World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

Lawrence Jones is one of the singers in this performance of Blessings & Benediction: Four Bach Cantatas at the Virtual 113th Bethlehem Bach Festival, 18 May 2021. Lawrence is the son of one of my colleagues, Stephen Jones, and he is blessed with a brilliant voice.

One hundred years ago, the US experienced what was arguably the worst race massacre in its history in Tulsa, Oklahoma. African-Americans had gone to Tulsa after the Civil War because Oklahoma was regarded as a safe space for Blacks and the African-Americans established a thriving neighborhood known as Greenwood which was also called the “Black Wall Street”. The Tulsa massacre followed a number of race riots instigated by whites against blacks in 1919. Those riots were meant to put African-Americans back into “their place” after many blacks assumed that they would be honored for their service in World War I. The Guardian describes the massacre:

“….on 31 May and 1 June 1921, a white mob had attacked Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, killing an estimated 300 people and wounding 800 more while robbing and burning businesses, homes and churches. Planes dropped explosives on the area, razing it to the ground. It remains one of the worst acts of racial violence in American history.”

The violence was also described by Viola Fletcher, who was seven years old when the massacre occurred and who testified to Congress about it at the age of 107:

“‘I still see Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the street, I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams,’ said Fletcher, one of the last three known survivors of what is known as the Tulsa race massacre.

“’I have lived through the massacre every day,’ the 107 year old told a United States congressional subcommittee earlier this month. ‘Our country may forget this history, but I cannot. I will not, and other survivors do not – and our descendants do not…..’

“‘I think about the terror and horror inflicted upon Black people in this country every day,’ Fletcher said. ‘I’m asking that my country acknowledge what has happened to me – the traumas and the pain and the loss.'”

The Tulsa massacre was itself extraordinary, but the deliberate forgetting of the massacre was also unbelievable. Here is an image of the Tulsa newspaper the day after:

As the US engages in a senseless debate about “critical race theory”, we should first remind ourselves that learning basic history is a necessary first step to understanding the race question in the US. If all Americans knew how African-Americans have been treated throughout the history of the US, first as colonies of European powers and second as an independent republic, then perhaps having a theory to explain the atrocities would not be necessary.

Germany has finally admitted that it committed genocide against the Herero and Nama tribes in South West Africa between 1904 and 1908. Germany held the territory as a colony between 1884 and 1915. After World War I it became a British Mandate under the League of Nations and was controlled by South Africa after the end of World War II although South African control was never legally recognized. The territory eventually became independent in 1990 and is now known as Namibia.

The German Colony of South West Africa

The Germans exploited the diamonds, gold, platinum, and copper resources of the territory and forced the indigenous peoples to work as slaves to mine the mineral resources. Moreover, the Germans seized the land of the locals in order to settle Germans on the land as part of an official policy in 1901 called Lebensraum which ultimately was brutally implemented in Europe by the Nazis. The treatment of the local population was horrific:

“Between 1893 and 1894, Hottentot Uprising’ of the Nama led by Hendrik Witbooi occurred. The following years saw many other local uprisings against the Germans. Remote farms were attacked and around 150 German settlers were killed. However, an additional 14,000 troops sent from Germany crushed the rebellion in Battle of Waterberg.

“Earlier, the German Lieutenant Von Trotha issued an ultimatum to Herero people. The ultimatum denied them the right of being German subjects and actually ordered the Herero people to leave the country or be killed.

“In 1904, Nama entered the struggles against the colonial rule. This uprising was finally stopped between 1907 and 1908. This resulted in between 25,000 and 100,000 Herero, 10,000 Nama, and 1,749 Germans deaths. After the conflict ended, the remaining natives who were released from detention were subject to a policy of deportation, deposition, forced labor, racial segregation and discrimination.”

The German confession of genocide comes after 6 years of negotiation. The Germans have refused to pay reparations to the Herero and Nama peoples, but have agreed to give Namibia $1.3 billion in development assistance. The offer was considered inadequate by the Namibians:

“As news of an agreement trickled out over the past two weeks, Herero and Nama leaders issued a joint statement rejecting the deal and condemning its lack of direct reparations.

“’The so-called ‘compensation’ to finance ‘social projects’ is nothing but a coverup for continued German funding of Namibian Government projects,’ said the statement from the Ovaherero Traditional Authority and the Nama Traditional Leaders Association. ‘Germany must pay reparations for the genocide.’

