Australian government passes IR laws attacking casual workers, but business demands much more

Oscar Grenfell

The Liberal-National Coalition government pushed its industrial relations legislation through the Senate yesterday, but it had to drop key aspects of the bill that had been demanded by big business in order to win the votes of crossbench MPs.

While the laws contain attacks on the rights and conditions of casual workers, and have been hailed as a victory by the Coalition, their passage will do nothing to stem a deepening crisis of the government.

Scott Morrison speaking at the National Press Club (Facebook/Scott Morrison)

The legislation has been greeted with intense dissatisfaction from different quarters of the establishment.

The corporate elite, and its mouthpieces in the financial press, have decried the fact that key changes to workplace relations, aimed at facilitating stepped-up pro-business restructuring, were dropped from the final version of the bill.

The trade unions participated in working groups alongside government ministers and corporate representatives to design the laws. But they have bemoaned the breakdown of those talks and fear that an opportunity for their further entrenchment in a government-employer assault on the working class has been lost. As always, the unions are seeking to camouflage their sordid interests with weasel-words about the impact of the legislation on workers.

All in all, the industrial legislation, which the government presented as the centrepiece of a broader economic program involving sweeping tax cuts for the corporations and the rich, deregulation and labour market “reform,” has become a debacle.

For months, the laws were stalled because the government could not cobble together a majority to pass them in the Senate. The government acted yesterday, amid mounting expressions of frustration from big business that one of its key policies had become a dead duck.

The Coalition clearly hoped that pushing the bill through would assuage the corporate elite, and turn the tide on what is becoming a breakdown of the government, expressed in media-fuelled hysteria over untested allegations of sexual misconduct, and its inability to implement legislation.

To pass the bill, the government secured the votes of Pauline Hanson, leader of the xenophobic One Nation Party, along with her colleague Malcolm Roberts, and Stirling Griff of the Centre Alliance.

With the various changes required to win the support of these right-wing populists, virtually all that remains of the original bill are provisions over the legal definition and rights of casual workers.

The impetus for the focus on casuals was a federal court ruling last year which found that employees on “regular, certain, continuing, constant and predictable” hours were owed full-time entitlements.

This sparked panic from business that the longstanding practice of employing workers on a casual basis, when they were effectively working full-time, could be over. Concerns were especially raised that corporations could be liable for back pay of workers entitled to permanency under the federal court definition, with estimates that the bill could run as high as $8 billion.

The legislation nullifies those possibilities, defining casuals as workers who were not given “firm, advance commitment” of permanent employment. Back pay is ruled out. The bill stipulates that casuals should be provided the opportunity to transfer to full-time work after 12 months of continuous employment, but the provision is meaningless because it gives bosses the right to refuse such requests on vaguely defined “reasonable grounds.” Small businesses are entirely exempt.

These policies are aimed at entrenching a sweeping assault on full-time jobs, accelerated by the pandemic, and the growing use of casual labour. Hundreds of thousands of permanent positions have been eliminated at the airlines, the universities, in the warehousing sector, and more broadly over the past year. A December 2020 report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that more than 100 percent of Australia’s net employment increase from July to August came from self-employed workers, indicating a dramatic increase of the precarious “gig-economy.”

Accompanying measures, aimed at providing business with even-greater “workplace flexibility,” were scrapped.

These included provisions for part-time employees to work overtime, without higher pay rates; two-year workplace pay deals that did not meet the “better off overall” test, which supposedly mandates agreements improving the wages and conditions of workers, and eight-year agreements for greenfield projects, which could be struck between unions and employers without any consultation with workers. This last plank was part of a broader push to “simplify” and “streamline” enterprise agreements and awards, allowing for deals slashing pay, conditions and jobs to be rushed through.

The government also axed an amendment that would have dressed up these regressive changes with a supposed crackdown on wage theft, including potential criminal penalties for liable employers.

A joint statement from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Australian Industry Group, the Master Builders Association, the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Mines and Metals Association praised “much needed certainty” on casual employment. But it urged the government to “not abandon the rest of the bill” and stressed that “further efforts need to be made over the months ahead to secure support.”

The financial press was less restrained. The Australian labelled the changes to the bill as a “stunning defeat” of the government. An article in the Australian Financial Review declared that “Almost a year of negotiation and hard work has amounted to little, with the government’s industrial relations omnibus bill gutted in the Senate and a cloud cast over the potential for future reform.”

An accompanying editorial proclaimed that the “IR debacle is a lesson in how to waste a crisis.” It bemoaned the changes to the bill, stating that they missed the opportunity to transition from pro-business stimulus measures, such as the JobKeeper wage subsidiary, to a “supply-side reform program” that would “drive up productivity” and abolish an industrial relations framework that “institutionalises conflict.”

All of these are code words for a stepped-up offensive against the working class, aimed at boosting corporate profits amid a downturn in the real economy and fears of a possible financial crisis, triggered by the huge speculative bubble that has been created by massive infusions of government money into the stock markets over the past year.

Labor and the unions back this entire agenda, but both have issued cynical condemnations of the legislation for leaving workers worse off.

The hypocrisy involved is immense. Labor governments, beginning in the 1980s, presided over deregulation of the economy, the destruction of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs, and the creation of an industrial relations framework that bans virtually all collective action by workers, resulting in stagnant wages, worsening conditions, and a deepening social crisis.

For decades, the unions have collaborated with governments and the employers as the enforcers of this program. They took this role to new levels last year. Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) Secretary Sally McManus declared, after the pandemic struck, that the unions would give businesses “everything they want.” The ACTU and its affiliates stripped millions of workers of overtime and other entitlements, on the pretext of the coronavirus crisis, and have overseen the mass job destruction.

