https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGSFOxhbHic
Sunday, August 16, 2020
Government watchdog concludes acting heads of Homeland Security were illegally appointed by Trump
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/15/unin-a15.html
By Jacob Crosse
15 August 2020
On Friday the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a congressional watchdog, issued a legally non-binding report which found the current head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Chad Wolf, and his deputy secretary, Kenneth Cuccinelli, were not legally appointed to their roles pursuant to the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998.
Throughout his presidency Donald Trump has sought to circumvent congressional approval for department heads through the technique of appointing “acting” secretaries after previous heads resigned. In this way Trump has cultivated, and is seeking to expand, his personalist fascist base of support within the leadership of DHS and throughout the state apparatus.
The DHS, with its 240,000 employees and nearly $50 billion budget for fiscal year 2021, currently has no Senate-approved leadership. The agency has been wielded by the Trump administration as a personal army directed at terrorizing the working class under conditions of mounting opposition to the homicidal policies pursued by the ruling class against workers and immigrants.
Under the leadership of Wolf and Cuccinelli in the last three months DHS thugs have been found kidnapping fathers on their way to work, disappearing and shooting protesters in Portland, raiding a humanitarian aid camp in southern Arizona and developing “intelligence products” on US journalists.
Both appointees have made frequent appearances on Fox News and delivered congressional testimony in which they have vilified protesters as “anarchist terrorists.” At a congressional hearing last week Wolf defended DHS snatching protesters off the streets in unmarked vans as a “common de-escalation tactic.”
The GAO investigation found that Wolf and Cuccinelli were part of an “invalid order of succession” after the previous head of the DHS, Kirstjen Nielsen, resigned from the agency on April 10, 2019. After Nielsen’s resignation, she named Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Kevin McAleenan as her designated successor, in violation of the then existing designation which required the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Christopher Krebs, to assume the title of Acting Secretary.
Since McAleenan was not the legal successor to Nielsen, the GAO ruled that the subsequent accessions of Wolf and Cuccinelli in November, after McAleenan submitted his resignation on October 11, were likewise not valid and therefore recommended that the DHS Inspector General conduct a “review.”
Friday’s report will likely reverberate throughout the courts as judges could be persuaded to dismiss some DHS actions as illegal given the leadership didn’t have proper authority to act. Speaking to NPR, Anne Joseph O’Connell, a law professor at Stanford University, remarked that the GAO findings “could be very persuasive in the courts.”
Wolf, who previously served as Chief of Staff under Nielsen, assumed the position of Acting Secretary in November 2019 after he was approved by 54–41 vote in the Senate for the position of DHS Undersecretary for Strategy, Plans and Policy and then elevated into the vacant secretary role. Wolf, unlike his previous boss, has a positive working relationship with the de facto shadow secretary of the DHS, Trump’s openly fascist advisor Stephen Miller.
The GAO report was careful to note that its purpose was not to render a verdict on the legality of any of the repressive policies or actions Wolf or Cuccinelli have overseen since illegally assuming their roles.
House Homeland Security Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (Democrat-Mississippi) and then-acting House Oversight and Government Reform Chair Carolyn Maloney (Democrat-New York), who originally ordered the GAO investigation, released a statement following its release Friday writing that, “Mr. Wolf should immediately step down and return to his Senate-confirmed position as undersecretary for strategy, policy and plans.”
“As for Mr. Cuccinelli, a political pundit plucked by the President to serve in multiple senior roles at DHS for which he is woefully unqualified, he should immediately resign from the federal government and retire his unprofessional official Twitter account.”
In a statement released Friday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stated that the report’s determination invalidated “actions Mr. Cuccinelli and Mr. Wolf have taken and both should immediately step down from their illegal roles.”
As their statements made clear, Schumer, Thompson and Maloney, along with the rest of the Democratic party, are not calling for Wolf’s resignation from government entirely, in fact, they wish him to return to his senior position within the DHS to continue the work of oppressing and terrorizing the working class.
