Cuba’s Fight against Imperialism

Yanis Iqbal

Cuba has been witnessing anti-government protests since July 11, 2021. Several objective factors account for these demonstrations. Cuba is experiencing its greatest economic crisis in 30 years. The devastating knock-on effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the country’s tourism-dependent economy, coupled with criminal sanctions and blockade, have caused real hardship to the Cuban people.

The decline in foreign visitors caused a loss of around $3 billion in 2020. Barring a modest recovery in China, the rest of Cuba’s trading partners have fallen into economic recession. These harsh conditions of a full-scale emergency have severely depleted the country’s reserves. The domestic supply of basic necessities, including food and medicine, has been greatly hindered.

The administrative henchmen of the global capitalist class have chosen to spew crude propaganda about Cuba. On July 15, 2021, President Joe Biden set the tonal texture of imperialist discourse: “Cuba is unfortunately a failed state and repressing their citizens…Communism is a failed system – a universally failed system.” Such reductive and ahistorical remarks serve a singular function: subversion of Cuba’s revolutionary process.

Revolution

Under the savagery of imperialism, Cuba was cauterized by the African slave trade and the overflowing inhumanity of white supremacy. In its efforts to conquer Spain’s Caribbean colonies, the US tried to gain influence in Cuba as a means to strengthen the profits of the slave trade. The American ruling class continued to smuggle slaves through Cuba after the Civil War, engaging in the wholesale whitening of the island after defeating Spain in 1898.

These openly murderous policies hardened into a steely, merciless regime of economic exploitation. By 1959, US corporations controlled 75% of arable land, 100% of oil refineries, and 90% of all telecommunications. Mass destitution, illiteracy, malnutrition, racism and patriarchy became the centerpiece of Cuba’s extroverted economy, designed to serve foreign capitalists and their native stooges.

The Cuban revolution swept across the firmament of shallow darkness, demineralizing the territories of neo-colonialism and capitalism. Fluid bonds of liberation sprouted from the sensitive and tenacious hands of less than a 100 Cubans who decided to wage guerrilla warfare in the countryside to undercut the repressive apparatuses of Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship.

Revolutionary guerillas served the people with necessary medical treatment and literacy training, forging deep links with the oppressed masses and providing an alternative to the illegitimate system of pure wretchedness. There was only one hospital of 10 beds in the countryside and over a quarter of the population was illiterate prior to the revolution.

The potent and emancipatory mix of social work and militant organization crafted the fabric of counter-hegemony, concluding in a general strike days before the revolution that ousted the US-backed government from the nation.

After the triumph of the revolution, Fidel and the core of the guerrilla army embarked on a long victory rally, from Santiago to Havana. The march was halted by speeches, salutations, meetings, and other ceremonies. By the time Fidel arrived in Havana, on January 8, 1959, the Rebel Army had come to power across all of Cuba.

The national hero was welcomed by an ecstatic crowd, while the new government took office. Castro spoke to a jubilant audience of sympathizers, emphasizing the need for revolutionary unity. As he was finishing his speech, a white dove settled on his shoulder – symbolizing the central message of Cuba’s socialist people: worldwide peace.

The imperialists did not heed the ideas of the Cuban Revolution, choosing to wage a brutal war of blockades and destabilization against the country. However, revolutionaries could not be eliminated easily. As Fidel remarked:

“[W]hen people are united and are defending a just right, they can trust their own energies. We are not, as we have been pictured, a mere group of men governing the country. We are a whole people governing a country – a whole people firmly united, with a great revolutionary consciousness, defending its rights. And this should be known by the enemies of the revolution and of Cuba, because if they ignore this fact, they will be making a regrettable error.”

Internationalism

To protect its revolution, Cuba formed a global support base. Cuban internationalists provided assistance in many ways: as special envoys, trusted advisers, military instructors and medical specialists. Between the 1960s and the 1990s, a group of high-level political observers and counselors worked as diplomats and undercover agents.

They maintained direct relationships with Latin America’s insurgent generations. These individuals belonged to the Departamento América, an organization under the leadership of Manuel Piñeiro – a close personal friend of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, and one of Raúl Castro’s comandantes during the revolt against Batista.

During Latin America’s long decades of military dictatorship, Cuba gave shelter to persecuted dissidents and refugee exiles. It served as the political and medical recovery house for thousands of wounded or crippled guerrilla fighters and other rebels in their own countries.

Cuba always remained loyal to those who had taken up weapons to struggle against colonialism and for independence. Despite its relatively small population, Cuba’s military participated in African liberation wars and its special forces trained guerrilla and resistance movements in many countries.

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), many of Cuba’s military facilities that supported the guerrilla movements were considerably reduced. During the “Special Period”, Cuba survived with great difficulties, but it never ceased to provide medical assistance to the poor and disadvantaged.

Cuba never stopped fulfilling its internationalist commitments, continuing to send medical brigades to poor regions in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. It also provided emergency assistance in natural disasters and its literacy experts went on civilian missions. Direct support to the guerrilla was replaced by networks of mutual support among friendly governments.

Cuba found a strong ally in Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, whose government proclaimed the dawn of “socialism of the 21st century”. Cuba and Venezuela founded a regional grouping with a common ideological vocation: the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). After 2000, the two leading countries cooperated in developing medical and literacy campaigns in many Global South countries.

Peace

In opposition to the discourse of interventionism, President Miguel Diaz-Canel has carried forward the historical force of the Cuban Revolution, vowing to defend the country from outside interference. On July 17, 2021, he stated:

“In the previous weeks, an intense political-communication operation was developed by a large media intoxication platform, financed by the United States Government and by the Florida political machinery. Its objective was to encourage unrest and instability in the country, taking advantage of the difficult conditions caused by the pandemic, the intensified blockade and the 243 measures of the Trump administration. In those days they carried out acts of Unconventional Warfare that included calls for social outbreak, violence, assault on police officers, vandalism and sabotage.”

