It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
AFP / MUNIR UZ ZAMANGarment workers wash their legs before entering a factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where hundreds of such factories reopened despite a nationwide lockdown against new coronavirus
Hundreds of Bangladesh's garment factories defied a nationwide coronavirus lockdown to reopen on Sunday, raising fears the industry's vulnerable and largely female workforce could be exposed to the contagion.
Big-name international brands have cancelled or held up billions of dollars in orders due to the pandemic, crippling an industry that accounts for nearly all of the South Asian country's export earnings.
Factories shut their doors in late March but some suppliers said they were now being pushed by retailers to fulfill outstanding export orders.
"We have to accept coronavirus as part of life. If we don't open factories, there will be economic crisis," said Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association vice president Mohammad Hatem.
He said his MB Knit company had reopened part of a factory that makes clothing for Britain's Primark and several other retailers.
AFP / STRBangladesh's garment factories are "under pressure" from brands to meet export deadlines despite the pandemic, an industry group said
Factories were "under pressure" from brands to meet export deadlines and feared the risk that billions in orders could be diverted to competing operations in countries like Vietnam or China, Hatem added.
More than four million people work in thousands of garment factories across Bangladesh, which last year shipped out $35 billion of apparel to retailers such as H&M, Inditex and Walmart -- second only to China.
Hundreds of those factories had resumed operations over the weekend in the industrial areas of Gazipur and Ashulia, just outside the capital Dhaka.
Some 200,000 workers were likely back at work just in Ashulia, police spokeswoman Jane Alam told AFP.
Mofazzal Hossain said he felt compelled to return to his factory, where he earns $115 a month.
"The fear of coronavirus is there," he told AFP.
"But I am now more worried about losing my job, wages and benefits."
Labour rights leaders said they were fearful the return to work could spark an explosion of COVID-19 cases.
"Its impact could be worse than Rana Plaza," said activist Kalpona Akter, referring to the collapse of a garment factory complex in 2013 that killed 1,130 workers.
Bangladesh, a nation of 168 million people, has almost 5,500 confirmed COVID-19 infections and 145 deaths according to the government.
Experts say the real number is likely much higher due to a lack of patient testing by authorities.
‘An economic model that must fail’
Chile, no peaceful oasis
The protests in Chile are against a state that sold out the majority in favour of a tiny minority that has long profited from what should be communal resources.
by Luis Sepúlveda
Enough! Chileans protest against the Piñera government in November 2019
Marcelo Hernandez · Getty
Violent protests have rocked Chile since early October 2019; at least 27 people have been killed, hundreds maimed, thousands injured and an unspecified number arrested. The police and armed forces have raped, tortured and committed other atrocities. Just before the protests began, President Sebastián Piñera commented on upheavals in other parts of Latin America, and described Chile as an oasis of peace and calm in the middle of a storm.
What characterised this oasis was not its sweet water or its lush palm trees, but the apparently unscalable fence that ringed it, made of a curious alloy of the basest metals: neoliberal economic policy, absence of civil rights, and repression. Chileans were on the right side of this fence.
Until the recent street protests, economists and politicians had held fast to the mantra that smaller government means more entrepreneurial freedom. They claimed a miracle, a spontaneous generation, had taken place in Chile, and they saw irrefutable proof of this miracle in growth figures and economic statistics praised by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The coup that ousted Allende
But not everyone in Chile was included in this little southern paradise. It lacked such trivial details as a right to fair wages, decent pensions, good-quality state education and a healthcare system worthy of the name. It was not concerned with the right of citizens to determine their own fate rather than just swallowing the macroeconomic figures the government force-feeds them.
What characterised this oasis was not its water or palm trees, but the fence that ringed it, made of neoliberal economic policy and repression. Chileans were on the right side of this fence
On 11 September 1973, a military coup toppled Chile’s democratic government. A brutal dictatorship took over in Santiago and under General Augusto Pinochet lasted until March 1990. Its objective was not to restore order nor save the country from a communist threat but to implement principles advocated by the gurus of neoliberalism, led by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. The aim was to establish a new economic model that would lead to the creation of a new society in which precarity and absence of rights would be the norm, silence would be enforced and guns would ensure social peace.
The civilian-military dictatorship achieved its goals, writing them into a constitution that enshrined the economic model established by force and made it the definition of Chile. No other Latin American country has adopted a model so carefully designed to benefit a minority at the expense of the rest of the population. The rules did not change with Chile’s ‘return to democracy’ in 1990, or, to be more precise, its ‘transition to democracy’. The dictatorship’s constitution was retouched, but not revised at a fundamental level. All successive centre-left and rightwing governments maintained the economic model as sacrosanct, though precarity affected ever more people.
If two people sit down to a meal and eat two cakes, then, statistically, the rate of consumption is one cake per person, even if one of them eats two and the other has none. This is the sleight of hand that allows Chile to present its economic model as a success. It’s not really a dictatorship, but neither is it a democracy; it relies on repression and fear.
Julio Ponce Lerou, former son-in-law of Pinochet, is one of the world’s richest men and heir to an economic empire built by robbing Chileans of what was rightfully theirs (1). He has paid huge sums to most Chilean senators, deputies and government ministers to encourage them to pursue privatisation. When Chileans found out about this, the government suggested that criticising these actions would end the ‘Chilean miracle’, then it repressed the protests.
Multinationals own all the water
Chile’s water — all of it, in rivers, lakes or glaciers — belongs to a handful of multinationals. The government responded to popular protests at this situation with the only form of communication it is prepared to countenance, police brutality. The same thing happened when people mobilised to defend Chile’s natural heritage from power generation transnationals; and when high school students demanded good quality education, not governed by market forces; and when much of the country came to the defence of the oppressed Mapuche people. The government responded in the same way every time, repressing the protesters and claiming that they were endangering the Chilean economic miracle.