This isn’t the first time Trump’s appointments have come under scrutiny. Under the same Vacancies Act, a federal judge in March ruled that Cuccinelli was serving illegally as head of US Citizenship and Immigration Services and that any policy directives Cuccinelli issued, including limiting the amount of time asylum seekers could seek legal counsel upon entering the country, were invalid. The Trump administration dropped a formal appeal to the judge’s ruling on Thursday prior to the release of the GAO report.
Upon the release of the report, DHS spokesman Nathaniel Madden issued a terse statement which read in part: “We wholeheartedly disagree with the GAO’s baseless report and plan to issue a formal response to this shortly.”
15 August 2020
On Friday the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a congressional watchdog, issued a legally non-binding report which found the current head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Chad Wolf, and his deputy secretary, Kenneth Cuccinelli, were not legally appointed to their roles pursuant to the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998.
Throughout his presidency Donald Trump has sought to circumvent congressional approval for department heads through the technique of appointing “acting” secretaries after previous heads resigned. In this way Trump has cultivated, and is seeking to expand, his personalist fascist base of support within the leadership of DHS and throughout the state apparatus.
The DHS, with its 240,000 employees and nearly $50 billion budget for fiscal year 2021, currently has no Senate-approved leadership. The agency has been wielded by the Trump administration as a personal army directed at terrorizing the working class under conditions of mounting opposition to the homicidal policies pursued by the ruling class against workers and immigrants.
Under the leadership of Wolf and Cuccinelli in the last three months DHS thugs have been found kidnapping fathers on their way to work, disappearing and shooting protesters in Portland, raiding a humanitarian aid camp in southern Arizona and developing “intelligence products” on US journalists.
Both appointees have made frequent appearances on Fox News and delivered congressional testimony in which they have vilified protesters as “anarchist terrorists.” At a congressional hearing last week Wolf defended DHS snatching protesters off the streets in unmarked vans as a “common de-escalation tactic.”
The GAO investigation found that Wolf and Cuccinelli were part of an “invalid order of succession” after the previous head of the DHS, Kirstjen Nielsen, resigned from the agency on April 10, 2019. After Nielsen’s resignation, she named Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Kevin McAleenan as her designated successor, in violation of the then existing designation which required the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Christopher Krebs, to assume the title of Acting Secretary.
Since McAleenan was not the legal successor to Nielsen, the GAO ruled that the subsequent accessions of Wolf and Cuccinelli in November, after McAleenan submitted his resignation on October 11, were likewise not valid and therefore recommended that the DHS Inspector General conduct a “review.”
Friday’s report will likely reverberate throughout the courts as judges could be persuaded to dismiss some DHS actions as illegal given the leadership didn’t have proper authority to act. Speaking to NPR, Anne Joseph O’Connell, a law professor at Stanford University, remarked that the GAO findings “could be very persuasive in the courts.”
Wolf, who previously served as Chief of Staff under Nielsen, assumed the position of Acting Secretary in November 2019 after he was approved by 54–41 vote in the Senate for the position of DHS Undersecretary for Strategy, Plans and Policy and then elevated into the vacant secretary role. Wolf, unlike his previous boss, has a positive working relationship with the de facto shadow secretary of the DHS, Trump’s openly fascist advisor Stephen Miller.
The GAO report was careful to note that its purpose was not to render a verdict on the legality of any of the repressive policies or actions Wolf or Cuccinelli have overseen since illegally assuming their roles.
House Homeland Security Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (Democrat-Mississippi) and then-acting House Oversight and Government Reform Chair Carolyn Maloney (Democrat-New York), who originally ordered the GAO investigation, released a statement following its release Friday writing that, “Mr. Wolf should immediately step down and return to his Senate-confirmed position as undersecretary for strategy, policy and plans.”
“As for Mr. Cuccinelli, a political pundit plucked by the President to serve in multiple senior roles at DHS for which he is woefully unqualified, he should immediately resign from the federal government and retire his unprofessional official Twitter account.”
