US jobless claims spike to 853,000 while Congress stalls further aid

Jacob Crosse

Historic job losses continued in the US with the latest initial unemployment claims from the Department of Labor revealing 853,000 first-time claims for the week ending Dec. 5, a week-to-week increase of 137,000 from last week’s revised total of 716,000.

In addition to state claims, 427,609 initial claims were filed for the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program, once again bringing the total claims between state and federal programs to nearly 1.3 million. Since March 21, combined state and federal claims have exceeded 1 million every week.

Overall, 70 million claims have been filed since mid-March, nearly seven times all the claims filed in 2019, a staggering figure that has no historical equivalent since the Labor Department began tracking initial unemployment claims in January 1967. The 853,000 claims this week exceeded bourgeois economists’ expectations and are the highest since the week of Sept. 18, disabusing delusional assertions of a “recovering” job market.

A significant data point in the report was the increase in continuing claims, which measures people collecting state unemployment benefits. The increase, which brought the total above 5.76 million, was the first since August.

Speaking to the Associated Press, AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist for the job listing website Indeed, indicated that the increase in continuing claims is a sign that hiring is slowing, portending more layoffs. “Today’s report is the first overt signal of a backward slide,” Konkel said. “It’s evident that the labor market is still in crisis.”

The economic and social crisis shows no signs of abating with over 19 million people claiming some form of unemployment benefit according to the report, a decrease of 1.12 million from the previous week. In addition to the 8.55 million claiming PUA benefits, another 4.53 million are claiming Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits. Without congressional action, both CARES Act programs will expire on Dec. 26, leaving some 13 million people with nothing.

Along with the expiration of state unemployment benefits and a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eviction moratorium at the end of the month, previously allocated funds through the CARES Act to supplement food banks and farmers have also expired. The $4.5 billion Farmers to Families Food Box program, launched in May, ran out of funds this month, leaving food banks across the country to scramble for food, or outright cancel their weekly food drives.

“The needs are beyond what we can comprehend,” Lawdia Kennedy, founder of the Queen Material Community Center in Buford, Georgia, told the Washington Post. “We had three truckloads scheduled for Saturday and they just vanished. Six states are right now being told there will be no food, right before Christmas. It’s hard to put into words what this means for the families I serve.”

“I’ve been telling people that [the food drive] is postponed and might happen next weekend, but that hope is turning a lie,” she said.

Leaders from both big businesses parties showed little interest in alleviating the suffering of millions of people. On Thursday, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi voiced her support for the bipartisan $908 billion relief proposal, which at this point, is not an actual bill, but a six-page summary that doesn’t include specific language on a proposed business liability shield or aid to state and local governments, two alleged points of contention between the parties.

It has been nearly six months since extended unemployment benefits expired, eliminating the $600 weekly federal supplement, leading to widespread hunger, evictions, mounting debt and death among the working class. But at her Thursday press conference, Pelosi thanked her colleagues for the “great progress” made on negotiations up to this point. She hailed the framework, which doesn’t include $1,200 stimulus checks and offers only half the previous federal supplemental benefits, $300 a week, as something that reflects bipartisan “values and priorities” and “what we need to do right away.”

As has been the case throughout the pandemic, the fact that unemployment benefits theoretically exist doesn’t mean workers get them, or can keep the money if they do. In Iowa, 84-year-old bladder, breast, skin and colon cancer survivor Audrey Birdsell has been ordered by Iowa Workforce Development to repay $3,530 she received through the PUA program earlier this year.

“I don’t think it’s quite right,” Birdsell told the Des Moines Register. Birdsell, at the behest of her family, took a leave of absence from her job at the Kwik Star convenience store when the pandemic emerged. “I really feel bad,” Birdsell continued. “I wouldn’t mind giving some back. But I wish I could have some, at least. I made an effort to stay home from work. And then they’re going to take it away when they promised they wouldn’t.”

A sample of 525 cases from late July reviewed by the newspaper found that more than 100 workers have been ordered to repay previously received funds with an average of $6,713 to be recouped.

As has been the case throughout the entire pandemic, Wall Street brushed aside the dismal report, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rallying above 30,000 before a brief dip at the market’s closing bell ended the trading day at 29,996.26. The stock market was buoyed by promises of unlimited “quantitative easing” via the Federal Reserve and assurances from President-elect Joe Biden that he would reopen the majority of schools within the first 100 days of his administration—a key to forcing workers back to their jobs.

The artificial inflation of the stock market boosted the wealth of US billionaires by over $1 trillion since the pandemic began, according to a Dec. 9 report from Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness. The report notes that the “total net worth of the nation’s 651 billionaires rose from $2.95 trillion March 18 … to $4.01 trillion on December 7, a leap of 36%…”

Topping the list is Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, whose wealth grew by 63.2 percent over that time from $113 billion to $184 billion. Tesla CEO Elon Musk saw the largest percentage growth, a monstrous 481.7 percent from $24.6 billion in March to $143 billion in December, for an increase of $118 billion.

The report notes that the $1 trillion hoarded by 651 people in the last nine months would be more than enough to send stimulus checks of $3,000 to all 330 million people in America, adults and children alike, providing a family of four with $12,000.

Contrasted to the euphoria of the markets and their “pandemic profiteers” is the unchecked spread of the coronavirus throughout workplaces and schools, leading to a record 3,124 deaths on Wednesday per John Hopkins University.

In comments made during a virtual event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield warned that “for the next 60 to 90 days we’re going to have more deaths per day than we had at 9/11 or we had at Pearl Harbor.”

Asked why the US had a world-leading case and death total, Redfield didn’t acknowledge the abandonment of lockdowns and the implementation of a de facto “herd immunity” policy that has been enacted by Democratic and Republican politicians alike at the behest of their oligarchic benefactors. Nor did he explain that millions of workers have been blackmailed into working in virus-ridden factories and schools, leading to unchecked community spread.

He made no mention of debilitating supply chain issues, a result of the anarchy of capitalist production and the lack of scientific coordinated global planning which to this day has crippled US testing capacity, rendering contact tracing meaningless, and has left doctors and nurses to fend for themselves in regards to personal protective equipment.

Instead, Redfield covered for the ruling class and blamed the American people for the current wave of mass death. Redfield cited high rates of comorbidities such as obesity and diabetes as well as the “culture.”

“Different cultures have embraced public health recommendations with different degrees of rigor,” he said. Redfield didn’t elaborate if this “culture” included President-elect Biden falsely claiming that schools can be reopened safely so parents can be forced back to work, or Trump instructing the population to inject bleach and avoid masks.

Europe’s COVID-19 deaths approach half a million

Johannes Stern

Two weeks before Christmas, the Covid-19 pandemic is raging out of control in Europe. Yesterday, the number of Covid-19 deaths again exceeded 5,000, bringing the European death toll to at least 444,135 people.

