Canadian establishment downplays failed attempt to assassinate Trudeau

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/08/trud-j08.html






By Roger Jordan
8 July 2020

46-year-old Corey Hurren was arrested by the RCMP last Thursday morning after crashing his pick-up truck through the gates of Rideau Hall, the official residence of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Governor General Julie Payette. Hurren, an army veteran and current member of the Canadian Rangers, a reserve unit operating in remote areas, was heavily armed when he was detained, including with an M14 assault rifle, a loaded high-standard revolver, an illegal high-capacity magazine of ammunition, and two loaded shotguns.

According to the charge sheet released Monday, Hurren, who was on full-time army duty at the time of his arrest, is accused of 21 firearms offences and one count of uttering threats against Trudeau. Hurren “did knowingly utter” or “convey a threat to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau … to cause death or bodily harm,” reads the charge sheet. Contradictory reports have appeared on how this threat was delivered. Initially the RCMP stated that Hurren had wanted to deliver “a note” to Trudeau, but declined to divulge anything about the note’s contents. Subsequent media reports have claimed that Hurren uttered the threat during his exchanges with RCMP officers on the grounds of Rideau Hall.

Although much about Hurren’s political biography and views is still unknown, it is clear, at the very least, that he has been influenced by far-right views.

He served in the military from 1997 to 2000, reaching the rank of corporal, and rejoined as a reservist in 2019.

Hurren appears to have been radicalized by the social and economic upheavals triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, including the difficulties facing the sausage-making business he set up in 2014 in Bowsman, Manitoba, the small community where he lives.

In late March, he shared a post on the Instagram account of his small business advocating the views of “QAnon,” a far-right group that claims US President Donald Trump is being targeted by forces in the “deep state.” “I am not sure what will be left of our economy, industries, and businesses when this all ends,” a Facebook post from Hurren noted in May, indicating that he feared for the survival of his business. Just one hour prior to the attack, he shared a post supporting the claim promoted by the far right in the US and Germany that Bill Gates and various international organizations created the COVID-19 pandemic.

The only conclusion that can be drawn from the available evidence is that Hurren plotted a political assassination. He drove his truck laden with firearms, military food rations, and ammunition from his home in northern Manitoba to Ottawa (a distance of more than 2,500 kilometers/1,550 miles); purposefully crashed it through the gates of the Prime Minister’s temporary official residence; and then sought to proceed on foot, heavily-armed, towards Trudeau’s home. He was intercepted by an RCMP security detail, who took him into custody after a long verbal exchange lasting 90 minutes.

However, judging by the response of the corporate-media and political establishment, Trudeau included, little out of the ordinary happened last Thursday morning. After a few perfunctory news reports on Hurren’s detention, including a handful pointing to his sharing of far-right conspiracy theories online, the story largely disappeared from the media. Trudeau, who was not at Rideau Hall when the failed attack took place, blandly remarked at a press conference Friday that he was happy that the RCMP had responded swiftly to this “concerning” incident. Only after the charge sheet against Hurren was released Monday could the National Post bring itself to admit the obvious: that the attack looks “like an assassination attempt.”

Prosecutors have to date refused to bring any national security or terrorism-related charges against Hurren. Displaying an astonishing degree of complacency, Leah West, a former national security lawyer with the Department of Justice, told the Toronto Star: “In order to bring charges of terrorism, they would need to have reason to believe that he was motivated by political, ideological or religious motives, and that he intended to intimidate likely in this case the prime minister or elements of the government. That may not have been apparent on its face from the initial investigation.”

One can only wonder how different the response would have been had the heavily armed assailant and would-be assassin expressed any affinity for Islamist terrorist groups.

The circumstances surrounding Hurren’s attempted assassination raise extremely troubling questions about his political motivations and ties, including the degree to which he was active in far-right circles, whether he acted alone, and if he promoted far-right views among his fellow members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Just one day before Hurren’s attack, hundreds of right-wing extremists and conspiracy theorists gathered on Parliament Hill in Ottawa for what they dubbed a “Dominion Day rally.” Banners at the demonstration included denunciations of “global elites” for fabricating the coronavirus crisis, calls for the abrogation of all COVID-19 related restrictions, and support for the American-based far-right “QAnon” movement. Present at the rally were several so-called “Yellow Vests”, a far-right group based in Alberta and Saskatchewan that has repeatedly organized anti-Trudeau and anti-immigrant protests over the past year-and-a-half. While there is no evidence as yet that Hurren attended the rally, it appears more than just coincidental that his attempted attack on the Prime Minister’s residence took place in the same city only hours later.