The recognition of the difficult economic realities indicates the transparent approach of Cuban leaders. Instead of obfuscating the material situation, the socialist government has talked to the people, listened to their grievances and tried to devise solutions. These practices are linked to a politico-ethical project. As Canel expressed, “We are going to put our hearts into Cuba – together we can – because Cuba is love, peace, and solidarity.”

Podemos, Spanish unions collaborate with big business to slash pensions

Santiago Guillén

Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government, working with the Workers Commissions (CCOO) and General Union of Workers (UGT) unions have announced an onslaught on public pensions. This is one of several cuts to basic social rights that the government is planning at the European Union’s (EU) behest, in exchange for hundreds of billions of euros in COVID-19 pandemic bailout funds.

Podemos party leader Pablo Iglesias speaks as Spain's caretaker Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez looks on after signing an agreement at the parliament in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. (AP Photo/Paul White)

The unions and Podemos deceitfully trumpeted two measures in the pension reform as beneficial to workers. The first one is to revalue pensions annually in line with inflation. This means returning to the situation before 2013, when the right-wing Popular Party (PP) set cost-of-living adjustments at only 0.25 percent per year, well below inflation. However, this by itself is not enough to give pensioners a decent standard of living. Around 58 percent of them earn less than the minimum wage of 950 euros, and one in four receive the minimum pension of around 600 euros.

The second measure repeals a plan to cut pensions in line with increases in life expectancy, which was also approved by the PP in 2013 but never went into effect.

On this basis, the Stalinist CCOO hailed the pension reform as “an agreement that changes the course of pensions by suppressing the [PP] cuts of 2013.” UGT General Secretary Pepe Álvarez was even more enthusiastic, declaring: “I feel very comfortable signing agreements. I would feel very bad if we did not have to sign agreements.”

In the same vein, Podemos co-spokesman Pablo Fernández claimed the agreement “represents a fundamental step in the consolidation and care of benefits, by eliminating the most damaging aspects of the reform undertaken by the PP in 2013.”

Through this cynical ceremony of confusion, Podemos and the trade unions tried to mask the basic content of their measure—cutting overall pension levels—by delaying the cuts over time and touting the abandonment of this or that cut that was considered too politically explosive to enforce.

Social Security Minister José Luis Escrivá was clearer, however. He told TVE that the so-called baby boomer generation, born between 1959 and 1977, is “wider” and will have to assume “some of the effort that must be made to moderate pension spending during a specific period of time.” Therefore, he said, they will “choose between several options: one may be a small adjustment in their pension, which would be very moderate, or alternatively, they could work a little more.”

Such was the uproar that the following day Escrivá claimed he had been misunderstood.

Podemos rapidly intervened to extinguish the fire. Fernández said: 'Podemos will not allow pension cuts in the present nor the future, either in relation to the inter-generational equity factor referred to by Escrivá or to the calculation of the pension pay-in period”. What Fernández did not say is that Podemos had already voted in favor last January of the Resilience Plan that commits the government, of which Podemos is a part, to the European Commission to make those cuts.

The PSOE-Podemos government’s presentation of the pension reform is a pack of lies: the reform aims to plunge broad sections of retirees into poverty. At its heart is the penalty workers receive to their pension payments if they retire early. This could reach to up to 30 percent penalty for those who retire four years in advance, and up to 21 percent for those who voluntarily retire two years in advance. It also confirms previous plans to raise the retirement age to 67.

The brunt of this pension reform will be borne by the most oppressed sections of the working class, with the most physically-demanding jobs. It would confront them with two choices. The first is to try to stay on the job until 67 despite the physical punishment this imposes on them, thus putting their lives at risk and drastically cutting their life expectancy. The second is to request early retirement and accept living on a poverty pension for the rest of their lives.

Poverty among the elderly will skyrocket. Older workers are routinely laid off in mass redundancy schemes, enriching a layer of union bureaucrats involved in negotiating these schemes, in order to employ younger, cheaper workers or offshore work to cheaper-labor locations. Many workers who are laid off after 60 will find it very hard to find a new job. With early retirement their only option, they will receive meagre pensions.

The final objective sought with these attacks on the pension system is to force layers of workers who can afford to do so to contract private pension plans. The reform proposes to promote so-called “company pension plans”, to increase private pension funds managed by the banks five-fold to €500 billion. The unions have vested interests in private pensions. In large companies that adopt them, a parity commission is established, made up of company management and union representatives that receive lucrative commissions to oversee the private plans.

These measures are yet another devastating exposure of the irrationality of capitalism and of the reactionary agenda of the petty-bourgeois “left populist” Podemos party. In Spain, where the government and unions aim to make currently employed workers work more, there are already four million unemployed desperately seeking work. Youth unemployment stands at a staggering 37 percent.

The EU engineered the pandemic bailout fund even as EU countries rejected a shelter-at-home order on the pandemic, claiming there was no money for a scientific policy to halt the coronavirus. Instead, it demanded that non-essential workers return to work to produce profits on the massive sums of financial capital being handed over to major corporations. This led to over 1.1 million deaths across Europe, as the EU sacrificed workers’ health and lives to the profits of the financial aristocracy.

Podemos had previously claimed there was no austerity commitment in exchange for pandemic bailout funds. Last year, the PSOE-Podemos government celebrated that Madrid would receive €140 billion over the next six years from the €750 billion EU fund. The then-leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, hailed it in July 2020, declaring: “There is no doubt that today, one of the most brilliant pages in EU history has been written.”

Iglesias contrasted the current bailouts to EU bailouts of Greece after the 2008 Wall Street crash: “We all remember the response of the European institutions to the financial crisis 10 years ago: austerity, men in black and demands for social cuts that caused the suffocation of the countries of the south and a serious crisis to the European project.” Now, he said, “For the first time in the history of the EU, a package of subsidies financed with joint debt is being proposed.”