On Thursday, 887 people died of Covid-19 in Italy, 529 in Germany, 516 in the UK, 562 in Russia, 292 in France and 470 in Poland.

A paramedic walks out of a tent that was set up in front of the emergency ward of the Cremona hospital, northern Italy [Credit: Claudio Furlan/Lapresse via AP, file]

If the death toll remains at this level, December will be the deadliest month since the pandemic began, with over 150,000 deaths. Already in November, there were over 123,000 Covid-19 deaths, making it the deadliest month to date. Now, in the first ten days of December, more than 50.000 people have already died of Covid-19, an average of 5,000 a day.

The situation is particularly dramatic in Sweden, where the “herd immunity” strategy that is effectively pursued by all European governments was first devised. By Thursday evening, it had recorded 7,354 deaths and over 312,000 infections. With a population of only 10.6 million, this means that almost 3 percent of all inhabitants have been infected. The infection rate doubled to over 500 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the first two weeks of November. On Thursday, the Swedish government reported a new record of 7,935 new infections.

Germany has long been praised in the bourgeois media as a model for how to handle the virus. Now, the country is at the centre of the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe. After reporting a record death toll of 622 on Wednesday, Germany also reported a record in new infections on Thursday with 28,179 cases. This figure was far higher than in France (13,750), the UK (20,964) and Italy (16,999)—the countries with the highest overall infection and death rates in the European Union.

Despite the deepening catastrophe, European governments of all stripes refuse to take necessary emergency measures and close schools and non-essential businesses to prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths. On the contrary, they are already preparing further relaxation of their ineffective, “lock-down light” measures. These have always been aimed at concealing the responsibility of the ruling class for the catastrophe as it sends youth to school and workers to work in order to secure the profits of the financial aristocracy.

Most European countries have kept schools and universities open without providing even the most limited safety measures or switch to online learning. There is no regulation of public transport used by tens of millions of workers every day, and even the limited lock-down measures on retail were scrapped to not impinge on Christmas shopping. This will inevitably massively spread the virus. Nevertheless, the agenda for the December 10-11 EU summit states that European governments will discuss “the overall coordination effort in response to the COVID 19 pandemic, including... the gradual lifting of restrictions.”

On the evening of the first day of the summit, French Prime Minister Jean Castex announced that the population would be able to travel freely throughout France from 15 December. There will also be a nationwide 8 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew throughout the holidays with the exception of Christmas Eve. Castex said his government’s target to cut the number of daily new infections below 5,000 would not be achieved. Nevertheless, schools will continue to operate normally until Christmas holidays begin, on December 19, and then resume operations as planned on January 4.

Before the Brussels summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel summed up the position of the European bourgeoisie. In a statement to the German Bundestag on Wednesday, she said: “The lesson we learned from the spring was that we will do everything in our power to keep day-care centres and schools open,” she said. Merkel proposed that students open school windows into the winter cold, since good “aeration is also part of the job in the winter months. This is simply because we have special conditions.”

That is unmistakable. Although the so-called “second wave” of the pandemic has already claimed more lives than the first, and scientific studies have shown that the “hard lock-downs” in spring saved millions of lives, European governments have agreed that this time there will be no comprehensive measures to contain the virus.

In her speech, Merkel spoke of the social and political interests behind this murderous policy. It is about imperialist economic and geostrategic interests in the struggle between the great powers. “This pandemic is something that will certainly reorganise the balance of power in the world, first of all economically, but perhaps also socio-politically,” she declared, “which means we must see how we are embedded in the global context.”

Merkel remarked that the German economy, like the US economy, will collapse by four to six percent this year. She said that Germany is far behind countries like China, “which will emerge from these years with growth of 1.9 per cent”. Germany must “do everything possible to ensure that the path of recovery that we embarked on in the third quarter after a massive slump in the second quarter can be continued.” German companies must “keep up with international competition,” and “everything possible must be done to ensure that we maintain German strength not only in the economic sphere”.

European capitalist governments refuse to close schools and factories—the main drivers of the pandemic—because they intend to relentlessly squeeze surplus value and profits from the working class.

The workers are to be made to pay for the hundreds of billions of euros handed out as part of the so-called Corona bailouts, mainly to the financial oligarchy, large companies and banks. Merkel said, “We must also always remember what public debt means. It means, of course, the burden on future budgets, it means the need to pay it back, and it means restrictions on future spending and on future generations.”

European governments’ propaganda claims that they reacted more responsibly to the pandemic than the Trump government have been exposed as a fraud. As in the US, the European population faces a ruthless ruling class that literally feeds on death and misery. As infection and death rates skyrocket and hospitals across Europe teeter on the brink of collapse, share prices are skyrocketing, vastly enriching a small layer at the top of society.

This winter of death in Europe shows the bankruptcy of capitalism. If hundreds of thousands of lives are to be saved, the working class must intervene independently in political life, against the social system that has led to this horrific disaster by blocking a rational, scientific policy. Fighting the pandemic—and also social inequality, war and dictatorship—requires the expropriation of the financial oligarchy and the transformation of society on a socialist basis.

Eighteen state governments urge Supreme Court to overturn Biden victory

Patrick Martin

In an extraordinary scene of political warfare, a total of 44 of the 50 states have filed briefs with the US Supreme Court arguing for and against honoring the results of the 2020 presidential election won by Democrat Joe Biden over President Donald Trump. Only six states did not file briefs by the 3 p.m. Thursday deadline set by the high court.

The state of Texas filed the first brief Monday, directed against four “battleground” states won by Biden over Trump: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The brief asked the Supreme Court to overturn the results of the vote in those four states and to refer the appointment of electors to the state legislatures, which are Republican-controlled in each state.

Clouds roll over the Supreme Court at dusk on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sunday, May 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

In effect, Supreme Court is being asked to suppress the votes of nearly 20 million people in the four states. The effect would be to shift 62 electoral votes from Biden to Trump and reverse the overall result in the Electoral College. Instead of Biden defeating Trump by 306 to 232, a margin that Trump termed a landslide when he achieved it in 2016, Trump would be victorious by a somewhat smaller margin, 294 to 244.

Seventeen states with Republican attorneys general have joined in an amicus brief supporting the Texas suit, including Florida, Indiana, Missouri and Tennessee. The combined population of the 18 pro-Trump states, all carried by him in the presidential election, is 107 million people.

Another pro-Trump amicus brief was filed by 106 Republican members of the House of Representatives. Half of the entire Republican caucus is thus calling on the Supreme Court to overturn the result of an election in which they won their own seats. Apparently, voters are to be allowed to elect Republicans to Congress, but not to put a Democrat in the White House.

