New York City Schools chancellor resigns as middle schools resume in-person learning

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/01/nyms-m01.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




Robert Milkowski
15 hours ago







New York City educators must organize to close all schools and prevent the deepening spread of the pandemic. The New York City Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee is spearheading this fight, and we urge educators in the city and tri-state area to attend our next meeting at 7pm this Wednesday, March 3.

Last Thursday, New York City—the largest school district in the US with over 1.1 million students—reopened 471 middle schools for approximately 62,000 students in grades 6-8. Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio had already sent back middle school teachers on Monday, and is negotiating with the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) to try to reopen high schools by the end of the year.

The volatility of the political situation, in which the Democratic Party has undertaken another highly unpopular step in opening more schools, was underscored by Thursday’s resignation of the Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza.


The following day, it was announced that Carranza will be replaced by Meisha Porter in mid-March. Porter, who has been the executive superintendent of the Bronx since 2018, stated during her first news conference Friday that the city is “ready to go” on reopening high schools. She pledged to meet this goal before the end of the school year, in line with the Biden administration’s campaign to reopen the majority of schools by the end of April.

On February 11, Carranza first announced that middle schools would reopen, the second phase of the city’s plan to resume in-person learning at all schools in order to send parents back to work producing profits for Wall Street. In a message to parents, Carranza falsely stated, “We have developed strong practices to help keep school communities healthy and safe.” He bragged about the totally inadequate testing program in which only 20 percent of students and staff are tested in each school on a weekly basis.

The level of trust parents had in Carranza and de Blasio has been reflected in the low number of returning students, with only 30 percent of parents opting for in-person learning since September.

The media have largely attributed the resignation to sharp differences Carranza had with Mayor de Blasio’s handling of the school system’s testing for gifted and talented programs and elite high schools that require an entrance exam for admission. The inequality in education after decades of budget cuts and under-funding of public schools has been framed entirely in racial terms by the Democrats, including both de Blasio and Carranza. Their solution of rationing quality education in the city has caused sharp divisions among these petty-bourgeois layers.

It is also likely that Carranza, knowing he would be replaced by a new administration in less than a year, sought to absolve himself of any responsibility for the wave of infections and deaths likely to hit city schools in the coming weeks as middle and high schools reopen. This mass reopening of schools coincides with the anticipated growth of more infectious and lethal variants of SARS-CoV-2, including a new mutation specific to New York City, B.1.526.

The campaign to reopen middle schools has had the fulsome support of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). With the collaboration of the UFT and its President Michael Mulgrew, de Blasio first reopened all public schools on September 29.

By early November, the seven-day citywide test positivity rate exceeded the 3 percent threshold that the UFT and de Blasio had negotiated for closing schools, prompting de Blasio to close schools. Only days later, de Blasio unilaterally reopened schools for K-5 students on December 7 with the support of the UFT. Both parties abandoned the 3 percent threshold and the positivity rates stood at 7 percent as middle schools opened Thursday morning.

Schools only closed last March due to the widespread opposition of educators, who threatened to carry out wildcat sick-out strikes. Despite the seriousness of the rapidly spreading pandemic, de Blasio argued in favor of allowing the schools to remain open. The slow response by the Democrats resulted in the city becoming the first epicenter of the pandemic in the US. The overall number of COVID-19 cases in New York City now stands at 712,389 with 29,088 deaths due to the virus.

Once again, de Blasio is now exploiting the likely temporary drop in the daily rate of COVID-19 cases to promote the reopening of middle schools. Mulgrew is reprising his role of cheerleader, recently stating, “These strict standards, and the requirement that buildings close temporarily when virus cases are detected, have made our schools the safest places to be in our communities during the pandemic.” He added, “They will continue to be the strongest protections for the health and safety of students and staff.”

In other words, the UFT is fine with sending another large group of students and educators back into middle school buildings that no amount of preparation will make safe.

Reacting to Carranza’s departure, Mulgrew praised him for his role last fall, “Richard Carranza was a real partner in our efforts to open school safely.” Mulgrew will surely find another “real partner” in Meisha Porter, who vowed on Twitter to “hit the ground running and lead our schools to a full recovery,” meaning full reopening as soon as possible.

