Continental workers in Bebra and Mühlhausen, Germany vote for strike

Marianne Arens

At Continental Automotive in Bebra (North Hesse) and Mühlhausen (Thuringia), almost 92 percent of the workforce at the automotive parts supplier voted for an indefinite strike on July 15 to defend jobs. Their willingness to fight is huge. “Ready to strike—we want to start and not wait for the executioner,” reads a poster in Mühlhausen.

However, instead of calling a strike, the IG Metall and IG BCE unions continued negotiations with management on Wednesday, July 21. “Against the background of recent, minor progress in negotiations,” wrote IGM district leader Jörg Köhlinger, “IG Metall is now giving the company one last chance at the negotiating table to avoid industrial action.” The union is “ready for a reasonable solution at the negotiating table,” IGM Secretary Dr. Matthias Ebenau also assured.

The works council representatives and union secretaries want to prevent a strike in defence of all jobs because they fear it could trigger a chain reaction. They agree with management and are pursuing the goal in Bebra and Mühlhausen of pushing through what they see as the “necessary” liquidation of almost 500 more jobs without it leading to a social uprising of the Conti workers.

The negotiations on a “social contract” are not to defend jobs but rather the way to push through the destruction of jobs against the declared resistance of the workers.

Significantly, Carola Rühl, chairperson of the works council of another Conti plant in Schwalbach/Taunus, wrote, “In Schwalbach, after tough wrangling, we finally succeeded in organising the inevitable job cuts in a socially acceptable way.” In Schwalbach, IG Metall agreed to the destruction of 220 jobs. Other examples of this “socially acceptable” (i.e., organised by the union and the works council) job destruction are at the Aachen tyre plant (1,800 jobs), the Karben site (1,088 jobs), as well as at Babenhausen, where production will be closed by 2025, costing 2,570 jobs.

24-hour protest strike at Continental Karben on April 15, 2021

Workers at all these sites are ready to fight. In mid-May, workers in Karben rejected a “social contract” worked out by the union and management. The union responded with intimidation and pushed through another vote on a slightly modified version of the contract, which also foresees the closure of the plant by 2025. A similar procedure is now on the agenda for Bebra and Mühlhausen.

It is obvious that the trade unions are not fighting a principled battle for jobs. The Continental Corporation decided more than a year ago to cut 30,000 jobs and close dozens of sites, and IG Metall is playing the key role in this. It is no coincidence that the deputy IG Metall chairperson, Christiane Benner, is also deputy chairperson of the Continental supervisory board, for which she receives several hundred thousand euros a year. There is no doubt that she has been involved in all the plans for a long time.

The massive cuts, initially justified by pointing to the coronavirus pandemic, are now openly aimed at making the world’s second largest automotive supplier fit for the intensified competition on the world market and to increase profits for shareholders and investors. An important component of this is the conversion to electric mobility, which directly affects the Bebra-Mühlhausen plant network. These plants belong to Vitesco Technologies, the name under which Continental intends to float its former Powertrain division for drive technology on the stock exchange in September. The largest Vitesco sites are in Nuremberg (2,300 employees) and Regensburg (3,000 employees).

When the spin-off of Vitesco was decided in May, it immediately led to an increase in Continental’s profit expectations by at least one percentage point, from 5-6 to 6-7 percent, which shows that shareholders have full confidence in the implementation of the planned cuts. To profit from the e-boom, Vitesco wants to focus on electric drives in the future. The managers will then no longer have any use for sites such as Mühlhausen, which had previously produced control technology for combustion engines.

It has been known since September 2020 that the plant in Mühlhausen, with 160 jobs, will be closed by the end of 2022. In Regensburg, too, 2,100 Vitesco jobs will fall victim to profit maximisation. In Mühlhausen, Conti workers already tried last January to prevent the removal of machines through a blockade.

The workers’ willingness to fight is beyond doubt. But the problem is that the IG Metall and IG BCE are not on the side of the workers but of management, whose perspective they represent. The union officials are masters at keeping workers busy with ineffective actions. They organise roadblocks, 24-hour strikes, religious services at the factory gate, spectacles with balloons, whistles and drums, and much more. But these protests stop exactly where the struggle only begins: with the capitalist profit interests.

The trade unions are completely oriented towards the welfare of Germany as a business location, from which their functionaries make a very good living. That is why they also support the transformation at Continental, which is currently attempting to sacrifice 30,000 jobs. And that is why they refuse to organise a strike to defend the jobs in Bebra and Mühlhausen.

In the strike ballot, workers in Bebra and Mühlhausen voted by 91.7 percent for indefinite strike. They must now implement this decision to strike and enforce it against the resistance of the trade unions. They must take the reins into their own hands and make this strike the starting point for an actual, joint industrial action of all Conti workers at all locations!

The first step must be to break with the IG Metall and IG BCE and their bankrupt methods, which only lead to deadlock. The World Socialist Web Site proposes that workers at each site build independent action committees that will enable them to unite across all sites and national boundaries to defend jobs together.

The corporation the Conti workers confront, and with which IG Metall is in alliance, originally owed its influential position on the DAX (German stock exchange) to the Nazi era. Based on fascist tyranny, it was able to enrich itself immeasurably by supplying Germany’s arms industry in the Second World War. In doing so, it did not shy away from extreme cruelty.

Just one example, cited by Wikipedia: Continental used concentration camp prisoners to test the durability of rubber shoe soles. The unfortunates chosen to do this had to run in circles for as long as they could, and anyone who fell down was shot. The rubber soles lasted for 2,200 kilometres.

Continental’s current owner, the Schaeffler family, is one of the richest German billionaire families. Its managers have already made good on the losses from the stock market crisis of 2008 by putting pressure on the workers through dismissals and wage theft. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, they have again openly shown their willingness to walk over corpses.

