Imperialist pressures on Southeast Asia to free up supply chains, amid COVID catastrophe

John Braddock

As they struggle with some of the world’s worst COVID-19 outbreaks, countries across Southeast Asia are under pressure, from the imperialist powers and manufacturing conglomerates, to remove COVID-19 control measures and free up crippled global supply chains.

An article in Fortune on September 13 declared that Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore have realized “they can no longer afford their strict COVID control measures.” While low vaccination rates make many vulnerable to the Delta variant, their “stretched” state finances and “dwindling monetary policy firepower” mean lockdowns are “less tenable by the day,” the magazine intoned.

A man breaches through a barricade to get in an alley in Vung Tau, Vietnam, Monday, Sept. 20, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Hau Dinh]

While governments have begun winding back protective measures, finance capital and big business are making sure that they realise the necessity of “opening up.” In what amounts to a threat, Fortune declared that addressing global supply-chain blockages is vital “to avoid dampening foreign investor appetite for the dynamic region.”

Amid escalating geo-strategic tensions, Washington is preparing an offensive over control of essential resources. The “Quad” meeting of leaders from the US, Australia, India and Japan last weekend, led by US President Biden, committed to bolster supply chain “security” for semiconductors, components and software, to reduce dependence on China, as part of the build-up for war.

An article in Forbes on September 12 described semiconductors, which are vital for military equipment, as “the most essential physical resource of the 21st century,” and warned the fight over access to semiconductors is the main “economic factor” that could trigger war between the US and China.

Currently, the uncontrolled spread of the Delta COVID-19 variant is producing shortages of semiconductors and computer chips, disrupting production and driving up the prices of cars and electronic goods, with a growing impact on the global economy.

A surge of COVID-19 cases in Vietnam and Malaysia, has contributed to the shortage of computer chips and vehicle parts. Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker, announced that it was slashing production for September, from 900,000 units to 540,000. Other auto companies, including Ford, General Motors, Jaguar Land Rover and China’s Geely have had to cut production in plants in Europe, Japan, the US and China.

The threat to profits is substantial. The WSWS reported in April that the global auto industry could see a $US61 billion drop in revenue in 2021. Ford is expecting that shutdowns will cut profits by $1 billion from $2.5 billion in the first half of the year, while GM revealed pre-tax profits could be hit by $2 billion. The global chip shortage will last for at least another year, according to Flex, one of the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturers.

The Wall Street Journal reported on September 17 that the surge in COVID-19 cases has also “throttled ports,” and locked down plantations and processors, sparking extended disruptions of raw materials, including palm oil, coffee and tin.

The Delta strain has become rampant in recent months, with the daily death rate in many Southeast Asian countries exceeding the global average. There is growing pressure by big business to resurrect profits, by treating COVID-19 as endemic and imposing the homicidal policy of “learning to live with the virus.”

Singapore, a global trade and travel hub, ranks among the most vaccinated, at above 80 percent of the population fully vaccinated. After shutting its borders in March 2020, Singapore entered the deepest recession in its history, with the government spending $US100 billion, or 20 percent of GDP, to shore up the economy.

However, despite the high vaccination rate, there has been a resurgence of the virus. As of September 25, Singapore reported 1,443 new COVID-19 cases, the fifth consecutive day new infections have exceeded 1,000, and bringing the total to nearly 86,000 cases. And there have been 21 deaths so far in September, a new monthly record.

Malaysia and Vietnam, which play critical roles in producing electronics, as well as packaging and testing components, used in everything from vehicles to smartphones, are facing their worst outbreaks since the pandemic began.

Vietnam has become an increasingly important part of the tech supply chain, with companies from Samsung Electronics to Apple suppliers relocating from China, amid rising costs and trade and geopolitical risks. Early in the pandemic, Vietnam remained mostly open, allowing Intel to increase production volume by 30 percent, in the first half of 2020.

Beginning in April, however, the government imposed strict lockdowns to contain the new Delta surge, with strict stay-at-home orders in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. Samsung was forced to cut back production at one of its big electronics factories, after an outbreak sparked demands to find accommodation for thousands of workers at the industrial complex.

The trade ministry warned that Vietnam risked losing overseas customers, because of shuttered factories. The European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam estimated that 18 percent of its members had relocated part of their production to other countries, to ensure their supply chains were protected, with more expected to follow.

Bloomberg reported that the new rules had “riled exporters” as lockdowns impacted manufacturers and businesses, while failing to halt Delta’s spread. Vietnam is now testing a strategy of limited target lockdowns, which has seen Hanoi instituting travel checkpoints, as officials vary restrictions based on virus risk in different areas of the city.

Vietnam, however, is reporting record-high infection rates, with new cases averaging 7,950 per day and deaths surging to 360 daily. In total, 263,543 infections have been reported in one month, according to Johns Hopkins. Vietnam has recorded 747,000 cases and over 18,000 deaths.

The outbreak has seriously impacted Vietnam’s health care system. Just 7.5 percent of its population is fully vaccinated, while 30 percent of 98 million people have at least one jab. The slow vaccine rollout is due, in part, to the fact that wealthy nations garnered the majority of early vaccine supplies.

In Malaysia, COVID-19 infections are also soaring. The country recently imposed its fourth lockdown, as it reported consecutive daily records of coronavirus cases. Malaysia has one of the highest infection rates and deaths per capita in the world. Daily new infections are currently running at nearly 16,000, with a total of 2.17 million cases. The death toll stands at more than 25,000.

More than 50 international chip vendors operate fabrication plants in Malaysia, which is also home to semiconductor packaging and testing facilities. The global supply of tin, used to connect computer chips to circuit boards, has been hit by interruptions at a major smelter in Malaysia. Tin exports decreased 29 percent in June, from a year earlier. Restrictions have also prevented migrant laborers from traveling to Malaysia’s plantations, raising prices of widely used palm oil.