The states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin all filed rebuttal briefs by the 3 p.m. Thursday deadline set by the Supreme Court, harshly criticizing the Texas suit and calling on the high court to flatly reject it. An amicus brief was filed by the District of Columbia, which was joined by 20 states, including California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Virginia. The combined population of the 24 states and the District of Columbia, all of which voted for Biden except North Carolina, is nearly 190 million people.

Separate briefs were filed by Republican attorneys-general in Arizona and Ohio, generally defending the outcome of the election in their own states—one carried by Biden, the other by Trump—but side-stepping the broader issues. These two states have a combined population of 19 million.

Only six states, Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, New Hampshire, and Wyoming, with only 12 million people, did not seek to intervene in the Texas suit. Biden carried New Hampshire, but the state government there is Republican. Trump carried the other five states.

Quite apart from the substance of the issues—on which the Texas suit is entirely false and politically provocative—it is historically unprecedented that 18 of the 50 states are openly flouting the result of 2020 election and demanding that the Supreme Court overturn the will of the people. The line-up of states for and against the recognition of the 2020 elections suggests that the United States is on the brink of a political break-up.

President Trump also filed an amicus brief in support of Texas, which asserted, in perhaps its only true statement, “Our Country is deeply divided in ways that it arguably has not been seen since the election of 1860.” This was the election won by Abraham Lincoln, which precipitated the secession of the Southern states, the formation of the Confederacy, and the assault on Fort Sumter that triggered the American Civil War.

Members of the Electoral College are to meet Monday, December 14, in the capitals of the 50 states and in Washington DC to cast their votes, 306 for Biden and 232 for Trump, unless the Supreme Court intervenes along the lines demanded by Texas. The justices are set to meet on Friday to discuss pending motions, and could well issue a ruling on Saturday, December 12, which is the 20th anniversary of the notorious decision in Bush v. Gore that awarded Florida’s electoral votes and the presidency to George W. Bush.

It is noteworthy that the Texas lawsuit cites the reactionary Bush v. Gore precedent at several points, suggesting that today’s Supreme Court employ the same specious arguments devised by the arch-reactionary Antonin Scalia 20 years ago to suppress vote counting and award the presidency to the loser in the popular vote. The abrogation of democratic principles is infinitely greater, however. While Bush lost the popular vote by 500,000 to Al Gore in 2000, Trump lost the popular vote to Biden by more than 7 million.

The Texas brief actually cites as its first legal basis the declaration by Scalia in Bush v. Gore: “The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the electoral college.”

The argument then proceeds through a tendentious interpretation of the “Elector’s clause” in the US constitution, which reads, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.”

Because the Constitution assigns this power to the state legislatures, the Texas brief argues, any change in the conduct of the presidential election in any state, including the shift to mail ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic, is illegitimate if the changes were carried out by the executive branch or the courts rather than by the legislature.

For example, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson sent out applications for mail-in ballots to every registered voter to give them the opportunity to vote more safely. The Texas brief denounces this decision repeatedly as a violation of the Constitution because it was initiated by the executive branch rather than the legislature. Virtually every action taken by the four states along these lines—establishing drop boxes for turning in absentee ballots, expanding early voting, extending the period for receiving mail ballots as long as they were sent by Election Day—was similarly condemned as unconstitutional.

The cynicism of this argument is demonstrated by the fact that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton challenged only the changes in election procedures in four states that would shift the outcome of the vote from Biden to Trump, ignoring similar actions taken in nearly every other state because of the pandemic, including many of those carried by Trump.

In relation to each of the four states, the supposed violations in election procedures have already been litigated repeatedly by the Trump campaign and other Republicans, and the efforts of state governments to accommodate voters under conditions of the pandemic have been upheld by local, state and federal courts. There is literally nothing new, of a factual character, in the Texas brief.

As the Michigan rebuttal brief points out: “The base of Texas’s claims rests on an assertion that Michigan has violated its own election laws. Not true. That claim has been rejected in the federal and state courts in Michigan, and just yesterday the Michigan Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch effort to request an audit.”

As for the legal and constitutional basis of the suit, the briefs by the four battleground states make a properly scathing and convincing rebuttal. Nothing in the Constitution or 230 years of US history give one state government the right to pass judgment on the electoral policies of another. Nor can the executive of one state—in this case Texas—assert and defend the supposed rights of the legislature of another state—the four in question—when the legislatures themselves have declined to take such a position.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Wednesday, “Nobody in Michigan elected AG Paxton to intervene in our electoral systems or processes here.” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro argued, “Texas’s effort to get this Court to pick the next President has no basis in law or fact,” calling the suit a “seditious abuse of the judicial process,” and urging the justices to “send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated.”

The Georgia brief, written under the direction of the state’s Republican attorney general, declared, “The novel and far-reaching claims that Texas asserts, and the breathtaking remedies it seeks, are impossible to ground in legal principles and unmanageable … This Court has never allowed one state to co-opt the legislative authority of another state...”

Two additional aspects of the Texas brief deserve attention, because they demonstrate the completely fraudulent, even provocative, character of the argument.

The lawsuit cites a supposed statistical argument against Biden’s victory, pointing out that he was trailing in the vote counting through the night of the election, only to overtake Trump the next day, or several days later, as mail ballots were counted. The brief goes so far as to claim that the possibility of Biden overtaking Trump was a quadrillion to one.

The basis of the statistical argument is the claim that ballots were “randomly drawn” to be counted. But this is completely false: all four states had legal restrictions on the counting of mail ballots before Election Day. Democrats disproportionately cast mail ballots, while Republicans mainly went to the polls November 3, responding to ultra-right claims that there was no significant danger from coronavirus. Hence the pattern, in many states, of an early Trump lead subsequently overtaken by Biden.

Finally, as noted by several legal analysts, the Texas brief actually admits that there is no evidence of fraud, and argues instead the changes in election laws were such that “fraud becomes undetectable.” The brief actually states: “The unlawful actions of election officials effectively destroy the evidence by which the fraud may be detected…” In this demented and upside-down world, the absence of evidence is now to be treated as proof!

How Growing Corporatization Has Harmed Farmers and Farming

Bharat Dogra

The most prominent feature of world farming in recent decades has been that of growing corporate control, and this has often been at the expense and interests of farmers. It is important to understand the wide-ranging adverse implications of this  corporatization of farming for the sustainability of farming systems, for the welfare of ordinary farmers and for food-security of the entire world.

As the most basic role in agriculture is that of seeds, it is not  surprising that corporate interests assigned the greatest importance to strengthening their  control over the seeds sector.