Under these conditions, what accounts for the general indifference to an assassination attempt by a supporter of the far-right against a sitting Prime Minister?

Behind much official tripe about Canadian capitalism’s “progressive” and “democratic” ethos, all sections of the ruling elite have joined hands in shifting politics rapidly to the right in recent decades, mounting an offensive against the working class that has produced an explosive growth in social inequality. A recent study revealed that the richest 1 percent of the population owns over a quarter of all household wealth and more than the poorest 40 percent of all Canadians (see: New report exposes staggering level of social inequality in Canada).

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were used to justify a vast expansion of the powers and reach of the national-security apparatus. Following an Islamist-inspired terrorist attack on the House of Commons in 2014, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government granted sweeping additional powers to the intelligence agencies under Bill C-51, including giving the Canadian Security Intelligence Service the right to break virtually any law in disrupting vaguely defined “threats” to national security. The Trudeau Liberal government enshrined these measures with its Bill C-59.

Over the past two decades, Canada’s armed forces have been engaged in virtually uninterrupted wars and military interventions and provocations, from Afghanistan to Haiti (where Canadian and US soldiers completed a coup against the country’s elected president mounted by a fascistic militia), to Libya, Syria, and Iraq.

These developments have led to the strengthening of far-right and even fascistic views among sections of the military. Last November, a military intelligence report revealed that at least three dozen serving military personnel had been identified as supporting far-right groups or expressing racist or right-wing extremist views. None of them were expelled from the military. Instead they were instructed to get counselling or were issued with warnings. The release of the report came weeks after a Manitoba-based reservist, Master Corporal Patrik Mathews, fled to the United States after a reporter exposed his role as a recruiter for a neo-Nazi organization. In January, Mathews was arrested by the FBI for his involvement in a far-right terrorist plot.

In another incident in 2018, a group of CAF sailors affiliated to the far-right Proud Boys group received a slap on the wrist after disrupting a Mi’kmaq ceremony in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The strengthening of far-right groups and networks is not merely a by-product of ruling class policy, but is actively encouraged. After Ottawa played a major role in the 2014 fascist-led coup in Ukraine, Trudeau travelled to the country after becoming Prime Minister in 2015 with members of far-right Canadian-based Ukrainian nationalists in his delegation, many of whom helped supply weaponry to fascistic militias in the country’s civil war with pro-Russian separatists (see: Trudeau bolsters Canadian support for Ukraine’s far-right regime).

Foreign policy is not the only field in which Canadian imperialism cultivates the far-right and fascistic forces. As the class struggle intensifies at home, driven by ever widening levels of social inequality and never-ending attacks by the ruling elite on the living standards of working people, far-right forces are being systematically nourished.

Last month, a Quebec court acquitted the leader of a fascist group who stormed a media office and threatened a journalist who had investigated the activities of the far-right.

During the recently concluded lockout of over 750 refinery workers at the Federated Cooperative Ltd. refinery in Regina, Saskatchewan, FCL chief executive Scott Banda appeared alongside members of United We Roll, a far-right truckers’ group associated with the “Yellow Vests,” to denounce picketing workers. United We Roll broke through a solidarity picket for the locked-out workers set up at an FCL site in Alberta, and also dismantled a blockade near Edmonton during the nationwide anti-pipeline protests earlier this year. In early 2019, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe explicitly declared his backing for a “Yellow Vest” organized convoy to Ottawa to protest the Trudeau government’s support for a UN refugee accord (see: Canadian oil refinery boss lauds George Floyd protests while employing state violence against locked out workers).

Workers in Canada must take the attempted assassination of Trudeau as a serious warning of the danger posed by the far-right. It takes place under conditions of a resurgence of right-wing extremist and fascistic politics internationally, including the promotion and protection of far-right networks within the German state apparatus by the political establishment. Just one year ago, Walter Lübcke, a local Christian Democrat politician in Germany, was assassinated at his home by a known right-wing extremist. The German government was recently forced to announce the reorganization of its elite special forces unit (the KSK) due to widespread sympathy for and ties to far-right and neo-Nazi networks among its personnel.