With Malaysia’s 2021 growth forecast set to halve to 3–4 percent, companies were allowed to keep operating, with 60 percent of their workforces, during partial lockdowns. Factories and workers’ crowded dormitories became major transmission sites for the virus. Businesses will now be able to resume full operation, when more than 80 percent of their workers are fully vaccinated. Meanwhile, vaccines are being directed to economically vital regions, rather than poorer residential areas.

Indonesia, with the region’s largest population, persists as an epicentre of infections and deaths. Yet in the capital Jakarta, a drop in case numbers to 2,500 per day from 50,000 has seen authorities junking the “red zone” status and partial lockdowns in many city districts and declaring the disaster over.

Thailand announced last month that it will shift away from a COVID-zero strategy, to one that tolerates the virus, amid its own wave of new infections and a lagging vaccine campaign. More than 1.5 million people have been infected with over 16,000 deaths, mostly since April. The government has lifted most of its limited lockdown measures, in a bid to revive tourism and manufacturing.

Under conditions of deepening poverty and a public health catastrophe, broad political opposition is erupting. In Malaysia last month, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin was forced to resign. The failure of the government to contain the virus, together with the worsening economic and social crisis, fueled protests by young people and a strike by overworked junior doctors.

Street protests against the Thai military-backed regime, that predate COVID, have evolved into pandemic-related rallies. The latest wave of protests began at the end of June, and has escalated over the past two months, despite police crackdowns. More than 10 demonstrations were broken up with force last month.

Sixty million in US relied on food banks in 2020

Chase Lawrence

Sixty million people in the United States, nearly 1 in 5, received assistance from food banks and similar organizations in 2020 according to the nonprofit Feeding America, representing a 50 percent increase over the prior year. According to a research brief by The Conversation, the sharpest increase in the rate of food insufficiency was among so-called middle-income households, households that make $50,000 to $75,000 per year, rising from 0.98 percent to 1.48 percent.

Cars line up for food at the Utah Food Bank’s mobile food pantry at the Maverik Center Friday, April 24, 2020, in West Valley City, Utah [Credit: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer]

Food insufficiency increased among Americans at all income levels according to The Conversation’s analysis of Census Bureau survey data after April 23. American households earning less than $50,000 have the highest level of food insufficiency, with each lower income bracket tracking with a higher level, with 4.4 percent of those under $25,000 food insecure. That is, this is a problem that affects primarily the working class.

Food insufficiency, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), “is a more severe condition than food insecurity and measures whether a household generally has enough to eat. In this way, food insufficiency is closer in severity to very low food security than to overall food insecurity.”

As defined by the USDA, “Food insecurity is the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways.” The USDA reports that overall food insecurity has rose in the US from 9.5 percent of the population as of April 23, 2020, to 13.4 percent as of December 21, 2020.

As of the end of August, according to the US Census Bureau’s weekly Household Pulse survey, more than 7 percent of all households and 9 percent of households with children said they sometimes or often did not have enough to eat.

Feeding America also projected that 54 million Americans didn’t have enough food to eat in 2020, a 46 percent increase over 2019.

As of March 2021 more than 42 million Americans received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, an increase of 5 million from the previous March.

While Congress passed a 15 percent increase to SNAP benefits at the end of last year, which it later extended, this is set to expire September 30, the end of FY 2021. A reassessment of the USDA’s “Thrifty Food Plan,” which is used to determine SNAP benefits, is set to take effect October 1 as a result of the 2018 Farm Bill, passed under the Trump administration, which stipulates a readjustment of payments for the first time since 2006 according to the USDA.

The Thrifty Food Plan will translate into an average $11 monthly increase over the current assistance program, from $240 to $251, despite the end of some federal benefits to SNAP, though with inflation factored in, using 2020 to 2021 numbers on the Minneapolis Fed’s inflation calculator, it will actually amount to a 68 cent decrease. The average amount will drastically decrease in 2022 to $169 a month before inflation if remaining federal pandemic assistance provisions for SNAP are allowed to expire according to USDA, though the decrease in real terms is likely to be far larger as inflation is expected to continue and accelerate.

According to the key findings section on a USDA study released before July 4 this year “88 percent of SNAP participants reported facing some type of barrier to achieving a healthy diet throughout the month.”

The second point states that, “The most common barrier overall, reported by 61 percent of SNAP participants, was the affordability of foods that are part of a healthy diet.”

The annual projected cost of the Thrifty Food Plan is a mere $20 billion, one-sixth the cost of the $120 billion transferred every month from the Fed to Wall Street, or about 2.8 percent of the $715 billion 2022 US military budget being requested by the Biden administration.

Furthermore, food prices are skyrocketing. The Consumer Price Index for food has increased to 2.7 percent for 2021 compared to 2020, with large increases seen in some food groups.

USDA forecasts for wholesale beef, farm-level eggs, farm-level wheat and flour prices were revised upwards this month. Beef is predicted to increase between 17 and 20 percent in 2021 based on data currently available this month, with the same for pork, with wheat rising between 33 and 36 percent and poultry with a 16 to 19 percent increase.

This, along with the disastrous job situation where upwards of 7.5 million unemployed workers have been cut off jobless benefits, millions are at risk of being thrown out of their homes with the lapsing of the national eviction moratorium, accompanied with skyrocketing home and rental costs that are bound to drive both an immiseration and radicalization of the working class.

The growth of hunger during the pandemic is a damning exposure of the incapability of capitalism to provide for even the most basic of social needs and an objective expression of the need for the working class to expropriate the wealth of the capitalist oligarchs and to put it towards the needs of the vast majority of the population.

Failure to fight COVID-19 pandemic has caused record fall in life expectancy

Patrick Martin

A report released Monday by Oxford University and published in its International Journal of Epidemiology finds that the decrease in life expectancy for 29 countries, including the United States, Chile and 27 countries in Europe, is the greatest in modern history.

US Army Capt. Corrine Brown, a critical care nurse, administers an anti-viral medication to a COVID-19 positive patient at Kootenai Health regional medical center during response operations in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, on Sept. 6, 2021. [Credit: Michael H. Lehman/DVIDS U.S. Navy/via AP]

For Western Europe, the decrease in life expectancy is the worst since the years of the Second World War, 1939–1945, and its immediate aftermath.

