

A Failure to Learn

In my hometown Montreal, Quebec, a perfect storm of profiteering, austerity and racism contributed to one of the world’s highest Covid-19 death rates. Almost 80% of Quebec’s five thousand Covid-19 deaths during the first surge were Montreal area nursing home residents – almost all were White.

A large percentage of nursing home staff are immigrants working at bottom wages without adequate personal protection such as N95 masks or sick leave. Because both private and public employers did not want to pay them benefits guaranteed with a full-time position, many worked part-time in different facilities. These policies spread Covid throughout facilities, then to their families, and into their immigrant communities.

Only enormous pressure on the Quebec government forced it to grant bonuses, delayed pay increases and some extra hiring for nursing home caregivers. But without any long-term commitment, bonuses were rolled back, staff quit, officials denied the crisis, and nursing homes are once again besieged by Covid disease.

Learning From Failure

Contrast us to S.E. Asia and Africa whose national and collaborative planning and deployment reinforces collective responsibility. Both experienced failure and tragedy after the SARS and Ebola pandemics respectively swept their regions.

Despite being at or near the epicenter of the novel corona-virus outbreak, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam and South Korea are mastering the pandemic. Their shut down measures are less calamitous then ours.

After suffering from the SARS pandemic, they developed national plans. They built robust national public health systems including testing and contact tracing, clear and unified communication, and control over distribution and pricing of essential medical equipment like testing supplies and masks.

In January, they took seriously the reports of a new coronavirus outbreak from Wuhan China, while Western governments failed to mobilize.

Borders were controlled for people entering from hot spots. Fever and symptoms health checks sprouted up at transit points, schools, workplaces and public buildings.

South-East Asian countries have a culture of masking in public that has proven to limit influenza transmission. Taiwan distributes masks to all residents and prevents price gouging.

When people are quarantined, many countries support those in need with food and money.  Contact tracing and quarantine surveillance is thorough. However, the state’s surveillance on people quarantined or locked down – using integrated government departments, cell phones and even CCTV face recognition in China – easily reinforces authoritarian control.

By employing multiple tools and strategies, South-East Asian countries can flexibly adjust to changing data and circumstances. Shutdowns do happen, but more selectively according to the data and science – not by panic and politics.

Superior African Organization

In February, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) convened an emergency meeting with all 55 continental health ministers to agree on a strategy on preventing transmission and mitigating community spread to avoid overburdening the already stressed healthcare systems.

Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo learned painful lessons from Ebola. “The response to an outbreak should begin and end at the community level,” Claude Kasereka, a surgeon from the DRC explained. “Training local leaders was much more effective for communicating the message than using untrusted outsiders.”

African countries that have so far are outperformed the global West, benefited from national preparations and high mask usage as well. They already had rapid-response teams, trained contact tracers, logistics routes, and other public-health tools and protocols in place.

Those that did not have staff in place at the beginning of the pandemic such as Uganda, Ethiopia and South Africa, devoted tens of thousands of people to do thorough contact tracing and city surveys to detect Covid-19.

Rwanda used local leaders to identify vulnerable members of communities affected by shutdowns and provided them with food and financial relief. Ethiopia reduced rents by 50%.

Perhaps with the West in mind, Professor Michael Hawks points out that , “Disorganized and conflicting messages from polarized political leadership leads to population mistrust of public health messages. And they have to be tailored to local understanding.”

Amara M. Konneh of Liberia explained that health authorities there “engaged pop stars to compose jingles and songs with health messages.”

“The continent of Africa reacted aggressively,” claims John Nkengasong, the director of the Africa CDC. “We have evidence to show that that helped a lot.”

“We’ve seen that in an epidemic, one day can mean a lot,” Sabin Nsanzimana, of the Rwanda Biomedical Center says in the New Yorker.

How well did our different systems work? Use this updated chart to compare us and them.

But in the Global North our deeply embedded structures of systemic racism and capitalism need to be overcome if we are to develop a coherent collective response to ensure safe and equitable health outcomes.