As in the 1930s, when world capitalism was similarly mired in systemic crisis, bourgeoisie elites, terrified of a challenge from below to their vast wealth and privileges, are cultivating fascist forces as shock troops against the working class. In Canada as around the world, fascistic thugs and state violence will be deployed at home and abroad to enforce the rapacious interests of the financial oligarchy. Only the mass mobilization of the working class on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program can answer the threat posed by the far-right.

Striking nurses in Joliet, Illinois denounce unsafe conditions at AMITA hospital

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/08/joli-a07.html






By Benjamin Mateus
7 August 2020

More than a hundred nurses picketed AMITA St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, Illinois Tuesday on the fourth day of the walkout by 700 nurses who are demanding adequate staffing and safe conditions for their patients as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage throughout the US.

Despite the brutal heat and humidity, striking nurses, wearing facemasks, enthusiastically chanted as passing cars honked in support. Among the handmade picket signs nurses held up high were: “Patients before profits,” “AMITA: In sickness and wealth,” and “Some cuts never heal.”

Nurses, who have been working without a contract for two months, told WSWS reporters that their primary concern was for patient safety. While they are certainly concerned with earning living wages, the nurses denounced the corporate media for claiming that salaries were the central issue in the strike. In fact, the pandemic has only worsened conditions for nurses and their assistants that have been deteriorating for decades.

Nurses who spoke to the WSWS requested anonymity to protect them against retaliation. Therefore, the WSWS has changed their names and limited details of their exact responsibilities.

Diane and Marianne said that AMITA does not value the nurses and frontline workers who have been exposed to COVID-19. On the issue of staffing ratio, they explained that hospital negotiators, concerned with costs, were not even discussing the issue. “But that’s the critical part of the fight,” Diane stated emphatically, “That’s the most important part.” On the question of their wages and recent counteroffer made by AMITA, Marianne said, “We heard last night that they would give 1.5 percent.” Diane interjected, saying this “has gone down since the last offer they gave us. That’s not even inflation.”

Marianne explained that she could be assigned up to five patients. Since May, elective surgeries have been rebooked and cases were up until the last few weeks when AMITA began preparing for the strike. Asked if the hospital was sending patients to other AMITA facilities in the area, she replied, “I don’t know if they’re sending surgical cases to another. I think they are going to continue to do emergency cases, but as far as elective type surgeries, they’re putting them off again.”

Marianne explained that the nurses were prepared to “strike as long as it takes.” The nurses openly expressed that striking raises conflicting feelings, but ultimately, they understand that the strike is conducted for their patients. “We’re doing it to improve conditions for our patients.”

Colleen and Kathy were seated in the shade of a pitched tent to stave off the heat. Colleen, a nurse for many years at AMITA, spoke thoughtfully and deliberately to the issues raised. “We are fighting for safe patient care. That’s the main thing. But they keep reporting that it is because we want the money. I’d forgo pay if we could take care of our patients safely.”

Asked by WSWS reporters how the hospital prepared for the pandemic, the nurses spoke about procedures and nurse-to-patient ratios. “On a COVID-19 unit before I left it was supposed to be two-to-one [nurses to patients] because you are donning and doffing gowns. Every time you are going in you are putting on your PPE, and sometimes we did not have the PPE. Now they are taking care of one to two patients.”

Nurses used to have spotters and runners to assist nurses with patient care, but these were quickly dispensed with, Colleen explained. The hospital’s COVID-19 cases remain considerable largely because of the local prison population in Joliet.

Even as nurses face fatigue and anxiety over contracting the disease and taking it home to their families, the hospital administration is taking away paid time off (PTO) and other rights. “The administration keeps taking things away,” Colleen said. “They are taking our PTO and sick time away. We are working with COVID-19 patients and they want to take our sick time away. But that is not getting out there. It's not about our pay, but we want to keep our community safe.”

Kathy said, “they have a convenient excuse” to take things away now. Colleen responded, “Right! I am sure if someone dug into it, they got government money. We did not get hazard pay. McDonalds got hazard pay and we did not get anything. And we jumped right in and started taking care of these patients and risked our families. But we didn’t get any hazard pay. They have always been wanting to do this before and are using the COVID-19 to just get done what they have been wanting to do.”

Kathy explained that she knew some nurses had become infected but didn’t have the numbers. “That’s not something they share with you. They actually hide those numbers. It’s important to know, but they won’t tell us.”

