Our Badly Threatened World Needs Out-of-Box Governance Reform

Bharat Dogra

It is a basic principle of effective governance that it should be in accordance with ability to achieve the most important aims and tasks. In terms of this very basic definition, the huge, colossal failures of existing governance systems in our deeply troubled world facing unprecedented threats have been exposed in more and more glaring and disturbing ways in recent times.

This failure is occurring moreover at the most critical juncture of human history when the effectiveness of world governance in facing up to the most formidable challenges is of most critical importance in the sense that this relates to protecting the very life nurturing conditions of our planet. To complete the alarming picture, the failure is actually the most glaring precisely in the context of the most critical issues like disarmament and checking climate change.

The existing governance system with all its heavy infra-structure, commissions and committees and organizations has been reasonably good at identifying the crucial issues. It has been even better at issuing statements. But in terms of effective action  it really lags far behind the actual needs,  which can be disastrous keeping in view the time-bound urgency of the issues.

With respect to the most life-threatening issues of weapons of mass destruction, climate change as well as about a dozen other extremely serious environmental and safety issues, action at world level is  far behind what is needed and the larger perspective that is needed for the timely satisfactory resolving of these issues within a framework of justice, equality and democracy is also  missing woefully.

Unprecedented threats demand unprecedented response. So it is time to consider out-of-box governance changes and improvements which can create the kind of world governance systems that are needed for resolving the most critical issues of our times and the near future in a time-bound framework before it is too late. This cannot be done very abruptly of course but we need to know carefully what we are aiming at and the direction in which we ought to be moving. Let us try to imagine what kind of world governance system we may like to see about three decades from now.

It is the year 2050. About 10 billion people live on earth. For the purpose of highly decentralised administration of daily affairs, they are divided among about 1000 provinces each with an average population of around 10 million (this may range between 5 million to 15 million, depending on population density and other factors).

Each of these provinces, apart from electing its local members for highly decentralised governance at levels of province, district and village, also elects a representative for the World Government. The lower house of the World Government is constituted in this way, each of its 1000 elected members being elected by people of one province.

The World Government also has an upper house, consisting of the best available experts on climate, biodiversity, oceans, weapons, peace and other issues of critical importance. These experts are elected to the upper house based on a system combining recommendations of professional associations, provincial administrations and lower house representatives.

The lower and upper houses of the World Government elect a Council of Ministers which is co-ordinated by two leaders who change once every two years or so.

The World Government takes critical decisions on protecting the life-sustaining conditions of planet on issues like climate change, species protection and other critical life-protecting environmental issues.

In addition the World Government has the responsibility of preventing any war or civil war, as well as ensuring that no province has any nuclear weapons, or other weapons of mass destruction (including robot weapons). It is responsible for ensuring that no outer space related destructive activity is carried out by any human being or agency.

In fact a province is allowed to keep very few weapons only for policing needs or checking crime, not for war.

However the World Government is allowed to have some stocks of conventional war weapons, and perhaps just about 10 nuclear weapons (with supporting infra-structure) as the World Government has the responsibility of checking any wars and checking the emergence and spread of any big terrorist force. Any disputes relating to provincial borders are settled by the World Government, involving the concerned provincial governments and their neighbors in the settlement of the dispute. No province has its own army, but contributes personnel to one and only one world army (a very limited armed force with land, air, sea and space sections).

Another task of the World Government is to ensure that a World  Constitution is created to ensure that –

1. a) all people are equal and there is no discrimination based on class, gender, race, colour, caste, ethnicity, previous nationality etc. (although affirmative action for those who suffered extreme historical disadvantages or injustice is allowed).
2. b) all provinces have to satisfy certain norms of democratic functioning and are governed in highly decentralised way by representatives elected in free and fair elections.
3. c) people can move freely from one province to another within the limits of some restrictions.
4. d) all provinces are free to decide their imports and exports, but certain basic qualitative norms have to be agreed by all of them.
5. e) all provinces have to observe certain norms of justice and equality, human rights and rights of all forms of life.
6. f) all provinces have to follow certain norms of controlling infectious diseases.
7. g) all provinces have to follow certain norms of protecting other forms of life, such as heavy curbs on hunting and harming habitats
8. h) jobs and income of all former soldiers of army, para military efforts, air force and navy will be protected by giving them work at the same salaries in protection from disasters, rescue work, eco-restoration and related works.
9. i) Issues relating to currency accepted all over the world will be decided by the world government.

Within these broad guidelines, all provinces and districts are completely free to grow in a highly decentralised manner according to their local conditions and creativity.

The world government will rush relief to areas seriously affected by disasters and work for a hunger-free world.

In other words the world government representing all people on equal basis and obtaining the best available advice creates broad conditions of protecting life-sustaining conditions, avoiding war and maintaining peace, bringing down all weapons to minimal levels, ensuring democracy and decentralisation and compliance to these conditions is ensured at world level.

Once these conditions have been ensured and some norms in keeping with these conditions have been set up, then in these secure conditions there will be the most space for realizing the enormous creative potential of people in various walks of life for creating a better and safer world.

With respect to protecting the life-sustaining conditions (checking climate change, elimination of weapons of mass destruction) all provinces have to strictly abide by the decision of the world government, whose chief mandate is to protect these conditions within a framework of justice, equality and democracy. In a democratic spirit they can certainly debate and oppose some decisions, but in the end, after all has been said and discussed, the provinces have to abide by what the world government says with respect to protecting the life sustaining conditions.

We should aim to achieve such conditions – or somewhat similar conditions within a decade or two. By year 2050 it should then be possible to check climate change to such an extent that remaining within the most essential limits can be achieved more or less. Also by 2050 elimination of nuclear, chemical, biological and robot weapons should be more or less achieved, although a very small stock can be maintained by the world government only (not by any province) to guard against any rogue elements or terrorists.