In a statement released Friday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stated that the report’s determination invalidated “actions Mr. Cuccinelli and Mr. Wolf have taken and both should immediately step down from their illegal roles.”
As their statements made clear, Schumer, Thompson and Maloney, along with the rest of the Democratic party, are not calling for Wolf’s resignation from government entirely, in fact, they wish him to return to his senior position within the DHS to continue the work of oppressing and terrorizing the working class.
This isn’t the first time Trump’s appointments have come under scrutiny. Under the same Vacancies Act, a federal judge in March ruled that Cuccinelli was serving illegally as head of US Citizenship and Immigration Services and that any policy directives Cuccinelli issued, including limiting the amount of time asylum seekers could seek legal counsel upon entering the country, were invalid. The Trump administration dropped a formal appeal to the judge’s ruling on Thursday prior to the release of the GAO report.
Upon the release of the report, DHS spokesman Nathaniel Madden issued a terse statement which read in part: “We wholeheartedly disagree with the GAO’s baseless report and plan to issue a formal response to this shortly.”
Lebanon’s oligarchs and imperialist backers seek to exploit outrage over Beirut port blast
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/15/leba-a15.html
By Jean Shaoul
15 August 2020
Lebanon’s Christian, fascist, and Sunni parties grouped around former Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri have begun to call openly for the return to power of this corrupt billionaire.
The demand was first made public within hours of Prime Minister Hassan Diab announcing the resignation of his “technocratic” government on Monday evening, following antigovernment protests in the wake of the massive explosion at the port on August 4.
The disaster, whatever its precise cause, was the result of the criminal neglect and callous indifference displayed by successive governments and the ruling elite, which for years ignored repeated warnings about the dangers of storing ammonium nitrate without proper safety controls so near residential areas.
Much has been made of Diab having received a letter about the storage of the powerful chemical at the port on July 20, after which he called on the Supreme Defence Council for action. In his own defence, Diab responded, “The current cabinet received the file 14 days prior to the explosion and acted on it in a matter of days. Previous administrations had over six years and did nothing.”
Nevertheless, when it became clear that Diab’s government was going to be branded as the chief culprit, some of his cabinet colleagues resigned, precipitating Diab’s own resignation, although he remains in a caretaker role. As Ghada Shreim, minister for displaced people in Diab’s now-caretaker government, told Al Jazeera, “In the end, we felt that they wanted to make us the criminals, that they wanted to put this all on us, and it was a major reason for the [government's] resignation.”
On resigning, Diab laid the blame for the “earthquake” that had hit Lebanon on his government’s corrupt predecessors, although he kept silent on whom he meant or what exactly they had done.
At no point during the six months that he held the reins of power did Diab warn publicly about the machinations of the political elite, even as they made it impossible for him to carry out any measures to deal with the economic crisis much less alleviate the plight of working class families.
On Thursday, in its first action since the explosion, Parliament approved a state of emergency granting the military sweeping powers to curb freedom of speech, assembly and the press, as well as to enter homes and arrest anyone deemed a security threat and try people in military courts. The move is clearly aimed at suppressing opposition to economic hardship, corruption and distrust of the political elite.
Hariri’s Forward Movement, in alliance with the fascistic Lebanese Forces led by former militia leader Samir Geagea, and the Druze-based Progressive Socialist Party of Walid Jumblatt are working energetically to engineer a Hariri-led government.
This could prove difficult to sell to an enraged public that is fully aware that Hariri was in power for four of the six years that the ammonium nitrate was stored in the port and that is disgusted with the entire ruling elite.
The fallback position of these layers is a “national salvation” government, potentially headed by the military and made up of bankers and other business figures, to supposedly resolve the crisis and prepare the way for elections on the basis of a new electoral law. The discussions are that this unelected body would be in power for two to three years.
Washington’s preferred option is apparently a government of “independents” headed by Nawaf Salam, a diplomat-jurist and scion of one of Lebanon’s ruling dynasties, whose cousin Tammam Salam was prime minister between 2014 and 2016, and like Hariri was responsible for ignoring the dangers of storing the powerful chemical.
