Friday, July 10, 2020
Housing Activists Unite to Fight Mass Evictions and Defund Police
“I just don’t feel that police evicting people is a way to ‘protect and serve.’”
July 6, 2020 Candice Bernd TRUTHOUT
https://portside.org/2020-07-06/housing-activists-unite-fight-mass-evictions-and-defund-police
As COVID-19’s second wave bears down, nearly half of all states’ eviction moratoria have already expired or are set to expire in the next two months. A federal moratorium that bans evictions of people in rentals backed by the government expires July 25. To make matters worse, the CARES Act’s supplemental boost to unemployment insurance ends July 31.
The country is already in the beginning stages of a massive eviction crisis as housing courts nationwide reopen. As many as 28 million renters could lose their homes in the coming eviction wave, boosting the national homeless rate by as much as 40 to 45 percent by the end of the year.
The wave will hit low-income Black and Brown people, who are twice as likely to rent as white people, the hardest. According to an Urban Institute survey in which half of adult renters reported having trouble paying rent or bills from late March to mid-April, Black and Brown renters were most likely to report reduced spending on food, depleted savings or increased credit card debt. According to the latest census data, 44 percent of Black tenants reported having little or no confidence they could make their next rent payment.
Last week, the U.S. Labor Department reported more than 1.5 million Americans filed new state unemployment claims, bringing the national total of claims to more than 44 million since mid-March. Rising Black and Brown unemployment coupled with mass evictions could spark renewed uprisings in the streets amid a national reckoning over racial justice following the police-perpetrated killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Even before the pandemic, the U.S. was facing affordable housing, eviction and homelessness crises disproportionately impacting Black and Brown people. In 2019, about 568,000 people experienced homelessness on a single night, with Black people making up 40 percent of those experiencing homelessness despite being 13 percent of the U.S. population.
While Sen. Elizabeth Warren recently introduced legislation that would extend and expand federal eviction protections for nonpayment of rent for one year, Congress is not expected to begin negotiating a new economic relief package until after July 4. Meanwhile, the $3 trillion HEROES Act stimulus package, which also includes a nationwide eviction moratorium, continues to languish in the Senate.
Without federal rental assistance and an extension of renter protections, the coming eviction wave could send the nation’s already dire homelessness numbers skyrocketing, overwhelming already overburdened shelters and emergency rooms.
This is the reality that housing rights activists across the nation are bracing for, and they say they won’t let it unfold without a fight. While calling for rent and debt cancellation for millions of tenants impacted by the pandemic, many activists are also tying their housing demands to the national movement to defund police as some prepare to face off with city marshals, constables and cops forcibly evicting renters.
Militarized Evictions in Oakland
Dominique Walker, an activist with Moms 4 Housing, a collective of unhoused and housing insecure mothers in Oakland, California, told Truthout that the collective’s organizing pressure has been key in city leaders’ decision to extend Oakland’s eviction moratorium to August 31. Nonetheless, several of the mothers say their housing is still in danger: They won’t be able to pay their owed rent when the city’s moratorium expires.“This is the police state that we live in, where they will spend tens of thousands just to make you get out of a speculative-owned property rather than help you get permanently housed.”
The end of the city’s moratorium, she says, will have severe, disproportionate impacts on Black and Brown renters, as gentrification and tech wealth has accelerated a housing affordability crisis that was already among the nation’s most dire before the COVID-19 crisis: The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Oakland is $2,300.
When the moratorium lifts, many tenants could owe $10,000 or more in back rent. Many simply won’t be able to pay, and could wind up on Oakland’s streets, where they join an unhoused population that has already jumped by 47 percent in the past two years.
After struggling to keep her family housed while working two jobs, Walker and three other working mothers reclaimed a vacant, investor-owned house on the 2900 block of Magnolia Street last November to call attention to the city’s “displacement machine.”
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office evicted the moms and their children in a high-profile, militarized raid in early January. Sherriff’s deputies decked in riot gear and armed with AR-15s showed up with an armored tank and a specialized robot. The eviction ultimately cost the county $40,000 — well beyond the cost of simply housing the families — a point the moms are now zeroing in on ahead of a looming eviction wave.
Walker tells Truthout that in addition to calling for full rent relief, the moms are targeting the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office for funding cuts. They want that money reinvested in organizations that provide housing and a jobs training program focused on providing mothers with the necessary skills to land jobs that make at least $40.88 an hour — the minimum wage required to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Oakland.“There still hasn’t been an explanation of why they came with that much force for mothers and babies.”
The January eviction “was a very violent display and was meant to cause terror in folks who are standing up for their human rights,” Walker says. “This is the police state that we live in, where they will spend tens of thousands just to make you get out of a speculative-owned property rather than help you get permanently housed and fix the issue. It was unreal.”
Walker says the group is still working to plan actions this week targeting the Alameda County Board of Supervisors budget.
The January eviction “looked like a war scene out of a movie,” she says. “There still hasn’t been an explanation of why they came with that much force for mothers and babies, so we still want to hold them accountable for that while redirecting some of those funds to get mothers and babies off of the streets.”
Targeting Cops and Marshals in NYC
On the East Coast, New York’s City Council voted this week to cut $457 million from city’s housing agency while also allocating an additional $8.6 million to city housing programs. The council also cut $1 billion from the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) budget, canceling the planned hiring of about 1,160 officers.
Both housing and police accountability activists, many of whom have protested at City Hall since last Tuesday, argue the budget doesn’t go far enough to address the twin crises of police violence and mass evictions, and say the council used accounting tricks to move money around, such as shifting funding of school policing over to the Department of Education.
Hundreds of renters also rallied last week outside newly opened housing courts in at least five city boroughs and in upstate New York to call for debt and rent cancellation and to protest the end of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s eviction moratorium, which expired June 20.
So far Governor Cuomo has resisted extending the moratorium, siding with landlords he says must continue to pay property taxes, utility bills and mortgages. Housing advocates fear up to 50,000 new eviction cases could be filed in the coming days, and that thousands of cases that were already in progress but were paused in March will resume.
A separate state order shielding tenants directly affected by the pandemic is set to expire in late August and could result in an explosion in the number of eviction cases, transforming the coming wave into a tsunami.“Police violence is an extension, the most brutal expression, of the ways police exist to protect private property interests and not people.”
At least 19 legal services organizations, including The Legal Aid Society and The Right to Counsel NYC Coalition, oppose the state’s reopening of housing courts, arguing that continuing eviction proceedings not only spells disaster for renters but could also expose legal aid workers to COVID-19. Sixty-nine housing advocacy organizations recently penned an open letter to Governor Cuomo demanding a universal eviction moratorium for all renters in New York State for the duration of the pandemic.
The New York-based coalition of tenants and housing activists, Housing Justice For All, is calling for the extension of the New York moratorium for the remainder of the year as well as rent, mortgage and utility payment cancellation. The group has helped coordinate the city’s largest rent strike in nearly a century, with at least 400 families in buildings each containing over 1,500 rental units withholding rent in May.
Housing Justice For All Campaign Coordinator Cea Weaver tells Truthout that the group is supporting efforts to confront police violence in the city and is calling for the firing of all city marshals, responsible for serving eviction papers. The coalition’s actions outside housing courts and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office have heavily emphasized the role of police in evictions.
The coalition has also organized several teach-ins on the intersection between housing and racial justice. This week, coalition organizers are training tenants and activists in both direct action and legal tactics for eviction defense in anticipation of hundreds of renters being forced out of their homes.
“Police violence is an extension, the most brutal expression, of the ways police exist to protect private property interests and not people, and that’s very much a part of what we are pushing and framing in this moment,” Weaver told Truthout. The coalition is not trying to replicate the work already being done by its affiliated groups, but instead, center anti-police brutality messaging in its housing work because the issues are interconnected.
Housing rights activists in New York highlight the NYPD’s 1984 murder of Eleanor Bumpurs, a 67-year-old Black woman, in her Bronx public housing apartment during her scheduled eviction. Advocates also point to more recent cases of Black people killed in their own homes, such as Botham Jean in Dallas, Texas, and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky.
“We need to prevent people from being evicted when the marshals come, but in reality, we want a much earlier intervention,” Weaver says. Ultimately though, she says, direct action and legal tactics aren’t a transformative solution. “We need to be able to use principles of eviction defense to heighten the political urgency to pass a real ‘cancel rent’ program. We can’t permanently block marshals from coming to get people through direct action alone.”“We need to be able to use principles of eviction defense to heighten the political urgency to pass a real ‘cancel rent’ program.”
A “real cancel rent” program means a policy that would automatically forgive all rent, mortgage and utility payments accrued during the COVID-19 pandemic that would apply universally to all homeowners and renters. Beyond pandemic-related protections and rent cancellation, Weaver says there must be a broader expansion of tenants’ rights in the private housing market, an end to homelessness, and investments in public and decommodified housing.
She is heartened by recent primary victories of progressive Democratic challengers Jamaal Bowman, Mondaire Jones and Ritchie Torres, who ran strongly on affordable housing platforms. Bowman, who ran on a national homes guarantee, joined housing justice organizations and tenant leaders this week in supporting a national eviction blockade as part the rent cancellation movement and “We Strike Together” campaign.