Can such conditions be achieved so soon? The basic reason for trying to achieve such a fast pace of change is that basic life sustaining conditions of planet earth have to be protected. The basic structure of a different world outlined above, along with other decision for a justice based decentralised world, can achieve this and also bring several other highly desirable changes. However we can also consider other visions.

The vision of a different world outlined above is based on complete elimination of nation-states. As outlined above, there is a truly representative world government which protects the basic life-sustaining conditions of earth at various levels in a framework of justice, democracy peace and protection of all forms of life. At the base there are higly decentralised provinces and districts, committed to decentralised governance, justice, peace and elimination of poverty.

However, the concept of nation states has become so deeply embedded in recent times that many people may not accept this. They may like to consider a different vision which is based on the creation of a world government while retaining nation-states.

In this more limited vision the nation-states remain as before, while electoral constituencies for world government are created, ignoring national boundaries, on average one for every 10 million people. Hence the Lower House of the World Government is created. The Upper House consists of experts, as elected or selected by professional bodies, on leading survival issues such as climate change, species extinction, oceans and weapons of mass destruction.

The mandate of the world government is to keep climate change to acceptable limits, eliminate all weapons of mass destruction and to protect other essential life- sustaining conditions. To the extent that it is necessary for this purpose, nation-states surrender their sovereignty to the world government with respect to decisions on these issues. On these aspects, all nation-states have to abide by what the world government decides. On other aspects, nation-states continue to retain their sovereignty.

In yet another version, we can go one step further. In this version, the nation-state continues to exist, but disbands its army (this includes army, air force, navy, special border protection forces etc.). All former soldiers will get re-employment in disaster and accident protection, rescue and eco-restoration work, as well as in peace keeping forces of the world government. In this version the only army will be with the world government and the world government will take care of all border disputes or disagreements.

All  these three versions of significant change can be debated and considered, together with other alternatives that may be suggested more learned scholars and experts.

The idea of a World Government finding effective solutions for survival crisis within a framework (and strengthening this framework) of peace, justice and democracy is a wonderful and very exciting idea. Many will agree with this but ask – is there even a little hope that this can be achieved in the near future, before it is too late?

If we look at the actual record of the international community for resolving much smaller issues, the situation does not appear hopeful at all. To take an example, the Palestine issue has been discussed endlessly during the last seven decades without any justice-based solutions being found. There have been ups and downs, and some times appeared to be more hopeful than others, and some efforts appeared to have more success than others, but the overall result after over 70 years is a very dismal one.

What hope, then, for much bigger changes of the kind that we are considering?

Before we consider this question let us take another one. If our world is facing serious problems, should we not consider the most obvious and effective solutions, even if these appear difficult to achieve at present?

I think that the most obvious and effective solutions should certainly be considered no matter how difficult and impractical these appear at present. These should be on the world’s agenda for all the people to see. In particular, these should be on the table for all the younger people and children to see, because it is their future which is most in danger under the present system. Adults have been thinking for too long along old lines. Give children and teenagers and young people a chance to see that such solutions are also on the agenda. Who knows? In their (as yet) uncorrupted innocence they may decide to choose these solutions.

As the survival crisis intensifies, there will be a new wave of yearning for new paths and solutions. There will be a turmoil and people, particularly young people, may be willing to consider all options.

In such situations the sincere and honest solutions which appear impractical today may appear the most obvious solutions to the younger people, and these may get much higher acceptability among all solutions.

For this to happen, it is important for some thoughtful people to keep these ideas alive and to provoke discussion on them so that the details of such solutions can be worked out.

UK academics face investigation, prison for China-linked “military” research

Julie Hyland

Almost 200 leading academics in the UK are being investigated for their “connections” to Chinese universities and “military-linked” firms, with the threat of up to 10 years imprisonment if they are deemed to be breaching “national security.”

The announcement by oligarch Rupert Murdoch's Times newspaper is part of an escalating assault on academic freedom and is integral to the US-led drive towards a potentially catastrophic military conflict with China.

Tom Tugendhat, chair of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee and a former Army officer, laid a Khadi Poppy wreath at India Gate in New Delhi, November 11, 2018. Tugendhat is part of the newly formed China Research Group that is working with right-wing lobby groups and think-tanks to demand the UK's “economic decoupling” from China. (Credit: British High Commission, New Delhi--FlickR)

It comes as Murdoch's Australian newspaper disclosed that Australia's federal Liberal-National government secretly blocked a number of university research grants last December on the grounds that they allegedly represented a China-linked “national security threat”.

On Friday, Australia formed one of three “guests” participating in a virtual meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) leaders, hosted by the UK's Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The so-called D-10 coalition (whose other invitees are South Korea and India) is strategising on an “anti-China front”.

The allegations that UK university research is being used to assist the Chinese military are made in a report by the right-wing Civitas think-tank, which began life as part of the Thatcherite Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). Entitled, “Inadvertently Arming China?”, its authors Radomir Tylecote and Robert Clark are attached to the extreme-right of the ruling Conservative Party and the pro-Brexit campaign, heading up the IEA and the neo-con Henry Jackson Society respectively.

The report claims to have “found” that 15 of the 24 top UK Russell Group universities have links with 29 Chinese “military-linked” universities and corporations. It accuses the UK universities of “unintentionally generating research” that “may be of use” to China's military conglomerates, “including those with activities in the production of Weapons of Mass Destruction...”

The spurious and menacing investigation concludes with an extended note that “None of the academics, researchers, or other staff… discussed in this report are accused of knowingly assisting the development of the Chinese military, of knowingly transferring information to that end, or of committing any breach of their university regulations. Nor are they accused of any other wrongdoing, or breach of national security, or any criminal offence.” It also states that the research queried “may be used solely for non-military ends”, and even that “this report is not necessarily to demonstrate that they risk being used for military purposes...”

