Copa América football tournament to be held in Brazil amid COVID-19 surge

Eduardo Parati

On June 13, the Copa América football tournament is to begin in Brazil under conditions of an already surging third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. With roughly 2,500 people dying daily, this may prove the deadliest stage yet.

Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro [Credit: Pedro Lopez]

For the government of Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro, hosting the championship is a means of reaffirming to both national and global ruling elites that no number of deaths will deter his pro-corporate “herd immunity” policy based on the complete reopening of all economic activity.

With Brazil’s official death toll set to top 500,000 in the course of the games, Bolsonaro told the media, “From the beginning I have said about the pandemic: I regret the deaths, but we have to live.”

The two countries that had originally been selected to host the football tournament between 10 South American teams bowed out in May: Colombia in the face of mass protests; and Argentina in response to an uncontrolled upsurge in COVID-19 infections. Bolsonaro volunteered to fill the breach, with the approval of all participating countries.

The June 1 announcement that Brazil would host the games came just days after protests against the Bolsonaro government’s handling of the pandemic brought tens of thousands of students and youth into the streets of major capitals throughout the country, and amid a Senate commission of inquiry into the federal and state governments’ response to COVID-19. The decision initially provoked worried reactions by prominent sections of the establishment that, coming amid persistently high levels of infections and reports of ICUs overflowing with patients, it could spark a new upsurge of opposition to the government.

Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) São Paulo state Governor João Doria first responded positively to Bolsonaro’s announcement, only to reverse himself a few hours later. The event had initially included matches in the Amazonas capital of Manaus, which has twice become a world epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. The city was removed from the tournament’s calendar a day after Bolsonaro’s press conference.

Disquiet within sections of the ruling class found expression in the extraordinary political crisis that swiftly gripped the corrupt Brazilian Confederation of Football (CBF). Last week, after reports that the Brazilian national football team was planning to make a statement opposing the Copa América over the pandemic, and even considering a boycott of the tournament, the CBF’s ethics council took up an internal sexual abuse accusation against the confederation’s president, Rogério Caboclo, forcing him to take a 30-day suspension. The move was taken less than 48 hours after the accusation was made, with major corporations and banks, including the biggest Brazilian bank, Itaú, and the major sports equipment manufacturer, Nike, making public statements demanding action.

While these sections of the ruling class sought to frame the entire affair around the sexual abuse charges, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the president’s eldest son, called attention to the wider political issues surrounding Caboclo’s swift removal. Responding to the reports of a possible boycott by the national team, he posted a video accusing its coach, known as Tite, of manipulating the players, implying that he was deliberately creating a crisis to benefit the Workers Party (PT). Bolsonaro’s far-right political base quickly responded with an online campaign around the hashtag #CommunistTiteOut.

The maneuver to remove Caboclo from the picture signaled the CBF’s distancing itself from the Bolsonaro government, of which Caboclo is a close ally, with the hope of convincing the players to accept the games in Brazil, as part of the efforts by all the governments in the region to bring their own national teams there.

The Brazilian daily Folha de São Paulo spelled out the motivation behind the swift action on the sexual abuse charge: “Since last week, athletes have been trying to define what to say about the general discontent towards holding the Copa América in the country and the relationship with CBF president, Rogério Caboclo. His exclusion on Sunday made everything easier.”

The ongoing conflicts over the tournament were exposed by a number of major transnational companies removing their brands from promotional spaces in the matches, with the beverage giant AB InBev now following an initial move by Mastercard.

However, for the ruling class as a whole, the financial interests at stake in the tournament go far beyond recovering the US$30 million in investments already made or dealing with the millions in potential losses from the boycott by certain brands.

The drive by the political establishment to allow the event to go forward is meant to signal that Brazil, and South America as a whole, is a safe place for foreign investments, to be secured through the uninterrupted exploitation of the working class in the face of mass death. In a televised speech a day after the announcement of the coming of Copa América to Brazil, Bolsonaro celebrated: “Yesterday, the stock exchange reached a historical record, the Brazilian currency is strengthened, and we are advancing in the difficult process of privatizations.”

On Thursday, just days before the first matches, Bolsonaro said that his health minister would issue a ruling allowing people who are vaccinated and those who were already infected not to wear masks. He said that his minister would make such an authorization “to take off this symbol, that obviously has use for those who are infected.”

This bid to remove any “symbol” of seeking to mitigate the spread of infections is being carried out in defiance of warnings that the Copa América has massive implications for the pandemic in Brazil, with leading medical scientist Miguel Nicolelis saying that the games could be the “last straw” for a looming third coronavirus wave.

As of Tuesday, ten states and the federal district registered more than 90 percent occupation of ICU beds, while the number of cases has plateaued at the stratospheric levels reached in April. The death toll is climbing back to the level reached that month, when more than 3,000 daily deaths were registered for weeks, reaching a peak of 4,249 in a single day. On June 2, there were 95,601 new cases, a level that was only reached a few weeks before April’s unprecedented death toll. Meanwhile, the daily death toll has topped 2,500 for the last four consecutive days.

In interviews with BBC Brasil, Brazilian health experts expressed outrage over the decision to hold the tournament in the country. Professor Antônio Augusto Moura da Silva, a professor in the Department of Public Health at the Federal University of Maranhão, warned about the danger of allowing an event involving high local and international flows of people during the pandemic: “We are confronting a second wave that hasn’t ceased yet. The transmission rate is also very high, and we are in an out-of-control situation. Moreover, the immunization rate is very low, with only 10.4 percent of the population vaccinated with the second shot against COVID-19.”

Professor Moura da Silva added: “Before, the population was shocked by 500 deaths a day. Then, by 4,000. Today, it is not shocked by 2,000 people dying, and events like this are more easily accepted. But it is a decision that is not based upon health. If it had been, it would be not to accept, as Argentina and Colombia did. This was a political and economic decision.” He added, “But for our politicians, the deaths of people don’t matter.”