New Data in Boston
Housing advocates with City Life/Vida Urbana in Boston have organized eviction blockades in defense of renters since the 1970s, according to the organization’s executive director, Lisa Owens. Now, she says, the group is working to bring renters into a series of online trainings that encourage tenants to form associations while guiding them through a series of escalating direct-action tactics. The group is also pushing two state bills that would provide a year of housing stability for renters and lift a ban on rent control.
“We believe in escalating direct action tactics based on the level of consciousness that gets developed when you’re beginning to figure out how to fight your case,” Owens says.
At least one of the group’s staffers have been directly involved in organizing efforts to redirect 10 percent of the Boston Police Department budget to community needs and services, including affordable housing. Last week Boston’s city council passed a city budget that only contained small cuts to the police department’s overtime pay, but Owens says police accountability and housing activists have since worked together more closely as a result of efforts to defund the department.“I just don’t feel that police evicting people is a way to ‘protect and serve.’”
A report released Sunday based on three years of housing court data collected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers and City Life/Vida Urbana found that 70 percent of market-rate eviction filings in Boston occur in neighborhoods of color — and most starkly in Black neighborhoods — even though only about half of rental housing is in these neighborhoods. The pandemic produced a spike in eviction filings in Boston before the state issued an eviction moratorium in April; 78 percent of the suspended cases were in communities of color.
Annie Gordon is one Black tenant at risk of eviction once the state’s moratorium lifts. She is the tenant association leader at the “SoMa Apartments at the T,” a Boston apartment complex she’s lived in for 44 years. The complex had already priced her out when it raised rents in 2018. Then the pandemic struck, laying off a family member Gordon relied on for financial help.“We didn’t even realize we had rights or that we could speak up when it comes to our housing.”
Gordon told Truthout tenants in her building are committed to defending one another from city marshals attempting evictions, if it comes to that, by using nonviolent, physical blockade tactics. She supports the city’s cuts to the police department’s overtime pay, saying that funding affordable housing is “much more important” than paying cops overtime.
The association is working to negotiate with the building’s management company to work out “a little more reasonable” rent increase than what was initially asked. They haven’t received a response from the company as of yet, Gordon says.
“Myself, as well as other tenants here, we didn’t even realize we had rights or that we could speak up when it comes to our housing. We didn’t know that. We just automatically assumed landlords have all the rights,” Gordon says.
City marshals and constables forcibly evicting renters in Black communities only adds to the stress and anxiety these communities face while struggling to survive the nation’s multiple crises, she says. “I just don’t feel that police evicting people is a way to ‘protect and serve.’”
The Police and the Pentagon Are Bringing Our Wars Home
Thanks to years of hyper militarization, American police departments are recreating our global war zones here at home. With these weapons on our streets, our history of structural racism becomes that much deadlier.
July 6, 2020 William J. Barber, Phyllis Bennis FOREIGN POLICY IN FOCUS
https://portside.org/2020-07-06/police-and-pentagon-are-bringing-our-wars-home
Uniformed U.S. soldiers occupied the center of the city, where an armored personnel carrier was stationed at a major intersection. Was it Kabul or Atlanta?
A U.S. military helicopter hovered over crowds of unarmed civilians, its down-drafts whipping debris and broken glass into their faces. Was it Mogadishu or Washington, D.C.?
Armed, uniformed men surrounded unarmed civilians. One of them shouted “light ’em up” and began firing projectiles. Was it Baghdad or Minneapolis?
Armor-clad, armed U.S. officers targeted and fired on journalists. Was it Iraq or Louisville?
In every case, it was both. Thanks to years of hyper militarization, American police departments are recreating our global war zones here at home. With these weapons on our streets, our history of structural racism becomes that much deadlier.
In recent weeks, overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrators protesting police killings and racism have been met by riot police, National Guard troops, and armed federal officers wielding tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber-coated metal bullets. Armored personnel carriers prowl the streets, turning U.S. cities and towns into war zones.
It’s shocking, but it’s not the first time. When a police officer killed 17-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, an armored personnel carrier stalked the agonized protesters who filled the streets.
Throughout U.S. history, policing has always been bound up with racism — and the military.
Organized police forces in the United States trace their roots to the slave patrols organized to capture and return enslaved people who managed to escape bondage.
After reconstruction, when a pandemic of lynching spread across the country, police stood by and in many cases initiated or assisted the kidnapping, torture and murder of people in their custody.
In the 1950s and ’60s, brutal police attacks against civil rights activists and African Americans trying to register to vote continued the pattern. So did police and National Guard violence against antiwar protesters at Kent State, Jackson State, and the Chicano Moratorium in Los Angeles in the 1970s.
This militarism at home is linked inextricably to U.S. militarism abroad. The troops that Trump called in to deploy against protesters in Washington, for example, had just returned from duty in Iraq.
Today’s “global war on terror” is less visible than in earlier years. But those wars continue — and it’s mostly black, brown and Muslim people who die. Civilian casualties caused by U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, for instance, were higher last year than at any time in the 20-year-long war.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. linked systemic racism and militarism as two of the three evil “triplets” he was committed to end. Yet that linkage remains a hallmark of U.S. policy in general — and of the militarization of police in particular.
Just in 2014, as Black Lives Matter demonstrations spread across the country, more than 500 law enforcement agencies received MRAP armored personnel carriers, designed to withstand bomb blasts in war theaters like Afghanistan and Iraq. Police in North Little Rock, Arkansas (population: 62,000) got two MARCbots, armed robots designed for war in Afghanistan.
Local and state police departments across the country do not ordinarily include budget lines to buy armored personnel carriers. But under a once-invisible program known as 1033, the Pentagon offers “surplus military equipment” free to any police agency requesting it.
And if the good people of North Little Rock don’t really need armed robots, well, they’ve got them anyway.
Does all that military gear make police officers more likely to act like occupying armies? We can’t say for sure, but we do know the relatively small town had two officer-involved shooting cases during one two-week period this spring.
“When the government equips police departments like they’re equipping the military, we undermine healthy relationships between the police and the community,” explains Equal Justice Initiative director Bryan Stevenson. “We have created a culture where police officers think of themselves as warriors, not guardians.”
From the beginning, the Poor People’s Campaign — a national mobilization of poor and working-class Americans — has made ending the 1033 program a centerpiece of its demands.
Rather than tinkering around the margins, we need to end systemic racism and the militarism that makes it even deadlier — from Kabul to Atlanta and Baghdad to Minneapolis.
India, China pull back from brink of conflict
The feuding neighbors agree to respect the Line of Actual Control separating their respective territories
By SUMIT SHARMA
JULY 6, 2020
https://asiatimes.com/2020/07/india-china-pull-back-from-brink-of-conflict/
India and China have pulled back from the brink of conflict by agreeing to respect the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and work to avoid clashes.
Both had agreed not to allow differences to become disputes, India said after the talks on Sunday between Ajit Doval, the country’s national security adviser, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
“They re-affirmed that both sides should strictly respect and observe the [LAC] and should not take any unilateral action to alter the status quo and work together to avoid any incident in the future that could disturb peace and tranquility in border areas,” India said in a statement.
India has been engaged in skirmishes with China over the past two months along India’s northernmost tip at Ladakh. India accuses China of encroaching several kilometres into Indian territory.
“The two sides should also ensure a phased and stepwise de-escalation in the India-China border areas,” India said. “In this regard they further agreed that both sides should complete the ongoing disengagement process along the LAC expeditiously.”
Doval and Wang Yi’s virtual interaction on Sunday was preceded by a surprise visit to Ladakh by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 3.
Modi met top army generals to take stock of the situation first-hand and accused China of expansionism, a charge Beijing denied.
On June 15, a skirmish between troops of the two countries turned ugly and 20 Indian soldiers were killed. The killings enraged India, prompting it to move troops and weapons nearer the border.
The Chinese embassy in New Delhi said after the Doval/Wang Yi talks,”The right and wrong of what recently happened at the Galwan Valley in the western sector of the China-India boundary is very clear. China will continue firmly safeguarding our territorial sovereignty as well as peace and tranquility in the border areas.”
China said Doval and Wang Yi agreed to keep communicating to ensure full and enduring restoration of peace and tranquility in the India-China border areas. Diplomatic and military officials of the two countries would continue the talks.
https://asiatimes.com/2020/07/india-china-pull-back-from-brink-of-conflict/
India and China have pulled back from the brink of conflict by agreeing to respect the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and work to avoid clashes.
Both had agreed not to allow differences to become disputes, India said after the talks on Sunday between Ajit Doval, the country’s national security adviser, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
“They re-affirmed that both sides should strictly respect and observe the [LAC] and should not take any unilateral action to alter the status quo and work together to avoid any incident in the future that could disturb peace and tranquility in border areas,” India said in a statement.
India has been engaged in skirmishes with China over the past two months along India’s northernmost tip at Ladakh. India accuses China of encroaching several kilometres into Indian territory.
“The two sides should also ensure a phased and stepwise de-escalation in the India-China border areas,” India said. “In this regard they further agreed that both sides should complete the ongoing disengagement process along the LAC expeditiously.”
Doval and Wang Yi’s virtual interaction on Sunday was preceded by a surprise visit to Ladakh by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 3.