In response to the status of negotiations and wages, Colleen added, “There wasn’t any serious offer put on the table. They keep taking. They are not negotiating in good faith like they are supposed to. We counteroffered but we have not heard from them.” Nurses, she said, were prepared to strike “as long as it takes.” She added, “I was here for the last strike, but people crossed. We must stand united. If you do not stand united, corporations are going to win.”

In a discussion with Jamie and Mildred who were raising their placards and waving to passersby, they agreed that expanding the strike with other nurses in other health systems would be critical. “Our money issues are so that we can’t recruit other nurses to come work here. If we can’t attract other nurses, we will always be short staffed and have unsafe numbers. We don’t want the raises or need them for ourselves. So many nurses have already left because of the staffing issues. How are we going to attract other nurses and fix this problem?”

Stacy explained that when the pandemic first hit Joliet, the nurse-to-patient ratios were supposed to be one-to-one. But it quickly fell aside getting up to four patients to one nurse. “You’re gowning and ungowning, onej room, to the other, and back ... In the ICU, it's supposed to be one-to-one but then they had patients that weren’t intubated so they put them in ‘step down units’ - they called them ‘step down units’ so they could have a nurse take more patients. But they were extremely sick, and they were just as difficult to take care of, just as heavy.” Mildred echoed, “even more so!”

“What did the administration and chief nursing officer have to say [about COVID-19 conditions and shortages]?” Mildred blurted out, “They said, ‘wear your mask till they drop off!’ That tells you how they thought. They claimed there was a class that you could take. But we were so short staffed we barely had enough staff that could cover the floors.”

AMITA Health has reportedly spent $5 million to recruit nurses through strikebreaking staffing agencies. Some replacements are coming from Colorado, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina and other states were COVID-19 spikes are currently occurring. However, none of the strikebreakers are from these hard-hit areas are being quarantined for two weeks. While the hospital is paying their air travel, meal, hotel, and bus transportation, striking nurses told the WSWS that the Illinois Nurses Association (INA) was not paying them strike benefits.

The courageous nurses need the support of the entire working class. However, the isolation of the strike imposed by the INA—a tactic used by the United Auto Workers, the International Association of Machinists and other trade unions—must be broken. To fight for this nurses should form a rank-and-file strike committee to reach out to the tens of thousands of nurses, health care workers and other workers throughout the state and beyond, to carry out a common fight to protect lives and end the subordination of public health to private profit.

Florida orders schools to reopen as COVID-19 cases surge

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/08/flor-j08.html






By David Brown
8 July 2020

On Monday, the Florida Department of Education issued an emergency order requiring school districts to reopen all “brick and mortar schools at least five days per week for all students” in August in order to facilitate “a return to Florida hitting its full economic stride.” The order, which specifically complains that school closures “limit many parents and guardians from returning to work,” is part of the murderous back-to-work campaign that has led to a spike in COVID-19 cases across Florida and dozens of other states.

The number of new cases in Florida has surged from an average of 700 each day at the beginning of June to a seven-day moving average of 8,587 daily cases on July 6. With the number of cases continuing to escalate, it is certain that COVID-19 will be present throughout the school system next month and face-to-face instruction would become a significant vector for further transmission. Teachers, including those nearing retirement or with health vulnerabilities, will almost certainly contract the deadly disease, while countless students will bring it home to their parents and grandparents.
The order immediately sparked outrage and protests from teachers and parents across the state. Teachers in Orange County, which includes Orlando, organized a protest caravan that blocked traffic. On Facebook, an Orange County teacher, Mia, wrote: “We the People…We can’t let the Governor and the head of the DOE make these decisions without the input of the Teachers. We’re the ones risking our lives. We need to make our voices heard and stand together. This is literally life and death.” A parent, Angela, added, “I'm a Mom and at risk due to an autoimmune issue...why for political reasons am I being forced to expose my child, her teachers, our families and communities to a virus that is not under control. Hell No! We won’t go!”

The Florida order comes as part of a nationwide push to end lockdown measures, “reopen” the economy and force workers into unsafe conditions. The same day as the Florida order, Trump tweeted “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!” On Tuesday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said in a call of governors, “Ultimately, it’s not a matter of if schools need to open, it’s a matter of how. School must reopen, they must be fully operational.”

