Category Archives: Wage Slavery

In India, COVID-19 has put the spotlight on migrant workers precarious working conditions. First, the sweeping lockdown left many workers jobless, forcing them to walk hundreds of kilometers to their native villages. Now, in a reaction to the coronavirus, states are loosening labor laws in a bid to get their economies up and running. As a consequence, migrant laborers have to work even more hours.

Punjab and Gujarat amended their Factories Act in April, increasing the work time to 72 hours every week. Rajasthan has upped working hours from 8 to 12 hours per day. Uttar Pradesh (UP) has exempted companies from almost all labor laws for the next three years. The relaxed UP laws relate to occupational safety, health, and working conditions, and those that pertain to contract workers and migrant laborers.

An estimated 450 million internal migrant workers make up 92 percent of the workforce in India, and no one seems to be looking after these workers. More than 700 million internal migrants globally continue to navigate the risk of working, despite the health crisis.

Migrant laborers in India have long been particularlyvulnerable to unfair labor practices. And labor protections often weaken further during crises. The recent call to loosen labor laws in UP and Gujarat dangerously sidesteps the minimalprotections in place for migrant workers in India. This post draws from my dissertation fieldwork in 2019 that investigates the aspirations and migration decisions of rural households in Nuapada District in the state of Odisha.

To begin with, hiring practices fail to protect migrant labor. For example, labor contractors lure workers with the prospect of cash advances into modern bondage working in brick kilns. In many cases, these workers who come from rural areas dont know the destination and rely on the contractors verbal assurances. Labor contractors in the construction and brick kiln industries do not operate openly. In the case of brick kiln workers in Odisha, the District Labor Office (DLO) issues the license for contractors for a specific number of workers. These licensed contractors however recruit remotely through other unlicensed subcontractors in the village. My interviews with migrant workers indicate that unlicensed subcontractors hire four to five times more workers than the license permits. The additional workers are completely invisible to the District Labor Office, although contractors are expected to register workers by submitting their contact information. This registration is also mandatory so that a family can access benefits like life insurance in case of a fatality.

Without any records of who is hiring and who is being hired, labor subcontractors as well as workers are completely invisible to the state and therefore cannot get any formal state protection. Further, because licensed contractors and sub-contractors as well as undocumented labor operate behind the scenes, theres a dangerous accountability gap. Workers dont know who should ensure their safety. As the COVID-19 crisis shows, non-standard broker practices weaken the first line of accountabilityfor the workers, who are expected to arrange for everything from transport back home and food, to coronavirus tests after the last day of work.

Second, the physicallocation of worksites furtheradds to the vulnerability of migrantworkers. Most heavy industries are located on the periphery or outside the residential and well-connected areas of cities or towns. During my visit to brick kilnsin Karimnagar, for example, I found that worksitesthat doubled as workers homeswere in isolated areas far from the closest town. Any access to public amenities like a hospital or a police station largely depends on the mercy of brick-kiln owners.

Further, for workers living in makeshift roomsright beside the brick kilns, working hours are hardly regulated. A12- to 13-hour day is not unusual, according to migrant workers I met. The inability to move without the knowledge or support of industry owners leads to arbitrary and exploitative norms. The brick kiln owners allowed workers to visit the nearby village for grocery shopping only once a day. But they do not allow two brick kiln workers to go to the village on the same day of the week. Kiln owners seem to suspect workers may share stories of mishaps and accidents at their kilns.

Migrant workers involved in manual daily-wage work are traditionally exposed to bonded labor, which is forced labor in lieu of debt, and other forms of modern slavery. The protection mechanisms vary drastically across the country. Places that are historical sources of migrant labor are forced to develop protections like worker registration and licensing of labor contractors, that remain largely opaque. In Nuapada, the district labor office is the local authority closest to workers. For a long time, migrantworkers had to be registered at the district labor office which could be as much as 50 to 70 km or more away from the migrants village. The incentives to register include life insurance for the worker and a monetary allowance for childcare.

Now that panchayats, the village level governing bodies, register migrantworkers, the number of registrations may have risen. Even with more workers registered, freeing oneself from bonded labor remains a bureaucratic process. To be rescued, the worker must file a complaint at the labor office associated with their residence. However, its almost impossible for a worker at a brick kilnin Karimnagar to file a complaint with the Nuapadalabor office. Between the low literacy levels of migrant labor, their poor access to telephones, and the great distance between the workplace and workers home villages, this option is unrealistic.

Invisible migrant labor brokers, isolated workplaces, and prevalent bonded labor practices erode any safety mechanisms for migrant workers in times of crisis. Migrant labor protection has to compete with demands of economic growth and urban development, forces that would maintain the status quo.

The occupational safety protections for migrant workers are weak by design. The translucent (if not opaque) labor practices also indicate why the recent criticism of the central governments response will not lead to significant labor reforms. In Karnataka, builders actively lobbied with the regional government to restrict the mobility of migrant workers. The state governments recently announced the possibility of relaxing labor laws to help local manufacturing and constructionbusinesses.

Migrant workers in India were leading a life where exploitation and vulnerability were the norms. The COVID-19 crisis has made their vulnerability more visible to everyone. Lacking strong worker safeguards, migrant labor cannot claim protection from the state. And the state can conveniently forget about these workers.

Kundan Mishra, a PhD Candidate in the Global Governance and Human Security program at University of Massachusetts Boston, is currently working on his dissertation about internal migration and human security in India.

Sources: BBC, Financial Express, International Labour Organization, Labour Directorate (Government of Odisha), Quartz India, Reuters, The Atlantic, The Hindu, The Wall Street Journal, The Wire.

Photo Credit:A Labor pull cart for selling at the wholesale fruit & vegetable market in New Delhi, India, during the lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus, Shutterstock.com, All Rights Reserved.

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COVID Crisis in India: Migrant Workers Exposed to Further Exploitation - New Security Beat

The repeat showing of Downton Abbey on ITV3 is timely, coinciding with calls for a re-examination of slavery, racism and imperialism. Set in an age of valets and butlers, it reminds us that some of the great men who built the Empire, traded around the globe and amassed vast fortunes were apparently incapable of putting on their trousers without help.

British families are encouraged to take the knee on their doorsteps as part of the Black Lives Matter campaign. Alarm bells ring. At one level, taking the knee is a simple act of remembrance of black people who died in police custody. But when white people take the knee it can also be seen as an act of atonement. And where might that lead?

This is by a reader of The Independent website: Anyone refusing to take the knee should be reported to the police by neighbours and prosecuted for hate crimes . . . and made to sign a racist register every week or month for 5-7 years. It says something for today's febrile atmosphere that I cannot judge whether the writer is being serious or ironic. But at a time when Fawlty Towers is being removed from TV-streaming for alleged racism, expect the unexpected.

Do not assume, as some activists will tell you, that because you are white you are automatically guilty. Some Brits were enriched by the slave trade; most were not. And the abolition of slavery was brought about largely by the revulsion of ordinary, decent English people. By 1792, the abolitionists had presented Parliament with no fewer than 519 petitions containing 390,000 signatures, at a time when England's population was only about five million. To suggest that all white people are tainted with slavery is a slur on our heritage.

My family has its roots in the North of England. My forbears were wage-slaves working in hellish cotton mills. They were part of the Victorian awkward squad. They were Liberals, radicals and God-fearing Methodists who admired the great reformers of their century. They recognised slavery as a great evil. They sang the spirituals of the American cotton plantations in their chapels. They supported the courageous reformers of the age. When my great-grandfather was born in 1874 his parents named him Bright, in honour of the Liberal campaigner John Bright. These were British working people who, like millions of others, yearned for a fairer future the New Jerusalem. To demand that their descendants take the knee for the sins of other folk's rich ancestors is bizarre.

Meanwhile, back at Downton Abbey, Hugh Bonneville is still the lord of the manor but is haunted by the movie success he has enjoyed since then in the tale of a small bear. Anyone else expecting Paddington to pop up?

Nimbly bringing together slavery and grand houses, it always irritates Americans to be reminded of the difference between Buckingham Palace and the White House. Buckingham Palace was built by free men.