Although the report does not specifically name the academics involved, their identities can be easily established. For example, it cites “Three academics from the Bristol Composites Institute [that] have lectured at Zhejiang University” and who “are experts in composite materials that can be made stronger, lighter and resistant to electricity or fire...”

It also lists universities—including Cambridge, Imperial, Queen Mary, Bristol and Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt—it says are involved in research with potential links to the Chinese Communist Party and the Peoples Liberation Army, while asserting that there is “no evidence that any of these universities has done anything wrong.”

Nonetheless, it argues that much of the research identified is “being sponsored by the UK taxpayer” and calls for “a strategic reassessment for new rules for scientific research”, as part of an “urgent reassessment of the security implications of the so-called ‘Golden Era’ policies towards China....”

On this basis, the Times disclosed that the Foreign Office is preparing “enforcement notices” warning up to 200 UK academics that they could be breaching export laws preventing highly sensitive intellectual property “from being handed to hostile states.”

“We could be seeing dozens of academics in courts before long,” an unnamed source told the Times. “If even 10 percent lead to successful prosecutions, we’d be looking at about 20 academics going to jail for helping the Chinese build super-weapons.”

The University of Manchester was forced earlier this month to end its research project with China Electronics Technology Group (CETC) following claims by Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, that the state-owned firm’s technology was being used against Muslim Uighurs.

Tugendhat is part of the newly formed China Research Group that is working with right-wing lobby groups and think-tanks to demand the UK's “economic decoupling” from China, using allegations of its human rights abuses. The Times editorial on the Civitas report was titled “Academic Decoupling.”

The right-wing forces mobilised globally behind this latest incarnation of human rights imperialism have no genuine concern as to the repressive apparatus of the Chinese police state, which is directed above all against the working class. They are the representatives of a financial oligarchy that has massively enriched itself on the backs of the super-exploited Chinese masses, following the restoration of capitalism by the Chines Communist Party (CCP).

Their “investigations” and “research” are politically-motivated propaganda aimed at justifying economic and military aggression—including nuclear war—against what they regard as a strategic competitor to the interests of western imperialism.

Though they are reluctant—at this point—to propose measures that might infringe on the City of London's role as the largest renminbi-denominated foreign exchange hub and payments centre outside of China, this campaign is becoming ever more strident. The UK is attempting to march in lockstep with the US, where President Joe Biden has made clear the Democrats will continue and intensify its economic and military encirclement of China, begun under Obama and continued by Trump.

Earlier this month, the Ofcom media regulator withdrew the license of China Global Television Network (CGTN) to broadcast in the UK, claiming that it was controlled by the CCP. This had been preceded by a campaign against academics and freelance researchers that had appeared on CGTN to criticise US and UK policy against China. The ban also follows the introduction of the UK's new National Security Investment Bill, giving sweeping powers to scrutinise and block deals with Chinese corporations, and Johnson's provocative assertion that COVID-19 is the outcome of Chinese “demented medicine.”

Anti-China propaganda is also the stalking horse for broader political censorship, the primary target of which is left-wing opposition to capitalism, which has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Civitas report author Tylecote is the co-founder of the Free Speech Union (FSU), which purports to champion “national academic freedom.” The FSU played a key role in the announcement by Education Secretary Gavin Williamson that he will place “a free speech condition” on universities wishing to access public funding and enable the government's recently created Office for Students (OfS) to appoint a “ free speech champion ” to investigate alleged breaches.

Journalist Toby Young is another founder of the FSU and was initially the government's first choice to lead the OfS before his attendance at a secret eugenics conference was exposed in the London Student .

The FSU is part of a network sponsored by the Charles Koch Foundation, a prominent funder of neo-fascist libertarian and Republican causes, including the Great Barrington Declaration in favour of letting COVID-19 rip through the working class.

Propagandising in favour of the state clampdown on academic freedoms, Edward Lucas in the Daily Mail drew a direct parallel between the anti-China measures and state surveillance of campuses pioneered through the Islamophobic Prevent strategy. These were pioneered on campuses by the Blair government in 2003, following the illegal invasion of Iraq.

“So how might we counter the threat?” he wrote. “Declining sponsorship for chairs in physics is certainly one way. But there are lessons to be learned from the close co-operation between counter-terrorism authorities and universities which has brought considerable success in beating back the radical extremists infesting our campuses.”

Germany: MV Werften to cut 1,200 shipyard jobs

Gustav Kemper

In a two-minute video, the CEO of MV Werften (shipyards), Peter Fetten, informed the workforces of the three shipyards in Wismar, Warnemünde and Stralsund that more than a third of the 3,000 jobs are to fall victim to a “restructuring programme.” Around 1,200 jobs are at risk—a bitter blow for the workforces, as the shipyard industry is one of the most important employers in the region.

MV Werften GmbH' shipyards in Rostock, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (Credit: Sebastian Krauleidis via Wikimedia Commons)

The future of the remaining workforce is also on the line as the owner of the shipyard is in financial difficulties. The three MV shipyards belong to the investment holding company Genting Hong Kong Ltd., which is mainly active in cruise shipping and also in the resort hotel, casino, travel events, aviation and shipyard businesses. The main shareholder and chairman of the board is billionaire Lim Kok Thay, who also operates large palm oil plantations in Malaysia.

In the former East Germany, the Baltic shipyards employed more than 50,000 workers producing cargo ships for sea and river shipping. After reunification, this business collapsed and tens of thousands lost their jobs. Ownership of the shipyards changed several times in the years that followed, and the workforce shrank to fewer than 1,500 workers.

When cruise shipping surged in the decade before 2020 and passenger numbers doubled internationally to 30 million, all shipyards specialising in cruise ships were operating at full capacity. This is what motivated Genting Hong Kong to enter the shipbuilding business in 2017 with the purchase of MV Shipyards. Genting promised orders totalling €3.5 billion for several river cruise ships, ice-breaking luxury vessels for cruises to the Arctic Ocean and two giant cruise ships.