While more and more plant closures and mass layoffs are being dictated, the group has seen a new upswing in its profits and exceeded analysts’ expectations in the first quarter of 2021. Trade magazine Autowoche wrote: “Above all, the clear progress in profitability helped Conti shares jump to the top of the DAX on Friday.” This has not prompted the corporation, or the union bureaucrats, to forgo the layoffs.

Chinese city hit by “once in a millennium” torrential rains

Peter Symonds

At least 25 people are dead after torrential rain and flooding hit the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, in what the local meteorological bureau described as a “once in a millennium” event. A dozen people were killed after being trapped by flood waters in the city’s subway, with five more injured. Hundreds were trapped in the train and had to be rescued.

The flooding brought much of the city, with its population of over 12 million, to a halt on Tuesday. More than 80 bus lines and the subway service were temporarily suspended while the city’s airport cancelled 260 flights. Some neighbourhoods were without water and electricity and about 200,000 people had to be evacuated.

Floodwaters in China (Source: CGTNOfficial)

Zhengzhou is an important industrial city. It is home to three huge factories owned by the Taiwan-based electronics-assembly giant, Foxconn Technology Group, which employs hundreds of thousands of people. More than half of Apple’s iPhones are manufactured in the city. Power was temporarily cut to one of the Foxconn sites.

Zhengzhou is the capital of Henan province, which has more than 100 million people. The province has been battered by storms over the past few days. The banks of major rivers burst in several locations, flooding several cities and leading to the closure of highways into the province. At a press conference yesterday, local authorities said that more than 1.2 million people had been affected and 20,000 hectares of crops damaged.

According to the official Xinhua news agency, at least four people were killed in Gongyi city near Zhengzhou, when houses and walls collapsed. The heavy rain has also caused a number of landslides. In the city of Dengfeng, there was a major explosion at an aluminum alloy factory after the floodwaters caused a factory wall to collapse and water to mix with chemicals kept inside.

The Zhengzhou meteorological bureau said the downpours were the heaviest in the city on an hourly and daily basis since records began in 1951. It received 671.1mm of rain—more than its average annual rainfall 604.8mm—in just over three days from Saturday evening to Tuesday. On Tuesday afternoon, 201.9mm fell in one hour.

According to China’s National Meteorological Center, the heavy rainfalls in Henan were the result of water vapour being pushed by Typhoon In-Fa and hitting a mountainous area.

The rainfall was greater than in 1975 when Henan experienced one of the world’s deadliest floods caused by a typhoon. More than 60 dams, including the large Banqiao dam, devastated large areas of the province with estimates of the death toll ranging between 26,000 and 240,000. More than 10 million people were affected, and 30 cities and counties inundated.

Chinese authorities clearly concerned about breached riverbanks, the failure of dams and a far greater catastrophe ordered thousands of troops into Henan. The People’s Liberation Army announced on Wednesday morning that it had averted the collapse of the Yihetan dam near Zhengzhou. Blasting operations had “successfully opened a new flood diversion opening” and lowered water levels.

President Xi Jinping declared that some dams had already burst, “causing serious injury, loss of life and property damage.” He pompously ordered “leaders and [party] cadres from all walks of life… to take the lead in commanding, quickly organise forces for flood protection and disaster rescue.”

Xi was responding to growing public outrage. According to the Financial Times, shock and anger have already been expressed towards weather forecasters, for failing to adequately warn of the dangers, and the state media that downplayed the seriousness of the floods. One widely shared article noted that local state media had initially said people trapped in subway cars were not at risk.

“Even if it was a once in a millennium downpour that caused the Zhengzhou floods, it may not be a natural disaster,” the article said. “If the dam discharge… caused the flood, then that’s definitely a human-made disaster.”

Zhengzhou, which lies on the southern bank of the Yellow River, has long been prone to flooding. In 2016, it was chosen to become one of 14 pilot cities involved in the country’s “sponge city” construction program, aimed at retaining and recycling rainfall. By 2020, the city had spent 53.5 billion yuan ($8.3 billion) on projects such as reinforcing the riverbanks and building water-permeable roads. The current disaster now raises questions about the efficacy of these expensive projects.

While China experiences annual storms and heavy rain at this time of year the threat of flooding is growing worse. The authorities have built tens of thousands of dams in part to mitigate flooding, but many are poorly maintained and prone to collapse in heavy rains. The dangers are compounded by excessive construction on low-lying areas and land reclamation of wetlands and lakes that have traditionally been a buffer against floodwaters.

Other areas of China have also been hard hit, with heavy downpours in Beijing last week resulting in the evacuation of 15,000 people from their homes. On Sunday, two dams collapsed in Inner Mongolia, following torrential rains. Earlier in the month, the city of Bazhong in Sichuan province suffered three days of heavy rain that affected over 380,000 people.

Following the devastating floods in Europe, the disaster in Zhengzhou adds to concerns about the impact of climate change. Climate scientists are warning that climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events such heatwaves and floods.

Australian COVID crisis expanding with more than half the population under lockdown

Oscar Grenfell

A COVID outbreak that began in a handful of Sydney suburbs mid-last month is now undeniably a massive national health crisis in line with the resurgence of the pandemic globally. As a direct consequence of the criminally-negligent policies of the state and federal governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, the highly-infectious Delta variant is spreading in cities and towns across the country that are home to more than 13 million people, over half the total population.

Sydney remains the epicentre, frequently recording more than one hundred cases per day, and with ever-greater indications that the crisis is out of control. But infections are also rising in Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria and the second-most populous city. Locally-acquired cases are also being registered in South Australia for the first time in many months, prompting the imposition of lockdown measures.