As the WSWS warned, this was a lie. It is now clear that, like the post-2008 bailouts in Greece, the current bailouts are massive handouts of funds to the super-rich which are to be paid for with slashing attacks on basic social rights negotiated between the PSOE, Podemos, the unions and the Spanish Confederation of Business Organisations (CEOE).

Ukrainian interior minister with close ties to the far right resigns

Jason Melanovski

Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who is notorious for his ties to neo-Nazis, has resigned from his position in the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky. No reasons for his surprise resignation were revealed.

Arsen Avakov (Photo: Wikipedia)

Avakov was the country’s longest-serving minister. He spent seven years in his position starting in 2014 under former President Petro Poroshenko, who came to power after a US- and EU-backed far-right coup in Kiev. He continued on after Zelensky defeated Poroshenko to claim the presidency in 2019. In addition to serving under two different presidents, Avakov also maintained his position through four different prime ministers.

As Interior Minister, Avakov oversaw the country’s domestic security forces including both local and national police, and Ukraine’s newly reformed National Guard, which is composed of members of the country’s various fascist militias such as the Azov Battalion. Thanks in no small measure to Avakov—who maintains a personal friendship with the leader of the Azov Battalion, Andriy Biletsky—open fascists were essentially granted the full backing of the Ukrainian state.

Under his watch, fascist thugs were given free rein to terrorize and attack journalists, assault ethnic minorities, and carry out targeted killings, up to and including the killing of a three-year old boy in a botched political assassination attempt.

In almost every case the culprits were never caught, received light sentences, or any actual prosecution was limited to the low-level assailants without any attempt to cover those higher up giving the orders to carry out right-wing political violence.

Demonstrating the close ties between Avakov and his far-right thugs and Washington, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch hailed Avakov in the 2019 impeachment hearings against former US president Donald Trump.

In Ukraine, Avakov is viewed simultaneously as one of the country’s most powerful and most hated political figures. A full 80 percent of the Ukrainian population held a negative view of Avakov’s time in office in a 2020 opinion poll.

In 2017, Avakov’s son Oleksander was implicated in an embezzling scandal involving the purchase of military weapons at inflated prices with government funds. Despite the blatant corruption by a family member, Avakov continued as interior minister and the charges against his son were quickly dropped.

In June of 2020 hundreds of protesters from various political backgrounds gathered in Kiev to call for Avakov’s resignation after reports of an alleged rape and torture of a woman by police not far from Kiev.

Despite the protests, Zelensky threw his support behind Avakov and stated among ministers “there were none better” than Avakov and called him “a powerful minister.”

Avakov would go on to spend another full-year in office building up his public political profile. Amid a military crisis over Crimea and East Ukraine between Ukraine and Russia in the spring, Avakov took a leading role in fueling tensions by visiting the front and inciting Ukrainian nationalists to war.

Using his Facebook page rather than official government media, Avakov called on “patriots,” using fascistic language, to prepare for war and protect the “Motherland.” He also suggested that Ukraine would fare better than it did in 2014 due to the over $2 billion in military aid and equipment it has since received from the US.

Throughout the seven-year-long conflict that has claimed the lives of over 14,000 people and displaced millions, Avakov has maintained the most right-wing and militaristic positions regarding a potential peace settlement with the breakaway separatist-controlled areas in Eastern Ukraine. Avakov and his far-right allies have vehemently opposed any deal that would grant sovereignty or special status to the separatist-controlled territories in East Ukraine, and deny Kiev full control over the region.

While the reasons behind Avakov’s resignation have not been revealed, reports have surfaced on the Ukrainian news site Strana that Avakov was ordered to resign while meeting with new US ambassador to Ukraine, George Kent. This may well be due to Avakov and his far-right ties presenting a public image problem for the United States as the Biden administration is seeking to posture as the protector of “democracy” against Russia.

Other reports have suggested that Zelensky ordered Avakov to resign after growing frustrated with Avakov’s own political prominence. Notably, in the past year Avakov refused to support sanctions pushed by Zelensky against former President Petro Poroshenko, with Avakov stating that Poroshenko “was not an enemy of Ukraine.”

Despite his resignation, it is telling that Avakov was able to quietly walk away from a position he held under two different US-backed administrations, with none of the murders, assaults and scandals he oversaw negatively affecting his political career and power.

On the contrary, reports from Russia’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta suggest that Avakov will now become a leading opposition figure and could become “the most dangerous opponent of the current government.”

Furthermore, Avakov’s announced replacement, Denys Monastyrskiy, formerly worked for Avakov associate and current deputy interior minister, Anton Herashchenko. Monastyrskiy is also a member of Zelensky’s own Servant of the People party, suggesting that Monastyrskiy was placed in the position as a compromise between Avakov and Zelensky.

Avakov’s resignation comes amid a profound domestic and foreign policy crisis. According to the news site Strana, Ukrainian political experts are expecting mass protests this fall due to rising gas and utility prices as well as an increase in consumer prices. The apparent attempts of Washington to ease tensions with Russia, including the recent summit between Russian president Vladimir Putin and US president Joe Biden, have further fueled conflicts within the Ukrainian oligarchy and the Zelensky government.

Whatever the details behind Avakov’s resignation, it is clear that he will continue to hold substantial political power within Ukraine due to his influence over the far right, which plays an oversized role within Ukraine as it is essential in carrying out the war in eastern Ukraine and crushing working class opposition to Kiev’s domestic policies.

Following his resignation, Ukraine’s parliamentary members lauded Avakov for having “saved Ukraine from the Russian world” and offered only mild criticisms of his time in office.

Avakov himself embodies the right-wing trajectory of the former Stalinist bureaucracy-turned-oligarchy and expresses it in its most rabid, nationalist form.

A former engineer, Avakov quickly transitioned into a capitalist following the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy in 1991. He made millions while creating a business network that included banks, natural gas fields, supermarket chains and factories.