“The German Foreign Ministry’s statement said the roughly $1.3 billion in development aid would serve as a ‘gesture of recognition for immeasurable suffering.’”

The German decision has received mixed reactions and there is probably no effective redress for such horrific actions. But the willingness of the German government to admit to the crime is a necessary first step to finding a more effective response.

Herero Victims of German Genocide

The recent conflict between Israel and Palestinians has revealed a small but distinct movement among some members of the US Democratic Party toward greater sympathy to the Palestinian people. Since the founding of Israel in 1948, members of both US political parties have been strong supporters of Israel. But recent polls suggest that the support is becoming less strong because the policies of the Netanyahu government have sharply circumscribed the possibilities for a viable Palestinian state next to Israel.

In many respects, this shift is a generational change. There is a large cohort of Americans who have never known any Israeli leader other than Netanyahu who has been Prime Minister since 2009. Additionally, that cohort has also witnessed the growth of the Black Lives Movement in the US which has exposed the reality of Black lives in the US which has never been witnessed before in US history (the cameras in smartphones has been a very important technological change for most Americans who very often know very little about how Blacks are treated in the US). Most Americans have never fully comprehended the reality of how Palestinians are forced to live under occupation.

It is also important to remember that there is no monolithic Jewish position on the occupation. The Pew Research Center has polling data which reveals the diversity of opinion among American Jews about the state of Israel. The polling has some interesting conclusions:

“Israel, the world’s only Jewish-majority country, is a subject of special concern to many Jews in the United States. Caring about Israel is ‘essential’ to what being Jewish means to 45% of U.S. Jewish adults, and an additional 37% say it is ‘important, but not essential’; according to a new Pew Research Center survey that was fielded from Nov. 19, 2019, to June 3, 2020 – well before the latest surge of violence in the region. Just 16% of U.S. Jewish adults say that caring about Israel is ‘not important’ to their Jewish identity.

“However, the survey found that Jewish Americans – much like the U.S. public overall – also hold widely differing views on Israel and its political leadership.

“Most Jewish Americans identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, and more than half gave negative ratings at the time of the survey both to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to then-President Donald Trump’s handling of U.S. policy toward Israel. But Orthodox Jews – 75% of whom are Republican or lean Republican – generally rated both Netanyahu and Trump positively.

“Orthodox Jews were also more likely than Jews in other denominations to say that the Israeli government was making a sincere effort to reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians and that God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people. By contrast, most Jewish Americans said they did not think that either the Israeli government or Palestinian leaders were sincerely seeking peace. And most Jewish adults took the position that God ‘did not literally give’ the land of Israel to the Jewish people (42%) or said they do not believe in God or a higher power at all (24%)…

“More than half of all U.S. Jews belong to the two long-dominant branches of American Judaism: 37% identify as Reform and 17% as Conservative. Roughly one-in-ten (9%) describe themselves as Orthodox. Other branches, such as the Reconstructionist movement and Humanistic Judaism, total about 4%, and due to small sample sizes cannot be analyzed separately. One-third of Jewish adults (32%) do not identify with any particular stream or institutional branch of Judaism.”

Israel and Hamas have agreed to a cease-fire which looks fragile, but there is no question in my mind that attitudes toward Israel have changed because of the 11-day conflict. Writing for the New Yorker, Bernard Avishai suggests that the conflict has changed significantly:

“The situation, in short, is fluid, agitated, and reminiscent of the atmosphere after the 1973 war, when, in spite of a putative Israeli victory, the idea that military force was all the foreign policy Israel needed—and that the Palestinian question would wait—was suddenly revealed to Israelis as delusional and arrogant. Before that war, the government spoke not of deterrence but of “security borders,” which neighboring Arab states, it claimed, wouldn’t dare attack. They did. Now, as then, there is a growing sense that Israel cannot come out of this crisis the same country it was when it went into it. On the right, there is more bravado: calls to disarm Gaza, and to suppress Israeli Arabs as a fifth column. On the left, which has found renewed energy, there are calls for reëngagement with the Palestinian question, and, correspondingly, for democratic norms that are vital enough to resist theocracy and to lessen anti-Arab discrimination.”