Reflecting the thoroughly collaborative role that the pseudo-left plays within the teachers unions, after the middle schools had opened on Thursday a member of the Movement of Rank-and-File Educators (MORE)—the UFT caucus associated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—posted an article on their website titled, “We Should Wait To Open Schools.”

The article provides a list of demands for a “safe” reopening and nowhere mentions the urgent need for educators to organize collectively to shut down schools as part of a broader program to stop community spread of the coronavirus. Similarly, Biden’s plan to reopen schools and the lies disseminated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are not raised.

There is a political logic in this. MORE is addressing the UFT and suggesting that with a series of safe-sounding but totally inadequate measures the UFT can negotiate a deal that MORE will endorse. In this appeal, MORE is following in the footsteps of its allies in the leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which recently negotiated a “safe” reopening of schools with Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Educators must resist the deadly drive to reopen schools in New York City, across the US and internationally by building independent rank-and-file safety committees that will organize the most far-reaching and necessary action to immediately close all schools and nonessential workplaces while providing full economic security for all workers affected. We urge educators in New York City and the tri-state area who seek to implement this program to attend the New York City Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee meeting at 7 p.m. this Wednesday, March 3.

Chicago and Cook County allocate the bulk of CARES Act funding to police and jail spending

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/01/illi-m01.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




Alexander Fangmann
15 hours ago







It has recently come to light that both the City of Chicago and the government of Cook County, of which Chicago is the county seat, have chosen to spend the bulk of their discretionary federal COVID-19 relief funding on police and jails. The decision to allocate the bulk of funding toward the repressive apparatus of the state, pushed from the highest levels of the Democratic Party, is a clear sign of the priorities of the ruling class, which has devoted a comparatively miniscule amount towards any kind of relief for workers.

Although city budget director Susie Park had denied last June that relief money was going toward the police, recent attempts by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to shuffle budget lines, requiring approval by the city council, led to the discovery that she planned to allocate $281.5 million on police payroll costs. This figure is 70 percent of the $403 million in discretionary funding the city received from the federal government and amounts to around one-third of the city’s annual police payroll costs of about $862 million.

Lightfoot claimed criticism of the spending was “just dumb,” and asserted, “We saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by saying yes to the federal government.” She and other Chicago officials claim the city was just taking advantage of a government program that would allow it to be reimbursed for expenses already incurred, and that by not taking the money for police, they would be leaving money on the table, as it were.
Insofar as this is true, it is a complete indictment of the city’s spending priorities prior and through the first year of the pandemic. According to the Chicago Civic Federation, the city budgeted $2.45 billion on the police department and police officer pensions during the previous fiscal year, over 21 percent of total spending, a figure which does not include health care and other benefit costs, as those costs are not broken out by department. It also does not include $82.6 million set aside for settling lawsuits and paying judgments resulting from police violence, for which the city has spent $757 million from 2004 to 2018.

Following the protests in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd last year, Lightfoot rejected calls to “defund” the police, claiming in an October budget address, “In this moment in Chicago, we cannot responsibly enact any policies that make communities less safe.”

Continuing, Lightfoot made clear her priorities, “While we will slow the rate of growth, with a resulting $80 million in corporate fund savings, on my watch we will never make cuts or policy changes that inhibit the core mission of the police department, which is to serve and protect.”

During the same week in which Lightfoot fought to push through the city council vote approving the relief spending, a group of local investors and CEOs published an open letter in the Chicago Sun-Times offering a full-throated defense of Lightfoot’s policies, the most notable of which have been the push to reopen schools and the violent crackdown on protesters over the summer saying, “We commend you and your team for your steadfast leadership in navigating the city through this crisis.”

Circulated by the co-CEOs of private investment firm the Vistria Group, who have close ties to former president Barack Obama, the letter was signed by 63 corporate and educational leaders. Among the individuals offering their support were Andrew Clarke of Mars Wrigley, Chris Kempczinski of McDonald’s, Dave Casper of BMO Harris Bank, Roger Hochschild of Discover Financial Services, as well as Tom Ricketts of the Chicago Cubs, Mellody Hobson of Ariel Investments and Valerie Jarrett of the Barack Obama Foundation, among others.