Chile is not really a dictatorship, but neither is it a democracy; it relies on repression and fear
The peace of the Chilean oasis was not shattered just because the price of metro tickets in Santiago went up. It has been destroyed by injustices committed in the name of macroeconomic statistics, and by the insolence of ministers who suggested that people get up earlier to save money on public transport (cheaper outside peak hours), buy flowers instead of bread (because the price of flowers, unlike that of bread, hadn’t increased), and organise bingo nights to raise money for the repair of school roofs.
Saying no to precarity
The peace of the oasis has been destroyed because it is not fair that students graduating from university are burdened with a debt that will take 15-20 years to pay off.
It has been destroyed because the pension system is controlled by predatory companies that speculate with their collected contributions and pass their losses on to pensioners, who receive tiny annuities based on a morbid calculation of the number of years they have left to live.
It has been destroyed because workers, labourers and small employers choosing a fund to manage their pension capitalisation accounts have to remember the government warning that ‘the size of your pension will depend on how clever you are when investing your savings on the financial markets.’
It has been destroyed because a majority of Chileans are now saying no to precarity and setting out to win back their lost rights.
No rebellion is more just and democratic than that of the Chileans. The demonstrators demand a new constitution that represents the whole country in all its diversity. They demand the reversal of the privatisation of sea and water. They demand the right to exist and to be considered as active participants in the country’s development. They demand to be treated as full citizens, not as an unimportant element of an economic model that must fail because of its inhumanity.
No rebellion is more just and democratic than that of the Chileans. And no repression, however harsh or criminal, can hold back a people rising up against it.
Luis Sepúlveda
Luis Sepúlveda is a Chilean writer and the author of The Story of a Seagull and the Cat who Taught her to Fly (translated from Spanish), Alma, Richmond (Surrey), 2016.
Thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet bloc In the name of the communist ideal
One of the received ideas that became a ‘truth’ after the fall of the Berlin Wall was that the Soviet bloc’s populations cursed communism, yet obeyed it slavishly. In fact, many social movements within the Eastern bloc had long aspired to genuine socialism.
by Catherine Samary cc. Carlos Reusser Monsalvez
The collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989-1991 is still portrayed as a collection of simplistic clichés (1). British political analyst Timothy Garton Ash says that ‘in 1989 Europeans proposed a new model of non-violent, velvet revolution’ (2), a reverse image of that of the storming of the Winter Palace in October 1917. Nothing incarnated this model better than Czechoslovakia and Václav Havel, the long imprisoned, dissident playwright who became president in 1989. This interpretation gives liberal ideology and its representatives a preponderant weight in the West’s victory at the end of the cold war.
Havel himself didn’t believe this. In 1989, he said, ‘Dissidence was not ready... We only had a minimal influence on the events themselves.’ To designate the decisive factor, he looked a little further east: ‘The Soviet Union could no longer intervene, without opening an international crisis and completely putting an end to the new policy of perestroika [reconstruction]’ (3).
Some years earlier, Garton Ash had used the neologism ‘refolution’ (from reform and revolution) (4), to reflect the combined traits of 1989-1991: a challenge to the political and socioeconomic structure of the existing system in a capitalist sense (revolutionary or counter-revolutionary, according to perspectives), but through reforms imposed from above. Charter 77 — the intellectual opposition front to which Havel belonged — showed remarkable resistance to the ‘normalisation’ of Czechoslovakia under occupation, but expressed no consensus on socioeconomic issues nor did it have the support of any organised social base.
Mass democratic mobilisations have, in fact, existed at the heart of these regimes: workers’ riots in June 1953 in Berlin, workers’ councils in Poland and Hungary in 1956, the Prague Spring of 1968 (prolonged by the birth of the Czech workers’ councils), the revolutionary trade unionism of Solidarność (Solidarity) in Gdansk, Poland, in 1980. It is this history that the liberal interpretation of 1989 obliterates or falsifies — and tries to appropriate by presenting it as anti-communist. These popular movements fought, not to re-establish capitalism, but on the contrary in the name of socialist ideals.
If the end of the single party was popular; the philosopher Slavoj Žižek recalled that ‘Behind the Wall the peoples did not dream of capitalism’ (Le Monde, 7 November 2009). Capitalism’s triumph did not arise from a mass desire, but a choice made by the communist nomenklatura: to transform its privileges of function into privileges of ownership. Although the elites’ ‘grand conversion’ has been analysed (5), there are few studies on the social base of the old single party, which, though it became restive, did not demand privatisations. Workers’ councils in Poland and Hungary
‘We can ask why it is the Polish working class which, out of all the countries in eastern Europe, periodically resumes the class struggle, and why now’, Polish journalist and former communist militant Victor Fay suggested in 1980 (6). Each of the great Polish independence struggles was marked by powerful workers’ mobilisations that, after the second world war, extended into a subtle relationship with the Communist Party of Poland (Polish United Workers’ Party, POUP), and also with the changing policy of the Kremlin in relation to eastern European communist parties.
The rupture in 1948 between Tito (Josip Broz) of Yugoslavia and Joseph Stalin showed the conflict between aspiration to the sovereignty of a national communism and the hegemonic policy of the Kremlin. It was accompanied by ‘anti-Tito’ purges in Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. After Stalin’s death, public apologies by his successor Nikita Khrushchev to the Yugoslav communists and the denunciation of Stalin’s crimes during the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956 revived the hope that Moscow would respect the egalitarian relationships, national and social, which in theory structured the Soviet universe.
Until the 1980s, all the great democratic uprisings sought, explicitly or in practice, to reduce the gap between the reality of bureaucratic oppression and socialist principles. Thus, the emergence of workers’ councils in Poland and Hungary in 1956 went along with the demand for the Stalinist leaders’ marginalisation, and was supported by significant sections of each of the parties. Discovering the limits of de-Stalinisation in the USSR, Tito’s Yugoslavia decided in 1956 to encourage the non-aligned movement, while affirming self-management (in contrast to centralised planning) as the ‘Yugoslav road to socialism’.
