Samoa’s Supreme Court ends bitter parliamentary standoff

John Braddock

Samoa’s Supreme Court on September 16 ruled in favour of an appeal by the opposition Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) and ordered the Speaker of the House to swear in the party’s members.

The ruling was an attempt to resolve a prolonged political and constitutional crisis in the tiny Pacific island state that followed the April 9 election. The HRPP had been defeated by the newly formed Faatuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi—Faith in the One True God Party (FAST) but had refused to accept the result.

FAST Party leader Fiame Naomi Mataafa (Source: FAST Party Facebook)

A protracted series of court cases eventually resulted in FAST’s Fiame Naomi Mata’afa being installed as prime minister. However, when the parliament first met on September 14, the Speaker refused to allow the HRPP members to be sworn in, claiming the party still refused to accept the election result.

Outside, members-elect of the HRPP, as well as party supporters, staged a march near parliament. Police had erected a barricade to prevent people from approaching the building and were under orders to remove protesters by force if necessary. Former prime minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi called the ban a “sad day for Samoa” and accused FAST of dictatorial behaviour.

The courts were also closed on police advice, due to threats made on social media. The courts had suspended operations in July following HRPP protests and its criticism of court decisions validating the FAST government. Tuilaepa is still facing contempt charges after initially refusing to quit office and claiming that the actions of the judiciary had shattered the constitution and imposed the “law of the jungle.”

Two days later, in the September 16 ruling, Chief Justice Satiu Simativa Perese declared that the Speaker had to administer the oath of allegiance to the HRPP’s 18 parliamentarians in order to fulfil the requirements of Article 61 of the Constitution.

The following day as the HRPP members were sworn in, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa and her predecessor, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, embraced to cheers in parliament. Radio NZ reported that there was considerable relief inside the chamber “to see the leaders of the country finally meeting halfway, smiling and hugging.”

With the opposition taking a “reconciliatory” stance, the parliament last Thursday passed a budget totalling 983 million tālā ($US381.4 million), including a deficit of $US41 million.

April’s election was a historic defeat for the ruling HRPP. Despite having only been formed in June last year, and running 50 candidates against HRPP’s 100, FAST held the HRPP to a dead heat in the poll. Each party won 25 seats in the 51-seat parliament, with one seat going to the sole independent Tuala Iosefo Ponifasio, who subsequently declared his support for FAST.

Tuilaepa, who held office unchallenged for 23 years, flatly refused to stand aside. He told the Samoa Observer on May 12 he was “appointed by God” and the judiciary had no authority over him. FAST held a ceremony on May 23 to swear in its own members, with Mata’afa as prime minister. Tuilaepa denounced the swearing in as “treason and the highest form of illegal conduct.”

The courts finally confirmed the FAST party’s victory and a number of HRPP politicians were found guilty of bribery and cheating. Tuileapa only formally conceded after the remaining election petitions were decided in favour of FAST, confirming it had won 26 seats with the HRPP reduced to 18 seats. Seven by-elections are now required.

FAST’s victory was a major shift in Samoan politics which was ruled as a virtual one-party state since formal independence in 1962. The result reflects growing political instability and social crises across the Pacific under the combined impact of the coronavirus pandemic, popular opposition and the rising geo-political tensions.

FAST was established last year as a breakaway from the HRPP, led by Mata’afa, who was then the deputy prime minister. It undoubtedly benefited from opposition to growing inequality, poverty and the government’s authoritarian measures. The HRPP was deeply unpopular over its disastrous handling of the 2019 measles epidemic when 83 people, mainly children, died. The government suffered further controversy over legislation changing the way land disputes are resolved. Moreover, while border closures have kept COVID-19 cases low, the tourism industry collapsed.

The subsequent crisis, however, involved a dispute between two competing factions of the ruling elite. The vast majority of the 250,000 population has no say in the undemocratic political structure. Matais, the country’s clan chiefs who wield immense power over family welfare, land, property, religion and politics, are the only people allowed to occupy seats in the Legislative Assembly.

Neither party contested the election with a program to address the deepening social, economic and health emergency. FAST’s manifesto contained vague references to “equitable development” and “a sustainable economy to benefit all people,” while promising more support for businesses. FAST declared its aim was to “ensure our people live in social harmony,” through the promotion of “culture and Christian practices.”