In 2002, Avakov entered politics as an official in Kharkov’s City Council. He was later appointed governor of the province of Kharkov by former President Viktor Yushchenko in 2005 after Avakov had supported the US-backed “Orange Revolution” in 2004.

Avakov used his position to enrich himself and his own Bazis Bank by purchasing government assets in Kharkov through the bank. He was later forced to flee to Italy in 2011 after accusations of corruption arose following the election of Avakov’s political enemy, former President Viktor Yanukovych.

Avakov eventually returned to Ukraine following the US-backed coup against Yanukovych in February 2014 and was appointed Interior Minister in the newly created government.

Through it all, like the rest of Ukraine’s ruling oligarchy, Avakov has maintained his own personal wealth which is reportedly in the hundreds of millions. While Ukraine is Europe’s poorest country, Avakov is known for his love of luxury. In 2018, Avakov purchased a 26-room villa on the Mediterranean Sea coast of Italy worth more than $900,000.

US auto plant shutdowns spur unexpected rise in jobless claims

Patrick Martin

The number of American workers filing new claims for unemployment compensation jumped significantly for the week ending July 16, driven by shutdowns in auto production linked to a shortage of computer chips. The total rose by 51,000 from the previous week to 419,000, the highest weekly total since mid-May.

Auto workers leave the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Warren Truck Plant after the first work shift, Monday, May 18, 2020, in Warren, Mich. (Photo: AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

An additional 110,257 applications for benefits were filed through a temporary federal relief program for freelance, “gig” and other contingent workers, bringing the total number of all claims for state and federal benefits to more than half a million. The combined figure has remained stubbornly at that level or above despite claims of the Biden administration of a booming economic recovery.

Four states—Michigan, Kentucky, Texas and Missouri, all with large auto assembly complexes—accounted for the lion’s share of the increase in new applications for state jobless benefits. Michigan showed the most dramatic increase, up 175 percent, rocketing from 7,465 claims to 20,548. Nearly 13,000 of the new claims were in the auto industry, either in auto manufacturing and auto wholesale trade, according to the state labor department.

There are likely to be further auto-related increases in unemployment, from a combination of chip shortages and summer cutbacks due to changeover to production of new models. General Motors announced Wednesday it would cancel production at its Ft. Wayne, Indiana truck plant and cut production at the Flint Assembly plant because of the chip shortage.

In addition to the 13,000 new claims in Michigan, Texas saw a rise of 10,000 claims, Kentucky a rise of 9,000 and Missouri a rise of 5,500. There were smaller but substantial increases in the industrial states of Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The increase of 51,000 overall came as a surprise to financial markets, since a survey of economists in the Wall Street Journal had predicted a drop to 348,000, rather than a jump. It was the third week out of the last six in which new jobless claims have risen, undermining the complacent official forecasts of a steady downward trend in benefit claims.

The corporate media propaganda has focused on claims that federal supplemental benefits were too generous, and that workers were refusing to take new jobs because they would prefer to stay home and collect a check.

But despite two dozen states cutting off federal benefits in June and July, the number of claimants for jobless benefits remains much higher than pre-pandemic levels. This is not surprising, since there are 7 million fewer total jobs than before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

There are now reports in the corporate media grudgingly admitting that rising COVID-19 infections, rather than “excessive” jobless pay, account for the difficulty in bars, restaurants and retail shops finding the workers they need. Workers are simply unwilling to go back to low-paying, high-contact jobs where they face a growing risk of contracting a potentially deadly disease.

Four of the states with increased jobless claims—Missouri, Texas, Kentucky and Florida—are among those with the largest increases in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks.

Unemployed workers have been facing a stepped-up campaign, spearheaded by Republican governors and state legislatures, but backed tacitly, and on some occasions explicitly, by the Biden administration, to roll back the federal benefits even before their scheduled expiration on September 6.

In Michigan, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a measure to rescind the state’s acceptance of the $300-a-week federal supplemental benefits, but Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer vetoed it. Whitmer also declared an amnesty for the 650,000 jobless workers who were being targeted by her own administration to repay benefits that were deemed to be “excessive” because the workers had made errors in their applications.

The total number of workers with continuing claims for state unemployment compensation fell to 3.24 million, the lowest point since the pandemic struck in March 2020. The total receiving benefits under state and federal programs combined fell by 1.2 million to 12.57 million, in large measure because of the state-by-state campaign to end the federal supplemental benefit, as well as a program which provides benefits for freelance and “gig” workers who are usually ineligible for state benefits.

There are also millions of workers who have been jobless for so long that they will either lose benefits entirely or see their weekly payment substantially reduced, because they are reaching the end of their “benefit year.” Other workers have worked so little during the pandemic that when they do file claims of jobless benefits, they only qualify for a very small weekly amount, since the payment is based on their recent earnings.

About 4.1 million workers, more than a third of all those receiving benefits, were collecting payments from the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, the official name of the federal supplemental benefit, which ends in every state in the first week of September. Another 5.7 million gig and freelance workers receive benefits under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program.

At his town hall meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio Thursday night, hosted and broadcast by CNN, President Biden reiterated that there would be no extension to those benefits and that the September cutoff of both programs would take effect. “The economy is picking up significantly,” he told his audience at Mount St. Joseph University.

Asked whether the federal unemployment benefits supplement had been an incentive for workers not to take jobs they were offered, Biden responded, “Let’s assume it did, but it’s coming to an end.”

The president flatly rejected any change in the filibuster rule in the Senate, the anti-democratic procedure that allows a minority to block legislation that fails to obtain 60 out of 100 votes in the upper house. While previously acknowledging that the filibuster rule is a legacy of the racist Jim Crow period in the American South, Biden claimed that scrapping it would “throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done, nothing at all will get done.”

While urging unvaccinated people to get their shots to protect themselves from coronavirus, Biden spent much of his time professing his willingness to work with Republicans on the passage of a bipartisan infrastructure bill, which had been blocked only hours earlier by a Senate filibuster.