Hariri and company would be the driving force behind either a “salvation” or an “independent” government. Their aim is to reverse the setback they suffered last October, when mass social protests swept the country forcing the Hariri-led government to resign. They are determined to restore the direct rule of the plutocracy, in the service of imperialism, and limit or eradicate the influence of the “mobsters” in Lebanon and Syria, a term employed always as a euphemism for Hezbollah.
These layers are vehemently opposed to Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, and with its allies forms the largest political bloc in parliament. Hezbollah is a bourgeois Islamist movement, politically and socially conservative and deeply hostile to any independent movement of the working class. It has for years been a member of the country’s coalition governments and played a key role in defending the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad against the far-right Islamists backed by the CIA, the Gulf monarchs, and Turkey.
The campaign against Hezbollah is bound up with the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions regime targeting Iran, which is tantamount to a state of war and aimed at overturning its government and installing a client regime.
Hariri’s campaign has been aided and abetted by the imperialist and regional powers and the international media, who have suggested that Hezbollah is to blame for the explosion and routinely singled it out as the “obstacle” to democratic reform and a break with sectarianism.
Diab, an engineering professor, was chosen by Aoun to head a “technocratic” and “independent” government in January as a sop to the popular demand for a break with the entire corrupt political setup.
Bassel Sallouk, an associate professor of political science at the Lebanese American University, told Al-Jazeera that the aim of Lebanon’s elite was “to defuse the momentum of the October 17 protests—and they did that very brilliantly. … We saw the momentum of the protest movement die down after Diab came to power.”
Diab’s cabinet, largely unaligned professional people, had the support of Hezbollah, President Aoun’s Christian Free Patriotic Movement, and the Shi’ite Amal Movement led by Nabih Berri, the parliament’s speaker.
While the Christian and Sunni oligarchs allied with Hariri’s Future Movement were bitterly opposed to the government, it suited them to blame Diab and Hezbollah for the growing economic crisis engulfing Lebanon, which had racked up debts of 170 percent of GDP as the Gulf countries withdrew their financial support.
Within weeks, as the currency’s value plummeted and inflation soared, Diab announced that Lebanon would default on its $30 billion foreign debts and turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a loan. But access to international loans and economic support pledged at the 2018 Cedre conference, policed by Washington and Paris, was always going to be dependent on the imperialists’ foreign and economic policy agenda.
The Trump administration has been applying pressure in support of its local stooges, intensifying its sanctions on Hezbollah and those organisations, including the banks, dealing with it, and imposing new sanctions on Syria, whose economy is closely linked to Lebanon’s.
The Diab government submitted a plan to the IMF that would have involved Lebanon’s banks, the country’s chief creditors, taking a substantial “haircut,” as well as a raft of austerity measures and privatisations. But the banks, owned by the Christian and Sunni plutocrats around Hariri’s Future Movement, rejected it.
The Future Movement refused to cooperate with the government, leading to the eruption of small but violent clashes between the two rival blocs. In June, Aoun warned that this could spark another civil war in a country that saw a bitter armed conflict from 1975 to 1990.
Even if the port blast had not occurred, the Diab government’s inability to provide a modicum of social support for Lebanese workers and their families hit by the coronavirus lockdowns imposed in March would have sealed its fate.
According to Social Affairs Minister Ramzi Musharrafieh, up to 75 percent of the people need aid, as people scrounge in garbage dumps for food and beg passers-by for something to eat. Hariri’s bloc, already preparing to move against Diab, seized the opportunity created by the devastation to blame Hezbollah, centred on claims that the warehouse was a Hezbollah explosives dump and that Hezbollah managed the port and was thus responsible for the failure to remove the ammonium nitrate.
Hariri and his allies refused to accept the investigation undertaken by the Diab government, which has placed around 20 officials under house arrest, frozen their bank accounts, and banned them from traveling. They demanded an international investigation, aimed at placing the blame on Hezbollah.