Epidemiologist and professor in the Department of Public Health at the Federal University of Santa Catarina Lucio Botelho agreed, stating: “This is insanity. And it is irresponsible on all levels. Perhaps my analysis has to be political. Once again it is something that will go down in the history of bread and circuses. It makes no sense that two countries refused the event and Brazil calls for it to come here. The vaccine is not going forward, and we are bringing many risks to the country.”

Bolsonaro’s hosting of the Copa América is only the most grotesque expression of a universal process that subordinates the protection of human life to private profit and the further enrichment of financial oligarchies across the planet.

Australian government steps up key role in US aggression against China

Mike Head

On the eve of this week’s G7 and NATO summits in Europe, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Defence Minister Peter Dutton sharply escalated Australia’s role as an attack dog for Washington, in its increasingly aggressive economic and military offensive against China.

Scott Morrison [Source: Facebook/Scott Morrison]

On his way to join the European gatherings, Morrison delivered a speech in Perth, in which he aligned himself lockstep behind US President Joe Biden’s demand at the summits for an alliance of the supposed “free world”—the major imperialist powers—against Beijing.

As if outlining the program for another world war, Morrison declared “great power strategic competition” to be “the defining issue” for “global and regional stability, upon which our security, our prosperity and our way of life depends.” The Indo-Pacific region was “the epicentre” of this “renewed” historic conflict.

Provocatively, Morrison again accused China of “heightened economic coercion,” even though it is Australia, in partnership with the US, that has systematically imposed punitive measures against China, including virtually blanket investment bans and a bar on the telecommunications equipment provider, Huawei.

This charge was accompanied by a long list of allegations, which included “rapid military modernisation,” “undermining of international law,” “enhanced disinformation, foreign interference and cyber threats.”

Last year, Morrison stridently championed the Trump administration’s unfounded accusations that China was responsible for the global COVID-19 disaster, despite scientific evidence that the virus did not come from a Wuhan lab. Now Morrison has said he “strongly supports” Biden’s demand for a further inquiry into these claims, with “enhanced surveillance” powers.

Morrison’s line up behind Biden on the Wuhan lab conspiracy allegations epitomised the Australian prime minister’s switch from personally and politically identifying himself with Trump, to backing Biden’s rapid intensification of the confrontation with China.

Back in October 2019, Morrison railed against “negative globalism,” echoing Trump’s “America First” demagogy. He was feted with a state dinner at the White House, and appeared alongside Trump at a campaign rally in Ohio. Now, he is backing Biden’s calls for stronger action against China via Western-dominated institutions such as the World Trade Organisation.

In other words, Morrison did everything he could to support Biden’s shift from Trump’s unilateralism, to demanding that all the major rivals to the US, notably the European and Japanese powers, line up against China to ensure that the US “wins the 21st century”—that is, reasserts the global hegemony it secured via World War II.

The common thread is the Australian ruling elite’s reliance on US imperialism since that war, both in terms of military backing and foreign investment, and its willingness to act as a frontrunner for Washington’s demands.

Echoing Biden, Morrison called for an alliance to uphold “a liberal, rules-based order, that has benefitted us for so long.” This “order” consists of the international economic and financial arrangements, based on the US dollar, that were put in place by the US and its allies after that catastrophic war.

For all the talk of “freedom” and “democracy,” the US is accelerating preparations for war against China. Dutton, giving his first public speech since taking over as defence minister in March, provided a further indication of this.

Dutton declared that he anticipated more US troops joining the current annual six-month basing of 2,500 US marines, near the strategic northern city of Darwin, and the hosting of more US warships at the key Australian Indian Ocean naval base near Perth.

The US is exploring options for dispersing its forces in the Indo-Pacific because several major bases, such as those in Japan and Guam, are in range of Chinese weapons. US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin this week ordered Pentagon chiefs to “revitalise” relations with America’s network of allies, after a classified report into the military challenge China poses.

“There is clearly an opportunity for Australia to do more, given our geographic location in terms of troop movements,” Dutton said. He gave “credit” to the previous Labor Party government of Julia Gillard, for agreeing with the Obama administration in 2011 to the stationing of US marines.

Dutton refused to specify the timing, composition or numbers of US personnel potentially involved, but pointed to his government’s plan to spend almost $8 billion on upgrading Northern Territory military bases and training areas to enhance US access.

Dutton also accused Beijing of already conducting “grey-zone tactics,” which he said were designed to “intimidate or injure a country” without resorting to armed conflict.

During the week, Dutton and Foreign Minister Marise Payne conducted virtual meetings with their German and Japanese counterparts, issuing strident communiqués accusing China of aggression and pledging to intensify their joint actions against Beijing.

Another indication of the pace and provocative nature of the US-led war preparations came from Western Australian Labor state Premier Mark McGowan. After listening to Morrison’s speech in Perth, and holding a private meeting with him, McGowan accused the federal Liberal-National Coalition government of “madness.”

“All this language I see coming out of the Commonwealth government, about us going to war with China, I have never heard something so insane in my life,” McGowan said. He described “the idea that somehow we should be promoting armed conflict with a superpower,” as “absolute madness” and “absolutely off the planet.”

McGowan voiced the alarm of sections of the Australian ruling class that depend heavily on exports to China, particularly the Western Australian-based iron ore and liquefied natural gas producers.

The value of goods exported to China was 20 times the value of the goods imported from China, McGowan said. “I’m the premier of the state that actually carries the nation’s economy,” he said, “particularly when iron ore is over $200 a tonne.” Losing that relationship with China by being “the tip of the spear in taking up trade issues” would be “absolutely catastrophic” for Australia.

As well as the consequences for multi-billion dollar profits, McGowan’s nervousness reflects fear that the government’s blatant statements and actions against China will trigger the underlying popular opposition, including among workers and youth, to such a disastrous conflict, that would almost certainly be fought with nuclear weapons.

This anti-war sentiment and hostility to US militarism, which developed during the Vietnam War, was deepened by the criminal invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, based on the lies and fabrications of the “war on terrorism” and “weapons of mass destruction.”