This letter makes it clear that the decision to allocate the bulk of federal relief money to policing is in no way an idiosyncratic decision of Lightfoot, but is rather a position carefully worked out with the representatives of finance capital and the leadership of the Democratic Party.

Just this week it was also revealed that Cook County spent $181.7 million, or 42 percent of its $428.5 million in coronavirus relief funding on the sheriff’s office, of which $176 million went to payroll costs. The sheriff’s office is responsible for the enormous and notorious Cook County Jail, along with electronic monitoring and policing in certain parts of the county which do not have their own police departments. Currently holding around 3,600 people in atrocious conditions, the Cook County Jail is one of the largest pre-trial detention facilities in the world.

Notably, in July the Cook County Board passed a non-binding Justice for Black Lives resolution calling for the county to “redirect funds from policing and incarceration to public services not administered by law enforcement that promote community health and safety equitably.” This resolution received the support of 15 of the 17 commissioners, and at the time Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle spoke in favor saying, “I’m for reducing and redirecting our investment in law enforcement.”

Preckwinkle, who is also the chair of the Cook County Democratic Party, ran against Lightfoot in the mayoral race. Despite an undeserved reputation for being a progressive, Preckwinkle lost, largely as a result of her ties to Chicago alderman Ed Burke, who had been charged with extortion as a result of his corrupt practices.

Proving the essential unity of the Cook County Democratic Party on support for police and jail spending, Preckwinkle’s deputies offered reasoning similar to Lightfoot’s in defense of the decision to direct pandemic relief funds to the police. Cook County Budget Director Annette Guzman claimed the county did not want to be “fighting over things that are misrepresented,” and downplayed it, saying, “This is one part of a whole panoply of things the county did in response to COVID-19 that really went to making sure that our residents were taken care of and secure during a once-in-a-lifetime event. You can’t look at things in isolation. You’ve got to look at them in total.”

Criticisms of the spending from some of the pseudo-left aligned members of the Chicago City Council serve merely to illustrate how groups like the Democratic Socialists of America serve to sow illusions in the Democratic Party and the reformability of the capitalist system. A real fight to allocate resources for worker needs must start with the fight for socialism.

Truth without consequences

Judd Legum
Mar 1



On Friday, the Biden administration released a report from the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) regarding the murder of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The DNI report concluded that the operation that killed Khashoggi, who wrote columns critical of the Saudi regime, was ordered by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS).


We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince [Mohammad] bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

We base this assessment on the Crown Prince’s control of decisionmaking in the Kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of [Mohammad] bin Salman’s protective detail in the operation, and the Crown Prince’s support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi.

This was an assessment made years ago, but kept secret by the Trump administration. In a January 2020 interview with journalist Bob Woodward, Trump bragged that he was able to protect MBS from any fallout. "I saved his ass… I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop," Trump said.

MBS has denied any involvement, but the evidence against him is overwhelming. Among other things, the Saudis involved with capturing and ultimately killing Khashoggi included numerous members of MBS' personal security detail, according to the DNI report.


The team...included seven members of Muhammad bin Salman’s elite personal protective detail, known as the Rapid Intervention Force (RIF). The RIF - a subset of the Saudi Royal Guard - exists to defend the Crown Prince, answers only to him, and had directly participated in earlier dissident suppression operations in the Kingdom and abroad at the Crown Prince’s direction. We judge that members of the RIF would not have participated in the operation against Khashoggi without Muhammad bin Salman’s approval.

Shortly after the release of the intelligence report, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken issued a press release called "Accountability for the Murder of Jamal Khashoggi." The release announced a new policy called the "Khashoggi Ban," which allows the State Department to deny visas to individuals acting on behalf of a foreign government that "have been directly engaged in serious, extraterritorial counter-dissident activities, including those that suppress, harass, surveil, threaten, or harm journalists." Blinken announced that the United States will immediately "impose visa restrictions on 76 Saudi individuals believed to have been engaged in threatening dissidents overseas, including but not limited to the Khashoggi killing."

But the visa restriction would not be imposed on the individual who ordered the operation against Khashoggi — MBS. Nor would MBS, who effectively rules the country since the Saudi King is in poor health, be subject to any other sanction.