Modi met top army generals to take stock of the situation first-hand and accused China of expansionism, a charge Beijing denied.
On June 15, a skirmish between troops of the two countries turned ugly and 20 Indian soldiers were killed. The killings enraged India, prompting it to move troops and weapons nearer the border.
The Chinese embassy in New Delhi said after the Doval/Wang Yi talks,”The right and wrong of what recently happened at the Galwan Valley in the western sector of the China-India boundary is very clear. China will continue firmly safeguarding our territorial sovereignty as well as peace and tranquility in the border areas.”
China said Doval and Wang Yi agreed to keep communicating to ensure full and enduring restoration of peace and tranquility in the India-China border areas. Diplomatic and military officials of the two countries would continue the talks.
Embracing the Equality of Nations
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/07/06/patrick-lawrence-embracing-the-equality-of-nations/
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
The signs of America’s decline are ubiquitous now such that the phenomenon is no longer worthy of debate.
China, Japan, South Korea; Italy, Spain, Germany, the Danes and Norwegians — Asia and Europe all gain control of the Covid–19 pandemic even as the U.S., by the newest numbers, is back where it was during the worst of it last spring.
This is systemic failure next to systemic success, plain and simple.
We face a leadership failure, too — again, as others do not. President Donald Trump was not wrong, during his Mount Rushmore speech last Friday, to note the frightening illiberality of American liberals. But there was something disturbingly Mussolini-esque in his language, his gestures, his defiance of reality — altogether the portentous dynamic one saw between an ignorant figurehead and a crowd embracing his ignorance as its own.
“The worst are full of passionate intensity,” Yeats wrote in “The Second Coming,” and the worst are either running our republic or propose to run it. Things fall apart: We are collectively responsible for this.
Bitter as our national circumstances are at this moment, let us not miss the larger reality of which they are expressions. Read properly, America’s decline is a subset of the decline of the West. The phrase is Oswald Spengler’s, of course — the title of a two-volume work he published a century ago. If the German historian got as much wrong as right, he was spot on in identifying our Western-centric understanding of history as a Faustian fallacy that would eventually bite us on the backside.
We are now living through the epochal turn Spengler’s thesis implied. All that befalls us and all our leaders do — our failed response to the Covid–19 crisis, the collapse of our political institutions, the exposure of our papered-over past, our ever-more-aggressive conduct abroad — is best understood as a function of this historic moment.
The West’s superiority over the non–West has been a given in the Atlantic world for half a millennium. I take my date from Vasco da Gama’s landing at Calicut, on India’s Malabar Coast, in 1498. From the Portuguese explorer’s first steps in the East and ever since, this presumption has rested primarily on the West’s material preeminence.
Systems of governance, social norms, individual liberties — the East was considered inferior in all such matters. But it was science, technology and industry that mattered most: From these the West derived its power and claimed its right to imperial dominion. Dieu et mon droit, remember?
This claim to historically ordained superiority evaporates as we speak. So is this, our Spenglerian moment. It has been a long moment, let’s say, unfolding for some time. But the Covid–19 crisis hastens it and brings it into painfully sharp relief.
21st Century Imperative
Parity between West and non–West is a 21st century imperative, a human destiny no nation can hope to prevent.
Your columnist has argued this (and applauded it) since the Cold War’s end. A wise and imaginative world power would not merely accept this turn of history’s wheel: It would embrace it, recognizing the immense advantage in having more voices from more perspectives address themselves to humanity’s common problems and tasks.
No such good fortune comes to us. The Europeans appear to be at least minimally open to the thought that the era of the West’s “global leadership” — skipping the euphemism, its colonial and postcolonial domination — draws to a close.
This may be an overly optimistic reading, I confess. But it is inarguably the case that the U.S. stands alone in waging so ferocious a fight against the prospect of equality among nations.
Do you think it is coincidence that Washington’s aggressions toward its declared enemies has intensified as America’s failed response to the Covid–19 pandemic becomes too evident to deny? I don’t. Our neoliberal political economy has failed.
Our elevation of individuality into an “ism,” a creed, has failed. Counting from the Reagan presidency, our savaging of our public sector over four decades leaves us looking like a nation of deluded nitwits. The military hardware we worship like cargo cultists proves of no use.
Consider these declared enemies, our latest axis of evil. China, Russia, and Iran are all non–Western nations in unmistakably emergent phases of development. In the advance toward parity with the West, these three are among the leaders.
They all have sturdy state sectors, centralized governments to one or another degree, and extensive social welfare systems. None is immune from domestic turmoil, but none is beset with institutional collapse. And not to be missed: As of Monday, China has 405 active Covid–19 cases on its books; Russia and Iran while their numbers are not nearly as good, appear to be in recovery mode, bringing their crises under control.
When the U.S. aggresses toward these nations by way of sanctions, threats of military attack, or a trade war, never mind how it explains itself. In the final analysis it acts in defense of the pretense of Western superiority. It is essential to the preservation of America’s understanding of the world that these nations fail.
Mike Pompeo, our thickheaded secretary of state, hoes this envy-of-the-world row more or less daily. At issue here is what I call the tyranny of American happiness: The worse we have done, the happier we must declare ourselves. This is our last line of defense against all admissions of failure. How forlorn a nation are we.
Pompeo takes his place in a centuries-long line of thinkers, commentators, travelers, and who have you — some a lot more elevated — who insist on the incontrovertible superiority of the West. It is to those in this tradition our virus-beset moment is bitterest.
When India and China Were Richer
Some years ago Angus Maddison, the late and noted British economist, published a study showing that until the brink of the 20th century the Chinese and Indian economies were the world’s largest by considerable margins. The U.S. overtook China in gross domestic product little more than a century ago. To speak of parity, then, is to speak of a return to it. What we witness now would be of little surprise were we not so conditioned to our habit of Orientalism.
Maybe Western Europeans are more cognizant of history’s waves. I read their far superior responses to the Covid–19 crisis as an indication they can still think for themselves after decades of marching to Washington’s orders.
They are emphatically not behind the U.S. in its efforts to cultivate a new Cold War with China, in its determination to apply its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran ever more stringently, in its efforts to isolate the Russian Federation. We will have to see where this emergent drift in European thinking leads. As things stand, it looks as if the U.S. is effectively pulling the West apart from within. No bad thing.
Spengler considered civilizational decline inevitable, a fate imposed by history’s laws—a very Germanic notion. Arnold Toynbee, whose 12–volume “A Study of History” came some years later, thought otherwise. Decline is the consequence of a failure of imagination and creativity among leaders. They can no longer respond anew to new circumstances. Decline comes to a choice, then, not a fate.
Your columnist stands with Toynbee on this point. The West’s decline, now so evident, arises from the choices its leaders make daily, Europe’s ambivalences notwithstanding. But we must not miss the optimism buried beneath the apparent pessimism. What is in decline should decline. Then there is at least the prospect of beginning again, and differently.
Annexation of West Bank Will Only Deepen Israel’s Apartheid Policies
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/07/07/annexation-of-west-bank-will-only-deepen-israels-apartheid-policies/
It is time for the world to deny Israel its impunity, writes Vijay Prashad.
By Vijay Prashad
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
It is impossible to be calm about the fate of the Palestinian people. Since 1948, they have been denied their country and denied their right to exist. One United Nations resolution upon another has said that their exile must end, that they must be allowed to build lives of dignity. Between UN Resolution 194 (1948) and 242 (1967) are a string of resolutions calling for the right of Palestinians to have a homeland and for the right of Palestinians to return to their homeland.
During the 1967 Israeli invasion of the West Bank, Defence Minister Moshe Dayan told Lieutenant General Yitzhak Rabin that the aim of the war was to remove all Palestinians out of the entire territory to the west of the Jordan River. When Israel seized that land from Jordanian control, Israel’s Prime Minister Levy Eshkol said that the new territory was a “dowry,” but that this “dowry” came with a “bride” – namely, the Palestinian people. “The trouble is that the dowry is followed by a bride,” he said, “whom we don’t want.” The Israeli plan has always been to annex all of Jerusalem and the West Bank, either killing the Palestinians who live there or pushing them out to Jordan and Syria.
This is precisely what the Israeli government is threatening to do: the annexation of the West Bank. The Oslo Accords of 1994 provided the basis for a “two-state solution” in which the Palestinian people would control the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in a future Palestinian state. But Israel was never going to permit such a reality. The imposition of prison-like conditions on Gaza and the punctual bombardment of that congested and impoverished area has left its people bereft.
The open annexation of East Jerusalem through land grabs has changed the status quo of that city. The Israeli state-backed policy that sent close to half a million Israeli settlers to occupy Palestinian land in the West Bank – often with the best water sources – has erased the possibility of any sovereign Palestinian state.
For years, Israeli settlers have encroached upon Palestinian land with the full backing of the Israeli state. Now, Israel has threatened (and postponed on July 1) to incorporate these settlements – which the United Nations has called illegal – into Israeli territory.
Since UN Resolution 237 (1967), the United Nations has cautioned Israel not to violate the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), which sought to ensure civilian protections in war zones, in the areas that Israel seized from the Palestinian people in the 1967 war. UN Resolution 2334 in 2016 said that the Israeli settlements were a “flagrant violation” of international law and had “no legal validity.”