“I take my Republican colleagues at their word. I come from a tradition in the Senate, you shake your hand, and that’s it, you keep your word,” he said, adding that Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman was one of those he could trust.

Even the vetted audience at a Catholic college saw expressions of skepticism about this approach, with one questioner asking about the “utopian need to gain bipartisan support.”

Biden replied, “I may be the wrong guy to talk to.”

Rise in COVID-19 cases among children surge in major US hotspots

Renae Cassimeda

Florida, Missouri and Arkansas have become major hotspots of the fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic in the US. The severity of the Delta variant, expressed in a rise in cases, hospitalizations and deaths has not spared children and youth ages 0-17, who have been placed in grave danger as schools across the country have fully reopened for summer school and the upcoming fall semester.

Elementary school students in Godley, Texas, Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Human Health Services (HHS) shows the seven-day national average of cases has risen 52 percent, deaths have increased 18 percent and hospitalizations have increased by 20 percent. The dominance of the Delta variant coupled with low vaccination rates has caused cases to surge in recent weeks across the country, reaching levels not seen since the spring. Vaccinations have stagnated across the country, with many states reporting well under 50 percent of their populations fully vaccinated. The threat to the half the population who are still unvaccinated has not halted the lifting of restrictions in Democratic- or Republican-controlled states.

Florida is currently the epicenter of the pandemic in the US. On Thursday, the Florida Department of Health reported 12,647 new infections and 86 deaths. Between July 15 and July 21, the state reported 45,449 new cases of coronavirus, far surpassing other states. It has seen a major surge with over 3,000 cases among children reported from July 8 through July 15, resulting in a greater than 80 percent increase among youth age groups from the two weeks prior.

Significantly, the Florida Department of Health stopped reporting hospitalizations among children on June 24 obscuring the severity of cases among the thousands of children who have tested positive throughout the state in recent days.

Despite the alarming situation, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis continues to downplay the dangers of the pandemic. In a statement Thursday, DeSantis vowed there would be no mask mandates in schools or COVID-related lockdowns this fall. In response to the recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) earlier this week that all students two or older and school staff wear masks, DeSantis said, “We’re not doing that in Florida. Ok? We need our kids to breathe.”

Earlier this week DeSantis spoke of the deadly virus in nonchalant language, declaring that cases will naturally drop in August claiming, “It’s a seasonal virus, and this is the seasonal pattern it follows in the Sun Belt states.”

In Missouri, on Wednesday health officials recorded over 2,000 new COVID-19 cases for the second time in seven days, as well as eight new deaths. More than 1,500 hospitalizations have been reported, up almost 50 percent over two weeks ago and remaining inpatient hospital bed capacity hovers around 21 percent.

Among children in Missouri, 1,356 cases were reported during the week of July 8 through July 15. A group of 100 Kansas City-area physicians signed a letter calling on school districts to require masks for all students under the age of 12, who are not currently eligible for the vaccine. Districts can decide whether to mandate masks, but regardless, full reopening plans with entirely inadequate mitigation and crowded classrooms will continue.

Missouri Governor Mike Parson has responded to the surge by announcing an insulting $9 million COVID-19 vaccine incentive program on Wednesday, offering 900 residents who get the vaccine a chance to win $10,000 in cash or $10,000 toward education savings. There are no significant efforts being made to overcome vaccine hesitancy through educational campaigns.

In Arkansas, 1,875 new cases were reported on Tuesday bringing the current number of active cases throughout the state to 11,475. Hospitalizations have also been on the rise, increasing by 49 since Monday. On Saturday, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock announced that its hospital, a public facility ranked among the best in the state, was full.

On Tuesday, Arkansas Children’s Hospital reported 12 COVID-19 hospitalizations among children, with half in critical condition diagnosed with COVID-pneumonia or on ventilation support.

In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Dr. Rick Barr, Chief Clinical Officer at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, remarked on the virulence of the Delta variant among children. He said, “The Delta variant is different than what we were seeing. We have 12 children admitted to the hospital now with COVID, that’s triple our usual numbers we saw during the previous months of the pandemic, and they seem to be much sicker.”

Arkansas Secretary of Health Dr. Jose Romero warned in an interview with CNN Tuesday that one of his “major fears” is the virus spreading in schools this fall as children return to in-person instruction. Romero emphasized, “We’re seeing outbreaks in sites that we didn’t see last year. So we’re seeing closures in day cares, we’re seeing closures in summer camps, and all that leads me to believe that in a setting where you don’t have strict mitigation that it will spread very, very quickly in our schools.”

According to a weekly report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children’s Hospital Association, cases among children nearly doubled across the US July 1 through July 15, from 12,102 to 23,551. The report also notes a marked increase in hospitalizations among children with an increase of 236 cases over the same time period.

The report also highlights the vast limitations of state reporting of COVID-19 data among children. Just 11 states currently report the age distribution of tests, and only 23 states plus New York City provide the age distribution of COVID-19 hospitalizations. Seven states do not report the ages of COVID-19 deaths. Notably, and despite a major surge in COVID-19 cases across the US, Nebraska stopped reporting COVID-19 data entirely on June 30, and Iowa stopped updating its child testing data on July 15.

This underreporting reveals an underestimation of the scope and severity of the virus’ impact and points to the deliberate attempts by state and federal government officials to normalize the pandemic. The working class is told they and their families must live, and die, with the virus.

Over the course of the past year and a half, there has been no federal program to track infections tied to schools. All reporting has been left to the local level. Districts have made sure to portray K-12 schools as being safe havens from COVID-19 spread due to entirely inadequate testing and contact tracing protocols. It has largely been up to independent voices, such as Florida data analyst and founder of the COVID Monitor, Rebekah Jones, who has been pursued by DeSantis and Florida officials for exposing COVID-19 cases in K-12 schools across the US and the dangers of in-person learning amid the ongoing pandemic.

