https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jao8aQuTl4&ab_channel=RedactedTonight
Saturday, January 9, 2021
School districts across the US push to reopen as COVID-19 infections and death soar
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/01/08/scho-j08.html
Emma Arceneaux
9 hours ago
The Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee will be holding a national online meeting at 1 p.m. EST this Saturday, January 9, titled, “Stop in-person learning until the pandemic is contained!” We urge all educators, parents, students and workers who wish to join the struggle to close schools and nonessential businesses to register today and invite your coworkers and friends.
On Wednesday, the United States had its deadliest day yet in the COVID-19 pandemic, with 4,100 perishing from the disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that the total death toll may exceed 430,000 by the end of January. A new strain of the virus, known as B.1.1.7, which first emerged in Britain and is 50-70 percent more transmissible, has now been documented in five states: California, New York, Florida, Georgia and Colorado. With no nationwide plan to track the strain, it is likely already far more widespread.
With this catastrophe overwhelming health systems across the country, state and local governments led by both Democrats and Republican continue to ride roughshod over the opposition of educators and parents to the unsafe reopening of school buildings.
This homicidal policy has already resulted in at least 435,674 cases in K-12 schools, according to the COVID Monitor. Hundreds of educators have died from COVID-19, and the death toll among children is growing.
The ruling class and its political representatives in the two capitalist parties have allowed the pandemic to spread uncontrolled, and have facilitated a vast growth of social inequality, in which millions have been made unemployed and face hunger and eviction while the billionaires have amassed unthinkable profits during the same period. The fascist coup attempted Wednesday and the bipartisan drive to reopen schools are both aimed at forcing workers to accept mass death while the pandemic profiteers enrich themselves.
President-elect Joe Biden has rejected a national lockdown and declared that one of his priorities is to have most students in the classroom within 100 days of taking office, despite the fact that the pandemic will be far worse in coming months. Democrat-led school districts across the country are already working to put this into practice because getting children back to school is necessary to get workers back into the factories and other workplaces to produce corporate profit.
Chicago
On Monday, thousands of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) teachers were required to return to school buildings to prepare for students’ return to classrooms next week. According to CPS officials, half of the teachers were absent but logged into work from their homes. In response, CPS Superintendent Janice Jackson sent a threatening email to teachers warning they would face “progressive disciplinary action” if they did not return.
Jackson claimed that the mass absences were the result of pressure from the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). In fact, the CTU has been working diligently to come to an agreement with the district to place teachers back in the classrooms.
The proposed “solutions” advanced by CTU President Jesse Sharkey are half-measures that do not address the health risks posed to staff and students. These include a delayed start of classes until teachers receive a first dose of the vaccine, an extension of the school year into the summer, the return of only those teachers and students who volunteer to do in-person learning, and mass testing of all teachers and students.
The idea that teachers are protected by a half dose of the vaccine is concocted pseudoscience. Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious disease specialist and member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, told CNN, “There’s no data on efficacy of a half dose. If you use a half dose, you’re just making it up.”
Other districts like Salt Lake City have used the promise to vaccinate teachers as a ploy to resume in-person instruction only to say that the disastrous rollout of the vaccines has delayed inoculations.
The CTU leadership has blocked any coordinated action by teachers throughout the city or across state lines. While making some noises about a possible strike, Sharkey plainly said, “We are seeking to negotiate a settlement.” While teachers were being herded back to schools, CTU Area Vice President Sarah Chambers boasted on social media of her poolside vacation to Puerto Rico, an area similarly devastated by the pandemic. Facing immense ire by the city’s rank and file, she has since had to “step back” from the executive board.
New York City
In New York City, the largest school district in the country, a similar collaboration between the local Democrats and the teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), is keeping schools open while the virus spreads uncontrolled and the new B.1.1.7 strain has been detected in the state.
Demonstrating the fraudulent character of the whole reopening, Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo recently discarded the state’s previously established metric of when a district can open—a less than nine percent test positivity rate—just as New York City is poised to surpass this threshold and as the pandemic breaks statewide records for new daily cases.
Cuomo’s new standard, that districts may stay open as long as their internal positivity rate is lower than the city as a whole, is completely unscientific and makes it virtually impossible to force a closure. Furthermore, the mandatory quarantine for exposed persons has been reduced from 14 to 10 days.
Despite New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s absurd claim that “schools are the safest place to be in New York City,” since schools reopened in September there have been 3,900 temporary classroom closures and 600 two-week shutdowns of entire schools, according to Chalkbeat.
Exposing the union’s complicity, UFT President Michael Mulgrew wrote in the Daily Newsthat the school reopenings had been “successful” because of the “cautious approach and rigorous standards.”
California
Governor Gavin Newsom of California recently announced $2 billion in funds to incentivize districts to open as quickly as possible, offering $450 per student to those that reopen. Without any scientific explanation, the order also relaxes the case rate at which districts are allowed to reopen, from an average of seven daily new cases per 100,000 to 28 per 100,000.
