WORLD ON THE VERGE OF CLIMATE CRISIS ‘ABYSS’

By Al Jazeera.

April 22, 2021

https://popularresistance.org/world-on-the-verge-of-climate-crisis-abyss/



UN Says World Is Running Out Of Time To Tackle The Climate Crisis, With 2020 One Of The Three Hottest Years On Record.

Time is fast running out to tackle the climate crisis, a United Nations report has warned, with the COVID-19 pandemic having failed to put the brakes on “relentless” climate change.

In a “double blow” to millions hit by the extreme climate events, lockdown restrictions linked to the global coronavirus pandemic also delayed crucial assistance in some regions, said the report by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The UN stressed that the year 2021 must be the year of action for protecting people against the “disastrous” effects of climate change.

The call comes ahead of US President Joe Biden’s climate summit on Thursday and Friday.

Forty world leaders have been invited to attend Biden’s virtual talks aimed at galvanising efforts by the major economies to tackle the climate crisis.

“We are on the verge of the abyss,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a press conference as he unveiled the State of the Global Climate 2020 report by the WMO on Monday.

“This is truly a pivotal year for humanity’s future. And this report shows we have no time to waste, climate disruption is here,” Guterres said, as he urged countries to “end our war on nature”.

The report described 2020 as one of the hottest years on record, about 1.2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial period, ranking it somewhere in the top three hottest years alongside 2016 and 2019, despite cooling La Niña conditions.

Concentrations of the major greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – continued to increase, the report said, despite the temporary reduction in emissions in 2020 related to the COVID-19 pandemic, which shredded economies.

Among the indicators highlighted were record low Arctic sea-ice extents in two months of 2020. About 80 percent of the ocean experienced at least one marine heatwave last year.

“This is the year for action. Countries need to commit to net zero emissions by 2050,” the UN chief said. “They need to act now to protect people against the disastrous effects of climate change.”
Hottest Years

Statistics showed that 2020 was one of the three warmest years on record. The past six years, including 2020, have been the six warmest on record.

Temperatures reached 38 Celsius at Verkhoyansk in Russia on June 20, the highest recorded temperature north of the Arctic Circle.

Last year featured “extreme weather and climate disruption, fuelled by anthropogenic climate change, affecting lives, destroying livelihoods and forcing many millions from their homes,” Guterres said.

The report said sea level rise was accelerating, while ocean heat storage and acidification is increasing, diminishing the ocean’s capacity to moderate climate change.

Extreme heatwaves, severe droughts and wildfires also led to tens of billions of dollars in economic losses and many deaths.

During 2020, the unprecedented number of 30 named Atlantic storms led to at least 400 fatalities and cost $41bn in damages.

Some 9.8 million displacements, largely due to hydrometeorological hazards and disasters – such as floods, droughts, hurricanes, and landslides – were recorded during the first half of 2020.

“This year is pivotal. At the United Nations climate conference, COP26, in November, we need to demonstrate that we are taking and planning bold action on mitigation and adaptation,” said Guterres.

But the 71-year-old UN chief stressed that reaching bold emissions reduction targets would mean “radical changes” in financing as well as prioritising efforts to help emerging regions like Africa and South Asia.

‘PEOPLE ARE NOT STARVING, THEY ARE BEING STARVED’

By Andrea Germanos, Commondreams.

April 22, 2021

The situation in Yemen is getting worse and it is projected that the population will experience alarming levels of acute malnutrition and food insecurity in Yemen which is the site of the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, where over 24 million out of the country’s total population of 30 million need humanitarian aid, and one in five children in danger of malnutrition.




https://popularresistance.org/people-are-not-starving-they-are-being-starved/





NOTE: It is important to recognize that starving people is a choice and hunger can be ended, but ending hunger requires more than spending more money on food aid. There needs to be an end to the economic war, referred to as ‘sanctions,’ that the United States and its Western allies are waging on almost 40 nations. It requires ending corporate land grabs and government subsidies for factory farms that decimate smaller farmers. It requires ending the tactic of destroying and stealing food as the United States is doing in Syria. It requires ending economic support for the state of Israel that is blocking access to food and water in Gaza. And it requires ending wars and taking effective steps to mitigate the climate crisis. – MF
250+ Groups Demand Rich Nations Provide Urgent Food Assistance.

“It is human actions that are driving famine and hunger, and it is our actions that can stop the worst impacts.”

Over international 250 organizations are demanding urgent action from global governments to address the hunger and famine faced by hundreds of millions—a crisis the groups said is driven largely by policy choices including ignored appeals for a global ceasefire and humanitarian funding.

“These people are not starving, they are being starved,” the groups wrote in an open letter released Tuesday.

Referencing the countries where they operate—Yemen, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, DRC, Honduras, Venezuela, Nigeria, Haiti, CAR, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Sudan where they operate—the groups said, “These girls and boys, men and women, are being starved by conflict and violence; by inequality; by the impacts of climate change; by the loss of land, jobs, or prospects; by a fight against Covid-19 that has left them even further behind.”

The letter—signed by the International Council of Voluntary Agencies, Oxfam International, Danish Refugee Council, and Save the Children—was released a year after the World Food Programme (WFP) executive director David Beasley warned of the threat of “multiple famines of biblical proportions.” Despite that grave warning, the groups said in a statement that so far this year, donors have funded a mere 5% of the United Nations’ $7.8bn food security appeal for 2021.