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Peter Rhodes on a missing bear, the ending of slavery and the fraught business of taking the knee - expressandstar.com

To the editor: I do not get the problem people have with removing statues and names that celebrate 19th century American traitors. The Confederates waged an armed rebellion against the United States.

I have visited many Civil War battlefields, and standing at the Bloody Angle at Gettysburg, looking across the field where the third days battle was fought, I thought what I had been told about the area: that you could walk across that battlefield and not touch the ground, because you were walking on the bodies of men and horses.

I have never heard of a country that spent four years fighting against a rebel army at a terrible cost, and after their defeat, allowing them to erect monuments to the murderous traitors who instigated and perpetuated the bloodshed that cost the lives of 620,000 Americans.

So yeah, I dont have a problem with monuments to Confederate officers being taken down from public spaces.

Marty Walsh, Lakeside, Calif.

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To the editor: I say take the Confederate statues down, but leave the pedestals with Black Lives Matter graffiti up. This would be a true monument to our times.

Margaret Parkhurst, Westchester

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To the editor: The president has a problem with taking a knee during the national anthem because it disrespects our flag, our country and our service members.

Yet, Confederate generals can wage war against our flag, our country and even kill our service members, and the president supports keeping their names on United States military bases. These Confederates were traitors and fought for the establishment of a non-democratic, racist nation that practiced human slavery.

This is another example of reconciliation for the slave owners but not the ex-slaves and their descendants.

Steven Jones, Eastvale, Calif.

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Confederates were murderous traitors. Remove their names - Los Angeles Times

Welcome to America, land of the free, home of the most slaves. Now some will naturally be alarmed by such a bold gesture. I ask you to be mindful that the 13th amendment in the U.S. Constitution states that slavery wasnt necessarily abolished but rather deferred to convicted prisoners carrying out their sentences. Now add that along with the fact the United States has the highest prison & jail population (2,193,798 in adult facilities in 2020), & the highest incarceration rate in the world (724 per 100,000 population in 2020), in addition to The New York Times report that misconduct was found in 75% of cases blacks were exonerated of a murder conviction.

In fact, blacks convicted of murder are a staggering 50% more likely than any other race to be innocent of a murder of which they were convicted. The Black race makes up less than 13% of Americas population, yet are convicted of 52% of the nations murder convictions. Statistically its improbable unless one says that its in all black peoples DNA to be murderers (totally ridiculous and not what the author is saying) or blacks are being wrongfully convicted at a vastly disproportionate number. Keep in mind many are being housed in privately-owned prisons. Also remember the nations prison system was not in place until 1891, which was after slavery ended and most slaves by then were displaced, without paying jobs, money, assets, or education.

Thats a heck of a sequence of coincidences huh?

You may not like it, but its a statistical fact America was not only built on free labor, but still profits from the free labor off the backs of enslaved prisoners. Private prisons also still exist, including in the very own state of your Memphis Grizzlies which technically is Tennessee (although there is a growing crowd of Memphians who now recognize Memphis as its own sovereign state). How can we expect unbiased justice when private prisons can have local lawmakers pass laws that allow them to arrest, convict and sentence people to these private prisons and in turn put these prisoners to work at a wage that is virtually free labor. The average prison labor paycheck isnt even enough to cover the average cost of essential commissary. Those wages? On average $0.86 an hour, down from the reported average of $0.93 in 2001. The cost of commissary goods have increased, while the average prison labor wage has decreased. Oh by the way, states such as Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, & Georgia, dont pay prisoners anything in exchange for free labor.

Some will say Dont do the crime!, but how many times have we seen convicted criminals found to be innocent in the wake of current DNA technology? Archie Williams is the latest sensation of the show, Americas Got Talent. He was convicted for the rape of a white woman. Archie was recently found innocent after serving 36 years of a life sentence in Angola State Penitentiary of Louisiana.

Stop what youre doing for a second and just imagine serving 36 years in one of the most notorious prisons in the world. Not to mention wearing the jacket of a black man who raped a white woman. Yet truthfully, you were actually at home asleep when the assault occurred. This is the pain Archie Williams sang with as he crooned Elton Johns Dont Let the Sun Go Down on Me.

More now than ever in my lifetime, more white people are asking, What can we do to help? How can we fix this?

There are clearly systemic measures in place against black people. So I beg to ask, why shouldnt there be systemic measures put in place to reverse the clearly intended poverty and oppression of blacks? Specifically the disparity in wealth, health, education and police brutality between black and white people.

Are the white people that have the knowledge and resources of things such as the modern tech industry, finance, real estate, business loans and grants, obtaining service contracts, or economics in general willing to share vitally impactful information and relationships with black people?

Are white people willing to lobby for the government to return funding for things like vocational technology programs in high schools so black kids that have the option of having a licensed trade coming out of high school as a means to earn decent income immediately even if they still attend a four year university for another occupation?

Are white people willing to help more black youth and adults start their own businesses and means of income? Offering not only funding but teaching black people how to develop a business budget, business plan, marketing plan, operations plan, etc.?

Maybe youre a gatekeeper or decision maker of sorts at a streaming service or record label and can help black artists receive equal budgeting, radio and marketing opportunities as their white counterparts? Or demolish the urban title placed on black music that prevents it from receiving an opportunity on mainstream pop culture platforms?

Will white people not only demand an end to police brutality but also prison and education reform of black people?

America was built on the free labor of blacks who were forced into slavery and that free labor is valued today somewhere north of 97 trillion dollars. Those who were enslaved, mostly died so poor they couldnt afford a decent burial. Their descendants inherited their debts and bondage on top of being discriminated against systemically in every facet of American society. Due to the emotional, mental and financial setbacks this systemic oppression has caused these Black American descendants, shouldnt they receive some sort of compensation for the 97 trillion dollars of free labor accumulated that the black race is still severely recovering from? Especially considering todays descendants of those white people still benefit from the free labor of black people forced into over 200 years of slavery while the black descendants still suffer from it?

I also ask, are you willing to sacrifice and in some cases suffer in order to have equality reform? It feels good to say one wants change for the other in the moment but are you passionate enough for a follow through and on a consistent basis? Ending racism requires sacrifice and commitment.

Are you willing to intervene if you witness a cop kneeling his weight on the neck of a black man?

Are you a white cop that is now willing to call out a fellow officer if you witness them doing something to a black person that they wouldnt do to their own?

Are you in a position of leadership at your place of employment and willing to give that black person an opportunity to move up or make significant progress within the company and thus for their career as well as yours as an equal opportunist?

I dare to ask politicians and those lobbying for black people to vote is there a plan of action in place to systematically address gentrification?

Is there a plan in place to systemically help black people finally access the wealth of Americas banks, so that black people can be approved for more business grants and loans as well as property financing?

Is there a plan of action in place to address the health care crisis of the black race, of which black women have the highest mortality rate of any other races. Black people are at the highest risk of diabetes and dental crisis as well.

Hopefully I get to see the results of real change in ending racism, if not Im even more glad if my kids do. However there are so many layers of racism to unravel and decipher that its not nearly enough room to cover in this article.

Have you ever bothered to wonder how traumatic it must be? Black, brown and non-Christian people have been forced (even to the point of death) to honor the tradition of saluting the American flag, and the national anthem despite black people knowing it was written at a time America recognized black people legally as barnyard animals who could talk and take orders. A time when black people were the furthest from free.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Follow @sbngrizzlies

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May I have a real talk with you America? - Grizzly Bear Blues

Sparked by the police murder of George Floyd and fueled by Minneapolis authorities reluctance to arrest and charge the murderers three police accomplices, mass protests have been sweeping across the United States with an intensity not seen since the 1960s. In over 150 cities, African Americans and their allies have flooded the streets, braving the COVID-19 pandemic, braving police violence, challenging centuries of racial and class inequalities, demanding liberty and justice for all, day after day defying a corrupt, racist power structure based on violent repression.

1. Breaches in the Systems Defenses

Today [June 7ed.], after ten consecutive days in the streets, this outpouring of popular indignation against systematic, historic injustice, has opened a number of breaches in the defensive wall of the system. The legal authorities in the state of Minnesota, where George Floyd was murdered, have been forced to arrest and indict as accomplices the three other policemen who aided and abetted the killer, against whom the charges were raised from third to second degree murder. A split has opened at the summit of power, where the Secretary of Defense and numerous Pentagon officials have broken with their Commander-in-Chief, Donald Trump, who has attempted to mobilize the U.S. Army against the protesters.