In Poland, Moscow was concerned by the triumphal return of Władysław Gomulka to the head of the POUP in October 1956 (from which he had been excluded in 1948), the decollectivisation of land and the favours accorded to the Church. However, Gomulka’s profession of communist faith and his promise to respect the ‘Soviet big brother’ pushed the Kremlin to concentrate rather on bringing Hungary to heel. Though Poland escaped Soviet intervention, its workers’ councils were contained, even if self-management rights were conceded in the universities: the threat to challenge these later led to the 1968 student explosion.
During the 1960s, workers’ strikes against planned price increases expressed the strength of an attachment to the ‘egalitarianism’ and ‘stability of employment’ that underlay what economist Michael Lebowitz analyses as a kind of (alienated) ‘social contract’ by which the single party sought to stabilise its reign, in the name of the workers and on their backs. (7). Socialist legality, which made producers the proprietors of the means of production, was expressed recurrently in the emergence of workers’ councils in workplaces, while the privileges of the communist nomenklatura were simultaneously denounced. The leaders were never perceived as legitimate proprietors. It was the restoration of capitalism after 1989 which would establish their true powers of ownership, that of selling off the factories and introducing the masses to capitalist unemployment. Social and ownership rights
Meanwhile, the party-state had power to manage enterprises, which it used to stabilise its regime, as an alternative to simple repression. Official trade unionism concentrated its action on the distribution of a social income (non-monetary and associated with employment in the big conglomerates) in the form of access to housing, health services, vacation centres or stores. In the Soviet Union’s last decade, more than 60% of workers’ incomes originated from these collective funds in kind (8). Under this system, all economic choices and mechanisms (including prices) were perceived, correctly, as political. Hence the rapidly subversive dynamic of strikes, which switched almost spontaneously from economic issues, to the demand for social and ownership rights to be recognised as legitimate.
Indeed, in the 1960s, reforms of centralised planning would attempt to reduce waste and improve the quality of goods produced, but without substantially increasing workers’ rights. It was about introducing autonomy of enterprise management and encouraging directors to compress costs, which threatened the social contract. These attempts were blocked by strikes (in Poland) or would lead, as a consequence of social movements, to an enlargement of the liberties and rights of workers in the enterprises, as in 1968 in Czechoslovakia. In Yugoslavia, ‘market socialism’ came to a halt in the early 1970s after an upsurge of strikes and political struggles (Belgrade’s ‘June 68’) against inequality and the ‘red bourgeoisie’. The violent repression of the Polish strikes in 1970 led to Gomulka’s fall and his replacement by former miner Edward Gierek, president from 1970-80.
In Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Rumania and the German Democratic Republic (RDA), the blocking of market reforms went in the 1970s with an opening to western imports, to respond to consumer demand and improve the efficacy of production through transfers of technology. The hard currency debt crisis which affected all these countries (9) was reflected in Poland by a new attempt at price reform, which led to an escalation of strikes, confrontations and negotiations, laying the bases for workers’ self-organisation on a nationwide scale in 1980-1981.
During the battle for the legalisation of Solidarność, there was a rise in power inside the independent trade union of a strong self-managed current (10). With more than ten million members, of which two million were Communist Party members, the independent union won the right to legally hold its congress in August 1981. A counter-power and a social project anchored in socialism and the self-managed control of economic choices was being developed (11). What then happened between 1981 and 1989 so that neoliberal ‘shock therapy’ could be administered without much resistance after the fall of the Wall? The two Solidarnośćs
ThePolish Marxist intellectual Karol Modzelewski, who was deeply involved in the struggles of Solidarność for which he was an adviser and spokesperson, witnessed to a conception of democracy that, contrary to that of Havel, does not stop at the doors of the workplace. In Nous avons fait galoper l’histoire. Confessions d’un cavalier usé (12), he concludes, like Havel, that the course taken in 1989 in Poland and in all the countries of Eastern Europe was determined by the situation in the USSR. But for him, this meant that Polish workers no longer weighed on the political dynamic. The cause of this was the introduction of martial law by General Wojciech Jaruzelski in December 1981. Modzelewski estimates that 80% of its members then left the union (forced underground), which led to a profound demoralisation and the demobilisation of a whole workers’ generation.
He distinguishes two Solidarnośćs. One was the ‘big’ union, solidaristic and fraternal, ‘the child of socialism’, capable of ‘making history gallop’. The second emerged transformed by its passage underground: it ‘was no longer a mass workers’ movement, but a relatively narrow anti-Communist conspiracy’. From then on, the return to legality around the Round Table of 1989 (13) produced a ‘clash of values’: everything separated the ‘collectivist and solidaristic’ aspiration of the original workers’ union and the type of ‘liberty without equality and without fraternity — hence precarious’ advocated by the new Solidarność, acclaimed by the pro-western liberal intelligentsia.
For the new and old ‘élites’ of 1989, ‘the West was like Mecca’, says Modzelewski, who perceived at this moment a divorce between intellectuals and workers. Certainly, at the time of the electoral triumph of 1989, ‘nearly everyone felt the taste of victory’. But ‘afterwards, they began to lose — lose on their wages, lose their work, lose the implantation in the community of the liquidated factories, lose the certainty of tomorrow and lose their social dignity.’ The ’self-managed Polish republic’ inscribed in the programme of Solidarność was in contradiction with capitalist restoration. But would it have resisted a Soviet military intervention?