Till about 60 to 70 years back the farming systems of most countries, particularly tropical countries, were characterized by a very rich diversity of seeds and crop varieties, the result of nature’s bounty as well as hundreds or even  thousands of years  of careful observation,  selection and protection by farmers. Farmers had detailed knowledge about these diverse seeds and  this had enabled them to maintain some self-reliance and autonomy despite all the exploitative practices  of the earlier colonial system. To give just one example, India alone had thousands of rice –varieties.

The first step of the corporate sector to attack this autonomy was to try to replace the diversity of indigenous seeds with a much narrower genetic base of varieties which will necessarily have to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides to get good yields. This was done in the name of the so-called green revolution. This led to a very rapid erosion of bio-diversity in agriculture.

To give just one example, the harm done to biodiversity of rice, the most important food crop in India, by the introduction of new seeds during  the early stage of the green revolution in India was described by an officially constituted task force on rice breeding chaired by Dr. R.H.Richharia in 1979, “ This narrow genetic base has created alarming uniformity, causing vulnerability to diseases and pests. Most of the released varieties are not suitable for typical uplands and low lands which together constitute about 75 per cent of the total rice area of the country.”

Thus top experts had confirmed had a very early stage that the new varieties being introduced were not suitable for most of our farming area and in addition were more susceptible to pests and diseases, yet this same strategy of farming was continued as it led to much bigger opportunities for corporate interests.

Once farmers became dependent on these seeds the next step was for the corporate sector to expand rapidly in the seeds sector. This process was helped by ‘gene robbery’, a term used by activists to refer to the trend of developed countries to collect the genetic wealth of bio-diversity of developing countries and then use this to obtain and sell their seeds and related inputs to developing countries at huge profits. Pat Roy Mooney, the senior expert on this issue who received the prestigious Right to Livelihood ward has written, “ Industrialized governments—often overruling the intentions of their scientists—have come to hoard germplasm and to stock seeds as part of the arsenal of international power diplomacy. Private companies in the North—although glad to receive free genes—are loath to divulge or share the adaptations they draw from these donations.”

The big seed companies expanded in two ways, first by buying the smaller seed companies at a rapid pace and secondly by also taking up the production, directly or through related companies, the production of chemical pesticides, herbicides etc. which were linked to these seeds.

Another step towards this increasing control was to improve the technology of genetic engineering in a big way to spread GM or genetically modified crops. This made it more convenient for bigger companies using more sophisticated technologies to increase their domination and the world seed industry and agro-chemical industry got heavily concentrated in a few companies. Multi-billion dollar deals were made to further enhance this concentration and control.

Similarly the concentration of marketing of important crops increasingly got concentrated in the hands of a few big multinational companies. Some companies directly or indirectly gained ownership of huge monocultures of plantation farming, while other resorted to contract farming on exploitative terms to have assured access to huge quantities of certain crops. Their methods were invariably more chemical input-intensive and capital intensive, causing more environmental ruin but contributing few satisfactory, sustainable jobs.

Yet another device used to increase corporate control was to introduce  strong and unjust  system of patents or somewhat similar intellectual property rights for seed and plant varieties.   A new way of imposing this system on developing countries was to include intellectual property rights in the new trade regime of the WTO which was being introduced in place of GATT. Even though developing countries tried rather desperately to include some safeguards, the overall impact was to increase corporate control to yet higher levels.

Other aspects of the changing trade regime also led to very disruptive impacts on the livelihoods of small farmers of developing countries as under the new trade regime these small farmers had to face a lot of unfair competition from imports from developed countries whose farming and farm marketing systems were increasingly dominated by very powerful and huge agribusiness giant companies who also cornered a big chunk of the massive farm subsidies paid by their governments to the farm sector.

The power of food and farm MNCs increased a lot due to the strong support they got from their governments. Henry Miller, who was formerly in charge biotechnology at the Food and Drug Administration, USA, has written “ In this area the US government agencies have done exactly what big agribusiness has asked them to do and told them to do.”

Another trend for big business was to use corruption unabashedly to advance their interests. Dr. Pushpa Bhargava, former Vice-Chairman of the National Knowledge Commission who was also appointed by the Supreme Court to protect safety concerns regarding genetic engineering,  was one of the foremost experts to hold very senior government positions while also opposing the onslaught of multinational companies on farming systems. He warned against the corrupt practices used by these companies to buy support of governments of developing countries. He wrote,” According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Monsanto bribed at least 140 Indonesian officials or their families to get Bt. cotton approved without environmental impact assessment. In 2005 the firm paid $1.5 million in fine to the US Justice Department for the graft. This is one of the many penalties that Monsanto has paid in its country of origin in spite of its close ties with the US government and its various regulatory agencies.”

More recently farmers’ organizations have become more aware of the dangers of rapid corporatization of agriculture and this is why are resisting legislative and other measures of government which increase corporatization trends. It is in this wider context that the emerging opposition of farmers’ movements to corporatization of  farming in several countries, particularly India, should be understood and supported.

Looming Hunger: These Inert Organizations Have No Answer

Otobong Inieke

Just like clockwork, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has set off another ‘heartfelt’ warning to the rest of the world, saying that, if conditions in the West African Sahel region continues to deteriorate, areas in four concerned countries could slip into famine, this was stated in the FAO’s Early Warning Analysis of Food Insecurity Hotspots and includes; Northeastern Nigeria, Burkina Faso, South Sudan and Yemen across the Red Sea. The consistent theme of mentioning conflict and economic decline as main factors for looming crisis -famine in this case- only serves to draw focus away from the deeper issues that directly or indirectly sustain conditions of strife. Readers and observers are never made to understand that these regions have for years, been theatres of neocolonial military operations that mask as part of the so-far-never-ending war on terror, which is a cynical term in that, one has to ask how a war is waged against a tactic.

The report is stated as a call-to-action which is practically a dog-whistle for NGOs to get excited about, and in typical inert fashion, the main drive is to get access to the populations to ensure that they have food and the means to produce food. This also dodges the reality that most countries experiencing food insecurity are saddled with odious debt and have adopted regressive economic programs prescribed by IMF/World Bank-type organizations. Although the four countries mentioned above are the focal regions, the early warning report draws attention to; Venezuela, Haiti, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Mali, Niger, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe. All are countries of the global south, all are countries that have been economically ravaged by transnational corporations, all are countries that have had any attempt at self-reliance sabotaged by imperial machinations for decades on-end.

The reference to NGOs was made because recent times have further exposed them as a net-negative to the vulnerable populations they are expected to serve. From women being abused by aid workers in Congo and Haiti to Human Rights Watch making condescending calls for an end to impunity in the Congo. One can deduce that global south countries acting in true independence to solve internal problems will spell an end to the humanitarian industry that thrives on the continuous exploitation of regions that have been methodically kept in an underdeveloped state. In West Asia, the ongoing attempt at the recolonization of Syria has contributed to an opioid crisis no one talks about, similar to the cholera crisis in Yemen. Being in the ‘golden crescent’, the wars waged against Syria by European countries and their allies is having the same effect on the population that the Opium Wars of the 19th century had on China.