“Every day, we share stories and evidence of hunger, starvation, and increasing humanitarian needs. Yet this does not prompt urgent action or sufficient funding,” they wrote.

“It is human actions that are driving famine and hunger,” the groups said, “and it is our actions that can stop the worst impacts.”




The letter asks the states to immediate provide $5.5 billion in food assistance to reach those “who are a step away from famine.”

That amount, the groups’ statement noted, is the equivalent of less than 26 hours of the $1.9 trillion of countries spend each year on the military.

Given conflicts’ role in driving hunger, global leaders must also work to “end conflict and violence in all its forms,” including by heeding U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’ call last year for a global ceasefire so that humanitarian assistance can reach those in need.

“There is no place for famine and starvation in the 21st century,” the open letter says. “History will judge us all by the actions we take today.”

Oxfam International executive director Gabriela Bucher said there’s no time to wait.

“The richest countries are slashing their food aid even as millions of people go hungry; this is an extraordinary political failure,” said Bucher, urging them to “urgently reverse these decisions.”

“And we must confront the fundamental drivers of starvation—global hunger is not about lack of food, but a lack of equality,” she added.

Inger Ashing, CEO of Save the Children, issued a similarly scathing statement.

“We have warned donors over and over again—their inaction is leading to death and despair among children, as we see in countries across the globe every single day,” Ashing said.

“That thousands of children will be dying of hunger and disease in 2021 is a political choice,” she added, “unless governments radically choose to help save the lives of children.”

WFP warned last year that 270 million people were on the brink of starvation.

Receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in December on behalf of the organization, WFP’s Beasley said that the award was “more than a thank you. It is a call to action.”

Super League – Super Greed

STEVE JONES 20 APR 2021

https://www.socialist.net/super-league-super-greed.htm




“Total war in European football – the Super League is born.”

So read the headline of the Spanish newspaper El Pais yesterday morning, in response to the announcement by Europe’s most wealthy football clubs that plans are in place to form a breakaway European Super League, the ESL.

“The bonfire of greed,” stated La Gazzetta dello Sport in Italy, echoing what many feel.

Paris Saint-Germain midfielder Ander Herrera summed it up best, when he stated that the creation of the ESL was “the rich stealing what the people created”.
Business interests

Sunday’s long-expected announcement confirms what everybody already knew. 12 top clubs – including six from the Premier League – have already signed up, with three more expected to join them. You can guess the likely suspects.

These 15 clubs will have automatic membership of the new league, with five more joining based on actual merit. These clubs will play home and away fixtures in the league, followed by a knock-out structure to conclude the competition, with a final held at a neutral ground, as is the case with existing European competitions.

What is the rationale behind this latest proposal?

The initial joint statement from the Super 12 gives the game away: “The formation of the Super League comes at a time when the global pandemic has accelerated the instability in the existing European football economic model.”

This opening declaration goes on to say that the new competition will “provide significantly greater economic growth”.

If this sounds more like a business statement than a sports-based one, you would be correct.
Maximising profits

This is about generating huge additional sums from fans and TV – all aimed at maximising the profits for the rich few.

The suggested model is equivalent to the closed-shop franchise system used for professional team sports in the USA, with no promotion or relegation to worry the money men. This removes the inconvenient problem of having to have a good season on the pitch to get into elite Europe-wide competitions – albeit at everybody else's expense.

Consider the two-faced statement from Real Madrid president Florentino Perez, the first chairman of the ESL. Perez asserted that the new competition would “help football at every level…”

“Football is the only global sport in the world with more than four billion fans,” the Real Madrid boss continued, “and our responsibility as big clubs is to respond to their desires.”


What Perez really means is: The new competition will help football boards enrich themselves at the top level, making use of the fact that the game has four billion customers waiting to be further exploited.

This is a competition that will solely respond to the desires of the big club owners. These 15 teams (or brands) will always be in the competition, come what may – and to hell with the rest.
Backlash

Hostile reaction has come in thick and fast – not only from UEFA and FIFA, but also (more importantly) from fans and their organisations.

Football fans can see where this is leading. After all, this is a road that the professional game has been travelling down for a long time.

Protest banners have already started to appear on social media from fans around the country. But few expect those at the top to listen.


The hand-wringing and insult-shouting from UEFA is particularly dishonest. Indeed, this body had been set to announce a not-dissimilar reformatting of the current Champions League, aimed at heading off threats of a breakaway.

This plan never saw the light of day, however, due to a failure to find a format that would guarantee the inclusion – merit or not – of the big clubs. This lack of a guaranteed income source became a major sticking point. And for once, the normally slippery UEFA officials couldn't find a way around this.

With financial giant JP Morgan bankrolling the ESL, the rich clubs could see where the money was.

UEFA’s gripe is that they will be out of pocket when it comes to palm-greasing. They certainly are not worried about the fans’ concerns anymore than the ESL organisers are.
Culmination

The whole history of football over recent decades has been heading this way: turning the game from a mass spectator sport with roots in the communities into a multi-billion pound operation for wealthy investors.

First we had the introduction of live-screened games – just a few at first, then more and more with the arrival of satellite TV. Then we had the establishment of the Premier League, aimed at maximising TV income for those at the top, whilst reducing the trickle of cash to the lower leagues.

In Europe, we had the replacement of the three European cup competitions with the useless Europa League – now to have a second division, or ‘Conference’, as they call it from next season – alongside the Champions League itself.

The latter involves actual champions, plus a load of others – the “rich mates”, as one reporter put it at the time.