But the Labor Party and its affiliated trade unions, whom McGowan represents, are no less committed than the Liberal-National Coalition to the US military alliance and Washington’s offensive against China. At this year’s Labor Party national conference, the party and union officials reaffirmed that commitment, and passed six resolutions denouncing China.

Moreover, the “madness” of which McGowan complains, is the insanity of the capitalist profit system itself. Its division of the world into nation-states, based on rival ruling elites, each fighting for plunder and supremacy, has already plunged the globe into two world wars in the last century.

The only force that can prevent an even-greater calamity, with human civilisation itself threatened by a nuclear holocaust, is the international working class, whose interests lie in unifying its struggles on every continent against the “insane” capitalist class in order to overthrow the private profit, nation-state system.

McGowan and the Labor and union apparatuses are utterly opposed to this essential socialist perspective. Instead, as McGowan’s reference to the damage to the “nation’s economy” typifies, they are totally wedded to the defence of the interests of their “own” Australian ruling class.

It’s Not Only Guns, It’s Also The Culture

Cesar Chelala

Unrelenting mass shootings in the United States show that present gun laws are ineffective to stem the increasing tide of gun deaths in the country. Although controlling gun sales is important, it is not sufficient to control gun violence in the country.

Violence is not only the result of gun ownership. Violence is multifaceted and requires the collaboration of individuals and institutions to address it. Violence is a political and legal problem (lawmakers need to pass appropriate laws); a public health problem (firearms injuries are a serious public health problem.); an educational problem (educating youth on its dangers is critical); and a social concern (it disrupts the fabric of society.)

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has been extraordinarily successful in influencing lawmakers. Although the majority of Americans say that gun laws should be more restrictive, Congress continues refusing to pass effective gun control laws.

This reluctance by mostly Republican lawmakers makes one wonder if they have children and grandchildren. How else can it be explained that they are deaf to a phenomenon that costs thousands of deaths and injured people? Why are they unable to do their part to stop a phenomenon that is a curse on our society?

The statistics are eye-opening. The U.S. has the most guns per capita and the weakest gun control laws of any developed country. It is estimated that at least a third of American adults own a gun, and an additional 11 percent live with someone who does. The Pew Research Center reports that for 82 percent of African American adults, gun violence is a very big problem –the largest share of any racial or ethnic group.

Self-defense has been often cited to justify the people’s right to bear arms. Research, however, has shown that a gun kept in a home is much more likely to kill a member of the household or a friend than an intruder. In the U.S., the number of teenagers who die from gunshot wounds is greater than those who die from all other causes combined.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were 39,707 firearm-related deaths in 2019 in the U.S., and firearm-related injuries were among the five leading causes of death for people ages 1-64 in the country. In addition, the economic impact of gun violence is substantial. It costs the government $280 billion annually on medical care and lost productivity.

Although many Americans claim that guns are necessary for security, experiences in countries such as Japan prove the fallacy of this argument. In Japan, people who purchase guns have strict background checks. They include a mental health assessment performed at a hospital, checking for evidence of drug use, and the opinion about the applicant by a relative or a colleague. As result, there are less than 100 fatalities for a population of 128 million annually.

Americans are exposed to violence since they are children. It is estimated that when a child becomes an adult, he will have seen 16,000 assassinations and 200,000 acts of violence in television. Can we be surprised when children try to imitate what they see on television and in the movies? For some of them, violence has become the normal way of solving conflicts.

Gun violence can be prevented by applying public health strategies such as continued surveillance of gun-related death and injuries; identification of risk factors; development and evaluation of interventions to reduce those factors; and institutionalization of successful prevention strategies. In addition, it requires de concerted efforts of all community members including law enforcement and public officials, teachers and school administrators, psychology experts and religious leaders.

As gun sales soar in the country, until violence is addressed as a multifaceted problem requiring multifaceted solutions, it will continue to threaten not only people’s lives but our future as a civilized society.

Covid Variant Chaos in the UK

Kenneth Surin

The UK has a “roadmap” for lifting its Covid lockdowns and restrictions.

These were eased in parts of Scotland on Saturday 5 June; in Wales on Monday 7 June; in England, the final stage in the roadmap for lifting its lockdown is due no earlier than 21 June (though the spread of the Delta/Indian variant in parts of England is causing the government to consider revising its plans); and in Northern Ireland, the next review is due on Thursday 10 June.

There has been a great deal of confusion about what exactly each phase of the lockdown involves. For instance, at present groups of up to 30 can meet outdoors in England, but members of my family in the UK say this rule has been impossible to implement on a busy evening in a pub’s beer garden—with people moving around it is impossible to say which group is which.

Just as confusing is the UK government’s “traffic light list” for travel abroad, which classifies countries as green, amber or red — with different rules for quarantine and Covid tests.

Portugal was placed on the “green list” initially, but was removed from it after 2 weeks. The relegation of Portugal from a “green”, restriction-free travel destination to an “amber” one, means the UK government now advises against visiting the country, and requires returning travelers from Portugal to self-isolate for 10 days upon return.

Understandably, Brits who made plans in advance for vacations in Portugal are furious— hardly of these vacationers had factored-in the need for a 10-day quarantine upon returning home, and many had not banked-up enough paid leave to accommodate the quarantine.

Towns in Portugal catering to British tourists are likewise angry at this travel clampdown, and the Portuguese government has demanded that the UK justify its seemingly arbitrary decision to downgrade Portugal on the travel list.

The spread of the more infectious Delta/Indian variant in the UK was due to another inconsistency on the part of the government. In early April, Bangladesh and Pakistan were added to the “red list” despite having infection rates that were far lower than in India. India was only added to the list 3 weeks later.

Boris “BoJo” Johnson is angling for a post-Brexit trade deal with India, and the delay in adding India to the travel “red list” is attributed by some to BoJo’s desire to ingratiate himself with India’s leader Narendra Modi.

The number of people carrying the Delta/Indian variant in the UK grew during those 3 weeks, and the UK now has the biggest outbreak of the Delta variant outside of India.

Other hurdles confront the lifting of the UK’s Covid restrictions.