This historic uprising is an outpouring of accumulated black anger over decades of unpunished police murders of unarmed African-Americans. It articulates the accumulated grief of families and communities, the sheer outrage over impunity for killer cops in both the North and the South. It reflects anger at capitalist Americas betrayal of Martin Luther Kings dream of non-violent revolution. and horror at the return to the era of public lynchings cheered on by the President of the United States. It impatiently demands that America at long last live up to its proclaimed democratic ideals, here and now. In the words of one African-American protester, William Achukwu, 28, of San Francisco: Our Declaration of Independence says life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Right now, we are only dealing with the life part here. This is a first step. But liberty is what a lot of people out here are marching for.

2. Violence and Non-Violence

It came as no surprise that local and state officials across the U.S. reacted to largely peaceful, spontaneous mass protests against police brutality and racism by unleashing a maelstrom of militarized police violence.[1]For a generation, the Federal government has been quietly gifting huge stocks of surplus military equipment, including tanks, to local police forces and sheriffs offices eager to play with lethal new toys designed for counter-insurgency in places like Afghanistan. Under both Democrats (Clinton, Obama) and Republicans (Bush, Trump) the federal state has been arming law enforcement in preparation for a preventive counter-revolution. This is precisely what President Trump is calling for today: full dominance by means of military crackdowns, mass arrests and long prison sentences in the name of law and order. Thanks to the determination of these masses of militant but largely non-violent protesters, the military is divided and Trump will not have his way.

Apropos of violence, it was feared at first that the numerous incidences of setting fires, smashing shop fronts, and looting, especially after dark when the large, orderly crowds of mixed demonstrators had gone home, would in some way spoil the uprising and provide a pretext for the violent, military suppression of the whole movement, as called for by Trump, who blamed it all on an imaginary terrorist group called ANTIFA (short for anti-fascism, in fact a loose network). At the same time, reports of gangs of young white racists wearing MAGA (Make America Great Again) hats committing vandalism, of Accelerationists systematically setting fires in black neighborhoods to provoke revolution, and of violent policeprovocateursare not entirely to be discounted.

Such actions play into Trumps hands. On the other hand, the more reasonable voices of the hundreds of thousands of angry but nonviolent protesters, might not have been listened to by the authorities if it had not been for the threat of violence from the fringes if their voices were ignored. Instead of burning their own neighborhoods, as has happened in past riots, todays militants are strategically hitting symbols of state repression and capitalism lighting up and destroying police property, trashing the stores of million-dollar corporations, and even pushing against the gates of the White House. In any case, as far as looting is concerned, as the spokeswomen of BLM argued at George Floyds funeral, white people have been looting Africa and African-Americans for centuries. Payback is long over-due.

3. Black and White Anti-Racist Convergence

What is especially remarkable and heartening to see as we view the impassioned faces of the demonstrators through images on videos, newspaper photos, and TV reports, is the realization that at least half the demonstrators in the crowds proclaiming Black Lives Matter are white people! Here again, a serious breach has been opened in the wall of systemic, institutionalized racism that has for centuries enabled the U.S. ruling class to divide and conquer the working masses, pitting slave laborers and their discriminated descendants against relatively privileged white wage slaves in a competitive race to the bottom. Today, they are uniting in the fight for justice and equality. Equally remarkable is the continuing. leadership role of women, especially African-American women in the founding of both the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the Womens March against Trumps Inauguration. The participation of young and old, LGBT and physically challenged folks is also to be remarked.

This convergence ofthese freedom struggles across deeply rooted racial divides promises to open new paths as U.S. social movements emerge from the COVID confinement. Even more remarkable, albeit limited, are incidents, also recorded on citizen video, of individual cops apologizing for police violence, hugging victims, and taking the knee with demonstrators. Public officials, like the Mayor of Los Angeles, have also been obliged to meet with the protesters and to apologize for their previous racist remarks. Moreover, as we shall see below, serious cracks have emerged in the unity of the U.S. military, both among the ranks, which are 40 percent people of color, and even among top officers. Such is the power of this massive, self-organized, inter-racial movement demanding freedom and justice for all.

4. Cracks Within the Regime

Today, after ten days during which the protests have continued to increase numerically and to deepen in radical content, cracks have opened in the defenses of the ruling corporate billionaire class and have reached the White House, where Donald J. Trump, the self-deluded, ignorant bully and pathological liar supposedly in charge, has finally been challenged by his own appointed security officials.

It must be said that in Trump, todays billionaire ruling class has the representative it deserves, and the Donalds ineptitude, visible to all, is symbolic of its historic incapacity to retain the right to rule. Trumps flawed, self-centered personality incarnates the narrow class interests of the 0.01 percent who own more than the bottom 70 percent of the population. His obvious selfishness exemplifies that of the billionaires he represents (and pretends to be one of). Out of his willful ignorance, Trump speaks for a corporate capitalist class indifferent to the global ecological and social consequences of its ruthless drive to accumulate, indifferent to truth and justice, indifferent indeed to human life itself.

Trumps clownish misrule has embarrassed the state itself. First came the childish spectacle of the most powerful man in the world hunkering down in his basement bunker and ordering the White House lights turned off (so the demonstrators outside couldnt see in?). Then came the order to assault peaceful protesters with chemical weapons to clear the way for President Trump to walk to the nearby Presidents Church (which he never attends and whose pastor he didnt bother to consult) in order to have himself photographed brandishing a huge white Bible (which he has most likely never read) like a club.

Trump, whos only earned success in life was his long-running reality-TV show The Apprentice, apparently devised this bizarre publicity stunt to rally his political base of right-wing Christians and show how religious he is. But it backfired when the Bishop of Washington pointed out that Jesus preached love and peace, not war and vengeance. The next day, even demagogues like Pat Robinson of the far-right wing Christian Coalition spoke out against him, while the anti-TrumpNew York Timestriumphantly headlined: Trumps Approval Slips Where He Cant Afford to Lose It: Among Evangelicals.

Let us pause to note that American Christianity, like every other aspect of American civilization, is a knot of contradictions all rooted in the fundamental problem of the color line. Although the racist, conservative, pro-Israel,Christian right has been the core of Trumps support, liberation theology and the black church have long been the base of the civil rights movement for equality. Indeed, George Floyd (known as Big Floyd and the Gentle Giant) was himself a religiously motivated community peacemaker. So are many of the demonstrators, white and black, chanting No Justice, No Peace.

Trumps phony populist act may have helped catapult him into office in 2016 (thanks to Republican-rigged electoral system and despite losing the popular vote by three million votes), but asAbraham Lincoln is often supposed to have saidof the American public, You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cant fool all of the people all of the time. Today, Trumps time is up.

5. Police: The Vicious Dogs of the Bourgeoisie

To me, the most emblematic image of the moment is that of a self-deluded Donald Trump, huddled (like Hitler) in his underground bunker with the White House lights turned off, shivering with fear and rage at the demonstrators outside, and threatening to sick (purely imaginary) vicious dogs on them. Trump has the Doberman mentality of the junkyard owner from Queens he incarnates; he is the spiritual descendant of the slave-catcher Simon Legree chasing the escaped slave Eliza with his dogs (seeUncle Toms Cabin).

Vicious dogs of the bourgeoisiethats what the police are paid to be (even if a few of them may turn out to be basically friendly German Shepherds underneath, like those who took the knee with the protesters). Their canines are the sharp teeth of the American state. Along with the Army, cops are the essence of the actual deep state which Marx defined as special bodies of armed men, courts, prisons etc. (as opposed to the people armed in democratically-run popular militias).

Although subservient to the bourgeois state, this police apparatus, like the Mafia with which it is sometimes entwined, has a corporate identity of its own based onomertor strict group loyalty. This unwritten rule is the notorious Blue Wall of Silence, which prevents cops who see their brothers committing graft and violent abuses from speaking out or testifying against them. The blue wall assures police impunity, and it is organized through police unions that, although affiliated with the AFL-CIO, are violently reactionary, anti-labor and pro-Trump. The President of the International Police Union has been filmed wearing a red Make America Great Again hat and shaking hands with Trump at a political rally, while protesters in Minneapolis have been calling for the ousting of Bob Kroll, the local police union president who has been widely criticized for his unwavering support of officers accused of wrongdoing.