The ACTU participated in the secret working groups to design the legislation. The talks did not break down as the result of the great intransigence of the unions, as McManus now suggests. The real issue was divisions within the corporate elite, over how fully they required the services of the unions.

While some sections of business view the unions as essential partners in enforcing their attacks on workers, others have expressed frustration over needing to deal with, and divert financial resources to, a corrupt bureaucracy that presides over organisations with dwindling memberships and even less credibility.

As the talks faltered, McManus did her best to revive them. In October, when the working groups ended without reaching full agreement, McManus begged the government to continue negotiations. Later that month, she sought to reassure the government and the corporations of the unions’ readiness to collaborate. McManus publicly revealed that the ACTU had already struck a deal with the Business Council of Australia for the abolition of the “better off overall test” in exchange for fast-tracked union enterprise agreements.

Amid ongoing divisions amongst the business representatives and frustration that the talks were dragging on, McManus’s overtures were rebuffed. She then discovered a great commitment to the “better off overall test” and expressed profound shock that moves were afoot for its abolition.

The responses to the bill are a straw in the wind of what is to come. The corporate elite is demanding nothing less than a return to the 1930s, as capitalist governments everywhere seek to force the working class to pay for the global crisis, and exploit it to strip away the few rights and conditions that have not already been overturned.

The hypocritical posturing of Labor and the ACTU reflects the fear in ruling circles that this agenda will provoke mounting opposition, including the emergence of working-class struggles outside the straitjacket of the unions.

Sri Lankan police arrest Muslim leader using draconian anti-terror laws

K. Ratnayake

Sri Lankan police arrested Muslim political leader Azath Salley on Tuesday at the orders of Attorney General Dappula de Livera, following provocative statements last week by former rear admiral, now Public Security Minister Sarath Weerasekera. Salley has been detained for three months under the country’s draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).

De Livera “advised” the Criminal Investigation Department to arrest the Muslim leader, claiming “credible information” that he had committed offences under the Penal Code, the PTA and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in a recent speech.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

Enacted in 1979, the PTA has been widely used to detain and arrest individuals allegedly linked to the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and other Tamil groups, beginning with Colombo’s bloody communalist war in 1983. It has also been employed by Sri Lankan governments to suppress political opponents and militant workers. Confessions extracted forcibly by the police under this law can be used as evidence against the victims.

The ICCPR, which was adopted in Sri Lanka in the early 1990s, was introduced under the guise of curbing “hate speech.” It has, however, been used to witch hunt individuals, accusing them of defaming Buddhism or preaching Muslim extremism.

Azath Salley (Facebook)

Salley leads the National Unity Alliance (NUA) and was Western Province governor under the previous government. He has been taken into custody for allegedly declaring that Muslim Sharia law and the Koran cannot be changed, and that his community will only respect these laws.

While the Socialist Equality Party does not support Salley’s politics, or the NUA’s Islamic communalist agenda, we oppose his arrest and detention, which is a part of an anti-Muslim campaign initiated by the Rajapakse government. Salley’s persecution is a warning to all political critics of the government and a threat to the democratic rights of the working class. It followed provocative comments last week by Weerasekera, who told the media, “We will arrest him, question him and take the necessary legal action.”

Further allegations have been hurled against Salley since his arrest. Police spokesman Ajith Rohana told the media that the Muslim leader was also being questioned over the April 21, 2019 terrorist bombing on three Catholic Churches and two tourist hotels. The Easter Sunday attacks, which were carried out by ISIS-backed Islamists, killed over 270 people and injured another 500.

The bombings were immediately seized on by the government, and the parliamentary opposition parties, to witch hunt the Muslim community. This provoked violent attacks on Muslims and was also used to divert attention from Colombo’s austerity measures against the working class and the poor.

Muslim shop destroyed by anti-Muslim thugs at Munuwangoda (WSWS Media)

Gotabhaya Rajapakse, with the backing of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), won the Sri Lankan presidency by rallying support from Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinist groups and the military and by promising a “strong and stable government.”

Weerasekera told parliament on March 11 that the government would act to “ban Madrasas [Islamic schools] and the burqa.” He claimed these measures would “prevent the recurrence of Islamic extremist activities” in Sri Lanka. Weerasekera later told a press conference that “The burqa is something that directly affects our national security” and that he had signed a cabinet paper to outlaw it.

Cabinet spokesmen claimed that the public security minister’s proposal had not come up at this week’s ministers’ meeting. The foreign ministry also said a decision had not yet been made and described it as “merely a proposal… under discussion.”

The latter statements, however, appear to be a tactical move by Colombo, which wants to downplay the issue at the moment because it is attempting to win support from Muslim countries in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Next Tuesday, a UNHRC meeting will discuss a resolution prompted by the US and its allies over Sri Lankan war crimes committed during Colombo’s war with the LTTE, as well as ongoing attacks on democratic rights.

The US and other Western powers, which have themselves committed numerous war crimes, have little concern about human rights violations and the suppression of democratic rights in Sri Lanka. Washington, which is intensifying its geo-strategic and military preparations against China, is using the resolution to pressure the Colombo regime to distance itself from Beijing.

Last Friday, President Rajapakse gazetted new additions to the repressive PTA, which are supposed to “de-radicalise” those “holding violent extremist religious ideology” and are clearly targeted against Muslims.

Under these rules any one can be detained “on suspicion of being a person who by words, either spoken or intended to be read or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise, causes or intends to cause commission of acts of violence or religious, racial or communal disharmony or feelings of ill will or hostility between different communities or racial or religious groups.”

In fact, anybody could be arrested and detained under these vague and sweeping regulations. The new measures also allow a magistrate to order anyone found guilty of “extremist ideology” to be sent for as long as 18 months to a so-called rehabilitation centre controlled by the commissioner general of rehabilitation.