As is the case with the US, the UK’s hospitality sector is facing severe staff shortages just as it is trying to recoup losses incurred over the past year. Customers with cash saved during lockdowns are returning, but many staff members have not.

The hospitality industry has long relied on EU migrants, and the coincidence of Covid and Brexit has contributed to critical staff shortages.

An estimated 1.3 million non-UK workers have left Britain since late 2019, many opting to ride-out the pandemic in their country of origin. With travel restrictions still in situ, and harsher post-Brexit migration policies introduced by BoJo’s xenophobic government, the prospects of EU residents coming to the UK for employment are much reduced.

At the same time, UK nationals working in bars and restaurants are not returning to work in significant enough numbers— these places have been the sites of previous Covid surges, and so while laid-off hospitality workers continue to receive furlough payments, the risks involved in going back to work in places paying low wages with stressful conditions, and faced with a history of Covid outbreaks, are likely to be outweighed by other considerations.

BoJo’s government is itching to end this furlough, but is not likely to do so while overall UK unemployment is relatively high.

Studies published by the Department for Education, show substantial regional disparities in the impact of the disruption to UK schooling resulting from the pandemic, with students in some parts of the less wealthy parts of the country losing twice as much learning over the same time-frames as those in the more affluent London.

The government’s plans for more investment in catch-up efforts intended to overcome these disparities are inadequate, and the UK’s education recovery chief, Sir Kevan Collins, resigned in disgust at the government’s £1.4bn/$1.63bn catch-up fund for children who lost learning during lockdowns.

Collins, appointed to the job just 4 months ago, said the sum “does not come close to meeting the scale of the challenge”. Collins had called for £15bn/$17.5bn of funding and 100 extra hours of teaching per student.

The government’s plans equate to about £50 per student per year, while other countries have provided more extensive and longer-term support. The total level of funding for education recovery in England (taking into account funding announced previously) amounts to about £300/$350 per student, which is underwhelming compared to the £1,600/$1,862 per student in the US and £2,500/$2,900 in the Netherlands.

The rickety criminal justice system was further undermined by the closure of courtrooms during the pandemic, and the scale of the problem is reflected in the government’s recent decision to allow the Lord Chief Justice to request unlimited funding to open-up more courtrooms in England and Wales.

The lockdowns exacerbated the growing crisis of mental health– an estimated 10 million people need mental health support as a direct consequence of the pandemic. There has been a steep rise in anxiety, depression, social isolation, loneliness, substance abuse, and trauma. Given that it takes years to train healthcare professionals, increased funding to expand their number will have little to show in coming years.

The NHS entered the pandemic already overextended by Tory austerity, resulting in the longest funding squeeze in its history, but the burden on mental health services is predicted to last for years. There have also been calls from leading medical organizations for frontline NHS staff to receive support similar to that given to war veterans.

Waiting lists for hospital treatment are now at the highest number on record–  4,950,297people in England are on the waiting-list for hospital treatment. That figure rose by over 250,000 in just one month– between February and March– as patients who were reluctant to go to NHS facilities during the pandemic, or who could not access it because of the extended suspension of standard care, took advantage of the pandemic’s lull to see their doctors and finally get referred to hospital.

Experts say the waiting list could reach 10 million by 2024. Hospital administrators say staff shortages, workers exhausted after Covid and sickness absences, some caused by pandemic-related mental health problems such as PTSD, will hamper the response to the backlog.

Pro-Tory newspapers such as the Daily Mail and Express titles have begun highlighting the long delays cancer patients face, as well as people with cardiac problems and incapacitating conditions such as arthritis, including those who need a new hip or knee.

Policy dictates that patients should be treated within 18 weeks, but NHS statistics show that the number of those forced to wait at least a year has careered from 3,097 in March 2020 to 436,127 in the same month in 2021.

Sceptics believe this underfunding of the NHS by the Tories is deliberate. That is, run-up waiting lists so that frustrated patients (who can afford it) will “go private” in order reduce their waiting times, and then stay in the private sector thereafter.

As if to confirm already warranted suspicions about Tory motives, the government announced a plan, given the Orwellian name “Care.data”, to sell everyone’s NHS health data to commercial firms like Google, who would then be able to use it without their explicit consent.

The government said the data would be anonymized, which evoked scorn from IT professionals in the media, since according to them it is really easy to deanonymize such data and for other private entities down the data-chain to acquire and sell-on the attained deanonymized data.

One expert said there are mountains of this type of data on both the deep and darknet.

Not that the Tories show any sign of giving a rat’s posterior about this eventuality.

Four members of a Muslim family killed in London, Ontario terrorist atrocity

Roger Jordan

Four members of a Muslim family in London, Ontario were brutally slain Sunday night in a hit-and-run attack that police have described as “premeditated” and motivated by “hate” towards Islam and Muslims.

Police have revealed next to nothing about what they know about the far-right political views and connections of the 20-year-old assailant, Nathaniel Veltman. But they have characterized his murderous attack as a “hate crime” and have said they are considering adding “terrorism charges” to the four counts of murder and one of attempted murder laid against him on Monday.

The Afzaal family (Credit: @MurtazaViews/Twitter)

The victims, whom Veltman struck at high speed with his black pickup truck at 8:40 p.m. Sunday while they were out for a stroll, are 46-year-old Salman Afzaal, his unnamed 74-year-old mother, his 44-year-old wife, Madiha Salman, and their 15-year-old daughter, Yumna Afzaal. Fayez Afzaal, aged nine, survived the attack and remains in hospital with serious injuries.

Salman reportedly came from Pakistan and was a well-known member of the Muslim community in London, which is one of Canada’s oldest. Danveer Chaudry, a family friend, said Salman was involved in community work at the local mosque. “He was a very humble guy, always there for the community. I feel sorry that we were not in touch in the last year because of COVID. When I heard this tragedy, my heart is in so much pain and sorrow,” he told CBC.

The authorities have said the assailant was wearing a body armour-style vest when he was detained by police 10 minutes after the attack. But as of yesterday afternoon, almost 48 hours after his arrest, they have said nothing about his background, including whether he was employed, unemployed or a student, had ties to a far-right group, or made any statement on his arrest.