The Blue Wall of silence extends up the repressive food chain to prosecutors, District Attorneys and even progressive mayors, like New Yorks Bill de Blasio, who defended N.Y. police driving their SUVs straight into a crowd of demonstrators, although his own mixed-race daughter was arrested as a Black Lives Matter demonstrator! De Blasiolike his reactionary predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, former law and order District Attorney and current Trump advisorknows that his political future is dependent on the good will of the Police Union. (Even junkyard owners are afraid of their own vicious dogs.)

This customary coddling of the police even extended to theNew York Timesinitial coverage of violent police attacks on members of the press in Minneapolis and elsewhere. In its report, theTimeshid behind a twisted notion of objectivity (blame both sides) to avoid pointing fingers at cops, thus observing the blue wall of silence even when reporters are victims. (At this writing over a thousand such attacks have been recorded). Using passive voice rather than naming the actual assailants (brutal racist cops), theNYTreport conflated a single isolated incident where a crowd attacked news people from Trumps FOX network, with systematic, nationwide police attacks on members of the media.[2]

A week later, that sacrosanct Blue Wall is beginning to crumble. Not only have the D.A. and Governor of Minnesota been forced to escalate the charges against Derek Chauvin, George Floyds killer, to second degree murder and arrest his three police accomplices, the latter have begun to rat each other out. Facing 40 years in prison and a bail of at least $750,000, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng, both rookies, are blaming Chauvin, the senior officer at the scene and a training officer, while Tou Thao, the other former officer charged in the case, hadreportedlycooperated with investigators before they arrested Chauvin.

6. Cracks in the Military Wall

Such is the power of todays mass Black Lives Matter uprising, that it has opened a breach in U.S. capitalisms most important defense wall: the military. For if the police are American capitalisms junkyard Dobermans, the Armed Forces are the basis of its domination over the world. And if the cry for equal justice has opened a tiny crack in the Blue Wall of Silence, the breach in the ranks of the U.S. military, which is 40 percent people of color and recruited from the poorest classes of American society, is more like a gulf.

The rank and file in todays U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force are a reflection of American society, of a population of mainly poor and minority people for whom the military provides one possible solution to unemployment and discrimination. The mood of the troops reflects that of the communities they are recruited from, and their officers, who are responsible for their morale, discipline, and loyalty, must be sensitive to their feelings. This situation is epitomized by the following quotations from theNew York Times:

The Navys top officer, Adm. Michael M. Gilday, said in a message on Wednesday to all sailors: I think we need to listen. We have black Americans in our Navy and in our communities that are in deep pain right now. They are hurting.

And Chief Master Sgt. Kaleth O. Wright of the Air Force, who is black, wrote anextraordinary Twitter thread declaring, I am George Floyd.

Although Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,released a messageto top military commanders on Wednesday, June 3 affirming that every member of the armed forces swears an oath to defend the Constitution, which he said gives Americans the right to freedom of speech, the Generals and Admirals, retired and active, who have been speaking out for racial justice and the rights of demonstrating citizens this week are not all sudden converts to the cause of peace and justice. Rather, the American officer class is sharply focused on its global mission, which is to protect American domination around the world by leading these troops to kill and be killed in bloody civil war situations in mainly non-white countries.

TheNew York Timesarticle cited above also quotes an email from Adm. Sandy Winnefeld, a retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

We are at the most dangerous time for civil-military relations Ive seen in my lifetime. It is especially important to reserve the use of federal forces for only the most dire circumstances that actually threaten the survival of the nation. Our senior-most military leaders need to ensure their political chain of command understands these things.

For the troops, policing the world for capitalism is an endless, incomprehensible and demoralizing mission of violent counter-insurrection from which they return physically and psychologically damaged, often haunted by guilt, only to face unemployment and lack of support from the public and the underfunded Veterans Authority. As for the officers, it is a question of maintaining discipline and morale. The top brass know that deploying troops trained in counter-insurrection to control civil disturbances on U.S. soil would inevitably have one of two negative results (if not both): 1. unacceptable violence against civilians and/or 2. fraternization with the protesters, mutiny, and disobedience among the ranks. Hence the Pentagons open break with their law and order Commander-in-Chief. The danger of fraternization is especially real in National Guard regiments, whose troops are drawn from the populations of the states their families live in. As anotherTimesarticlenoted:

Senior Pentagon leaders worry that a militarized and heavy-handed response to the protests, Mr. Trumps stated wish, will turn the American public against the troops, like what happened in the waning years of the Vietnam War, when National Guard troops in combat fatigues battled antiwar protesters at Kent StateAdm. Mike Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, denounced the use of the military to support the political acts of a president who had laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country.

Although the eternal showman Trump apparently appointed Mark Milley aschairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the basis of the Generals physical resemblance to John Wayne, Milley happens to be a serious military historian. So is Secretary of Defense Esper. Both are aware that revolutions can only happen when there is a split in the ranks of the soldiers. In their West Point courses on counterinsurgency, they have certainly read of the classic example of Russia in 1917 when the Cossacks were sent to block the demonstrators in St. Petersburg. These fierce cavalry men sat passively still on their horses as the strikers dove between their legs, leading Trotsky to famously remark that the revolution passes underneath the belly of a Cossacks horse. And indeed, not long after this incident the Russian soldiers formed soviets (councils) and joined the workers and peasants in overthrowing the Czar.

Of course, in 1917 Russia was in the middle of a social crisis, ruled by an inept, self-deluded autocrat and an outdated, parasitical aristocracy, heedlessly bleeding lives and treasure into an endless, pointless, unpopular foreign war. Nothing even vaguely similar could ever happen in optimistic, triumphant, happy, America under the firm leadership and uniting presence of our loveable President, Donald J. Trump.

7. Race and Class in U.S. History

American society has been riddled with contradictions since its beginnings, and these contradictions, rooted in race and class, are still being played out today in the streets of over 150 U.S. cities. Todays uprisings, interracial from the beginning, express popular frustration that after centuries of struggle against slavery, after a bloody fratricidal Civil War in the 1860s and after the second American revolution of Reconstruction, after the Civil Rights movement and the urban riots of the 1960s, the lives of the descendants of black slaves are still not safe in the land that first proclaimed the human right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The murder of George Floyd is said to be the straw that broke the camels back. It was the straw that set fire to the haystack of anger and frustration that was smoldering for generations. Will this blaze be yet another fire of straw, fated to die out? I think not. The context has changed. U.S. society, like the whole capitalist world, is in crisis. The economy, with productivity declining, with inequality and unemployment increasing, with debt and speculation ballooning was already in crisis. The pandemic pushed it over the top, and the resulting recession has only just begun. Thirty years after the post-Cold War new world order of democracy, peace and un-ending grown was proclaimed, few Americans believe that their lives and those of their children likely to improve, what with social and ecological doom impending. The system has little to promise them and its leaders little to inspire confidence in them. In other words, they are no longer politically and socially hegemonic and must depend on coercion to hold power. Today, the credibility and legitimacy of that coercive power, the cops and army, is being called into question by the masses, white and colored, demanding justice and equality.

The police may well continue to attack the demonstrators and while Trump and his followers call for militarization of the country in the name of protecting property, law and order, it is clear that a breach has been opened in the Blue Wall of Silence protecting the privileges of the billionaire class against the power of the working masses who today face not only a political crisis but also the crisis of an ongoing pandemic, the crisis of poverty and mass unemployment, and the impending climate crisis of which COVID is a symptomatic forerunner.

Throughout U.S. history, from the white Abolitionists, to the Yankee Civil War volunteers, to the Northern carpet-baggers who worked for Reconstruction, to the white Civil Rights marchers of the 1960s to the millions of whites in the streets proclaiming Black Lives Matter today, the unity in struggle of Americas racialized peoples has brought about whatever progress in freedom and democracy this race-benighted Republic as ever known.