These bloated TV-friendly competitions were then spread over three days a week, rather than just one.

All this did not go unnoticed in company boardrooms. Money began to flow into the coffers of a few elite clubs. Huge corporations – and even countries – started buying clubs.

Matching this at every step were the major media companies. COVID-19 was a godsend for them. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, every game in Europe and the Premier League has been screened live: total football, seven days a week. This has opened a door that will not be easily closed.

The ESL will now be looking closely at what deals they can magic up with the television companies – especially the Americans, with the lucrative US market up for grabs.

At every stage, working-class fans and communities have been pushed further and further away. For football’s bosses, we are just walking credit cards; extras in a reality TV show.
What next?

The Tory government is talking about new legislation to block the ESL. But even if they succeed in scuppering these plans, we can guarantee that they won’t kick the billionaires out of football; nothing fundamental will change.

The fact is that we cannot rely on big business politicians or establishment figures to save our game. Instead, as Gary Neville has suggested, football fans should organise protests and boycotts immediately. And a grassroots campaign to kick capitalism out of football must be launched.

Maybe the league will go ahead; or maybe a deal will be brokered with international football organisations in order to keep existing competitions going – but certainly with critical changes that will leave us with something pretty similar to the private members’ club that is the ESL.

The losers, of course, will be us: ordinary football fans.

Expect other aspects of the game to change also. TV companies have already complained that games between-or-involving the top clubs attract higher viewing figures, and therefore greater advertising income. They will want ‘something’ done about this.

The elitist US-style format of the ESL may also provide a model for the next incarnation of the Premier League itself. Indeed, this has already been floated before.

FIFA is also rumoured to have a world club tournament in the works, aimed at cutting across UEFA.
Kick out capitalism

Real Madrid’s president claims that the ESL plan is about ‘saving football’. But why is football in danger? Because of the damage caused by capitalism. Upping the ante with more greed will only seal football’s fate.

The move to establish the ESL is just the next step in the process of profit destroying the ‘beautiful game’; the latest example of the corrosive influence of capitalism on football.

As with every other walk of life and sector of the economy, the result of capitalist competition is monopolisation and a concentration of wealth in the hands of a super-rich few.

Football is already being run by bodies riddled with corruption, cronyism, dodgy deals, and a total indifference to the interests of the fans. No wonder that when the FBI started looking into corruption inside FIFA some years ago, they found it easier to understand FIFA’s workings by comparing it to the Mafia. They certainly act like a bunch of gangsters.

The war now breaking out between UEFA, FIFA, and the new ESL is a war to decide how to divide up the spoils; to decide which group of rich bloodsuckers benefit from what is coming next.

This is not sport. It is big business, run under the ruthless logic of the capitalist system.

We need to kick capitalism out of football. The ESL, Premier League, UEFA, FIFA: It is all about making money and nothing else for these people.

The only league tables that interest these parasites are those in the company spreadsheets – profit and loss. They have no interest in the spirit or traditions of the game, as is proven by the guarantee against relegation in the ESL.

Instead of this destruction and profiteering, we must demand that clubs be brought under public ownership, run by-and-for fans, players, and local communities.

We say: No to the ESL! No to the bureaucrats and bosses running football! No to capitalism! Boot them all out to save our game!

Health Insurer Pressured Employees To Fight State Public Option

Video shows UnitedHealth exec slamming Connecticut proposal’s “artificially low premiums” and pushing employees to lobby against the bill.


Julia Rock
Apr 23




Editor’s note: In response to subscribers’ requests, this is the second in a multi-part series on state-level health care reform. Read the first story here.


Photo credit: Dawn Villella/Getty Images

This report was written by Julia Rock.

Health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group held a webinar to pressure its rank-and-file employees to mobilize against efforts in Connecticut to create a state-level public health insurance option, according to a video of the presentation obtained by The Daily Poster.

“It does sound like it’s just an option. But the problem is that it would exist on an unlevel playing field with private insurance,” Mishael Azam, a UnitedHealth Group vice president of external affairs, told employees on the February 24 webinar. “The public option really is the path to single-payer, where there is really no private option left.”

Azam slammed the public option proposal for potentially providing Connecticut residents “artificially low premiums.” She encouraged employees to call their legislators and express their concerns about Connecticut’s public option proposal, which is designed to create more insurance competition and reduce health insurance premiums for consumers.

“If you agree with anything that you’re hearing today, taking action and contacting your legislator really makes a difference. It did make a difference in 2019,” she said, referring to when the insurance industry successfully killed a previous public option effort in Connecticut.




UnitedHealth spokesperson Eric Hausman told The Daily Poster that employees’ attendance at the February webinar was voluntary. “While we do not discuss internal meetings, educational webinars on issues of importance to our industry and our communities, such as the proposed public option in Connecticut, are completely voluntary,” he said.
“They Think They Are Screwed”

The nation’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealth saw its profits boom last year during the COVID-19 pandemic, as people largely avoided going to the doctor and put off elective procedures, activities that cost insurers money.

The company reported more than $15 billion in profit in 2020, an 11 percent increase over the previous year. In the year prior to that, the company made headlines after its CEO netted more than $50 million. Now, UnitedHealth is taking action to protect its windfall, as lawmakers around the country weigh reforms to address soaring health care costs.

In Connecticut, where UnitedHealth asked regulators to approve large increases in premiums for this year, the company and other major insurers have undertaken a massive campaign to block a new legislative attempt at passing a state-level public option.