It is an unfortunate condition whereby the ostensibly honorable intentions of people who contribute their time in the activities of NGOs are subverted by perceived and/or unspoken allegiance to the funders of these organizations. The reputation of global organizations meant to address or draw focus to injustices have also been on the decline in recent times and an example is of the United Nations withdrawn an unverified claim about the number people who were killed in an extremist attack in the Northeastern region of Nigeria. The issue here being that the UN can just as shakily as mainstream media, promote unverified and improperly sourced information on very sensitive issues. Conversely, as there are individuals within NGOs who seek to provide genuine assistance to vulnerable populations around the world, solutions should be administered as specified by those who require said aid and not from the humanitarian aid industries perspective, which is usually a singular aid blueprint to be applied across various socio-economic and geopolitical contexts. This does not always serve the purpose of assistance because vulnerable population requirements in Brazil, may be different from what refugees might need in Haiti.

Although humanitarian groups can show on paper their various successes, the metrics only satisfy donors and other interest groups, there are rarely any situations where assistance has provided structural recovery to the people who are vulnerable as a result of armed conflict or environmental degradation. One must observe the skewed attention balance on how there is much media attention on the dire economic conditions in Venezuela which is mostly as a result of aggressive economic sanctions by the U.S. and its allies while there is next to no focus on the far deadlier conditions in the D.R. Congo, a country whose natural resources practically supports the global electronic industry and via geopolitical machinations has lost over five million people to neo-colonial proxy conflicts.

By drawing the connections between these expressions of injustice, the aim is to make it clearer to Africans around the world that material and fundamental assistance will not come from specialist organizations of the so-called international community, the solutions will not come from NGOs that prescribe cookie-cutter neoliberal socioeconomic policies without substance. Defiant self-reliance and revival of cross-cultural interaction will go a great distance in healing African grassroot confidence when addressing political issues or facing leaders who collaborate in the exploitation of their own people. Food insecurity is real, the twist should be in giving more people the larger frame of discussion through which structural violence and injustice can be tackled.

Ten Realistic and Unrealistic Expectations of the Biden Administration

Jon V. Kofas

Those who supported Biden did so primarily to see America free of the Fascist-style president and Republican Party determined to bring the country as close to the Third Reich as possible. To be sure, there were many who backed Biden-Harris because they espouse the platform of the establishment Democratic Party. However, the demographics have changed, and the middle class has shrunk just as the majority of the population under the age of 25 is non-white. In short, the Democratic Party is not operating with the same demographic base today as in the 1970s.

Republicans voting for Biden did so to defeat Trump who was dogmatic about forcing all in the party accept him as the leader who determines the party platform and direction. Disgruntled Republicans also figured that Biden is a mainstream establishment Democrat closer to mainstream Republican issues on the economy, foreign affairs and defense. Progressive Democrats (mostly Sen. Sanders’ supporters) voted against Trump by voting for Biden, while hoping he would yield on some key progressive issues, including raising taxes on the rich, raising minimum wage, supporting Obamacare, protecting the environment and cultural/racial/ethnic diversity. Given the disparate policy goals of the three groups backing Biden, can there be policy divergence, especially if Republicans keep the Senate and block Biden’s agenda? T

1. It is realistic to expect some movement toward taxing the highest income groups, but unrealistic to expect raising taxes on the rich without Biden making concessions o some aspect of social programs, social security, Medicare/Medicaid.

2. It is realistic to expect diversity of cabinet appointments as a pretext concession to the progressives, but totally unrealistic to expect concessions on a progressive agenda that is class-based instead of identity-politics based.

3. It is realistic to expect the end of American unilateralism as a strategy to force other nations into submission, but unrealistic to expect the withering of American militarism and imperialism.

4. It is realistic to expect the end of corporate welfare for non-renewable energy, but unrealistic to expect the end of corporate welfare which will simply be redirected to high tech, renewable energy and bio-tech.

5. It is realistic to expect the end of persecuting illegal immigrants, but unrealistic to expect the end of marginalization of ethnic minorities.

6. It is realistic to expect more high-visibility appointments of blacks, but unrealistic to expect the end of system racism, wage, housing, college, and criminal justice discrimination based on race.

7. It is realistic to expect US re-engagement with international organizations on the environment, health and trade, but unrealistic to expect that the US will operate outside the confines of the neoliberal model that accounts for continued downward socioeconomic mobility.

8. It is realistic to expect a US-China relationship rooted in multilateral diplomacy, namely US rallying all of its allies to force China to abandon quasi-statism (51% government ownership) and into the neoliberal model it wishes to impose on Beijing. It is unrealistic to expect much improvement in US-China relations, considering that China has far greater global leverage than the US and will use it as needed while negotiating its way to retaining the status quo.

9. It is realistic to expect some movement toward rapprochement with Iran, but unrealistic to expect a lot of results, as Israel and Saudi Arabia will push back hard.

10. It is realistic to expect a tougher policy toward Russia, but unrealistic to expect Russia to cave to US demands on its strategic zone of influence inside the old USSR borders.

Many-Sided Rural Crisis and 12 Groups

Bharat Dogra

An important strength of India is that about two-thirds of its people live in villages. As the world grapples with life-endangering environmental problems, the rural base of a country can be an important source of resilience in protecting life-nurturing conditions and getting close to self-reliance in terms of meeting basic needs. However in the absence of proper priorities and policies,  multiple crises have emerged in our villages , including the economic crisis of farmers which is most discussed. Here we discuss  crises of 12 groups of rural India each one of which is important in its own way, and most of the crises have accentuated in covid times.

Firstly there is the crisis of landless farm households, most of whom take up casual farm and non-farm work in and around villages, although some of them still have more regular arrangements with a single , relatively bigger landowner. The number of these households is likely to be more than owner cultivator households. The farm work opportunities have decreased greatly due to mechanization. These households have very low resource base. These households have very low food-stocks and savings to fall back upon in difficult times and employment opportunities in non-farm employment have declined steeply in covid times. These households are often the poorest in any village.

Secondly there is the crisis of migrant workers who are generally among the poorest but in several cases managed to temporarily improve their income from migrant work. However their coping mechanism has broken badly in covid times and they have been experiencing acute distress. Another aspect of these households is that often only small children and/or elderly persons are left behind and life for them can be very difficult.

Thirdly there are additional problems  of sharecroppers and tenants, those landless persons or near landless persons who lease in small plots of cultivation land.  They are denied several benefits which landowner-cultivators can access, and have to hand over a big share of their meager produce to the landowner, while the sharing of costs is much lesser.