The current annexation plan of Israel shows disregard for international law and for the democratic aspirations of the Palestinian people.
What would annexation of the West Bank mean? It would mean that Israel has grabbed the land that it had formally ceded to a future Palestinian state and that Israel is willing to incorporate the Palestinian natives of this land as non-citizen residents of Israel.
The land grab would violate international law; the second-class status of Palestinians affirms Israel’s status as an apartheid state. In 2017, the UN’s Economic and Social Commission of West Asia published a report called “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid.” The report showed that all Palestinians – regardless of where they live – are impacted by the apartheid policies of the Israeli state.
Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship (ezrahut) do not have the right to nationality (le’um), which means that they can only access inferior social services, and that they face restrictive zoning laws and find themselves unable freely to buy land.
Palestinians in East Jerusalem are reduced to the status of permanent residents who must constantly prove that they live in the city. Palestinians in the West Bank live “in ways consistent with apartheid,” write the authors of the UN report. And those who are exiled to refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan have been permanently denied their rights to their homeland.
All Palestinians – whether those who live in Haifa (Israel) or in Ain al-Hilweh (Lebanon) – suffer the consequences of Israeli apartheid. This indignity is punctuated with laws that humiliate Palestinians, each one meant to make life so miserable that they are forced to emigrate.
The annexation of the West Bank will only deepen Israel’s apartheid policies. The Zionist state will not permit Palestinians full citizenship rights. There is no intention to incorporate the Palestinian people into Israel with full citizenship nor to cede even a threadbare Palestine. This is barefaced colonialism of the old type.
Inside this kind of colonial aggression comes the demolition of Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem (such as Wadi Yasul) and the destruction of olive groves (such as in Burin Village). In the few months of 2020, the Israeli state has arrested 210 Palestinian children and 250 students, as well as 13 Palestinian journalists. These moves are reported by human rights groups and condemned by Palestinian civil society organizations but are otherwise ignored. This is the attrition of dignity.
All of this is illegal: the demolitions, the settlements, the apartheid wall that encircles the West Bank. UN resolutions, International Court of Justice rulings, civil society condemnations: none of it seems to make an impact.
Since 1948, Israel has acted with impunity as it has sought to annihilate Palestine and Palestinians, to steal the “dowry” and dispose of the “‘bride.” Not far from the wall that Israel built surrounding the West Bank to humiliate the Palestinians are the traces of walls that Israel has knocked down to turn homes into dust.
Those walls, which once held up roofs, were shelters for a people who have been thrown off their axis, made to walk at a tilt, always afraid of the settler’s bullet or the soldier’s handcuffs.
Prison walls are made of stone. Settlement walls are made of stone. But the walls of the homes of a Palestinian are made of that odd combination of fear and resistance.
There is fear that the cannons of the colonizer will blast through them, but there is resistance that acknowledges that the walls of the home are not the real walls. The real walls are the walls of fortitude and perseverance.
Wretched states are hollowed out by their insensitivity and by their injustice. In the absence of moral conviction, it is impossible for the Israeli state to make its case except by the arrogance of guns. When a bulldozer comes before a home, it is the bulldozer that will prevail, but it is the home that remains alive in the hearts and dreams of the people. Bulldozers produce fear, but not humanity.
A humane society cannot be built by fear. It must be built by the enthusiasm of love. Wretched states – such as Israel – cannot build a utopia of love on land that has been scarred by brutal theft. Even after olive trees have been uprooted, their groves still smell of olives.
Yalalan Band (Palestine), “Dingi Dingi,” 2016
After the 2014 Israeli bombing of Gaza, the Iraqi poet Sinan Antoon wrote “Afterwords.” The poem imagines a child walking with a grandfather (sidu).
Are we going back to Jaffa, sidu?
We can’t
Why?
We are dead
So are we in heaven, sidu?
We are in Palestine, habibi
and Palestine is heaven
and hell.
What will we do now?
We will wait
Wait for what?
For the others
….
to return
There is no time to wait. It is time for the world to deny Israel its impunity, which is provided by the full-throated backing by the United States of America.
During the 1967 Israeli invasion of the West Bank, Defence Minister Moshe Dayan told Lieutenant General Yitzhak Rabin that the aim of the war was to remove all Palestinians out of the entire territory to the west of the Jordan River. When Israel seized that land from Jordanian control, Israel’s Prime Minister Levy Eshkol said that the new territory was a “dowry,” but that this “dowry” came with a “bride” – namely, the Palestinian people. “The trouble is that the dowry is followed by a bride,” he said, “whom we don’t want.” The Israeli plan has always been to annex all of Jerusalem and the West Bank, either killing the Palestinians who live there or pushing them out to Jordan and Syria.
This is precisely what the Israeli government is threatening to do: the annexation of the West Bank. The Oslo Accords of 1994 provided the basis for a “two-state solution” in which the Palestinian people would control the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in a future Palestinian state. But Israel was never going to permit such a reality. The imposition of prison-like conditions on Gaza and the punctual bombardment of that congested and impoverished area has left its people bereft.
The open annexation of East Jerusalem through land grabs has changed the status quo of that city. The Israeli state-backed policy that sent close to half a million Israeli settlers to occupy Palestinian land in the West Bank – often with the best water sources – has erased the possibility of any sovereign Palestinian state.
For years, Israeli settlers have encroached upon Palestinian land with the full backing of the Israeli state. Now, Israel has threatened (and postponed on July 1) to incorporate these settlements – which the United Nations has called illegal – into Israeli territory.
Since UN Resolution 237 (1967), the United Nations has cautioned Israel not to violate the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), which sought to ensure civilian protections in war zones, in the areas that Israel seized from the Palestinian people in the 1967 war. UN Resolution 2334 in 2016 said that the Israeli settlements were a “flagrant violation” of international law and had “no legal validity.”
The current annexation plan of Israel shows disregard for international law and for the democratic aspirations of the Palestinian people.
What would annexation of the West Bank mean? It would mean that Israel has grabbed the land that it had formally ceded to a future Palestinian state and that Israel is willing to incorporate the Palestinian natives of this land as non-citizen residents of Israel.
The land grab would violate international law; the second-class status of Palestinians affirms Israel’s status as an apartheid state. In 2017, the UN’s Economic and Social Commission of West Asia published a report called “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid.” The report showed that all Palestinians – regardless of where they live – are impacted by the apartheid policies of the Israeli state.
Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship (ezrahut) do not have the right to nationality (le’um), which means that they can only access inferior social services, and that they face restrictive zoning laws and find themselves unable freely to buy land.
Palestinians in East Jerusalem are reduced to the status of permanent residents who must constantly prove that they live in the city. Palestinians in the West Bank live “in ways consistent with apartheid,” write the authors of the UN report. And those who are exiled to refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan have been permanently denied their rights to their homeland.
All Palestinians – whether those who live in Haifa (Israel) or in Ain al-Hilweh (Lebanon) – suffer the consequences of Israeli apartheid. This indignity is punctuated with laws that humiliate Palestinians, each one meant to make life so miserable that they are forced to emigrate.
The annexation of the West Bank will only deepen Israel’s apartheid policies. The Zionist state will not permit Palestinians full citizenship rights. There is no intention to incorporate the Palestinian people into Israel with full citizenship nor to cede even a threadbare Palestine. This is barefaced colonialism of the old type.
Inside this kind of colonial aggression comes the demolition of Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem (such as Wadi Yasul) and the destruction of olive groves (such as in Burin Village). In the few months of 2020, the Israeli state has arrested 210 Palestinian children and 250 students, as well as 13 Palestinian journalists. These moves are reported by human rights groups and condemned by Palestinian civil society organizations but are otherwise ignored. This is the attrition of dignity.
All of this is illegal: the demolitions, the settlements, the apartheid wall that encircles the West Bank. UN resolutions, International Court of Justice rulings, civil society condemnations: none of it seems to make an impact.
Since 1948, Israel has acted with impunity as it has sought to annihilate Palestine and Palestinians, to steal the “dowry” and dispose of the “‘bride.” Not far from the wall that Israel built surrounding the West Bank to humiliate the Palestinians are the traces of walls that Israel has knocked down to turn homes into dust.
Those walls, which once held up roofs, were shelters for a people who have been thrown off their axis, made to walk at a tilt, always afraid of the settler’s bullet or the soldier’s handcuffs.
Prison walls are made of stone. Settlement walls are made of stone. But the walls of the homes of a Palestinian are made of that odd combination of fear and resistance.
There is fear that the cannons of the colonizer will blast through them, but there is resistance that acknowledges that the walls of the home are not the real walls. The real walls are the walls of fortitude and perseverance.
Wretched states are hollowed out by their insensitivity and by their injustice. In the absence of moral conviction, it is impossible for the Israeli state to make its case except by the arrogance of guns. When a bulldozer comes before a home, it is the bulldozer that will prevail, but it is the home that remains alive in the hearts and dreams of the people. Bulldozers produce fear, but not humanity.
A humane society cannot be built by fear. It must be built by the enthusiasm of love. Wretched states – such as Israel – cannot build a utopia of love on land that has been scarred by brutal theft. Even after olive trees have been uprooted, their groves still smell of olives.