Hartford, the state capital, is a major hub for health insurers, which account for 25,000 jobs, according to the industry. The state has long been a battleground between the health insurance industry and those fighting for reforms.

In 2009, Connecticut passed a law that paved the way for the state to establish a public option. Six months later, though, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and the state never set up its own insurance option. Former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman played a key role in killing the public option provision in the ACA, refusing to support the bill if it included a public option.

Connecticut lawmakers proposed public option plans in 2019 and 2020. Once again, legislators in the Democratic-held state house are considering public option legislation, backed by state Comptroller Kevin Lembo, and the chair of the Senate insurance committee Sen. Matthew Lesser. The bill passed the Senate finance committee on Thursday, and will receive a vote on the floor of the Senate before going to the assembly.

The legislative proposal to create a public option in Connecticut would authorize the state comptroller to offer the state’s current health care plan for public employees to certain individuals, small businesses, and non-profit employers. The so-called Connecticut Partnership Plan is currently administered by Anthem.

Additionally, the proposal would raise funds for subsidies for those people by instituting a tax on health insurance companies, similar to the Affordable Care Act’s Health Insurance Tax. The Health Insurance Tax, which cost Connecticut health insurers $300 million annually, was repealed in 2019, and the repeal took effect earlier this year. The new tax would cost insurers in the state $50 million.

Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont opposes the legislature’s bill, and has instead proposed his own health insurance reform plan, which would tax insurance companies to fund more subsidies to buy health insurance on the state exchange.

Front group campaigns backed by the health insurance industry are working to kill the legislation, and they are spending millions of dollars to kill state-level public option legislation being considered in Colorado, too. They argue that if states set up even modest public option plans, it could be the start of a slippery slope towards a single-payer system where there’s no need for health insurance companies.

Hausman, the UnitedHealth Group spokesperson, additionally argued in an email that “public option proposals will disrupt current coverage platforms by reducing access to providers, shifting costs to small businesses, increasing taxes, and eliminating jobs.”

Tom Swan, the executive director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, a group advocating for the public option legislation, told The Daily Poster that health insurers “are so threatened by this because if a public option passes in the insurance capital of the United States, they think they are screwed. And we hope that’s true.”
“Really Grassroots”

During the webinar, Azam, the UnitedHealth Group vice president, claimed that a state-run health insurance option would create an “unlevel playing field” in competing against private insurers, claims that have been widely repeated in the industry’s campaign.

When asked by an employee attending the webinar what it means for the premiums to be artificially low, she responded, “When I say artificially low, I mean that we wouldn’t even be allowed to have premiums that low because we are required to have revenues match claims. Whereas the state is not requiring itself to do so. And taxes have been increased to cover those state costs.”

Azam was repeating the false claim propagated by the Connecticut Business & Industry Association that the state’s Connecticut Partnership Plan does not charge high enough premiums to cover costs.

Lembo, the state comptroller, debunked that claim in a February letter, explaining that a 2019 legislative fix had brought premiums on par with the cost of care. The actual reason the Partnership’s premiums are lower is that the difference between claims and premiums is not used to generate profits, according to a March report from the comptroller’s office.

In the presentation, Azam also laid out the company’s strategy for tanking the public option proposal. “We have three major coalitions in Connecticut in addition to our grassroots efforts,” she said.

The presentation slide listed the Stop The HIT national coalition, a group that was formed to push for the repeal of the original Health Insurance Tax in the ACA; Insurance Matters to Connecticut, a coalition of insurers, businesses, and trade groups in the state organizing against the public option; and Connecticut’s Health Care Future.

Connecticut’s Health Care Future is a campaign from the Partnership for America’s Healthcare Future Action, a state-focused affiliate of the health care industry front group set up to oppose Medicare for All and a public option at the federal level.

“This national group has major members including the American Hospital Association, AHIP [America’s Health Insurance Plans], physician groups, business groups, and the Connecticut arm of it is really grassroots,” Azam said.

Connecticut’s Health Care Future has made radio ad buys, and Azam said during the February webinar that it is also “aggressively engaged in letter writing campaigns.”

She added: “There are over 10,000 members of ‘My Care, My Choice,’ a grassroots platform in Connecticut, that are engaged in letter writing, and we also have a targeted letter writing campaign to key members of the Insurance Committee in the legislature.”

Azam said that other insurers and trade groups are working to deploy their employees against the Connecticut legislation.

“We also have trade groups doing employee engagements like this and member engagements. And the other carriers in Connecticut, the other major health insurance carriers, are doing engagements like we are today as well,” she said.

Azam noted that Connecticut’s Health Care Future had recently done polling in the state and found that “consumers are very concerned about a government takeover of health care.”

The group’s polling was conducted by Locust Street Group, a public relations and grassroots consulting firm. They claimed that only 36 percent of respondents support a Connecticut public option, and only 40 percent support the idea of a national public option plan.

Meanwhile, a Fox News Voter Analysis survey of the American electorate, conducted just before the 2020 election, found that 74 percent of Connecticut voters support the idea of “changing the health care system so that any American can buy into a government-run health care plan if they want to.”

While Azam had previously said that Connecticut’s Health Care Future is “really grassroots,” when an employee asked how they can get involved with the group, she responded: “I don't know that individuals can join the Connecticut for Health Care Future coalition. I think it's mostly businesses.”