Next there are owner-cultivators or farmers. The bulk of them are small farmers with a low resource base, very vulnerable to  weather extremes and other adverse situations. Even in normal times they have many problems relating to  getting a fair price for their crop ( often having to resort to distress sale) and accessing announced government benefits. Due to wrong and distorted policies they have faced escalating farm costs in recent times, while deteriorating soil and water conditions and ecological damage have made it very difficult to improve or maintain yields despite spending a lot on inputs. Most of them are indebted and have to regularly make interest payments.

There is a rich diversity of poor rural artisans and crafts-persons in India including potters, weavers, leather-workers and several others who have faced many problems in recent years and their problems have increased in covid times as markets for several of their products have collapsed.

There are several service providers in rural areas like sanitation workers,  dhobis, barbers , oil-millers, vendors etc. whose work has suffered from different types of problems, all the more so in covid times.

There are several groups of villagers specializing more in animal related work. Due to various reasons those dealing in cattle, camels, goats , sheep and bees and other species have suffered    in recent times and selling of their products like milk and honey has been more difficult, particularly for those outside limited marketing chains. Traditional fisher-folk, whether working in rivers, lakes, ponds or coastal areas have faced increasing problems.

There are several nomadic and semi-nomadic groups who have been generally among the most neglected, but their problems increased all the more in covid times as established patterns of migration and related livelihoods broke down.

Tribal communities have suffered a lot in terms of land alienation, displacement and erosion of forest rights and overall resource base. They have been subjected to many-sided exploitation, including in marketing of non-timber forest produce collected by them.

There are several groups who fall in the category of those facing serious social discrimination which sometimes also takes the form of several kinds of violence. This discrimination can be on the basis of caste and increasingly also on the basis of faith or religion. Dalits and Muslims have suffered the most due to such discrimination.

Women and girls in villages suffer due to discrimination as well as violence. The limited gains made by girls earlier in education have been badly threatened in covid times. Violence against women has also increased due to increasing alcoholism . While levels of domestic violence are high, opportunities of women in obtaining paid work declined further in covid times.

The increasing number of unemployed youth face very uncertain and troubled times due to a combination of several factors and these intensified a lot due to disruption of normal economic , educational and training work as well as transport in covid times.

Israel faces fourth election within two years

Jean Shaoul

Israel's Blue and White Party, the coalition partner of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, has voted with the opposition parties for an early election. Netanyahu’s “emergency unity” coalition, formed in May after Israel’s third inconclusive election within a year, has been almost paralysed for months, with its fractious cabinet rarely meeting.

An imminent fourth election within the space of two years testifies to the deep political crisis confronting Israel, amid the broader economic and healthcare crisis besetting world capitalism. Regardless of which bloc wins a majority, the next government will be a regime of escalating militarism abroad and social reaction and repression at home.

The aim of Blue and White leader Bennie Gantz, Israel’s deputy and alternate prime minister, is to put pressure on Netanyahu to agree a two-year budget for 2020, as agreed in the coalition agreement, before the December 23 deadline that would automatically trigger an election within three months. Three top finance ministry officials have resigned, citing their frustration over the party-political bickering, while in the absence of a budget Israel is using a pro-rated version of the 2019 budget.

Benjamin Netanyahu [Photo: Office of the Israeli Prime Minister]

According to opinion polls, only about 30 percent of Israelis believe Netanyahu has handled the pandemic effectively, with Israel recording more than 345,000 COVID-19 cases and nearly 3,000 deaths, mostly in the last three months. After lifting an early lockdown without adequate safety precautions and in defiance of recommendations by the country’s health experts, cases began to soar, leading to a second partial lockdown in September. Now, after an early lifting of those limited closures, the number of infections is again on the rise, prompting talk of a third lockdown.

The situation is worse in the occupied Palestinian Territories for which Israel is legally responsible. The West Bank has recorded nearly 100,000 COVID-19 cases and around 700 deaths, mostly in the last few months, and has run out of testing kits to screen patients. The Palestinian Authority has announced a week-long closure of all but essential services in four of the 11 provinces.

In the besieged Gaza enclave, the situation is catastrophic. Healthcare workers have run out of testing kits and the only laboratory able to analyse COVID-19 test samples stopped its work “due to a lack of equipment” amid a spike in cases in the last few weeks. The healthcare system is on the point of collapse as the number of confirmed cases reach 25,000 and 150 people have died, prompting the Hamas-led government to announce a lockdown, starting Friday, on weekends and to close schools, universities, kindergartens and mosques.

While the vote appears as a defeat for Netanyahu, who has been prime minister since 2009, it signifies the political demise of the opposition led by Gantz. His electoral coalition bloc, made up of former generals and politicians that had previously served under Netanyahu, had fought three elections on an “anyone but Bibi” [Netanyahu’s nickname] platform. Branded a “centre left” party, Blue and White and the other small parties in the bloc had no significant differences with Netanyahu on the economy, social conditions, the management of the pandemic or relations with the Palestinians. It is this that has allowed political life in Israel to be dominated by Netanyahu’s calculations and maneuvering as to how best to avoid criminal corruption charges that could send him to jail for 10 years.

No party advances any policies to deal with the poverty and social inequality that characterizes Israeli society, one of the most unequal among OECD countries. Some 15 percent of workers are unemployed, with the post-lockdown recovery slower than in May and the economy expected to contract by 6 percent in 2020, the first annual contraction in Israel’s history.

None opposes the brutality of the police towards Israel’s Palestinian or immigrant communities. Of the 13 people killed by the police last year, 11 were Palestinians and two were of Ethiopian descent. Despite 1,200 brutality complaints a year, just eight police officers were indicted in 2018, the last year for which data is available, and only a handful face disciplinary tribunals.

This is a pale reflection of the treatment meted out to the Palestinians in the West Bank, who face daily intimidation, provocation and violence from settlers and Israeli security forces. Last week, an Israeli soldier shot and killed a 13-year-old Palestinian boy, Ali Abu Aliya, who was protesting against a new settlement outpost near his village. Four other young people were wounded by rubber bullets.

The lack of any genuine opposition leaves Israel under the leadership of a criminally indicted politician openly mired in cronyism and corruption and notorious for his lavish lifestyle--courtesy of expensive presents from businessmen and his stock dealings.

Netanyahu is due to attend court daily in February to give evidence in his defence. Denying the charges, he has called his indictment a frame-up, accused the judicial system of mounting a coup against him at the behest of “leftists,” and made several attempts to neuter the judiciary and change the law to evade prosecution. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, a former close aide of Netanyahu, has faced threats if he doesn’t quit or drop charges against the prime minister. Emulating Donald Trump, his patron in the White House, Netanyahu has sought to incite his far-right supporters against demonstrators who have been mounting weekly protests calling for his resignation outside his official residence in Jerusalem, in Tel Aviz and around the country.