Long lines of cars at inner-west Sydney COVID-19 testing station [Photo: WSWS Media]

The New South Wales (NSW) Liberal-National Coalition government today announced 124 cases in the 24-hours to 8 p.m. last night, the highest figure since infections were first registered on June 16. Premier Gladys Berejiklian declared that the state needed to be prepared for “cases to go up even higher” over the coming days.

The figures continue to be presented in a dishonest manner, aimed at downplaying the extent of the spread. The government highlights the number of daily cases where those with the virus were circulating in the community throughout their infectious period. It then briefly notes the number of other people who were in the community for “part” of their infectious period, without providing any further details.

When the two figures are combined, however, it demonstrates that the spread of the virus is largely unchecked. Of yesterday’s 110 infections, 73 were in the community for all or part of the time that they were potentially-contagious. The proportion was even higher today, at 87 of 124.

Only 67 of today’s cases were “linked to a known outbreak,” meaning that well over 40 percent were of “unknown origin.” The number of such infections, where chains of transmission have not been determined, are rising rapidly. This indicates that there are many cases that are not being identified at all by the health authorities. Of the 1685 infections recorded in Sydney 419 or 25 percent are “mystery cases.”

Contact-tracing, which the NSW government, along with Coalition Prime Minister Scott Morrison previously boasted was the “gold standard,” has broken down. Late last week, it was revealed that NSW authorities had issued an urgent appeal to other state administrations to help bolster its contact-tracing efforts. Yesterday it was reported that Transport NSW workers were being seconded to assist the pandemic response, including in a quasi-medical capacity, advising those tested of their isolation requirements, providing them with risk assessments and advising of “referral processes.”

This desperate measure comes amid revelations that people are in some cases waiting in excess of 100 hours before receiving their test results, far above the 24–48 hours that is aimed for. Laverty Pathology, which processes some 10,000 tests per day, is reportedly struggling to keep up with demand. The reliance on the private company again highlights the refusal of state and federal governments to bolster the chronically-underfunded public health sector, even under conditions of a global pandemic.

Berejiklian today sought to defend her government’s response to the outbreak, even though it is now undeniable that official policies have not only failed to halt the spread of the virus but created the conditions for its expansion. She claimed that the restrictions introduced by her government had been proportionate and had prevented “thousands and thousands of new cases” being recorded each day.

In reality, the fact that the highest daily tally has been registered almost a month-and-a-half into the outbreak, is an unanswerable indictment of the government. For ten days, after infections were first recorded on June 16, it refused to impose any additional safety measures, aside from an extension of mask mandates.

When stay-at-home orders were eventually put in place, they were of such a limited character that they could not be described as a lockdown. Virtually all businesses, including non-essential retail, remained open, along with the vast majority of workplaces.

Only last weekend did the government impose some non-essential business closures. But this was limited to three Local Government Areas (LGAs) in southwestern Sydney, that have been epicentres over recent weeks. Similar localised measures have been tried and have failed repeatedly. And the dozens of industries were exempted a day after the restrictions were put in place, following joint lobbying from big business and the thoroughly-corporatised trade unions.

The spread, moreover, is far wider than one or a handful of LGAs, but extends throughout Sydney, with infections and exposure sites being registered in every direction.

Western Sydney, which had recorded very few cases over the first month of the outbreak, is emerging as a new hotspot, with 29 infections yesterday, and 40 today, up from fewer than five per day a week ago. As in the southwest, the western suburbs are working-class, with far higher averages of household density and workers who cannot perform their employment from home.

Three of the state’s central west local government areas of Blayney, Cabonne and Orange are now in lockdown following infections through workplace transmission.

The extension of the pandemic to the regional area is another indication that workplaces are central drivers of transmission. Data indicates that around ten percent of infections, since the outbreak began, have been contracted at work. Around 30 percent of those have then unwittingly spread the virus in the community. An unknown number have transmitted it to family members.

Despite this clear evidence, the government is continuing to reject calls for sharper restrictions. NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard today declared that “nobody wants to impose restrictions on our population that are unnecessary.” What he meant is that the NSW government and its counterparts will not implement necessary public health measures if they will have a negative impact on corporate profits.

This means that the government has no perspective whatsoever to bring the outbreak under control. In the press conference today, Berejiklian and Hazzard were unable to state what policies they would implement to reduce transmission.

This criminally-negligent program has a homicidal character, especially under conditions of Australia’s shambolic vaccine rollout, which has seen only around 14 percent of the adult population fully-inoculated. Three aged care facilities in Sydney have recorded eight positive cases, six of whom are unvaccinated staff members. They are among the tens of thousands of aged care workers, nurses and other frontline workers who remain unvaccinated.

The response in NSW has allowed the virus to spread across the country. South Australia has recorded 14 cases over recent days, prompting a limited lockdown of the state.

Victoria today registered 26, up from 22 yesterday and the highest tally in ten months. While the virus “spilled” into the state from NSW, the policies of Victoria’s Labor government have facilitated its spread. This included the resumption of mass sporting events, with two football matches, attended by tens of thousands of people, among the state’s almost 400 exposure sites. A statewide lockdown was yesterday extended for at least seven more days.

Exposure sites have also been recorded in the regional Victorian areas of Phillip Island, Mildura, Wycheproof, Bacchus Marsh and Waurn Ponds, as well as the NSW central west region around Orange, indicating that the virus is spreading outside of the major capital cities.

Despite the expanding crisis, there is a drumbeat from the corporate sector and the financial press for governments to dispense with even the limited safety measures in place, and to embark upon a course of “living with the virus.” These increasingly strident calls are directed against the mass popular sentiment, which is in favour of scientifically-grounded public health policies, dictated by the needs of society, not those of the corporate and financial oligarchy.