House Sergeant-at-Arms ordered security barricades moved the day before January 6 attack on the Capitol

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/04/23/coup-a23.html




Jacob Crosse
13 hours ago







During a House Administration Committee hearing on Wednesday, it was revealed that those attacking the Capitol on January 6 were aided by what were described as “illogical” security decisions from then House Sergeant at Arms (SAA) Paul Irving.

The revelation came in the course of a question-and-answer session between the ranking Republican on the committee, Rodney Davis of Illinois, and Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton. Davis told Bolton that an email was uncovered “this week” that revealed, “a US Capitol Police directive initiated by then House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving to the Architect of the Capitol sent on January 5.”

US Capitol Police at The Supreme Court (Lorie Shaull/Wikimedia Commons)

Davis said the email from Irving asked the Architect of the Capitol, J. Brett Blanton, “to move approximately 500 bike racks serving as security barricades away from 1st Street Northeast and Constitution Avenue to the east front.”

Davis asked Bolton if he was aware of this extraordinary request, to which Bolton replied that he was not aware and that he had not “delved into that.”

Davis continued his line of questioning, stating that, “this week we’ve uncovered emails from the Architect of the Capitol where it is clear that this was directed by the House sergeant at arms against the legitimate security concerns from the AOC [architect of Capitol] where the AOC Blanton called it ‘illogical.’”

“This is yet another example of the dysfunction of the security decision-making process of the Capitol Police Board,” Davis added.

This is a stunning revelation. Irving demanded that security barriers be repositioned less than 24 hours before a mob of Trump supporters and fascists would descend on the Capitol from the very direction where the barriers were removed. There is no innocent explanation. It adds further evidence of the active role of highly placed security officials in facilitating the security stand-down of the Capitol in support of Trump’s coup attempt.

The email recalls similar memos issued by highly placed officials in the Department of Defense to District of Columbia Guard Commander William Walker, in the days leading up to the coup, which effectively prevented Walker from deploying his troops. In both cases the effect of the “unusual” (Walker) and “illogical” (Blanton) requests was to clear a path for Trump’s mob to attack Congress.

The day of the attack the Capitol Police Board was comprised of Irving, Blanton, Steven Sund, then Capitol Police chief, and then Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger. The board oversees the Capitol Police and has final say over security matters, including when to declare an emergency and request National Guard support. After the attack, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi requested the resignation of Sund and Irving; Stenger also resigned after Senate leaders of both parties demanded it.

In congressional testimony in February, Sund alleged that the Police Board had prevented him from seeking National Guard support prior to the attack. Sund alleged that the Police Board denied his request for Guard support on January 4 and delayed subsequent requests the day of the attack.

Sund testified that he had spoken to Irving specifically on January 6, and requested he declare an emergency and request Guard support at 1:09 p.m. Sund’s request would not be honored by the Police Board until 2:10 p.m. However, further delays at the Pentagon meant that Gen. Walker would not be granted permission to deploy his soldiers until 5:09 p.m., well after the worst of the siege had ended and Trump’s objectives failed.

During the February 23 hearing, Irving disputed Sund’s timeline and alleged that he did not receive a call from Sund until “around 1:28, 1:30.” In a follow-up hearing with the House Appropriations Committee, acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman confirmed through telephone records that Sund actually first called and spoke to Irving to request Guard support at 12:58 p.m. the day of the attack.

In another revelation further implicating the Capitol Police leadership in facilitating the attack on the Capitol, Committee Chair Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat, alleged that radio communications made during the morning of January 6 by an unnamed Capitol Police officer, recently found by the Office of Professional Responsibility, advised “all outside units’” to not look “for any pro-Trump in the crowd.” Instead the voice said, “We’re only looking for any anti-Trump who wants to start a fight.”

Lofgren did not identify the Capitol Police officer who issued the directive. Neither the Capitol Police nor Congress have released audio of the broadcast despite requests to do so from major media organizations.

The Capitol Police department, which has yet to hold a public news conference since the attempted coup over three months ago, issued a statement on Thursday attempting to refute Lofgren’s allegation, stating that the radio call, “has been misquoted and is lacking … necessary context.”

In their statement, the department included what it says is the transcript of the broadcast, which reads: “With regards to pedestrian traffic on—on the grounds today, we anticipate a—a large presence for pro-Trump participants. What we’re looking for is any anti-Trump counter protesters,” the transcript reads, according to the Capitol Police statement.

As the Capitol Police department’s own statement makes clear, the police were looking for “any anti-Trump counter protesters.” This is despite the fact that the department’s own intelligence report issued on January 3 warned that unlike previous “Make America Great Again” rallies held in November and December in D.C., the pro-Trump mob assembled on January 6, comprised of fascist militias and white supremacists, would be targeting “Congress,” not antifa or anti-Trump protesters. The intelligence report even said that those gathered on January 6 saw the stopping of the congressional certification of the Electoral College vote as “the last opportunity to overturn the results of the presidential election.”

The latest revelations come on top of a mountain of evidence of state complicity in the attempted coup that was revealed during last week’s House Administration Committee hearing. It was revealed that:

• Capitol Police were directed by at least one “assistant deputy chief of police” not to use “heavier” crowd-control devices, such as 40 mm launchers or sting ball grenades, out of concern that their misuse could cause “life-altering injury and/or death.”

• Rank-and-file police were not briefed on intelligence reports that warned that “Congress itself” would be the target on January 6.