When Gantz took Blue and White into a coalition with Netanyahu, citing the need to address the pandemic, it split his electoral bloc and discredited his party. Netanyahu seized every opportunity to smear, humiliate and intimidate Gantz, bypassing him in all the major decisions of state, including the recent “normalization” agreements with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Sudan.

Despite predictions that Likud will lose seats in the next elections, along with defections to a new party opposed to Netanyahu’s continued premiership led by Gideon Sa’ar, Netanyahu is pinning his hopes on the increased support for his former close political ally, Naphtali Bennett’s right-wing Yamina Party, and the fracturing and demise of Gantz’s former allies to return him to power.

Yet another retired army chief of staff, Gadi Eisenkot, following the lead of seven of the last eight army chiefs including Gantz, is seeking to enter politics and form his own party. Eisenkot authored the Dahiyeh Doctrine, named after the southern suburb of Beirut that is Hezbollah’s political base. According to this doctrine, should Hezbollah attack Israel, it will retaliate forcefully against Dahiyeh. He was also the architect of Israel bombing campaign against Iranian targets in Syria.

The so-called peace camp has also embraced a former general. Yair Golan, a former deputy army chief of staff, has announced that he is to formally join Meretz, the political arm of Peace Now that was associated with the back-channel negotiations that preceded the 1993 Oslo Accords. The Accords were meant to inaugurate a new era of peace with Israel through the establishment of a Palestinian state. He entered parliament last year as a supporter of the Democratic Union of Ehud Barak, another former chief of staff and a short-lived prime minister, before joining the Meretz list in April.

Speaking to the daily Ha’aretz, Golan said that he would run for the Meretz leadership if the election is held in June. He criticised Meretz for “insisting on remaining a small, separate and purist party. It lacks a real desire for power, or to be part of the government.” He added, “Certain forces are trying to drag it into becoming a Jewish-Arab party. These forces need to be calmed and silenced, as I will do my utmost to do in the coming months.”

Public sector workers mount national strike across Italy

Will Morrow

Yesterday, a nationwide strike in Italy brought large portions of the public sector to a standstill. As hundreds continue to die every day from the coronavirus pandemic and the government’s policy of permitting the virus to spread, there is mass opposition in the working class to the lack of safe working conditions and the malignant levels of social inequality fueled by decades of austerity and exacerbated by the pandemic.

According to the trade unions, more than three million workers participated in the strike. The public sector union federations that called the strike cover public administration employees, civil servants, education and health care workers, though hospital employees remained on the job.

The strike was animated by mass opposition to the slashing of public funding over decades, particularly in the health sector. There are currently 350,000 public sector workers on casual contracts without job security, including 60,000 health workers. Even as it has cynically hailed nurses as “heroes” in the fight against the pandemic, the government of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has refused to provide funding for permanent job positions or wage increases.

A man wearing a mask walks in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Friday, March 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

The strike took place amid a series of protests and strike actions by workers internationally. In neighboring Spain, thousands of doctors and nurses protested in Madrid on November 29 against plans to slash health funding. In Portugal, a national strike of childcare, primary and secondary educators will take place this Friday. In Greece, hundreds of thousands of workers shut down the country’s public sector on November 26, to protest a law abolishing the eight-hour day.

In France, hundreds of thousands took part in protests across the country a week ago against police violence and to oppose the Macron government’s plans to criminalize the filming of police. And in Germany, there is growing opposition among teachers and students to the policy of keeping schools open to allow the virus to spread.

Under these conditions, the strike in Italy has received virtually no coverage in international media. The state-run France Info radio broadcaster produced a single article on the strike, the only one to appear in French. None of the major English-language or German news outlets produced an article on the strike.

In contrast, when groups of several hundred right-wing protesters held anti-lockdown demonstrations in Germany this year, they received immediate international coverage. In the political and media establishment in Europe there is intense concern at the eruption of working-class opposition to their policies that have permitted the virus to spread by rejecting a prolonged economic lockdown that would impact on corporate profits.

The death toll from the coronavirus in Italy is catastrophic, among the highest per capita in the world. Yesterday alone, 634 people died from the virus. There have been more than 500 deaths from the virus every day since November 20. On December 3, there were 993 deaths, eclipsing the record of 921 deaths set this spring, on March 27, when Italy was one of the first countries in the world to be overwhelmed. With Italy’s population of 60 million, the December 3 death toll would be equivalent to approximately 5,300 deaths in a single day in the United States. In total, more than 60,000 people have died since the beginning of the year.

Italy has the second-highest number of infections in Europe, after France, at 1.77 million cases. The total number of recorded cases stood at half a million on October 24 and has more than tripled in less than two months. Between 10,000 and 20,000 new cases are recorded each day.

This massive death toll was not inevitable. The Conte government was forced to enact lock-down measures in March, after wildcat strikes at auto and other industrial plants in Italy demanded the idling of non-essential production to allow workers to shelter at home. After lock-downs were ended, the Conte government, like its counterparts across Europe, reopened the economy, including non-essential production, bars, restaurants and schools, to ensure that the extraction of corporate profits could resume.

The Conte government has since rejected the re-imposition of a full lock-down demanded by medical professionals. On November 9, the president of the Italian Federation of Medical Guilds called for a complete lock-down to prevent the spread of the virus.

The same day, the head of the infectious disease department at Milan’s Sacco Hospital told RAI news that a lock-down was required, “otherwise the pandemic will end up doing damage that goes beyond the already very sad number of deaths.” Conte replied in an interview with La Stampa on November 11 that such a lock-down “shouldn’t be the first choice” because “the costs are too high.”

Instead, the government has maintained a nationwide curfew from 10pm to 5am. High schools, covering the final two years of secondary education, are closed across the country, but middle school and primary schools have been kept open everywhere except in “red zones,” where the virus is spreading the fastest. Currently, only the central Abruzzo region is marked as “red.” In “orange zones,” bars and restaurants are closed, but commercial and retail stores remain open. Lombardy, Piedmont, Calabria, Bolzano and Tuscany are all among the “orange” zones.

The trade unions have not called the latest strike as an act of opposition against the government and its coronavirus policies. On the contrary, the unions have supported the opening of schools, and opposed any action to demand a lock-down with full wages provided to workers.

It has called a series of one-day actions whose purpose is to let off steam among workers, while doing nothing to oppose the government’s policies. The unions called the latest strike action after a similar token four-hour national stoppage on November 25, which shut down transport, education and health services across the country, including bus services in Rome.

Pupils in Germany resist in-person classes and demand “consistent lockdown”

Gregor Link

As the World Socialist Web Site has reported, a European-wide mass movement for safe education is developing, especially among schoolchildren, in face of the murderous herd immunity policy of governments across the continent. In Bremen, for example, students have been organizing another “hybrid strike” for almost two weeks.