Todays privileged white demonstratorsthemselves victims to a lesser degree of American capitalismknow in their hearts that they can never be free and never be safe from state violence until black lives really do matter. They know that Black and White Unite and Fight is the only possible way to block authoritarian government, prevent fascism, establish democracy, institute class equality, and face the future with a modicum of hope.

*********

[1]Facing Protests Over Use of Force, Police Respond With More Forcehttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/police-tactics-floyd-protests.html. Videos showed officers using batons, tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets on protesters and bystanders.

[2]A Reporters Cry on Live TV: Im Getting Shot! Im Getting Shot!https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/us/minneapolis-protests-press.html. See the following phrases in italics: From a television crew assaulted by protesters to a photographer struck in the eye, journalists havefound themselvestargeted on the streets of America. Linda Tirado, a freelance photographer, activist and author,was shotin the left eye Friday while covering the street protests in Minneapolis. Ms. Tirado is one of a number of journalists around the country whowere attacked, arrested or otherwise harassedsometimes by police and sometimes by protestersduring their coverage of the uprisings that have erupted nationwide after the death of George Floyd in MinneapolisWith trust in the news media lagging, journalists havefound themselvestargeted.

*********

This piece was originally published at New Politics.

Continue reading here:

Ten days that may have changed the world: an internationalist perspective - Red Flag

Huffpost AustraliaScott Morrison Says There Was No Slavery In Australia', Instantly Gets Dragged On Twitter

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison drew strong criticism after he said that there was no slavery in Australia during a discussion of the early days of British settlement, which he acknowledged was pretty brutal.

He told Sydney radio: While slave ships continued to travel around the world, when Australia was established, sure it was a pretty brutal settlement ... but there was no slavery in Australia.

Historians, First Nations activists and a number of lawmakers called the PM out on the factually incorrect comments.

Sharman Stone, a former federal lawmaker turned politics professor at Monash University said, Slavery of Indigenous, men, women and children is well documented in a series of State government inquiries, in particular in the WA Royal Commission into the conditions of Natives, 1904, but also in 1913, 1929 in SA and Commonwealth parliamentary papers.

Slaves in Australia were made to work in the pearling, fishing, the pastoral industries or provide domestic labour.

The capturing of labour from the Pacific to work in Queensland cane fields is also well documented, Stone said.

Denial of slavery in Australia is akin to denial of the Stolen Generations. Now is the time for all Australians to learn, understand and acknowledge its history.

Rapper Briggs scoffed at the PMs statements.

Blackfullas worked for free, for the love of it. Bit of sun, bit of air, bit of a chain around your neck, bit of a stolen wage, he Tweeted.

Labor Senator for the Northern Territory Malarndirri McCarthy told ABC News Breakfast on Friday that the PM needed to get out more.

This is a big country and there are so many things that need to be understood. And truth-telling begins with telling all those stories, she said.

Meanwhile Bruce Pascoe, the award-winning author of Dark Emu condemned Morrisons comments.

When you capture people, and put chains around their necks, and make them walk 300 kilometres and then set them to work on cattle stations, whats that called?

Many others on Twitter called out Morrison with someinviting him to sugar cane regions of Queensland to work for free.

See the rest here:

Scott Morrison Says There Was No Slavery In Australia', Instantly Gets Dragged On Twitter - HuffPost Australia

In 1999, Washington Post music writer Richard Harrington asked Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello whether he thought any of the band's fans could be "oblivious" to the political content of their music. "It's not very well hidden," Morello said. "It's on every Rage T-shirt, on every backdrop, in every song and every video, on the front of the amplifiers. I don't think you can get with Rage Against the Machine without at least being aware of what it's about."

It seemed preposterous that anyone could have overlooked the band's message(s) then, or that they could've even ignored the cover of their debut album, which featured Malcolm Browne's still-shocking photograph of Thch Qung c, the Buddhist monk who sat cross-legged on a cushion in a Saigon intersection and lit himself on fire to protest the government's treatment of Buddhists.

It's equally hard to imagine someone listening to literally any song on the three records that Rage had released at the time and missing the lyrics about racial inequality and class warfare ("Now I'm rolling down Rodeo with a shotgun / These people aint seen a brown skin man since their grandparents bought one") about political hypocrisy ("They rally round the family with a pocketful of shells") or about white supremacy's prevalence in law enforcement (every word of "Killing in the Name.")

And more than 28 years after Rage laced their boots, clenched their fists, and released their first 52 minutes of righteous fury, it's bonkers to imagine that a dude like Scott Castaneda exists. Earlier this week, the Michigan man logged into his Twitter account and sent 260 unfortunate characters to Morello. "I use [sic] to be a fan until your political opinions come out," he wrote. "Music is my sanctuary and the last thing I want to hear is political bs when Im listening to music. As far as Im concerned you and Pink are completely done. Keep running your mouth and ruining your fan base."

First, Scott, we're sorry to hear that you've been cryogenically frozen for the better part of the 21st century, but congrats on finally being defrosted. But the larger question here is how can anyone become a so-called Rage fan without noticing the "political opinions"? That's like writing a letter to Count Dracula to tell him that you appreciate the architecture of his castle, but have recently discovered a few problems with his dietary habits. And finally, having a go at Tom Morello has been a bad idea since about 1968. "Scott!!! What music of mine were you a fan of that DIDNT contain political BS? I need to know so I can delete it from the catalogue," Morello responded.

Other Twitter users enthusiastically ratio-ed Castaneda to the earth's core and back. (He has since deleted his account.) "I do miss RATM music when it was all about partying, highschool crushes and candies," one person wrote. "I liked Sesame Street until they started introducing so many 'numbers' and 'letters' into their music," another added.

"It's one of those things where, can we just listen to music and just enjoy life? EDM, techno, rock, I get all kinds of different stuff, and that's my safe haven," Castaneda told the Detroit Metro Times. "I don't want to listen to political stuff. And once someone taints that for me, it just kills the mood." (He added that he knew the band had "always been political," but "it's getting worse and worse." Never mind that lately, everything feels like it's getting worse and worse.)

A willingness to uncompromisingly challenge the establishment is right there in RATM's band name, and it's been a part of the band's ethos since before there even was a band. After the members of Morello's early-90s band Lock Up went their assorted ways, he took out an ad in a SoCal music weekly to try to find a "politically radical front-man" for his "hip-hop, hard rock, punk rock" band. ("I didn't get too many calls," he told the Hartford Courant in 1997but he did eventually connect with rapper and lyricist Zack de la Rocha, who ticked all of those boxes, and more.)

Ignoring Rage's unyielding activism and the political causes they've championed isn't even reading Playboy for the articles; it's peeling the address label from the magazine's front page, tearing out a DirecTV ad, and throwing the rest into the bin. There's even an entire Wikipedia page called "Political views and activism of Rage Against the Machine," which covers everything from their support of Mexico's Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) to their feedback-soaked, all-nude anti-censorship demonstration, with brief stops to mention how they were asked to leave the Saturday Night Live set after hanging upside-down American flags from their amps.

The band's politics have also been a central focus of almost every piece written about them for the past two decades-plus. For example:

"Asked what he thinks of the Russian Revolution today, Morello notes that today is the 4th of July, and ties the original hopes of the Russian Revolution to those of America's Revolutionary War. He brings it up to the present, observing 'There's a permanent culture of resistance here in Russia, and I feel pretty comfortable with that,' before cautioning Russians fleeing the authoritarian past not to adopt the moden excesses of the West. 'I would warn all your listeners to closely watch Boris Yeltsin and his masters on Wall Street,' he finishes."

"The World's Most Dangerous Band," Spin, October 1996

"Indeed, de la Rocha will not rock without a mission: 'Thats why Im in this bandto give space and volume to various struggles throughout the country and the world. To me, the tension that exists in this band, and its effect on me, is a minimal sacrifice.' Without the politics, he contends, 'I would not be in this band. And thats the honest truth.' [...] On his first trip [to Mexico] in the spring of 1995, de la Rocha joined a team of observers from Mexico City monitoring talks between the Zapatista army and Mexican government officials. At one point, de la Rochas group formed a protective human chain around the building where the negotiations took place'to make sure,' he says, 'that if there was any attempt on the Zapatistas lives, we would be there.'"