Yalalan Band (Palestine), “Dingi Dingi,” 2016
After the 2014 Israeli bombing of Gaza, the Iraqi poet Sinan Antoon wrote “Afterwords.” The poem imagines a child walking with a grandfather (sidu).
Are we going back to Jaffa, sidu?
We can’t
Why?
We are dead
So are we in heaven, sidu?
We are in Palestine, habibi
and Palestine is heaven
and hell.
What will we do now?
We will wait
Wait for what?
For the others
….
to return
There is no time to wait. It is time for the world to deny Israel its impunity, which is provided by the full-throated backing by the United States of America.
The crisis of the Indian healthcare system
Arsalan Ghani
07 July 2020
http://www.marxist.com/the-crisis-of-the-indian-healthcare-system.htm
The COVID-19 crisis is hitting India hard. Despite only spending 1.2 percent of GDP on healthcare, Modi is assuring his fellow countrymen that they do not need to worry; that India is equipped with the required infrastructure to cope with the pandemic. This is a blatant lie. The Indian healthcare system was devastated even before COVID-19, and it is certainly no better under the current crisis. With the coronavirus hitting all major towns and villages, the rottenness of the Indian healthcare system is laid bare. Here, we will analyse the situation facing the health system in India, the state’s inability to address the pandemic, the role of the private sector, the limits of Indian 'democracy' and the revolutionary road forward.
Based on officially submitted figures, India ranks 154 among 195 Countries in the Global Healthcare Index in terms of access and quality measures. Counting unofficial figures, it would rank even lower. Official government figures show India's doctor-to-population ratio is 1:1,655. For reference, the WHO recommends 1:1,000. In the government sector, there is one medical doctor per 11,000 people on average. In poor states such as Bihar, this number is 28,391, while in the capital city Delhi, the ratio is one doctor to every 2,203 people. The bed-to-population ratio is 0.5 per 1,000 on average, against the WHO recommendation of 3.5 per 1,000. The situation in rural areas is much grimmer. About 60 percent of the Indian healthcare system is in the hands of private profiteers who are benefitting from people’s illnesses.
Disease prevention for poor: a myth
India is not only a country that houses a quarter of the world's poor but also contains the highest numbers of people with chronic hunger: one of the significant factors contributing to disease vulnerability. Prevention of diseases is impossible in India. The Food and Agricultural Organisation estimates that 195 million people in India are undernourished, which is around 14.5 percent of the population. This is the official figure, but the reality is much worse. 70 percent of minor deaths are linked to hunger. More than 50 percent of the population lack access to clean drinking water. Pollution, traditionally considered an urban issue, is now ravaging villages and households in small towns, comprising 68 percent of the total population. While vehicles and uncontrolled industrial emissions are destroying the urban atmosphere, poisonous pesticide spray is doing the same to villages.
If the poor somehow manage to escape hunger, they still are vulnerable to diseases, given the condition of their food. In order to reduce costs and increase profits, dangerous chemicals and additives are introduced to food ingredients and sold to ordinary people by fatcats. This includes adulterations to spices, poisonous pesticide-ridden vegetables, chemically enhanced meat and milk, and oils dangerously high in saturated fats, in addition to a lack of hygiene in street foods. The Centre for Science and Environment Delhi estimates that 2 million deaths every year are caused worldwide by diarrhoea arising from contaminated food and water, 1.5 million of them children, and 700,000 of these in South Asia alone.
Access to quality public healthcare is a class issue in India, with the affluent having access to a clean environment, inside and outside their houses, while poor working-class people are forced to live in densely crowded and often polluted urban areas. The rich can afford to buy organic and pesticide-free, uncontaminated food, while the poor cannot even think of such luxuries. All state laws, regulations and control against food contamination only to help the rich. The poor are forced to eat unregulated and cheaply available, dangerous foods that test the limits of their immune systems.
Rural farmers and their families are exposed to dangerous pesticides on a daily basis. Poisonous sprays and byproducts from factories heavily contaminate rivers from which people obtain water for their daily use. Cancer is rife in rural Punjab and Haryana, considered breadwinner states, caused by poisonous pesticide sprays on farming lands. The irony is that there is no proper cancer treatment hospital in Punjab. The state runs a regular train known as the 'cancer train' through major farming villages across the states, collecting cancer patients and driving them hundreds of miles down to treatment centres in Bikaner Rajasthan.
The Indian government is fully aware of the public health crises, but turns a blind eye, because it is unable and unwilling to do anything under the present capitalist system of private profit production. Sick people are left at the mercy of the rotten healthcare system.
Wrecked government-run hospitals
The situation in government hospitals is worse than one could ever imagine. Treatment is free, but people are treated like animals. The buildings of almost all state-run hospitals are crumbling due to corruption in the maintenance funds. Hardly any medical equipment is maintained properly.
In 2017, in Gorakhpur Uttar Pradesh, about 63 children were suffocated to death in front of their helpless parents, because the hospital ran out of liquid oxygen cylinders and the private contractor refused to supply oxygen because of a previous unpaid bill of $107,000. This incident provoked a nationwide protest.
The poor regions in India seldom have any proper functioning healthcare infrastructure. These regions are often infested with deadly disease outbreaks, with children most at risk. 80 percent of Primary Health Centres lack a qualified doctor, if they somehow exist in villages. Patients and their carers have to travel tens to hundreds of miles to reach a hospital with a qualified doctor. This gives rise to chronic overcrowding in state hospitals, which cannot refuse to take in new patients by law.
The leeching private hospitals
Private profiteering hospitals and treatment centres fill capacity gaps in the state healthcare system. But they are no better than their state-managed counterparts. In fact, they are much worse. Apart from a few large private hospitals, the majority are located in residential houses and makeshift office spaces. Only 10 percent of the 1 million doctors in India work in the public health sector, the rest are in the private sector. After spending tens of millions of rupees on medical college fees and other living expenses to become a doctor, the potentially lucrative private sector seems an attractive prospect for newly qualified medics, where they can earn high salaries and commissions from pharmaceutical companies. But still, doctors are in limited supply in most of the private hospitals as well. This does not stop private hospitals from regular functioning and performing complicated operations in the absence of doctors. If treatment goes wrong and the patient is near death, they are shifted to a state hospital to avoid liability and a bad reputation.
Bloodthirsty private hospital bosses pursue aggressive marketing tactics. They force their part-time doctors and nurses, who also work in state hospitals, to divert patients from the state hospitals to their private hospitals. Swindlers, con artists and cheats are hired on commission by these private hospitals for this purpose as well. Also, there is a whole fleet of private-run ambulances at the disposal of the swindlers, parked outside of state hospitals, ready to pick up incoming patients and their families, and redirect them to private hospitals.
In a private hospital, a patient gets everything – except proper treatment – at a high cost. Minor illnesses are diagnosed as major ones, and the patient ends up spending days in an expensive ward with daily mounting bills. If patients exhaust their supply of money in the middle of their treatments, they are kicked out of the hospital and/or immediately shifted to a state hospital. Hardly any poor people come out of hospital without colossal debts. Several private hospitals also employ the services of thugs for debt recovery from patients and their families. In a lot of cases, local police officers extend their services as debt collectors on behalf of the private hospitals for a commission.
Private hospitals in rural areas are hotbeds for the illegal human organ trade. The government has formed teams to do surprise checks in PHCs and hospitals for quality control, but due to rampant corruption and political connections, nothing happens to improve private hospitals’ conduct.
Several NGOs and philanthropists are active in healthcare and often provide free or low-cost treatment facilities to the poor. Large Indian capitalists such as Nadar, Ambani, Piramal, Premji, Godrej, Adani and others have opened charity hospitals. But only a tiny percentage of patients are treated free of cost; for the rest of the patients at these facilities, it is a rip-off. Often, charity is used as a vehicle to evade taxes by these big capitalists. Several international charities are linked to pharmaceutical multinationals, who use them as a means to penetrate into Indian markets or for drug trials.
The malpractice committed by private hospitals in their lust for profits has dire implications given the current pandemic. The New Meerut Hospital, a private facility in Uttar Pradesh, recently had its license revoked by the local government after a video came to light of an employee telling the relative of a patient that, for Rs 2,500, the hospital will provide a negative COVID-19 test report, so the patient will be able to go back to work and avoid quarantine. It transpired that the hosptial manager was behind this scheme. There have been 27,000 cases of COVID-19 and 785 deaths in Uttar Pradesh so far. Private sector crooks are willing to exploit the desperation of sufferering people, and push these numbers even higher in exchange for a quick profit.
Fake medicines and quackery
The pharmaceutical industry in India is appalling. International agencies suggest that 20 percent of medicines sold in India are fake, and a lot more are substandard – but the real figure is much higher. The inability of the government to regulate the pharmaceutical sector is encouraging all types of profiteeringmafiosi to venture in the medicine manufacturing business. The poor can only access cheap, adulterated medicines with limited effects. Patients are supposed to get free medicines during their treatment in a state hospital, but due to rampant corruption, there is hardly any stock of free medicines. Patients have to visit pharmacies, which mushroom around hospitals, selling substandard medicines at high prices. Often patients and their families decide to abandon hospital treatment and let the patient suffer or die because they cannot afford the expense. Despite India's considerable exports of medicines to the USA and UK (80 percent of Britain's NHS generic medicines are imported from India), Indians at home are deprived of essential and lifesaving medicines.