A Comparison of Respect for the Sanctity of Mosques in France, the US, and China

Kim Petersen

France has seen a spate of attacks carried out by radicalized Muslims. The attacks and killings must be denounced. But more so must one denounce the terrorism and killings carried out by the French state against Muslims in its wars abroad. In a move that gives a strong inkling of French values, the French state has targeted 76 mosques for “unprecedented action” and potential closure.

France is a party to the western chorus that condemns the alleged internment of the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China. China has rebutted the western disinformation; for example, China provided real-site photos in Xinjiang to debunk satellite images as purported evidence of so-called internment camps.

Eljan Anayt, spokesperson of the Xinjiang regional government, said,

I want to emphasize that Xinjiang is an open region, and there is no need to learn about it through satellite images. We welcome all foreign friends with objective, unbiased stance to come to Xinjiang and to know a real Xinjiang.

The Qiao Collective, an all-volunteer group comprised of ethnic Chinese people living abroad, complied a must-read report on Xinjiang that warned of “politically motivated” western disinformation:

The effectiveness of Western propaganda lies in its ability to render unthinkable any critique or alternative—to monopolize the production of knowledge and truth itself. In this context, it is important to note that the U.S. and its allies are in the minority when it comes to its critiques of Chinese policy in Xinjiang. At two separate convenings of the UN Human Rights Council in 2019 and 2020, letters condemning Chinese conduct in Xinjiang were outvoted, 22-50 and 27-46. Many of those standing in support of Chinese policy in Xinjiang are Muslim-majority nations and/or nations that have waged campaigns against extremism on their own soil, including Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, and Nigeria. On the issue of Xinjiang, the clear break in consensus between the Global South and the U.S. bloc suggests that Western critiques of Xinjiang are primarily politically motivated.

France states that its crackdown on radicalized mosques is spurred by terrorist actions. The Qiao Collective notes that France had earlier begun its own “de-radicalization programs.”

➤ 2015 October – France begins operating “de-radicalization programs.” It would seem these programs have since garnered mostly criticism from the public, but mainstream Western discourse has not accused France of cultural genocide.

Earlier in 2020, French media alleged the destruction of mosques in Xinjiang by Chinese authorities. The New York Times ran a similar story claiming that “China Is Erasing Mosques and Precious Shrines in Xinjiang …” This is coming from the US that erased several Indigenous nations from it landmass at its establishment. This is coming from a country that is engaged in genocide against Muslims worldwide — calculated to be 34 million avoidable deaths in 20 countries post-9-11.

The below video depicts how US forces respect the sanctity of a mosque during its illegal war waged in Iraq, a war based on the fixing of intelligence and facts indicating that Iraq possessed weapons-of-mass-destruction (weapons that the US arrogates the right to possess to itself and some of its allies) around the policy. That war has been condemned as a genocide.

 

Regarding the situation surrounding mosques in China, CGTN corrected the western disinformation:

Western accusations of “forceful demolition of mosques,” “persecution of religious leaders,” and “restrictions of religious freedom” in Xinjiang are “ridiculous” and “groundless,” and the lies and slandering have deeply offended the feelings of Xinjiang people and tarnished the true picture of Xinjiang, Xinjiang Islamic Association said in a statement…

Xinhua, the largest media organization in China presented an affirmative and uplifting video on the respect for Islam by the Chinese government.

Another video report cites the greater number of mosques in China than in either the US or France, even when compared per capita; the modernization of mosques having been carried out; the effectiveness of a respectful de-radicalization program in Xinjiang; and the reluctance of western governments and western media to acknowledge terrorism having been carried out in China.

The Qiao Collective provides relevant background information that China has been a victim of several attacks by Muslim terrorists:

Although there were many attacks between 1990 and 2016 and not all of the information is yet available, some high-profile attacks are as follows:

➤ 2009 July 5 – The Urumqi Riots, 197 killed, 1700 wounded…

➤ 2013 October 28 – Tiananmen Attack, 5 killed, 40 wounded…

➤ 2014 March 1 – Kunming Train Station Attack, 31 killed, 141 wounded…

➤ 2014 May 22 – Urumqi Attack, 39 killed and 94 injured …

➤ 2014 July 30 – Assassination of Imam Jume Tahir at the Id Kah Mosque after morning prayers…

➤ 2016 September 6 – Kyrgyzstan’s state security service attributed the suicide bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Bishkek to the ETIM/TIP.