For Eastern Europe, the decrease in life expectancy is the worst since the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989–1991, which led to the restoration of capitalism and the dismantling of public health care systems and other social support.

For the United States, the decrease in life expectancy is the worst since official records began to be kept, in 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression. In other words, COVID-19 is the worst calamity to befall American society in living memory.

The declines in life expectancy averaged more than a full year across the 29 countries studied. The biggest decrease, 2.2 years, was for men in the United States, double the average across the 29 countries.

This massive social retrogression is caused not by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but by the refusal of the ruling classes in these countries to conduct any serious struggle against it. Rather than seeking to suppress the pandemic and eliminate the virus, they have carried out a policy of “profits first,” maintaining capitalist production at all costs, including that of human life.

In some countries the slogan has been “herd immunity,” the brazenly pro-virus policy adopted in Sweden, Britain and elsewhere in Europe. In the United States, the Trump administration followed the same policy, under a different slogan: “The cure can’t be worse than the disease.”

The same policy is now being pursued almost everywhere, from Biden’s America to Macron’s France and Merkel’s Germany, under a slightly different refrain; it is necessary to “live with the virus.” This means in practice that countless people will die by the virus.

The study was carried out by scientists at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford, who created a database of life expectancy figures from all 29 countries which was then analyzed to determine trends from 2019 to mid-2020 based on sex and age. In only three Scandinavian countries was there any improvement. In all others, there were declines for both men and women, and for over and under 60 years of age.

According to the study, “The magnitude of these declines offset most gains in life expectancy in the 5 years prior to the pandemic. Out of 29 countries, females from 15 and males from 10 countries ended up with lower life expectancy at birth in 2020 than in 2015…”

There are significant differences between the two main regions covered by the report, Europe and the United States. In Europe, deaths among people aged over 60 were the main factor in reducing life expectancy. In the United States, however, “Notably increased midlife mortality (0–59 years) was the largest contributor to life-expectancy losses between 2019 and 2020 in the USA among males.”

This is only one of several findings that indicate that the working class in the United States, and particularly male workers, have suffered a disproportionate impact from the pandemic.

The report found: “Despite having a younger population, the USA also has higher co-morbidities in these age groups compared with European populations with greater vulnerability to COVID-19. Other factors, such as those linked to unevenness in healthcare access in the working-age population and structural racism, may also help to explain the increased mortality.”

These comorbidities include the higher rates of heart disease, cancer and diabetes, in many cases linked to stress in the workplace and overwork, the impact of alcoholism, opioid addiction and other forms of drug abuse brought on by similar causes.

There is also a crowding-out effect from the swamping of health care facilities by COVID patients, as those seeking care for heart disease, cancer and other conditions may not be able to gain access. The report notes, “Emerging evidence further indicates that non-COVID-19 excess mortality was concentrated in working ages.”

The Oxford report did not go further and examine the impact of economic inequality on life expectancy and COVID death rates. But recent data from a study in Ontario, Canada, found that those in the lowest income bracket had a five-times higher COVID infection rate in the highest income bracket.

While the virus which causes COVID-19 does not care whether its human target is rich or poor, the same cannot be said of the profit-based social order which determines which people will be exposed to the deadly virus and for how long, and how healthy and resistant to infection they will be. Nor is the profit-driven health care system indifferent to class and wealth when deciding what treatment a COVID-infected person will receive.

Working people in every country entered the coronavirus pandemic at a disadvantage compared to their capitalist exploiters, who had greater access to health resources and fewer comorbidities before the pandemic struck, and greater ability to isolate and protect themselves when millions were falling sick and dying.

In particular, once the pandemic hit, male workers were more likely to be working in industries deemed to be “essential,” (other than health care itself), such as meatpacking and other food production, warehousing and logistics, electricity and other utilities, and trucking and transportation.

The Oxford report concludes with this warning about the long-term implications of the pandemic: “Although COVID-19 might be seen as a transient shock to life expectancy, the evidence of potential long-term morbidity due to long COVID and impacts of delayed care for other illnesses as well as health effects and widening inequalities stemming from the social and economic disruption of the pandemic suggest that the scars of the COVID-19 pandemic on population health may be longer-lasting.”

The Oxford report is based on analysis of data collected before the production of vaccines and the onset of mass vaccination. But the vaccination of less than half of the world’s population, and that very unevenly, ranging from more than 70 percent in China and parts of the industrial West, to 5 percent or less in Africa, has not halted the spread of SARS-CoV-2, and the virus continues to mutate.

The study noted that 1.8 million died worldwide of COVID-19 in 2020, without making the obvious warning that the death toll is far higher in 2021—2.9 million so far, for a global total of 4.7 million—so the decline in life expectancy is likely to be even greater this year.

The United States, for example, hit 342,000 total deaths by the end of 2020. Another 365,000 have died so far in 2021, with more than a quarter of the year remaining. At the current pace, the death toll in 2021 would approach 500,000. If it accelerates, as widely expected, due to school reopenings and the onset of cold weather, which drives people inside where they are more easily exposed to infection, the death toll could easily go far higher, with a corresponding impact on life expectancy.

The science is clear that COVID-19 can be eliminated in regions and eradicated worldwide, but only if the political will exists to carry out a program of maximum social struggle against the pandemic: the closure of schools and workplaces except those genuinely necessary to sustain life—not corporate profits—and a full-scale public health policy including masking, social distancing, testing and tracing.

Bangladeshi school reopenings threaten wave of COVID-19 infections among children

Wimal Perera

More than a dozen students have been infected and one has died from COVID-19 after schools were reopened in Bangladesh this month.

Students attend a class at the Narinda Government High School as schools reopen after being closed for nearly 18 months due to the coronavirus pandemic in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sunday, Sept.12, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu]

On September 12, the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ordered all schools, apart pre-primary facilities, to reopen with in-person classes. Educational institutions had been closed more than one and a half year, following the outbreak of the pandemic in Bangladesh in March 2020.