As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, cruising came to a virtual standstill and with it the business of manufacturing these ships. The cruise ship Global One is still to be completed in Wismar, and the luxury expedition yacht Crystal Endeavor in Stralsund, but work on a third ship, Global II in Rostock-Warnemünde, has been terminated and a scrapping company is already being sought.

As in other industries, the workers are burdened with any impediment to profit. This has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Instead of owners taking the loss, the shipyard group applied to the state government of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the German government for state aid to cover loan payments and other liabilities. In October, the state government agreed to an early partial disbursement of €193 million from the German government’s economic stabilisation fund.

IG Metall called this a “positive signal” and is hoping for further funds. A loan totaling €570 million has been requested. So far, employment has been secured until the end of March 2021, but with the company threatened with insolvency, the future outlook is uncertain.

The trade union has been holding talks on a plan to meet the crisis since last week. As in other industries, this means that IG Metall has already accepted the reduction of 1,200 jobs. Salary cuts and reduced working hours are under discussion.

The district manager of IG Metall Küste, Daniel Friedrich, called for new projects in offshore wind farms or naval contracts. Stefan Schad, managing director of IG Metall Rostock and Schwerin and union representative for MV Werften, said in a press release that the union was pushing for a “well-equipped transfer company.” “As many employees as possible” are to be retained, he said.

As early as last November, IG Metall Küste announced that the union, the Nordmetall employers’ association, and the management of MV Werften, as well as the general works council and the state ministries of finance and economics, had agreed that, given the current workload, there would have to be “extensive personnel adjustments and cost savings.” The workers’ representatives, the company and the government agreed to “close and constructive cooperation.”

Like the numerous transfer companies that IG Metall had already set up in other industries, this one will only transfer workers to lower-paid jobs, precarious employment or unemployment. The Stralsund shipyard with about 650 employees could even be closed down entirely. Current orders are only sufficient to maintain employment until June.

The entire shipbuilding industry is in crisis. According to a survey by the consulting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers, 83 percent of the companies questioned expect there to be numerous insolvencies in the industry this year. Already last year, the German Naval Yards in Keil received federal subsidies. Thyssen Krupp Marine Systems is also in crisis. In September 2020, the union announced that more than a third of the 18,000 jobs at German shipyards were at grave risk.

The pandemic is revealing the brutality of capitalism: While luxury cruise ships for the rich are scrapped, refugees from Africa capsize in their unseaworthy rubber dinghies in the Mediterranean and refugees from Syria freeze in Greek mass camps.

Instead of defending every job on principle, the unions prove again to be stooges of the owners of capital, striving to engineer the destruction of jobs and workers’ livelihoods in such a way as to prevent any rebellion.

World governments exploit pandemic depression to recruit youth into their militaries

Eoin Oisin

As mass unemployment from the COVID-19 pandemic ravages countries around the world, young people are turning to military conscription as a last resort. Economic crises are notoriously fertile grounds for militaries to recruit applicants who would otherwise be going to college or entering the workforce. Without other opportunities available, sections of youth are joining the military at great personal risk, in hopes of a better future.

U.S. Marines prepare to deploy from Kuwait (U.S. Marine Corps photos by Sgt. Robert G. Gavaldon via AP)

According to a new report released by the Wall Street Journal, countries across the world have seen upticks in military recruitment in the last year, particularly in the last months of 2020 and the first months of 2021.

Around the world, 60 countries have some form of mandatory conscription. While military service is an unavoidable part of life in these countries, trends of enlistment and military service extension are revealing. South Korea has a draft for men, and 195,000 applications were submitted for the first four months of 2021, a rise of 44 percent for the first four months of 2020.

In Israel, where all citizens including teenagers living abroad have to enlist for between two and two-and-a-half years beginning at the age of 18, a noticeable trend during the past year has been to request extensions on their military service to continue earning an income while jobs and working conditions in Israel to decrease.

The Australian armed forces saw a 23 percent rise in recruitment applications from January 2020 to the beginning of September, and a 9.9 percent rise during the full 2020 year. The highest rates of increase were from Victoria, New South Wales, and the Australian Capital Territory, the most urbanized regions. In these regions working class youth have faced immense unemployment and underemployment.

The United Kingdom, where the pandemic has taken a staggering toll on jobs and wages, is set to surpass its target for military recruits for the 2020-2021 recruitment cycle. To meet these recruitment goals, the UK was forced to lower the physical fitness standards and other requirements for recruitment in 2019. This move followed a 7 year stretch of low recruitment numbers.

The US Army was an exception, meeting a recruitment goal for 2020 that had been previously lowered twice. Over 62,000 people joined the US Army last year, far from the initial goal of 80,000 at the beginning of 2020. However, its rate of re-enlistment was higher than expected at 92 percent compared to 83 percent the previous year.

The recruitment efforts in the centers of imperialism, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia and Canada are bound up with the growing threat of a third world war. President Joe Biden, for example, has spent much of his first month in office making clear that his administration will escalate, not step back from, the aggressive and dangerous confrontation with China initiated by the Obama administration and intensified under Trump.

The escalating drive to world war has been openly acknowledged for years by the heads of major capitalist powers. Former US President Donald Trump reoriented the Pentagon’s central focus from wars against terrorism to “great power conflicts” in 2018. French President Macron and German Chancellor Merkel have both floated proposals for a European Army. Macron has also pushed to bring back the draft in France, while Germany is spending billions of euros to build up its military for foreign interventions.

There are countless military hotspots throughout the world that could quickly become the center of a major conflict. Regional wars have broken out in the Caucasus states in September 2020 between the borders of Russia, Iran and Turkey and proxy war has continued between all major global powers in Syria, nearing 7 years of open intervention. In recent months, provocative military maneuvers have continued against Iran and China overseen by Trump and Biden.