"The Battle of Rage Against the Machine," Rolling Stone, November 1999

"The band's activism has many faces. In May, for instance, a conservatively dressed de la Rocha addressed the International Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations on the [Mumia] Abu-Jamal case as well as the racially disproportionate application of the death penalty in the United States. The band's album liner notes and website offer socialist and generally left-leaning reading lists, news updates and links with such organizations as Rock for Choice, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Refuse and Resist, and the defense committees for [Leonard] Peltier and Abu-Jamal. And, Morello points out, those are real Los Angeles sweatshop workers in the band's new video for "Guerrilla Radio," already one of MTV's most requested."

"Rage Before Beauty," Washington Post, November 1999

"Rage have entered the political fray most prominently in the U.S. with their support of Abu-Jamal, the former NPR essayist and Black Panther sentenced to death in a much-disputed 1982 conviction [...] The Fraternal Order of Police, a right-wing group based in Nashville, called for NBC to cancel Rages appearance on Late Night With Conan OBrien and placed Rage on a hit list of celebrities it opposes (from Michael Stipe to Bishop Desmond Tutu). Says FOP National President Gilbert Gallegos: 'This is a mediocre band, at best, whose real talent is marketing an anti-everything image. We should not have to sit idly by and allow a murderer to be celebrated.'"

"Enemies of the State: Rage Against the Machine Strike Back," Spin, March 2000

"What we've done so far is nowhere near enough for what a band like Rage Against the Machine could be doing,'' [Morello] said. 'While Leonard Peltier is in jail, we have not done enough. While the system of wage slavery is in place, we have not done enough. I don't put any cap on what it is that we can or should be doing in the weeks and months and years to come.''

"A Rock Machine with Creaks," New York Times, December 2000

As entertaining as it is to dunk on one Twitter user for being casually oblivious, it's also worth noting what a privilege it is for all of those lyrics and that imagery to mean nothing to you. If you can disregard or critique the politics in Rage Against the Machine's music, then it means that these particular injustices haven't affected you in any meaningful way. It's a privilege to have a "safe haven" where you can squeeze your Airpods into your auditory canals and block out the ongoing calls for racial equality, the protests against police brutality, or the other literal cries for help from marginalized communities that have been amplified by bands like Rage.

Listening to nothing but the kind of bland pop that helps you ignore any problem bigger than, like, a clogged downspout or a dead bird in the back garden doesn't make these problems go away any more than covering your own eyes makes you invisible. And to anyone out there wringing their hands over the realities of Rage's politics, if song lyrics make you uncomfortable, that's a pretty good sign that you should turn that track up instead of skipping it.

Excerpt from:

Ignoring the Politics of Music Isn't Just a Blind SpotIt's a Privilege - VICE

A house submerged in Assam after the 2019 flood. Photo: PTI.

I felt as if I had fallen into an ocean, said Moharshi Chaudhary, a 52-year old farmer in Churu, Rajasthan, as he watched an army of locusts cover the sky, two hours before sunset one evening this May. He had been warned by neighbours, so he had rushed to his field with drums, plates and crackers.

As hundreds of thousands of insects descended on his cotton crop, the farmer lit crackers, but the grasshoppers didnt budge. In five minutes, the locusts ate my dreams and hard work, Chaudhary said, Can you imagine the impact that had on me?

This May, armies of locusts hormonally charged grasshoppers flying from Iran and Pakistan chomped on over 200,000 hectares of farmland with standing crops of cotton, pulses, vegetables and oranges. It is the second consecutive year of locust attacks.

Chaudharys locust tragedy has its roots in three cyclones that hit a remote and barren Arabian Peninsula desert in 2018. The moisture and new vegetation created fertile breeding and feeding grounds for them. Some swarms flew south, towards Yemen and the Horn of Africa, while the other groups flew north into Iran.

In early 2019, torrential rains in Iran, one of the heaviest downpours in decades, helped locusts multiply, leading to even bigger swarms flying eastwards to Pakistan and India. The unusual cyclones and frequent and intense rainfall, scientists say, owe themselves to climate change.

At the end of May in North and Central India, a scorching heat wave made stepping out in the sun to chase locusts nearly lethal. In Churu, for example, the temperature touched 50 C.

As extreme weather events, made more likely by climate change, pummel the planet with increasing force and frequency, they are reinforcing long-standing inequalities of caste, class and gender in poor and marginalised communities.

When temperatures hovered at around 45 C in Churu in May, Vikas Regar, a brick-kiln labourer, was still working. Regar is paid 20 rupees for every tractor he loads. He spends several hours stacking bricks in the tractor. Then he spends several hours baking bricks. Its like I am putting my hand in the oven, Regar told me about working with a kiln that can be fired up to 1,100 C.

At the end of a 14-hour day, the 26-year old, who is paid per unit of work, takes home about Rs 300 to his wife and infant. Although Indias wage code requires employers to set a fair piece-work rate pegged to the minimum wage, brick-kiln owners routinely exploit workers by setting low piece-work wages, forcing them to work faster and for longer hours, even in the heat.

One oppressively hot afternoon that week, Regars head ached, his eyes burned. I was resting and then I started to vomit, he said. When Regar started to feel giddy after throwing up several times, his wife took him to the doctor.

The doctor gave me an injection, four litres of water and some glucose, said the man with blisters on his palms and feet from working in the sun. Because of the blisters, I cant hold a cup of tea in my hand. But my boss doesnt care he hasnt even paid the doctors fees. On May 28, after a two-day break, Regar returned to the kiln.

Workers are not able to take breaks in many piece-work jobs, including in brick-kilns, Vidhya Venugopal, a professor at the department of environmental health engineering, Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai, said, This is because employers set impossible daily targets for workers to complete.

A 2017 paper Venugopal co-authored, on climate-change-induced heat risks for labourers in brick kilns, recommended that any technical improvements to reduce pollution or mitigate heat stress must be accompanied by measures to end human rights abuse and slavery on site.

Addressing heat and climate change without considering human rights and ecological injustices ignores the obvious elephant in the room, the paper noted.

Some 1,600 km east of Rajasthans Churu, and two days after Chaudhary saw locusts destroy his crop, Cyclone Amphan triggered heavy rain, fast winds and storm surges in Bengal. South 24 Parganas, a district that extends across the Sundarbans delta in India, is one of the worst-hit. It is a devastation I have not seen in my life. Nearly 99% of South 24 Parganas district has been wiped out, said Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal.

For decades, rising seas and violent storms have swept mud homes, breached embankments and flushed saltwater into fields. One in five households in the Sundarbans has a family member who works elsewhere; 64% of migrants said economic or environmental factors have pushed them out. Close to nine in 10 households are either landless or own land less than an acre big.

Within the Sundarbans, there is a particular geography of inequality, Megnaa Mehtta, an environmental anthropologist who specialises in the Sundarbans, said in a recent interview. The people who are the poorest and often landless live on the rivers edge. These are people who live right next to embankments and are the first to be hit.

Sundarbans workers fleeing one climate catastrophe will likely face another this decade: rising heat. A little over 2% of total working hours, an equivalent of 80 million full-time jobs, will be lost to warmer weather by 2030, according to a 2019 International Labour Organisation report that examined the impact of heat stress on labour productivity. This report noted that high rates of vulnerable employment will put workers at greater risk of heat stress.

After adopting the UN Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction, Indias released its national disaster management plan in 2016. It mentioned women, children, the elderly and the disabled as groups vulnerable to natural disasters. The policy identified Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as groups-at-risk only in 2019, when the plan was revised.

Policy statements for vulnerable groups dont go far enough. We need funding and staff to develop and implement an operational framework for marginalised communities, said Lee Macqueen, senior programme manager at National Dalit Watch of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, a civil society group that monitors the exclusion of Dalits and other marginalised communities in disaster situations.

For example, using Indias census data, the state and central governments can identify vulnerable groups by their caste, the quality of their homes, their livelihoods, their access to electricity, water, their migration status and disabilities, Macqueen said. The government can overlap this data with Indias hazard maps, and develop focused strategies to protect and build resilience of families in high-risk situations.