The “relief” expressed in parliament as the FAST and HRPP leaders embraced reflected fears in the ruling elite that the protracted political crisis could open the door for the eruption of popular opposition by working people.

The intense geo-political rivalry in the region as the US ramps up its confrontation and war preparations against China was a central factor in the election outcome. Tuilaepa was regarded as a long-time ally of Beijing. Mata’afa’s first act in office was to abandon a Chinese-backed port development, signalling a realignment towards Washington. She said the $US100 million project would have significantly added to the country’s exposure to China, which accounts for 40 percent of external debt.

The regional imperialist powers, Australia and New Zealand, promptly recognised the new government. In August NZ Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta said recognition of Samoa’s new government was “swift and unequivocal,” and that New Zealand had faith in the country’s judicial and law enforcement systems.

Tuila’epa hit back, attacking Mahuta and NZ’s Labour government for interfering in Samoa’s political affairs. He accused Prime Minister Ardern of being “blinded by an obsession to ensure a female prime minister” to lead the Pacific nation. He further claimed there had been an “unprecedented and immediate grant of aid funding” of $NZ14 million from Wellington, as soon as the courts had confirmed the appointment of the FAST government.

Whatever the truth in these accusations, Australia and New Zealand doubtless had an agenda to establish a government in Samoa more in line with their interests and those of Washington. Underscoring the considerable influence wielded by New Zealand, the Samoan Judicial Commission last month appointed five NZ High Court judges to provide “external oversight” for upcoming contempt cases, including the one against Tuila’epa.

Mata’afa is regarded as a “safe” pair of hands. She is a member of the Samoan elite, a matai and the daughter of Mataʻafa Faumuina Mulinuʻu II, the country’s first prime minister at independence. Elected to the Assembly as a member of the HRPP in 1985, Mata’afa was the first woman to hold the offices of cabinet minister and deputy prime minister. Educated in New Zealand, she has extensive international contacts.

Canberra and Wellington have no concern for the formalities of democracy in the impoverished former colonies of the southwest Pacific, which they regard as their own “backyard.” Their overriding calculations are to protect their own geo-political interests amid the rapidly sharpening tensions across the region and the rapid build up to a US-led war with China.

COVID surge in Singapore despite 80 percent vaccination

Peter Symonds

Singapore, which has been regarded as a model in combatting COVID-19, has been compelled to tighten public health restrictions amid a surge of cases and deaths related to the highly infectious Delta variant of the virus.

The government had begun lifting restrictions, having adopted a “living with COVID” policy based on the fact that more than 80 percent of the city’s population is fully vaccinated. As new cases rapidly multiplied, however, health authorities have been forced to reverse course.

Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong greeted by ASEAN Secretary General Lim Jock Hoi in April 2021 (Photo: Wikimedia commons)

Yesterday, the number of cases set a new daily record of 2,236 by noon, with five more deaths. Of those, 2,226 were local cases, comprising 1,711 in the community and 515 among migrant workers living in dormitories. Since the pandemic began, Singapore has had 91,775 cases overall and a death toll of 85.

The latest surge has taken place over the past month, from just 32 cases on August 20 to a daily figure of more than 1,000 by September 19. The daily case numbers have more than doubled over the past 10 days and are predicted to rise to more than 6,000. As of yesterday, the death toll for September was 30—a record monthly figure and over a third of all COVID deaths.

Health authorities were at pains to play down the significance of the latest outbreak, pointing out that the majority of cases were asymptomatic and mild. The five people who died were elderly and had underlying conditions, but no details were provided.

Nevertheless, 1,325 COVID-19 patients were in hospital. While most were described as being well, 209 required oxygen supplementation and 30 were in critical condition in an intensive care unit (ICU).

The new restrictions came into force on Monday and are due to remain in place until October 4. Working from home is now required for those who can do so. Previously, the restrictions had been loosened to allow businesses to return up to half of their employees to workplaces.

Gatherings in restaurants or other social settings have been reduced from a maximum of five to two people for those who are vaccinated, and limited to one a day. Primary school and special education students will continue to learn from home until at least October 7.

The health ministry is also widening the availability of rapid antigen testing and access to vaccine booster shots. The vaccines most widely used in Singapore have been Pfizer or Moderna, whose efficacy is known to wane significantly over time. From October 4, people aged 50 to 59 will be able to get a vaccine booster, currently only available for those over 60.