It is quite likely that the young people joining the military service around the world will see combat and suffer immense loss during their service. Moreover, this increase in recruitment comes at a time when young people are overwhelmingly opposed to war and militarism. After last January’s assassination of Iranian general Sulemani, over 61 percent of Americans said they opposed a war with Iran. Even larger numbers supported withdrawal of troops or an all-out end to the decades-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In August 2020, army soldier Daniel Robuck stationed in Honolulu, Hawaii posted a Tiktok video in which he asked his fellow soldiers why they had joined the military. They overwhelmingly answered that they “did not know.” Other responses included “to beat drugs” and cycles of crime, to earn US citizenship, to make a living and provide for their families. Some stated they were lied to by recruiters. The viral video and two similar ones amassed over 4 million views and hundreds of thousands of “likes.” Answering this question, “why did you join the army” has become a common theme on social media ever since.

The fact that there is an increase in military recruitment despite the risk involved and the opposition to its purpose, is a testament to the dire economic situation that workers face.

The COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to push an additional 119 to 124 million people into extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1.90 a day, according to the January 2021 forecasts from the World Bank. Eight out of 10 of the “new poor” will be in middle-income countries.

A January 2021 report issued by the UK-based charity Oxfam International notes that for the first time since 1870 per capita incomes are expected to decline in all regions of the world.

The report explains: “This means it is likely that COVID-19 will drive up inequality in virtually every country on earth simultaneously. This will be the first time that this has happened since records of inequality began, over a century ago.” Oxfam estimates that globally 56 percent of the population lives on between $2 and $10 a day.

Amid the on-going pandemic and its catastrophic impact on workers, world governments are offering to today’s struggling youth the “opportunity” to risk it all in imperialist wars in order to receive the most basic stability. Most disturbing about this offer is that it is enticing enough for many youth to take it. The fact that so many young people are willing to risk their lives in order to secure a livable wage, escape poverty, or to qualify for reduced tuition is a thorough indictment of capitalism, which has nothing else better to offer them.

Protests mount against Socialist Party-Podemos persecution of Spanish rapper Pablo Hasél

Alejandro López

The Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government is escalating the persecution of rapper Pablo Hasél and repression of protests in his defence. It is part of broader campaign by the European ruling class on free speech and democratic rights, intensified with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Tuesday morning, Catalan regional police seized Hasél at the University of Lleida, where he had barricaded himself with his supporters, and jailed him. He has been sentenced to nine-month prison sentence for insulting the Spanish state and the Bourbon monarchy, becoming the first musician imprisoned in Spain since 1978 and the fall of the fascist regime led by Francisco Franco.

Painting in defense of Pablo Hasel. (Image Credit: Twitter/VDefensa)

Three days later, the Lleida High Court provocatively upheld another conviction, adding an additional two-and-a-half years to Hasél’s sentence, for allegedly obstructing justice and threatening a witness. Hasél had denounced a person on social media for having falsely testified in favour of police who had beaten up a 16-year-old protestor during the 2017 Catalan referendum. The witness then confronted Hasél, and a fight broke out.

Hasél’s incarceration triggered mass protests in his defence, coming days after 300 actors, musicians and artists signed a manifesto to demand his freedom, “and to oppose these types of crimes that not only curtail the right of freedom of expression, but also ideological and artistic freedom.”

For four consecutive evenings, thousands of protestors have demonstrated in major cities across Spain calling for Hasél’s immediate release—including Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao, Valencia, and Tarragona and Lleida, among others. Violent clashes broke out in many cities after the police charged protesters without reason. Hundreds of protesters have been injured or arrested. During a stand-off in Barcelona, a 19-year-old teenager lost an eye after police fired a foam bullet at her face.

Many of these protestors are young, under 25. This is a generation that has only witnessed austerity, mass unemployment, relentless media propaganda in favour of the fascistic Vox party and attacks on democratic rights, under both the right-wing Popular Party and the PSOE and Podemos. They view police with contempt, having witnessed how they routinely use violence against protestors, workers and migrants, while treating far-right protests in affluent areas with kid gloves. They recall how 10,000 militarised police attacked thousands of peaceful voters in the 2017 Catalan referendum.

This generation’s main political experience has been with what the ruling class passes off as the “left”, that is, the “Left Populist” Podemos party, and the treachery, cynicism and hypocrisy of the trade unions, which act as para-statal organisations enforcing the ruling class re-opening of the economy and schools amid the pandemic.

This was once again on display this week. Podemos parliamentary spokesperson Pablo Echenique tweeted: “All my support to the young anti-fascists who are calling for justice and freedom of expression in the streets.”

But Podemos has passed a digital gag law to carefully monitor social media, sent police to attack protestors opposed to its criminal herd immunity policy, and threatened to deploy the army.

As for its “anti-fascist” pretensions, the PSOE-Podemos government is increasingly adopting the programme of the far-right in its relentless persecution of migrants, while downplaying coup threats from sections of the military and Vox which call for the murder of “26 million” leftists. In fact, the PSOE and Podemos managed to pass a law to shower banks and corporations with 140 billion euros in bailout funds thanks to the votes from Vox in parliament.

Podemos has now submitted a proposed “pardon” for Hasél in parliament, aware that if the PSOE opposes the move, nothing will come out of it. Over the past two years, it has always claimed that its seats in parliament are never enough to bring about significant changes. Podemos could easily bring the government to its knees by threatening to leave the ruling coalition and bring down the government, but it refuses to do this because—as its record in government makes clear—it supports policies of austerity, police-state repression and “herd immunity” against the workers.

In Catalonia, the main pseudo-left party, the Candidatures of Popular Unity (CUP), criticised the “unjustified charges, truncheon blows above the waist, punches to the face and body, blows to the face, vans ramming protesters, vans speeding past the protesters, foam bullets directly to the body and the face and a person mutilated.”