President Biden preferred to stay out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict–most Administrations have failed to make any substantive progress towards advancing peace. But I suspect that Biden will be forced to pay closer attention to the conflict during his Administration. It is time for new ideas.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken gave an interview to a Danish journalist in which he was asked about the current violence between Israel and the Palestinians. His response to the question deserves close examination:

QUESTION:  Let’s turn to the current situation in the Middle East, the deadly violence between Israel and the Palestinians.  In the past few days we’ve seen multiple civilian casualties on both sides, but mostly in Gaza.  You’re Jewish yourself.  Do you think that the Israeli response, their defense, is justified and proportional?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Well, first, we believe strongly that Israel has a right to defend itself.  And this false equivalence between a terrorist group – Hamas – that is indiscriminately launching rockets at civilians and Israel, which is responding to those attacks, I think we have to be very, very wary of.  That’s – it’s a false equivalence.  And again, I’ll give you another concrete example.  Israel has, I think by last count, launched about 2,000 attacks on terrorist targets in Gaza.  There were more than 3,000 rockets launched by Hamas from Gaza into Israel.

Having said that, I think Israel has an extra burden as a democracy to do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties, especially to look out for children, and of course to make sure that journalists, medical personnel, are not harmed.  And so that’s vital.

And we also want to see this de-escalate.  We want to see the violence stop.  And we want to see the possibility of focusing on improving lives and improving Palestinian lives in a material way.  People have to have hope for a better future, and we all need to work on that.

QUESTION:  And you’re also going to help the Palestinians getting a better life?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Yes, absolutely.  This is – I think this is critical.  It is very, very difficult if you see no positive prospects.  And I think we all have an obligation, a responsibility to do that.

I am not sure what Secretary Blinken means by “false equivalence” but there is no equivalence whatsoever between the violence used by Hamas and that used by the Israeli state.

Israel has one of the most powerful militaries in the world and possesses some of the most advanced weaponry of any state in the international system. It has used that military to defend its interests vis-à-vis the Palestinians since its founding in 1948. But the interests of Israel slowly changed from legitimate self-defense to territorial expansion after the war of 1967 and the change has been most apparent during the continued rule of the Netanyahu government since 2009.

It is morally impossible to defend the rocket attacks by Hamas in response to Israeli military action. They are rockets, not missiles, and cannot discriminate between combatant and non-combatant targets. But to suggest that the rocket attacks are comparable in any way to the military power of Israel is delusional. Military superiority has not brought peace to Israel nor does it seem as if peace is any more likely now than at any time since the Oslo Accords of 1993 as described by the Public Broadcasting System:

“Oslo sketched out a peace process with a two-phase timetable. During a five-year interim period, Oslo envisioned a series of step-by-step measures to build trust and partnership. Palestinians would police the territories they controlled, cooperate with Israel in the fight against terrorism, and amend those sections of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) charter that called for Israel’s destruction. Israel would withdraw almost entirely from Gaza, and in stages from parts of the West Bank. An elected Palestinian Authority would take over governance of the territories from which Israel withdrew.

“After this five-year interim period, negotiators then would determine a final peace agreement to resolve the thorniest issues: final borders (see map), security arrangements, Jerusalem, whether the Palestinians would have an independent state, Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinian refugees’ claims to land and property left behind when they fled Israel.”

The official policy of the US been to support the Oslo idea of a two-state solution and one would think that as one of Israel’s most important allies it should have been able to move the process forward: “This year America is supplying Israel with $3.9bn in aid, almost all of it military assistance; Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of American aid, at $146bn, since the second world war.” Additionally, the Biden Administration approved $735 million in precision-guided weapons to Israel on 5 May. All that assistance, however, does not seem to have any effect on Israeli policy toward the Occupied Territories. The Israeli government continues to support an active settler movement on the very land it was supposed to return to the Palestinian Authority.

It is long past time for the US to reassess its relationship to Israel. Israel is a sovereign state that can pursue whatever foreign policy it believes serves its interests. But the foreign policy of the Netanyahu government is in no way consistent with the interests of the US (one can also demonstrate that discrepancy in the attitudes toward the reinstatement of the nuclear agreement with Iran which the US supports and Israel opposes). The foreign policy of the Netanyahu government appears to be the full colonization of the West Bank and the complete submission of the Gaza Strip to Israeli military control. Those outcomes are not in the interests of the US nor are they in the interests of a democratic Israel. The US should end all economic and military assistance to Israel until it makes a serious and credible effort to implement a viable two-state solution.