The communal, discriminatory character of the government’s actions is revealed in its attitude towards Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), a fascistic Buddhist group. The recent Presidential Commission of Inquiry’s report into the Easter Sunday terror attack recommended, among other things, the banning of BBS for causing religious disharmony.

On March 8, however, SLPP chairman and Minister of Education G.L. Peiris told the media the commission of inquiry’s recommendation to ban the BBS “wasn’t acceptable to the government.” BBS is one of the extreme right formations that campaigned for Rajapakse to become president and backs his government.

The Rajapakse government, which faces an unprecedented economic crisis, with rising foreign debts and falling export income, is systematically provoking racial and religious tensions in order to divide and weaken rising working class opposition to its attacks on jobs and social rights.

The Sri Lankan ruling elite, from the outset of so-called national independence in 1948, and whenever faced with a political crisis since, has systematically discriminated against the country’s minorities, principally the Tamils, to defend capitalist rule.

Predictably, the Sri Lankan media has backed the government’s anti-Muslim campaign. Gayantha Karunatilleke, an MP from the main opposition party the Samagi Jana Balavegaya, condemned Salley’s remarks. Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) leader Vijitha Herath advised the government to “speak to the communities and religious and political leaders” about banning the burqa. These parties, which are mired in reactionary Sinhala communal politics, have no differences with Rajapakse’s anti-democratic measures or his moves towards the establishment of a presidential dictatorship.

President Biden and the Making of a New US Policy on North Korea

Sandip Kumar Mishra

The change of leadership in the US means that a new strategy on North Korea will be articulated. This article looks at the developments in this regard: the ways in which the Biden presidency could differ from the previous administration’s approach, and what this could mean in the long-term.

On 3 March 2021, the President Biden administration released an Interim National Security Strategic Guidance which promised diplomacy as the “tool of first resort,” with a preference for working more closely with allies, South Korea and Japan, in dealing with North Korea. The document indicates that Washington is likely to give more autonomy to diplomats and officials, in a reversal of recent past trends. The most important part in the Interim Guidance document is that it begins with the more modest goal of reducing threats emerging from Pyongyang by restraining its arsenal, and working towards the ultimate goal of denuclearisation.

On 14 March, reports via White House sources indicated that Pyongyang had been unresponsive to Washington’s offer of backchannel diplomatic talks underway since February. This probably suggests that Kim does not want to prematurely play his card, with the US still reviewing and consulting on an articulation of its North Korea policy. Further, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s visits to Japan and South Korea in mid-March could mean two things. One, that the US would like a more coordinated approach on North Korean denuclearisation with its regional allies. Two, Washington is opting for a bottom-up approach.

These distinguish the evolving Washington approach on Pyongyang from earlier policy in important ways.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile issues were unresolved under the Trump administration despite all the buzz during that period. President Trump began his North Korea policy with ‘maximum pressure’ and ‘fire and fury’. He later changed course to hold three meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, becoming the first US president to do so. The last two meetings in 2019, in Hanoi and Panmunjom, were not as productive as his first in Singapore in 2018.

Trump’s activism in dealing with North Korea failed because it was not based on any coherent policy. This was evident from the fact that though he was trying to engage North Korea through personalised diplomacy, his team consisted of hawkish officials such as then National Security Adviser John Bolton. This sent mixed signals to the North Korean administration. Consequently, even a minimal level of trust for any forward movement remained elusive. There were two other problems in Trump’s engagement with North Korea. First, it was a top-down approach. Agreements anticipated from the summit meetings were to be taken forward by US and North Korean officials. Second, the Trump administration had a “front-heavy” proposal for North Korea’s comprehensive, verifiable, irreversible denuclearisation (CVID), but the trust quotient between the two countries, among other things, was very low.

Fast forward to 2021. In another move, the Biden administration wants to bring in Quad countries into the process. North Korean denuclearisation is one of the five points in the joint statement released on 12 March following the first Quad Summit. Approaching the North Korean nuclear issue via Quad means that China’s cooperation may not be sought, or it could be considered marginal. It also suggests that that the US has changed its policy stand: from the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula—which was agreed to in the 2018 Singapore Summit—to denuclearisation only of North Korea. These changes could herald a widening gap between the US and South Korean approaches, with the President Moon Jae-in administration seeing China as critical to the process. Seoul is also prepared to denuclearise the peninsula if this covers North Korea in its ambit.

While it is too early to make definite conclusions about the Biden administration’s North Korea policy, a few important issues must be flagged:

• There is something to be learnt from Trump’s proactiveness in dealing with Kim and the US policy should not revert to ‘strategic patience’
• Even if difficult, Beijing must be sought out in addressing issues related to Pyongyang
• South Korea must be given more weightage than Japan in consultations with allies      
• It is important to ask whether involving the Quad countries may be necessary because this may complicate the process rather than resolving it
• A bottom-up approach is a good move, but any policy must be flexible enough to adapt to a top-down approach if and when required
• An incremental approach, which may have its own complications, appears to be the only way forward
• Finally, policy formulation on North Korean denuclearisation must begin with the acceptance that among all the imperfect options, the least imperfect may be a more realistic choice than an endless and perhaps futile pursuit of policy perfection.

Government of Singapore – ICAO Developing Countries Training Programme 2021/2022

Application Deadline: Various. Check the courses for the different deadlines

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

To be taken at (country): Singapore

About the Award: Singapore and ICAO jointly established a Developing Countries Training Programme (DCTP) in 2001 which is sponsored by the Singapore Government and administered by the ICAO Technical Cooperation Bureau for specialised training programmes conducted by the Singapore Aviation Academy (SAA).

The Singapore Aviation Academy works closely with the Singapore Government and international funding agencies to secure training fellowships for developing countries.