• Capitol Police were woefully unprepared for the crowd. Inspector General Bolton found that unlike previous protests, Capitol Police failed to preposition ammunition caches within the Capitol or set-up a “decontamination area” for officers who were attacked with chemicals.

• The Capitol Police’s equivalent of “riot police,” the Civil Disturbance Unit, did not have access to riot shields which were apparently locked on a bus.

The latest revelations conclusively demonstrate that the attack on the Capitol on January 6 was not simply an “intelligence failure” compounded by unprepared police and exuberant Trump supporters duped by Trump’s “big lie” of a stolen election. It was a deliberate attempt to stop the certification of electoral votes, seize hostages and maintain Trump in power as a dictator-president.

The growing evidence of the complicity of elements of the state with Trump’s coup has been met with deafening silence in the corporate media, which has reported very little from the House Administration Committee hearings. Nor have the Democrats who run the committee sought to highlight this evidence or draw public attention to it.

UAW works to sell out New York University strike before it starts

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/04/23/asop-a23.html




International Youth and Students for Social Equality at New York University
11 hours ago







The IYSSE at NYU will be hosting a meeting, “A socialist perspective for Columbia and NYU graduate students,” on Wednesday, April 27, at 7 p.m. We encourage graduate students, undergraduates and workers from the New York City area to attend.

More than 2,000 graduate student workers at New York University (NYU) are preparing to go on strike on Monday for living wages, proper health care coverage, safe working conditions, adequate child care benefits, and the demand “NYPD off campus.” Two weeks ago, over 96 percent of the members of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC) at NYU, which is affiliated with the UAW, voted in favor of a strike.

A sharp warning must be made: Before the strike has even begun, the UAW is doing everything to sell it out. During 10 months of negotiations, NYU has done nothing but stonewall workers’ demands while the GSOC has worked to prevent a strike, making ever-greater concessions to the university and repeatedly extending the 2015 contract that includes a “no-strike clause.”

New York University campus in Manhattan (Photo: nyu.edu)

Since the strike authorization vote, the GSOC has stepped up its efforts to create conditions that would allow them to call off any strike action at the last minute. The GSOC has made significant concessions to the university, including further lowering wage demands from $38 per hour to $32 per hour and lowering remission on combined tuition for working Masters students from 100 percent to 40 percent.

The lowering of these demands went against votes by the membership last week, and had not been communicated to GSOC members until after the proposals were presented to NYU.

The president of GSOC Local 2110, which also includes Columbia graduate workers, is Maida Rosenstein. Rosenstein spoke to the Bargaining Committee (BC) and a small group of rank-and-file workers between bargaining sessions with the university on Thursday. In the discussion, she strongly advocated for further lowering demands on compensation, stressing that $32 was “unrealistic.” She also peddled the lie that a strike by graduate workers could harm lower-paid workers at the university, actively discouraging graduate students from going on strike.

Then, after a whole day of bargaining, the BC offered to be “available” for further negotiations with NYU all weekend. There is a real danger that the strike will be called off at the last minute, with none of the major demands by graduate students met.

The experience of the strike at Columbia University offers important lessons for NYU graduate students and places the question of leadership front and center. The same UAW Local 2110 that the GSOC is affiliated with is working to shut down the strike of more than 3,000 graduate workers at Columbia University, just six miles north of the NYU campus. The UAW has kept the strike hidden from its nearly 400,000 members and has facilitated economic blackmail against the strikers by issuing a measly $275 a week in strike pay, despite sitting on a strike fund of almost $800 million. Rosenstein, the local president, has explicitly opposed uniting the Columbia University graduate workers’ strike with the strike at NYU.

As the strike was gaining momentum in its third week, the Bargaining Committee for the Graduate Workers of Columbia (GWC) agreed to a strike “pause,” against the will of the rank-and-file. On Monday, a week before the NYU strike deadline, the GWC BC agreed to a tentative contract with the university that imposes a de facto pay cut in the first year and does not come close to meeting any of the original demands advanced by graduate workers. The tentative contract includes a “no-strike clause” and guarantees the deduction of 2 percent of workers’ wages for union dues payments to the UAW.

The Columbia strike clearly demonstrates that not one step forward can be taken while graduate workers are tied to the trade unions. The UAW is one of the most prominent examples of the degeneration of the trade unions over the last 40 years. Although originally formed by left-wing workers during the semi-insurrectionary class battles of the Great Depression that won significant gains for auto workers, the UAW ceased to be a workers’ organization decades ago.

With globalization, the rise of transnational corporations, and the ever-deepening crisis of US capitalism over the last 50 years, the trade unions, based on a national program and tied to the capitalist nation-state, have become integrated into corporate management and the state apparatus. Since the late 1970s, they have worked together with the ruling class to strangle workers’ struggles, increase profits, and line the pockets of a small layer of union executives.

Over the last year, the UAW has obediently carried out the dictates of the ruling class by keeping workers in contaminated factories and workplaces amid the pandemic to ensure the continued production of profits. For these services rendered, it has received an enormous payoff.

After over four decades of betrayals, large sections of workers no longer see a way forward within these rotten organizations and are entering into a rebellion against the unions. The rejection of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) by workers at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama, plant two weeks ago sharply exposed the extent of workers’ alienation from these organizations.

At Columbia University, anger within the rank-and-file about the blatant union betrayal is running high. A significant section of Columbia graduate workers are organizing to stop the union from ramming through the sellout contract.

However, the experience of all previous struggles—including the Columbia strike itself—shows that militancy from the rank-and-file alone is not enough. What is urgently required is a political perspective and new organizations.