Right now, the US is refusing to demand a cease-fire in the conflict. Instead, it merely suggests that Israel and Hamas should support a cease-fire. Its self-imposed impotence in the face of this humanitarian crisis is pathetic.

There has been a sharp escalation of violence between Israel and the Palestinians. The conflict is rooted in passionately held views over the control of territory in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The immediate cause of the current violence stems from an attempt by Israel to evict Palestinians from the homes in East Jerusalem in a neighborhood known as Sheikh Jarrah. There are 7 Palestinian families who have lived in those homes since the 1960s but the Israelis claim that the home was previously owned by Israeli Jews. Those Jewish families lost their homes when the state of Israel was created in 1948 and the United Nations declared that the city of Jerusalem would be under international control:

“With the increase in violence in 1947 and the all-out war between the two communities in 1948, which
was joined by the neighbouring Arab States, Jerusalem was placed at the heart of the conflict and its
control became an essential goal of the fighting parties. In an attempt to find a permanent solution, the
United Nations adopted in 1947 the Partition Plan for Palestine which, while dividing the country into
Arab and Jewish States, retained the unity of Jerusalem by providing for an international regime under
United Nations control.”

That plan was never fully implemented and Jerusalem was divided into West Jerusalem under Israeli control and East Jerusalem under the control of Jordan. The division collapsed after Israel took control of all of Jerusalem in the 1967 war. The world, however, did not recognize Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem until US President Trump moved the US Embassy into Jerusalem in 2017. Even now, however, most of the world recognizes East Jerusalem as Occupied Territory subject to the rules of the 1907 Hague Convention and the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The International Committee of the Red Cross outlines the responsibilities of the Occupying Power:

“The duties of the occupying power are spelled out primarily in the 1907 Hague Regulations (arts 42-56) and the Fourth Geneva Convention (GC IV, art. 27-34 and 47-78), as well as in certain provisions of Additional Protocol I and customary international humanitarian law.

“Agreements concluded between the occupying power and the local authorities cannot deprive the population of occupied territory of the protection afforded by international humanitarian law (GC IV, art. 47) and protected persons themselves can in no circumstances renounce their rights (GC IV, art. 8).

“The main rules of the law applicable in case of occupation state that:

• The occupant does not acquire sovereignty over the territory.
• Occupation is only a temporary situation, and the rights of the occupant are limited to the extent of that period.
• The occupying power must respect the laws in force in the occupied territory, unless they constitute a threat to its security or an obstacle to the application of the international law of occupation.
• The occupying power must take measures to restore and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety.
• To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the occupying power must ensure sufficient hygiene and public health standards, as well as the provision of food and medical care to the population under occupation.
• The population in occupied territory cannot be forced to enlist in the occupier’s armed forces.
• Collective or individual forcible transfers of population from and within the occupied territory are prohibited.
• Transfers of the civilian population of the occupying power into the occupied territory, regardless whether forcible or voluntary, are prohibited.
• Collective punishment is prohibited.
• The taking of hostages is prohibited.
• Reprisals against protected persons or their property are prohibited.
• The confiscation of private property by the occupant is prohibited.
• The destruction or seizure of enemy property is prohibited, unless absolutely required by military necessity during the conduct of hostilities.
• Cultural property must be respected.
• People accused of criminal offences shall be provided with proceedings respecting internationally recognized judicial guarantees (for example, they must be informed of the reason for their arrest, charg ed with a specific offence and given a fair trial as quickly as possible).
• Personnel of the International Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement must be allowed to carry out their humanitarian activities. The ICRC, in particular, must be given access to all protected persons, wherever they are, whether or not they are deprived of their liberty.

Most importantly, the Hague and Geneva Conventions prohibit the confiscation of private property. The controversy over the evictions is complicated by the inequities in Israeli law, as explained by The Economist:

“The land on which their homes sit was owned by Jews before Jordan occupied the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1948. Jordan used it to resettle Palestinian refugees from the western part of the city, which had been taken by Israel. Under Israeli law the heirs of the original owners, as Israelis, can reclaim the property. The Palestinian families have no such rights over their former homes in West Jerusalem. In fact, all property once owned by ‘absentee’ Palestinians was expropriated by Israel and can no longer be claimed by its original owners.