A Reuters report released Monday night noted that relatives of the deceased had released a statement saying that Veltman’s attack was supported by a group with which he was associated. However, neither their statement nor any other publicly available report has identified the group.

Although details about Veltman’s past and political views are being kept strictly under wraps, the fact that the police are even considering terrorism charges indicates that substantial evidence of his association with the far right must be in their possession.

Adopted on the pretext of the 9/11 attacks, Canada’s draconian anti-terrorism laws have been invoked multiple times against Islamist extremists, including those entrapped by state agents. But Crown prosecutors and the police-security agencies have generally declined to bring terrorism charges against fascist and other far-right assailants.

For example, Alexandre Bissonnette, who killed six Muslims in an armed assault on the Quebec City mosque in January 2017, was convicted on six charges of first-degree murder. However, he faced no terrorism charges, even though his far-right convictions, including support for Trump and the French neo-fascist Marine Le Pen and hatred of Muslims, were well established.

Canadian political leaders acknowledged the political character of Veltman’s bloody crime. “This killing was no accident,” declared Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a Tuesday House of Commons speech. “This was a terrorist attack.” He placed Veltman’s murderous rampage in the context of the Quebec City mosque shooting, the murder of a man at an Ontario mosque last September, and the harassment of black Muslim women in Edmonton, Alberta. He vowed to “dismantle far-right groups” and pointed to the government’s placing of the Proud Boys on Canada’s terrorism watch list as proof of its readiness to act.

New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh declared that the attack had its source in “pervasive racism” in Canada. “The reality is this is our Canada,” Singh said. “How many more families will be killed before we do something? Another family can’t be mauled down in the streets and nothing happens. Muslims are not safe in this country.”

Behind these crocodile tears, the representatives of the political establishment are unwilling and incapable of acknowledging that the rise of Islamophobia and far-right forces is a direct product of the foreign and domestic policies pursued and supported by all parties in parliament. Contrary to Singh’s fatuous attempt to blame the entire population for anti-Muslim hysteria and discrimination with references to “our Canada,” the reality is that these reactionary sentiments have been systematically stoked and deployed to deadly effect by the Canadian ruling class.

Taking the neocolonial invasion and occupation of Afghanistan as a starting point, Canadian imperialism has been engaged in almost perpetual war for the past 20 years. Canada’s involvement in the US-led onslaughts against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria have not only brutalized Canadian society, conveying the impression that all problems can be overcome by resorting to military force and high-powered firearms, but facilitated the eruption of virulent Islamophobia at home. This has proceeded in tandem with a savage assault on social spending and the gutting of democratic rights, including workers’ right to strike, which has ratcheted up social tensions to the breaking point, accelerated the growth of social inequality and created urban landscapes dominated by mass poverty and precarious employment.

To enforce this class war agenda against widespread social opposition, sections of the ruling elite have cultivated direct ties with far-right groups. This includes the use of fascistic thugs by company management at the Federated Cooperatives Ltd. oil refinery in Saskatchewan to intimidate locked out workers.

The Canadian ruling class’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic epitomizes the brutality of contemporary capitalist society. It has systemically prioritized profits over lives. While more than 25,000 Canadians have lost their lives to COVID-19, the country’s 48 billionaires have gained $78 billion in wealth during the 16-month-long pandemic.

Far-right forces, like Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party and the right-wing populist Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ), which currently forms Quebec’s provincial government, have undoubtedly spearheaded the demonization of the Muslim population. In 2015, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, in which Bernier served, proposed setting up a “barbaric cultural practices” snitch line targeting Muslims. In 2019, the CAQ, to wide applause from Quebec’s ruling elite, adopted legislation, Bill 21, that attacks religious minorities, and especially Muslim women, by prohibiting the wearing of “religious signs” by public sector workers, including teachers, in “positions of authority;” and by denying public services, including health care and education, to observant women who wear the burka or niqab.

If these chauvinist and far-right forces have been able to act with such aggressiveness, it is because the discriminatory measures they propose have been given credibility and even endorsed by forces on the so-called “left.” For more than a decade Québec Solidaire, a pseudo-left party that supports Quebec independence, described the reactionary debate over “excessive accommodation” to immigrants and minorities out of which Bill 21 emerged as “necessary.” And while Singh took potshots Tuesday at “politicians” who “have used Islamophobia for political gain,” the reality is that his own NDP is the linchpin propping up the Trudeau minority government. A government that has continued and expanded Canada’s participation in US aggression and war in the Middle East and intensified its collaboration, under both Trump and Biden, with the fascistic Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the United States to stop refugees fleeing poverty and American imperialist violence from seeking asylum in Canada.

Trudeau and Singh’s bluster about fighting the far right is a fraud. The Trudeau government has played a central role in ignoring and downplaying the extensive evidence of far-right activities in the Canadian Armed Forces. When a far-right military reservist sought to assassinate Trudeau last July, the incident was trivialized and the assailant faced only minor weapons charges.

These processes are not unique to Canada. Far-right terrorists, nourished by the imperialist-led wars of aggression targeting predominantly Muslim countries and the discrimination and abuse against immigrants and refugees perpetrated by the major powers, have targeted Muslims around the world. The deadliest of these far-right rampages include the brutal shooting spree by fascist terrorist Brenton Tarrant in Christchurch, New Zealand, which claimed the lives of 51 people in two mosques in March 2019, and the July 2011 massacre by Anders Behring Breivik of 77 people, most of whom were members of the Labour Party’s youth movement.

US Supreme Court blocks green cards for refugees with temporary status

Kevin Martinez

On Monday, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled in Sanchez v. Mayorkas that immigrants who are living in the US for humanitarian reasons cannot apply to become permanent residents. Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the federal law prohibits those who entered the United States illegally and now have Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from seeking green cards to stay permanently.

There are currently 400,000 people in the US who have been granted TPS because of war or disaster in their home countries. The program involves more than 12 countries and allows TPS holders to work legally and apply for permanent citizenship.