A review of the Czechoslovak experience of 1968 reveals instead some arguments in favour of an open history. The traditional analysis of the Prague revolt, says Karel Kovanda (14), who was involved in it as a student, opposes the forces of the conservative bureaucracy — around the secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, Antonín Novotný — to those of the liberal reformers incarnated by his successor, Alexander Dubček, all this in a context of restructuring of the planned economy. But this superficial cleavage hides another, at least equally structuring, inside the progressives, according to Kovanda. He distinguishes on the one hand ‘technocrats in the economic area, liberal in politics’ who ‘demanded very controlled reforms... conducted from above’. They were found ‘inside and outside the Czechoslovak Communist Party’, as were the members of the second component, what he calls the ‘radical democrats’. For the latter, ‘a mass popular participation was an essential condition to undertake a change of system going beyond the cosmetic’ — which raised the question of the mobilisation of the workers. ‘Socialism with a human face’
It was to boost the popularity of the reforms that Dubcek advanced the idea of a ‘socialism with a human face’ from which the movements from below would emerge immediately. According to Kovanda, the Central Council of Trade Unions (URO), one of the more conservative bodies in the country, received in the first weeks of 1968 around 1,600 resolutions from local sections concerning the question of rights lost by the workers, including in the function of the official union itself. The trade union newspaper Práce launched a crusade ‘demanding more extensive powers for the workers’, while, in April 1968, the influential weekly Reportér published a column calling for a self-managed workers’ movement.
Concrete proposals of statutes were drawn up, in particular in the factories of ČKD, the biggest industrial complex in Prague, and those of Škoda, in Plzeň. In April 1968, the Communist Party central committee had to integrate into its programme the question of workers’ councils. In a study published that year in the review of the CP’s central committee, Nová Mysl (‘new spirit’), focusing on 95 councils, the sociologist Milos Barta stresses ‘the rapidity with which, after the development of the process of democratisation in society, the idea of founding preparatory committees for workers’ councils took root and spread’ (15). On the eve of the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovak territory, on 21 August 1968, ‘nearly 350 workers collectivities assumed that a workers’ council would be at their head as of January 1, 1969’.
Before this surge of self-management, the project of a reform under technocratic guidance was vanishing. Positions were taken not between conservatism and reform, but between radical democracy and a return to the bureaucratic grip. The invasion only accelerated this trend. The ČKD factory hosted, in the district of Vysočany, the clandestine Communist Party congress, which denounced the intervention and elected a new Central Committee, not recognised by Dubcek, himself implicated with other leaders in a spirit of compromise with the Kremlin. In this context, Kovanda stresses, ‘the Prague Spring could only continue through the autumn to the extent that massive popular investment continued’, with the ‘transformation of the factories into bastions of economic democracy — via the councils ‘as principal priority’.
In September 1968, there were 19 councils; from 1 October, 143 others began to function. At the end of October, while the tanks of the Warsaw Pact (16) patrolled the streets, the government, still led by Dubcek, declared, without having been ordered to do so by the Soviets, that it was ‘not appropriate to pursue this experience’. This outcome led to a wave of union protests which were taken up by the press. In January 1969 — after several months of occupation —, ‘the councils represented more than 800,000 persons, a sixth of the labour force’ (outside of agriculture), Kovanda recalls. Others were still forming in spring 1969. In late June, ‘the existence of 300 councils and 150 preparatory committees was reported, with a prestige associated with the biggest enterprises in the country. A little more than half were CP members. For a ‘radical democracy’
But the crackdown had begun. From January 1969, the praesidium of the party had denounced the worker and student strikes. The student Jan Palach set fire to himself on 16 January. On 17 April, Dubček was removed from his post. During the summer of 1970, the workers’ councils, initially smothered de facto, were banned. The ‘normalisation’ was complete.
For Jaroslav Šabata, a member of the self-management current of the CP, elected to the central committee during the clandestine congress of August 1968, the Czechoslovak communists ‘should be proud of the Vysočany congress, which rejected the invasion of the Warsaw pact’; but they should be less proud of having ‘themselves contributed to the dispersal’ of the sovereign and self-managed ‘radical democracy’, which this congress supported. On the other hand, its consolidation ‘would have immensely encouraged all the reformist forces of the Soviet bloc and of the USSR also”’ (17).
Šabata explains that he signed Charter 77 because a ‘radical democracy’ was needed inside the Communist movement also. However, the social dimension of such a democracy — subjecting the economy to collective choices made in a context of egalitarian social relations — was far from being consensual inside of Charter 77. And is completely incompatible with the treatment of the workers in the ‘actually existing capitalism’ and ‘European construction’ which emerged after 1989.
Catherine Samary is an economist and the author of Communism, Democracy & The Commons (co-ed), Merlin Press & Resistance Books, 2019. Translated by Bernard Gibbons
U.S. religious freedom watchdog recommends blacklisting India
By Darryl Coote APRIL 29, 2020 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (R) stands with U.S. President Donald J. Trump after addressing the media in New Delhi, India, on Feb. 25. Photo by Harish Tyagi/EPA-EFE
April 29 (UPI) -- Religious freedom in India sharply declined last year under the strengthened leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a U.S. religious freedom watchdog said, recommending the United States add it to its list of countries of greatest concern.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which is an independent, bipartisan government commission, released its annual report Tuesday, urging the Trump administration to designate U.S.-ally India as a Country of Particular Concern, putting its name beside the likes of North Korea, China and Iran.
The report explained that Modi used his parliamentary majority, which he gained last May with a landslide victory that secured him another five-year term, to enact the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act that violates religious freedoms, specifically that of Muslims.
The law expedites citizenship for non-Muslim migrants, exposing Muslims in India to statelessness, deportation or prolonged detention, the report said.
The government's actions, the report said, "created a culture of impunity for nationwide campaigns of harassment and violence against religious minorities."
"During 2019, discriminatory policies, inflammatory rhetoric and tolerance for violence against minorities at the national, state and local level increased the climate of fear among non-Hindu communities," the report said, adding that this downward trajectory continued into 2020 with mobs attacking Muslim neighborhoods with police failing to stop the assaults, resulting in at least 50 deaths.
Advocacy group the Indian American Muslim Council said it "welcomed" the report and its criticism as "painfully necessary, given the escalating level of persecution of minorities."