One can review the arguments of the state of Israel defending its control over all of Jerusalem and the counter arguments defending the city’s status as Occupied Territory. My own view is that the city of Jerusalem remains Occupied Territory until an agreement over the status of Jerusalem is determined by an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The evictions have led to the spiraling violence as explained by The Guardian:

“A month ago, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began, and Palestinians have complained of what they say are unnecessarily severe restrictions by Israeli police, who prevented them from gathering on steps outside the Old City – an unofficial tradition after evening prayers.

“Amid rising tensions, there was an increase in communal violence, with videos shared online of street harassment and several attacks between Jews and Palestinians. Events came to a head in late April when hundreds of far-right Israelis marched down city streets chanting ‘death to Arabs’ and confronted Palestinians.

“Anger built ahead of an Israeli court ruling, which was due on Monday, on whether authorities would evict dozens of Palestinians from the majority-Arab East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah and give their homes to Jewish settlers.

“On the same day, thousands of flag-waving Israeli nationalists were due to march through Muslim neighbourhoods in the Old City in a provocative parade that celebrated Israel’s capture of the city in 1967.

“By Monday, the court date had been delayed and the march was rerouted, but by that point, the situation has already spiralled.”

The violence now involves rocket attacks launched by Hamas from the Gaza Strip and Israeli counterattacks by air against targets in the Gaza. The rocket attacks have been against civilian population centers such as the city of Tel Aviv, attacks which clearly contravene the laws of war. Similarly, Israeli aerial attacks have been targeting military targets, but the close proximity of civilian centers to those targets have rendered the distinction moot, and many civilians have been killed in the strikes.

It would be foolish to try to predict how the violence will unfold in the immediate future. The last overt violence was in 2014 and it lasted 7 weeks. But the Israeli government is still not settled despite 4 elections in the last two years and the settler movement is a powerful constituency in determining the coalition that will ultimately govern Israel. And the Palestinian Authority, divided among Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, has not held a legitimate election since 2006.

Finally, the US government does not seem to want to be involved in the dispute. It is not clear how the US can avoid involvement, but it is safe to say that President Biden does not seem to have a plan of action. It is doubtful, however, that wither the Israelis or the Palestinians would pay much attention to anything that President Biden might say.

Colombia has entered its second week of protests and the government’s response to the protests has become increasingly repressive. There are actually a number of issues that have led to the protests, as explained by The Guardian: “Demonstrations began over an unpopular tax reform but have since grown into outburst of rage over poverty, human rights abuses and the authorities’ heavy-handed response to protests.” Colombian President Iván Duque has called for a national dialogue, but the government’s handling of the protests has become increasingly militarized:

“Duque has been powerless to quell the unrest despite ordering the militarization of major cities and withdrawing his tax plan. His government has attempted to frame the protests as the work of “terrorists” from dissident rebel groups.

“Amid growing popular anger, observers have advised caution over the possible spread of disinformation. But videos analysed by Amnesty International confirm that police have used lethal weapons, including rifles and semi-automatic guns, against protesters around the country.

“’It is deeply alarming to see the heavy-handed crowd control response across the country,’ said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director of Amnesty International. ‘The people’s discontent over the economic crisis is clear – it is unjust and puts their human rights at risk.’”

The protests have occurred in over 240 villages and towns in the country, suggesting that the discontent is widespread. The protests have intensified because of the heavy-handed response and the death count is over 25 so far. The effect of the COVID pandemic on Colombia has mirrored the experience of many other countries in the world. Unemployment in the country increased from 9% to 16% because of the economic slowdown caused by the disease. COVID has heightened the disparity between rich and poor in the world to an alarming degree:

“Globally, 41 percent of workers in the poorest 20 percent of their country’s income distribution said they lost their job or business as a result of the pandemic, compared with 23 percent of workers in the richest 20 percent. That gap in job loss is similar between those with a college degree (16 percent who have lost a job or business) and those without (35 percent).

“The gulf in economic vulnerability is strongly linked to the prevailing level of income inequality going into the pandemic. In the most economically egalitarian nations (as measured by the Gini coefficient for household income), workers with lower incomes and less education were protected from mass unemployment, in part through national policies that sought to prevent job loss.”