Delta variant spreads in Sri Lanka, as government lifts health restrictions

Sakuna Jayawardana & K. Ratnayake

On July 15, Dr. Hemantha Herath, Sri Lanka’s deputy director general of health services announced that all remaining health restrictions would be relaxed, even though the highly infectious coronavirus Delta variant was being detected in several districts across the island.

“Keeping the country closed indefinitely is not going to help at all,” Herath told the Daily Mirror. He insisted that “people should take the responsibility” for ensuring “social and economic activities are carried out without leaving any room for the spread of the disease.” He failed to explain, however, what workers and the poor could do to prevent COVID-19 spreading in the absence of the restrictions.

Dr. Hemantha Herat, Sri Lanka’s deputy director general of health services [Source: YouTube]

Herath stressed the necessity for “achieving economic goals,” and that relaxation of the restriction was in order “to find money”—in other words, profits and the economy take precedence over public health.

On Tuesday, Herath admitted that between 20 and 30 percent of COVID-19 cases involved the Delta B.1.617.2 variant. Apart from Colombo, the deadly variant has been found in the Jaffna and Kilinochchi districts in the North and in Galle and Matara in the South. The current numbers are deceptive because health authorities have been directed to conduct lower numbers of PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests.

Herath’s call for the removal of all health restrictions and unrestricted economic activity by big business, slavishly echoes the government’s line. Like its capitalist counterparts around the world, the Rajapakse government has placed the pursuit of profit before human life.

On July 5, President Rajapakse told a meeting of co-operative society representatives that it was necessary to “face the pandemic, the only solution is the vaccination.” “Without opening the country we cannot sustain the economy,” he said.

Confronted with worsening economic problems, the Rajapakse regime is desperate to drive up production and boost exports in order to maintain foreign loan repayments.

Long lines outside vaccination centres in plantation areas [Photo credit: Facebook]

The Delta variant has now been detected in over 110 countries, with the World Health Organisation warning that the new and highly-transmissible variant will quickly become dominant in the coming period. Highly-vaccinated countries are currently seeing an upsurge of Delta cases.

Medical specialists in Sri Lanka have warned that the island faces an explosive outbreak as a result of the removal of health restrictions, low testing rates and neglect of other important health and safety measures.

Yesterday, Professor Padma Gunaratne, president of the prestigious Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA), warned that the island faced the beginning of a “fourth wave” of the coronavirus and its Delta variant.

“There was no significant decline in the number of COVID positive cases,” she said, because of the shortcomings of current health restrictions. The SLMA has called for an effective lockdown of the country but is being ignored by the government.

Gunaratne warned that vaccines alone would not protect the population. “We cannot think of moving forward in the country [and just resume] our social activities like before the start of the pandemic. Having such thoughts is a myth,” she warned.

Dr. Ravi Rannan-Eliya, executive director of the Institute for Health Policy, issued similar cautions in an interview with the Island on Monday. “Given that even highly vaccinated countries, like the UK, the USA, and Israel are experiencing explosive outbreaks of Delta variant, Sri Lanka needs to be especially vigilant,” he said.

Rannan-Eliya explained: “The simple answer is aggressive testing, contact tracing and isolation,” adding that vaccination alone was not the answer. He warned that health authorities were “doubling down on cutting testing, maybe with the mistaken hope that case numbers will fall as a result.”

The health ministry reported yesterday that the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases was 289,577 with 3,917 deaths. Daily cases recorded in recent days are around 1,400 but this is based on lower testing. Since March 2020, 10 babies have died at Lady Ridgway Hospital, the country’s premier children hospital and 13 pregnant women have also become victims.

On Tuesday, only 9,000 PCR tests were conducted, down from the 12,000 daily on the previous three days. The reduction in PCR testing is in defiance of experts urging that there should be around 60,000 each day for effective tracing. The highest number of daily tests carried out in Sri Lanka has been 25,000 and then for just two days.

The government’s health expenditure is a pittance with only 28 billion rupees ($US140 million) allocated in the 2021 budget, and only 10 billion rupees, or 0.1 percent of gross domestic product, added in response to COVID-19.

The government’s reaction to the crisis has created the conditions for the rapid spread of the virus. Thousands became infected after last year’s rapid reopening of the economy in mid-April, following a brief and limited national lockdown during which most garment factories remained open.

In June 2020, as infections were rapidly spreading across the country, President Rajapakse called on provincial governors and district administrative officers to fully support ongoing production at factories and all development projects. These facilities should not be immediately shut down “if an infected person is detected,” he declared.

The media reported earlier this month that 23 workers were infected at the Sisalu Fashion garment factory in Medirigiriya, a remote area in the North Central Province. The health officials, however, sent those workers to quarantine centres but ruled out any closure of the factory. Ten days later workers reported feeling ill at the same plant and it was discovered, after limited tests, that 124 workers were infected.

Big business is reaping high profits from the government’s policies. On Monday, Export Development Board chairman Suresh de Mel boasted that export revenue was $5.6 billion in the first half of 2021, an increase of 27.5 percent compared to same period last year. He voiced his appreciation for this contribution to the economy, “despite the severe third wave of COVID-19.”

The trade unions fully supported last year’s reopening of the economy, backing the demands of big business and government and scuttling workers’ struggles and protests. All the opposition parliamentary parties, including the United National Party, Samagi Jana Balawegaya and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, and the pseudo-left groups have similarly backed these reactionary policies that place profits ahead of human life.

The Rajapakse government and the rest of the Sri Lankan political establishment, aided and abetted by the unions, are creating the conditions for a greater catastrophe for workers and the poor.

To confront these dangers, the Sri Lankan working class must take the initiative. All non-essential production must be closed with full compensation to all employees in these workplaces and institutions. Those working in the essential services must be given the necessary protective equipment and safety measures must be implemented to fully protect their health, and the rest of the community.

Small businesses and the self-employed must be paid adequate compensation. Schools must be closed but online education facilities provided to all students. Billions of rupees are needed to improve health services.