Speaking of the new restrictions, Trade Minister Gan Kim Yong, one of the co-chairs of a virus taskforce, told the media: “While doing so may not reduce the number of daily new infections immediately, it will allow us to slow down the speed of increase and avoid overtaxing our healthcare workers.”

The government was clearly responding to growing public concern about the pandemic. According to a Bloomberg article, the surge in cases “has begun to stir anxiety in Singapore. Residents are airing grievances over not being able to reach the health ministry quickly to discuss their concerns and fretted over the long lag between testing positive for COVID-19 and getting sent to a recovery facility.”

The trade minister indicated that the government is under pressure from businesses to open up, saying: “This was a very difficult decision for us as we know that this would affect many businesses and people.”

The government has promised handouts to business worth $S650 million ($US478 million) for various sectors hit by the pandemic restrictions, including restaurants and food stalls, retail and cinemas. Taxi and private hire car drivers will receive financial assistance. Tenants of state-owned commercial properties will have a two-week rental waiver, with an equivalent cash payout to private tenants.

Among those hardest hit, however, are hundreds of thousands of foreign workers who live in crowded purpose-built dormitories. Last year, these dormitories experienced some of the worst outbreaks. Foreign workers received little or no assistance. A quarter of the new cases yesterday were in dormitories, even though workers living there make up only about 5 percent of the city’s population.

Proponents of the criminal policy of herd immunity have seized on Singapore as an example to push for “opening up” and “living with Covid” once high vaccination rates have been achieved.

In late June, Anthony Bergin, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, argued that Singapore, with its high vaccination rates, low case numbers and easing of restrictions, offered a model for Australian governments to end lockdowns—a policy stridently demanded by big business.

“The Singapore approach is appropriate, strong and versatile,” Bergin declared. “The goal should be to ensure everyone is fully vaccinated, with boosters as required, with a vaccine variant that works against whatever virus variant is ‘cock of the walk’ at the time. This is the familiar ground we see with seasonal variation in the flu vaccine. Then carry on as normal.”

The US-based business-oriented website CNBC cited proponents of “herd immunity” in Singapore who argued that the current COVID surge might even be beneficial as most cases were mild. “For these people, infection will not have any short-term or long-term consequence to their health, but may additionally trigger a natural immune response which reduces the chance of subsequent infection,” Teo Yik-Ying of the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health said.

In reality, the surge in Singapore is further evidence that only a strategy of eradication, which requires not only vaccination but stringent public health restrictions, can prevent the spread of the coronavirus. COVID-19 is not like the flu and is continuing to evolve into potentially more deadly and transmissible variants, which may or may not respond to vaccines.

The advocates of “opening up” simply dismiss the tragic consequences of their policy. In Singapore, while the numbers of daily cases and deaths remain low compared to the United States, Europe, Brazil or India, they have been rising rapidly over the past month, with no indication of being brought under control in the near future.

Google Ad Grants 2021 for Non-Profits

When is the Application Deadline:

Ongoing

Tell Me About Google Ad Grants for Non-Profits:

Attract donors, raise awareness for your organization, and recruit volunteers with in-kind advertising on Google Search. Ad Grants provides access to $10,000 USD of in-kind advertising every month for text ads.

What Type of Scholarship is this?

Grants

Who is Eligible for Google Ad Grants for Non-Profits?

To be eligible for a Google for Nonprofits account, an organization must:

1. Be registered as a charitable organization in one of the countries listed below. All organizations must be verified as a nonprofit organization by TechSoup or the local TechSoup partner
2. Meet the requirements in its own country. Sometimes countries have additional eligibility requirements. Find your country in the list below to review the additional requirements.
3. Agree to the Google for Nonprofits Terms. 

You are not eligible for Google for Nonprofits if your organization is:

• A governmental entity or organization
• A hospital or health care organization (charitable arms or foundations associated with healthcare organizations are eligible).
• A school, academic institution, or university (philanthropic arms of educational organizations are eligible). Learn more about Google for Education, Google’s programs for educational institutions.

Which Countries are Eligible?

Google for Nonprofits is now available in Nigeria, Tanzania, Ghana, Pakistan, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Malta, Cyprus, Iceland and Ecuador.