In the aftermath of Cyclone Fani in Odisha and the 2018 Kerala floods, National Dalit Watch interviewed over 3,900 affected individuals in both states. Marginalised communities in Kerala and Odisha, both reports found, were likely to be poorer when disaster struck; are more likely to be in harms way; are more likely to suffer damages; and are likelier to receive delayed relief.

As the planet heats and Himalayan glaciers supplying rivers begin to melt, some of the subcontinents perennial river systems that support over a billion people could dry up for months each year, spurring further conflict.

In Lucknows Manak Nagar slum, Pallavi Tharu and her family of seven live in a 150 square-foot mud hut. This May, the hand-pump in their settlement the one that Tharu and over a thousand plus residents depend on broke down. As temperatures breached 47 C, Tharu had to cycle a kilometer to a railway officers colony to use their water tank.

On one of her trips to the colony in late May, she was shoved by a policeman: He pushed me as I was filling water and kicked my bucket. Tharu said the officer told her that she did not have permission to fill her buckets in the colony. They said I was spreading the coronavirus and threatened to lock me up in jail, she said.

The Tharus, like many in the settlement, have voter and ration cards but dont have electricity. A group of economists and scientists this May, via an article in Nature Climate Change, urged governments to ensure continuity of basic services. They said providing electricity, water and other utilities will be critical to limit loss of life during heat waves, wildfires and hurricanes.

The locust outbreaks are expected to get worse this year, according to Indias Locust Warning Organisation. In Churu, Moharshi Chaudhary doesnt think he will be compensated for his losses. He is probably right. The Centres locusts relief package for Rajasthans farmers in 2019-2020 was restricted to only four of the 12 districts that reported losses.

In the four districts, compensation could be claimed for up to two hectares of land, lower than the average landholding size of 2.73 hectares. Payouts per hectare were capped at Rs 13,500 less than half of the farmers average cultivation costs.

With his cotton profits, Chaudhary was going to repair his house. His brother Omkarmal was going to have a kidney operation. I dont know what I will do now, he said.

Amit Mishra is a community journalist in Lucknow. Nikhil Eapen is a freelance journalist and a researcher at Equidem, a labour-rights organisation.

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How Inequality Is Aggravating the Impact of Climate Change for Millions in India - The Wire

Coronavirus deaths are passing their peak in many countries, with millions of people who have been locked down for months venturing out of their homes on non-essential trips for the first time.

While nations such as the US and the UK are coming out of lockdown having seen huge numbers of people die of this disease, life is already back to normal in New Zealand and Vietnam has not recorded a single death. And with the virus taking hold in North America and Western Europe but not affecting Africa to anything like the same extent, it is upending old notions about the respective abilities of First World countries and their former colonies.

So what can countries learn from one another as we all creep back towards normal and try to ward off a second wave? Since the pandemic began, The Conversation has published thousands of articles on the subject of COVID-19. Heres a selection from this vast new archive that highlights different approaches to controlling the pandemic around the world.

International borders began to slam shut around the world soon after the WHO declared that coronavirus was a pandemic on March 11. Doing so changed the trajectory of the virus in many countries, helping them avoid the worst effects.

Australia. Prime minister Scott Morrison announced the closure of Australias borders and the establishment of a mandatory 14-day quarantine period in hotels, not in homes for all incoming travellers regardless of nationality in late March. Stephen Duckett and Anika Stobart explain that this largely prevented the virus circulating in the community, making sure the majority of COVID-19 cases to date are linked to overseas travel.

Vietnam. Closing borders with China but also between cities within the country has been a vital part of Vietnams world-beating coronavirus strategy. Robyn Klingler-Vidra and Ba-Linh Tran say that by instituting a self-funded 14-day quarantine in government-assigned facilities for anyone entering certain cities, like Danang, and fencing off villages, the country has managed to keep deaths to zero.

Countries with the most successful coronavirus strategies are those that have had a strong test, track and trace system in place from early on. Those that didnt have paid the price.

UK. A test and trace system launched in the UK on May 28, much later than other countries. Pandemic modeller Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths says the failure to fully test and trace positive cases from the beginning of the epidemic is one of the reasons why the UKs death toll is so high, and public health expert Andrew Lee explains how the country might be able to turn things around.

South Carolina. The US is the worst affected country in the world, and there have been criticisms of many states for reopening too soon after lockdown. But Anthony Fauci, the countrys top infectious diseases expert and member of the governments coronavirus task force, has singled out the state South Carolina as a success story when it comes to fighting the virus. Jenny Meredith explains how the states contract tracing strategy paid off.

The need to bring down infection rates is often at odds with the desire for privacy during this pandemic. Contact tracing apps have raised concerns in the UK, Canada and Australia. But some countries are using surveillance to get ahead of the pandemic.

China. Much has been made of Chinas state-sponsored lockdown and mass testing efforts. But the country has a relatively small state bureaucracy, writes Qi Chen, and has relied on private surveillance, including networks of security guards, to enforce its measures.

South Korea. After being hit hard early by coronavirus, South Korea reversed its fortunes and managed to swiftly get the virus under control. Part of its success was down to a large-scale contact tracing scheme, writes Jung Won Sonn, but it also relied heavily on widespread and publicly accepted surveillance.

Coronavirus may be the most significant pandemic the world has seen this century, but there are still lessons to be learned from the Ebola, Sars and Mers outbreaks of recent years.

Mers. While many countries have struggled to get adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) to healthcare staff, South Korea was already prepared to prevent these workers getting infected. Thats because the country was hit hard by Mers in 2015, writes Michael Ahn, and learned that health workers needed to be prevented from contracting and spreading the disease.

Ebola. Sierra Leone suffered badly during the 2013-2016 West African Ebola outbreak. But it also learned valuable lessons in targeted quarantines, social distancing and made significant investments in health education and prevention, writes Jia B. Kangbai, and all of this is helping with its COVID-19 response.

The coronavirus crisis had laid bare some stark differences in political leadership around the world. While Jacinda Ardern and Angela Merkel have been praised for their quick action in responding to COVID-19, the worlds strong man leaders have frequently been criticised for coming up short.

Jacinda Ardern. As a relatively isolated group of islands, New Zealand had some natural advantages when it came to limiting the spread of COVID-19. But the countrys other secret weapon has been prime minister Jacinda Ardern and her authentic, empathetic approach to leadership, writes Suze Wilson, who researches executive development. She explains how Ardern has acted as an effective public motivator during the crisis, and how the UKs Boris Johnson has fallen short by comparison.

Jair Bolsonaro. In Brazil, president Jair Bolsonaro has clashed with health experts, spread misinformation and refused to practice social distancing, all while the countrys death toll shot up to become the third-highest in the world. A trio of Brazil experts calls his approach a strategy of chaos.

Joseph Magafuli. Tanzanias president Joseph Magafuli has used the coronavirus pandemic to wage a personal war against the countrys national laboratory halting regular updates on cases, recommending home remedies and questioning the validity of testing. Its all part of his unilateral playbook, writes Aikande Clement Kwayu: He will decide whether cases of COVID-19 in Tanzania have declined or increased, no matter what the science says.

Its clear that coronavirus does not affect everyone equally in the US, UK and Brazil, black people have been shown to be at far greater risk of the disease than white people. In Canada, Indigenous populations are particularly vulnerable. Understanding these inequalities is one of the biggest challenges in any government response.

Migrant workers. Heralded as an early success story for its comprehensive coronavirus response, Singapore saw its cases rise again among populations of migrant workers, many of whom live in overcrowded dormitories. Sallie Yea says its all part of Singapores history of institutionalised neglect of these communities.

Domestic workers. Given the higher rates of serious COVID-19 among black people in Brazil, its perhaps no surprise that the countrys domestic workers have been badly affected by the virus. With a history dating back to slavery, the domestic workforce in Brazil is predominately made up of black women, says Mauricio Sellmann Oliveira. As the disease rages out of control in the country, this population is now disproportionately at risk of both contracting and passing on the virus, and will also be hit hard by the economic fallout.

Girls. The closure of schools in Kenya has meant that many girls who relied on the governments Sanitary Towels Programme to manage their periods no longer have access to menstrual hygiene products. This is only compounded by a lack of running water in poor areas and the loss of incomes among poor households, writes Caroline Kabiru.