The struggle of graduate workers will not succeed outside of the development of a political leadership oriented toward the struggles of the entire working class for its social rights. Fundamentally, this requires a socialist perspective and an understanding that, implicitly, what is involved is a struggle against the capitalist system.

When workers at NYU and Columbia enter into a fight against their universities, they are battling the powerful forces of Wall Street, the state and the Democratic Party. Both schools embody the subordination of academia to private profit and the state. NYU and Columbia are run by a collection of Wall Street and Democratic Party operatives and maintain deep ties to US imperialism.

Over the last month, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), the youth and student wing of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), has powerfully intervened in the Columbia graduate strike. Basing itself on a Marxist perspective, the IYSSE has consistently warned of and exposed the treachery of the UAW. We have fought for the expansion of the strike to other campuses and, most importantly, into the broad sections of the working class in New York City and beyond that are now entering into struggle.

To take the control of these strikes out of the hands of the unions, we are calling for the formation of rank-and-file committees. In New York, across the US and internationally, such committees have already been formed among teachers as well as auto and Amazon workers. They are completely independent from the unions and the Democratic Party and answer to workers only. They advance demands based not on what the universities and corporations claim is “affordable” but what workers need.

Significant layers of graduate students, workers and undergraduates in New York have followed this coverage and our exposures. We now call upon all those who agree with this perspective to contact us, join the IYSSE, and take up the fight for socialism!

India ravaged by COVID-19 pandemic—a global catastrophe

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/04/23/pers-a23.html




Keith Jones
11 hours ago







India is now being ravaged by a tsunami of COVID-19 cases and deaths. This surge threatens to dwarf anything yet seen in a global pandemic that has already officially infected 145 million people and killed almost 3.1 million.

Yesterday India reported a single-day world record of 314,644 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the country’s total new infections since Monday to well over 1.1 million and an Indian record of 2,104 deaths.

People receive the COVAXIN vaccine for COVID-19 as others wait at an indoor stadium in Gauhati, India, Thursday, April 22, 2021. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Both the infection and death totals are undoubtedly gross undercounts. Death and cremation statistics tabulated by journalists and health experts reveal a vast discrepancy between the actual number of fatalities and the official numbers provided by government officials. A Financial Times study of seven of India’s 718 districts concluded that the true death count could be 10 times higher than what is being officially reported.

Chilling reports are emerging from across the country of crematoriums and cemeteries engulfed by corpses. In Bhopal, India’s 16th largest city, crematoriums are said to be operating at their highest levels since the 1984 Union Carbide gas leak disaster, which killed more than 2,200 people in its first hours. In the western state of Gujarat, where crematoriums have been working 24 hours nonstop, their metal supports have reportedly begun to melt.

India’s ramshackle health care system is collapsing, as chronically understaffed hospitals run out of beds, oxygen, and anti-COVID 19 drugs like Remdesivir. News reports from Delhi and Mumbai, respectively the capital and financial centre, show crowds of COVID-19 victims and their relatives outside hospitals clamouring for help, only to be told none is available.

Yet India’s government and ruling elite are utterly indifferent and impervious to this mass suffering and death.

Prioritising corporate profits over working people’s health and lives, India’s national and state governments have adamantly refused to order a lockdown as COVID-19 infections cases rose with ever increasing speed for the past two months.

In an address to the nation Tuesday evening, Prime Minister Narendra Modi proclaimed India must be “saved” not from the pandemic but from a lockdown aimed at halting the virus’s advance and saving lives! “In today’s situation, we have to save the country from lockdown,” he declared. He then went on to urge state governments to similarly forswear lockdowns.

Dire and harrowing as is the current situation, all evidence suggests that infections and deaths will continue to grow exponentially for weeks, even months, to come.

In the two weeks since April 8, the number of active cases in India rose more than 250 percent, from 910,000 to almost 2.3 million. This surge is being fueled by new, more infectious and lethal variants, including a “double-mutant” strain first identified in India that combines mutations in two different “variants of concern.”

All but a tiny fraction of the population remain at risk of infection. Just 8.4 percent of Indians have received a first vaccine dose, and only 1.4 percent are fully inoculated.

Moreover, hundreds of millions are desperately poor and malnourished, lack ready access to clean water, and live in one-room dwellings, meaning they cannot implement social distancing measures and, in many cases, are already in compromised health. If, as has been tragically demonstrated in recent days, hospitals in the country’s largest cities are being overwhelmed, the situation remains bleaker still in the large swaths of rural India, where public health facilities are all but nonexistent.

The catastrophe in India, it must be emphasized, is a global catastrophe in the face of a virus that respects no national borders and needs no passport. The decision of the world’s governments, led by the United States and the other imperialist powers, to abandon any systematic effort to halt the spread of the pandemic has created conditions in which COVID-19 has been able to mutate and develop more virulent, potentially vaccine-resistant strains. Unless and until there is a coordinated global, science-based effort to eradicate COVID-19 predicated on protecting people’s lives, not capitalist profit, this process will continue. Sparks from the current pandemic wildfire in India will cause blazes around the world. Indeed, cases of the Indian double-mutant variant are now being reported in North America, Europe and the Middle East.

Furthermore, in a reactionary, panicked response to the disaster produced by its own actions, India, a major supplier of generic drugs and vaccines to middle- and low-income countries, has stopped the export of COVID-19 vaccines.