Type: Training, Fellowship (Career)

Eligibility: 

• The fellowships/scholarships are intended for participants nominated by their respective Governments.
• Nominating Governments should preferably nominate not more than 2 candidates for each course and advise which candidate should take priority if more than one candidate is nominated.

Number of Scholarships: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: The Government of Singapore will bear the training fees, daily allowance of Sixty Singapore Dollars (S$60) and hotel accommodation for participants accepted for the programmes.

• Complimentary breakfast will be provided at the hotel and lunch at SAA during training days. Travel arrangements are to be made and costs borne by the nominating Governments.
• Hotel accommodation will be provided for the training duration, i.e. one day before course commencement (after 2 pm) and one day after the course (till 12 noon).
• Daily allowance will be limited to the training duration, i.e. from the start of the course up to the last day of the course.
• Expenses to be incurred for stay beyond this duration will not be covered.
• Travel arrangements are to be made and costs borne by the nominating Governments.

How to Apply: Apply below

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

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Turkey: the Host With the Most

John Clamp

Turkey has for many years running been the single nation hosting the most refugees in the world. The number is hard to reckon, since a goodly number of Syrians and Afghans live there off the cards, but let’s say 4,000,000. Living in one of those X-marks-the-crossroads countries has forever made the Turks reasonably tolerant of incomers. Back in the day, peoples from all over the known world would make Constantinople top of the polyglot pops, and it’s still up there today as a gateway nation to Europe.

So the Syrian refugee crisis has almost reached the Biblical proportions of the 1947 Catastrophe in Palestine. It has surpassed in a single decade the 2,500,000 Afghan refugee population. And that is where the point lies: the 10 years. Syria has become, like in a pop-up book, the next Middle Eastern page. When opened, it turns into a weeping sore on the body politic of humanity itself, just like the complete khazis in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Yemen.

These conflicts grind on for years without resolution because the ethics-free zone that was the Cold War has morphed into the equally bad ethics-free zone that is the multi-polar, post-Cold War geopolitical scene. These days, without any restraint from the White House, Israel is practically off the leash, and leaders across the region (when not bombing neighbouring countries or brutally repressing their in-house pleas for justice) are investing heavily in the next-gen monitoring tech that they think might stave off those very same plebs.

We’re a long way from the heady days of Nobel-irony-prize-winning Sadat and Begin. If anyone knows what happened to the State Department’s positive-outcome scenario for the Middle East, please let us know on a postcard.

Originally welcoming to Syrians, in the long-lost days when people thought the war might be a short-run thing, Turkey has more recently kept its borders closed to Syrians, except at some crossing points where Ankara can monitor the intake more closely. The lives lost in the terrorist attacks in 2015 and 2016 served to harden Turkey’s stance: whether towards Kurds or Syrians.

Turkey is in a bind. Despite its ancient traditions of assimilation and co-existence (forgotten in the craziness of the Armenian genocide), Erdogan’s government has failed to fully commit to what it knows to be the truth: that its Syrian population, which grows by 350 a day through newborns, is there to stay. Ankara has gone some way to address the refugees’ needs, with legislation in 2013 and 2014 that regularized provision of health and education to its ‘guests’, but Syrians and other refugee populations including the Afghans do not yet have an easy route to desperately-needed work permits, a move that would signal a longer-term commitment that Ankara surely knows must be warranted. The last thing anyone needs, after all, is yet another enormous population of dispossessed refugees, forlorn of hope, betrayed by the international community.

Let’s face it. In the Middle East, quick fixes turn to desert dust before you can say ‘Oslo’.

Why Brazil is Losing the Global Race for Vaccines

Raphael Tsavkko Garcia

On January 17 nurse Monica Calazans became the first person vaccinated against COVID-19 in Brazil. The procedure took place during a much-awaited ceremony in São Paulo. However, after months of denial and heel-dragging from the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s late entry into the global race for vaccines could prove to be fatal for thousands of Brazilians.

To date, over 260,000 people have died of Covid-19, a disease that Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, once called a “little flu”. Since the start of the pandemic, Bolsonaro denied scientific evidence and refused to comply with basic health measures, including wearing a mask in public or avoiding crowds. Even after he and several members of the cabinet came down with the virus, Bolsonaro continued to oppose all measures to contain the pandemic and to hinder efforts to start the vaccination in the country. Moreover, he argued that the lockdown would affect the economy.

Now, faced with popular pressure and the insistence of the Governor of São Paulo, João Dória, the president finally decided to talk to several laboratories and acquire COVID-19 vaccines to immunize the entire Brazilian population. Meanwhile, the Butantan Institute, supported by the São Paulo government, is now in charge of producing locally the CoronaVac, developed by Chinese company Sinovac Biotech, with inputs imported from China. Also, Brazil’s National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA) gave the green light on March 12 for the importation of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine as well as the local production by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz).

However, there are still numerous uncertainties on the horizon as to whether the country will be able to produce or to import the necessary doses of vaccines to immunise the entire population.

The president previously declined offers of 70 million doses from laboratories such as Pfizer and he Ministry of Health refused to explain the reason behind such decision. When Bolsonaro finally did begin talks to purchase vaccines, the delay brought uncertainty about the real possibility of a broad vaccination campaign in the country. To date, the government is still negotiating to buy doses from several different laboratories, but no agreement was reached so far. The Butantan Institute can only produce so many vaccines and it’s struggling to import supplies from China.

Part of the reason for the Institute’s difficulty in acquiring supplies is due to the tensions between Brazil and  China, as well as a power struggle between the president and João Dória.

These delays are taking their toll. So far, less than 12 million people have been vaccinated in a country with 210 million people as the number of daily deaths is on the rise and the country has surpassed the US in number of daily deaths. 1954 people died of Covid on March 10 alone.

If this continues, the country might run out of vaccines soon and knowing it, Brazil’s government has already approached China asking for help as the country faces a shortage of vaccines.