Schools across the country, in many cases under pressure from teachers and parents, shut down in-person instruction in March in order to slow the spread of the pandemic. School districts have struggled to come up with any effective plans to reopen schools under conditions where state and federal governments have rejected efforts to contain the virus and pursued a policy of mass infection. During the nearly four months since Florida schools were closed—when there were only 217 confirmed cases acknowledged in the state—no effective measures were implemented to contain or mitigate the disease, such as contact tracing. Now that there are 1,000 times as many confirmed cases in the state, they are trying to open up schools.

In early May, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis rushed to reopen the economy even as his administration was deliberately undercounting the number of COVID-19 deaths and infections. This included firing a state employee in charge of Florida’s coronavirus database after she refused to manipulate the data to justify the governor’s back-to-work order.

The Trump administration and Governor DeSantis are so adamant about getting children physically into school regardless of health cost or educational value, because they need schools as day care centers in order to push parents back to work. Safer, more effective distance learning would require that families take care of children during the day.

The conditions of schools make it effectively impossible to safely have in-person instruction when there is community transmission. Outside of prisons and meatpacking and other industrial facilities there are few environments that squeeze people into such close contact throughout the day as a school. Underfunded districts cram over 30 students into classrooms, making any pretense of social distancing absurd. A high school English or math classroom can easily have over 100 students cycle through during the day. Cafeterias and playgrounds see almost continuous use and cannot be feasibly cleaned between classes.

Proposed measures to minimize transmission at schools are either unworkable or undercut the academic advantages of in-person instruction. Mandatory masks, as proposed in Lake County, cannot prevent transmission in an environment where children eat and play. Daily temperature checks, as suggested in Orange, Osceola and Polk Counties, won’t catch pre-symptomatic students.
Many districts in Florida and across the country have proposed a complicated hybrid model of online teaching with occasional weekly face-to-face instruction to minimize student time on campus. Every proposal made runs into hard limits stemming from decades of underfunding the public education system. There are not enough teachers to adapt and implement the curriculum to small, socially distanced classrooms. There are not enough facilities to handle the student body. There are not enough janitors and facilities staff to disinfect facilities.

As Trump demands full reopening of schools

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/08/usco-j08.html






US coronavirus case count soars past 3 million
By Bryan Dyne
8 July 2020

There have been more than 1 million new confirmed coronavirus cases in the US in the past month, bringing the total to just under 3.1 million. A further 20,000 human lives were lost during that time, bringing the official death toll to more than 133,000, more than the total number of US soldiers killed in World War I and nearly three times the number of lives lost to the flu each year.

Including the fatalities in the United States, there have been 544,000 deaths worldwide and more than 11.8 million cases. Next to the US, Brazil, India and Russia have the most cases, while Brazil, the United Kingdom, Italy and Mexico have the most deaths from the disease. Every day that the pandemic is not brought under control leaves at least another 4,000 people dead.

“The outbreak is accelerating,” said World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at yesterday’s press briefing, “and we have clearly not reached the peak of the pandemic.” He continued, “I will say it again. National unity and global solidarity are more important than ever to defeat a common enemy, a virus that has taken the world hostage. This is our only road out of this pandemic.”
A father helps his child with a mask in front of Bradford School in Jersey City, New Jersey on June 10, 2020 (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

The WHO leader’s remarks contrasted sharply to the nationalist action by President Donald Trump, who yesterday formally issued notice to Congress that the United States is withdrawing from the World Health Organization. According to a State Department official who spoke to CNN, the letter is addressed to António Guterres, UN secretary-general, and notes that the withdrawal will be effective on July 6, 2021. When Trump first announced this move, it was decried by Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet medical journal, as a “crime against humanity.”

Trump is also pushing for a full reopening of in-person classes this fall. He tweeted Monday that “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!” His hysterical comment was followed by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who stated, “American education must be fully open and fully operational this fall!” The Trump administration views sending students back to school as a necessary precondition for the next stage of the back-to-work campaign. Forcing workers back on the job despite the acute risk of infection and even death is essential for the extraction of surplus value and profit from the labor of workers to back up the trillions in debt piled up to bail out Wall Street.

Trump’s policy would entail all 60 million K-12 students returning to enclosed spaces for several hours each school day as the pandemic gains strength across the country—a recipe for giving the virus to every young person in the country. In that scenario, according to the existing data, some 0.06 percent of students would die—a total of 36,000 children. The rest would bring the disease back home, further spreading the contagion to untold millions of their older and more vulnerable parents and grandparents.