Students arrive at the 'Friedensburg Oberschule' school for the first day at school after the summer vacations during the new coronavirus outbreak in Berlin, Germany, Monday, Aug. 10, 2020. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

Final year students at the Kurt-Schumacher-Allee High School have halved their in-person attendance at classes on their own initiative and without the approval of the education authorities. As the Weser-Kurier reported on Sunday, one-half of the 240 students work on the material at home, while the other half attend classes at the school. A change-over then occurs after two days. “We have the feeling that schools are being kept open at almost all costs,” explained student spokesperson Fabienne Pastoor.

In an interview with the Bremen news website Butenunbinnen, student Leonie Müller reported overwhelming support from the teaching staff. “Most people cooperate and think it’s good. The school management is also on our side.” Principal Christian Sauter described the students’ intervention in the fight for safe education as “great.” According to Leonie, the students were concerned with saving lives. “We don’t just want to protect ourselves, but also other people, for example, our families at home or people we pass by on the street.”

In carrying out the strike against in-person tuition, students, teachers and school management drew from experiences in the early summer, when alternating digital teaching was ordered nationwide and considered by the government to be the first step towards the complete reopening of schools.

However, several months after the end of the summer vacations, the herd immunity policy of the federal and state governments has led to a situation in which the daily number of new infections in Germany is forty times higher and the pandemic is claiming around fifty times as many lives every day. In the meantime, almost 500 people die every day of COVID-19.

The school strike in Bremen is part of the growing wave of student resistance against the herd immunity policy of European governments. In recent months, large student movements for safe education have emerged in Greece, Poland and France, which have expanded to many hundreds of schools and, in several cases, have been crushed through brutal police violence. In Germany, there have been strikes and protests throughout the country in recent weeks, including in Bochum, Düsseldorf, Essen, Mönchengladbach, Bremerhaven, Worms and Kassel.

Last week, more than 300 students took part in a strike in Frankfurt am Main called by the city’s student council. They carried signs saying, “more education—more co-determination—more health.” The Hesse student initiative unverantwortlich.org, which collects and publishes photo statements from students, has also called for a digital protest action for next Friday.

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) and Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) are fighting to establish independent rank-and-file committees to expand and network the protests and prepare a European-wide general strike to close schools and non-essential businesses. Only through a conscious internationalist and socialist perspective that places the lives and health of workers above the capitalist drive for profits can the greatest humanitarian catastrophe on the continent since World War II be ended and mass death stopped.

On Tuesday, representatives of the IYSSE spoke with Meret Göhring, who attends the 13th grade of a high school in Bremen and has been a member of the student council for three years. She spoke about the school strike there, the government’s “profits before life” policy, and the question of political perspective.

“Our class is extremely dissatisfied and frustrated,” she says, “They put us in a quandary and force us to choose between our graduation and the lives of our relatives. But we have been waiting since September for iPads promised to us by the education authority. The more we are approaching our final exams, the more we panic. It is becoming clear that half-solutions no longer work. What we would like to see is a consistent lockdown for two to three weeks until the infection cases are down again. A big step must now be taken.”

According to Meret, the federal and state governments are pursuing interests which are fundamentally different than those of schoolchildren and their families. “It is quite clear what the politicians are motivated by at the moment—and that is not the well-being of the population, but to keep the economy and businesses running. They have set the priorities on profit. That is the crux of the matter, but politics is beating about the bush and justifying things by playing down the pandemic.”

Responding to the massive armament spending of the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) amid the pandemic, Meret added, “When you see the things that money is being put into, at a certain point, you can only feel like a fool as a pupil.” More and more young people were being forced to draw far-reaching political conclusions from this, Meret said.

“I believe that my social environment and my generation are currently becoming highly politicized—because of the experiences we are all going through. We have people in class who have lost their jobs. Others have lost their entire existence, and still others are working in nursing care. It’s quite something for a young generation when you go through such experiences. The idea that privileged people can get through the pandemic without it having any impact on their lives is absolutely incredible for me.”

Meret has been working in a nursing home since September. “In the last few weeks, conditions have deteriorated dramatically,” she says. “When I was at work last week, five of the fourteen residents in my hallway were transferred to the coronavirus ward. If nursing staff become infected at work, they cannot go into quarantine because that would have a direct impact on the operation and therefore on people’s lives. Some of my colleagues therefore simply collapse in the corridors. It is hard to watch how the people are affected and how my colleagues suffer from this and how the care staff shortage, which has been known about for decades, makes the situation even worse.”

The situation in hospitals is dramatic. As broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported on Sunday, there are currently 40 percent more COVID-19 patients in intensive care units than in the spring. Gerald Gass, President of the German Hospital Federation (DKG), told the press: “In individual states like Saxony, the number of intensive care patients is five times as high as in April. Clinics there are reaching their capacity or have already exceeded it.” The “personnel bottlenecks” were particularly devastating, he said, due to the well-known lack of qualified nurses, which is already leading to a further increase in the number of planned operations that have to be postponed. Almost one in five intensive care beds in Germany is now occupied by a COVID-19 patient.

“Hospitals are not equipped for major natural disasters,” Berlin nurse Nina Böhmer said in a viral social media post. “That the intensive care units are full and overloaded” was “nothing new,” Böhmer says. “You can thank the Chancellor and her coalition of CDU/CSU (Christian Democrats) and SPD (Social Democrats) for this development, but also all 16 state governments, in which all the democratic parties are involved.”

That schools carrying out in-person teaching—where 30 children interact in close quarters in each classroom—play a decisive role in the spread of the virus has been repeatedly emphasized by serious epidemiologists and medical experts. Last week, for example, Professor Alexander Kekulé, Director of the Institute for Medical Microbiology at Halle University Hospital, spoke to the press about “serious outbreaks” in secondary schools. Young students, Kekulé continued, were “very strong drivers of the pandemic.”

The arrogant treatment by the ruling class of both the medical facts and the fate of millions of students became clear on Tuesday in an interview conducted by Berlin radio station Radyo Metropol FM with Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU). The Chancellor advised students, who spend hours in overcrowded classrooms with temperatures below zero and the windows open, to “bring something warmer to wear,” clap their hands and regularly do “little knee bending exercises.” Merkel rejected the widespread installation of air filters in classrooms, arguing that this could lead to “simply rolling the air around” instead of refreshing it.

The ruling class of Germany and Europe is fully aware of the catastrophe that their policies have brought about. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently stated in a speech to the European Parliament that COVID-19 was currently “the number one cause of death” in the countries of Europe. According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), by Tuesday, there had been almost 14.2 million cases in Europe, including more than 352,000 deaths.