These were the forces that organised the welcome extended to French President Emmanuel Macron when he visited Beirut just two days after the blast. Speaking as the representative of Lebanon’s former colonial master, he called for an international investigation into the cause of the blast and insisted that financial aid would be conditional on “political reform.” Reuters cited a Lebanese government source as saying that Macron wanted Hariri to head a government of technocrats, but Aoun and the Christian parties were opposed to this.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas echoed this call during his visit to Beirut Wednesday, when he brought a cheque for a token €1 million for the Lebanese Red Cross, while insisting that aid would be conditioned on “economic reforms and good governance.”
On Thursday US Undersecretary of State David Hale called for an end to “dysfunctional governments and empty promises.” He added that the FBI along with French investigators would join Lebanon’s probe into the blast at the port, in an apparent reversal by Aoun of his earlier refusal to accept an international investigation.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is preparing to impose anticorruption sanctions against prominent Lebanese politicians and businessmen in a bid to drive a wedge between Hezbollah and its allies.
A recent report by the Congressional Republican Study Committee (RSC), focused on containing Iranian power and influence in the Middle East, gives some indication of the thinking in Washington. It recommended legislation banning any IMF money from bailing out Lebanon, as it would “only reward Hezbollah,” and the extension of US sanctions to Hezbollah’s allies in Lebanon.
It cites a Lebanese-American analyst who wrote in 2017, “Lebanon’s stability, insofar as it means the stability of the Iranian order and forward missile base there, is not, in fact, a US interest,” indicating that as far as the US is concerned, a civil war in Lebanon might be welcomed as a useful way of undermining and targeting Iran.
Either of the Hariri bloc’s scenarios for a return to power—the outright reinstatement of Hariri or a military-dominated government of “national salvation”—presages escalating class struggle and threatens a turn to civil war.
The working class must understand that its demands for economic security and social equality are diametrically opposed to the interests of all factions of the kleptocracy that has ruled Lebanon for decades. Workers must be guided by a political and economic strategy based upon their own class interests that recognises that it is impossible to resolve the crisis confronting the working class without a direct challenge to capitalism and its state apparatus.
While the ruling elite which is mortally afraid of the working class turns to its international patrons in a position of weakness, the strength of the working class lies in its international nature. It needs an international perspective that focuses on building a political leadership to unify the working class across sectarian, ethnic, and national divisions—not just within Lebanon’s borders but throughout the region—in a struggle against capitalism and for socialism.
This means building sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International, with its perspective for a United Socialist States of the Middle East, as the leadership of such a struggle.
Brazilian teachers report 36 COVID-infected schools after one week of classes in Manaus
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/15/braz-a15.html
By Tomas Castanheira
15 August 2020
The first week of return to classes in public schools in Manaus, the first Brazilian capital to take the measure, was marked by disastrous episodes.
The Secretariat of Education and Sports (Seduc) of the state of Amazonas reported that 123 state schools reopened in Manaus on Monday. About 110,000 students returned to classrooms under a “hybrid system,” alternating days of attendance.
The Secretary of Education Luís Fabian Barbosa assured that the government was going to implement “a safe plan for resuming classroom activities, which included the participation of control agencies, unions representing the workforce, the students’ parents and the school community.”
This statement was backed up by a committee of deputies from the Amazonas Legislative Assembly that visited schools “at random” and proved that “all the measures are being taken.”
The commission was led by congressman Sinésio Campos, the state president of the Workers Party (PT), who said: “As a teacher I understand the concern of teachers. ... But I also understand that students need to resume educational activities.”
In contrast to the statements made by Seduc and the deputies, educators and students shared on social media images of crowded schools with extremely precarious infrastructure. The masks distributed by the government, unusable because of being oversized, became a meme among students.
Students shared pictures on social media denouncing the ridiculously large face masks offered by the government of Amazonas.
The day after the reopening, the government confirmed the COVID-19 infection of a teacher who, after giving a full day of classes on Monday, showed symptoms during the night.