In a press brief last week, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky noted, “This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated. We are seeing outbreaks of cases in parts of the country that have low vaccination coverage, because unvaccinated people are at risk.” On Wednesday President Biden spoke at a CNN town hall noting that the CDC may come out with recommendations for children under 12 to wear masks in schools and noted that this age group will be eligible for the vaccine “soon,” emphasizing, “I do not tell any scientist what they should do.”

The Biden administration has doubled down on efforts to push an estimated 56 million children in K-12 schools into crowded, poorly ventilated classrooms this fall where the vast majority of students will be unvaccinated. Currently only 25 percent of children ages 12-15 are vaccinated, and 37 percent of young people 16-17 are fully vaccinated. Children under 12 have yet to receive one dose of the vaccine.

Global school reopenings pose massive threat to children

Evan Blake

The global surge of the COVID-19 Delta variant, the most infectious so far, poses particular dangers to children who remain largely unvaccinated globally. Well aware of these risks, governments worldwide are nevertheless deepening their drive to fully open schools for the fall semester.

Peyton Copeland, 5, was hospitalized with Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C). Photo: (Twtiter/@Cleavon_MD via Tara Copeland)

In Brazil, where the Gamma variant has been dominant and the Delta variant is now spreading rapidly, a July 20 report from Uol noted that COVID-19 has already killed 1,581 young people aged 10 to 19 in just the first six months of 2021, becoming the leading cause of death by disease for that age group. An additional 1,187 children under 10 years old have succumbed to the virus since the start of the pandemic, with Brazil experiencing the highest number of child fatalities from COVID-19 in the world.

In the UK, where daily new cases have skyrocketed by over 1,600 percent in the past two months, one in seven of all UK students, 1.05 million children, are presently either infected with COVID-19 or in isolation due to exposure to the virus. Childrens’ hospitals are filling up, with roughly 30 more children hospitalized with severe symptoms each day. Studies conducted in the UK have found that as many as 20 percent of children develop Long COVID, in which symptoms persist months after an initial infection, while a new study has found that roughly 5 percent of children hospitalized with COVID-19 develop brain or nerve complications.

On Wednesday, the United States recorded 56,525 new COVID-19 cases, the highest official tally of any country and an increase of 565 percent in just one month as the Delta variant has become dominant. Last week, cases among children under 12 years old surged by 87 percent in Florida. Dr. Joseph Pernot, the chief medical officer at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, told FOX 13 News, “Our last seven days, we’ve seen more patients than any other seven days since the pandemic began. So we’re seeing a dramatic increase in kids.”

Children’s hospitals in Arkansas, Missouri and a growing number of states are also reporting the highest numbers of children hospitalized with COVID-19 since last winter’s surge. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, for the week ending July 15 there were 23,551 child COVID-19 cases, nearly doubling from the week prior, while an additional 236 children were hospitalized that week.

Despite the surge of infections and hospitalizations among young people, the Biden administration is pressing ahead with its campaign to fully open all schools this fall. Two weeks ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new guidelines promoting this policy while encouraging vaccinated teachers and students not to wear masks. According to a recent survey, roughly 30 percent of the 200 largest school districts in the US will not offer any remote learning option, including the first- and third-largest districts in New York City and Chicago, which serve a combined 1.4 million children.

On Thursday, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky stated at a White House press briefing, “The delta variant is more aggressive and much more transmissible than previously circulating strains.” She added, “This virus has no incentive to let up, and it remains in search of the next vulnerable person to infect.”

Walensky failed to reconcile these statements with the reality that roughly 42 million school-aged children remain unvaccinated, with no vaccines expected to be approved for children under 12 years old until the start of 2022 at the earliest. When this was noted in an interview last week, Walensky stated callously, “I remain emphatic that our schools need to open in the fall. They need to open for full, in-person learning.”

Speaking at a CNN town hall on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden said that children under 12 years old “should probably be wearing a mask in school,” while those over 12 years old who are vaccinated “shouldn’t wear a mask.”

Biden went on to directly lie about breakthrough infections and deaths among fully vaccinated people, stating, “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” In fact, the CDC has already logged at least 791 deaths and over 5,000 hospitalization from COVID-19 among fully vaccinated people in the US.

This was not Biden’s first time lying about the pandemic. At a CNN town hall in February, Biden lied directly to a second-grader, saying “Kids don't get … COVID very often. It’s unusual for that to happen.”

The same lies are being told by the ruling class in every country to carry out the reckless reopening of schools. In the face of mounting opposition among parents, students, educators and the broader working class, the fascistic Bolsonaro administration is spearheading a drive to fully reopen schools across Brazil in the coming weeks, with the support of state governors from all political parties. In São Paulo, the largest school district in South America with roughly two million students, all students will be expected to attend in person with spacing between students reduced from 1.5 meters to one meter.

The global character of the drive to fully open schools arises out of a common objective necessity for the capitalist class to send working class parents back to unsafe factories and other workplaces to produce corporate profits.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this week that roughly 9.5 million Americans were unemployed and looking for work in June. Economists note that some of the primary factors behind continued high rates of unemployment are a lack of access to affordable child care, safety concerns over COVID-19, and the extension of federal unemployment benefits.

The school reopening drive coincides with the ending of the federal moratorium on evictions on July 31 and the cutoff of federal unemployment benefits on September 6, placing enormous financial pressures on parents to send their children to unsafe schools and return themselves to unsafe workplaces.

In response to this ruling class offensive, the pro-capitalist American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA), and their counterparts globally, continue to facilitate the campaign to fully open schools. NEA President Becky Pringle recently stated, “There is no substitute for in-person learning,” while AFT President Randi Weingarten stated as early as May, “There is no doubt: Schools must be open. In person. Five days a week.”