Other Countries are: Argentina, Australia Austria Belgium Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Canada Chile Colombia Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Ecuador Estonia Finland France Germany Ghana Greece Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Ireland Italy Israel Japan Kenya Korea Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Macau Malaysia Malta Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Nigeria Norway Pakistan Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Romania Russia Serbia Singapore Slovakia Slovenia South Africa Spain Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Tanzania Thailand Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom (including England & Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland) United States of America Vietnam

Where will Award be Taken?

In home countries of candidates

How Many Scholarships will be Given?

Numerous

What is the Benefit of Google Ad Grants for Non-Profits?

You’ll receive $10,000 USD of in-kind advertising from Google each month to create text-based ads, and get access to tools to help you build effective campaigns that can display on Google Search when people look for information related to your nonprofit.

• Raise Awareness for your cause
• Drive more website views and activity
• Track your non-profit marketing efforts
• Reach the people who need your help

How Long will the Program Last?

Program is continuous

How to Apply for Google Ad Grants for Non-Profits:

Request a Google for Nonprofits account

As part of requesting a Google for Nonprofits account, you’ll need to register your organization with TechSoup. They handle the nonprofit verification process for our program.

If you’re not currently registered, you’ll be able to register once you start the request for a Google for Nonprofits account.

If you’re already registered with TechSoup, you’ll just need your verification token to use during your request.

Once we’ve verified your organization’s eligibility, you’ll be able to activate the Google products that best meet your needs.

Visit Google Ad Grants for Non-Profits

Jobs “catastrophe” worsens in Australian universities

Mike Head

Nearly one in five tertiary education workers in Australia lost their jobs in the 12 months to May this year, according to a recent analysis by the Centre for Future Work, and the toll is still growing.

The report, entitled “An Avoidable Catastrophe: Pandemic Job Losses in Higher Education and their Consequences,” sheds light on how governments and employers have been able to exploit the COVID-19 disaster to devastate higher education, at the expense of staff and students alike.

University of Sydney’s Main Quadrangle [Credit: Jason Tong/Wikipedia]

The report estimates that more than 40,000 jobs were eliminated in just one year, from May 2020 to May 2021. This was the highest number in any non-agricultural industry so far, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In fact, university job losses have been much worse this year than in the first year of the pandemic. Now, according to the report, they mostly affect permanent and full-time positions, unlike last year, when casual workers suffered the initial brunt of the government-employer attack.

In 2021, “university administrations began to attack permanent positions with a vengeance. Year-over-year permanent employment (defined as positions with normal paid leave entitlements) in public tertiary education declined by over 34,000 jobs in the first half of 2021.”

By the May quarter of 2021, as universities increased hiring casuals, as cheap and expandable labour, permanent jobs represented all the net job loss compared to year-earlier levels.

Altogether, an estimated 35,000 jobs had been lost at public universities by May. More than 5,000 jobs disappeared at Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges and other public vocational education institutions. But no overall job losses occurred at private colleges, many of which received federal government bailouts via last year’s JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme.

National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) national president Alison Barnes issued a media release on the report saying: “It is now incumbent on vice chancellors to step up and secure jobs and careers. The pandemic must not be an excuse for further casualisation and wage theft.”

But that is exactly what is happening. Appeals to the very managements that are executing these cuts will do nothing to halt this offensive.

Last year, the NTEU itself calculated that up to 90,000 jobs could have been eliminated. The latest estimate appears to show that some of the losses may have been reduced, but only because casuals are being hired to replace permanent staff.

The truth is that the “catastrophe” documented in the report, commissioned by the NTEU, is an indictment of the sector’s trade unions, which have opposed any unified national struggle by staff and students against this onslaught.

A supposed national “week of action,” by the NTEU from September 13 to 17—timed to coincide with the report’s release—consisted primarily of impotent appeals to vice chancellors and the Liberal-National Coalition government for increased funding to restore job losses. That was combined with pleas to university workers to support the NTEU’s current enterprise bargaining negotiations with individual employers.

This enterprise bargaining regime, concocted by the Keating Labor Party government and the Australian Council of Trade Unions three decades ago, serves only to atomise workers. It ties them to the revenue and cost-cutting demands of “their” employer and straitjackets them into the anti-strike laws that were reinforced by the last union-backed Labor government of 2007 to 2013.