This loosening of public health restrictions comes as the virus is devastating the health care system in California. Los Angeles currently has zero percent ICU capacity, and ambulance workers have been instructed not to deliver patients with little chance of survival. Hospitals are also seeing an increase in younger COVID-19 patients requiring intensive care.
In response to Newsom’s order, the superintendents of the state’s seven largest school districts wrote a letter criticizing him from the right. Rather than following local cases and positivity rates, they prefer for him to set a single standard for the state that would require in-person instruction to begin everywhere once this threshold is met. The signatories of the letter are representatives of the financial elite, including Los Angeles superintendent Austin Beutner, a billionaire investment banker and former publisher and CEO of the Los Angeles Times.
Tennessee
A report by the Tennessee Education Association estimates that a staggering 16,000 teachers in the state have contracted COVID-19, while at least eight have died. According to Chalkbeat, the figure was derived from “a representative sample of six large and medium-size school systems that offered in-person instruction and regularly published their case counts.”
The analysis suggests that people teaching in classrooms have “significantly higher infection rates than the general population and in the communities they serve.” This last point is corroborated by data coming out of the UK, which found that school staff were infected at a rate over 300 percent of that of the local population as a whole.
Oregon
In Oregon, Democratic Governor Kate Brown recently issued a directive to the Oregon Department of Education and Oregon Health Authority to begin initiatives to get more students back into classrooms, including reducing guidelines on reopening schools from “mandatory” to “recommended.”
Teachers, parents and community members protested outside various district offices in the state, putting up 500 flags to symbolize the educators and children who have died from the virus in the past year. Though there is no state or national governmental database to track workplace COVID-19 deaths, various independent websites have attempted to document educator deaths.
Arizona
Hundreds of Phoenix-area teachers, parents and community members protested Monday in response to plans for in-person instruction to resume Tuesday in the Gilbert Public School and Chandler Unified School Districts. Both districts held emergency board meetings to decide on their reopening plans, with each voting to delay by a mere week or two. Notably, Gilbert’s Superintendent was absent Monday due to having tested positive for COVID-19. Arizona currently has the highest per capita seven-day rolling average of new cases in the country.
In the campaign to reopen schools, the teachers unions have dutifully collaborated with the Democratic and Republican parties. In the same manner, they are playing a pivotal role in downplaying the dangers posed by the Trump administration and Wednesday’s fascist coup attempt. At the same time, the unions are promoting Biden, who will be committed to a brutal program of austerity to pay off the multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street.
In order to halt and reverse the reopening of schools, to defeat Trump and the rise of fascism, and to develop a program that addresses the interests and needs of the working class, educators must create democratic rank-and-file committees that are independent of both parties and their lackeys in the corrupt unions.
To learn more about this perspective and how to form such committees in your district or state, we urge readers to attend the next national meeting of the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee this Saturday. Register today at wsws.org/edsafety and invite your friends and coworkers to participate!
New weekly jobless claims at 797,000 amid signs of US economic slowdown
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/01/08/jobs-j08.html
Shannon Jones
9 hours ago
New first-time claims for unemployment benefits remained at historically high levels last week following the passage by Congress of a temporary $300 weekly addition to state jobless benefits and an absurdly inadequate one-time $600 stimulus payment.
There were 787,000 new claims for unemployment benefits for the week ending January 2, only a slight drop from the previous week and still an extremely high number by previous standards. It demonstrates the continuing hardship and suffering for millions of American workers as hospitals are overcrowded with COVID cases and the pandemic death toll rises.
Only a few states have started distributing the additional $300 unemployment payments, while others, such as Ohio, say they are waiting for additional “guidance.” The supplement will only last for 11 weeks, ending in March, long before the COVID-19 pandemic will be contained.
The number of continuing claims for unemployment assistance fell 125,000 to 5.1 million last week. And there was also a decline in the number receiving extended unemployment benefits. However, the drop was likely related to the lapsing of the previous federal unemployment extension on December 26.
For a similar reason new applications for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) fell as well to around 160,000 from 310,000 the previous week. The program provides assistance to those not normally covered by regular unemployment benefits such as self-employed and independent contractors. It followed a nearly week-long lapse in benefits as Trump and Congress engaged in parliamentary theatrics. As a result there was evident confusion among potential claimants over whether or not they were eligible.
The result was a further blow at millions of workers already behind on rent and other critical payments. A number of states, such as Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio and Wyoming, did not report any new claim data for the PUA program at all during the week ending January 2.
A US Labor Department report due out Friday is expected to show the unemployment rate increased to 6.8 percent after months of declines. However that number is itself a gross understatement. It does not include workers employed part time who want full time work and doesn’t include “discouraged workers” who have dropped out of the labor market altogether. According to Thomas Barkin, president of the Richmond Federal Reserve, some 4 million workers employed before the pandemic have left the labor force. If those were counted, the actual unemployment rate would be 9.5 percent.
The biggest employment declines in December were in businesses such as restaurants, hotels and retail stores that depend on face-to-face interaction with customers. These businesses are not likely to recover until after the pandemic ends.