The situation on the ground

Mellanie Dutra, a biomedical practitioner currently doing postdoctoral research in neuroscience at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and a member of the Covid-19 Analysis Network, stated in an interview that “among the main criticisms [towards the government] is the lack of communication. Especially because we should have started campaigns on TV already, showing the benefits of vaccines since the beginning of the pandemic.”

Dr. Dutra said, “since 2018, we have seen a drop in vaccine coverage of already approved vaccines, and we were already observing that Covid’s vaccine was being politicised, denied. So, it was very important to have started this clarification on vaccines with scientific backing a long time ago, back when clinical trials started, and people started to pay more attention to these Covid vaccines.”

For some years now, government campaigns about the need for vaccination for various diseases have been side-lined by denialism from broad sectors that support Bolsonaro regarding the benefit and effectiveness of vaccines, have created a scenario of reduced vaccine coverage and distrust.

But, thanks to the efforts of activists, scientific disseminators, and health professionals such as Dutra, the population has increased access to information on the disease and vaccines – particularly through online campaigns, memes shared on social media and a larger presence on TV shows to debate the pandemic. And this effort is reflected in opinion polls. In December last year, 22% of the population said they would not get vaccinated. Today the figure is about half that 11%.

Bolsonaro himself had stated that the actual number of those who would not get vaccinated was more than half of the population). Now, even the President himself seems to have changed his mind, claiming that “I have never been against the vaccine” and going so far as to promote the campaign, albeit timidly.

Part of the issue stems from a lack of qualified experience by those managing the crisis. The current minister of health, Eduardo Pazuello, comes from the logistics area of the army, but has no training in health management nor even in logistics. Overall, his management as head of the ministry has been disastrous. In October of last year the minister tried to buy doses of CoronaVac from China, but Bolsonaro disallowed it.

Pazuello also advocates what the Ministry calls “early treatment” for Covid-19 with remedies without proven efficacy such as the use of Ivermectin and Chloroquine.  André Watts, an anaesthesiologist at warns that the indiscriminate use of some of these “leads to greater resistance to the effect to treat bacterial infections of the respiratory tract and gonorrhoea, for example.”

“Bolsonaro is the worst leader in pandemic management in the world,” stated Celso Rocha de Barros, doctor in sociology and op-ed writer for the newspaper Folha de São Paulo. He adds that “no other country put a military minister in charge of the pandemic without any relevant qualifications, who was then publicly disallowed when he tried to buy vaccines. Bolsonaro’s Brazil is completely outlier in incompetence in crisis management– nobody compares.”

Conflict with international allies

 São Paulo’s Butantan Institute pledged to produce millions of vaccine doses locally, but there is a lack of supplies for vaccine production. Additionally, the government of Jair Bolsonaro, has alienated almost all possible international allies that could cooperate in producing and exporting the vaccine. China, for example, created several obstacles to exporting supplies for vaccine production and the close relationship between Bolsonaro and Trump has jeopardized Brazil’s relationship with the new Democrat administration.

Mauricio Santoro, professor of international relations at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) explains that “Bolsonaro’s foreign policy has focused on a preferential relationship with Trump rather than with the US. The Brazilian government has indisposed itself with the Democratic Party and was in a difficult situation when Biden won the elections.” With China, Santoro adds, “there is a contrast between the growth of trade (even with the pandemic) and the tensions arising from the government group that is hostile to the Chinese political system.”

India also delayed the export of millions of Oxford/AstraZeneca doses to Brazil for almost a month before allowing a plain with 2 million doses leave the country.

Even though both India and China ultimately agreed on resuming exports of supplies and vaccines to Brazil, the growing international isolation of the country is noticeable. “Brazil is not a priority for any of these countries. It has its importance in economic issues or regional affairs in Latin America, but it is not a country of great strategic prominence,” Santoro points out.

Milton Deiró Neto, an international relations researcher at Brazil’s SENAI-Cimatec Defence and Public Security Research Centre, agrees that Brazil’s isolation on the international stage, exacerbated by Bolsonaro’s chumminess with Trump, his refusal to act to save the Amazon and his racist and misogynist public remarks, is costing the country vaccine access.

“Brazil has lost much of its diplomatic leadership in the past and is today in a relative position of global pariah because of [Brazil’s foreign minister] Ernesto Araújo’s absolute lack of competence in managing Brazilian foreign policy,” says Deiró.

Let’s Stop Pretending Russia and China are Military Threats

Dave Lindorff

Someone needs to say this, and it looks like it’s gotta be me: China and Russia are not our enemies.

Somehow, the opinion-makers in the media, the bloated military brass with all their ribbons and stars and with little to do but worry about how to keep their massively overbuilt operation afloat with ever more taxpayer money, and the members of Congress who like to gin up fears among the voters so they’ll keep voting for them have gotten everyone thinking that Russia is still hell bent on world communist takeover and that China it trying to replace the US as global hegemon.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

First let’s talk military forces:

The US has an army of 2.5 million — 1.5 million active duty and one million reservists and National Guard units,

Russia’s army numbers 2.9 million but only 900,000 of those are active duty, with two million being reservists.

China has 2.8 million active duty troops, but that number is deceptive. 800,000 of them are so-called armed police, the Wu Jing, and their job is keeping a restive population in check. They are not for fighting wars, but for controlling the people of the country.

Now let’s talk military budgets:

The US will spend, if we want to be purists, $716 billion on the military. It’s actually a lot more because the National Security Agency is part of the military, and the CIA to all intents and purposes is military in nature and between them their secret budgets top more than the $50 billion that was leaked in a Congressional hearing eight years ago, and could be double that now since so much more US military activity is now handled by Special Forces acting under the direction of the CIA, but for sake of argument let’s just leave it at $716 billion.