Two days later, eight schools had already been closed for disinfection after reporting cases. They opened again the next day or the afternoon of the same day. Staff and students who came into contact with cases were not isolated and returned to their schools.
The government placed the responsibility for reporting cases and isolating contaminated teachers and staff on the schools themselves. Educators reported disputes over the closure of schools with school boards that tried to suppress cases.
A map drawn from complaints sent to unions showed, as of Friday, 36 schools that reported infections among students, teachers and other staff after reopening. This represents about 30 percent of schools in Manaus.
15 August 2020
The first week of return to classes in public schools in Manaus, the first Brazilian capital to take the measure, was marked by disastrous episodes.
The Secretariat of Education and Sports (Seduc) of the state of Amazonas reported that 123 state schools reopened in Manaus on Monday. About 110,000 students returned to classrooms under a “hybrid system,” alternating days of attendance.
The Secretary of Education Luís Fabian Barbosa assured that the government was going to implement “a safe plan for resuming classroom activities, which included the participation of control agencies, unions representing the workforce, the students’ parents and the school community.”
This statement was backed up by a committee of deputies from the Amazonas Legislative Assembly that visited schools “at random” and proved that “all the measures are being taken.”
The commission was led by congressman Sinésio Campos, the state president of the Workers Party (PT), who said: “As a teacher I understand the concern of teachers. ... But I also understand that students need to resume educational activities.”
In contrast to the statements made by Seduc and the deputies, educators and students shared on social media images of crowded schools with extremely precarious infrastructure. The masks distributed by the government, unusable because of being oversized, became a meme among students.
Students shared pictures on social media denouncing the ridiculously large face masks offered by the government of Amazonas.
The day after the reopening, the government confirmed the COVID-19 infection of a teacher who, after giving a full day of classes on Monday, showed symptoms during the night.
Two days later, eight schools had already been closed for disinfection after reporting cases. They opened again the next day or the afternoon of the same day. Staff and students who came into contact with cases were not isolated and returned to their schools.
The government placed the responsibility for reporting cases and isolating contaminated teachers and staff on the schools themselves. Educators reported disputes over the closure of schools with school boards that tried to suppress cases.
A map drawn from complaints sent to unions showed, as of Friday, 36 schools that reported infections among students, teachers and other staff after reopening. This represents about 30 percent of schools in Manaus.
Map of Manaus showing the 36 infected schools
But the real scale of the disaster is certainly much greater. Workers, students and family members are being forced to go forward in the dark, with the secretary of education stating that mass testing of students and teachers is not a “recommended strategy” of the Health Surveillance of Amazonas.
The degree of recklessness of the policy being implemented in Manaus is shocking, if not surprising. A few months ago, the world was shocked by the scenes there of graves being dug by backhoes for thousands of COVID-19 victims after the collapse of the local health care system. The governor of Amazonas, Wilson Lima of the Christian Social Party (PSC), under investigation for corruption in connection with the purchase of ventilators, tested positive for coronavirus on Thursday.
The disaster of the reopening in Manaus was suppressed by the media, which reported only bits and pieces of what is happening there and mostly on local channels. The repercussions of these events threaten to undermine the policy being implemented by virtually all Brazilian states and capitals, which plan to reproduce the homicidal model of Manaus.
On Friday of last week, the governor of São Paulo, João Doria of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), who has also tested positive for the coronavirus, announced his agenda for reopening public schools.
But the real scale of the disaster is certainly much greater. Workers, students and family members are being forced to go forward in the dark, with the secretary of education stating that mass testing of students and teachers is not a “recommended strategy” of the Health Surveillance of Amazonas.
The degree of recklessness of the policy being implemented in Manaus is shocking, if not surprising. A few months ago, the world was shocked by the scenes there of graves being dug by backhoes for thousands of COVID-19 victims after the collapse of the local health care system. The governor of Amazonas, Wilson Lima of the Christian Social Party (PSC), under investigation for corruption in connection with the purchase of ventilators, tested positive for coronavirus on Thursday.