While terrorist actions have been carried out by Muslims, this points to a minority among Muslims. In no way does it diminish Islam as a religion compared to other religions because there is plenty of terrorism to be attributed to other confessions such as Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. Unless otherwise demonstrated by solid evidence, then the terroristic actions must be acknowledged as that of a minority in the religion. Any actions taken to remediate the violent factions must be undertaken in a respectful manner that does not tarnish the entirety of a group.

Finally, to stake out the moral high ground, the state must abstain from carrying out its own terrorism.

UK schools facing bankruptcy during pandemic

Margot Miller

Thousands of UK schools are threatened with bankruptcy, staff redundancies and larger class sizes as they are forced to stay open and cope with the COVID-19 pandemic without extra funding.

Despite educational settings being a major vector for the rising number of coronavirus infections—accounting for 45 percent of new cases—Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, backed by the trade unions and opposition Labour Party, insist that schools must remain open. This criminally reckless policy, underpinned by the “herd immunity” strategy, has contributed to a death toll of over 70,000.

Year seven pupils are directed to socially distance as they arrive for their first day at Kingsdale Foundation School in London, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

According to the National Association of Headteachers (NAHT), half the schools in the north west England town of Stockport anticipate going into deficit budgets this year, as they struggle with extra costs incurred by the pandemic. Many schools report their annual supply cover budget has been exhausted in just half a year due to staff absences, either from teachers contracting COVID-19 or quarantining at home after contact with positive cases at school.

General secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), Geoff Barton, told the Guardian, “Most of a school’s budget is spent on staffing, so the inevitable conclusion of having less money is that they have to cut staffing. This increases class sizes and reduces the capacity to deliver pastoral care and provide additional classroom support for pupils who benefit from that. Unless the government acts, one of the legacies of Covid will be yet another funding crisis in education.”

The Guardian reported that one secondary school in the north west incurred extra COVID-19 related expenses to the tune of £339,000. A term’s supply of hand sanitisers cost the unnamed school more than £10,000, bacterial anti-sprays accounted for £3,381, and £4,000 was spent on disposable paper towels.

In theory, schools could apply for government reimbursement to cover some extra costs, but only up to July 2020. The school’s headteacher told the Guardian, “I have put in a claim to the Department for Education, but as yet have received diddly squat.”

The head of Wales High School in Kiveton, South Yorkshire, Giuseppe Di’Iasio, worked over the summer holidays providing covered areas outside so the school’s year-groups would have room to separate into their “bubbles” for social distancing.

“We spent our reserves to fund the building work, which has used up in advance all the capital fund money we will get over the next three years, so other improvements will be put on hold,” Di’Iasio told the Guardian .

“It cost £6,000 to re-design the school and put in one-way systems and distancing, and we had to spend £19,000 on catering facilities so we could serve lunch at seven different venues. We had to spend £2,000 on webcams for staff at home to facilitate remote learning, toilet refurbishment cost £3,500, and hygiene costs have been £13,000. We’re looking at spending at least a third of a million pounds out of our £10m budget, but as 80% of our spending is on staff costs, it is actually a sixth of the £2m other spend.”

Julia Maunder, the head of another school, Thomas Keble in Eastcombe, told the newspaper, “When I say I need £14,000 to pay for marquees to keep children dry, I should not be made to feel I'm being unreasonable.”

The school has triple the national average number of children with special educational needs, which it supports from its budget. This led to a “notice to improve” last year by the Education and Skills Funding Agency. The school only avoided bankruptcy through loans from the agency, voluntary contributions from parents, and staff cuts. The school is again teetering on a budget deficit.

The situation was as grim at Stockport’s Mellor Primary school. Headteacher Jim Nicholson reported spending £9,500 on supply teachers since the autumn term began. The cost of building adaptations to permit separate class “bubbles” amounted to £1,386. Extra cleaning and hygiene materials totaled £2,738 for a half term, £484 spent on IT for remote learning, and £2,000 on school equipment so children are not sharing.