Since March, when the pandemic forced widespread lockdowns, new weekly unemployment claims have been running at historically unprecedented levels. Over 73 million new claims for benefits have been filed during this period. The threat of eviction looms for millions, while 50 million face food insecurity.
The hunger crisis is being exacerbated by a global rise in food prices, which have gone up 18 percent since May even as incomes decline. Federal data analyzed by Northwestern University found that overall food insecurity has doubled, and child food insecurity has tripled during the pandemic. Nationwide, seven percent of families reported receiving free food in the previous week.
Regardless, the stock market surge continued on Thursday despite record deaths due to COVID and the storming of the US Capitol by fascist supporters of President Donald Trump. Tech stocks climbed to record highs led by electric vehicle maker Tesla, which was up five percent. Elon Musk, co-founder and CEO of Tesla, is now the richest man in the world based on his company’s stock rise, with a net worth of $187 billion, edging out Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Tesla’s huge stock valuation is largely based on speculation, given that the carmaker delivered less than 500,000 vehicles in 2020.
After months of increased hiring the US economy is showing signs of a slowdown. The private payroll processor ADP reported that the private sector cut 123,000 jobs in December. It was the first monthly decline since April 2020. Consumer spending also declined in November for the first time in seven months as well as household income. According to JP Morgan Chase credit card and debit card purchases were down 6 percent in December from last year compared to down two percent year on year in October.
Some states reported a significant spike in new unemployment claims. New filings in Michigan rose to near 29,033, up from 19,818 the prior week. Due to cuts enacted by the state legislature those filing after January 1 will only be eligible for 20 weeks of unemployment benefits, not 26 as previously was the case. Another 6,000 in Michigan filed for PUA benefits the week ending January 2 and 304,080 Michigan workers remained on PUA benefits through December 19.
A number of other states showed increases of more than 10,000 new unemployment claims, including Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Virginia and Texas.
In spite of unprecedented economic hardship, California is suspending unemployment payments on 1.4 million claims due to allegations of fraud. This comes at a time when the state has failed to process and pay out benefits. There were a reported 777,760 unemployment claims in California for the week ending December 30. That was a 32,124 increase over the previous week’s total.
According to a report in the Guardian, nearly every US state has failed to meet federal standards that require getting unemployment benefits to claimants within three weeks. It cites the horror story of Eugene Williams of Daytona Beach, Florida, who lost his job with a food distributor near the start of the pandemic. He received benefits up until June when he accidentally entered “return to work” while verifying his claim.
He has not been able to reactivate his benefits since that time and has suffered severe deprivation as a result. “I’m sleeping in my car and in the next few weeks I’ll be without a phone,” said Williams. He has been unable to find new employment and has had to rely on charities for food assistance. “It is impossible to get a hold of the unemployment department. ... all I’m hearing is ‘be patient.’ Isn’t 31 weeks patient enough?”
The increasing economic desperation of millions of workers stands in sharp contrast to the enrichment of the financial oligarchy, who have been the recipients of trillions of dollars in federal handouts. This is a symptom of a deeply unjust and dysfunctional capitalist system that prioritizes private profit over human need. The answer is socialism, the control of production by the working class, the producers, on a rational and planned basis in the interest of the common good. We urge workers who agree with this perspective to join the Socialist Equality Party.
European politicians and media downplay coup in the United States
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/01/08/euro-j08.html
Peter Schwarz
9 hours ago
Leading European politicians and newspaper editorialists condemned the fascist coup in the United States. They are responding with a combination of concern and nervousness following the storming of the Capitol building by supporters of US President Donald Trump.
The central focus of their concerns is not the threat to American democracy, but rather the fear that its advanced decomposition, laid so bare on January 6, could strengthen the opposition to similar developments in Europe, where authoritarian and fascistic tendencies are also extremely well developed.
In Germany, right-wing extremist networks with strong support from the highest echelons of the state are spreading throughout the army, police, and intelligence agencies, and the far-right Alternative for Germany sets the political tone in the federal and state parliaments. In France, President Macron, who is distinguished from Trump only by his more elegant manners, cracked down brutally against the Yellow Vest protesters and has passed increasingly stringent censorship and security laws. In Poland and Hungary, authoritarian regimes are bringing the judiciary and media under state control.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier addressed these parallels in their remarks on the events in the United States. It would be a sign of self-satisfaction to point the finger at the US alone, Maas wrote in a guest commentary for Der Spiegel. “Here with us too, in Halle, Hanau, on the steps of the Reichstag building, we have had to experience how agitation and insurrectionary words can be transformed into hate-filled acts.” Steinmeier also compared the storming of the Capitol with the events in Berlin in August, when far-right coronavirus deniers stormed the steps of the Reichstag building.
Almost all of the European comments sought to downplay the extent of the conspiracy in the United States. While they criticised President Trump, who was voted out of office, and the right-wing mob he incited, they remain silent on the role of the state apparatus and the Republican Party.