At a press conference, Blinken was asked why MBS was let off the hook:


Q: Hello, Mr. Secretary… You talked about future – preventing future actions, and you have unveiled a new ban, Khashoggi Ban. But you have fallen short of punishing the very person that DNI has said is responsible for this. So how are you – because of this lack of accountability, how is that not counter to your actions to ensure accountability elsewhere in the future? Isn’t this counterproductive?

BLINKEN: ...As to accountability, again, I think this report speaks for itself. And the fact that we have provided the transparency necessary to shine a bright light on what happened through the assessment, not just of the media, as important as you are, but the United States Government is, in and of itself, I think significant action.

A Washington Post editorial sharply criticized the Biden administration's approach, saying they were giving "a pass" to MBS.

On Saturday, Biden himself was asked if MBS would receive any sanction. "There will be an announcement on Monday as to what we are going to be doing with Saudi Arabia generally," Biden responded. This created some speculation that the administration would take additional steps. But a White House official told Reuters that nothing new would be announced. "The administration took a wide range of new actions on Friday. The president is referring to the fact that on Monday, the State Department will provide more details and elaborate on those announcements, not new announcements," the official said.

Why is the Biden administration so reticent to punish MBS? There are a variety of potential explanations but the answer could come down to money.
The economic influence of MBS

MBS presides over a repressive regime and, according to the DNI, ordered an operation that resulted in the gruesome murder of a US-based journalist. But he still has lots of high-powered friends in the United States and elsewhere. They are willing to overlook MBS' human rights record and focus on the tens of billions in international investments that MBS makes through the Saudi sovereign wealth fund and other vehicles.

In December 2019, for example, MBS spearheaded the IPO of Aramco, Saudi's state-owned oil company. The offering raised $29 billion for less than 2% of the company, valuing it at $1.7 trillion — "the world’s biggest-ever IPO." (MBS had been hoping for a $2 trillion valuation.) The largest Wall Street banks "JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Citigroup—all participated in the underwriting as joint global coordinators," Vanity Fair reported.

The massive IPO was part of MBS' broader initiative to diversify Saudi Arabia's economy beyond oil, a project he calls Saudi Vision 2030. The IPO injected more cash into Saudi's sovereign wealth fund, Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is a key investor in enterprises around the world. Since 2017, the PIF has hosted an annual conference called the Future Investment Initiative — better known as "Davos in the Desert."

In 2018, in the immediate wake of Khashoggi's murder, many corporate executives pulled out of the conference. But by 2019, many corporate executives quietly returned. The 2020 event was postponed until January 2021 due to COVID-19. Top executives from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Black Rock, Nasdaq, Carlyle, and other US financial giants were in attendance. The companies told the New York Times they participated in the event because of "the important business relationships they have with cash-rich Saudi Arabia."

The PIF is a significant player in US business. According to a recent filing with the SEC, the fund "increased its holding of US stocks to nearly $12.8 billion in the fourth quarter [of 2020] from $7 billion in the third quarter." The PIF, for example, currently owns $3.7 billion worth of Uber stock. The Saudi fund invested billions in Uber in 2016, years before the company went public.

Overall, the PIF controls $400 billion in assets and MBS plans to increase its holdings to over $1 trillion by 2025 as part of Saudi Vision 2030.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and others have urged the Biden administration, in response to Khashoggi's murder, to implement "financial" penalties against MBS and the Saudi government. But that could jeopardize the ability of powerful US companies to access PIF funds, which MBS effectively controls.
Blinken's perspective

Blinken has been the most outspoken opponent of taking more aggressive measures against MBS. "[T]he actions that we’ve taken is really not to rupture the relationship, but to recalibrate it to be more in line with our interests and our values. And I think that we have to understand as well that this is bigger than any one person," Blinken said on Friday.

Prior to his confirmation as Secretary of State on January 26, Blinken was the co-founder and Managing Partner in WestExec Advisors. In this role, Blinken advised prominent corporations on how to navigate the international world. He earned about $1.2 million in 2020 performing this work.