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

The Supreme Court argued that although refugees were granted TPS they were never formally “admitted” into the country. Kagan wrote, “The TPS program gives foreign nationals nonimmigrant status, but it does not admit them. So the conferral of TPS does not make an unlawful entrant… eligible,” for a green card.

Kagan noted that only Congress can grant citizenship and noted that the House of Representatives has passed legislation that would allow TPS holders to apply for green cards. The bill, however, faces slim chances of passing the Senate.

President Joe Biden expressed his support for changing the law but noted, like the Trump Administration, that he did not support allowing immigrants who entered the country illegally to apply for permanent resident status.

In recent years, federal courts around the country issued conflicting rules regarding TPS holders and their right to apply for citizenship. The Trump Administration had threatened to cancel the program, sending fears among immigrants that they could be deported back to countries that they had not lived in for years, despite living and working in the US, and in some cases giving birth to children who have American citizenship.

Justice Kagan ruled that “Lawful status and admission, as the court below recognized, are distinct concepts in immigration law: Establishing one does not necessarily establish the other.” She continued, “And because a grant of TPS does not come with a ticket of admission, it does not eliminate the disqualifying effect of an unlawful entry.”

The ruling closes a window for plaintiffs Jose Santos Sanchez and his wife, both residents of New Jersey and TPS holders originally from El Salvador, to apply for a green card from his employer, a yacht company that sponsored him for a job-based green card over a decade ago.

The couple came to the US illegally in 1997 and 1998 and now have four children, with the youngest born in America and therefore a citizen.

After a series of earthquakes in El Salvador in 2001, they were granted TPS, which shielded them from deportation. In 2014, the couple wanted to “adjust” their status to become lawful permanent residents and get green cards.

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services denied their application, stating that they were ineligible because they entered the country illegally and were never formally admitted into the US.

Kagan argued that even though Sanchez was given TPS status, his unlawful entry into the US means that “He therefore cannot become a permanent resident of this country.”

Michael R. Huston, assistant to the US solicitor general, arguing for the Biden Administration and against the couple, noted that it had been “reasonably determined” by Congress that TPS was not “a special pathway to permanent residence for non-citizens who are already barred from that privilege because of pre-TPS conduct.” He added that TPS holders should know that the program is a temporary form of relief from deportation and “will not last forever.”

One of Santos Sanchez’s lawyers, Jaime Winthysen Aparisis, told Reuters he was “highly disappointed the Court decided against the rights of immigrants who otherwise played by the rules like Mr. and Mrs. Sanchez.” He added, “TPS recipients like them have been living and working lawfully here for twenty years.”

The case revealed that some circuit courts would grant immigrants green cards, while others would not, even in cases with identical circumstances.

The 6th, 8th, and 9th circuits of the US Court of Appeals ruled that granting a TPS status counted as a legal admission to the country, allowing immigrants to apply for a green card with a family member or employer sponsor and not have to leave the country. This allowed TPS holders with American spouses to avoid having to stay abroad and reenter the country to become permanent residents, something that is not only expensive for most, but also unsafe. The 3rd and 11th circuits ruled otherwise. Monday’s ruling put an end to the split in rulings.

China at the Edges

Alec Dubro

China is the world’s fourth largest country by landmass. It’s nearly three times bigger than India, with roughly the same population. It spans roughly four time zones (but uses only one). Its terrain encompasses desert, jungle, plains and river valley—and everything in between. It has 9,000 miles of coastline. In other words, it’s big.

But apparently not big enough.

China abuts 14 other countries—the most neighbors in the world—and has had border disputes of some kind with all of them. Two of these disputes, with Vietnam and India, have broken out into open, deadly fighting. In all, China is claiming territory or rights at sea from nine nations. In the South China Sea, armed standoffs and threats—most recently with the Philippines—are regular occurrences.

Many of the land parcels have little intrinsic value. The area in the Himalayas hotly contested with India, for instance, is basically uninhabited. There is some strategic value in that China wishes to build roads or pipelines, but given China’s massive wealth, these rights of way could be negotiated without threat. Instead, this is about sheer nationalism—China’s post-Communist secular faith. While flexing its muscle militarily and in space, China has also embarked on a determined campaign of classic irredentism: contesting lands that it claims rightfully belong to China—or once did.

Others countries in the region—most notably Japan with Russia, South Korea, and Taiwan—also have border issues. Indeed, such disputes are common throughout the world. But it’s the volume of Chinese claims, coupled with China’s massive military and financial clout, that makes these objectionable and sometimes frightening to its neighbors and to the international community. If any adjacent country had doubts about what China might do with acquired territory, ongoing events in Hong Kong made the future all too clear. Moreover, some areas, like Tibet and Xinjiang no longer have border disputes because China forcibly incorporated them into its greater polity.

These actions make a certain sense within Chinese nationalism for they are based on history. Over the millennia, China has taken many geographical and political forms, from warring fiefdoms to continental empires, all within shifting borders. Nevertheless, China has defined its rightful current borders to include any desired place that was once considered within the realm of China—no matter how fleetingly or how tenuously it was held. But even that claim is based on sand. As Evelyn Rawski wrote in her comprehensive book, Early Modern China and Northeast Asia, while the various governments spoke of a grand polity, “Chinese rhetoric belied the inability of the Chinese state to control the vast territories that it claimed.”

As a result, China is currently clawing at chunks of territory—some of which haven’t seen any form of Chinese hegemony in ages. This is currently playing itself out in several tense areas.

In India, for instance, the spring of 2020 marked an escalation of a long-standing face-off between troops of the two countries over several spots in the Himalayas, including Tibet. It reached its height that June with the beating deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and over 40 Chinese troops sustaining casualties. The following September, for the first time in 45 years, shots were exchanged. It’s a far cry from the 1960s when a full-blown war left hundreds dead and thousands injured. This time, both countries are nuclear powers and vying for influence in the region and the world. Moreover, with border conflicts still ongoing and a substantial Tibetan diaspora, India is the center of resistance to Chinese irredentism. Google “China border disputes” and a majority of the news stories and reports originate in India.