In justifying these policies, the politicians and union bureaucrats refer to the very real mental health crisis facing youth. But their feigned concern for the well-being of children is a smokescreen to provide cover for their homicidal policies. These same figures have said nothing of the fact that the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that roughly 1.5 million children worldwide have lost a parent or guardian from COVID-19, with an untold number of these deaths attributable to the spread of the virus through schools.

The United States Underestimates China’s Economic Challenge at Its Own Peril

Richard Wolff

The economy of the People’s Republic of China has been growing much faster than that of the United States for decades. So too has China’s average real wage. China is now the world’s second superpower, catching up to the United States economically if not (yet) militarily. Its political influence grew alongside its GDP. Where once the chief scapegoat for the U.S. was the USSR/Russia, China has replaced the latter in that position. The global tourist industry courts Chinese big spenders.

China’s technical advances continue to amaze and impress most of the world.

The basic story here replicates in large part the story of the United States and the British Empire. The United States was once a mere colony, humiliated as well as economically abused by its colonizer. China suffered similarly at the hands of its colonizing abusers, although it was able to avoid formal colonial status, except for some enclaves. Resentment and bitterness accumulated in the American revolutionary break from its colonial status in the late 18th century. The same happened in China in the middle of the 20th. In the War of 1812, the new United States proved that the British Empire could not undo the American Revolution. In the Korean War, the new People’s Republic of China proved that the U.S. empire could not undo the Chinese Revolution.

Independence unleashed rapid economic growth in the United States, which caught up to and overtook its colonizer economically across the 19th century. World War I marked the reversal of roles between the United States and the UK. On many levels—political and cultural as well as economic—the dominator and the dominated changed places. Across the 20th century, the United States displaced (and itself replaced) the British and other European empires to become the global hegemon. After stumbling badly in the Great Depression, it responded with the New Deal’s burst of social democracy. On that basis, the United States undertook to make the rest of the world copy what it labeled a “people’s” or a “welfare” capitalism that represented the epitome of human development. By the beginning of the 21st century, critics labeled UK Prime Minister Tony Blair as “America’s poodle” for his slavish subordination to the George W. Bush regime in the United States.

China’s 1949 revolution likewise unleashed a stunning economic recovery from the sequential scourges of Japanese invasion, World War II, and the civil war. The economic recovery enabled a political maturation that transformed the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Republic of China from disciples of the Soviet Party and of the USSR into equals with their own agenda, values, and interpretation of Marxism. Culturally, China gained a remarkable self-confidence as an awakening giant retaking its hegemonic position in Asia and beyond that in the entire world. Changing global conditions and a certain exhaustion of the recovery phase of its development led China to change course with Mao Zedong’s passing. It crafted a new Chinese economy and labeled it socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Not only did that economy achieve the unprecedented growth feats mentioned above, but it also did so without most of the foreign aid given to many other developing nations. The active enmity of the United States imposed that deprivation on China. It thereby also made self-reliance a crucial basis for China’s development. For the last half-century, China has been a model of how a determined developing nation can mobilize its surplus for development. China’s workers produced a surplus used primarily to build and expand the Chinese economy via huge investments in infrastructure, industrial capacity, productivity growth, education, and research and development. This deliberate investment program continued even after China opened itself to (1) foreign private capitalist investments, (2) private Chinese capitalist enterprise development and growth, and (3) partnerships between them. The Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese state apparatus controlled and maneuvered the resulting acceleration of surplus production to tilt investments toward the growth goals set by the party and the state. China’s surplus was also used, secondarily, to reproduce the complex class structures of private and state enterprises and of foreign and domestic private capitalists, and finally to undertake the regulation of markets and governmental economic planning.

Today, the challenge offered by China to the United States and indeed the capitalist world economy is a model that departs sharply from the private laissez-faire model of capitalism that has prevailed in global capitalism to date. In the latter model, the government is called in (à la Keynes) only when crises hit and threaten private capitalism. And then the government’s economic interventions are constricted in scope and reach and are temporary in time. Minimal government regulation and minimal direct production of goods and services by government are the key rules.

In contrast, in China, the Communist Party and the state intervene much more in economic affairs by regulating private businesses (foreign and domestic) more and also by having the state own and operate businesses. What results for the party and the state is an overarching control of economic development. That control, in its extent and duration, far exceeds the governments’ role in western Europe, North America, and Japan. Having the party and state as collaborative entities pushing determined policies enables the regular mobilization of most private and public resources to achieve agreed goals. Chief among the goals has been economic development to escape the endemic poverty of southern Asia. The mobilization to stop the spread of COVID-19 via lockdowns in Wuhan and elsewhere was another example. So too was the achievement of technical parity with and sometimes superiority to the United States in many fields.

Keynesian economics enjoyed a meteoric rise within the discipline of economics when it enabled government policies clearly to assist capitalism’s survival and recovery from the 1930s Great Depression. Neoclassical economics could return to dominance within the profession in the 1970s when it enabled government policies (neoliberalism) clearly to assist in rolling back the Keynesian regulations of and constraints on private capitalists (such as the New Deal and social democracy). China’s remarkable economic growth over the last 30-40 years will likely provoke and be further enabled by corresponding developments in the discipline of economics. These will entail the rediscovery, embrace, and strengthening of governments’ economic interventions as means to achieve socially prioritized goals.

As denials of what China continues to accomplish economically lose their rhetorical power, attention likely will turn increasingly to the Chinese model, to exploring whether and how the capitalisms of western Europe, North America, and Japan can learn from and coexist with China. Demonizations and threats (a new cold war) directed at real and false political and cultural problems in China will also likely fade in favor of mutual accommodation with China. Chinese leaders have made clear their view that they have accommodated and will continue to accommodate trade with and investments by private capitalists alongside and interacting with enterprises owned and run by the state. That was an engine of their remarkable development, and they see no reason to change that approach.

It is rather parts of the United States that consider a military confrontation with China as needed and rationally possible now. If it happens, the Chinese will see it for what the United States has in fact opposed, namely the continuation of the power of the Chinese Communist Party and the social structure over which it and the Chinese state preside. The Chinese leadership has said it will fight that totally.