The NTEU and other unions are promoting the prospect of another Labor government, even though Labor’s shadow education minister, Tanya Plibersek, told an elite business gathering last month that a Labor government would escalate the corporate restructuring of tertiary education.

In her August 16 speech to the Australian Financial Review Higher Education Conference, Plibersek said nothing about the destruction of jobs, let alone commit a Labor government to reversing the cuts. Instead, she echoed the demands of the financial elite, highlighted by a recent blueprint issued by the EY global consulting giant, for the pandemic to be utilised to radically reshape higher education to satisfy the vocational training and research requirements of big business.

It was the Rudd-Gillard Labor government of 2007 to 2013, in which Plibersek served as a cabinet minister, that imposed the “education revolution,” featuring a “demand-driven” system. Labor compelled universities to compete with each other for enrolments, particularly in business-oriented courses, in order to survive financially, and then slashed university funding by several billion dollars in 2012–13.

This system, which the Coalition government has retained ever since, drove the universities to turn to full-fee paying international students, treating them as cash cows. By 2019–2020, international student fees accounted for over $12 billion in revenue for Australian universities—almost quadrupling over the previous decade. Vocational education providers received another $2 billion per year, in international student fees.

When the pandemic hit, these revenues began to dry up, and this became the pretext for the government-employer drive to slash costs.

The NTEU has actively facilitated this assault, despite the anger and resistance of staff and students, who have initiated petitions against the demolition of jobs and courses at numbers of universities, including La Trobe, Monash, Adelaide, the University of Western Australia and Sydney’s Macquarie University.

The NTEU’s role was typified at Macquarie University, where, on top of more than 300 job losses in 2020, management has used a “Hunger Games”-style operation to cut several dozen more positions this year, forcing educators to compete against each other for survival.

A letter from the NTEU’s Macquarie branch to Bruce Dowton, the university’s vice chancellor, made no demand that the redundancies be reversed. Instead, it “requested” that redundant staff have access to the information that led to the decision to cut their positions, so that the “process” could be “transparent.”

Moreover, the entire “spill and fill” operation was conducted within the framework of the “change process” set out in the NTEU’s enterprise agreement with management.

Homicides in the US surged by almost 30 percent in 2020

Kevin Reed

Homicides in the US surged by nearly 30 percent in 2020, the greatest one-year increase ever recorded by the FBI since the agency began collecting the annual statistics in 1960. The spike in murders was a primary factor in the overall 5.6 percent increase in violent crime in the US last year.

The total number of homicides reported in 2020 was 21,570, which was almost 5,000 more than the previous year. While the increase over 2019 was dramatic, and indicative of the intensity of the social tensions rooted in a year dominated by the coronavirus pandemic, the number of homicides did not come close to the record of nearly 25,000 murders committed in 1991.

Officers from the Polk County Sheriff Department work outside the scene of a shooting in Lakeland, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

The FBI released the statistics on Monday in the 2020 edition of its report called, “Crime in the US.” The report says that there were an estimated 1,277,696 violent crimes committed, approximately 388 offenses per 100,000 inhabitants. The data is maintained by the FBI in its Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.

An FBI statement announcing the data said, “The UCR Program collects information on crimes reported by law enforcement agencies regarding the violent crimes of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, as well as the property crimes of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson.”

The agency statement also indicated that the number of homicides was likely even higher given that only 15,897 law enforcement agencies out of a total of 18,819 nationwide submitted data to the UCR program.

One notable aspect of the data is that the increase in murders was a nationwide phenomenon, not a regional one. According to an assessment of the data published by the New York Times, “No geographic area was spared.” In cities with populations over 250,000 that reported full data, the number of murders rose over 35 percent. In cities with 100,000 to 250,000 people, homicides increased over 40 percent and in cities under 25,000, it rose 25 percent.

It is also significant that 77 percent of the homicides were committed with a firearm, the largest share ever reported and an increase from 67 percent in the previous decade. Additionally, while the total number of violent crimes increased, the data shows a decrease in other major crimes in 2020. The Times report says, “Murder, although it carries the highest societal cost, makes up a tiny portion of major crimes as defined by the FBI.”

The Times analysis went on, “Some of the reduction in overall crime was clearly related to the pandemic. Theft made up around seven in 10 property crimes, and it’s hard to commit shoplifting when stores are closed. But overall crime was dropping long before the pandemic: 2020 was the 18th straight year of declining overall crime.”