Government and education officials justified the reopenings by claiming that 97 percent of teachers and staff had been vaccinated. Most students, however, are not vaccinated and are highly vulnerable.

Health Minister Zahid Maleque said claims that students between 12 and 17 years will be vaccinated in October and those 18 years and over are being registered for vaccinations.

Inadequate and unsafe school infrastructure, however, makes it virtually impossible for students to maintain official health guidelines, including social distancing. This makes them highly vulnerable to infection and as transmitters of the deadly disease to their families.

The reopening of schools is a part of Hasina’s attempts to claim the situation in Bangladesh is “normal.” This is to justify the easing of pandemic control restrictions, which began on August 11, and allow major industries and many other businesses to resume full production. With the Bangladesh ruling elite prioritising corporate profits over human lives, most sectors of the economy are operating.

When schools began reopening in Bangladesh, the national test positivity rate was 7 percent, with some districts recording between 10 percent and 20 percent.

Epidemiologist AM Zakir Hussain warned in the New Age on September 13 that there was the danger of an infection “spike” of the virus. “What we see here is cluster transmission,” adding, “cluster transmission can develop into community transmission and then may cause a countrywide spike of Covid cases.”

Notwithstanding Bangladeshi government assurances, countries with high rates of vaccination are experiencing rising numbers of deaths and infections among students following the reopening of schools. In the US, where 54 percent of the population is vaccinated, “children and educators are dying of COVID-19 at a rate of at least three per day nationwide,” the World Socialist Web Site reported on September 23.

Bangladesh, however, has one the lowest vaccination rates in the world, with some 21 million or 12.7 percent of its 165 million population with one dose and just 14 million or 8.5 percent having had a second dose. This is less than a third of the 31.4 percent of the world population’s which is fully vaccinated.

As of September 24, the total number of COVID deaths in Bangladesh since March last year, was over 27,000 and total number of cases more than 1.5 million. Official, grossly understated, figures issued by the government are being used to claim the pandemic is under control. On September 21, the daily COVID test positivity rate fell below 5 percent, according to New Age .

While some online education was available in Bangladesh during the lockdown, most Bangladeshi parents cannot afford a computer or pay for internet access so their children can access online education. A study conducted by one Bangladeshi NGO found that about 56 percent of the country’s students had no online facilities.

The school reopenings are already adversely impacting on students. The Dhaka Tribune reported that a grade eight student at Surendra Kumar Government Girls’ High School at Manikganj Sadar died from COVID-19 on September 22. Her relatives told the newspaper: “She had been suffering from fever and sore throat since her first day of school on September 15.”

The young girl later suffered from shortness of breath and was rushed to Kurmitola General Hospital in Dhaka that day. The school was closed for a week when another student tested positive.

The New Age reported on September 24 that at least 14 primary and secondary school students at three educational institutions in Thakurgaon had tested positive for COVID-19, since schools reopened. A student from Ferdhora Government Primary School in Kotalipara sub-district of Gopalganj also contracted the virus on September 17, and her mother also tested positive.

Parents fear their children being infected. The father of one student told Al Jazeera, “COVID is still there, and I am not feeling comfortable sending my children to school.” These concerns are reflected in declining attendance at schools.

The Business Standard, citing the education ministry data, reported on September 24, that student attendances across the country stood at 67 percent on September 12 but dropped to 59 percent by September 21.

The decision to reopen all educational institutions was made following discussions early this month between Education Minister Dipu Moni and senior authorities from universities and schools.

Moni recommended “gradual” and “phased” reopenings in line with government health guidelines. These included temperature monitoring of teachers and students, social distancing, provision of hand washing facilities and other minimal procedures.

While the schools opened September 12, university authorities could decide for themselves to reopen any time after September 27, subject to government’s recommendation. This involved the vaccination of one dose for 70 to 80 percent of students, a retreat from the government’s previous target of all university students being fully vaccinated by September.

Under this “gradual” reopening, school classes will be held for a limited number of days per week—initially one day per week for lower grade classes.

The 18-month closure of schools has seriously impacted on children and led to a high number of dropouts. The Dhaka Tribune reported on September 17 that 50,000 children may have dropped out in the district of Kurigram, alone. Frustrated students from Rajshahi and Jahangirnagar universities have also demonstrated, demanding the universities be reopened by the end of September.

The government has exploited the concerns of poor parents and university students to declare the necessity for all education facilities to reopen. But the conditions that undermined the education of millions of students during the pandemic were created by the Hasina government and its failure to provide online education facilities for all.

This is the case across the region. Citing a report based on research in India, the Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, UNICEF’s regional director for South Asia George Laryea-Adjei said: “School closures in South Asia have forced hundreds of millions of children and their teachers to transition to remote learning in a region with low connectivity and device affordability…

“Even when a family has access to technology, children are not always able to access it. As a result, children have suffered enormous setbacks in their learning journey.”

The inability of the ruling elites in Bangladesh and rest of South Asia to maintain proper online education is another expression of their incapacity to address any social and democratic issues confronting hundreds of millions of working people and oppressed masses in the region.

The eradication of the pandemic, leading to safe reopening of educational institutes, requires a global strategy to mobilise the world’s vast resources and expertise.

This must include the closure of in-person education until the virus is eliminated, while providing all technological facilities to teachers and students to maintain online education, along with a full-range of health measures, including vaccines and a vast expansion in public health spending.

Acclimation and Heat Stress of Plants, and Future Crop Failures

Manuel Garcia Jr

One of the most popular ideas that springs into people’s minds when mulling over remedies for slowing the advance of climate change because of the ever increasing accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, is to plant more trees, bushes and grasses. Let a greater quantity of plant photosynthesis filter our atmosphere of excess CO2.

This is not an entirely bad idea — especially in its more nuanced formulation as multi-crop regenerative agriculture coupled with wildland, wetland and forest conservation and reforestation, ending industrialized chemical pesticide monoculture farming and drastically reducing the entire meat industry, along with a popular shift to plant-based diets — though it is an entirely inadequate tactic for absorbing the ever increasing load of CO2 in the atmosphere being fed by gargantuan torrents of anthropogenic CO2 emissions exhausted as waste products from the fossil fueled engines powering today’s capitalism and militarism, which remain requirements by our capitalists and militarists for the continuation of our present civilizational paradigm.