Russia’s military budget is $65 billion, and even if you tripled that to account for how much more expensive everything is in the US from soldiers’ pay to weapons systems would represent less than a third of what the US spends.

China’s military budget is $183 billion, and again, you could double that if you like to account for different costs and it would still be less than half of the US military budget.

That is to say, even if you put the Chinese and Russian militaries together, their budgets would be significantly smaller than the US military budget.

On top of that there’s the matter of where those three militaries are.

The US has 800 bases in 70 countries and at least the last time the White House reported on the subject, in a 2018 report to Congress, it had troops fighting in seven countries.

Russia, according to a report in Izvestia, has 21 military bases operating outside of the country, many of them in states that were formerly part of the Soviet Union until 1990, like Tajikistan, Armenia and Belarus. The only place it has soldiers fighting is in Syria.

China has four overseas basis — one in Djibouti, one in Tajikistan, and two signal facilities in Myanmar and at the southern tip of Argentina.

Finally, and this is important, the US has nine operational aircraft carrier battle groups, eight based in the US and one in Japan, all available for force projection anywhere in the world, and carrying more planes than almost any of the world’s other air forces not counting Russia and China. The US carriers are all nuclear powered and can remain away from home port indefinitely. US carriers have frequently been posted for operational use off the coast of Afghanistan, in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf and in the Mediterranean. One was even sent into the Arctic Ocean a few years back.

Russia has one oil-powered aircraft carrier. It rarely leaves port.

China has two aircraft carriers, which stay close to home.

In terms of nuclear weaponry, the US and Russia each have 1600 actively deployed nuclear warheads, limited by a treaty that is currently in fragile shape. They each have a total of over 6000 nuclear warheads, with over 4500 of them in each country in storage.

China has 380 nuclear warheads, more than double what India has.

As far as delivery systems for those nukes, the US has 405 Minuteman III missiles, each capable of carrying three independently targetable and highly accurate warheads. It also has 14 Trident missile-firing nuclear submarines each capable of carrying 24 Trident missiles with up to 8 independently targetable warheads, though these subs are currently limited to carrying just eight missiles and four or five warheads on each, for a total of 40 nukes per submarine.

Russia in 202 claimed to have 517 land-based missile launchers on its territory to carry those warheads to targets. It also has 11 missile launching subs each capable of carrying 16 missiles with multiple warheads.

China is estimated to have 100 nuclear capable missiles of various ranges. Not all could reach the US. It has six nuclear missile carrying submarines.

While even one nuclear weapon striking a country — even a country as large as are Russia, China and the US — it is clear from all these figures that the US has by far the most dominant military in the world.

Russia or China would be crazy to take on the US militarily, and in fact, there is no indication that either country is even considering doing such a thing. Indeed, where the US engages its military at will all over the globe, China and Russia have consistently limited their military activities to areas near their home countries.

The Pentagon and its backers in the US media and in Congress, have to strain like a person with severe constipation in order to produce anything resembling a threat from either country, as when Russia a few years ago flew one of its aging long-range bombers over the pole and landed with some supplies to donate to Venezuela, and the US press was filled with alarms that the jet was “capable of carrying nuclear weapons, as I Russia might decide to drop one on Miami of Boston on the return flight home.

If readers could get past the heavy breathing of the reporters they might have recalled that the US sends it’s nuclear capable bombers, both B-52 Stratofortresses and the much more ominous B-2 Stealth bombers, half way around the world, to actively bomb other countries (with conventional ordnance) or to “send a signal” just by flying near a country like Iran.

The real threat posed by Russia and China is commercial. The US acts as though a Russian pipeline called Nordstream, being built under the North Sea to bring cheap Russian natural gas to Western Europe is a virtual act of war. And China, with its huge “belt and road” project to link eastern China to Europe with high-speed rail and all-weather highways to facilitate trade between Europe and Asia is some kind of devious military maneuver.

Let’s get real. The US military is the biggest threat to the future of the United States. It’s ravenous appetite for ever more money, which Congress obliges year after year, is gobbling up almost the entire discretionary budget of the federal government — an amount which, even if you just count the official numbers represents half of the total tax collection of the government each year.

A great example of this is the F-35 nuclear-capable fighter bomber, a $1.7-trillion dollar boondoggle which now, mid-way through its production process, the Pentagon admits is a complete failure as an aircraft, unreliable, incapable of flying at supersonic speed as it destroys its “stealth” coating, too heavy to engage other planes in aerial dogfights, and a danger to pilots because of avionics that are unreliable. It is likely to end up in a very expensive scrap heap and nobody is being blamed for this epic waste.

If we were actually concerned about national security, we would slash the US military by 90 percent and its budget by the same amount, bring all the ships and troops home from those 800 overseas bases, get out of all the conflicts into which the government injects our military — usually illegally—and start taking care of this country, which is, from the stand point of education, environment, health care, infrastructure, economy, and democratic governance in pretty sad shape.

Anyone who has traveled to Europe or Asia can attest that in many countries one feels like a visitor from the Third World. The US has abilities — like the landing of the Perseverance Rover on Mars — but meanwhile Japanese and Chinese people whisk between cities on smooth-as-glass high-speed trains while Europeans get their health care delivered free at point of service, mostly covered by taxes paid by all, get six or more weeks of paid vacation and retire without a suffering plunge in living standard.

Lets us US citizens smarten up and start figuring out who our real enemies are. Guess what? They’re right here at home, not in Beijing or Moscow, and the biggest one is a big five-sided building across the Potomac River from the Lincoln monument.

Back in October 1967, Abbie Hoffman led a group of protesters during a huge antiwar demonstration outside the Pentagon in a mock attempt to levitate the monstrous building constructed during World War II. Maybe it would be better to just raze it, use eminent domain to evice Trump’s hotel from the old Washington Post Office building so it can house a much smaller and appropriately re-named War Department bureaucracy, and then force them tne new tenant to share the space with a new Department of Peace.