In addition, the school, which has 225 pupils on roll, did not receive £29,000 allocated for after-school care and outreach work.

“Then there are the hidden costs, such as our metered water bill. On average, children are washing their hands five times more times a day, which will have a significant impact on our bill—which was £3,047 last year,” he said. Heating bills will also soar as schools have to be well ventilated during the winter to try and mitigate against high viral load.

The pandemic has accelerated the funding crisis in education, which has suffered decades of cutbacks, especially since the 2008 global financial crisis. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ “2019 annual report on education spending in England,” spending per pupil in England fell in real terms by eight percent between 2009–10 and 2019–20.

A survey by the government school inspectorate Ofsted in 2018-19 found financial pressures were the biggest concern of half the headteachers questioned, and for 80 percent it is one of their three biggest concerns.

Ofsted reported, “Forty-two per cent of primary school headteachers and 48 percent of secondary school headteachers who responded to our survey predicted that their school would be in debt by the end of the 2019–20 budget year.”

Like the other education unions, including the National Education Union (NEU), Unite and the GMB, the headteachers’ unions have not lifted a finger to mobilise their members in effective action to adequately resource education either in the past or now.

Educators continue to work in unsafe workplaces with the unions doing nothing to protect them. At least 148 education staff have tragically succumbed to the virus.

The unions have put up no fight to ensure a fully resourced safe learning environment during the pandemic, which must include school closures for all but the children of essential workers. A recent article in scientific journal Nature, cited several international studies proving that closing schools saves lives.

Last week, the Department for Education announced a “short-term Covid workforce fund” to subsidise supply cover costs for schools and colleges. But to apply, schools must already be in a crisis situation and have 20 percent of staff absent “short-term” or 10 percent “long-term”. It stipulates that “Schools will first need to use any existing financial reserves, as we would typically expect when facing unforeseen costs.”

According to Schools Week “Officials have not said how much will be available in total” in the fund. Welcoming what amounts to a few crumbs thrown by the government, National Association of Head Teachers general secretary Paul Whiteman said, “We would like to see the government go further, and our continuing discussions with them will focus on this in the coming weeks.”

The government, Labour opposition and unions feign concern that children, especially from poorer and disadvantaged families, are losing out, not just in terms of their education but their social development during the pandemic. This is undoubtedly true—but their concern is totally disingenuous.

Labour supported the government’s Coronavirus Act, which handed billions to the corporations, along with quantitative easing policies that funneled hundreds of billions into the stock market. Over £17 billion in lucrative PPE contracts were handed over to the private sector, including cronies of the ruling Conservatives, while hundreds of thousands of workers and young people face joblessness and impoverishment. None of this has been fought by the unions, which have operated as part of a de facto government of national unity with Labour and the Tories.

New report condemns Greek government’s “inhuman” treatment of refugees

George Gallanis

“Appalling,” “inhuman,” and “degrading” are some of the words published in a report by the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), describing the conditions refugees live in on Greece’s islands.

Approximately 50,000 refugees live in Greece, 38,000 of whom are on the mainland and 11,000 are on the Greek islands of Lesbos, Leros, Chios, Kos, and Samos. More than half are women and children.

Arrested refugees in the Fylakio detention center in Evros, Greece. (Wikimedia Commons)

The report, published last month, summarizes the CPT’s findings from its visit to Greece from March 13 to 17. The CPT informed the Greek government of its intent to visit and inspect refugee detention centers less than 48 hours before its visit. It should be noted that CPT’s visit and its findings describe conditions before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and before the devastating fire at the Moria refugee camp on Lesbos island. Since then, life for refugees on Greece’s islands has deteriorated significantly.

The previous pseudo-left ruling party, Syriza, paved the way for today’s assault on migrants with attacks by riot police, evacuations and the creation of festering holding camps. In 2015, the European Union (EU), Turkey and the Syriza government struck a dirty deal to establish Greece as the EU’s prison camp for refugees at its southern border.