The majority of Indians are going to quacks for cheap and unscientific treatments, the market for which is thriving. These snake oil salesmen often use a combination of various herbs with alleged ‘magical’ properties to treat real illness. Their 'treatments' are not only ineffective but often aggravate the illnesses of their patients, who then end up in hospital. The ruling class knows that they cannot provide effective healthcare to the population under capitalism; therefore, they are at the forefront of promoting such an unscientific approach to treatment, and keeping masses ignorant and reliant on 'magic'.
Various kinds of fake medicines are promoted in print and electronic media, including social media. Quacks who make fortunes for themselves also financially support politicians from the ruling parties. Prime Minister Modi himself is a staunch supporter of these ‘magic’ treatments, and regularly promotes fake medicines and regimes to cure serious illness, resulting in more deaths.
A famous multimillionaire quack named Baba Ram Dev is promoting such fake medicinal products in combination with yoga, and has even declared existing products called Coronil and Swasari as medicines to cure COVID-19.
One of the major panaceas churned out by BJP leaders is cow urine, which, according to them, can be used to treat all kinds of diseases, including COVID-19. This unscientific approach also permeates through the medical fraternity and many of them also firmly believe in such miracles, resulting in fatal methods of treatment for the poor patients. Religious leaders from Muslim, Buddhist and other communities also promote similar quackery which only adds to the general level of ignorance, in turn exacerbating unhygienic living and the spread of disease.
Hopeless healthcare for Indian women
The lives of women are much worse as they have to endure all of this ignorance and deprivation, in addition to the oppression that comes with being a woman. A large number of women die during childbirth due to unscientific methods of care during delivery. Women’s health is the lowest priority in typical, poor Indian households. The general atmosphere of prejudice and oppression towards women in society forces women to hide their illnesses due to shame, and many even prefer to die rather than disclose their medical problems. The lack of female doctors across the country also worsens their plight as many families will not allow any male doctor to touch their female relatives due to “family honour”.
The development of technology under capitalism has only served to worsen the oppression of women rather than overcome it. The ultrasound machine, which should help the women in pregnancy identify problems with the baby or themselves, has become an instrument for more barbaric oppression towards women. Every year in India, hundreds of thousands of sex-selective abortions are carried out. Female foetuses that are detected early through ultrasound technology are forcefully aborted. The practice has reached such horrific levels that, in some states, like Haryana, the disproportion in population ratio between males and females have reached levels never seen in history. The birth of a female, still seen as stigma and dishonour, results in a lack of interest in their healthcare and wellbeing. This results in a life filled with sickness and disease for most of the women living in poverty.
The option of surrogacy has also become twisted under class society. This technology should be a boon for women who have medical issues and can't bear children, but under capitalism, it is being used by rich women to avoid the pain of childbirth, by hiring poor women to endure the suffering for a meagre sum of money, and then handing over the child to its 'mother'.
A sick and disgusting concept still prevails in India, where menstrual periods are considered impure and therefore, women are not allowed in temples or mosques. In a country where 90-100 women are raped each day – often by strangers – if the lives of these women are spared by their relatives, who accuse them of dishonouring their families, they suffer psychological and mental trauma for the whole of their lives, which goes untreated.
The lack of toilets across India has been an issue discussed frequently in politics, and open defecation is a routine for millions of people across the country. But for women, this is a particular nightmare, as they have to wait for midnight or other odd hours to relieve themselves. Many face sexual assaults even during this process. In this situation, safe and hygienic living has become a luxury for a significant majority of the population. Modi launched a campaign named 'Swachh Bharat Mission' in 2014 to build 90 million toilets in cities and towns, with a budget of $8.7 billion. Since its inception, the project has been riddled with massive corruption, wasteful spending and did not manage to address the sanitation issue at all, as fields and rivers are still being polluted as a result of this project. Rural people are being forced to use these toilets, threatening their electricity connections and public food subsidy entitlements, again disproportionately affecting women.
Given all these circumstances, the Indian healthcare system cannot cope with the COVID-19 crisis. There are insufficient doctors, non-existent care centres, scant hospital beds, a lack of medical equipment such as ventilators and PPE, and preventive medicines are often out of reach of the majority. Given the already chronic overcrowding of state hospitals, the situation is accelerating towards a total collapse, with rising COVID-19 cases. There are reports of two and even three patients sharing a single hospital bed. There isn't enough oxygen available in hospitals. Ventilators and oxygen masks are only given to preferred patients, while the rest are left to suffocate and die. The official figures at the start of July 2020 state that 200,000 COVID-19 patients are under treatment, with 16,000 deaths. However, given the condition of hospitals and lack of data collection, the actual figure is likely much higher. Private hospitals, pharmacies and quacks are making a killing off the crisis out of COVID-19 tests and fake treatments. And even if the life of a poor working-class person is saved through COVID-19 treatments, they will be saddled with crippling debt.
Political parties: pouring old wines in a new bottle
The political parties are totally inept at addressing the crisis faced by the Indian healthcare system. The Congress Party continuously put free health in its election manifestos, such as in 2014 and 2019, however, they didn't manage to get significant traction on this. This is because, during the Congress-led governments, massive cuts to healthcare were made and privatisation was encouraged in the sector. For example, Congress promised free healthcare for all in 2009, but after assuming office, it did nothing to fulfil that promise but instead brought the concept of health insurance for low-income families under the name of Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY). It's akin to bringing the American healthcare model and bolting it on to a wrecked Indian healthcare system. This measure only benefited the private insurance industries and providers.
The BJP promised 'health assurance for all' in its 2014 manifesto. But on assuming power, it revamped RSBY with some cosmetic changes, such as the Ayushman Bharat (PMJAY), just before the election season of 2019, which is now being sold to the people as universal healthcare. These schemes, far from providing free and quality healthcare, are just a vehicle to shower masses of public funds on private healthcare profiteers and leeching insurance companies, without any improvements being made.
The bankruptcy of the communist parties
The disgusting condition of the communist parties is extremely visible when it comes to healthcare. On the one hand, they oppose the private healthcare system in words; but in reality are seen promoting large corporate-owned hospitals. They aren't calling for a complete nationalisation but talking about extending the same health insurance scheme. Furthermore, they are habitually aligned with right-wing parties, including Congress, and in doing so are continuously compromising and watering down their manifesto and promises. Despite having control of West Bengal and having complete autonomy on healthcare implementation for many decades, the communist parties led a massive privatisation programme, starting from public-private partnerships in healthcare at the behest of the World Bank and DFID. Such betrayals by the Stalinists not only cost them the West Bengal state government but also resulted in a complete wipe-out from the Indian political landscape. People see them as no different from other right-wing parties who are following similar privatisation and anti-worker programmes.
The revolutionary way forward
The Indian working-class deserves free healthcare. There are enough resources in the country to fund free healthcare for all. No charity, philanthropy or misplaced faith in right-wing political parties will resolve India’s healthcare crisis. Also, international development organisations and banks are only interested in profits and worker exploitation. One cannot expect the Indian healthcare system to run better under the present decaying capitalist system. Only the complete overthrow of capitalism will enable free healthcare in India. This is not possible through the currently rotten parliamentary politics or adopting the road of Stalinism, but through building a revolutionary organisation in India on Bolshevik lines.
It is the task of Indian youth and workers to overthrow this decaying capitalist system, which cannot be reformed and has not the slightest capacity to improve the lives of masses. Rather, in its death throes, it will murder millions more. The only way forward is to build a genuine Marxist tendency in India that can connect with the ongoing struggles of the workers and students on the basis of correct ideas for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, through the mass action of Indian working class. In the recent period, we have seen historic general strikes in India, which were able to paralyse the whole country. But what we saw also were shameless betrayals of the leaders who cashed on the anger of millions of working-class people to further their careers. The mainstream political parties, including so-called communist parties, criminally defuse the anger of masses with petty reforms and limited demands.
In the coming period, events on a much larger scale will be seen, bringing class struggle to the top of the political agenda, challenging the rule of government and big business who are making fortunes off the suffering and illness of the working-class. Only by overthrowing the bourgeois state and replacing it with a workers’ state, that could nationalise the commanding heights of the economy under the democratic control of workers, will we be able to provide free and scientifically sound healthcare to all people of India. Nothing less than this strategy can solve this burning issue of healthcare. Socialist revolution in India will be only the beginning of a process towards a socialist federation of South Asia and the world.
http://www.marxist.com/the-crisis-of-the-indian-healthcare-system.htm
The COVID-19 crisis is hitting India hard. Despite only spending 1.2 percent of GDP on healthcare, Modi is assuring his fellow countrymen that they do not need to worry; that India is equipped with the required infrastructure to cope with the pandemic. This is a blatant lie. The Indian healthcare system was devastated even before COVID-19, and it is certainly no better under the current crisis. With the coronavirus hitting all major towns and villages, the rottenness of the Indian healthcare system is laid bare. Here, we will analyse the situation facing the health system in India, the state’s inability to address the pandemic, the role of the private sector, the limits of Indian 'democracy' and the revolutionary road forward.