What stands in the way of mobilizing the world’s resources to fight the pandemic are the profit and predatory geopolitical interests of the rival national-based capitalist cliques.

Take the case of India. Not just Modi and his far-right Hindu supremacist BJP are responsible for the mass death that now stalks the world’s second most populous country. The entire ruling class and political establishment are responsible.

For decades, the Indian state, whether under governments led by the BJP or Congress Party, has spent a derisory 1.5 percent of GDP on health care. Although the World Health Organization, among many others, pointed to India’s great vulnerability in the face of COVID-19, due to its mass poverty and derelict heath care system, the Modi government took no substantive measures to fight the pandemic for the first two and a half months of 2020. Then on March 25, with no foreplanning and less than four hours’ notice, it imposed a calamitous nationwide lockdown that failed by every measure. Failed because it was not accompanied by mass testing and contact tracing, a vast infusion of resources into the health care system, and the provision of social support to the hundreds of millions whom the lockdown deprived of their livelihoods overnight.

Subsequently, spearheaded by the Modi government, but with the support of the state governments whether led by the BJP or the ostensible opposition parties, India embraced a policy of “herd immunity.” Beginning at the end of April, the government started “reopening” its economy and this continued, with one measure after another jettisoned over the next six months as infections and deaths soared.

Giving voice to the mindset of the ruling elite, Modi government health advisor and epidemiologist Jayaprakash Muliyi blithely declared that given the immense size of the country’s population, mass deaths on a scale not seen outside the world wars of the last century would be acceptable. “With a substantial opening up of the lockdown, India may see at least two million deaths,” said Muliyi. “Mortality is low, let the young go out and work.”

As India’s COVID-19 “second wave” gathered strength in late February and March, the political establishment in unison declaimed against lockdown measures. Taking their cue from Modi, they pronounced India’s supposedly “world-beating” vaccination campaign as the answer to the pandemic. In this they were acting at the behest of big business, whose media voices like the Times of India have been churning out editorial after editorial denouncing “lockdowns” as “unaffordable.”

To further this mercenary campaign, they have cynically pointed to the hundreds of millions whose livelihoods have been devastated by the pandemic. A recently published Pew Research study found the number of Indians earning less than 150 rupees per day (US $2) more than doubled during the pandemic’s first wave to 135 million, and that 32 million more had seen their income fall below $10 per day.

For the political and ideological representatives of the ruling class, it is, of course, unthinkable that even a fraction of the fortunes of India’s billionaires—which, according to Forbes, nearly doubled to $596 billion in 2020—be seized to provide social support to the population while the spread of the pandemic is halted.

The “open” economy, “herd immunity” policy of the Modi government is the cutting edge of an intensified assault on the working class and rural masses. In the name of reviving the economy, Modi has introduced a raft of “pro-investor” measures. These include a fire sale of public sector enterprises, a pro-agribusiness reform of farm laws, and changes to the labor code to further expand precarious contract employment, empower large employers to fire workers at will and outlaw most strikes.

At the same time, the BJP government has further integrated India into US imperialism’s war drive against China, through the US-led Quad, and a growing web of bilateral and trilateral strategic ties with Washington’s principal Asia-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia. This is both to strengthen the India capitalist elite’s hand against the working class and pursue its own great power ambitions.

This class war assault and the Modi government’s attempt to whip up communalism so as to divide the working class are encountering mass opposition. Strikes and protests have erupted across the country against speedup, poverty wages and the lack of PPE (personal protective equipment). Tens of millions joined a one-day nationwide strike last November 26 to oppose the government’s pro-investor reforms and demand emergency support for the hundreds of millions whose incomes have been slashed by the pandemic. And for the past five months hundreds of thousands of farmers have been camped on the outskirts of Delhi to demand the repeal of Modi’s farm laws.

But as everywhere the striving of the working class to assert its class interests is immediately blocked by the organizations that claim to speak in its name: the procapitalist trade unions and the establishment left parties. Under conditions of the eruption of the greatest crisis of world capitalism since the Great Depression of 1930s the twin Stalinist parties—the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India—have cemented their political alliance with the Congress Party. The traditional governing party of the Indian bourgeoisie, the Congress Party has focused much of its attack on Modi over the past year on the claim that he is “soft on China.”

The pandemic has starkly revealed the utter incompatibility of the capitalist profit system and the selfish class interests of the bourgeoisie with the most essential needs of society. At the same time, it has exacerbated all of the malignancies that have increasingly characterized capitalism for decades—ever growing social inequality, intensifying interimperialist conflict and great power rivalry, the breakdown of bourgeois democracy and the ruling class’s cultivation of far-right, fascist forces.

The pandemic is a global crisis that can only be brought under control through the coordinated independent action of the international working class to impose the public health measures and secure the social support needed to protect workers’ lives and livelihoods worldwide.

Likewise workers’ struggles to defend their social and democratic rights and against imperialist war and reaction is a global struggle that necessitates the building of new mass organizations of struggle. Against the transnational corporations, the rival capitalist governments, and the trade and military alliances through which they seek to advance their predatory global ambitions, the working class must mount a common and coordinated struggle on the basis of a socialist internationalist program.

It is to develop such a global movement animated by the great liberating ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky that the World Socialist Web Site and International Committee of the Fourth International are holding an online May Day rally on Saturday, May 1—“One year of the coronavirus: From global pandemic to global class struggle.” We urge workers, youth and socialist-minded professionals in India and throughout the world to make plans to attend the event.