Greece’s ruling conservative New Democracy (ND), is building upon these anti-refugee policies. Under ND, refugees have been shot and killed by Greek police, beaten by fascists and illegally turned away, also known as “push backs”, when crossing into Greece and seeking asylum. As with the recent attacks on refugees in France by police, the onslaught against refugees and migrants is a policy of the entire European ruling class.

Adding to previous countless eye-witness accounts, video footage, and other investigations, the report only confirms the ongoing brutalisation of Greece’s refugees. Focusing on certain facilities in the Evros region, Greece’s most north-eastern tip, and on the island of Samos, the report describes refugees being held in detention units made of “large barred cells crammed with beds, with poor lighting and ventilation, dilapidated and broken toilets and washrooms, insufficient personal hygiene products and cleaning materials, inadequate food and no access to outdoor daily exercise”. These appalling conditions were made worse by overcrowding in several centers.

In one instance, upon visiting two Greek police holding cells on the island of Samos, the CPT delegation “found 93 migrants (58 men, 15 women—three of whom were pregnant—and, 20 children, 10 of whom were under five years old), crammed into the two cells.”

The detained men, women, children “slept on blankets or on cardboard placed on the cell floor. The cell reeked from “unpartitioned in-cell toilets” that were “blocked and emitted a foul stench.” No one was given access to a “shower for more than two weeks and no soap was given to them to wash their hands after going to the toilet.” The female detainees were “given wet wipes, but they were not provided with any other hygiene products; many women recounted the embarrassing and unsanitary situation with which they had had to cope during their detention.”

The new temporary refugee camp is seen from above on the northeastern island of Lesbos, Greece, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2020. (AP Photo/Panagiotis Balaskas)

The report cites examples of extraconstitutional and rushed court sentences in which refugees appear in court without a lawyer within 24 hours of their apprehension by Greek police, are sentenced to 3-4 years in prison and given fines in the thousands of euros that same day.

In one example, two Turkish men had entered Greece at 6am and were then brought to a police station at 9:40 am that morning. In that afternoon, they appeared in court without lawyers, and claimed they did not understand the proceedings due to the language difference. At the end of the hearing, both were sentenced to four years of imprisonment and fined 10,000 euros.

Additionally, the CPT’s delegation found overwhelming evidence of Greek police performing pushbacks at the Evros River border in northeastern Greece. A recent report by the New York Times found the EU border patrol group, Frontex, to be complicit in helping cover up Greece’s role in performing illegal pushbacks.

The CPT’s damning exposure of the plight of Greece’s refugees is one documenting a humanitarian crisis. But the crisis has only gotten worse since the CPT’s visit some nine months ago.

On Lesbos sat the Moria camp, described by BBC as the “worst refugee camp on Earth.” With a capacity of less than 3,000 people, at one point it held 20,000 refugees in and around the site. In September, it burst into flames, in still unexplained events, and was laid to waste.

Previously housed in Moria, some 8,000 men, women and children now live in a temporary camp, once a former shooting range near the sea. Lack of infrastructure has meant the sprawling facility is wholly dependent on water tanks. With winter only weeks away, refugees will have little protection from the cold.

A new detention center will not be built until next summer. George Koumoutsakos, ND’s alternate minister for migration and asylum policy, told the Guardian. “A new camp has to be built from scratch and agreement has yet to be reached over its location. It’s impossible to get a new state-of-the art facility ready before next summer.”

Refugees are plagued by another factor: the Covid-19 pandemic, which is briefly mentioned by the CPT report, due to its visit preceding the massive spread of the virus. Adding in the devastating impact of the pandemic on society makes worse the already grueling conditions.

The report notes, “The CPT acknowledges that the COVID-19 pandemic has created additional challenges to ensure that all facilities in which migrants are detained adhere to strict standards of hygiene and cleanliness, and that persons in need of health care are provided with rapid access to such.”

The island's cramped detention centers create the perfect breeding grounds for the virus to spread uncontrollably. According to the International Rescue Committee, 35 refugees have tested positive on Lesbos. On Samos, over 100 refugees tested positive last month.