So, planting trees is being done and will continue because it is something that many people can do to try to help, and because it poses no real threats to capitalism or militarism. But one of the cruelties of global warming is that high concentrations of CO2 combined with elevated global temperatures reduce the rate of photosynthesis and plant growth. These effects are called “acclimation” and “heat stress” of plants, respectively.

Acclimation is either an enhancing or inhibiting effect on photosynthesis by high CO2 concentrations. Generally, photosynthesis is enhanced as CO2 concentration is increased from a low level. Then above an elevated threshold concentration, the rate of photosynthesis saturates and can even be reduced. The mechanism of the effect is involved and has been the subject of research for many years by agricultural scientists interested in maximizing crop yields (for example in greenhouses).

Elevated temperatures can cause heat stress in growing plants by dehydrating them: as in their fatally drying out in a drought. However, a growth inhibiting (and even growth killing) heat stress can also occur to well-watered plants by the high temperature “denaturing” of the enzymes that control the reaction rates (the chemical reactions) of the photosynthesis process within plant leaves.

Current research on plant growth under the combined effects of elevated temperature and high CO2 concentration shows that “in heat-stressed plants at normal or warmer growth temperatures, high CO2 may often decrease, or not benefit as expected, tolerance of photosynthesis to acute heat stress. Therefore, interactive effects of elevated CO2 and warmer growth temperatures on acute heat tolerance may contribute to future changes in plant productivity, distribution, and diversity.”

There are now scientific projections of crop yield reductions for several agricultural regions, due to anticipated rises of CO2 concentrations and their related elevated regional temperatures. A report issued by Chatham House on 14 September 2021 describes the following:

“The planet could be struck by a wave of ‘unprecedented’ crop failures in the next 20 years if global greenhouse gas emissions continue as usual… researchers detailed a litany of risks that climate change could pose to [food security]… global agriculture will need to produce nearly 50 percent more food by 2050 to feed a growing population. But as global demand increases, crop yields could drop by 30 percent as farmers contend with a hotter and more volatile planet… By 2050, an anticipated 40 percent of the planet’s cropland will be exposed to severe drought for at least three months per year, and the breadbaskets of the United States and southern Russia could be among the regions most affected. Europe, the report said, is likely to experience the largest increase in agricultural drought, ‘with the central estimate indicating that nearly half the cropland area will experience severe periods of drought by 2050’… By the 2040s, the United States, China, Brazil and Argentina, which grow 87 percent of the world’s maize, could suffer a steep drop in their maize production — all at the same time. ‘The probability of a synchronous crop failure of this order during the decade of the 2040s is just less than 50 percent.’… Farmers will also have to contend with a decline in the length of crop seasons and long stretches of water scarcity… East and South Asia will be particularly hard hit, with 230 million people subjected to prolonged drought by 2040. Outside of Asia, Africa will likely have the greatest number of people facing drought, exceeding 180 million by 2050. Many regions also will have to manage coastal and river flooding. By 2100… 75 million people in East, South, and Southeast Asia will face coastal flooding every year. ‘Across these three regions around 11 times more people will be impacted by coastal flooding than under a scenario in which climate change is averted.’”

This all leads to a bleak vision of our planet’s future, where lives are shorter, food is more scarce, and 3.9 billion people “are likely to experience major heat waves.”

My purpose in describing all this is not to feed into more self-indulgent wallowing in depression and flaccid fatalism over the anticipated ‘collapse of civilization’ and ‘human extinction,’ but to show how elevated CO2 concentrations along with elevated global-regional temperatures will physically reduce our food security — crop yields — and in that way very directly shorten human life globally. This is intended to prod the public mind to get on with the job of effectively responding to global warming climate change, by cutting through the many excuses for continuing to cling to the dysfunctional behaviors (fossil fueled capitalism and militarism) driving the planetary crisis, and to change those behaviors to ensure we all have sufficient good food and clean water in an enduring future.

White Supremacy, Immigration Hypocrisy, and Haiti

Wendell Griffen

Recent news coverage of U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback chasing asylum-seekers from Haiti who tried to enter the United States at Del Rio, Texas is disturbing. The images harken back to a time when white slave patrols used horses and dogs to capture enslaved Africans who tried to escape the brutalities suffered from white capitalists who stole their bodies and labor to produce the wealth that funded the United States. The deeper history of white people to the people and place now called Haiti is even worse.

Haiti is about the size of Maryland. It is found on the western third of Hispaniola in the Caribbean. The eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola is the Dominican Republic. Hispaniola was home to Taino/Arawak people for thousands of years before Christopher Columbus stumbled upon it in December 1492.

Spanish colonizers enslaved their Taino hosts and forced them to work in gold mines. Hunger, violence, disease, and harsh working conditions decimated the indigenous enslaved people, so King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain licensed the colonizers to enslave Africans to replace the work force. The enslaved Africans worked on plantations to grow sugar cane, coffee, tobacco, and other raw crops for export to Europe. French colonizers replaced the Spanish in the western part of Hispaniola and continued the plantation system until San Dominque (the name the French gave that part of Hispaniola) became the most profitable French colony in the world.

Enslaved Africans waged a violent revolution against French colonizers that forced France to abolish slavery in 1794. Napoleon Bonaparte responded by invading San Dominique with the largest fleet then assembled and thousands of French soldiers. However, African resistance to the French invasion over the next ten years was so fierce that Napoleon lost over 50,000 soldiers, including 18 generals.

The Africans defeated the French invaders in 1804.  The war also led Napoleon to negotiate the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, a land deal that covered what is now all or part of the states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Iowa, Colorado, Wyoming, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Montana to the United States. That successful revolt made Haiti the first Black republic, the only nation where enslaved people overthrew their oppressors, and the second nation in the Western Hemisphere (after the United States) to declare independence from its colonizers.