Based on officially submitted figures, India ranks 154 among 195 Countries in the Global Healthcare Index in terms of access and quality measures. Counting unofficial figures, it would rank even lower. Official government figures show India's doctor-to-population ratio is 1:1,655. For reference, the WHO recommends 1:1,000. In the government sector, there is one medical doctor per 11,000 people on average. In poor states such as Bihar, this number is 28,391, while in the capital city Delhi, the ratio is one doctor to every 2,203 people. The bed-to-population ratio is 0.5 per 1,000 on average, against the WHO recommendation of 3.5 per 1,000. The situation in rural areas is much grimmer. About 60 percent of the Indian healthcare system is in the hands of private profiteers who are benefitting from people’s illnesses.
Disease prevention for poor: a myth
India is not only a country that houses a quarter of the world's poor but also contains the highest numbers of people with chronic hunger: one of the significant factors contributing to disease vulnerability. Prevention of diseases is impossible in India. The Food and Agricultural Organisation estimates that 195 million people in India are undernourished, which is around 14.5 percent of the population. This is the official figure, but the reality is much worse. 70 percent of minor deaths are linked to hunger. More than 50 percent of the population lack access to clean drinking water. Pollution, traditionally considered an urban issue, is now ravaging villages and households in small towns, comprising 68 percent of the total population. While vehicles and uncontrolled industrial emissions are destroying the urban atmosphere, poisonous pesticide spray is doing the same to villages.
If the poor somehow manage to escape hunger, they still are vulnerable to diseases, given the condition of their food. In order to reduce costs and increase profits, dangerous chemicals and additives are introduced to food ingredients and sold to ordinary people by fatcats. This includes adulterations to spices, poisonous pesticide-ridden vegetables, chemically enhanced meat and milk, and oils dangerously high in saturated fats, in addition to a lack of hygiene in street foods. The Centre for Science and Environment Delhi estimates that 2 million deaths every year are caused worldwide by diarrhoea arising from contaminated food and water, 1.5 million of them children, and 700,000 of these in South Asia alone.
Access to quality public healthcare is a class issue in India, with the affluent having access to a clean environment, inside and outside their houses, while poor working-class people are forced to live in densely crowded and often polluted urban areas. The rich can afford to buy organic and pesticide-free, uncontaminated food, while the poor cannot even think of such luxuries. All state laws, regulations and control against food contamination only to help the rich. The poor are forced to eat unregulated and cheaply available, dangerous foods that test the limits of their immune systems.
Rural farmers and their families are exposed to dangerous pesticides on a daily basis. Poisonous sprays and byproducts from factories heavily contaminate rivers from which people obtain water for their daily use. Cancer is rife in rural Punjab and Haryana, considered breadwinner states, caused by poisonous pesticide sprays on farming lands. The irony is that there is no proper cancer treatment hospital in Punjab. The state runs a regular train known as the 'cancer train' through major farming villages across the states, collecting cancer patients and driving them hundreds of miles down to treatment centres in Bikaner Rajasthan.
The Indian government is fully aware of the public health crises, but turns a blind eye, because it is unable and unwilling to do anything under the present capitalist system of private profit production. Sick people are left at the mercy of the rotten healthcare system.
Wrecked government-run hospitals
The situation in government hospitals is worse than one could ever imagine. Treatment is free, but people are treated like animals. The buildings of almost all state-run hospitals are crumbling due to corruption in the maintenance funds. Hardly any medical equipment is maintained properly.
In 2017, in Gorakhpur Uttar Pradesh, about 63 children were suffocated to death in front of their helpless parents, because the hospital ran out of liquid oxygen cylinders and the private contractor refused to supply oxygen because of a previous unpaid bill of $107,000. This incident provoked a nationwide protest.
The poor regions in India seldom have any proper functioning healthcare infrastructure. These regions are often infested with deadly disease outbreaks, with children most at risk. 80 percent of Primary Health Centres lack a qualified doctor, if they somehow exist in villages. Patients and their carers have to travel tens to hundreds of miles to reach a hospital with a qualified doctor. This gives rise to chronic overcrowding in state hospitals, which cannot refuse to take in new patients by law.
The leeching private hospitals
Private profiteering hospitals and treatment centres fill capacity gaps in the state healthcare system. But they are no better than their state-managed counterparts. In fact, they are much worse. Apart from a few large private hospitals, the majority are located in residential houses and makeshift office spaces. Only 10 percent of the 1 million doctors in India work in the public health sector, the rest are in the private sector. After spending tens of millions of rupees on medical college fees and other living expenses to become a doctor, the potentially lucrative private sector seems an attractive prospect for newly qualified medics, where they can earn high salaries and commissions from pharmaceutical companies. But still, doctors are in limited supply in most of the private hospitals as well. This does not stop private hospitals from regular functioning and performing complicated operations in the absence of doctors. If treatment goes wrong and the patient is near death, they are shifted to a state hospital to avoid liability and a bad reputation.
Bloodthirsty private hospital bosses pursue aggressive marketing tactics. They force their part-time doctors and nurses, who also work in state hospitals, to divert patients from the state hospitals to their private hospitals. Swindlers, con artists and cheats are hired on commission by these private hospitals for this purpose as well. Also, there is a whole fleet of private-run ambulances at the disposal of the swindlers, parked outside of state hospitals, ready to pick up incoming patients and their families, and redirect them to private hospitals.
In a private hospital, a patient gets everything – except proper treatment – at a high cost. Minor illnesses are diagnosed as major ones, and the patient ends up spending days in an expensive ward with daily mounting bills. If patients exhaust their supply of money in the middle of their treatments, they are kicked out of the hospital and/or immediately shifted to a state hospital. Hardly any poor people come out of hospital without colossal debts. Several private hospitals also employ the services of thugs for debt recovery from patients and their families. In a lot of cases, local police officers extend their services as debt collectors on behalf of the private hospitals for a commission.
Private hospitals in rural areas are hotbeds for the illegal human organ trade. The government has formed teams to do surprise checks in PHCs and hospitals for quality control, but due to rampant corruption and political connections, nothing happens to improve private hospitals’ conduct.
Several NGOs and philanthropists are active in healthcare and often provide free or low-cost treatment facilities to the poor. Large Indian capitalists such as Nadar, Ambani, Piramal, Premji, Godrej, Adani and others have opened charity hospitals. But only a tiny percentage of patients are treated free of cost; for the rest of the patients at these facilities, it is a rip-off. Often, charity is used as a vehicle to evade taxes by these big capitalists. Several international charities are linked to pharmaceutical multinationals, who use them as a means to penetrate into Indian markets or for drug trials.
The malpractice committed by private hospitals in their lust for profits has dire implications given the current pandemic. The New Meerut Hospital, a private facility in Uttar Pradesh, recently had its license revoked by the local government after a video came to light of an employee telling the relative of a patient that, for Rs 2,500, the hospital will provide a negative COVID-19 test report, so the patient will be able to go back to work and avoid quarantine. It transpired that the hosptial manager was behind this scheme. There have been 27,000 cases of COVID-19 and 785 deaths in Uttar Pradesh so far. Private sector crooks are willing to exploit the desperation of sufferering people, and push these numbers even higher in exchange for a quick profit.
Fake medicines and quackery
The pharmaceutical industry in India is appalling. International agencies suggest that 20 percent of medicines sold in India are fake, and a lot more are substandard – but the real figure is much higher. The inability of the government to regulate the pharmaceutical sector is encouraging all types of profiteeringmafiosi to venture in the medicine manufacturing business. The poor can only access cheap, adulterated medicines with limited effects. Patients are supposed to get free medicines during their treatment in a state hospital, but due to rampant corruption, there is hardly any stock of free medicines. Patients have to visit pharmacies, which mushroom around hospitals, selling substandard medicines at high prices. Often patients and their families decide to abandon hospital treatment and let the patient suffer or die because they cannot afford the expense. Despite India's considerable exports of medicines to the USA and UK (80 percent of Britain's NHS generic medicines are imported from India), Indians at home are deprived of essential and lifesaving medicines.
The majority of Indians are going to quacks for cheap and unscientific treatments, the market for which is thriving. These snake oil salesmen often use a combination of various herbs with alleged ‘magical’ properties to treat real illness. Their 'treatments' are not only ineffective but often aggravate the illnesses of their patients, who then end up in hospital. The ruling class knows that they cannot provide effective healthcare to the population under capitalism; therefore, they are at the forefront of promoting such an unscientific approach to treatment, and keeping masses ignorant and reliant on 'magic'.
Various kinds of fake medicines are promoted in print and electronic media, including social media. Quacks who make fortunes for themselves also financially support politicians from the ruling parties. Prime Minister Modi himself is a staunch supporter of these ‘magic’ treatments, and regularly promotes fake medicines and regimes to cure serious illness, resulting in more deaths.
A famous multimillionaire quack named Baba Ram Dev is promoting such fake medicinal products in combination with yoga, and has even declared existing products called Coronil and Swasari as medicines to cure COVID-19.
One of the major panaceas churned out by BJP leaders is cow urine, which, according to them, can be used to treat all kinds of diseases, including COVID-19. This unscientific approach also permeates through the medical fraternity and many of them also firmly believe in such miracles, resulting in fatal methods of treatment for the poor patients. Religious leaders from Muslim, Buddhist and other communities also promote similar quackery which only adds to the general level of ignorance, in turn exacerbating unhygienic living and the spread of disease.