Some analysts have attributed the increase in murder to a stand down by law enforcement officers due to the George Floyd protests against police violence last year. While there was a large increase in officer retirements between April 2020 and April 2021, the Times reports that the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows no change in the total number of people employed by local police departments during the same period.

The sharp rise in homicides is but one indication of impact of the criminally negligent and homicidal response of the capitalist ruling elite to the coronavirus pandemic on the social crisis facing masses of people in the US. More than 350,000 people died from COVID-19 in 2020, while millions lost jobs and were driven into poverty as the ruling establishment pursued a policy of “herd immunity” and demanded a return to work and school while the virus continued to spread.

The past year also saw a spike in the number of people killed in auto accidents. A preliminary estimate by the National Safety Council found that 42,060 people were killed in car crashes in 2020, up from 39,017 in 2019, the largest single year increase in fatalities in nearly a century. The increase in road deaths took place even though the number of miles traveled by car fell by 13 percent.

According to a report in Vox on September 19, traffic experts said the 2020 fatality spike came as there were “fewer cars on the road during quarantine, traffic congestion was all but eliminated, which emboldened people to drive at lethal speeds. Compared to 2019, many more drivers involved in fatal crashes also didn’t wear seat belts or drove drunk.”

As reported on July 15 by the World Socialist Web Site, the pandemic also fueled an all-time high of 93,000 overdose deaths in the US in 2020. Based on a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of drug overdose deaths—which translate to an average of more than 250 each day, or roughly 11 every hour—increased by over 30 percent from the already catastrophic numbers from 2019.

Wide support for farmers’ all-India mobilization against Modi’s pro-agribusiness laws

Saman Gunadasa

Monday’s farmer-union called Bharat Bandh (all-India shut down) demanding the repeal of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s pro-agribusiness laws won widespread popular support. In many states, the 10-hour 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. protest significantly disrupted socioeconomic life. This was especially true in Punjab and Haryana in the north, and several states in the south where opposition-led governments made a show of supporting the farmers.

Policemen walk along as activists of various organizations march in support of farmers during a nation-wide shutdown to protest against contentious farm laws in Bengaluru, India, Monday, Sept. 27, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi]

The Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM-United Farmers’ Front), an umbrella body of 40 farmers’ groups, called the protest to mark one year since Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his far-right BJP rammed their “farm reform” through parliament with next to no debate. Sept. 26 also marked exactly 10 months since the farmers’ organizations launched an agitation that has seen tens of thousands of protesting farmers continuously encamped at three entry points into the Delhi National Capital Territory.

In many parts of the country Monday, farmers and their supporters blocked highways, including from Uttar Pradesh into Delhi, and squatted on rail lines. Elsewhere, there were rallies at rail stations and outside government buildings. According to the Tribune, there was an “enormous response in Punjab and Haryana where tens of thousands of farmers blocked major highways, including National Highway 1 linking Delhi. Shops and other commercial establishments were closed in most towns as traders extended their support to the agitating farmers.” Also impacted were Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the north, West Bengal and Odisha in the east, Tripura in the northeast, Rajasthan in the west, and Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka in the south.

The SKM called the support for Monday’s bandh “unprecedented and historic,” adding that the country’s annadaata (food providers) had mounted protests in 23 of India’s 28 states, with “spontaneous participation from various sections of the society … witnessed at most places.”

Spokespeople for the BJP government were quick to disparage the protests, labelling them an opposition party ploy. The government had hoped to wear down the protesting farmers and split their leaders—who are either drawn from more wealthy, politically-connected farmers or are themselves local political leaders—through long drawn-out negotiations and the offer of minor, mainly cosmetic changes to the three laws. But the agitation for the repeal of the laws has persisted, even as the government insists that it is ready to countenance no more than a handful of amendments.

Most opposition parties—including the Congress Party, till recently the Indian bourgeoisie’s preferred party of national government, the Aam Aadmi Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal, Samajwadi Party, Telugu Desam Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, and the Stalinist CPI and CPM—issued statements declaring support for the bandh. In some cases their party workers joined the farmers’ protests. In Kerala, the Stalinist-led Left Democratic Front government joined with the trade unions in promoting the bandh, giving most government workers the day off and ordering virtually all state-owned buses off the road, resulting in a near total shutdown of the state. The Andhra Pradesh state government, led by a regional split-off from the Congress, the YSR Congress Party, also cancelled bus service for the duration of the protest. In Tamil Nadu, by contrast, the Stalinist-backed DMK government limited its “support” for the farmers to ordering party workers to wave DMK flags at a handful of demonstrations.