However, the United States refused to recognize Haiti until 1862.  Politicians from pro-slavery states opposed recognizing and having a harmonious diplomatic relationship with a nation that had overthrown white enslavers. White Americans worried that the existence of Haiti challenged the slave-driven US economy and would encourage slave revolts in the US.

Instead of being a good neighbor to Haiti, the United States sided with France and Britain in imposing an economic embargo against Haiti. The US supported France in its demand that the government of Haiti pay reparations to the white enslavers covering the cost of land, the value of enslaved persons, livestock, commercial properties, and services the enslavers claimed were lost due to the successful revolt. Even Haitian officials were assigned a monetary value – as former enslaved persons – which the French (with US support) demanded be repaid. However, no reparations were paid by the enslavers to the formerly enslaved persons.

The US sided with the French to force Haiti to take out a loan for 150 million gold francs with a designated French bank to cover the cost of “reparations” to French enslavers for the loss of their “property.”  The value of that loan was ten times that of Haiti’s total revenue in 1825 and twice the price the United States paid France for the Louisiana Purchase, which covered 74 times more land than Haiti.

In 1915, the United States invaded and began a military occupation of Haiti that lasted until 1934 – almost two decades. Over the years, the US has supported insurrections against Haitian political leaders, propped up corrupt and ruthless Haitian leaders, sponsored the assassination or forced removal of Haitian leaders, and been complicit in fomenting greed and discord among Haitians. Also, Haiti – the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere – has suffered earthquakes, hurricanes, and other catastrophic natural disasters.

Now the US refuses to welcome Haitians who seek asylum from atrocities, inequities, poverty, disease, catastrophic natural disasters, centuries of white supremacist-sponsored and financed internal strife, and other hardships. Instead, Border Patrol agents on horseback chased and brutalized asylum-seekers. In addition to that despicable conduct, the Biden administration has forced asylum-seeking Haitians onto planes and returned them to Haiti rather than process their petitions for asylum.

Haitians who trek across Central America to seek asylum in the United States are survivors of a failed state, gang violence, political turmoil (including the assassination of the most recent Haitian president), natural disasters, and centuries of white supremacist schemes to punish Black people for overthrowing white enslavers. They have the right, under US law, to seek asylum in this country.  And they have the right to protection from abuse and oppression – in the United States – when they seek asylum.

What Haitian asylum seekers are now experiencing is the latest instance of more than two hundred years of white supremacy, brutality, greed, hypocrisy, disregard for the rights of Black, Brown, indigenous, and other people of color, and deliberate US policy decisions. The suffering produced by those decisions, past and present, is worse than despicable. It is worse than outrageous. It is damnable.

All of Germany’s parliamentary parties support the further spread of COVID-19

Marianne Arens

All of the parties in the German parliament (Bundestag) support a policy of allowing the COVID-19 infection to spread—with all of the subsequent devastating consequences. The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP-Socialist Equality Party, German section of the International Committee of the Fourth International) was the only party in the election campaign fighting for a policy to completely eradicate the coronavirus pandemic on a global basis.

Andreas Gassen, head of the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, was particularly outspoken a few days ago. Gassen, a specialist for orthopaedics and accident surgery, demanded a “clear political signal: That in six weeks we will also celebrate a Freedom Day!” He told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung that “after the experience of Great Britain,” it was also time for Germany to “have the courage” to lift all pandemic restrictions on October 30.

Gassen’s reference to the “experience of Great Britain” reveals the full brutal extent of what he advocates. Currently, the United Kingdom is again recording around 30,000 new infections per day and deaths in the hundreds. The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) denounced this very same policy as “social murder” some time ago.

Caption: Intensive care bed (Photo: Calleamanecer / Wikimedia)

Gassen’s proposal has been met with considerable opposition on the part of the public but is essentially in line with the stance of all of the politicians with influence at a federal and state level. The German Health Minister Jens Spahn (Christian Democratic Union, CDU), for example, has distanced himself from Gassen’s proposal, but expected the pandemic to be “over” by spring. Spahn told the Augsburger Allgemeine that it was “very unlikely” that a new virus variant would emerge against which vaccination offered no protection. And then “we will have overcome the pandemic by the spring and return to normality,” Spahn said last Wednesday.

All of the Bundestag politicians, regardless of political affiliation, are in practice pursuing a course of ruthlessly infecting the population. In doing so they accept that many thousands more will die. Despite an explosive increase in the number of cases among children and adolescents, they have fully reopened schools in all German states.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is expanding dramatically worldwide as the highly contagious Delta variant takes hold and even worse mutations are quite possible. The US, Brazil and India are all experiencing devastating new outbreaks with thousands of deaths every day. In Europe, the World Health Organisation has warned of another 236,000 deaths by December 1.

In Germany, a fourth pandemic wave is also erupting with the start of face-to-face schooling and the first cold days of autumn. The 7-day average of daily deaths rose to nearly 60 last Thursday and a total of 400 COVID-19 patients have died in the past week. Over the course of the past few days, the number of new infections has once again exceeded tens of thousands, and statistics indicate a high number of unreported cases.

At the end of last week, around 1,500 COVID-19 patients were receiving intensive treatment, with wards filling up day by day. This development was confirmed by a report by Cihan Çelik, a pulmonary physician, in the FAZ newspaper on September 19.

Çelik is head of an isolation ward for COVID-19 patients in Darmstadt. His hospital, he said, has had to transfer several COVID patients to other hospitals in recent days. The number of new admissions had fluctuated wildly for about three weeks. On several occasions, it had been necessary to expand the facilities for treatment of COVID patients with up to “ten Covid patients with a severe course” being admitted in the course of a single day.

Çelik also reported on “Covid patients with vascular complications such as thromboses, pulmonary embolisms and strokes.” His conclusion: “I’m afraid the current situation is just a taste of what’s in store for us this fall.”

Another report featuring Dr. Çelik, which appeared as a video for Der Spiegel magazine titled “Mavericks on the Corona-Station,” documents a number of horrific COVID cases with severe health consequences. “The fourth wave is here, and it is picking up speed,” the report states.