"India being categorized as a top violator of religious freedoms while unfortunate is expected and justified," IAMC President Ahsan Khan said in a statement. "We hope this report, as well as recent concerns expressed by other countries, mark a turning point in the treatment of religious minorities as well as the caste oppressed in India."
The report also recommends Nigeria, Russia, Syria and Vietnam to be added to the list of countries of particular concern while moving Uzbekistan and Sudan from the bottom designation to the U.S Department of State's Special Watch List.
In December, the State Department preemptively downgraded Sudan to its watch list following steps the country has taken after the ousting of former dictator President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.
The report detailed the lengths the ruling joint civilian-military transitional government has taken, including no longer identifying Islam as the primary source of law and including a provision to ensure the freedom of belief and worship.
"While much work remains to extend full religious freedom to all Sundanese -- including repealing apostasy and blasphemy laws -- enough positive change has come to the country that ... USCIRF is now recommending Sudan for the U.S. Department of State's Special Watch List," it said.
The commission has also recommended the State Department add 11 countries to the watch list, including Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Central African Republic, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Malaysia and Turkey.
Six non-state actors were also recommended to be designated as Entities of Particular Concern, five of which the State Department did so in December.
"We commend the administration for continuing to prioritize international religious freedom in 2019, including dedicating a significant amount of U.S. funding to protect places of worship and religious sites globally," USCIRF Vice Chair Gayle Manchin said in a statement.
Decreasing land available for biodiversity offsetting, conservationists warn
ByBrooks HaysSCIENCE NEWS APRIL 29, 2020 Elephants in Uganda pass beneath power lines. Photo by Laura Sonter/QU
April 29 (UPI) -- To offset the environmental impacts of large-scale building projects, developers can spearhead conservation efforts in other parts of the world.
New research, published this week in the journal Nature Communications, suggests land for this kind of biodiversity offsetting is becoming increasingly scarce, threatening to thwart conservation goals.
"Most countries now have offsetting policies requiring developers to re-vegetate or protect areas of habitat and ecosystems, to compensate for biodiversity losses caused by their projects," Laura Sonter, ecologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, said in a news release. "When these activities create as much biodiversity as that lost to development, the offsets are said to achieve no net loss of biodiversity."
The problem is that land is limited. With every new development, the land supply dwindles. Land suitable for re-vegetation or protection is especially scarce. In some parts of the world, plans for new developments are made every day.
"In East Kalimantan, Indonesia, twice the amount of land that is currently available for revegetation would be required to compensate for losses from proposed developments, in order to achieve no net loss of biodiversity -- and we found similar results in Mozambique and Brazil," Sonter said. "For places like these, it is inevitable that development will result in an overall loss of biodiversity, because land availability constraints make no net biodiversity loss impossible to achieve."
Criticism of some biodiversity offsetting programs have moved policymakers to call for more aggressive conservation efforts from developers, further reducing the amount of land available for future biodiversity offsetting efforts.
It's possible the lack of land available for biodiversity offsetting could ultimately slow the pipeline of development projects in some countries, but Sonter and her colleagues worry policymakers will instead relax offsetting requirements, paving the way for more dramatic biodiversity losses.
"The consequences of offset failure for rare species and habitats that have limited opportunities for offsetting are disproportionately large, and include near-certain extinction," Sonter said. "However, since development is essential in many instances, we recommend governments explicitly account for land availability constraints in their offset policies and making decisions about projects."
Farmers start to kill pigs they can't sell to slaughterhouses due to closures By Jessie Higgins
Closed slaughterhouses are backing up the supply chain, leaving too many pigs on farms for farmers to care for. Photo by ramboldheiner/Pixabay
EVANSVILLE, Ind., April 23 (UPI) -- With coronavirus outbreaks closing slaughterhouses across the country, the American hog industry is running out of space to physically keep a backup of live pigs.
Hog farms are so crowded that producers are starting to euthanize their animals.
"I really, really don't want to kill my pigs," said Howard AV Roth, president of the National Pork Producers Council, who raises and weans pigs in Wisconsin.
"But it is getting close here. I know there are farmers who have had to kill their pigs, farmers are aborting sows. It's really awful," Roth said.
The issue stems from the more than a dozen meat packing plants that have closed since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The most recent occurred Wednesday when Tyson Foods announced it would shut its largest pork producing plant, which is in Waterloo, Iowa.
On Monday, JBS, an international meat processing company, closed its third processing plant, in Worthington, Minn. Smithfield Foods closed its pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, S.D., last week, while Cargill closed a plant in Hazleton, Pa. Other plants have closed, too, while far fewer have reopened.
The closures have significantly reduced the nation's slaughter capacity.
In a normal week, the American pork industry kills 2.5 million pigs. This week, it will kill only 2 million, Roth said.
"We're looking at a backup of a half a million pigs a week, starting this week," he said. "And we were already backed up by about a half million. This is bad."
The problem also is sending pork prices plummeting. Lean hog futures were trading at about 44 cents per pound Wednesday, down from around 84 cents at the start of the year, according to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
The price matters little, though, when farmers can't sell their animals, Roth said.
"This is not milk you can spill or crops you can till into the ground," said Jim Monroe, a spokesman for the National Pork Producers Council, based in Washington, D.C. "These are live animals that need care."
Farms across the country have started to go out of business as a result of the pandemic. Two of the producers to whom Roth normally sells weaned pigs have gone under, he said. Others with whom he works are close to failing, and the future of his farm depends on how long the slaughterhouse closures continue, he said.
"This is our biggest crisis ever in pork production," said Joseph Kerns, the president of Iowa-based Kerns & Associates, a consulting firm that specializes in livestock. "And I don't say that lightly."
It is too soon to predict how many farms will go under, Kerns said. But it could be a huge number.
"This could have a huge, long-term impact on the hog industry," he said.