Undercover Investigations Expose Brutal Wildlife Killing Contests

Katie Stennes

You would really have to try hard to find anything more depraved than a wildlife killing contest, which targets coyotes, foxes, bobcats, squirrels, raccoons, crows and even wolves and cougars in some states, for the sake of a prize that could range from cash to hunting equipment. These contests are responsible for the mindless killing of an inconceivable number of animals, all under the guise of sport.

Contests like these should be relegated to history books; instead, these events still take place in nearly all of the 42 states where wildlife killing contests are legal and result in the killing of thousands of animals every year.

Participants in these events, billed as family-friendly and often sponsored by bars, churches, firehouses and other local groups, compete with each other for prizes for killing the largest or smallest animal or the highest number of animals. Hundreds of animals may be slaughtered during a single contest. After the bloody piles of animals are weighed, prizes are awarded and the celebration ends, the bodies of the dead animals are often dumped like trash. Contestants frequently use cruel electronic calling devices to lure animals in for an easy kill and then shoot them with high-powered rifles—including AR-15s.

Referring to a custom-built rifle, a competitor in the De Leon Pharmacy and Sporting Goods’ Varmint Hunt told an investigator from my organization, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), that these rifles, “they’re like a .22-250 on steroids.” He had just used the rifle to gun down animals during the 21-hour contest that culminated in the pharmacy’s parking lot on a January morning in Texas. The rifles are “not very fur-friendly,” he added as he stood over a row of bloody bodies he had killed. “I wouldn’t use something like that if you want to save the fur.” To illustrate his point, he nudged a coyote, bragging, “I shot this one up here in the throat from high up and it blew out the whole bottom of his chest.”

Other participants at the contest unloaded more dead animals from the trucks, which were outfitted for prime killing with raised decks, cushioned chairs and gun mounts. A team of three men, who called themselves “Dead On,” won the event, killing five coyotes, two bobcats, a fox and a raccoon. Contest organizers handed out more than $3,000 in prize money.

At another killing contest in December 2020 that took place 1,000 miles north of Texas, an HSUS investigator saw firefighters helping to drag dead coyotes to the weighing station in the parking lot of the fire department in Williamsport, Indiana. The grand prize went to those who killed the five heaviest coyotes, with side pots awarded to those who killed the greatest number of coyotes, the “big dog” and the “small dog” (referring to the size of the coyotes). The winning team, which had all its teammates dressed in matching jackets, killed about 16 of the roughly 60 animals lined up for display when the contest ended. One competitor told investigators from the HSUS that he used an AR-15 rifle with night vision, adding, “I enjoy it.”

Other undercover investigations by the HSUS—in Maryland, New Jersey, New York (in 2018 and 2020), Oregon and Virginia—showed similar chilling images of contests, including children playing among dead bodies of animals.

Some of these contests are high stakes. At the West Texas Big Bobcat Contest in January, participants vied for $148,120 in prize money. The jackpot for “Most Grey Fox” killings went to a four-man team that killed 81 foxes in 23 hours.

Competitors spend thousands of dollars on equipment to achieve an almost absurd advantage. Electronic calling devices amplified across a field by a loudspeaker lure unsuspecting animals into the open using the sounds of dependent young in distress. These animals can hardly be expected to compete with a team of people armed with spotlights and AR-15-style weapons fitted with precision thermal night vision scopes that “troll” habitat areas, obliterating anything that comes their way.

Killing contests have a cousin in the old-school pigeon shoots—another contest based on indiscriminate animal slaughter. At a pigeon shoot, the birds are stuffed into spring-loaded boxes, thrust into the air at the shooter’s command and then shot from a short distance—all for thrills and prizes. Only one state—Pennsylvania—still openly holds these pigeon shoots.

Just like pigeon shooters, participants in wildlife killing contests spout false claims that they’re doing some act of service for society by ridding the landscape of animals they deem as “varmints” and “pests.” But it is a fact that these events are for fun and games and serve no legitimate wildlife management purpose. The best available science shows that randomly killing animals, especially coyotes, creates problems where there were none.

It sounds counterintuitive but killing coyotes causes them to proliferate. In an unexploited coyote pack, typically only the dominant pair reproduces. Kill off a few members, and the pack splinters apart to find other mates. More breeding pairs means more coyotes—and this adds yet another wrinkle. While most coyotes avoid livestock and prefer to munch on rodents, more pups mean more mouths to feed, forcing adult coyotes to find easier targets like sheep just to survive.

It’s a “paradoxical relationship”—kill more coyotes, lose more livestock. Haphazardly removing coyotes who haven’t been proven to threaten livestock before leaves voids that may be filled by coyotes who are more likely to prey on livestock. Most coyotes can even serve as “guard coyotes” for ranchers, keeping other carnivores at bay.

Native carnivores like coyotes and foxes provide a range of free ecological services to our communities—including controlling rodent and rabbit populations, indirectly contributing to the boosting of plant and bird biodiversity, and scavenging animal carcasses, which keeps our environment clean—and removing them en masse upsets the natural balance of our ecosystems.

We can’t make wildlife management decisions based on anecdotes or intuition or cater to misinformation that competitors use to justify their actions—we must follow the science. State wildlife agencies recognize that ethics must come into play, too. The Arizona Game and Fish Commission outlawed these killing contests in 2019. When the commission was still considering the ban, its chairman, Jim Zieler, who is also a hunter, was quoted by the Washington Post as saying, “There has been a lot of social outcry against this, and you can kind of understand why. It’s difficult to stand up and defend a practice like this.” Sportsmen and state wildlife agency professionals and commissioners across the country have echoed similar sentiments, and some have noted that these contests are damaging the reputation of hunters and jeopardizing the future of hunting. It’s a reasonable fear—society’s values about wildlife are shifting in favor of greater harmony with nature.