The video also shows that people who have been vaccinated twice usually have only mild symptoms, without pneumonia, but can still become infected. These are so-called “vaccine breakthroughs,” in which infected vaccinated people unknowingly spread the virus.

“Vaccination breakthroughs have been increasing since the Delta variant became rampant,” the report says, “with around 7,000 cases so far in Germany.”

This development is being systematically ignored. The current mantra of the country’s ruling politicians is that vaccination alone solves the problem. This is a deliberate misrepresentation and a dangerous fallacy. As important as vaccination is, it cannot defeat the pandemic without the implementation of a number of other measures. The Delta variant has a far higher R-value than the existing “wild type.” This means the pandemic will continue to spread even if 80 percent of the population or more is vaccinated.

Capitalist politicians don’t care, however, and have systematically downplayed the dangers of the fourth wave during the election campaign. The extent to which they themselves are becoming the driving factor for infection was evident in the measures they adopted just a few days before the election.

This applies first and foremost to the decision by federal and state governments to cancel compensation payments for unvaccinated people in quarantine. The state premiers claimed that by doing so, they would encourage vaccination among the group of those designated as “unwilling.”

In reality, this measure is highly dangerous. Denying the compensation for a quarantine loss of earnings, paid up until now, will result in countless outbreaks going undetected. How many infected people will continue to drag themselves to work for fear of losing pay? How many contacts will remain untested and how many infections will spread undetected and in secrecy until major outbreaks occur?

Another recently passed measure involves the cancellation of free “citizen testing.” This means that many people will be forced to pay for COVID-19 tests from October 11. This is stipulated in a new regulation issued by the Federal Ministry of Health on September 22.

This measure will also result in countless new infections going undetected. Nevertheless, the measure has been approved by Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and all of the country’s 16 state premiers.

The Left Party, in particular, is fully supporting this policy. This is vividly demonstrated in the state of Thuringia, where the party is part of a coalition government and a Left Party member, Helmut Holter, is Minister of Education. In Thuringia, as of last week, there are to be no more rapid tests at schools, no more mandatory masks, and virtually no more quarantine rules for contact persons.

“This gives the virus free rein among unvaccinated children and young people over the next few months,” commented the teachers’ platform news4teachers.de in bewilderment.

Thuringia has the second highest COVID-19 mortality rate in all of Germany, after Saxony. The state has recorded 208 pandemic deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. The national average is 112 per 100,000 inhabitants. More than 2,000 test results were positive in the first two weeks of school testing alone.

The example of Thuringia shows that all of the main parties are complicit in this contagion policy and act openly or quietly along the lines of the Freedom Day called for by Gassen. To keep the economy going, they insist on opening up schools in the midst of the fourth pandemic wave, abolish mass testing and categorically rule out any new lockdown.

To defeat the pandemic, the working class needs its own party to enforce internationally a consistent, science-based strategy for eradicating SARS-CoV-2, combining vaccination, contact tracing and isolation with consistent lockdowns. If world leaders had consistently addressed the pandemic in February and March 2020, they would have defeated the virus within weeks. Millions of people who died agonizing deaths in the last 18 months would be alive today.

US drops demand Canada extradite Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, allowing her to return to China

Roger Jordan

Under a deal worked out by Washington and Beijing at the highest political levels, Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei and the daughter of its founder, returned to China Saturday, after living under house arrest for nearly three years in Vancouver, British Columbia.

As part of the deal, Meng, who was seized by Canadian authorities at the behest of the Trump administration in December 2018, pled not guilty in an on-line New York court appearance to charges of committing bank fraud to evade US sanctions on Iran.

The Canadian authorities’ decision to arrest Meng during a Vancouver stopover had all the hallmarks of a political kidnapping, timed as it was to coincide with a bilateral meeting between then US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a G-20 summit. Trump’s goal at the meeting was to extract sweeping concessions from China on trade and economic relations.

Meng Wanzhou (Image credit: Wikimedia CC BY 3.0)

The deal to release Meng was designed to be face-saving for all concerned. US prosecutors officially pledged to suspend their concocted fraud case against Meng, until December 2022, at which point the criminal charges against her will be dropped entirely, provided that Meng does not violate any other federal laws. The US Justice Department claimed that Meng’s admission in the Statement of Facts that she described Skycom, a subsidiary of Huawei, as a business partner engaged in “normal business cooperation” in a 2013 power-point presentation instead of a company controlled by Huawei was an acknowledgement of guilt. This is a spurious reading of the evidence and, in any event, far from the incendiary allegations the US levelled against Meng that she duped the HSBC bank so as to violate Washington’s punitive, unilateral sanctions against Iran.

Several prominent US legal experts described the Justice Department’s deferred prosecution agreement as unlike any they had previously seen, underscoring that Washington effectively decided to abandon the case. Following the announcement of the deal, the Chinese government reiterated its position that Meng’s detention and prosecution were purely political and emphasized that she had made no acknowledgment of guilt. Her return to China became the occasion for the regime to whip up nationalism, with her red-carpet welcome ceremony broadcast on state television and livestreamed online.

The dropping of the US request for Meng’s extradition and her return to China was accompanied by the tit-for-tat release of two Canadian citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, whom Beijing had detained on charges of spying in the immediate aftermath of Meng’s seizure by Canadian authorities.

Underscoring that the prisoner swap was orchestrated at the highest levels of the Biden administration, Kovrig and Spavor were picked up by a US Air Force jet destined for Alaska at precisely the same moment that Meng boarded her Air China-chartered flight from Vancouver. Kovrig’s and Spavor’s return to Canada Saturday was exploited by the political establishment and corporate media to intensify their virulent anti-China campaign.

Several considerations were at play in Washington’s decision to abandon its prosecution and persecution of Meng. First, the case against her, as the Statement of Facts attests, was based on a tendentious, politically-motivated representation of her dealings with HSBC and in serious danger of collapsing. While the Canadian government was emphatic in its support for Meng’s extradition, with lawyers for the Attorney General vigorously defending it in court, the judge hearing the extradition case, B.C. Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes, increasingly expressed concern about its legal foundation. At an August 12 hearing, she described the fraud case against Meng as “unusual,” noting, according to a Globe and Mail report, that “no one lost money, the allegations are several years old, and the intended victim, a global bank, knew the truth even as it was allegedly being lied to.”