We and the peoples of the world would all be better off for the change.

Thumb in the Dike: Homelessness and Deepening Inequality

David Rosen

In December 2020, USA Today ran a bold headline declaring, “the federal eviction moratorium expires in January. It could leave 40 million Americans homeless.”  The article cites Diane Yentel, CEO and president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, who warns,  “We’re facing potentially the worst housing and homelessness crisis in our country’s history.”

In February 2021, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that the “latest Census Pulse survey” found that some 15 million adults — 1 in 5 adult renters — were not caught up on their rent payments.  It claimed that

^“experts agree that renters likely already owe tens of billions of dollars in back rent and will need more help paying rent in coming months. Nearly 5 million renters say they have lost employment income and expect to be evicted soon.”

The Biden administration has put a thumb in the growing homelessness dike. On January 20, 2021, the president signed an executive order mandating that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) extend the current eviction moratorium until at least March 31, 2021. On February 25, 2021, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac extended the moratorium on single family homes until June 30, 2021.

***

Statistics are telling but never tell the whole truth.  Rather, they outline a subject, suggesting the contours of a story. In no area is this more the case when considering poverty and inequality in America.

In 2019, the year before Covid-19 struct, the U.S. Census estimated the official poverty rate at 10.5 percent and involved 34 million Americans.  This was down from the 11.8 percent in 2018 and was the lowest poverty rate annual rate since 1959.

The Census reported that 2019 median household income was $68,703, an increase of 6.8 percent over the 2018 median.  Going further, it reported that between 2018 and 2019, the real median earnings of all workers increased by 1.4 percent, while the real median earnings of full-time, year-round workers increased 0.8 percent.

And then came Covid-19.  By June 2020, the nation’s poverty rate jumped to 8.6 percent and, five months later in November, it skyrocketed to 11.7 percent.  This was the biggest one-year increase in the last 60 years.  And, in April 2020, the unemployment rate peaked at 14.7 percent.

James X. Sullivan, a Notre Dame economics professor and coauthor of “Real-time Poverty Estimates During the COVID-19 Pandemic through November 2020,” notes that the $2.2 trillion CARES Act of March 2020, along with enhanced unemployment benefits, small-business loans and other aid, helped contain unemployment and halt deepening poverty.

“The CARES Act and additional government relief went a long way to staving off a rise in poverty, but those benefits have expired or will soon expire, so it’s not surprising we see poverty creeping up again,” he said.

Now, one year later, Joe Biden signed the “CARES Act 2,” the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan Act of 2021” (ARP).  Whether it brings real relief by ending the Covid-19 pandemic or ends the ongoing economic recession will significantly determine the fate of the Biden administration and the outcome of the 2022 Congressional elections.  More significantly, one can only wonder how it will affect poverty in this country and the deepening inequality dividing the nation.

***

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, American cities across the country sported “Hoovervilles,” shacktowns and homeless encampments that were

testimonials to the housing crisis that accompanied the unemployment crisis that gripped the nation.  The terms “Hooverville” was a deliberately politicized label, accusing Pres. Herbert Hoover and the Republican Party of failing to address the economic crisis and the miseries it caused.

Today, postmodern “Hoovervilles” are back with a vengeance.  They have come to be called “Tent Cities” – sometimes “Trumpvilles” — and can be found throughout the country. The National Alliance to End Homelessness estimated the U.S. homeless population at nearly 600,000 in 2019, before the pandemic hit.  While many are located in rural or small-town areas, the freeway underpass in the Wilmington neighborhood about 20 miles south of downtown Los Angeles has become well publicized. (At the start of the pandemic, city officials stopped aggressively “cleaning up” homeless encampments but recently resumed “cleanups.”)

While New York makes an effort to contain homelessness, many homeless people are encamped on city streets, shuffle through subway cars and huddle in building doorways.  One group, Bowery.org, estimates nearly 80,000 New York men, women and children are homeless.  It stresses:

Every night, nearly 4,000 people sleep on the street, in the subway system or in other public spaces. However, the vast majority of New Yorkers experiencing homelessness spend the night within the city’s shelter system where they remain unseen. For every person sleeping on sidewalks or on trains, 20 more are sleeping in shelters.

The Coalition for the Homeless further details the city’s homeless crisis.  It reports that “in January 2021, there were 55,915 homeless people, including 17,645 homeless children, sleeping each night in the New York City municipal shelter system. A near-record 20,738 single adults slept in shelters in January 2021.” Going further, it adds: “Over the course of City fiscal year 2020, 122,926 different homeless men, women, and children slept in the New York City municipal shelter system. This includes more than 39,300 homeless children.”

Among the homeless who seems to suffer the most are gender-nonconforming young people.  “In the United States, 4.2 million youth experience homelessness each year, with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ+) youth 120% more likely to experience homelessness than their non-LGBTQ peers.”  So warns a recent study, “2020 State Index on Youth Homelessness,” by True Colors United and National Homelessness Law Center.

Homelessness “refers to experiences of sleeping in places not meant for living, staying in shelters, staying in hotels, motels, or campgrounds due to a lack of alternatives staying in cars, parks, or public spaces, or temporarily staying with others (“couch surfing”) while lacking a safe and stable alternative living arrangement.”  The report notes:

Annually, one in 30 youth ages 13 to 17 and one in 10 young adults ages 18 to 25 endure some form of homelessness, and youth of color are disproportionately represented. Latinx youth make up 33% of 18- to 25-year-olds reporting homelessness. Black youth are also overrepresented, with an 83% increased risk of having experienced homelessness over youth of other races or ethnicities. Black youth who identify as LGBTQ+—especially young men aged 18 to 25—reported the highest rates of homelessness. Nearly one in four Black young men, ages 18 to 25, identifying as LGBTQ+ reported homelessness in the last 12 months, and this not even include those who only reported couch-surfing

Youth homelessness is but one additional expression of the deepening poverty crisis gripping the country.