Migrants and refugees stand next to burning house containers at the Moria refugee camp, on the northeastern Aegean island of Lesbos, Greece, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2019 [InTime News via AP]

The Greek government has used the pandemic to implement draconian lockdown measures. Vice News reports refugees camps were repeatedly placed on lockdowns, even after the rest of the country opened up, which severely limited access to resources and healthcare. This shows that the measures have nothing to do with fighting the pandemic but are rather means to imprison refugees and deprive them of basic resources.

The Moria camp was locked down for nearly six months before a single confirmed coronavirus case was confirmed. The first person in Moria tested positive on September 2, which moved the camp under a stricter quarantine. The camp erupted into flames a few days later.

Andrea Contenta, Regional Advocacy Representative for Doctors Without Borders, told VICE News, “We warn against using quarantine as a blanket measure. It should only be implemented when people’s basic rights can at the same time be protected. This can be seen in access to economic and social rights. The restrictions are impacting access to services, to lawyers or other essential services because people are basically unable to enter the cities.”

The brutal conditions and treatment of refugees by the Greek government, the lack of healthcare, sanitary living areas, create the deadly possibility of the COVID-19 ripping through refugee camps on Greece islands.

As the virus spreads across Greece, the healthcare system is close to collapsing under the weight of the spread of the virus. On Thursday, another 100 people were announced as the latest COVID-19 fatalities bringing the total to 2,706. Total infections stand at 111,537 with almost 1,900 reported yesterday. In November, nearly twice as many people have died from the virus than in the entire span of the beginning of the pandemic until October.

Wife of UK chancellor richer than the Queen: Rishi Sunak and the rule of the oligarchy

Jean Shaoul

The Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak failed to declare his and his wife’s wealth and any potential conflicts of interest on becoming a Minister of the Crown last year. He is in breach of all the rules supposedly designed to prevent conflicts of interest.

It was no secret in ruling circles that Sunak is the wealthiest man in the House of Commons, having become a multi-millionaire after working for just a few years for some of the big names in the City of London. That his wife, Akshata Murty, is the daughter of one of India’s richest businessmen, Narayana Murthy, co-founder of giant technology corporation Infosys, is also well known. But the scale of her personal wealth is staggering.

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak (centre) with Frances O'Grady, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (left) and (right) Dame Carolyn Julie Fairbairn, Director General of the CBI, London, September 24, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Frank Augstein]

Sunak’s declaration of his financial and business interests in the official register of ministers’ interests, one of the scantiest on record, was contradicted by a Guardian investigation based on publicly available information. It revealed that Murty’s shares in Infosys—part of a family stakeholding worth £1.7 billion--are worth £430 million, from which she receives millions every year in dividend payments. This makes her one of the richest women in Britain and wealthier than the Queen, whom the Sunday Times ’ Rich List reports as having a net worth of £350 million.

Murty’s Infosys shares form only part of her wealth. Sunak also failed to declare his wife’s 5 percent stake in International Market Management (IMM). IMM channels investments via a “letterbox” company in Mauritius—a tax haven—into two Indian subsidiaries that operate restaurants in India, reducing its tax obligations. According to the Guardian, the use of such letterbox companies in Mauritius has cost India between $10-15 billion over the past 20 years in capital gains tax, dividend tax, interest tax and loyalty payments.

Neither did Sunak declare that his wife holds direct shareholdings and directorships in several UK companies, including two that benefited from his furlough scheme. Instead, he simply declared his wife’s ownership of a small UK-based venture capital investment company, Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd. He and his wife set up the company as a vehicle for investing her wealth in start-up businesses. Sunak then transferred all his shares to Murty before he entered parliament in 2015.

Sunak also concealed his own wealth, simply declaring he had put his own wealth into a “blind trust” that supposedly ensures he has no knowledge or control over its investment decisions, thereby avoiding disclosure. Spotlight on Corruption, an anti-corruption NGO, has exposed such devices as a fraud, noting that the ostensible safeguards can be circumvented and that such trusts “function as a tool to encourage the public perception that steps have been taken to manage conflicts of interests without requiring politicians to divest of their financial interests.”