The disaster of the reopening in Manaus was suppressed by the media, which reported only bits and pieces of what is happening there and mostly on local channels. The repercussions of these events threaten to undermine the policy being implemented by virtually all Brazilian states and capitals, which plan to reproduce the homicidal model of Manaus.
On Friday of last week, the governor of São Paulo, João Doria of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), who has also tested positive for the coronavirus, announced his agenda for reopening public schools.
Students crowding into a school in Manaus.
In a maneuver covered up by the media, the government declared that the return to schools had been postponed until early October. In practice, however, the government is maintaining the reopening in early September to “attend to students whose parents have started working and are having trouble taking care of their children...[offering] school tutoring and optional activities such as sports and conversation,” in the words of O Globo.
São Paulo is the state with the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide. On Thursday, after a change in the notification system, which now considers results of imaging exams, the state announced a single-day record of 455 new deaths and 19,274 new cases, bringing the total to 26,324 deaths and 674,455 cases. This is more than the number of cases in California, which has recorded the highest for any US state, topping 600,000 on Friday.
In Rio Grande do Sul, the reopening of schools, starting with kindergarten, was scheduled for August 31. The extremely unsetting situation of the pandemic in the state is shown in the occupation rate of hospital beds, which has remained for the last two weeks at 89 percent, even as new beds were created.
The imprudence of the decisions being taken by the Brazilian political establishment as a whole was expressed quite openly by the secretary of education of Rio Grande do Sul, Faisal Karam. Justifying the plainly precipitous back-to-school plan, opposed by 84 percent of families, he said:
“We can’t wait another five months for a vaccine or fully secure alternatives. ... There was no time to plan. There was no collective form among all the secretariats in the country, nor was there a federal government regulation to support the return to classes.”
In similar terms, the governor of the state of Bahia, Rui Costa of the PT, ridiculed teachers who demanded vaccines before returning to school. He attacked the workers, saying, “It is unreasonable that people think they can go to the mall and are not able to teach in a school. ... I haven’t seen anyone talking about genocide when we talked of reopening malls.”
None of the criteria upon which governments base their plans for school re-openings are based on scientific perspectives or any social interest in preserving lives.
They are based upon the claims of a) a supposed control of the pandemic, expressed in the color maps showing the rate of infection in a given territory; b) the capacity of the health care system to attend to new patients; and c) safe return protocols.
The first two arguments assume that the majority, or the entire population, should contract the virus. It is the so-called “herd immunity” policy, which has no scientific value and will result in an incalculable number of deaths that could be totally avoided.
As for the “safe protocols,” they were nakedly shown in the criminal episodes of last week in Manaus. But even if followed to the letter, the protocols have no effectiveness in the absence of a policy for the eradication of COVID-19, which involves massive testing of the population and a strict contact tracing.
Neither are true, and this overrides all the official rhetoric feigning concern for the welfare of children being adversely affected by distance learning.
Behind the moral crusade against the “incalculable losses” to the learning process are the same political parties that have been promoting the destruction of public education, scrapping classrooms and attacking the gains of teachers and school workers.
As the pandemic spreads, they have not bothered to ensure a minimally adequate infrastructure for families and teachers to effectively carry out distance learning.
The plans to reopen schools in Brazil, as in every other country in the world, are dictated solely by the interests of capitalist profit. The ruling class needs the schools opened so that workers have a place to leave their children while they are exploited at their jobs and themselves subjected to infection, and that is all.
The main issue being discussed by the bourgeoisie now is how to break the resistance of parents and educators to work or send their children to environments that are being described as “slaughterhouses.”
The working class, in an association between family members and education workers, must lead a joint struggle against the measures of the bourgeois governments to force schools to reopen. Both the false campaign of existence of safe conditions and the attempts to gain ground with partial reopenings must be fought.
Teachers and school staff need to advance their discussions of organizing a general strike of education. To overcome the efforts of the unions to isolate them locally and from the rest of the working class, they must organize themselves in rank-and-file committees in every school and neighborhood.