China has more than four times the population of the United States. Its economy’s total output may well surpass that of the United States in a few years. Its global political influence is rising fast. Allies of the United States must increasingly rethink their foreign relations in light of China’s ascendancy. Meanwhile, the economic problems of the United States (such as instability cycles, inequalities of wealth and income, political divisions, and explosive debt accumulation) mount. The ability of the United States to change China, to move it away from the path and structures that took it so far and so fast, has proved less than impressive to virtually everyone who pays attention.

Ratcheting up demonizations of China seems a poor and likely counterproductive response. Yes, it does replicate the demonization of the USSR that served effectively to cover the rollback of the New Deal. But for the United States to roll back another country’s progressive period is a project quite different from doing that domestically. Also, the conditions (economic, political, and cultural) of today’s world differ drastically from those after 1945. Yet Biden’s repetition of post-1945 Cold War policies is much closer to that original than his economic policies are to those of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And that will prove to be exactly the reverse of what today’s crisis needs.

COVID in Malaysia

Chandra Muzaffar

Malaysia

The significant increase in Covid 19 infections in our country in the last one week has prompted concerned Malaysians to ask the authorities to re-strategize their approach towards the fight against the spread of the virus. A total lockdown, some feel, where most movements are severely curbed is not the solution. They prefer a targeted lockdown which is focused upon specific areas or clusters. Since infection numbers are increasing at an alarming rate the blanket approach they are convinced is not working. The proponents of the total approach argue that only such an approach will break the rapid transmission of the virus. Besides, the accelerated transmission is caused by a new variant of the virus which will happen even if a targeted approach is adopted.

On the question of vaccinations there is also diversity of opinions. Since factory workers are among those who have been infected in large numbers, they should have been given the vaccine first according to some critics. The government on the other hand prioritized senior citizens and those with disabilities, apart from front liners such as health workers who were at the head of the queue.

The distribution of aid packages has also sparked some differences. The government initiated a range of aid packages which on the whole appear to have reached their targets. However there are others who feel that the victims of the economic crisis would have been better served if assistance had been consolidated and delivered through a single channel.

These differences have been further complicated by the old and new media. There are media outlets and media commentators and opinion makers who are clearly aligned to certain political actors and entities. The positions they take on different aspects of the Covid 19 crisis and their solutions are more often than not conditioned by their affiliations. These biases are more pronounced today than before partly because political alignments are more rigid in the current political scenario.

This is what one should expect in a robust democracy. However differences of opinion should not lead to extreme positions which are not supported by facts or realities on the ground. An example of this is the reckless description of Malaysia as a failed state in a foreign journal which was quickly echoed by a handful of unthinking Malaysians including some veteran journalists and former politicians. The notion of “a failed state” has become political science jargon largely through its misuse. Right from the outset it was directed at one’s ideological adversary though the term has certain features which are more or less widely accepted. The inability to exercise effective territorial jurisdiction, enforce law and order, and provide for the necessities of life over a long period of time are some of the characteristics of a failed state. By no stretch of the imagination is Malaysia such a state.

Avoiding extreme stances aside, a discourse on Covid 19 and its solutions would also benefit from a willingness to listen and even learn from the views of the other. An inclusive rather than an exclusive attitude which accommodates the other would strengthen the discourse. An adherence to scientific methodology would be of immense help. Respect for empirical evidence would also be an asset.

There is another reason why a rational attitude in formulating solutions to the Covid 19 crisis is imperative. Solutions are being propounded in Malaysia and elsewhere which are actually designed to undermine our societies. A brief look at what transpired in Cuba on 11 July 2021 would be instructive. Taking advantage of the economic difficulties facing the Cuban people, the United States using stooges and proxies in Cuba tried to foment riots which it hoped would create instability leading to the fall of the government. The Cuban government and people thwarted the diabolical move. Let it not be forgotten that Cuba has not only managed the Covid crisis reasonably well; it has also manufactured two vaccines on its own and exported them to some other poor countries in Latin America and Africa.

Of course, the Malaysian situation is different from Cuba though there are some parallels. Our management of the crisis is being constantly criticised by some of the same media outlets from the West. While some of the criticisms are justified there is also a systematic attempt to distort and exaggerate what is happening to give the impression that there is mass disaffection with the government. For instance, I have asked media personnel to give me information on how widespread the “white flag “protest is; its geographical locations ; the socio-economic backgrounds of the families and individuals involved ; their access to,( or lack of access to), state and community aid programmes and so forth and yet they have not been able to respond.

What is obvious is that the loudest condemnations of the state’s handling of the crisis are coming from opposition politicians and their sympathisers and supporters in the media, among NGOs, in cultural and ethnic organisations, within universities and the like. The motives behind these condemnations become suspect when we realise that at the same time the US drive to tighten its grip upon Southeast Asia is getting stronger. This is related to the US’s primary goal in the region at this point in time which is to curb and curtail China’s phenomenal rise. The US elite knows that Southeast Asia which contains two vital waterways — the South China Sea and the Straits of Melaka — is that one crucial neighbourhood that is essential to China’s global ascendancy. Which is why the US is determined to frustrate China’s dominant role in the region. Control over Malaysia in particular which resides at the centre of the region and is contiguous to both waterways is important for a superpower with its hegemonic agenda.

It explains the role that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) — through its own admission — played in promoting a change of regime in the 2018 General Election in Malaysia. The NED it is worth observing is an important instrument of US hegemonic power whose overt agenda mirrors the covert role of the CIA. It is known to have funded a number of NGOs and media outlets in Malaysia. The positions adopted by these outfits in recent months in the midst of the dual health and economic crises provide some indication of how they are trying to shape the future of Malaysian society.

Eternal vigilance Malaysians should never forget is the price we have to pay to protect our sovereignty and preserve our independence .