Sunak only declared his ownership of property worth slightly more than £100,000, a sum that would barely buy a rundown tenement in Britain today. However, he and his wife own a £7 million five-bedroom home in Kensington, a £1.5 million 12-bedroom Georgian mansion set in a 12 acre estate in his constituency in the Yorkshire Dales, and property in the US.

Of issue is not just Mr. and Mrs. Sunak’s obscene personal wealth, but that he occupies, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself, the most important position in UK politics in determining public policy choices to favour others such as himself who are part of the super-rich—at the expense of the vast majority.

On the most immediate and personal level, since 2015 Infosys, which employs 10,000 people in the UK, has won government contracts worth £22 million. It has worked for the Home Office, signing a framework agreement that means it can be awarded multi-million pound contracts without competition.

Significantly, Sunak himself precipitated events leading up to the exposure of his fraudulent declaration, when he refused to disclose whether he will profit from the huge increase in the share price of the COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer Moderna, which has announced successful trials of its vaccine. Moderna was one of the biggest investments held by the Theleme Partners hedge fund he co-founded before entering parliament. As a partner in the fund, he would own a stake in the management company and have money invested in its fund.

Johnson’s government was fully aware of all of this. Yet the then head of propriety and ethics, Helen MacNamara, signed off Sunak’s registration of financial interests, even though Murty’s holdings in the family business was common knowledge. His fabulous wealth and specialist knowledge of how to protect it, both for himself and others, all but guarantees his continued elevation within government. Sunak, who became chancellor at the age of 39 within five years of entering parliament, is a man with no groundswell of popular support, or political experience. But he has been tipped as a future prime minister to replace the beleaguered Johnson.

Sunak is the living embodiment of government in the service of the financial oligarchy. He became Chancellor of the Exchequer in February as the pandemic was causing stock markets around the world to plummet. He joined a government that became the first in the world to publicly admit to pursuing a policy of “herd immunity”—allowing the virus to spread throughout the population with virtually no obstacles in its path. This murderous and fascistic policy was consciously pursued so as not to jeopardize the profits of Britain’s banks and corporations. It is the grotesque expression of rule of, by and for the oligarchy.

Sunak used his first budget on March 11 to spearhead this policy, engineering a huge transfer of social wealth to the banks and major corporations that included £330 billion loan guarantees for business—a sum equal to 15 percent of GDP--£12 billion support for business, reduced business rates or no liability at all for the 2020-21 tax year and a pledge to cover businesses’ cost of providing statutory sick pay for up to 14 days for workers in firms with fewer than 250 employees, as well as £895 billion in quantitative easing (QE), subventions that far exceed those passed after the 2008 global financial crash.

Last week, this odious financial parasite announced an austerity offensive targeting working people to meet the cost of Britain’s economic collapse, with the words, “Our economic emergency has only just begun.”

The cost of the pandemic had already reached £280 billion, he declared, without explaining that the lion’s share of these costs were the result of his subventions to business announced in March. With the economy expected to be between 3 percent and 6 percent smaller by 2025, government debt would reach nearly 100 percent of GDP by 2025 thanks to such handouts to the banks and corporations.

The Chancellor Rishi Sunak works on his Spending Review speech with members of his team in his offices in 11 Downing Street (credit: HM Treasury FlickR)

He also neglected to say that the wealth of just the 1,000 richest people in Britain would almost cover the government’s debt.

Such is the degraded state of British political life today that there have been no calls for him to resign by the Labour opposition, in line with leader Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge of only “constructive opposition.” All that was demanded by the backbench Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi was that parliament’s toothless committee on standards in public life look into whether Sunak’s lack of disclosure breached the Ministerial Code and might “further erode public trust in politicians and bring parliament into disrepute.”

Trust in parliament could hardly be lower. Millions of workers view the Johnson government as a bunch of political criminals. The pandemic has confirmed that working people have no political vehicle to express their opposition to its gangster-like policies. With the Labour Party functioning as the government’s partner in crime and bodyguard, parliament has ceased to function in any genuinely democratic sense.