Among Blinken's clients at WestExec Advisors were numerous corporations with deep ties to Saudi Arabia and PIF. For example, in a financial disclosure released on New Year's Eve, Blinken revealed that Uber — which counts the PIF as a major, long-term investor — was a client. Blinken also represented SoftBank. The PIF is the largest investor in SoftBank's Vision Fund 1, a $98 billion technology-focused venture capital fund, contributing nearly half of the capital. SoftBank is currently seeking the PIF's investment in a follow-up vehicle, Vision Fund 2. Microsoft, another of Blinken's former clients, has deep ties with Saudi Arabia and MBS' Vision 2030. Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, signed an agreement with MBS in 2016, "to speed up the pace of the digital transformation in the Kingdom, as well as expand its systems support [center] at Saudi Arabia's royal court." In a statement, Nadella pledged to "come out with technology to translate the Vision 2030 into a reality, with a focus on human capital and innovation."

Blinken resigned from WestExec Advisors upon his confirmation and will not directly profit from the firm's future success. He sold his ownership stake in the firm and it will be paid out, with interest "over two years."

But more importantly, having immersed himself for years in the world of international corporate consulting, Blinken is acutely sensitive to the economic impact of imposing economic or other sanctions directly on MBS. It is, of course, possible that MBS is not being sanctioned for other reasons. But, at present, the economic interests of powerful corporations are being protected and issues of human rights are being subordinated.

Democrat Reassures Friend This One Of The Good Syrian Airstrikes

https://local.theonion.com/democrat-reassures-friend-this-one-of-the-good-syrian-a-1846366749





CHICAGO—Following a report Friday that Joe Biden’s first military action as president had killed at least 22 people at sites used by Iranian-backed fighters, local registered Democrat Tim Randall was overheard reassuring a friend that this was one of the good Syrian airstrikes. 

“No, no, don’t worry—these are the sorts of bombing raids we’re supposed to be doing,” the Illinois native said of the overnight attack near the Iraq-Syria border, adding that something had happened with U.S. troops overseas and that, for strategic reasons, the commander-in-chief basically had no choice but to respond with deadly force. 

“Obviously, you’re going to have some airstrikes, and trust me, this is the kind you want to see. While this was, technically, a lethal action on the sovereign territory of another nation, it was really more about sending a message. It’s like when Obama did it, okay? Look, I don’t blame you for being concerned, but you seriously shouldn’t sweat it.” 

According to Randall, the strike was undoubtedly part of a broader Middle East policy designed to ensure the United States would not have to continue intervening in the region for years on end.

House Dems Demand Harris Advance $15 Minimum Wage

In a new letter, nearly two dozen House Dems are pressing Vice President Kamala Harris to ignore the Senate parliamentarian and fulfill her minimum wage promise.

Julia Rock and Andrew Perez
Mar 1




Progressive House lawmakers are demanding Vice President Kamala Harris use her power as presiding officer of the Senate to immediately advance the $15 minimum wage that she has long said she supports.

“Eighty-one million people cast their ballots to elect you on a platform that called for a $15 minimum wage. We urge you to keep that promise,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Harris and President Joe Biden, pressing the White House to raise the wage for workers as part of Biden’s American Rescue Plan. “We must act now to prevent tens of millions of hardworking Americans from being underpaid any longer.”

The letter released Monday was signed by 23 Democrats, including Reps. Ro Khanna, Pramila Jayapal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Jamal Bowman, and Cori Bush.

Raising the federal minimum wage from its current level of $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour would increase the wages of 32 million workers, a majority of whom currently live below the poverty line.

“We believe that the bill the President signs must include the House-passed minimum wage legislation,” Khanna told The Daily Poster. “This is the moment to get this done and it is within our control.”

The Senate Presiding Officer Is The Decider, Not The Parliamentarian

Last Thursday, Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, the body’s nonpartisan adviser on all procedural matters, issued an opinion advising Democrats that she believes the minimum wage increase is subject to a point of order, allowing it to be stripped out of a COVID bill under the budget reconciliation process. Democrats are using that process so they can pass the legislation by a simple majority vote.