The proceedings also uncovered how Meng’s rights were blatantly violated by Canadian authorities. For several hours Canada Border Services agents concealed from Meng that she was effectively under arrest as soon as she arrived in Canada in December 2018 and thereby got her to hand over her phone and other possessions. They then handed them to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which in turn made their contents known to the FBI.

There was no doubt concern in the Biden administration that if Meng’s extradition or subsequent trial collapsed or became the occasion for further embarrassing revelations about the lawlessness of US and Canadian authorities, it would represent a serious blow to Washington’s propaganda campaign against Beijing.

This campaign, which touts the US as the leader of a “democratic” coalition of nations that respect the “rules-based international order” against China and other “authoritarian” regimes, is political cover for an ever expanding military-strategic offensive against China whose logic is a catastrophic global conflagration. Earlier this month, Washington established a new Indo-Pacific war alliance with Australia and Britain (AUKUS), whose first action has been to supply Australia with nuclear-powered and nuclear missile-capable submarines.

The release of Meng may also have been motivated by a desire to mend fences with the European powers, who, led by France, have angrily protested the secretly negotiated AUKUS deal, which cuts across their own plans to play a greater role in the Indo-Pacific. Meng’s trial over Iranian sanctions would have involved the extraterritorial application of US laws, which the European powers view with hostility.

Finally, Washington has largely gotten what it wanted out of Meng’s detention, which was part of a concerted pushback against Huawei’s emergence as one of the world’s largest high-tech concerns. Key US allies, including Australia and Britain, have explicitly banned Huawei from their 5G networks, while many others have effectively blacklisted the company by choosing competitors. US authorities also introduced bans and restrictions preventing businesses from trading with Huawei, including an August 2020 measure that requires companies selling any product with a US-made microchip to Huawei to first obtain a license. At the time, this move was described as imposing a “death sentence” on the Chinese company as a maker of 5G technology products.

By taking the dispute with Beijing over Meng off the table, Washington removes what had become an impediment to any meaningful interaction with the China’s Communist Party-led capitalist regime, enabling it to concentrate on stepping up diplomatic pressure to make concessions on climate change and other issues that Biden has said are up for negotiation. US imperialism views the climate change negotiations as a vital arena in the pursuit of its global economic and geo-political interests and providing it with an avenue to attack China economically, including potentially through “carbon tariffs.” In his address to last week’s UN General Assembly, Biden summed up this policy by referring to a “new era of relentless diplomacy.” This is by no means a turn away from, but rather a critical component of, the comprehensive economic and military pressure US imperialism is exerting on China.

By securing the release of Kovrig and Spavor as part of its settlement of the Meng case, Washington is also in a position to ratchet up pressure on Canada to fall even more fully into line behind its diplomatic, economic, and military campaign of intimidation against China. Canada has yet to formally exclude Huawei from its 5G network, and repeated delays to the release of its updated China policy have frustrated US officials. Speaking just days prior to Meng’s release, David L. Cohen, Biden’s nominee as Washington’s new ambassador to Ottawa, told a US Senate confirmation hearing, “We are all waiting for Canada to release its framework for its overall China policy. As ambassador, if I’m confirmed, it’s an appropriate role to be engaged in discussions and make sure that Canada’s policies reflect its words in terms of the treatment of China.”

The most vociferously anti-China sections of the Canadian political establishment certainly got the message as they unleashed tirades against Beijing over the weekend, combined with demands that Canada further expand its across-the-board military-security cooperation with the United States. Ignoring the fact that Beijing’s seizure of Kovrig and Spavor was a reaction to the initial political kidnapping of Meng, Guy Saint-Jacques, Canada’s former ambassador to China, stated, “We must agree among ourselves on sanctions that we could apply against China if they ever use this hostage diplomacy again. It’s about sending a very powerful message that this kind of bullying can’t carry on. We have to put teeth to it.”

Conservative Senator Leo Housakos, a leading anti-China hawk, added, “Now that the two Michaels are home and the Chinese communist regime’s thuggery has been fully exposed for what it is, what we’ve known it is all along, Canada can no longer continue to deal with this regime as honest brokers.” Housakos demanded that the Trudeau government immediately ban Huawei from the 5G network and announce a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

Far from avoiding confrontation with Beijing, the Trudeau government has lined up squarely behind US imperialism’s concerted geostrategic and military offensive against China. Under Trump, the Trudeau government supported the renegotiation of NAFTA to create an even more explicitly US-led protectionist North American trade bloc directed against China. The Liberals have also more fully integrated Canada’s military operations into US-led aggression in the Asia-Pacific, including by sending warships and submarines to the South China Sea.

Last month, the Trudeau government concluded an agreement with the US to modernize NORAD, the joint Canada-US aerospace and maritime defence, with the aim of consolidating the North American imperialist powers’ domination of the Arctic and preparing for a new age of “strategic competition” and potential nuclear war with Russia and China.

However, Trudeau continues to be associated by his political opponents with efforts to expand trade relations and even conclude a free trade deal with China. China is an important export market for corporate Canada, especially natural resources and agricultural products.

The exclusion of Canada from AUKUS gave further ammunition to Trudeau’s critics, who saw in this Ottawa’s sidelining by the US in the Indo-Pacific. It became the occasion for denunciations of the Liberal government from the right in the final days of the election campaign and demands from the military-security establishment for a more comprehensive foreign policy strategy and increased military spending.

Though Trudeau has avoided making any major statement about Canada-China relations since the Meng deal, the government gave its full support to the media-engineered propaganda campaign surrounding Kovrig and Spavor’s return to the country. Trudeau and Foreign Minister Marc Garneau both flew to Calgary to welcome the pair, who travelled on from Alaska in a Canadian Armed Forces plane.