But the most visible territorial flashpoint right now is the South China Sea. In the area of the Whitsun Reef, the Philippines is demanding that China remove some 200 vessels from the area Manila claims as its own. China is stalling, claiming according to Japan’s Nikkei news service, “that the Chinese vessels were sheltering from ‘adverse weather conditions when there were none’ and the ‘nonexistence of maritime militia in the area.’”

But Manila-Beijing is just one dispute in the area; others, notably, are Vietnam, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan. As this article was being written, Malaysia scrambled a dozen aircraft to confront Chinese warplanes flying over shoals claimed by Malaysia near its territory of Sarawak on the island of Borneo. China’s aggressive militarizing of the largely uninhabited but strategically important Spratley and Paracel Islands has also drawn in the U.S. Navy ostensibly to protect the world’s shipping lanes but also as a counterweight to China’s expanding footprint.

Meanwhile, China’s clampdown on the Uighur Autonomous Region is part and parcel of its ongoing push into Central Asia. China, has claimed for instance nearly the whole of adjoining Kyrgyzstan, based on its one-time incorporation into the Qing Empire. In 1863, China was forced to cede Kyrgyzstan to the Russian Empire. It remained in the Soviet Union and achieved independence in the 1990s. Although China has for now relinquished territorial claims on adjacent Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, resentment over its lost territory is still present in Chinese nationalist circles.

China’s 2002 nationalist-inspired Northeast Asia Project raised the ire of Koreans who saw it as an attempt to block North Korean immigration into China based on China’s historical interpretation. Indeed, the Chinese behind the project cited the history of the ethnic Korean Koguryo peoples whose fifth-century territory crossed today’s boundary lines. More recently in the late 1800s, the Korean Joseon Dynasty claimed that the area of northeast China inhabited by ethnic Koreans was, in fact, Korean territory. Fortunately, this feud has so far played itself out in scholarly journals and conferences.

The fervor over these various territorial disputes—with India, Korea, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia—burns in the inflammatory tracts and pronouncements of nationalists that make their way into Chinese media—social and otherwise. That these irredentist messages are tolerated by the Chinese government indicates that Beijing to a degree approves of the message—even if it isn’t always prepared to act on it.

The most notable case lies in the Russian Far East, where jingoist Chinese claim territory north from Manchuria through Vladivostok and beyond. China did have periodic settlement in the area, but it was never extensive or deeply rooted. There they clashed with both Japan and Russia until Russia won it in the 1858 treaty of Aigun and solidified its hold after World War Two. Russia and China have indulged in armed clashes in the region as recently as 1969, and it’s hardly a secret that China covets the abundant resources of the region. But the fact that Russia is itself militarily aggressive—and nuclear armed—makes any Chinese takeover moves highly unlikely, at least for now.

But Russia has seen during its tenure in Eastern Siberia what can happen to territories on its periphery. Manchuria was once the home of a distinct peoples called the Manchu. These people spoke a language related to those of the indigenous tribes of Siberia and not related to Chinese languages. They were expansionist and conquered China in the seventeenth century, founding the Qing Dynasty. In the end, though, their home territory was saturated with Han Chinese coming from the North China Plain who eventually intermarried with the scarcer Manchu population until today there are just a handful of Manchu-speaking people left in the area. China, it seems, doesn’t so much defeat its enemies as absorb them.

With 4,000 years of history, China is able to pick and choose which history it wants to cite to justify its border belligerence. At times the Chinese hark back to the Yuan Empire s when its boundaries reached their greatest extent in the fourteenth century. Although basing territorial claims on ancient configurations is hazardous at best and fraudulent at worst, China makes its claims with a straight face.

But maybe attainment of these dubious goals isn’t the aim of the policy of irredentism. Instead, re-actualization of empire likely fulfills other, present, needs. This is the muscular attempt to wipe away the centuries when China under the Qing Dynasty was forced into humiliating treaties, invaded and eventually partially occupied by the West and Japan. The hurt is real and if not everyone in China is concerned with it, enough are to create a receptive constituency for extravagant territorial claims. That’s why, at heart this isn’t so much a foreign policy adventure as an attempt at righting history and, as it turns out, a largely successful attempt at internal cohesion.

In the end, China does not seem to want open warfare, certainly not with Japan, India, or above all the United States. It’s sufficient for those nations to occasionally back down and perhaps sign treaties that can be presented to the Chinese public as triumphs, even if the gain is slight and of little consequence. China seems to want the world to be scared of it, and maybe that’s all. The problem is these things have a way of spiraling out of hand and meaningless clashes have often turned into global calamities.

Chilean miners go out on indefinite strike

Mauricio Saavedra

Chilean mine workers are confronting a bitter fight in their two-week-old strike against Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton amidst a surge of COVID-19 infections and deaths.

Workers not only must deal with corporate giants who, buoyed by historic high copper prices, are scrambling to fully reactivate mining activity regardless of the human cost. They are also coming into conflict with the corporatist unions which during the pandemic again demonstrated their subservience and loyalty to management and the government by helping to keep the mining industry operational.

Copper has reached its highest price in a decade with the push to reopen the global economy. China is leading the demand for the metal as Washington is promising a US$2 trillion infrastructure plan. Supply shortages have also played a role as reduced output due to COVID-19 has shrunk international inventories.

S&P forecasts that total copper consumption will be more than double today’s total world production of 20 million tons. “Beyond 2020, we forecast that consumption will outstrip production over the period to 2024, resulting in a growing refined market deficit and increasing copper prices,” S&P commodity analyst Thomas Rutland said in a news release.

“We estimate that by-mid decade this growth in green demand alone will match, and then quickly surpass, the incremental demand China generated during the 2000s,” Goldman Sachs said in a report on copper released in April. “Ripple effects into non-green channels mean the 2020s are expected to be the strongest phase of volume growth in global copper demand in history.”

All the major players who privately own 71 percent of copper mines and 100 percent of lithium mines in Chile—BHP Billiton, SQM, Albemarle, Anglo-American, KGHM International, Glencore, Freeport-McMoRan, Teck, Antofagasta Minerals—are rubbing their hands at the dividends bonanza this will bring to shareholders and are gearing up to confront the working class.