Through these committees, they will be able to appeal to their colleagues in every part of the country and to the working class as a whole, turning this struggle into a fight for safety in every working place and decent living conditions for all.
In a maneuver covered up by the media, the government declared that the return to schools had been postponed until early October. In practice, however, the government is maintaining the reopening in early September to “attend to students whose parents have started working and are having trouble taking care of their children...[offering] school tutoring and optional activities such as sports and conversation,” in the words of O Globo.
São Paulo is the state with the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide. On Thursday, after a change in the notification system, which now considers results of imaging exams, the state announced a single-day record of 455 new deaths and 19,274 new cases, bringing the total to 26,324 deaths and 674,455 cases. This is more than the number of cases in California, which has recorded the highest for any US state, topping 600,000 on Friday.
In Rio Grande do Sul, the reopening of schools, starting with kindergarten, was scheduled for August 31. The extremely unsetting situation of the pandemic in the state is shown in the occupation rate of hospital beds, which has remained for the last two weeks at 89 percent, even as new beds were created.
The imprudence of the decisions being taken by the Brazilian political establishment as a whole was expressed quite openly by the secretary of education of Rio Grande do Sul, Faisal Karam. Justifying the plainly precipitous back-to-school plan, opposed by 84 percent of families, he said:
“We can’t wait another five months for a vaccine or fully secure alternatives. ... There was no time to plan. There was no collective form among all the secretariats in the country, nor was there a federal government regulation to support the return to classes.”
In similar terms, the governor of the state of Bahia, Rui Costa of the PT, ridiculed teachers who demanded vaccines before returning to school. He attacked the workers, saying, “It is unreasonable that people think they can go to the mall and are not able to teach in a school. ... I haven’t seen anyone talking about genocide when we talked of reopening malls.”
None of the criteria upon which governments base their plans for school re-openings are based on scientific perspectives or any social interest in preserving lives.
They are based upon the claims of a) a supposed control of the pandemic, expressed in the color maps showing the rate of infection in a given territory; b) the capacity of the health care system to attend to new patients; and c) safe return protocols.
The first two arguments assume that the majority, or the entire population, should contract the virus. It is the so-called “herd immunity” policy, which has no scientific value and will result in an incalculable number of deaths that could be totally avoided.
As for the “safe protocols,” they were nakedly shown in the criminal episodes of last week in Manaus. But even if followed to the letter, the protocols have no effectiveness in the absence of a policy for the eradication of COVID-19, which involves massive testing of the population and a strict contact tracing.
Neither are true, and this overrides all the official rhetoric feigning concern for the welfare of children being adversely affected by distance learning.
Behind the moral crusade against the “incalculable losses” to the learning process are the same political parties that have been promoting the destruction of public education, scrapping classrooms and attacking the gains of teachers and school workers.
As the pandemic spreads, they have not bothered to ensure a minimally adequate infrastructure for families and teachers to effectively carry out distance learning.
The plans to reopen schools in Brazil, as in every other country in the world, are dictated solely by the interests of capitalist profit. The ruling class needs the schools opened so that workers have a place to leave their children while they are exploited at their jobs and themselves subjected to infection, and that is all.
The main issue being discussed by the bourgeoisie now is how to break the resistance of parents and educators to work or send their children to environments that are being described as “slaughterhouses.”
The working class, in an association between family members and education workers, must lead a joint struggle against the measures of the bourgeois governments to force schools to reopen. Both the false campaign of existence of safe conditions and the attempts to gain ground with partial reopenings must be fought.
Teachers and school staff need to advance their discussions of organizing a general strike of education. To overcome the efforts of the unions to isolate them locally and from the rest of the working class, they must organize themselves in rank-and-file committees in every school and neighborhood.
Through these committees, they will be able to appeal to their colleagues in every part of the country and to the working class as a whole, turning this struggle into a fight for safety in every working place and decent living conditions for all.
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