Farmers fear USDA's $19B in coronavirus aid won't 'scratch the surface'
The livestock industry is facing a crisis as meat packing plant closures are making it difficult for ranchers to sell their animals. Photo courtesy of Pixabay
EVANSVILLE, Ind., April 28 (UPI) -- As the federal government prepares to distribute an unprecedented $19 billion in aid to farmers struggling through the coronavirus pandemic, farm industry experts say it won't be enough.
"That $19 billion helps," said Pat Westhoff, director of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the University of Minnesota. "But if things deteriorate further, that may not even scratch the surface for what people are going to need to get through this."
The issue is especially severe among livestock producers, Westhoff said.
That sector is facing an immediate crisis because the widespread closure of meat packing plants because of outbreaks of the virus makes it impossible for many farmers to sell all their animals.
"It's a mess," said Jim Petrik, a South Dakota rancher who raises cattle and hogs. "Almost all our local plants are out. It's going to be a bloodbath for producers."
Hog producers are losing money every day. The National Pork Producers Council on April 17 released a "conservative" estimate that hog farmers would lose a collective $5 billion in 2020.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has allocated $1.6 billion in aid for the hog industry.
The cattle and chicken industry also are in peril from the slaughterhouse closures. The National Cattlemen's Beef Association has estimated that producers will lose some $13.6 billion, a far cry from the $5.1 billion they've been allocated in direct USDA aid.
With losses quickly outpacing the promised aid, the American Farm Bureau Federation has called the federal aid "an important down payment" to bolster the rapidly deteriorating farm industry.
"More help will be needed," the organization has said.
Other farming sectors also are in crisis, industry leaders say.
Both fresh produce growers and dairy farmers are reeling from the sudden loss of the food service industry market after governors across the country closed restaurants, schools and other institutions in an effort to slow the virus' spread.
Before the virus hit, roughly half of the money Americans spent on food was from food service, according to the USDA.
Prices for those goods have plummeted. Milk prices have fallen to around 12 cents per pound from nearly 18 cents in January, according to trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange,
But, as with the livestock industry, the price matters little as farmers across the country are struggling to sell their products.
Dairy farmers are dumping milk across the country, while fresh produce growers are tilling vegetables into the dirt and livestock producers are beginning to euthanize animals.
"Congress and the Trump administration and the USDA are all doing exceptional things to support this industry," said Todd Van Hoose, the president and CEO of the Farm Credit Council, an agricultural lending firm based in Washington, D.C.
"But we've never been here before. We're off the map. No one knows just how bad this is going to get."
Markets for corn evaporate during coronavirus pandemic
Corn prices are falling fast as the markets for the vegetable disappear during the coronavirus pandemic. Photo by Jessie Higgins/UPI
EVANSVILLE, Ind., April 29 (UPI) -- The market for corn has evaporated during the coronavirus pandemic, and farmers worry they'll be unable to sell this year's harvest.
More than two-thirds of the corn grown in the United States goes either to feed livestock or make ethanol, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Both those industries are taking severe hits during the pandemic.
"The first thing that knocked the corn market down was the collapse of ethanol," said Blake Hurst, a corn grower who is the president of the Missouri Farm Bureau.
"People just aren't driving as much," he said. "Now, we're seeing concerns in the market because we're losing packing plants. Farmers are euthanizing their animals, so livestock herds are shrinking."
Ethanol production has been cut nearly in half since February, according to data released by the Renewable Fuels Association.
Meanwhile, ethanol stocks have hit a record high, climbing to 27.7 million barrels by April 17, up from 24.1 million barrels a month earlier, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
It's unclear to what extent meat packing plant closures will impact demand for livestock feed -- especially after President Donald Trump said Tuesday he would sign an executive order to make meat processing plants stay open amid the pandemic.
The impact still could be large, though, Hurst said.
More than a dozen slaughterhouses have closed due to workers becoming sick since the start of the pandemic. Livestock producers who are unable to sell their animals already are killing them.
"I know there are farmers who have had to kill their pigs," Howard AV Roth, president of the National Pork Producers Council, who raises and weans pigs in Wisconsin, told UPI on Thursday. "Farmers are aborting sows. It's really awful."
In addition, corn exports have ground nearly to a halt as port workers around the world stay home to avoid contracting the virus.
"It is a struggle to ship anything right now," said Floyd Gaibler, the director of trade policy and biotechnology for the U.S. Grains Council, a Washington, D.C.-based trade organization that represents the corn, sorghum and barley industries.
That problem exists "even to our top markets," Gaibler said. "They are open, but the ports are all backed up."
Around 20 percent of America's corn is exported, according to the USDA. Those markets are essentially on pause, Gaibler said.
The combined market disruptions are pushing corn prices down rapidly. Corn was trading at close to $3 per bushel Tuesday, down from close to $4 in January, according to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
But despite plummeting price and disappearing markets, farmers this year intend to plant a large corn crop, according to USDA surveys. This is in part because planting decisions are made -- and supplies purchased -- around the start of the year.
Farmers may make some last-minute changes to their planting plans, but probably not a lot, the farm bureau's Hurst said.
With markets shrinking fast, farmers might enter their fall harvest with high stocks of stored corn.
"We're just at the beginning of the planting season right now," said Andrew Novakovic, a professor of agricultural economics at Cornell University.
"Farmers have indicated they intend to plant a lot of corn this year. If that ends up being true, we could end up with a large crop this fall on top of a large carry-over."
Hospitals turning to UV light to disinfect medical gear
APRIL 28, 2020 By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News
Wendy Gould, R.N., inspects N95 masks that have been sanitized with UV light in a special trailer at Saint Louis University Hospital in St. Louis on Thursday. Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo
Supplies of personal protective equipment remain scarce across the United States, especially the N95 respirator masks that health care workers use to protect themselves from the new coronavirus.
To help extend the useful life of available equipment, researchers and hospitals are turning to a long-known, if little-used, means of disinfection -- ultraviolet radiation.