The CUP talks as if its votes had not been key in supporting two pro-austerity regional governments and with it, their regional police whose anti-riot units are notorious for their brutality—and in fact were the ones sent to arrest Hasél. The CUP is now negotiating its support for a third Catalan regional government.

The ruling class is increasingly terrified at growing social opposition. The pro-PSOE daily El País objected that the protests “had not been communicated beforehand to the authorities,” as required by the law, instead they were “responding to generic calls made on social networks ‘for the freedom of the rapper’ and freedom of expression.”

El País complained that the protests were not being organised and controlled by the established political parties. Significantly, the newspaper, which was notorious for its endorsement of the fascistic anti-Catalan campaign, was concerned that the Catalan separatists were not organising these protests in Catalonia, unlike the 2017-2019 separatist demonstrations.

The protests, it wrote, “are different from those of recent years. No flags or esteladas [the Catalan independence flag], no banners and a lot of dark clothing. ‘We are here for freedom of expression and Hasél,’ they repeat when participants are asked. There is no more speech or organization. And in Madrid they also chant: ‘Here are the antifascists.’”

Terrified that the struggle to defend democratic rights will intersect with the struggle against “herd immunity” policies and bank bailouts, the bourgeois press and the political establishment are branding the protestors as thugs, violent Catalan secessionists, and terrorists. Hasél’s private life is being turned upside down for any “crime.” His tweets and songs, especially the more confused or distasteful ones reflecting Hasél’s Stalinist politics, are being obnoxiously repeated.

However, Hasél has been jailed in a desperate attempt to silence a figure who has given voice to widely felt anger at the political criminality of Spanish capitalism and the cowardice and treachery of pseudo-left groups like Podemos, whom Hasél has repeatedly denounced.

The politics of the ruling establishment’s attacks on Hasél were unveiled this week in its treatment of neo-Nazi leader Isabel Medina Peralta. On Sunday, as Hasél was barricading himself in Lleida university, Peralta marched with 300 neo-Nazis through the streets of Madrid to pay tribute to the Blue Division, the 45,000-strong Spanish fascist unit that fought alongside Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union in World War II.

Unabashedly appealing to anti-Semitism and the traditions of Spanish fascism, Peralta declared: “It is our supreme obligation to fight for Spain …The enemy will always be the same, although with different masks: the Jew …. The Jew is the culprit, and the Blue Division fought it.”

She was immediately provided with a platform, interviewed by three major newspapers. El Mundo titled its interview “Isabel Peralta, the new face of Spanish fascism.” 20 Minutos had its piece, “Who is Isabel Peralta, the young Falangist who considers the Jews ‘an enemy’.” While El Español led its piece with “The young anti-Semite paying homage to the Blue Division: ‘I’m a fascist and a socialist’.”

The Spanish bourgeoisie’s attempt to give a false “socialist” colouration to its fascistic politics, hiding the historic opposition between fascism and the socialist workers movement, is utterly reactionary. The task of every socialist is to defend democratic rights against the fascist onslaught of the Spanish bourgeoisie and call for the Hasél’s immediate liberation.

With thousands facing layoffs, Brazilian unions push temporary work at Ford

Brunna Machado

The two main trade unions leading the negotiations with Ford on the shutdown of its operations in Brazil are urging workers to return to work next Monday, February 22, in a clear gesture of their obedience to the automaker’s profit interests. Even knowing that they will soon be laid off, the workers are to return to the factories to meet the company’s demand for spare parts.

Workers march against Ford shutdown in São Paulo in 2019

This imposition of the return to work comes amid pressure from Ford dealerships, which have shown concern about a shortage of spare parts for the cars that are still for sale. The announcement of the plants’ closure provoked an immediate drop in sales of Ford vehicles in Brazil. In January, the company’s sales were cut in half in comparison to December, totaling only 8,100 units sold in the entire country. It was the biggest drop among car manufacturers in Brazil.

According to a report by the UOL Carros website, the Brazilian Association of Ford Distributors (Abradif) warned Ford at the end of January that parts were already scarce. In their document submitted to Ford, the organization states that its members have received notifications from the Consumer Protection Agencies (Procon) due to the unavailability of maintenance components in the authorized network.

Of the three plants owned by Ford in Brazil, only the one at Horizonte, in the state of Ceará, has continued to operate. It is expected to shut down completely by the end of the year. The other two plants, in Camaçari, Bahia, and Taubaté, São Paulo, which employ the larger number of workers, have been completely closed since January 11, the day the automaker announced the end of production in Brazil.

After a few weeks, however, Ford started to recall part of the workforce at Camaçari and Taubaté. Workers were notified individually by telegrams or phone calls from their bosses but despite direct intimidation did not respond to the summons.

In an interview with the O Globo newspaper, the president of the Camaçari Metalworkers Union, Julio Bonfim, had reported: “Ford is sending notices, but the adhesion is zero, everything is stopped, nobody is going. The plant was forced to rent a shed because in the region of Simões Filho [the neighboring municipality] there were no people here in Camaçari to unload goods from 90 truck drivers.”

To guarantee the return to work, Ford had to call upon the services of the respective unions, not only to formalize the new order, but also to convince the workers. It was with this purpose that conciliation hearings were held this week between the unions and Ford executives.

During a hearing, the president of the Camaçari union declared himself in favor of the return to work, presenting disagreements only in relation to the criteria for this return. “The union wants to comply with the return conditions, yes, but the union wants to discuss criteria for these workers to return. Not the way Ford is doing it. Ford is recalling all workers, even disabled workers, workers who are injured,” Bonfim argued.

While the company executives denounced an “illegal strike” by the workers, accusing the union of leading this resistance, Bonfim denied that he was responsible: “There is no strike, there is no stoppage.” In other words, at the moment when Ford was most dependent upon the workers, when the workers’ power over the company was revealed, the union subordinated that power to capitalist profit interests, disarming the working class struggle.