The fight has already begun with BHP using strike breakers to continue production. This is permitted in Chile because pro-company labor laws allow for the replacement of contractor workers by the client company, effectively voiding the supposed “right to strike.” These laws were passed in Congress with the collusion of the parliamentary left.

The union has made a mealy-mouthed plea to challenge the provocation through Chile’s pro-employer labor court system. “The company is placing substitute workers in the mines located in northern Chile, to ensure continuous production,” BHP Specialists and Supervisors union secretary Robert Robles told Reuters. “Complaints were filed with the Labor Directorate for violation of the right to strike and anti-union practices.”

On May 27, 2021, contract workers who remotely run both the Escondida and the Spence mines’ Integral Operations Center (IOC) from 1,400 kms away in Santiago went on indefinite strike for the first time since the union was formed in 2019.

BHP’s Escondida Mine (source: BHP)

The remote workers are made up primarily of highly skilled people dismissed from BHP’s Escondida mine (which last year produced 1.19 million tons of copper, more than any other individual mine in the world) as well as the smaller BHP Spence mine. They were then immediately outsourced to a sister company “BHP CHILE” on individual contracts with lower wages and benefits when the Integral Operations Center was inaugurated two years ago.

As one IOC worker recently commented, “We remotely operate (from Santiago) the entire value chain from the extraction of the ore to its shipment. We are control room specialists who cover all the bases. In addition, we have people who work in technology, people who work in technological support, people who work in long-term and short-term planning, strategic planning, projects...”

The IOC strike was followed by a vote of 1,100 onsite workers at the Spence mine in the Antofagasta region to go on strike on May 31. A larger group of onsite workers at the Escondida mine located in the same region are scheduled to go out later in June.

A massive transformation is underway in international mining associated with the implementation of automation and remote operating systems. The process began with the relocation of business functions, operational planning and analytical functions away from sites. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated this process to include the development of remote field work with the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning technology.

A mining industry analyst from Accenture Chile explains that “pre-pandemic, field workers were 100 percent on-site. During the first quarantines this presence dropped to 60 percent and is now between 70 and 80 percent. As for office workers, pre-pandemic, on-site work represented 90 percent. During the first quarantines it dropped to 5-10 percent and is currently between 30 and 40 percent.”

With an annual production of some 5.7 million tons, Chile accounts for 28 percent of the global supply of copper. The industry as a whole is responsible for 10 percent of Chile’s GDP and 52 percent of its exports. Billions have been made in profits by the largest mining consortiums as the country has steadily lost market share. Both the state-owned company, Codelco, and many privately owned mines have been in operation for decades and require enormous capital outlays to deal with aging infrastructure, falling ore grades and higher operating costs as they dig deeper into the earth.

Map of mines in Chile (source: Consejo Minero Chile)

The drive to “modernize” labor relations and increase flexibilization, therefore, is to intensify cuts to production costs by removing all restraints to the exploitation of labor.

The latest government report indicates that the present workforce surpasses that prior to the pandemic. From 250,000 workers employed in mining pre-pandemic, 40,000 jobs were destroyed in the months following March 2020. Since June of last year, when the second wave hit the mining regions particularly hard, the trend was reversed and as of March 31 of this year 260,000 people are working in the mining industry.

What these figures don’t show is that the majority of that workforce is hired from subcontractors or on individual contracts, as are the IOC employees. The proportion of staff directly employed by the mining industry has been declining for well over four decades. In the early 2000s, only 39 percent of the workforce was directly employed, falling to only 27 percent by 2019. This trend has only accelerated since the pandemic.

Large mining corporations have couched the push for efficiencies and productivity increases through automating field work and machine operations as driven by safety concerns. This is belied by the fact that they, with the help of the right-wing government, the parliamentary lefts and the trade unions, conspired to keep the mining industry operational during the pandemic.

In the northern regions of Tarapacá, Antofagasta and Atacama, where the bulk of the mining sites are located in Chile (see map), total confirmed and suspected COVID-19 infections reached 126,300 cases, and there were 2,375 deaths by the end of last month. This carnage does not even begin to account for the thousands of incapacitations suffered by Chilean miners due to horrific accidents that in the last 20 years have claimed the lives of 581 workers.

A March 31 editorial in the Peruvian Mining Council’s Tiempo Minero gave an estimate of the number of miners who had died of COVID-19 in several Latin American countries, revealing the same disdain for workers’ lives everywhere: 120 in Ecuador; 299 in Brazil; 55 in Peru; 18 in Chile; 35 in Argentina.

Responsibility for this state of affairs rests squarely on the parliamentary left, the Communist Party, Frente Amplio and the corporatist trade unions, which for decades since the return to civilian rule have maintained tripartite arrangements, working simultaneously with business and with past center-left coalition governments, just as they have today embraced the incumbent right-wing presidency of Sebastian Piñera.

Not only did they support keeping the non-essential but highly profitable mining industry running, they passed laws facilitating the suspension of hundreds of thousands of contracts, forcing workers to eat into their unemployment insurance under the “Employment Protection Law.” They put into operation “Electronic Settlements” allowing massive layoffs without the right of workers to make any claims and agreed to postpone collective bargaining negotiations.

They signed a national unity pact with the Piñera government in the midst of massive anti-capitalist demonstrations at the end of 2019—from which emerged an agreement to hold a plebiscite and election to draft a new constitution—seeking to channel workers behind parliamentarism and dampen the class struggle. Other populist measures, such as a mining royalty bill that is unlikely to see the light of day, were pursued with the same agenda in mind.

The class struggle has reemerged among a historically significant section of Chilean workers. It is part of a developing strike wave and radicalization of the working class on a global scale whose objective significance is the fight to save lives and livelihoods from a capitalist-made crisis that the pandemic has exposed for all to see.

The working class can take forward this fight only by breaking with the nationalist and opportunist trade unions and fake left capitalist parties and developing new organs of struggle.