But without acknowledging their role, it is impossible to understand the extent of the right-wing conspiracy and the danger it poses. In the perspective “The Fascist Coup of January 6,” the WSWS explained the central role played by the Republican majority in the Senate and sections of the state apparatus in preparing the coup, and warned that it would happen again, even though the first attempt had not accomplished its goal.
The Republican senators and congressmen delayed recognising the election results, and thus supported Trump’s lie that the election was stolen. Even after the storming of the Capitol building, 138 Republicans voted against the confirmation of the election result in Pennsylvania to try and block Biden’s victory. Without support from the security apparatus, the right-wing mob would not have managed to force its way into one of the most strongly guarded buildings in the world.
This context is totally ignored by the European comments from politicians and the media. They portray the events as though American democracy is in the best of health, and that merely Trump and his immediate entourage were responsible for the coup plot. Like President-elect Biden, they appeal for unity with the Republicans—i.e., the coup plotters.
This was expressed clearly in a comment by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung entitled “The loss of control at the Capitol is a warning signal, but not the decline of American democracy.” “The scenes from the Capitol are a scandal,” stated the mouthpiece of the Swiss banks. “But they do not primarily reflect the condition of the US, but the condition of its president.”
A similar line was taken by Italy’s la República, which wrote, “American democracy has proven that it still has defensive forces to resist the authoritarian impulses of a president.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron argued along similar lines. Macron, who spoke on the events in Washington late Wednesday evening, said, “What happened today in Washington, D.C. is not America, certainly not. We believe in the strength of our democracies, we believe in the strength of American democracy.”
Merkel told a press conference Thursday that the pictures from the United States made her “angry as well as sad.” She was very disappointed “that President Trump has not recognised his defeat since November, and again yesterday.” The deliberately encouraged doubts about the election result “prepared the atmosphere that made the events during the night possible.”
“But the words of President-elect Joe Biden,” Merkel continued, “make me absolutely sure that this democracy will prove much stronger than the attackers and vandals…in less than two weeks, the United States will, as it must, open a new chapter of its democracy.”
In a pathetic speech, Biden had pleaded with the leading coup plotter Trump to give a televised address to the people, and avoided uttering a single word that could have been interpreted as a call to his supporters to mobilise. He thus made clear that he is far more fearful of a movement from below than he is of any coup plots by Trump and his supporters. In the final analysis, the Republicans and Democrats represent the same interests of a tiny layer of billionaires and millionaires.
Germany’s Social Democrat Foreign Minister also set great store in Biden and reconciliation with the putschists. “Every Republican with a modest degree of responsibility should now at last contradict Trump,” wrote Maas in Der Spiegel. Biden’s “call for mutual respect and reconciliation were the well-chosen words of a president. And the confirmation of the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris by the US Congress was the best, democratic answer to those who created chaos and unrest in Washington yesterday.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose Brexit strategy was based on a close alliance with the United States under Trump, struck a similar tone, but was more concise. “Disgraceful scenes in U.S. Congress. The United States stands for democracy around the world and it is now vital that there should be a peaceful and orderly transfer of power,” he wrote on Twitter.
The Times of London also invoked the stability of American democracy. Judges had rejected his legal challenges to overturn the election results, and officials in his own party had resisted him. “This is not a democracy about to fall,” concluded the Times.
Only a handful of newspapers published more thoughtful commentaries. The Warsaw-based Rzeczpospolita pointed to the real divisions in American society. “We only know such pictures usually from African countries where heads of state and government refuse to accept their democratically elected successors,” the newspaper remarked. “This was a spectacular outburst of frustration that has been growing in the United States for decades. A gigantic polarisation of society is taking place, with ever greater numbers of people no longer able to make ends meet, while a few can barely still count their billions. The pandemic has intensified this drama.”
The Financial Times (FT) warned that the danger has not passed. “Nobody should feign surprise,” it wrote. Trump had long made his plans known. “The most pressing question now is what Mr Trump might try to do in his remaining two weeks in office. Senior military in the Pentagon have discussed at length how they would respond if Mr Trump tried to declare martial law, using the 1807 Insurrection Act. Some around Mr Trump, including Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser, have been urging him to invoke it,” the paper added. “The concern about what Mr Trump can still attempt to do is not academic. In spite of what happened on Wednesday, Mr Trump still commands the personal loyalty of many people in uniform. One reason why the mob so easily breached Congress is because many of the Capitol Hill police officers were clearly in sympathy.”
Trump also continues to enjoy support from leading Republicans, the FT continued, including “Ted Cruz, the Texan senator, Josh Hawley, the Missouri senator, and more than 100 of their colleagues in both houses.”
The working class will draw different lessons from the coup in the United States than the bourgeois commentators, and will begin to take up a struggle against a social system that only has fascism, war, poverty, and death by the coronavirus to offer.