Hopeless healthcare for Indian women
The lives of women are much worse as they have to endure all of this ignorance and deprivation, in addition to the oppression that comes with being a woman. A large number of women die during childbirth due to unscientific methods of care during delivery. Women’s health is the lowest priority in typical, poor Indian households. The general atmosphere of prejudice and oppression towards women in society forces women to hide their illnesses due to shame, and many even prefer to die rather than disclose their medical problems. The lack of female doctors across the country also worsens their plight as many families will not allow any male doctor to touch their female relatives due to “family honour”.
The development of technology under capitalism has only served to worsen the oppression of women rather than overcome it. The ultrasound machine, which should help the women in pregnancy identify problems with the baby or themselves, has become an instrument for more barbaric oppression towards women. Every year in India, hundreds of thousands of sex-selective abortions are carried out. Female foetuses that are detected early through ultrasound technology are forcefully aborted. The practice has reached such horrific levels that, in some states, like Haryana, the disproportion in population ratio between males and females have reached levels never seen in history. The birth of a female, still seen as stigma and dishonour, results in a lack of interest in their healthcare and wellbeing. This results in a life filled with sickness and disease for most of the women living in poverty.
The option of surrogacy has also become twisted under class society. This technology should be a boon for women who have medical issues and can't bear children, but under capitalism, it is being used by rich women to avoid the pain of childbirth, by hiring poor women to endure the suffering for a meagre sum of money, and then handing over the child to its 'mother'.
A sick and disgusting concept still prevails in India, where menstrual periods are considered impure and therefore, women are not allowed in temples or mosques. In a country where 90-100 women are raped each day – often by strangers – if the lives of these women are spared by their relatives, who accuse them of dishonouring their families, they suffer psychological and mental trauma for the whole of their lives, which goes untreated.
The lack of toilets across India has been an issue discussed frequently in politics, and open defecation is a routine for millions of people across the country. But for women, this is a particular nightmare, as they have to wait for midnight or other odd hours to relieve themselves. Many face sexual assaults even during this process. In this situation, safe and hygienic living has become a luxury for a significant majority of the population. Modi launched a campaign named 'Swachh Bharat Mission' in 2014 to build 90 million toilets in cities and towns, with a budget of $8.7 billion. Since its inception, the project has been riddled with massive corruption, wasteful spending and did not manage to address the sanitation issue at all, as fields and rivers are still being polluted as a result of this project. Rural people are being forced to use these toilets, threatening their electricity connections and public food subsidy entitlements, again disproportionately affecting women.
Given all these circumstances, the Indian healthcare system cannot cope with the COVID-19 crisis. There are insufficient doctors, non-existent care centres, scant hospital beds, a lack of medical equipment such as ventilators and PPE, and preventive medicines are often out of reach of the majority. Given the already chronic overcrowding of state hospitals, the situation is accelerating towards a total collapse, with rising COVID-19 cases. There are reports of two and even three patients sharing a single hospital bed. There isn't enough oxygen available in hospitals. Ventilators and oxygen masks are only given to preferred patients, while the rest are left to suffocate and die. The official figures at the start of July 2020 state that 200,000 COVID-19 patients are under treatment, with 16,000 deaths. However, given the condition of hospitals and lack of data collection, the actual figure is likely much higher. Private hospitals, pharmacies and quacks are making a killing off the crisis out of COVID-19 tests and fake treatments. And even if the life of a poor working-class person is saved through COVID-19 treatments, they will be saddled with crippling debt.
Political parties: pouring old wines in a new bottle
The political parties are totally inept at addressing the crisis faced by the Indian healthcare system. The Congress Party continuously put free health in its election manifestos, such as in 2014 and 2019, however, they didn't manage to get significant traction on this. This is because, during the Congress-led governments, massive cuts to healthcare were made and privatisation was encouraged in the sector. For example, Congress promised free healthcare for all in 2009, but after assuming office, it did nothing to fulfil that promise but instead brought the concept of health insurance for low-income families under the name of Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY). It's akin to bringing the American healthcare model and bolting it on to a wrecked Indian healthcare system. This measure only benefited the private insurance industries and providers.
The BJP promised 'health assurance for all' in its 2014 manifesto. But on assuming power, it revamped RSBY with some cosmetic changes, such as the Ayushman Bharat (PMJAY), just before the election season of 2019, which is now being sold to the people as universal healthcare. These schemes, far from providing free and quality healthcare, are just a vehicle to shower masses of public funds on private healthcare profiteers and leeching insurance companies, without any improvements being made.
The bankruptcy of the communist parties
The disgusting condition of the communist parties is extremely visible when it comes to healthcare. On the one hand, they oppose the private healthcare system in words; but in reality are seen promoting large corporate-owned hospitals. They aren't calling for a complete nationalisation but talking about extending the same health insurance scheme. Furthermore, they are habitually aligned with right-wing parties, including Congress, and in doing so are continuously compromising and watering down their manifesto and promises. Despite having control of West Bengal and having complete autonomy on healthcare implementation for many decades, the communist parties led a massive privatisation programme, starting from public-private partnerships in healthcare at the behest of the World Bank and DFID. Such betrayals by the Stalinists not only cost them the West Bengal state government but also resulted in a complete wipe-out from the Indian political landscape. People see them as no different from other right-wing parties who are following similar privatisation and anti-worker programmes.
The revolutionary way forward
The Indian working-class deserves free healthcare. There are enough resources in the country to fund free healthcare for all. No charity, philanthropy or misplaced faith in right-wing political parties will resolve India’s healthcare crisis. Also, international development organisations and banks are only interested in profits and worker exploitation. One cannot expect the Indian healthcare system to run better under the present decaying capitalist system. Only the complete overthrow of capitalism will enable free healthcare in India. This is not possible through the currently rotten parliamentary politics or adopting the road of Stalinism, but through building a revolutionary organisation in India on Bolshevik lines.
It is the task of Indian youth and workers to overthrow this decaying capitalist system, which cannot be reformed and has not the slightest capacity to improve the lives of masses. Rather, in its death throes, it will murder millions more. The only way forward is to build a genuine Marxist tendency in India that can connect with the ongoing struggles of the workers and students on the basis of correct ideas for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, through the mass action of Indian working class. In the recent period, we have seen historic general strikes in India, which were able to paralyse the whole country. But what we saw also were shameless betrayals of the leaders who cashed on the anger of millions of working-class people to further their careers. The mainstream political parties, including so-called communist parties, criminally defuse the anger of masses with petty reforms and limited demands.
In the coming period, events on a much larger scale will be seen, bringing class struggle to the top of the political agenda, challenging the rule of government and big business who are making fortunes off the suffering and illness of the working-class. Only by overthrowing the bourgeois state and replacing it with a workers’ state, that could nationalise the commanding heights of the economy under the democratic control of workers, will we be able to provide free and scientifically sound healthcare to all people of India. Nothing less than this strategy can solve this burning issue of healthcare. Socialist revolution in India will be only the beginning of a process towards a socialist federation of South Asia and the world.
Hands Off Venezuela condemns UK High Court decision on Venezuelan gold: “It’s daylight robbery!”
Hands Off Venezuela
07 July 2020
http://www.marxist.com/hands-off-venezuela-condemns-uk-high-court-decision-on-venezuelan-gold-it-s-daylight-robbery.htm
We condemn without reservation the outrageous decision of the UK High Court to deny Venezuela access to 31 tonnes of gold deposited at the Bank of England. This decision can only be described as daylight robbery and an act of piracy.
The UK High Court ruling on 3 July stated that the UK government “unequivocally recognised opposition leader Juan Guaidó as president,” and therefore the gold deposited in the Bank of England should not be handed over to the Venezuelan Central Bank as its lawyers had requested.
The Bank of England originally took the decision to block access to the gold reserve, worth over US$1bn, which had been deposited in London for safekeeping, in 2018. That decision was taken at the request of the US government as part of its efforts to undermine the Venezuelan government.
At that time Guaidó had not even proclaimed himself “president” and therefore the UK had not recognised him as such. In his recently published book, John Bolton explains how the then British Foreign Minister, Jeremy Hunt, was “delighted to cooperate” with Washington’s “regime change” efforts against Venezuela, specifically mentioning the freezing of Venezuela’s gold reserves at the Bank of England.
The fact that the UK High Court cites the UK government’s recognition of Juan Guaidó as the reason for blocking access to the gold is farcical. The UK government has formally recognised Guaidó as “interim president”, but maintains full consular and diplomatic relations with Venezuela and its legitimate government. There is a Venezuelan ambassador in London and a British ambassador in Caracas.
Furthermore, the Venezuelan government had pledged that proceeds from the repatriation of the gold reserves would only be used, under supervision of the UN Human Development Program, in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in Venezuela.
By continuing to illegally withhold the Venezuelan gold, the UK is endangering lives in Venezuela.
We call on the labour, trade union and solidarity movement in Britain and across the world to energetically reject and protest this outrageous decision of the UK High Court, which sets a very dangerous precedent.
UK Hands Off Venezuela!
Sanctions Kill!
Give Back the Gold!
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