The relatively good news about COVID in the US is not reflected in many poor countries. India is the most destabilizing example so far, but Colombia suggests that we can anticipate further protests globally.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released a report on new “normals” for temperature and precipitation in the US. NOAA determines these normals for thirty-year periods and assesses current conditions with those periods. NOAA explains:

“U.S. Climate Normals are designed—and best-suited for—better understanding what is happening today. Rather than assess long-term climate trends, Normals reflect the impacts of the changing climate on our day-to-day weather experience. Normals are not merely averages of raw data. Thirty years of U.S. weather station observations are compiled, checked for quality, compared to surrounding stations, filled in for missing periods, and used to calculate not only averages, but many other measures. These then provide a basis for comparisons of temperature, precipitation, and other variables to today’s observations.”

The procedure is designed to help us make the distinction between weather and climate. We experience weather on a daily basis but climate is far less observable except over a long period of time. I have little difficulty in asserting that the climate today is different from when I was 12 years old (in 1961): spring comes earlier for me and winter starts a little later. I am pleased that NOAA agrees with my clearly unscientific assessment:

“The 1981–2010 average temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 52.8°F while the new average temperature for the contiguous U.S. for 1991-2020 is 53.3°F. The new normals period, 1991-2020, is the warmest on record for the country. But warming is not ubiquitous across the contiguous U.S. in either geographic space or time of year. Changes vary from season-to-season and month-to-month.

“For instance, the north-central U.S. Temperature Normals—for those in the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest—have cooled from 1981–2010 to 1991–2020, especially in the spring. The South and Southwest are considerably warmer. Normals were also generally warmer across the West and along the East Coast. Precipitation-wise, the Southwest was drier; wetter averages emerged in the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains, especially the Southeast in the spring.

NOAA presents its data graphically

The distinction between weather and climate is important. Europe experienced the coldest April in decades this year. Nonetheless, the trend toward warmer climate continues. European temperatures were the highest ever recorded in 2020:

“2020 was Europe’s warmest year to date, as temperatures rose by almost half a degree above previous records. Across the entire continent, mean temperatures exceeded the 1981-2010 average, with parts of northern and eastern Europe being more than 2°C warmer. The same regions had higher than average daily minimum temperatures, while France and Benelux countries saw higher daily maximum temperatures.

“’We’ve had some periods of exceptionally high temperatures, heatwaves in summer and a warm spell in autumn, though they were not as intense, widespread and long-lived as in recent years,’ says Dr. Francesca Guglielmo, senior scientist at the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and one of ESOTC report’s co-authors.

“The most striking temperature anomaly was last winter. Cold season temperatures rose on average about 1.9°C above the previous record and 3.4°C above the average for 1981-2010, in what C3S scientists deem ‘an exceptionally warm’ winter. ‘The number of days in which the temperature stayed below zero throughout the day illustrates this warming,’ says Dr. Freja Vamborg, senior scientist at C3S and lead author of the report. ‘Whether you have a freezing or non-freezing situation in a certain location, it makes a big difference.’”

It’s May Day. Unlike the US, the rest of the world celebrates the power and value of workers. It is unfortunate that Americans do not join in and instead celebrate the Pablum we call Labor Day in September.

Violent Scenes in France As Police and Protests Clash Over May Day Rallies, May Day 2021

Langston Hughes, Chant for May Day

Arundhati Roy has written a powerful essay on the COVID crisis in India for The Guardian. It is a very long essay but pulls together a number of important threads which serve to explain why the country is in such terrible straits. The situation in India is grim: there are shortages of oxygen, vaccines, hospital beds, and wood for cremation. Reuters reports:

“India’s total COVID-19 cases passed 18 million on Thursday after another world record number of daily infections, as gravediggers worked around the clock to bury victims and hundreds more were cremated in makeshift pyres in parks and parking lots.

“India reported 379,257 new infections and 3,645 new deaths on Thursday, health ministry data showed, the highest number of fatalities in a single day since the start of the pandemic.

“The world’s second most populous nation is in deep crisis, with hospitals and morgues overwhelmed.”

Initially, India took a very hardline against the virus, ordering a nation-wide lockdown with only four hours notice. That step, while economically disastrous, was effective in bringing down the number of COVID infections. The Washington Post describes the move:

“Modi’s approach to India’s current surge stands in contrast to his actions last spring. Last March, he ordered a strict nationwide lockdown, the world’s largest, with four hours’ notice at a time when the country had recorded about 500 coronavirus cases. The lockdown caused extreme economic hardship: More than 100 million people lost their jobs. Among them were millions of migrant workers who began leaving cities on foot to return to their home villages.