Jacobin’s Bhaskar Sunkara on Trump’s January 6 coup: “Nothing to see here!”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/01/08/jaco-j08.html
Genevieve Leigh
9 hours ago
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump instigated a fascist coup aimed at halting the congressional session at which Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election was being certified. In response, leading members of Jacobin magazine, which is associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, responded with a campaign to downplay the significance of what was happening.
The lead was given by Jacobin founder and editor Bhaskar Sunkara who tweeted near 6 p.m. on Wednesday: “What’s the advantage of saying ‘this is a coup’? I just don’t understand the advantage in finding the most extreme labels for bad things.”
What was happening prior to Sunkara’s warning against placing “extreme labels” on the day’s events? Between 1 and 2 p.m., thousands of Trump’s supporters swarmed the Capitol building, following a speech by Trump insisting that “you’ll never take back our country with weakness.” With the complicity of the police, they entered the building around 2 p.m., taking over office buildings and the Senate chamber. Photos showed insurrectionists dressed in camo armed with guns and zip ties, which would have been used to secure hostages.
Jacobin responded with a coordinated campaign to insist that nothing particularly remarkable was happening. Leading staff writer Branko Marcetic tweeted at 4:58 p.m.: “The events in DC are certainly alarming, but it’s also worth bearing in mind this is not the first time a capitol building has been stormed (or whatever term you want to use) by armed protesters, and it didn’t mean the end of American democracy then either.”
Marcetic’s tweet assuring everyone that American democracy was safe and sound came just 40 minutes after President Trump released a video praising the fascist protesters as “very special people.” Only about 15 minutes after Marcetic’s tweet, videos released on social media showed far-right rioters charging the media.
Less than a half-hour later, at 5:52 p.m., Sunkara tweeted his indifference to the events. He followed up his initial tweet cited above with another outlining his assessment of the events: “I’ve seen the stability of US republican institutions in the face of a right-wing mob and a party whose leader is committed to their delegitimation so far.”
Sunkara’s tweet was followed by another from Julia Damphouse, Jacobin magazine’s reading groups coordinator and European editor. She wrote at 6:42 p.m., “Calling this a coup is like calling the CHAZ in Seattle a coup because Kshama Sawant let people into city hall. Get a grip.”
That is, in response to the fascist insurrection in Washington DC, an event that will go down in history as a significant political turning point, Jacobin’s European editor tells concerned workers and youth to “get a grip,” its founder and chief editor insists on the “stability of US republican institutions,” and one of its leading staffers declares that nothing extraordinary is happening.
As the Jacobin writers were opposing the notion that a coup was underway, the Democratic Party itself was silent. For hours after the insurrection began, there were no statements from major Democratic Party officials denouncing the conspiracy or calling for popular resistance to the coup. When Biden finally appeared before the public, it was only to issue an appeal to Trump, the leader of the conspiracy, to “step up” and call it off.
Throughout Trump’s coup plotting—prior to and after the election—the Democrats have worked to cover up the far-reaching assault on democratic rights. As a party of Wall Street and the military, its principal fear has been that an exposure of the conspiracy would spark mass opposition from below that could not be controlled.
Jacobin and the Democratic Socialists of America, functioning as a faction of the Democratic Party, played their assigned role.
On Thursday morning, the day after Sunkara, Damphouse and Marcetic’s tweets, Jacobin published an article by David Sirota, a longtime Democratic Party operative and former speechwriter for Bernie Sanders, titled, “The Insurrection was Predictable.” The article is an exercise in political cover-up.
Sirota begins by claiming that Jacobin had previously warned about “the growing threat of a coup attempt, wondering why it wasn’t being taken more seriously by Democrats and the media. We were scoffed at and eye-rolled, as if such things could never happen in America. Nobody is scoffing or eye-rolling anymore, after Wednesday’s events at the US Capitol.”
Sirota fails to mention that the primary “eye-rolling” is coming from none other than the editor and founder of the very magazine for which he is writing!
As for the claim that Jacobin has been at the forefront of warning about the growing threat of a coup attempt, nothing could be further from the truth. Of the three links provided by Sirota as proof of the so-called “warnings” from the magazine, only one is actually a Jacobin article.
On the contrary, over the course of the past year, Jacobin has published a series of articles downplaying the threat to democratic rights. On April 17, Daniel Finn wrote that calling Trump a “protofascist” was “melodramatic hyperbole.”
Later in the year, when fascist plots to kidnap and kill governors Gretchen Whitmer and Ralph Northam emerged, Jacobin waited two weeks to respond. When it finally did address the situation, the article, by Branko Marcetic, argued that the Michigan plot was “exaggerated,” the media was engaged in “sensationalism,” and far-right violence “remains a statistically minor threat to life.”
As recently as December 2, Jacobin declared, in another article by Daniel Finn, that Trump’s “would-be coup” had ended “with a feeble surrender,” and that Trump’s “bark proved to be much worse than his bite.”
Jacobin’s denial of the scale of the crisis, its insistence on the “stability of US republican institutions” is bound up with its organic hostility to revolution. Jacobin’s politics—and this is the politics of the Democratic Socialists of America as a whole—is based on the claim that social reform will be achieved within the framework of the Democratic Party and the capitalist system.
Sirota’s column, which acknowledges the reality of a coup, on its face conflicts with the initial response of Sunkara. The conclusion, however, is the same. Sirota proclaims that the way to undermine the strength of Trump is to pressure the Democrats to implement social reforms, which they will not do.
Those who make up the editorial board of Jacobin, speaking for privileged sections of the upper-middle class, are characterized by their complacency, opportunism and unseriousness. Everything they write is aimed at containing the growing social opposition from below.
As Brazil reaches 200,000 COVID-19 deaths, Bolsonaro sabotages vaccination campaign
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/01/08/braz-j08.html
Tomas Castanheira
9 hours ago
With the COVID-19 pandemic reaching new catastrophic proportions in Brazil, the country’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro is actively working to sabotage a vaccination program and take the murderous “herd immunity policy,” which he has openly advocated since the arrival of the pandemic in Brazil, to its ultimate consequences.
On Thursday, after more than 1,000 deaths were recorded for the third day in a row, Brazil reached the terrible milestone of 200,000 COVID-19 deaths. High infection rates, which are yet to reflect the explosive impact of holiday events, are reflected in the overcrowding of hospitals throughout the country.
A number of hospitals in São Paulo, the country's largest metropolis, have already reached 100 percent capacity. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second largest city, there is a queue of 164 people waiting for an ICU bed. In Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais’ capital, the ICU bed occupation rate is close to 90 percent. Belém do Pará reached 96 percent of the ICU capacity, after the government closed COVID-19 treatment centers.
The most critical situation in the country is, once again, in Manaus. With scenes of patients being cared for amid the dead in overcrowded hospitals and backhoes digging mass graves for victims of COVID-19 still fresh in the city’s memory, the Amazonian capital declared a second collapse of its health care system in just nine months.
Almost daily, Manaus has been recording record hospital admissions. On Wednesday, 221 people were hospitalized with COVID-19, a number significantly higher than the peak of 168 recorded in April. On the same day, the occupation of the ICU beds reached 94 percent, approaching the 96 percent reached in April. Private network ICU beds have already reached full capacity.
The calamitous situation inside the hospitals was summarized in an article published by Folha de São Paulo: “a scenario of overcrowding, lack of beds, stretchers in the corridors and absence of social distancing.” About a week ago, refrigerated chambers were once again installed in the hospitals facing the imminent collapse of their morgues.
On Wednesday, workers at the 28 de Agosto Hospital protested against the conditions faced by health care professionals. “We are not asking any favors, we are asking for help because health care workers are dying,” said a radiology technician in the protest, according to G1. In this same hospital, workers held a spontaneous strike in April.
The accelerating increase in deaths is causing a new collapse of the funeral system. There was an 84 percent growth in the number of burials in Manaus in the first days of January, compared to the same period in December. On Wednesday, 110 people were buried. The number of people who died in their own homes, regardless of the causes, doubled in December, and increased again sharply in the first days of January.
The city declared a state of emergency on Tuesday. The newly elected mayor of Manaus, David Almeida of the Avante (Forward) party, ordered the emergency digging of 6,000 new graves in the city’s cemeteries. He plans to order the digging of 22,000 graves in total.
The reasons for this catastrophe are no mystery. But the claim of the secretary of Health of Amazonas, that “there was a relaxation of the population, despite all our propaganda so that this would not happen,” is nothing but a lie. The epidemiologist of Fiocruz Amazonas, Jesem Orellana, declared that, despite having been alerted months ago of the emergence of a second wave of COVID-19 in Manaus, “the extreme gravity of the situation of the epidemic continues to be minimized by health authorities.”
This second wave of infections was the direct product of the criminal actions of Governor Wilson Lima of the Christian Social Party (PSC). In August, the state schools of Manaus were the first to be reopened nationwide, immediately causing outbreaks of COVID-19 in dozens of schools. The WSWS wrote on that occasion:
“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.”
Educators responded with strikes and protests. The Lima government, assisted by the unions, was able to suppress the strike movement, taking repressive measures such as cutting wages and threatening to replace striking teachers.
In September, an increase in COVID-19 cases and ICU admissions was announced by the government of Amazonas. Instead of closing down the schools, Lima blamed the outbreak on “people in some places making crowds, especially at private parties,” and only restricted the operation of bars. To keep the schools functioning, Lima promoted the idea that Manaus had achieved “herd immunity,” based on studies not endorsed by the academic community. Lima’s policy was not confronted in any of the mainstream newspapers, which instead enthusiastically reported these same studies.
Wilson Lima’s criminal policy is no exception. It was adopted by the ruling class as a whole throughout Brazil. Its principles were dictated and are still being taken to their ultimate conclusion by President Jair Bolsonaro.
Only by the middle of this week did Bolsonaro sign a bill freeing up the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines. At this occasion, the Minister of Health, Gen. Eduardo Pazuello, said that vaccinations will begin simultaneously in January throughout the country.
However, the government cancelled the purchase of 331.2 million syringes needed for the application of the vaccines, only acquiring 7.9 million units. Bolsonaro stated that in the face of an increase in prices, his government “suspended the purchase until prices return to normal.” And, although Pazuello and Bolsonaro say there are enough syringes to start the vaccination process, the National Association of Mayors declared that these supplies must “attend to several procedures, among them the National Immunization Plan.”
At the same time that he is deliberately disorganizing the vaccination program, Bolsonaro has made virulent attacks against the vaccine itself. He has insisted that the vaccines can cause unknown side effects and that he himself will not take one. On Thursday morning, speaking to his supporters in front of the governmental palace, he said: “As far as I know, less than half [of the population] will take the vaccine. And this polling that I do, I do on the beach, I do on the street, I do everywhere.”
Bolsonaro insistently proclaims that “it’s no use hiding from the virus, this virus will stay in us all our lives.” There is a class logic behind this sociopathic policy. He is signaling to the capitalist class, through his normalization of deaths, that he’s willing to implement the most violent and dictatorial measures against the working class in order to maintain a high degree of exploitation and social inequality, which are the necessary consequences of maintaining the capitalist order.
Israel strikes Syria as Trump coup attempt stokes war threat in Middle East
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/01/08/isra-j08.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
Bill Van Auken
9 hours ago
Israeli warplanes attacked targets near Damascus Wednesday, reportedly striking bases linked to Shi’ite militias and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Conflicting reports indicated casualties ranging between three and 15 dead, as well as substantial material damage.
This was the third time in just 10 days that Israel has carried out such a provocative attack against Syria. These strikes are part of a broader escalation of military tensions with Iran that have been at a high pitch since Mossad’s assassination of top Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh last November.
The threat that these tensions will ignite a catastrophic new war in the Middle East that could involve not only Iran, but also nuclear-armed Russia and China, which both have geo-strategic interests in the Persian Gulf, has never been greater.
This threat has been intensified by the parallel political crises of the supposedly lame duck administration of President Donald Trump in the US and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces his fourth election in the last two years in Israel. Both may seek a war as an instrument for clinging to power.
After his attempted coup in Washington, with the storming of the US Capitol by a fascist mob, there is no reason to doubt that Trump will use his last dozen days in office to provoke a catastrophic new conflict in the Middle East.
In the aftermath of the November 3 election, Trump convened a meeting of his security cabinet to discuss a proposal to launch US airstrikes against Iran’s main nuclear facility at Natanz, an attack that could claim the lives of thousands and subject many more to radiation poisoning.
While Trump was dissuaded by his top aides from carrying out this war crime, Washington has carried out a continuous escalation of military threats against Iran, claiming that it was responding to threats that Tehran would use the first anniversary of the January 3, 2020 drone missile strike assassination of senior Iranian leader Qassem Suleimani to stage a retaliation against US forces and facilities in Iraq.
US B-52 heavy bombers were sent over the Persian Gulf three times over the course of a month in what amounted to dry runs for bombing Iran, while a US Navy armada, consisting of the USS Nimitz carrier strike force as well as the nuclear-powered and cruise-missile-armed submarine USS Georgia, together with their accompanying warships, has been deployed in the Persian Gulf, prepared to unleash massive firepower against Iran.
Trump’s extraordinary order last Sunday to reverse a decision to return the Nimitz carrier strike group to its home base and send it back into the Persian Gulf for an indefinitely extended deployment exposed the extreme tensions within the administration and the military command as Trump attempts to cling to power while staging a buildup to war in the Middle East.
Multiple media reports have cited senior US uniformed commanders voicing concerns that Trump will try to draw the military into his coup plotting by invoking the Insurrection Act and imposing martial law, potentially using a war in the Persian Gulf and mass US casualties as a pretext.
In Israel, meanwhile, the Netanyahu government has not only ordered the continuous attacks on Syria, but also dispatched an Israeli Dolphin class submarine, armed with cruise missiles, potentially tipped with nuclear warheads, through the Suez Canal en route to the Persian Gulf.
The Netanyahu government seized upon Iran’s announcement that it had resumed enriching uranium to 20 percent purity at its underground Fordo facility to claim that this was evidence that Tehran was pursuing a path to nuclear weapons and threaten a military response.
Tehran has insisted that it has no such ambitions and that its nuclear program is entirely civilian in nature. The increased enrichment is part of a series of measures taken by Tehran in response to the Trump administration’s unilateral abrogation of the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and the major powers, as well as the failure of Europe’s governments to challenge the crippling US “maximum pressure” sanctions regime. It is also seen as a bid by Tehran to improve its bargaining position with an incoming Biden administration in the US.
Meanwhile, Benny Gantz, Israel’s defense minister and Netanyahu’s erstwhile electoral ally turned rival, has protested Netanyahu’s bid to assume exclusive control over Israeli policy toward Iran, according to Israel’s Walla news website.
The prime minister’s monopolization of control over Israel’s Iran policy was announced in a letter to Gantz from National Security Council head Meir Ben-Shabbat, with copies sent to the heads of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Mossad, as well as Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and Israel’s ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer.
According to Walla, Gantz responded angrily to the letter, declaring, “The issue of security and specifically on Iran is not the personal business of one man.”
Like Trump, Netanyahu has ample political motives for provoking a war with Iran. If he is ousted from his position, he will be far more vulnerable to prosecution on a series of corruption charges. A major military conflict could provide him the means to run for re-election as a “wartime” prime minister. His government has the additional motive of using war to create “facts on the ground” that would prevent an incoming Biden administration from rejoining the Iran nuclear treaty.
While the danger of war is intensified by the political calculations of Trump and Netanyahu, its source lies in the insoluble crisis of US imperialism and its attempt to reverse its declining global hegemony by military means. Domination over the Persian Gulf is a geo-strategic imperative in Washington’s conflict with its principal global rival, China, which depends upon the region for much of its energy resources.
This militaristic policy will continue and intensify if and when Joe Biden is inaugurated as president on January 20. The incoming administration, which will include all of the architects of the US regime change wars in Libya and Syria, as well as the 2014 coup in the Ukraine, will be committed to an escalation of US war threats abroad, combined with an intensification of the assault on the rights and conditions of the working class at home.
While Trump was dissuaded by his top aides from carrying out this war crime, Washington has carried out a continuous escalation of military threats against Iran, claiming that it was responding to threats that Tehran would use the first anniversary of the January 3, 2020 drone missile strike assassination of senior Iranian leader Qassem Suleimani to stage a retaliation against US forces and facilities in Iraq.
US B-52 heavy bombers were sent over the Persian Gulf three times over the course of a month in what amounted to dry runs for bombing Iran, while a US Navy armada, consisting of the USS Nimitz carrier strike force as well as the nuclear-powered and cruise-missile-armed submarine USS Georgia, together with their accompanying warships, has been deployed in the Persian Gulf, prepared to unleash massive firepower against Iran.
Trump’s extraordinary order last Sunday to reverse a decision to return the Nimitz carrier strike group to its home base and send it back into the Persian Gulf for an indefinitely extended deployment exposed the extreme tensions within the administration and the military command as Trump attempts to cling to power while staging a buildup to war in the Middle East.
Multiple media reports have cited senior US uniformed commanders voicing concerns that Trump will try to draw the military into his coup plotting by invoking the Insurrection Act and imposing martial law, potentially using a war in the Persian Gulf and mass US casualties as a pretext.
In Israel, meanwhile, the Netanyahu government has not only ordered the continuous attacks on Syria, but also dispatched an Israeli Dolphin class submarine, armed with cruise missiles, potentially tipped with nuclear warheads, through the Suez Canal en route to the Persian Gulf.
The Netanyahu government seized upon Iran’s announcement that it had resumed enriching uranium to 20 percent purity at its underground Fordo facility to claim that this was evidence that Tehran was pursuing a path to nuclear weapons and threaten a military response.
Tehran has insisted that it has no such ambitions and that its nuclear program is entirely civilian in nature. The increased enrichment is part of a series of measures taken by Tehran in response to the Trump administration’s unilateral abrogation of the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and the major powers, as well as the failure of Europe’s governments to challenge the crippling US “maximum pressure” sanctions regime. It is also seen as a bid by Tehran to improve its bargaining position with an incoming Biden administration in the US.
Meanwhile, Benny Gantz, Israel’s defense minister and Netanyahu’s erstwhile electoral ally turned rival, has protested Netanyahu’s bid to assume exclusive control over Israeli policy toward Iran, according to Israel’s Walla news website.
The prime minister’s monopolization of control over Israel’s Iran policy was announced in a letter to Gantz from National Security Council head Meir Ben-Shabbat, with copies sent to the heads of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Mossad, as well as Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and Israel’s ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer.
According to Walla, Gantz responded angrily to the letter, declaring, “The issue of security and specifically on Iran is not the personal business of one man.”
Like Trump, Netanyahu has ample political motives for provoking a war with Iran. If he is ousted from his position, he will be far more vulnerable to prosecution on a series of corruption charges. A major military conflict could provide him the means to run for re-election as a “wartime” prime minister. His government has the additional motive of using war to create “facts on the ground” that would prevent an incoming Biden administration from rejoining the Iran nuclear treaty.
While the danger of war is intensified by the political calculations of Trump and Netanyahu, its source lies in the insoluble crisis of US imperialism and its attempt to reverse its declining global hegemony by military means. Domination over the Persian Gulf is a geo-strategic imperative in Washington’s conflict with its principal global rival, China, which depends upon the region for much of its energy resources.
This militaristic policy will continue and intensify if and when Joe Biden is inaugurated as president on January 20. The incoming administration, which will include all of the architects of the US regime change wars in Libya and Syria, as well as the 2014 coup in the Ukraine, will be committed to an escalation of US war threats abroad, combined with an intensification of the assault on the rights and conditions of the working class at home.
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