Making matters worse, the pandemic has added another element: virtual competitions where the killing persists but the judging and participation are online. Contestants living anywhere in the United States can submit videos of the animals they have killed nearby, and in these videos the contestants are seen shaking the bodies of the dead animals to show that they have been killed recently. These virtual competitions have also led to new prize categories like “best video of a kill.” People from more than 40 states have joined these contest websites, including from states where the contests have been banned. These virtual events take place nearly every weekend.

We certainly can’t let this continue without challenge, especially since many hunters share the growing public disdain for wildlife killing contests. They understand that no animal’s life should be taken in this cruel manner, and like countless other Americans, they believe that there are limits to what we should permit when it comes to the treatment and use of animals.

The good news is that bills and regulations to prohibit wildlife killing contests are emerging at both the federal and state levels. The reasons to ban these events are supported by overwhelming evidence, and those who oppose these contests will have increasing opportunities to register their viewpoints and convictions about this senseless killing of American wildlife, in letters to Congress and to state legislatures and state wildlife management agencies (contact your HSUS state director to find out what’s happening in your state), and to their local government. Wildlife is important to everyone, and our public policies and practices should reflect that.

Holding Onto the Cold War

Melvin A. Goodman

The United States cannot escape the consequences of the Cold War.  The Cold War has shaped our political culture, our political institutions, and our national priorities.  The Second World War ended 75 years ago, but we still outspend the entire global community on defense; control an overseas military infrastructure with more than 700 bases and facilities; and allocate tens of billions of dollars annually to nuclear forces.  Now add the absurdity of the Space Command.  The Cold War divided Europe; engulfed the Third World (our briar patch); inspired a reckless arms race; and created chronic geopolitical tensions.  As a result, the United States has become a national security state relying on military power and use of force, despite having the most secure geographical boundaries of any major power.

Recent events in Haiti that culminated in the assassination of President Jovenel Moise is one more reminder of our Cold War policy of supporting authoritarian leaders around the world in order to advance U.S. interests.  Biden supported Moise despite warnings about his increasingly autocratic rule.  U.S. presidents throughout the Cold War emphasized the importance of democratic government and “rules-based internationalism,” but these bromides were typically observed in the breach.

No American president has been willing to tackle the problem of our national security state, although some presidents have done better than others. Presidents Eisenhower and Carter could claim no significant battlefield casualties on their watch, and Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan opposed the Pentagon in their pursuit of arms control and disarmament.  But no president since Eisenhower has understood the military.  Several were intimidated by the military (Clinton and Obama) and others too willing to yield to the military (the senior Bush and the junior Bush).  Biden has the advantage of a half-century of exposure to our militarization of national security policy.  He even warned Barack Obama not to get “boxed in” by the military, thereby earning the ire of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who—like too many secretaries— was “captured” by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

But six months into his presidency, Biden has not addressed collective and universal solutions to foreign policy; instead, he trades on Cold War tropes, particularly with regard to Russia and China.  Biden’s efforts to challenge both Russia and China is particularly counterproductive in view of the close Sino-Russian relationship that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have forged.  They have ended a sixty-year period of discontinuity that included struggles over aid to North Vietnam; warfare on their border;  and differences over military aid and geopolitical rivalries.

Biden’s diplomatic foray into Europe in June and his summitry with Germany’s Angel Merkel in July produced ample evidence of the kind of “old thinking” that has dominated U.S. policy and diplomacy even after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which created an opportunity for “new thinking.”  Biden’s European thrust revolves around the relaunching of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, including expanding its scope to deal with a challenge from China.

Biden’s national security team believes that the United States can isolate and contain China.  For the first time, a NATO document included China in the list of security threats for the alliance, which probably produced a good deal of head scratching in Beijing.  The key European states signed on reluctantly; they prefer not to be part of the Sino-American differences that were worsened by the Trump administration.  Meanwhile, Russian President Putin may be taking satisfaction from NATO’s firm stance against China, which was designed in part to compensate for the lack of a firm stance against Russia.  Germany’s defense of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and Franco-German interest in coordinating policy with Russia point to the absence of any lasting success for Biden’s diplomacy in Europe.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel clearly and succinctly said with regard to U.S. and European approaches to the problems of Russia and Ukraine that “We’ve come to different assessments.”  Merkel made no specific response to Biden’s interest in countering China.  France and Italy appear to be aligned with Germany on these key bilateral issues. Similarly, many Asian nations don’t want to choose between the United States for reasons of security vs. China for reasons of their own prosperity.

Instead of reversing the decoupling policies of the Trump administration toward China, Biden has appointed a national security team that is committed to more aggressively countering and containing China in East Asia.  Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan are China hardliners.  Sullivan’s deputy is Kurt Campbell, who developed the policy of a “pivot” toward China ten years ago; Campbell’s senior aide in the National Security Council is Rush Doshi who recently published “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order.”  Sullivan has placed another hardliner, Ely Ratner, as a special adviser to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.  These appointments suggest the problem of classic groupthink on China, our greatest diplomatic challenge, relying on the Cold War principle of negotiating from a position of strength.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military-industrial-congressional community is taking advantage of Sino-American differences over the South China Sea and U.S.-Russian tensions over Ukraine to campaign for greater defense spending.  The defense community particularly is fixated on the issue of China as a major threat, and appears to have no understanding of possible constraints on policy toward China.

At the same time, there is a bipartisan consensus in Congress that China constitutes the central threat to the United States.  The U.S. Innovation and Competition Act attracted a bipartisan majority by emphasizing the importance of challenging China in Artificial Intelligence and quantum computing.  The often hyperbolic charges in the Congress and the mainstream media against China have led to “xenophobic rhetoric” against Asian-Americans, according to leaders of the congressional Asian Pacific American caucus.