“The lockdown slowed transmission of the virus and gave India time to scale up testing and other capacities to fight the pandemic. Infections surged in the fall as restrictions were loosened across the country but receded early this year for reasons that remain unclear.”

“Modi’s national government as well as state authorities ‘went into the comfort zone of believing the pandemic has passed,’ said Srinath Reddy, the president of the Public Health Foundation of India. ‘That illusion came to settle in the minds of most people and clouded their judgment.’”

Roy reproduced parts of Prime Minister Modi’s speech last year in which he celebrated India’s success in containing the virus:

“Modi spoke at a time when people in Europe and the US were suffering through the peak of the second wave of the pandemic. He had not one word of sympathy to offer, only a long, gloating boast about India’s infrastructure and Covid-preparedness. I downloaded the speech because I fear that when history is rewritten by the Modi regime, as it soon will be, it might disappear, or become hard to find. Here are some priceless snippets:

“’Friends, I have brought the message of confidence, positivity and hope from 1.3 billion Indians amid these times of apprehension … It was predicted that India would be the most affected country from corona all over the world. It was said that there would be a tsunami of corona infections in India, somebody said 700-800 million Indians would get infected while others said 2 million Indians would die.’

“’Friends, it would not be advisable to judge India’s success with that of another country. In a country which is home to 18% of the world population, that country has saved humanity from a big disaster by containing corona effectively.’”

Her analysis of the crisis is damning but it also reflects the inadequacies of governments in Trump-era America and in Bolsonaro’s Brazil:

“The system has not collapsed. The ‘system’ barely existed. The government – this one, as well as the Congress government that preceded it – deliberately dismantled what little medical infrastructure there was. This is what happens when a pandemic hits a country with an almost nonexistent public healthcare system. India spends about 1.25% of its gross domestic product on health, far lower than most countries in the world, even the poorest ones. Even that figure is thought to be inflated, because things that are important but do not strictly qualify as healthcare have been slipped into it. So the real figure is estimated to be more like 0.34%. The tragedy is that in this devastatingly poor country, as a 2016 Lancet study shows, 78% of the healthcare in urban areas and 71% in rural areas is now handled by the private sector. The resources that remain in the public sector are systematically siphoned into the private sector by a nexus of corrupt administrators and medical practitioners, corrupt referrals and insurance rackets.

“Healthcare is a fundamental right. The private sector will not cater to starving, sick, dying people who don’t have money. This massive privatisation of India’s healthcare is a crime.

“The system hasn’t collapsed. The government has failed. Perhaps ‘failed’ is an inaccurate word, because what we are witnessing is not criminal negligence, but an outright crime against humanity. Virologists predict that the number of cases in India will grow exponentially to more than 500,000 a day. They predict the death of many hundreds of thousands in the coming months, perhaps more. My friends and I have agreed to call each other every day just to mark ourselves present, like roll call in our school classrooms. We speak to those we love in tears, and with trepidation, not knowing if we will ever see each other again. We write, we work, not knowing if we will live to finish what we started. Not knowing what horror and humiliation awaits us. The indignity of it all. That is what breaks us.

The crisis in India affects everyone in the world. Given the high number of cases and how quickly it has spread, the are legitimate fears that there will be a large number of mutations in the virus, some of which may be more resistant to the vaccines that have already been developed. But the world also relies heavily on the robust pharmaceutical sector of India. CNN reports:

“The country is a major player in COVAX, the global vaccine-sharing initiative that provides discounted or free doses for lower-income countries. India promised to supply 200 million COVAX doses that are being distributed to 92 poor countries. But its own rapidly worsening situation has prompted Delhi to shift focus from COVAX to prioritizing India’s own citizens….

“‘I don’t think the global leadership has woken up to the scenario of how bad this delay can be for the world,’ said Shruti Rajagopalan, a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. The moment India is short on vaccines and keeps its supplies for domestic purposes, it means other countries like South Africa and Brazil have to wait, she said. ‘You’re delaying the world getting vaccinated by many months,’ Shruti added.

“John Nkengasong, the director of Africa’s disease control body, warned earlier this month that India’s hold on exports could be ‘catastrophic’ for the continent’s vaccine rollout.”

The US and other states are stepping up relief actions, including vaccines and medical supplies like oxygen. But those supplies will take some time. In the meantime, Roy’s characterization of the failure of the Indian government looks accurate: “an outright crime against humanity“.