The record number of cases and deaths being reported by various states underscores these mortal dangers. Arizona counted 117 deaths yesterday, 33 percent higher than the previous record set a week earlier. The state has had an average of more than 3,000 cases per day since June 28, and the overwhelmed health system has forced the state’s Department of Health Services to draw up a “crisis of standards care” plan. Patients in Tucson are already being moved to Phoenix because of a lack of available beds. It is expected that Arizona’s medical facilities are only days away from being forced to determine who lives and who dies because of a lack of medical personnel and equipment.

One of the reasons for the pandemic spiraling out of control in the state is the lack of testing. Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego has repeatedly asked for federal aid, including a FEMA mass-testing site, and has been told that the county’s case numbers, which are over 67,000, are not high enough for that level of support. As a result, there are many testing sites in the city and around the country, such as the one at South Mountain Community College, where people are forced to wait in their cars for hours to get tested. Currently, a quarter of those who do eventually get tested are being told they have COVID-19, indicating essentially uncontrolled spread in the region.

Arizona’s situation reaffirms the recent warning by the country’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, who stated, “We are still knee deep in the first wave” of the pandemic. Fauci, who stressed that he was extremely concerned and that the situation was getting worse, was referring both to the record number of coronavirus cases and to the low rates of testing and high rates of hospitalization.

The United States is currently testing about 500,000 people a day, about half of the 900,000 tests per day at minimum recommended by Ashish Jha, the director of Harvard’s Global Health Institute. This is the lowest number, Jha’s team estimated, required to find everyone who contracts the virus each day and confirm whether or not their contacts also caught the infection. Other public health experts have said that the US needs to do up to 30 million tests per day in order to truly know the full extent of the pandemic.

The situation as known is already dire. Nine states—New York, California, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, Arizona and Georgia—report more than 100,000 total cases. Nine are currently reporting more than 1,000 new cases each day—Florida, Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, California, North Carolina, Tennessee and Missouri. Only 10 states are reporting fewer than 100 daily cases. Twenty-two states have seen an increase in hospitalizations over the past 14 days, including Arizona, California, Georgia, Florida and Texas.

Despite such perils, states are continuing with their reopening plans or at most putting them on hold. One of the most significant reopenings will be the Walt Disney World theme parks in Orlando, Florida, and Anaheim, California, starting this weekend. While company and park officials insist that safety measures will be put in place, multiple petitions with tens of thousands of signatures, including those of theme park workers, have been circulated demanding that the park remain closed to keep workers and guests safe.

No section of the US political or media establishment is calling for the shutdown of non-essential production and business to halt the explosive spread of the disease. The policy of “reopening” without adequate testing, contact tracing and quarantining—that is, the policy of “herd immunity”—is supported by both big business parties, the Democrats no less than the Republicans.

US war drive against China accelerates

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/08/pers-j08.html






8 July 2020

The presence of two US aircraft carrier strike groups in the South China Sea conducting “high end” war games starting Saturday, involving round-the-clock aircraft launches, is just the most graphic demonstration to date of the Trump administration’s accelerating preparations for war against China. The fact that the two-carrier operations were timed to coincide with Chinese naval exercises in the same strategic waters makes them all the more provocative and dangerous.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically exacerbated the crisis of global capitalism, centered in the United States, and all of its fundamental contradictions, leading to a further rapid rise of geopolitical tensions. Confronting a deep social and economic crisis at home, with growing opposition in the working class to the reckless back-to-work drive, the Trump administration is seeking to divert social tensions outward at an external enemy.

Trump, backed by the Democrats and the media establishment, is seeking to whip up a climate of war fever through a relentless campaign of anti-China propaganda based on lies and disinformation. Without a shred of evidence, top officials routinely blame China for the coronavirus pandemic and the huge American death toll, for which the White House is directly responsible through its criminal negligence and indifference.
Royal Australian Navy guided-missile frigate HMAS Parramatta (FFH 154), left, sails with U.S. Navy Amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA 6), Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG 52) and Arleigh-Burke class guided missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG 52). (Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Nicholas Huynh)

The anti-China campaign goes across the board. The US has ramped up its denunciations of Beijing over “human rights” abuses in Hong Kong and against the Muslim Uyghur minority in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.