In a video released right after the negotiation hearing, the president of the Taubaté Metalworkers Union, Cláudio Batista, presented as an achievement the fact that the agreement had obtained “the negotiation with Ford’s global executives, an unprecedented fact because we never managed to negotiate with Ford’s executives aiming to reverse the closure.”

Despite being held separately, the two hearings, in Camaçari and Taubaté, approved virtually identical resolutions urging the workers to return to their factories with the guarantee that there will be no layoffs “until the end of negotiations.” During this period, Ford will also maintain the payment of wages, even for those who are not called to work.

Regarding the workers who didn’t show up after Ford’s initial call, there will be no reductions in salary. On the other hand, starting on the 22nd, those who are called and do not show up will be subject to the “applicable measures.” Both agreements were later submitted to a workers’ vote and have been approved.

Besides the political implications involved, this return to work comes amidst the worst moment of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country. More than 300,000 new cases and 7,520 new deaths were reported last week in Brazil, the week with the second highest number of deaths since the pandemic began. This alone justifies the need to keep workers at home, stopping all non-essential production.

This issue was mentioned during the Camaçari hearing, with a request—but not a demand—from the union that Ford test all workers who return to work, considering the recurrence of COVID-19 medical leaves recorded throughout the pandemic.

In an anti-scientific and disgusting posture—similar to that of Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro and aligned with the ruling class as a whole—one of the company’s representatives at the hearing replied that “there has been no infection inside the factory to this day.” Challenging the workers’ intelligence and blaming them for getting infected, she then said that “the employees who tested positive acquired the disease outside [the factory].”

After the insistence of the judge overseeing the hearing, who stressed the urgency of the health crisis in the state of Bahia and throughout the country, the company limited itself to “think carefully” about the proposal. Thus, workers will return to their workplaces only under the legally minimum “safety protocols,” absolutely insufficient at this critical moment of the pandemic.

In addition to Ford executives and government officials, the unions must also be denounced as those responsible for subordinating workers to the profit interests that threaten the health and living conditions of the working class.

Under such conditions, the return to work will be especially bitter for Ford workers. It urgently poses the question: who should control the Ford factories, the working class or the capitalists?

The Lancet reveals impact of COVID-19 on health care workers

Kevin Martinez

The British medical journal the Lancet recently published an article describing the heavy emotional and physical toll that the coronavirus pandemic has had on frontline health care workers all around the world.

Enduring months of exhaustion, the threat of infection and the loss of countless patients, health care workers have unsurprisingly faced additional problems that have added to their stress and anguish affecting their ability to cope.

Medical workers tend a patient suffering from COVID-19 in the Nouvel Hopital Civil of Strasbourg, eastern France, Oct. 22, 2020. (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias)

The journal outlines how nurses were thrust into emergency settings with insufficient training and lacked personal protective equipment (PPE) despite their protests. Nurses and hospital staff had to keep up with the latest knowledge of the pandemic while at the same time working in facilities that were overwhelmed.

In addition to having to take care of patients, health care workers had to take care of each other when they became sick, console the dying and inform surviving family members remotely about their loved one’s fate. Some nurses were burdened with the responsibility of having to ration limited medical supplies and treatments, as well as tell non-COVID patients that their essential surgeries or appointments had to be either canceled or postponed.

Fear of infection prevented many health care workers from seeing their own families in person for months, contributing to their isolation and loneliness. The stigma of being a health care worker led to some being shunned by their community.

Despite being labeled as “heroes” by the political and media establishment, health care workers saw a real decline in their earnings because of the loss of outpatient visits, elective surgeries and the interruption of training and certification for new nurses and staff.

Home health care workers, who have little or no PPE, have been especially hit hard as they are faced with the agonizing decision of having to choose work and possible infection or unemployment and starvation.

The pandemic’s impact is especially acute in what the Lancet calls low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), where there has always been a lack of basic medical equipment and supplies. A high burnout rate for nurses may have contributed to worse outcomes for patients with COVID-19. It was not uncommon for nurses to abandon their posts or refuse to attend to patients with the virus.

In countries like Uganda, these workers were targeted by political leaders and hospital administrators for persecution and had their policy decisions met with hostility. This, of course, was also evident in the US, with public health figures such Dr. Anthony Fauci and Rebekah Jones of Florida being attacked publicly for voicing concerns about the government handling of the pandemic.

Under pre-pandemic circumstances, nurses and hospital staff already faced high levels of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Severe burnout syndrome affected as many as 33 percent of critical care nurses and up to 45 percent of critical care physicians.

The experience of SARS in 2003 caused these workers chronic stress for months and years. A recent Chinese study found that among workers treating patients with COVID-19, 50 percent suffered depression, 45 percent had anxiety, 33 percent had insomnia and 72 percent suffered distress. This was based on a review of 13 studies involving more than 33,000 participants.

In Italy and France, studies showed high rates of depression, PTSD and burnout, with symptoms especially prevalent among those who were younger, female, nurses and working with patients infected with COVID-19.

These disproportionate rates among women are due to the fact that they comprise 70 percent of the global health care workforce. These inequalities increased the risk of unemployment and domestic violence. Working-class women not only have to care for patients under extraordinary conditions but also take care of their families, home school children, take care of their elders and still perform household chores.

The Lancet noted positively that social media was an important venue for workers to share their experiences and grievances, reducing the “sense of isolation and normalised conversations about mental health.”

The journal closes with the hope that the pandemic will promote a “redefinition of essential support workers, with recognition of the contribution of all health care workers and appropriate education, protection, and compensation.”

Help for health care workers and their families, however, will not come from the ruling classes, who have viewed the pandemic as an opportunity to make money and sacrifice older, less “productive” members of the population.

Health care workers must base their struggle for protection and compensation on a socialist basis and overturn the capitalist system, which views their lives as “nonessential.”