By associating themselves with the widely popular 10-month-long farmers’ agitation against the BJP government’s pro-agribusiness laws, the opposition parties hope to reap electoral gains in next year’s state elections, especially in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. Their principal concern, however, is that the burgeoning and increasingly explosive mass opposition to Modi and the Hindu supremacist BJP be contained within parliamentary and protest politics and thereby defused and suppressed.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged India, Modi and his Hindu supremacist BJP had been pushed onto the back-foot by the mass protests against its discriminatory, anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act and a growing working class challenge to its “pro investor” agenda of austerity, privatization and the gutting of environmental and labour standards.

The Indian ruling class’ ruinous and criminal response to the pandemic, which has systematically prioritized corporate profits and investor wealth over saving lives, has resulted in mass death and enormously exacerbated an already acute social crisis. Led by Modi and his BJP, India’s governments have pushed relentlessly to “reopen the economy,” resulting in two devastating waves of the pandemic that have overwhelmed the country’s ramshackle health care system, and now threaten to produce a third. Officially, India has recorded just under 450,000 COVID-19 deaths, but the true figure, as a spate of studies of increased mortality during the pandemic have demonstrated, is approaching 5 million or more.

Moreover, alongside the health crisis there has been a pandemic of joblessness and hunger as India’s governments, beginning with the calamitous ill-prepared lockdown Modi imposed with less than four hours’ notice in March 2020, have left India’s workers and toilers to effectively fend for themselves amid unprecedented job losses. In August, according to the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy, there were 28 million workers employed in manufacturing as compared to 40 million before the pandemic struck. Desperate for any income and means of support, tens of millions Indians have turned to hawking or agriculture, whether as subsistence farmers or agricultural labourers, during the pandemic.

The Modi government and Indian bourgeoisie have responded to the pandemic’s intensification of the crisis of global capitalism by shifting sharply further right. To attract investment, they are intensifying their class war assault on India’s workers and toilers, and for both geostrategic and economic reasons they are integrating India ever more fully into Washington’s military-strategic offensive against China.

In the September 2020 Monsoon session of parliament, the Modi government pushed through its three farm “reform” laws, which pave the way for agri-business to entirely dominate India’s agriculture sector. They remove most restraints on hoarding, allow corporate houses to bypass the existing government markets (mandis), which farmers rightly fear will lead to the abolition of the government minimum support price for key commodities, and strengthen big business in its dealings with contract farmers, including by giving them near blanket legal immunity.

In the same parliamentary session, the Modi government pushed through a so-called labour law reform. It further expands employers’ already sweeping prerogatives to employ contract workers and ensnares workers in an elaborate state-supervised “labour relations” regime with the aim of making most worker job actions illegal.

In this year’s just-completed Monsoon session of parliament, the Modi government pushed through a further raft of right-wing laws, including legislation authorizing further privatizations and illegalizing all strikes by workers in defence-related industries. The government has also brought forward a “national monetization pipeline” scheme under which the management and profits from a vast array of government and PSU (public sector unit) assets, from train lines and highways to power stations, will be “leased” to big business.

There is mass opposition within the working class to the Modi government’s and the employers’ attacks on jobs and wages and their criminal mishandling of the pandemic. Recent months have seen broad sections of workers, from bank clerks to coal miners, join one-day strikes against the government’s privatization drive. Last Friday, hundreds of thousands of rural health (AHSA) workers, who have been on the front lines of the fight against the pandemic, staged a one-day strike to demand improved pay, insurance and proper personal protective equipment. Workers in India’s globally-connected auto sector have been involved in a wave of struggles against speed-up, poverty wages and precarious contract jobs. In late May, a worker rebellion against the lack of COVID-19 safety measures forced Hyundai, Ford and Renault-Nissan to temporarily shut down their plants in the auto manufacturing belt neat Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

However, the unions and the ostensibly left parties, above all the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, and its close ally the Communist Party of India (CPI), are doing everything in their power to straitjacket the working class resistance and politically suppress it.

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.