Punitive US sanctions have already been imposed over these issues. The Trump administration’s rank hypocrisy is underscored by its push for the military and National Guard to be deployed, in breach of the American Constitution, to violently suppress protests against police killings in the US. Once again, as with its criminal wars in the Middle East, Washington is seeking to exploit “human rights” to pursue economic warfare and a massive military buildup against China.

The COVID-19 pandemic is not the root cause of the US war drive. It is rather the accelerant of longstanding processes. The Obama administration announced its “pivot to Asia” in 2011 directed against China, involving an aggressive diplomatic offensive to undermine Chinese influence throughout the Indo-Pacific and the world, to isolate China through the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and to build up and restructure the American military presence throughout the region. Obama recklessly inflamed dangerous regional flashpoints, including the South China Sea and the Korean Peninsula.

The Trump administration has intensified the drive to war against China. While he abandoned the TPP, Trump launched a full-scale economic war against China, imposing a raft of punitive tariffs on virtually all Chinese goods, most of which remain in place. He demanded not only greater US exports and investment in China, but the country's subordination to the US in hi-tech industries. Trump’s economic nationalism and insistence that supply chains, especially those crucial for the military, have to be American-based are nothing less than the economic preparation for war.

On the pretext of protecting American intellectual property and preventing Chinese spying, Washington has targeted the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei. It has pressured allies such as Britain not to use Huawei equipment and threatened sanctions on firms supplying Huawei with key components. While the US makes unsubstantiated allegations of Chinese spying and hacking, its own intelligence agencies like the NSA, as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, spy on the world’s population, including its own citizens, on an industrial scale.

The Trump administration has also targeted Chinese students and researchers in the US, imposing tough entry restrictions. It is now threatening to deport thousands of students if they are enrolled only in on-line college courses due to COVID-19 measures. The White House is widening its restrictions on Chinese media operating in the US, with another four organisations last month designated as “foreign missions.”

The military preparations for war are also proceeding apace. Obama set the target of 2020 for the redeployment of 60 percent of US warships and warplanes to the Indo-Pacific. Under Trump, the Pentagon announced in 2018 that great power competition, not the “war on terror,” was its top priority, with Russia and China identified as its chief rivals. The focus on China reflects the view in American strategic circles that China’s extraordinary economic expansion represents the chief threat to the continued global dominance of American imperialism.

In preparation for military conflict, the US has been strengthening military alliances and strategic partnerships throughout the Indo-Pacific, in particular, the so-called “Quad,” involving Japan, Australia and India.

The reckless character of the US anti-China campaign is nowhere clearer than in its encouragement of India in recent military clashes with China over disputed borders. In this dangerous stand-off between nuclear-armed powers, Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, sided unequivocally with India in comments on Monday, declaring, “We’re not going to stand by and let China or anyone else take the reins in terms of being the most powerful, dominant force, whether it’s in that region or over here.”

All the preparations for a US war against China, which would rapidly escalate into a catastrophic conflict involving the whole world, are very advanced. Any number of flashpoints, whether in the South China Sea or on the Indian borders with China, could lead to an incident, whether accidental or deliberate, that would provide a casus belli for a US president under siege at home.

The only social force capable of halting the precipitous plunge towards world war is the international working class. In 2016, the International Committee of the Fourth International issued a statement titled, “Socialism and the Fight against War,” calling for the building of a unified antiwar movement of workers and youth around the globe. The dangers identified in that statement have only become more acute in the past four years and thus the urgency of constructing such a movement.

The statement outlined the fundamental principles that must form the political basis for uniting the working class against war:

* The struggle against war must be based on the working class, the great revolutionary force in society, uniting behind it all progressive elements in the population.

* The new antiwar movement must be anticapitalist and socialist, since there can be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and put an end to the economic system that is the fundamental cause of militarism and war.

* The new antiwar movement must therefore, of necessity, be completely and unequivocally independent of, and hostile to, all political parties and organizations of the capitalist class.

* The new antiwar movement must, above all, be international, mobilizing the vast power of the working class in a unified global struggle against imperialism.

That is the task to which workers and young people today should turn to ensure the future of humanity.

Peter Symonds

Age-related impairments reversed in animal model

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200706140905.htm


Frailty and immune decline are two main features of old age. Researchers from the University of Bern and the University Hospital Bern now demonstrate in an animal model that these two age-related impairments can be halted and even partially reversed using a novel cell-based therapeutic approach.