Ontario reopens all schools, delays March break ignoring warnings of a third COVID-19 wave

Jake Silver

Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce delivered a tirade of lies at a press conference last week to cover over the deadly implications of the province’s school reopening policy.

His remarks came in the run-up to Tuesday’s return to in-class learning in the only remaining parts of the province with predominantly online instruction—Metro Toronto and the neighbouring Peel and York regions. All three areas continue to be hotspots for the spread of COVID-19.

The press briefing was called to announce a delay of the annual week-long March Break until April 12 for all public and publicly-funded Catholic schools throughout the province.

Huntsville High School in Huntsville, Ontario, Canada. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

With the spread of more infectious and lethal strains of the virus, the province is encountering increased resistance from teachers to its phased return to in-person learning.

Last year, schools were closed due to the pandemic for the first time immediately following March Break, when the seven-day rolling average of daily new COVID-19 cases was still in the hundreds. Now, it is in the thousands. However, the government, opposition parties, and trade union bureaucrats are all demanding that schools not only remain open, but are never closed again.

Lecce made this clear at the press conference, declaring that the government was “following the advice of the medical community and the chief officer of health to delay March break […] with one aim, to keep these schools open.”

The decision to delay March break has triggered a furious response from teachers and families. Educators have worked tirelessly in recent months to provide learning to their students, while receiving virtually no support from the government. They have been shunted back and forth between distance learning, hybrid models, and full in-person classes. Many of them justifiably believe that they deserve a break. Numerous families, concerned about their children being exposed to the deadly virus in overcrowded classrooms and public transit, would prefer to keep them at home, even though this means substantial financial hardship due to the totally inadequate assistance provided by all levels of government in Canada.

Lecce claimed the province’s concern was over community spread due to travel and holiday congregations. He asserted that requiring all students down to Grade 1 to wear masks would keep everyone safe, and that suspending March break was a necessary decision to protect kids’ mental health.

This is a hypocritical fraud. The vast majority of teachers, parents and working people recognize that travelling under pandemic conditions poses a severe threat, and have no intention of doing so. The most conspicuous travelers in recent months have been members of the political establishment and super-rich, including Lecce’s former colleague, the ex-Ontario Finance Minister Rod Phillips, who was forced to resign after jetting off to a private Caribbean resort as thousands died across Ontario in December.

While the Ford government claims to be protecting the health and well-being of education staff and students from the community transmission that may result from a small minority of travellers during March break, its policy of reopening schools is preparing the way for a much more catastrophic spread of COVID-19, including its more infectious variants. Multiple scientific studies have confirmed the central role that open schools played in triggering the pandemic’s devastating second wave.

With the support of the federal Liberal government, Ontario’s Conservative government and its provincial counterparts across Canada are preparing the way for a deadly third wave of the pandemic, a fact that is openly acknowledged by numerous medical experts. Commenting on the Ford government’s recent announcements concerning the reopening of schools and the economy, Dr. Michael Warner, the Director of Critical Care at Toronto’s Michael Garron Hospital, said,“The hope that I had that we would have a little bit of light has been vanquished by this announcement by the government. It doesn't make any sense! I have not been able to encounter one scientist, an epidemiologist or infections doctor, who thinks this plan makes sense.”

The supposed safety measures put in place by the Ontario government to accompany the reopening of schools cannot even be described as a Band-Aid. In a school system with around 2 million students, Lecce boasted that the government will make available a mere 50,000 tests per week to test for asymptomatic cases. At that pace, it would take the best part of a year to test every student in Ontario just once! Moreover, given the government’s previous bungled efforts at mass testing and the rollout of vaccines, it is extremely doubtful that even its inadequate 50,000 target will be met.

The provincial government knows very well that schools are a major vector of transmission, yet it is doubling down on the lie that schools are safe. According to the Feb. 12 update on the Ontario government website responsible for tracking school outbreaks, 5,264 students, 1130 staff and 1125 unidentified individuals have been infected with COVID-19 since September. There are active outbreaks at 112 schools, four of which have been closed, with 167 cases reported in the previous 14 days. There have also been 2431 cases at licensed child care facilities, including 134 with active cases. 17 have closed their doors. Overall, the province has reported over 295,000 cases and 6,775 deaths since March.

The increased danger posed by virus mutations was highlighted by reports of two teachers in Brampton testing positive for the more infectious UK variant, and a student in Waterloo who likely also has a case of the same variant.

These developments underscore that it is impossible to safely organize in-person learning amid a raging pandemic. However, this will not stop the political elite from trying to force teachers, students, and their relatives to risk their lives on a daily basis, because the reopening of schools is seen as essential to boosting corporate profits. From the standpoint of the ruling class, children must return to in-person learning so that schools can function as holding pens, freeing up parents to fully participate in the “labour force,” churning out profits for big business.

Opposition among teachers and families to this homicidal course has been rising for weeks. Since November, educators at three Toronto-area schools have walked out to protest dangerous working conditions due to COVID-19 outbreaks. In the most recent example of this, 22 educational assistants and support staff walked off the job at Beverly Public School in late January. These determined struggles have been systematically sabotaged by the education unions, who insist that teachers and education assistants confine their protests to the reactionary anti-worker labour relations system, which is designed to impose the dictates of the government and big business.

Nine schools in northern Ontario, where schools reopened on January 11, had already reported cases by January 28. In response, Shannon Senior, an educational assistant and single mother with two school-aged children living in Sudbury wrote an open letter to Ontario Premier Doug Ford denouncing the province’s school reopening. “None of our kids should be sick today. The schools should have been closed. This could have been prevented. It feels like we are a smaller community, so we have been overlooked,” she told the Sudbury Star. “One of the things that stood out to me a few weeks ago during Ford’s announcement was when he said that he doesn’t take the health and safety of our children lightly. I almost felt like saying you’re clearly not taking it lightly for your children, but what about ours?”