The Biden administration believes that the development of state-of-the-art weaponry will discourage China from more aggressive moves toward Taiwan and in the South China Sea.  U.S. actions in the South China Sea revolve around quasi-Cold War measures that include deployment of aircraft carriers in freedom of navigation operations.  U.S. actions vis-a-vis Ukraine are aimed at creating a “strategic relationship” with Kiev, and challenging the Russian sphere of influence in the Black Sea.

The Biden administration is wrongly trying to present Russia and China as existential threats to Western democracy.  Too many pundits and the mainstream media describe Iran and North Korea similarly.  These countries are problems for U.S. diplomacy, but the existential problems for the United States are a world with too many nuclear powers; a pandemic; a climate crisis; and cybersecurity.  These problems demand a collective and cooperative approach, and the United States is best placed to lead the way in making Russia and China stakeholders on these issues.  Unfortunately, Biden and his national security team don’t appear to be willing or even witting.

Precarity of Migrant Labour in Punjab’s Textile Industries

Akashleena

Punjab faces a severe power crisis in the literal and metaphorical sense. Unprecedented shortage in power supply, power thefts and rise in power demand has turned it into a power-starving state. Facing an acute shortage of power supply amidst soaring demand of power from the agricultural sector. Gap between demand and supply traces to increase in consumer demand and shut down of the power plants. This crisis led to power regulatory restrictions in the state. Ranging from prolonged power cuts to restrictions on industries, the power crisis enhances the political power crisis in Punjab slated to go for elections in the next year..

This power crisis neglects the workers’ question on the policy table. Punjab is highly dependent on migrant labour for agricultural, industrial and construction based activities. Legal literature and policy discourse lack adequate provisions for protection of workers. Amendments in Labour laws pertaining to negligence  by the state and the market, refocusing attention towards the workers in the informal economy should form the need of the hour.

Political power play involves the usual blame game tactics between the Congress ruled government and opposition parties of Shiromani Akali Dal and Aam Aadmi party. Punjab is not producing power in accordance with the demand as shutting down of government owned plants in Bathinda and Ropar along with Private TSPL owned power plant in Talwandi Sabo reduces the power utility supply. Power regulatory restrictions were imposed on industries such as textile, chemical and spinning mills to compensate for the demand of paddy transplantation. Delayed onset of monsoon adds to the existing power crisis for agriculture. Despite resumption of generation at one of the power stations, the power crisis ceases to exist. Punjab has not enhanced its transmission capacity and faces severe fund crunch

Among the largest producers and exporters of yarn and cotton, Punjab is home to the textile and apparel industry of India. Labour intensive in nature, it provides a huge source of employment to skilled workforce in the form of contractual employees and low-skilled workforce as daily and monthly wage workers.  Wage workers in such industries lack adequate social security schemes, protection nets, low income resulting in instability and insecurity guaranteed by the nature of work.

 Despite the introduction of developed machinery, textile and other garment industries remain labour intensive and labour dependent on the low skilled workforce. In this case, labour dependence leads to over-exploitation and extraction of cheap labour at minimal cost through daily and monthly wage workers.Profit and production in industries is dependent on the extraction and exploitation of the toil of workers. Gender lens provides an interesting insight as often women wage labourers are paid lesser than the male counterparts.

Socio-economic inequalities worsened in the pandemic best illustrated through the devastating pictures of migrant workers on their way back home. Migrant workers live through the worst working conditions, denied the opportunity of decent work and paid below the minimum wages set in the policy documents. In the informal sector/unorganised economy, uncertainty, insecurity, rampant exploitation and oppression marks the lives of workers. Most of the textile industries fall under this category opening up spaces for exploitation with cheap, available surplus labour migrating from the Bimaru states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

The adverse effects of the pandemic in the textile and apparel industry reduced the production demand. Despite production of PPE kits and masks, restriction of exports and lock downs and shut downs affected production, demand and supply in these sectors. However the small scale set ups and demand in general reduced leading to layoffs. Amidst low demand, unprecedented power cuts and diversion attempted to provide relief to agricultural requirements. Weekly offs and shut downs forced the daily and monthly wage labourers to sit idle, salary cuts and job suspensions. Power crisis hit the production capacity of the industries while the workers bore the brunt of it.

Legislations on labour include recent amendments and introduction of codes such as Industrial Relations Code, Social security code, Occupational Safety, Health and Working conditions code revisiting the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008, Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, Factories Act, 1948 and Contract Labour (Regulation & Abolition) Act, 1970 and the InterState Migrant Workmen Act, 1979 defended by the narrative of ‘ease of doing business’. Laws target Limiting the ambit of applying labour laws, laying off and notice period of, dilution of labour laws framework, close down the units. Labour laws to protect the workers facilitates their exploitation by supporting the employers rather than employees. In situations of emergencies and calamities, these welfare provisions fail to trickle down to the lowest rungs of the society. These concerns have been raised in several protests conducted by workers in other sectors such as Transport, sanitation and anganwadi work in Punjab

Workers remain in a precarious situation despite reverse or counter migration. Reports from states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar indicate the poor implementation of schemes and policies such as Jan Dhan Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Gram Awas Yojana forcing people to fight for basic sustenance and survival needs. Shrinking healthcare systems and poor infrastructure provides no respite to workers and their families.

Power crisis in Punjab should bring the workers’ question back to the table. Workers’ protests in sectors of sanitation and construction focus on registration of the workers and families and regularisation of work. Even the informal sector should have some provision for formation of unions for raising the voices of the workers. Necessary amendments in Labour laws should pave the way for guaranteeing the right to life, dignity and decent work for the workers in these industries especially in times of crisis.

 Let’s hope that history does not repeat itself in the third wave!