"It's generally well known that UV-C radiation kills microbes," said Bob Karlicek Jr., director of the Center for Lighting Enabled Systems and Applications at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. "What's not known is the specific quantities of UV-C radiation that is required to fully disinfect complex equipment like N95 masks, because you have to get the light to the inside of the mask."
Karlicek led a team that created a UV-C system designed to disinfect N95 masks. It's being tested at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
President Donald Trump was ridiculed last week after publicly speculating that UV light could be used to treat COVID-19 infection inside the human body.
"Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous -- whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light -- and I think you said that hasn't been checked, but you're going to test it," Trump said at a media briefing. "And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you're going to test that, too. Sounds interesting."
Experts quickly came forward to note that UV light can be harmful to humans, and that it would be impossible for ultraviolet rays to reach deep within the body to kill coronavirus in the lungs and other organs.
That's also part of the problem with using UV light to disinfect protective gear like masks, gowns and gloves, Karlicek said.
UV light disinfects by breaking down the genetic structure of coronaviruses and other microbes, he said. The virus either dies or is rendered incapable of replicating.
But that means the ultraviolet rays must directly strike the virus -- meaning every square inch of the equipment must be exposed to UV light to be properly disinfected. Any part that falls within a shadow might still carry active coronavirus, Karlicek said.
The UV rays must also be very powerful. Mere sunlight alone will not kill the coronavirus, experts say.
The Rensselaer team's solution is a conveyor system that runs N95 masks through a battery of mercury UV lights.
"That allows us to have a vertical arrangement of UV-C mercury lamps and then suspend the masks carefully on a moving framework that would go in between the lamps, so you could simultaneously irradiate masks from both sides," Karlicek said.
The system stands about 8-feet tall and about 8-feet long. The masks are hung on a series of hooks, and the speed of the conveyor belt determines how much radiation the masks receive.
Mount Sinai doctors are testing the system to figure out the exact level of UV exposure needed to fully disinfect the masks, Karlicek said.
"There's no doubt we'll be able to deactivate the virus at the right dose," he said. "The question is how many uses can we get? Does the UV light damage the straps that hold the mask on the face? These are things that need to be worked out."
Other groups also are trying to develop similar solutions. For example, a team at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is working on a system that would use LED lights to sterilize protective gear with UV-C radiation.
"Anything we can do to extend the life of N95 masks in particular -- those are in relatively short supply pretty much everywhere -- that's certainly something I would like to see developed," said Dr. Matthew Heinz, a hospitalist and internist with Tucson Medical Center in Arizona.
"Of course, we have to take proper precautions and make sure we are adequately sterilizing the personal protective equipment," he added.
Karlicek's team assembled its prototype for about $10,000, but he warned that supply issues would hamper efforts to make more light-disinfecting machines.
"One of the biggest challenges we had in building the system was finding a supply of mercury lamps that were commercially available now, as opposed to being backordered for five or six weeks," Karlicek said.
Similar devices -- including wands, boxes and bags -- are already available for disinfecting at home using UV light, he noted.
"People are selling UV-C disinfection systems for the home, in particular UV-C wands you can wave over surfaces," Karlicek said, adding he doesn't consider them a good idea.
"You have no idea how much UV-C light you're getting from one of these wands, and you have no idea how to use it to get an appropriate dose," he said of home users. "In order to disinfect well, you really need a good amount of UV-C light."
These devices also can be hazardous to people. While UV-C light cannot penetrate the skin, it is bright enough to damage the eyes, Karlicek said.
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about ultraviolet light.
Copyright 2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
THIRD WORLD USA Costs would prevent 1 in 7 in U.S. from seeking COVID-19 treatment
By HealthDay News St. Louis Metropolitan motorcycle Police Officer Dave Tenorio bumps fists with a health care worker, during a celebration discharge, at St. Luke's Hospital, in Chesterfield, Missouri on Friday. Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo
Worries over medical bills would prevent 1 in 7 Americans from seeking treatment if they had possible symptoms of COVID-19, a new poll finds.
Of more than 1,000 adults surveyed, 6 percent -- representing 15 million Americans -- said that during the coronavirus pandemic, they or a family member had been denied care for another health problem.
Asked if they would seek medical attention for a fever and dry cough -- telltale signs of COVID-19 -- 14 percent said they would not because of cost, according to the results from the nonprofit West Health and Gallup.
Even if they suspected they were infected, 9 percent said they wouldn't seek treatment -- a finding that suggests insurance coverage shortfalls, lack of money, or poor knowledge of COVID-19 symptoms, the survey sponsors said.
More than 20 percent of adults under age 30, nonwhites, those with a high school education or less, and those in households with annual incomes under $40,000 were most likely to not seek care for suspected COVID-19 symptoms.
"Millions of Americans, even in the face of a disease that has brought a country to its knees, would forgo care due to the potential expense and still others may not be clear on the common symptoms of COVID-19," said Tim Lash, chief strategy officer for West Health.
"While physicians and health care workers are doing courageous and lifesaving work, the pandemic magnifies the longstanding perils and flaws of a high-cost health care system in need of reform," Lash added in a West Health news release.
Regarding denial of care for other health problems during the pandemic, rates were 11 percent in the Northeast 8 percent in the West 5 percent in the South and 3 percent in the Midwest.
Those rates likely reflect how hard coronavirus has hit certain regions. New York state has had the most confirmed cases in the United States, followed by New Jersey, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.
Race was not strongly associated with denial of care for other health problems, but income was. Nearly four times more people with household incomes below $40,000 said they'd been denied care (11 percent), compared with 3 percent of those with incomes above $100,000.
"These new findings align with previous research by West Health and Gallup on the impact of high health care costs in the U.S.," said Dan Witters, a senior researcher for Gallup.