The parliamentarian’s advice is non-binding. The presiding officer of the Senate is the ultimate decision maker and can ignore the parliamentarian, as The Daily Poster previously reported and as indicated by a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report. If the minimum wage is included in Democrats’ COVID relief bill and Republicans raise a point of order to try to strip it out, the presiding officer can reject the point of order.

As vice president, Harris is the chamber’s presiding officer, though if she decides to avoid being present in the chamber, another Democratic senator can issue rulings on parliamentary questions. The CRS report notes that 60 votes are needed to overrule a presiding officer’s ruling, though Republican senators could try to change that longstanding rule with a simple majority vote.

Democrats also have another option to advance the minimum wage: They could follow Republican precedent and replace the parliamentarian with a different adviser with a different interpretation of the so-called Byrd Rule, a three-decade-old rule requiring measures in budget legislation be related to federal spending. A Congressional Budget Office report said the minimum wage is related to spending, but the parliamentarian ignored that report.

While Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin backed a minimum wage increase in 2014, they have said they oppose including a $15 minimum wage in the COVID bill. It’s unclear whether they would vote to sink the entire relief package if Democrats include the measure and overrule the parliamentarian.

White House Is So Far Trying To Preemptively Surrender

President Biden campaigned on a promise to enact a $15 minimum wage and presented himself as the guy who knows “how to make government work,” but his White House has suggested it wants Democratic senators to accept the parliamentarian’s opinion and allow the minimum wage measure to be pulled out of the COVID relief bill.

“The vice president's not going to weigh in,” Biden National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said Friday on CNBC. “The president and the vice president both respect the parliamentarian's decision and the process.”

House Democrats included the minimum wage measure in the COVID relief legislation they passed on Saturday.

The new letter from the House Democrats heightens the pressure on Harris, who has backed a $15 minimum wage for years.

Exactly one year ago today, Harris reiterated her support for the wage increase.
Kamala Harris @KamalaHarrisIn 2009, the federal minimum wage was set at $7.25/hour. More than 10 years later and it’s still $7.25. We need a $15 minimum wage to be the national floor. Now.


March 1st 20206,232 Retweets36,965 Likes

She is now letting White House aides speak for her on the issue, however. Harris, should she want to run for president, could be seen as the candidate who killed a major party priority while in the White House. Alternately, she could play a high-profile role in advancing the minimum wage increase.

The letter notes that Vice President Hubert Humphrey twice overruled the Senate parliamentarian, as did Vice President Walter Mondale. In 2001, Republicans fired the parliamentarian after he made two rulings that impeded their policy goals.

Days before the presidential election, Harris appeared in a virtual town hall with Sen. Bernie Sanders and committed to raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Biden and Harris both backed a $15 minimum wage during the Democratic primaries.

“The outdated and complex Byrd rule, rooted in restricting progress, must not be an impediment to improving people’s lives.” the House Democrats said in their letter. “You have the authority to deliver a raise for millions of Americans.”

Your Privileges Are Not Universal

Formal democracies retain their constitutions and their laws, their elections and their public hearings – all part of the panoply of modern democracies. They fail, however, to actually listen to the suffering of the people, writes Vijay Prashad.

By Vijay Prashad
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/03/01/your-privileges-are-not-universal/




Stencilled in red on the walls of Santiago, Chile, is a statement of fact: “your privileges are not universal” (tus privilegios no son universales).

This is a factual declaration because the privileges of power and property are not shared across the gaping class divide. Consider the fact that before the pandemic struck last year, over 3 billion people —or half the world’s population — had no access to health care. This data appears in a 2017 World Health Organization (WHO) report that tracks important matters such as access to basic household sanitation (lacked by 2.3 billion people) and medical care for uncontrolled hypertension (suffered by 1 billion people).

An Oxfam report from Jan. 25 called “The Inequality Virus” points out that “the pandemic could cause the biggest increase in inequality since records began, as it precipitates a simultaneous and substantial rise across many countries.”

Before the pandemic, the World Bank calculated that about 2 billion people “remain in poverty, that is, living below the standards their own societies have set for a dignified life.” Because of the pandemic-triggered jobs crisis, it is likely — the United Nations notes — that half a billion more people will sink into poverty by the end of the decade; World Bank numbers concur.