Elderly people are more prone to infectious diseases as the function of their immune system continuously declines with progression of age. This becomes especially apparent during seasonal influenza outbreaks or the occurrence of other viral diseases such as COVID-19. As the efficacy of vaccination in the elderly is strongly reduced, this age group is particularly vulnerable to such infectious pathogens and often shows the highest mortality rate. In addition to the age-related immune decline aged individuals are commonly affected by frailty that negatively impacts quality-of-life. Even though the average life-expectancy for humans continuous to rise, living longer is often associated with age-related health issues.

Important role of belly fat in aging processes identified

Researchers from the Department for BioMedical Reserarch (DBMR) and the Institute of Pathology at the University of Bern as well as the University Hospital Bern (Inselspital) have set out to identify new approaches to improve health-span in a fast-growing aging population. For many years scientists speculated that chronic low-grade inflammation accelerates aging processes and the development of age-related disorders. An international team of researchers under Bernese guidance has now demonstrated that visceral adipose tissue, known as belly fat, crucially contributes to the development of chronic low-grade inflammation. Scientist around Dr. Mario Noti, formerly at the Institute of Pathology of the University of Bern and Dr. Alexander Eggel from the Department for BioMedical Research (DBMR) of the Universität of Bern reported that certain immune cells in the belly fat play and an essential role in regulating chronic low-grade inflammation and downstream aging processes. They could show, that these immune cells may be used to reverse such processes. The findings of this study have been published in the scientific journal Nature Metabolism and were further highlighted by a News and Views editorial article.

Belly fat as a source of chronic inflammation

The team around Dr. Noti and Dr. Eggel could demonstrated that a certain kind of immune cells, known as eosinophils, which are predominantly found in the blood circulation, are also present in belly fat of both humans and mice. Although classically known to provide protection from parasite infection and to promote allergic airway disease, eosinophils located in belly fat are responsible to maintain local immune homeostasis. With increasing age the frequency of eosinophils in belly fat declines, while the number of pro-inflammatory macrophages increases. Owing to this immune cell dysbalance, belly fat turns into a source of pro-inflammatory mediators accumulating systemically in old age.

Eosinophil cell therapy promotes rejuvenation

In a next step, the researchers investigated the possibility to reverse age-related impairments by restoring the immune cell balance in visceral adipose tissue. "In different experimental approaches, we were able to show that transfers of eosinophils from young mice into aged recipients resolved not only local but also systemic low-grade inflammation," says Dr. Eggel. "In these experiments, we observed that transferred eosinophils were selectively homing into adipose tissue," adds Dr. Noti. This approach had a rejuvenating effect on the aged organism. As a consequence, aged animals showed significant improvements in physical fitness as assessed by endurance and grip strength tests. Moreover, the therapy had a rejuvenating effect on the immune system manifesting in improved vaccination responses of aged mice.

Translating findings into clinics

"Our results indicate that the biological processes of aging and the associated functional impairments are more plastic than previously assumed," states Dr. Noti. Importantly, the observed age-related changes in adipose immune cell distribution in mice were also confirmed in humans. "A future direction of our research will be to now leverage the gained knowledge for the establishment of targeted therapeutic approaches to promote and sustain healthy aging in humans," says Dr. Eggel.

This study has been supported by the VELUX STIFTUNG, the FONDATION ACTERIA, and funds of the FreeNovation and medical-biological science research programs of Novartis.






Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Bern. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal References:
Daniel Brigger, Carsten Riether, Robin van Brummelen, Kira I. Mosher, Alicia Shiu, Zhaoqing Ding, Noemi Zbären, Pascal Gasser, Pascal Guntern, Hanadie Yousef, Joseph M. Castellano, Federico Storni, Neill Graff-Radford, Markus Britschgi, Denis Grandgirard, Magdalena Hinterbrandner, Mark Siegrist, Norman Moullan, Willy Hofstetter, Stephen L. Leib, Peter M. Villiger, Johan Auwerx, Saul A. Villeda, Tony Wyss-Coray, Mario Noti, Alexander Eggel. Eosinophils regulate adipose tissue inflammation and sustain physical and immunological fitness in old age. Nature Metabolism, 2020; DOI: 10.1038/s42255-020-0228-3

Chih-Hao Lee. Young eosinophils rejuvenate ageing adipose tissues. Nature Metabolism, 2020; DOI: 10.1038/s42255-020-0230-9

SCOTUS Sides With Trump On Birth Control

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfBfJM5Lr3E&feature