Mobilising Against the Corporate Hijack of Agriculture and the UN Food Systems Summit

Colin Todhunter

The UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), including a ‘pre-summit’, will take place in September 2021 in New York. The Italian government is hosting the pre-summit in Rome from 26–28 July. The UNFSS claims it aims to deliver the latest evidence-based, scientific approaches from around the world, launch a set of fresh commitments through coalitions of action and mobilise new financing and partnerships.

Despite claims of being a ‘people’s summit’ and a ‘solutions’ summit, the UNFSS is facilitating greater corporate concentration, unsustainable globalised value chains and agribusiness leverage over public institutions. As a result, more than 300 global organisations of small-scale food producers, researchers and indigenous peoples will gather online from 25-28 July to mobilise against the pre-summit.

The Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSM) for relations with the United Nations Committee on World Food Security is working to eradicate food insecurity and malnutrition. According to the CMS, the UNFSS – founded on a partnership between the UN and the World Economic Forum (WEF) – is disproportionately influenced by corporate actors, lacks transparency and accountability and diverts energy and financial resources away from the real solutions needed to tackle the multiple hunger, climate and health crises.

The CMS argues that the UNFSS is not building on the legacy of past world food summits, which resulted in the creation of innovative, inclusive and participatory global food governance mechanisms anchored in human rights, such as the reformed UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS).

Promoting industrial agriculture

It seems the UNFSS is now dominated by corporate front groups and corporate-driven platforms, including the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the International Agri-Food Network, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the EAT Forum as well as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Gates Foundation. The President of AGRA, Agnes Kalibata, was even appointed as UN Special Envoy for the summit.

According to the CMS, those being granted a pivotal role at the UNFSS support industrial food systems that promote ultra-processed foods, deforestation, industrial livestock production, intensive pesticide use and commodity crop monocultures, all of which cause soil deterioration, water contamination and irreversible impacts on biodiversity and human health.

The industrialised food system that these corporations fuel does not even feed the world, despite corporate claims to the contrary. For example, the 2021 UN Report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition indicates that the number of chronically undernourished people has risen to 811 million, while almost a third of the world’s population has no access to adequate food. Furthermore, the Global South is still reeling from Covid-19 related policies which have laid bare the inherent fragility and injustices of the prevailing food system.

Those who contribute most to world food security, smallholder producers, are the most threatened and affected by the corporate concentration of land, seeds, natural and financial resources and the related privatisation of the commons and public goods.

And these processes are accelerating: the high-tech/data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants in a quest to impose a one size fits all type of agriculture and food production on the world. Digitalisation, artificial intelligence and other technologies are serving to promote a new wave of resource grabbing and the restructuring of food systems towards a total concentration of power.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also heavily involved, whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland, funding and promoting a much-heralded (but failed) ‘green revolution’ for Africa, pushing biosynthetic food and new genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating the aims of the mega agrifood corporations.

Under the guise of saving the planet with ‘climate-friendly solutions’, helping farmers and feeding the world, what Gates and his corporate associates are really doing is desperately trying to repackage the dispossessive strategies of imperialism wrapped in the language of ‘sustainability’ and ‘inclusivity’.

Through various aspects of data control pertaining to soil quality, consumer preferences, weather, and land use, for example, and e-commerce monopolies, corporate land ownership, seed biopiracy, patents, synthetic food and the undermining of the public sector’s role in ensuring food security and national food sovereignty, global agricapital seeks to gain full control over the world’s food system.

Smallholder peasant farming is under threat as the big-tech giants and agribusiness impose lab-grown food, genetically engineered (GE) soil microbes, data harvesting tools and drones and other ‘disruptive’ technologies. The model being promoted desires farmerless industrial-scale farms being manned by driverless machines, monitored by drones and doused with chemicals to produce commodity crops from patented GE seeds for industrial ‘biomatter’ to be processed and constituted into something resembling food.

The CMS notes that these are false ‘solutions’ that seek to bypass and undermine the peasant food web which currently produces up to 70% of the world’s food, working with only 25% of the resources. Moreover, these false solutions do not address structural injustices such as land and resource grabbing, corporate abuse of power and economic inequality. They merely reinforce them.

Towards food sovereignty

More than 380 million people belong to the movements protesting against the UNFSS. They are demanding a radical transformation of corporate food regimes towards a just and truly sustainable food system. They are also demanding increased participation in existing democratic food governance models, such as the UN Committee for World Food Security (CFS) and its High-Level Panel of Experts. The UNFSS threatens to undermine CFS, which is the foremost inclusive intergovernmental international policy-making arena.

There is an intensifying fight for space between local markets and global markets. The former are the domain of independent producers and small-scale enterprises, whereas global markets are dominated by increasing monopolistic large-scale international retailers, traders and the rapidly growing influential e-commerce companies.

It is therefore essential to protect and strengthen local markets and indigenous, independent small-scale producers and enterprises to ensure community control over food systems, economic independence and local food sovereignty. With this in mind, the CMS is calling for a radical agroecological transformation of food systems based on food sovereignty, gender justice and economic and social justice.

Agroecology is practised throughout the world. As numerous high-level (UN) reports have argued over the years, this approach improves nutrition, reduces poverty, contributes to gender justice, combats climate change and enriches farmland. With no need to purchase proprietary inputs (chemicals, seeds, etc) and its outperforming of industrial agriculture, agroecology represents a shift towards genuine food sovereignty and thus a direct threat to corporate agribusiness.

During the online mobilisation against the pre-summit, participants will share small-scale food producers and workers’ realities and their visions for a human rights-based and agroecological transformation of food systems. In doing so, they will highlight the importance of food sovereignty, small-scale sustainable agriculture, traditional knowledge, rights to natural resources and the rights of workers, indigenous peoples, women and future generations.