Want to know more about whats happening in relation to coronavirus? Check out Coronavirus Weekly, The Conversations regular round-up of expert information about coronavirus from around the world.

Read the rest here:

Coronavirus around the world: Conversation authors on lessons from different countries - The Conversation UK

A protester gestures in front of the burning Third Precinct building of the Minneapolis Police Department on May 28, 2020. (Julio Cortez / AP Photo)

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Calls to abolish the police are spreading. Dozens of cities are considering cutting police budgets, and police are resigning across the country. In Minneapolis, where the police murdered George Floyd and the insurrection first broke out, the city council is moving to disband the police department. While this would only be a first step toward full abolitionwhich would require ending all forms of policing, evictions, imprisonment, courts, and racial capitalismthree weeks ago, that a major city would even consider this was unthinkable.Ad Policy

For many whove been fighting for police abolition for years, the sudden uptake of these ideas has been disorienting. Gratifying, certainly, but also surprising and overwhelming. Many respond with frustration, as the meaning of abolition is watered down, reduced to defunding or even less drastic reforms. Black people in America have lived through a partial abolition before: The enslaved overthrew the regime of slavery in what W.E.B. Du Bois called the General Strike of the Slaves, only for it to be reinstituted in all but name in convict leasing, sharecropping, Jim Crow, vigilante white terrorism, chain gangs, and prisons. Abolition not accompanied by a social revolution will just be another in the long history of white supremacist reforms that allow this settler state to continue as it always has.

But even with these caveats, the question remains: How did this demand jump from a small, mostly black contingent of revolutionary thinkers to the mainstream in the span of a few weeks? The most obvious answer is two weeks of rioting, looting, and protesting. That is correct, of course, but its not enough. Rioting and looting against the police took place in Ferguson, Mo., and eventually across the country, following the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner in 2014; Baltimore rose up against the killing of Freddie Gray in 2015; and Charlotte, N.C., saw looted and overturned semitrucks turned into burning highway barricades for Keith Lamont Scott in 2016. And yet the call that emerged out of that movement was for officers to wear body cameras.

The difference, this time, is not simply in the national character of the riots, nor some other quantitative change in their ferocity or visibility. It was, I believe, the destruction of the Minneapolis Third Precinct house on the night of May 28, three days into the riots. Having just completed a book on the history of anti-police rioting and uprisings in America, I cannot recall another time when protesters took over and burnt down a police station. It was an unprecedented and beautiful moment in the annals of rebellion in this country. By seizing the cops home base, rioters showed millions of people that they could defeat the police. For many, it finally broke through the veil of omnipotence, timelessness, and domination that kept abolition from seeming possible. Police were returned to the realm of history.

The police are rarely imagined to have a history at all. As Kristian Williams, a historian of the police, writes in Our Enemies in Blue, people seem to imagine that the cop has always been there, in something like his present capacity, subject only to the periodic change of uniform or the occasional technological advance. But what the rioters of Minneapolis demonstrated by torching the police base in their community is that cops are just people operating out of ordinary buildings. Particularly powerful and cruel people, yes, but theyre individuals no more free from the forces of history than the rest of us.

The dehistoricization of the police is a long and constant project of the US state and media apparatus. There are thousands, perhaps millions of hours of TV and movies full of mythologizing stories about the police. There are heroic police, conflicted police, troubled cops with a heart of gold, good cops taking on corrupt cops, slapstick cops, and genius cops. The detective is the only profession in America that has its own wildly popular genre of novels. And news media gives a constant and free platform to police (often in exchange for special access).

And yet, none of this vast media project concerns the early history of the police. Almost none of us learn in school about the emergence of the police in the 19th century and their role in the oppression and control of black communities. We dont learn about how they took techniques and inspiration from colonial forces in Caribbean slave colonies. We definitely dont hear that the first modern police force in the world, the Charleston South Carolina City Guard, was formed to terrorize and control the citys slave quarters.Current Issue

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Antebellum Southern urban economies were built around the practice of enslavers hiring out laborers to other employers in town. These enslaved workers earned a wage from their bosses, most of which they would then turn over to their enslaver. These laborers most often lived together, usually at a remove from both their employer and their enslaver, and their lives outside work unfolded mostly in black neighborhoods known as slave quarters. These communities were spaces of relative autonomy for the enslaved, and as such were a cause of anxiety to white residents, who feared the possibility of black peoples organization and rebellion. These neighborhoods were frequently outside of white control. They were places where the enslaved and free alike could organize and trade; where recent fugitives could hide out and Underground Railroad stations could form; where African, Creole, and subversive Christian religious practices could flourish; and where white people werent respected, deferred to, or welcomed.

Such communities threatened the slave order. So Southern cities developed city guards, militarized forces of young white men whose large numbers and modern weaponry allowed them to patrol and control those quarters. The earliest of these, in Charleston, S.C., is historys first modern police force, formed in 1783, though most other early police forces, like the NYPD, wouldnt even emerge until the 1840s.

Nor do we learn that one of the main tasks of the earliest Northern police force, alongside repressing strikes and other labor unrest, was to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Cops kidnapped and returned black people who escaped captivity and put down anti-slave-catcher riots and protests. Another way standard history obscures the possibility of abolition is by erasing the role of the militant and often riotous urban vigilance committees of black freedmen in the Underground Railroad. We dont learn that prisonsplaces where people are held for years as punishment in and of itself, as opposed to jails or dungeons where people were held preceding trial or executiononly emerged in the 1820s. And we dont learn that because if we did, we might begin to imagine a world without them.Related Article

Wherever they appeared in the United States, police were the first urban bureaucracies. Law enforcement provided most urban governmental services in the 19th century. Only slowly, as their utility to city governments became clear and their burden grew larger and larger, did cities begin creating new departments to handle urban tasks like sanitation and transportation. In other words, the model of bureaucratic urbanism that dominates and organizes our cities is made in the image of these anti-black police departments, in the image of slave catchers, white terrorists, and colonial officers. It is this history that abolition seeks to break with, and why it would mean uprooting the entire anti-black system.

So how did one moment of direct action in Minneapolis serve to counter years of disinformation, miseducation, and media violence? Black Panther Party cofounder Huey P. Newton, in a speech called The Correct Handling of a Revolution, analyzed how rioting like what took place in Watts in 1965 was politically powerful because it could not be reinterpreted by the press. In Watts, Newton said, the economy and property of the oppressor was destroyed to such an extent that no matter how the oppressor tried in his press to whitewash the activities of the Black brothers, the real nature and cause of the activity was communicated to every Black community. This kind of communication is what we saw in Minneapolis at the end of May. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that riots are the language of the unheard, but rioters do not address themselves to the state, the bosses, or the politicians. Instead they speak to each other, over the heads of the media and the white establishment, with words of fire and punctuation of broken glass.

As I write this, the riots have receded, but the movement is not slowing down. The media, having demonized the rioters, has tried to go back to ignoring peaceful protest. But the capture of another police precinct, this one the East Precinct in Seattle, has led to the creation of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), six blocks of rioter territory defended by barricades. The CHAZ is such an impressive provocation that it caused Donald Trump to have one of his Twitter meltdowns, but it has also been intensely weakened by nonviolence advocates, local politicians, and peace police, who refused to let the building be attacked. Instead, it sat empty and unharmed inside the CHAZ, allowing for the police to reenter it on June 11.

It is truly incredible that two precinct houses have fallen in the space of two weeks, and that fact has already dramatically shifted the calculus of what is possible. But while the burning of the Third Precinct building in Minneapolis led to countrywide riots and the emergence of police abolition as a mainstream argument, the hesitation in the CHAZ may mean the movement in Seattle has much less significant long-term impact in the abolitionist imagination. Nevertheless, events continue to unfold, and the example of creating a cop-free resistance zone is leading organizers and rioters around the country to think more boldly and openly about new tactics. It is a real-time lesson in the wisdom of action, the power of crowds, and the diversity of tactics, strategies, and possibilities that we have when we fight together.

Most importantly, however, the seizing of two police precincts is a blow against whiteness, against the police, against capitalism and the anti-black world it upholds. May the blows continue to fall, until we stand side by side in a post-abolition world.

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Burning Down the 3rd Police Precinct Changed Everything - The Nation