“And with the pandemic,” write the World Bank analysts, “the newly poor are more likely to live in congested urban settings and to work in the sectors most affected by lockdowns and mobility restrictions; many are engaged in informal services and not reached by existing social safety nets.” These are the billions who will slide deeper into debt and despair, with education and healthcare slipping away from them as hunger rates rise.

Nothing of what is written above is an exaggeration. All of it comes from researchers and analysts at mainstream organizations such as the World Health Organization and the World Bank, neither of which is known to inflate the ill-effects of capitalist policy.

If anything, these organizations have a tendency to minimize the perils of privatization and corporate-based policies, urging on further cuts to public systems. During the tenure of Gro Harlem Brundtland at the helm of the WHO (1998-2003), the organization encouraged the creation of Private-Public Partnerships (PPPs) and Product Development Partnerships (PDPs). The WHO’s emphasis on the private sector — alongside pressure from the International Monetary Fund to cut public sector funding — accelerated the hemorrhaging of public health systems in many of the poorer countries.

When the WHO should have led the fight to deepen public health systems and to create regional and national pharmaceutical production systems, the agency produced PPP platforms such as the underfunded Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI). Along with other agencies, GAVI is now spluttering forward to provide Covid-19 vaccines to low-income countries. The people who produced global austerity, a desert of possibilities, only now recognize the perils of the inequality virus.

To be anxious about inequality is insufficient. A range of possible, common-sense reforms are being demanded by people’s organizations across the world, which include:
Free Universal Healthcare This has been achieved in poorer countries like Costa Rica and Thailand as well as in socialist states and should, therefore, be the objective of every country on the planet.
A People’s Vaccine Momentum toward the availability of a people’s vaccine is growing, which should include not only open access to all patents for the Covid-19 vaccine but also the creation of pharmaceutical production facilities in the low-income states and in the public sector.

These two basic measures could be easily financed by the money now exported to service odious debts. But such logical solutions that would provide immediate relief to people are set aside. Despite the strong words about the problems posed by austerity, more austerity will be demanded, and more social disorder will be produced.

Rather than focus attention on the actual problems that face the planet’s people and acknowledge the democratic demands coming from people’s organizations and manifestations, government after government has taken refuge in undemocratic behavior.

For example, the farmers and agricultural workers in India continue their months-long protest against three anti-farmer laws pushed through by the extreme right Indian government. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi knows that its commitment to big capital — personified in the wealthy Adani and Ambani families — prevents it from any serious negotiation with the farmers and agricultural workers. Instead, the government has tried to portray the farmers and agricultural workers as terrorists and as anti-national.

When this did not work, the government went after reporters and media houses that amplified the farmers’ struggle. Many who have reported on, participated in, or shown solidarity with protestors have been arrested — such as in the cases of journalist Mandeep Punia, worker rights activist Nodeep Kaur and activist Disha Ravi, who created and shared a toolkit to support the farmers.

Finally, in an act of lawfare, the government conducted a 113-hour raid against NewsClick, one of the key media houses to cover the protests; accusations of money-laundering tried to sully the name of NewsClick, which has earned the trust of millions of readers and viewers with its frontline reporting that lifted up the sentiments and demands of the agriculturalists.

Meanwhile, India’s Ministry of Education released an order on Jan. 15 that required any online conference or webinar that might discuss India’s “internal matters” and those that receive foreign sponsorship to seek prior government approval.

Similarly, the French government started a process to investigate academic research that promotes “Islamo-leftist” ideas and thereby, according to the Minister of Higher Education, “corrupts society.” In the name of Order, freedom of speech is easily set aside and the fragility of the formal nature of democracy is exposed.

The attack on NewsClick, alongside the investigation of academics in France, reveals the yawning gap between democratic ideals and the practice of statecraft.

Despite the $364 billion prêt garanti par l’État (PGE) program to provide relief for the French population, there is a serious long-term problem of inequality and joblessness.

Rather than focus on this, the French government has whipped around to fight an illusionary adversary: Islamo-leftists. In the same way, faced with mass dislocation and social suffering deepened by the pandemic, the Indian government is prosecuting a war against farmers and media platforms that are sensitive to the issues raised by the farmers. Both these formal democracies retain their constitutions and their laws, their elections and their public hearings – all part of the panoply of modern democracies.