"Last year, over 13 percent of respondents, representing more than 30 million Americans, reported having a friend or family member who died in the last five years after not being able to afford necessary care," he said in the release. "Add to that the challenges associated with COVID-19, and Americans find themselves in a quagmire as many of them turn to a system they can't afford or that can't accommodate them."
The telephone poll of a random sample of 1,017 U.S. adults was conducted between April 1 and 14.
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on COVID-19.
Copyright 2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved
Organic food growers see surge in demand during pandemic By Paul Brinkmann Grimmway Farms in California harvests organic carrots this spring.
Photo courtesy of Cal-Organic/Grimmway Farms
April 29 (UPI) -- Demand for organic produce and eggs has strengthened during the COVID-19 pandemic that causes worker absences and minor supply chain disruptions, growers and industry representatives said.
While many large conventional farms had to destroy millions of pounds of crops, organic producers said customer loyalty and direct sales to retail outlets helped them thrive.
Producers in New Hampshire, California and Florida said this week that their only problem was keeping up with increasing demand and maintaining a healthy labor force to handle that demand.
All organic crop varieties showed a spike in demand in March at Cal-Organic/Grimmway Farms, based in Bakersfield, Calif., said Jeff Huckaby, the president. The company is the nation's largest organic produce grower, based about 100 miles north of Los Angeles.
"Our business has been very busy, very solid. I know some farmers are suffering, but we've seen steady demand and increased demand," Huckaby said.
He attributed increased demand to the devotion of customers toward organic products and the need to cook at home when many states banned dining in restaurants and adopted stay-at-home restrictions in March.
Organic growers, in general, tend to sell more product directly to consumers or to retail outlets, rather than to restaurants or other food service establishments, according to Huckaby and the Organic Trade Association, based in Washington, D.C.
Cal-Organic's food-service, which represents 10 percent of sales, declined, but retail sales boomed, Huckaby said.
"For all crop varieties, it's a solid 25 percent increase across the board," he said, adding that demand might outstrip his supply for certain vegetables soon.
To keep up with the demand amid a deadly pandemic, some employees worked longer hours. Cal-Organic/Grimmway Farms paid "Feed the Nation" bonuses to the staff, Huckaby said.
In south Florida, customers at Glaser Organic Farms in the Homestead area bought mangoes, avocados and other food items at normal or higher-than-normal prices, co-owner Tracy Glaser said.
"I'm incredibly fortunate that we still have customers and some workers willing to come in" to help run the business amid ongoing demand despite the pandemic, Glaser said.
The head of Pete and Gerry's Organic Eggs, based in New Hampshire, said its products sold so fast that they disappeared quickly from some stores. The company, which partners with 120 farms in 13 states, strove to keep up with demand by collecting and distributing eggs as fast as possible.
"We're doing our very best to keep up with increasing demand while keeping our own workers and families safe," according to a statement from CEO Jesse Laflamme to customers.
Organic supply chains, because they are certified, are more resilient to shocks due to any disaster, including a pandemic, said Johanna Mirenda, farm policy director at the Organic Trade Association.
Due to their increased demand, Mirenda said, some organic growers may not require government stimulus money that is earmarked for farmers.
But, she said, even organic farmers are impacted by the pandemic, despite the increased demand. That included warehouses being closed temporarily if a worker tests positive for COVID-19, which could increase transportation or distribution costs or higher labor costs to process the increased demand while providing sanitizer and protective gear.
Looking ahead, Mirenda said the increased demand for many organic products means growers might have to adjust what they plant next year while trying to determine if increased demand will continue if and when the pandemic subsides.
For consumers, organic produce gives them an added layer of security.
Eating organic vegetables pleases Angela Bishton of the Orlando, Fla., area because they generally come from local, certified farms. In a time of uncertainty like the pandemic, she said, she appreciates and trusts that kind of sourcing.
Bishton said she subscribes to deliveries from an organic produce supplier, Orlando Organics. "The convenience can't be overstated," she said. "They deliver fresh vegetables to my door, and I believe their values align with mine in terms of using less chemicals and protecting the environment."
Pentagon formally releases Navy videos of unidentified object encounters By Ed Adamczy
APRIL 27, 2020
A sailor watches an F/A-18F Super Hornet, from the Flying Eagles of Strike Fighter Squadron 122, as it prepares to land on the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz in 2017. Photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Ian Kinkead/U.S.Navy April 27 (UPI) -- The Pentagon formally released three videos on Monday taken by Navy pilots which indicate the presence of "unidentified aerial phenomena.
The videos, one from 2004 and two from 2017, have been circulating since their unauthorized leaks, and the Navy has attested to their authenticity.
They were officially released on Monday "in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos," the Pentagon said in a statement.
The videos show what appear to be unidentified flying objects, recorded by infrared cameras, rapidly moving past airborne planes. Audio in two videos include comments from surprised service members, with one voice suggesting the flying object could be a drone.
The events prompted the Navy to introduce guidelines for pilots' reports of suspicious or unidentified phenomena. The photographic evidence was first released in 2017 and 2018 by To The Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences, a company studying unidentified aerial phenomena and co-founded by Tom DeLonge, former member of the band Blink-182.
"As I got close to it ... it rapidly accelerated to the south, and disappeared in less than two seconds," retired Navy pilot David Fravor said in 2017.
Fravor witnessed the movement, captured on video in 2004, of an unidentified object, about 40 feet long and hovering about 50 feet over the Pacific Ocean. "This was extremely abrupt, like a ping pong ball, bouncing off a wall. It would hit and go the other way," he said.
The Pentagon studied recordings of aerial observations of unknown objects in a classified program from 2007 to 2012, which closed after it was assessed that higher priorities required funding.
AFP / MUNIR UZ ZAMANGarment workers wash their legs before entering a factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where hundreds of such factories reopened despite a nationwide lockdown against new coronavirus
AFP / STRBangladesh's garment factories are "under pressure" from brands to meet export deadlines despite the pandemic, an industry group said