***

A report by American For Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies reveals that as the Covid pandemic engulfed the nation, the super-rich engage in an historically unprecedented round of profiteering.  The report found that during the 17 weeks of March 18-July 16, 2020, the collective wealth in the nation’s 600-plus billionaires topped $700 billion.

The total wealth of American billionaires grew by nearly a quarter, from just under $3 trillion to $3.66 trillion since the pandemic lockdown began. That works out to an average weekly gain of $42 billion. Over the same period, weekly jobless claims have spiked to nearly 7 million and never fell below a million.  During the same period, 170,000 people died of the Covid-19 virus and upward of 50 million workers lost their jobs.

When Biden pulls his proverbial thumb from the homelessness dike later this year, the likely resulting flood will likely only increase poverty and inequality.  So, the worse is yet to come.

Is Secularism a threat to Traditions of India?

Ram Puniyani

India got independence from British colonial rule on 15th August 1947 after a long struggle which was inclusive and had plural dimensions. Foundation of Indian Constitution is Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and Justice. The values of secularism are deeply ingrained all through and particularly in Articles 14, 19, 22, and 25. It gives us freedom of religion, to practice, preach and propagate the same.

Not all Indians were for such plural values which respect diversity. The communal streams immediately attacked the constitution saying it does not reflect the glorious contribution of Indian past, the values given in holy tomes like Manu Smriti. Communal stream was critical of Constitution and did not accept the tricolor as our national flag. Nearly seven decades down the line those opposing Indian Constitution and its values are rearing their heads from last few decades. There are top leaders like the Prime minster Narendra Modi who on one side claim to be Hindu nationalists and on the other level for electoral purpose claim that “We are secular not because the word was added in our Constitution. Secularism is in our blood. We believe in Sarva Pantha Sambhava.”

There is yet another types of leaders like Yogi Adityanath, the Chief Minister of UP who detest this ideology out and out. Recently he stated that secularism was the “biggest threat” to the traditions of India getting recognition on the global stage.” At an earlier occasion he had stated that “The word “secular” is “the biggest lie”, and suggested that the people who propagated it should apologize to the nation, a reference to the Congress party.”

Adityanath who has taken the oath on Indian Constitution has no qualms in denigrating one of its core values. He himself is the Mahant (Chief Priest) of Gorakhnath Math. He is saffron clad like few others in his party.

Let us see how secularism is a threat to traditions of India. India is inherently plural with rich diversity in religious traditions, languages, ethnicities, food habits, dressing pattern, ways of worship etc. In a way the Hindu religion, in whose pretext he is taking secularism to the task itself is so diverse; from the Brahmanical traditions of hierarchy to the Bhakti tradition talking of equality; there is a wide range. Has this diversity hampered the path to recognition of India on the global stage?

The rich contributions of India are recognized all over the World. The contributions of philosophers like Buddha are appreciated in large parts of the World, more particularly South East Asia. During freedom movement Mahatma Gandhi rose like a colossus and based on Indian tradition he propagated non Violence and Satyagriha (invocation to truth). These were the contribution which inspired many a great leaders in the World including Martin Luther King (Jr) and Nelson Mandela who followed his path to take their goals towards fruition. Indian philosophy influenced the global thinking in multiple ways.

Even global culture is diverse and learns from each other, the astronomical and mathematical contributions from India made their place in the global knowledge systems. Further the First Prime minster of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, gave the unique concept of ‘non alignment’, which was picked up by large sections of the World and many nations joined this unique movement at the peak of its success.

Contrary to what Adityanath is stating; it is precisely due to the secular path which we followed that we could achieve miraculous progress in first 5-6 decades of our republic in the areas of industrialization, education, irrigation, atomic and space research among others. As such we seem to have stagnated during last cople of decades as the path of secularism has been denigrated and mocked at. Lately the communal party is gloating that in last elections no body dared to utter this word!

There is also criticism that the introduction of this word in 1976 during emergency was uncalled for and so should be done away with. As such the whole constitution is seeped with the values of secularism. While at one level secularism says that state has no religion, Indian model of secularism respects all religions without being guided by it. Secularism is unique in another way that it respects those communities which are in minority and provides for affirmative, protective clauses for them. These are currently is being labeled as ‘appeasement of minorities’ and is being made a rallying point for electoral mobilization of majority community.

While Adityanath is lamenting against secular plural diverse values and propagates for Hindu Nation, the ideology of the ruling party, he is not alone in that. At the moment multiple articulations are being put forward. One Anant Kumar Hegde the Union minster bluntly stated that BJP is in power as it wants to change the constitution. One earlier Sarsanghchalak K. Sudarshan also put is forward by saying that Indian Constitution is based on Western values and so not suitable for our country. We should bring a Constitution based on Indian Holy books!

Religious nationalists all over the world abhor the secular-plural values they limit their power to impose their own values on society, to create a value system of hierarchy, the overt expression of which comes in the books like Manusmriti. The pre modern structural hierarchies of class, caste and gender are their ideal, be it the Talibans, Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt based communal organization) or those indulging in politics in the name of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

The plight of Pakistan, where communal forces had been dominant, is there for all of us to see. Neither it could remain united as Islamic nation nor could it make headways in areas of science, education, health and industrialization.

The communal mindset needs to be overcome to focus on the progress of society in the areas of education, health, employment and nutrition rather than celebrating religious festivals at the expense of the state or taking up issues related to temple-mosque and put to margins the issues of marginalized sections of society.