They fail, however, to actually listen to the suffering of the people, let alone the demands made by the people; they remain insensitive to the possibility of a more viable future for our societies.

During the period of the military dictatorship in Pakistan, the communist poet Habib Jalib sang:

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Kahin gas ka dhuan hae kahin golian ki baarish
Shab-e-ehd-e-kum nigahi tujhay kis tarah sarahein

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Teargas smoke is in the air, bullets are raining around.
How can I praise you, the night of the period of myopia?

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Your privileges are not universal, since your privileges earn you — the few — the vast bulk of social wealth. When the people put forward our views, you fire teargas and bullets. You believe that your myopia will allow your night-time to last forever. We praise the hopes and struggles of the people, whose desire to advance history will cut through your repression.

The End of the Narco-Dictatorship in Honduras?

By Gilberto Ríos Munguía on February 25, 2021




https://www.resumen-english.org/2021/02/the-end-of-the-narco-dictatorship-in-honduras/




The “honorable mentions” produced by the investigations conducted by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, which named Honduran President de facto Juan O. Hernandez Alvarado as Co-conspirator 4, or CC4, in the narco-trafficking activity in the country during the past 17 years, continue to emerge and increase in the national and international communications media. The Honduran population’s hope for change has also increased, to the same extent as the increase of the evidence demonstrating the participation in organized crime by this supreme representative of oligarchic interests in Honduras.

With the current lack of any verified information, we can only speculate with the little information to which we have access, and, in passing, use the hindsight of history to try to imagine how far the U.S. actions may go against this figure who has been their main ally in the region, and whom they have firmly and decisively supported in consolidating the election frauds and violations of human rights which have been systematically committed against the social and political opposition in the country.

In his statements to the press today, Juan Hernandez himself swears on a story in which he tries to position himself as the greatest fighter against narco-trafficking – the same narrative that he uses to pretend to display himself as a victim who has fought against powerful criminals who now accuse him or “try to involve him” in illegal activity. His story lacks credibility and the facts, such as his brother Juan Antonio Hernandez having been in prison in the United States for drug trafficking, and the mysterious accident of his deceased sister Hilda Hernandez, lead us to think that his story of innocence is wearing thin and his end is near.

However, faced with these occurrences, one cannot be too optimistic. The end of Juan Hernandez as an individual representative of organized crime, political reactionary ideology, and the right-wing of Honduras will be an incentive to continue the struggle for the structural transformation of Honduras; it may perhaps be a good start to continue to persevere in that direction, but it will, by no means, be the end of the criminal structure of the oligarchy who controls the country and who also receives all the support of the US government.

We have referred to the importance that this year should have, as the 200th anniversary of the first independence efforts in Central America; after freeing ourselves from Spanish colonialism, one of the central problems that we face is that, without being able to exercise national sovereignty and confronted with the power that the forces of giant capital have acquired to control our economy and national politics, the internal forces who oppose the neoliberal model may be insufficient, unless they are able to come together to defeat it and also unless they are able to raise their levels of consciousness and commitment to understand and overcome it.

Returning to history, in this region alone we have the case of Noriega in Panama – the invasion with which Bush senior began to show the true face of the “Washington Consensus” and also the invasion with which the deepening of neoliberalism began. The attack became more extreme with the political and military defeat of the opposition forces in Central America, after the heroic fight of our peoples who opposed this neoliberal model that deepens social inequality, concentrating the wealth generated by the work of the masses of men and women into very few hands. On this occasion the empire may take away Juan O. Hernandez or throw him out of power, just as they did with Otto Perez Molina, replacing one presidential figurehead with another to guarantee that the system will not undergo any modification.

Real change will not come without a course of organized struggle by the people of Honduras; this situation marks an important turning point. The enemies of the people have the worst image of their history – a history that increasingly shows their cruel and cynical nature. But it is also true that this opportunity could be lost if the “damage control” actions coming from the U.S. embassy and their oligarchic instruments in this country can be put into effect faster than the opposition can act.




Source: El Pulso, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau