Dear Friend,
The coronavirus pandemic surged across Europe this weekend, with more than 2,600 deaths, the majority of them in Italy, followed by Spain, France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The weekend toll by itself nearly equaled the entire three-month death toll in China, where the epidemic began.
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Coronavirus kills more than 2,600 across Europe in one weekend
by Alex Lantier
The
coronavirus pandemic surged across Europe this weekend, with more than 2,600 deaths, the majority of them in Italy, followed by Spain, France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The weekend toll by itself nearly equaled the entire three-month death toll in China, where the epidemic began.
The coronavirus pandemic surged across Europe this weekend, with more than 2,600 deaths, the majority of them in Italy, followed by Spain, France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The weekend toll by itself nearly equaled the entire three-month death toll in China, where the epidemic began.
On Sunday alone there were 1,287 deaths and 17,303 new cases, with Italy, Spain and France all seeing record numbers of deaths from the epidemic. The total for the continent as a whole reached 168,803 cases and 8,785 deaths.
The toll from the pandemic in Europe has now reached more than double the impact in China, which saw 81,054 cases and 3,261 deaths. Worldwide, there have been 335,377 declared cases of coronavirus and 14,611 deaths.
A third major epicenter is Iran, where there have been at least 21,638 cases including 1,685 deaths, while the number of cases in the United States has skyrocketed to more than 32,000, with 400 deaths. There is also a rapid growth in the number of cases in Africa and Latin America.
Though Italy, Spain and France are under country-wide lockdown, as well as large parts of Germany, the contagion is spreading relentlessly across Europe, after governments refused for weeks to adopt shelter-in-place orders or make any serious effort to actually stop the contagion by combining lockdowns with testing, contact-tracing and quarantining all those either infected or in contact with the infected.
Italy, Europe’s worst-hit country for now, saw 5,560 new cases and 651 deaths on Sunday after 6,557 new cases and a record 793 deaths on Saturday, for 59,138 cases overall and 5,476 deaths. On Saturday, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced that all factories would close indefinitely except for those “strictly necessary … to guarantee us essential goods and services.” Officials in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region, warned that stricter measures, like a ban on anyone leaving their homes, might be taken as hospitals continue to be flooded with critically ill patients gasping for air.
While Russian military aid and a group of Cuban doctors arrived in Italy, the European Union (EU) still refuses to provide aid to the devastated country. A diplomatic incident ensued this weekend over the theft of a shipment of 680,000 Chinese face masks to Italy in the Czech Republic, whose government initially denied that anything had been stolen. The Czech government is now sending masks and respirators to Italy, however.
Italian health officials pointed to the slight fall in the number of infected and of deaths on Sunday, as well as the fact that only 30.4 percent of new cases were in Lombardy, as signs the contagion might be slowing. The incubation period of the virus typically ranges from three to seven days and can go up to 14. As confinement orders to prevent further spread of the disease took effect over a week ago, many of those already infected and incubating the virus at that time could be expected to have already started showing symptoms.
However, officials also warned not to take false hope. “I hope and we all hope that these figures can be borne out in the coming days. But do not let your guard down,” commented Italian civil protection service chief Angelo Borrelli.
In Spain, there were 3,925 new cases and 288 deaths Saturday and 3,107 new cases and 375 deaths Sunday, bringing the total to 28,603 cases and 1,756 deaths. One of those who has fallen ill is the beloved opera singer, Placido Domingo, lately a target of the right-wing #MeToo movement. Moreover, 12 percent of the confirmed cases (3,475) are doctors, nurses or health staff, devastating the health system which is already flooded with patients in key areas such as Madrid.
On Saturday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez warned that “the worst is to come.” As confined Spanish people banged on pots and pans to protest his handling of the pandemic, Sanchez pledged to organize more mass testing for coronavirus. The Sanchez government has prolonged Spain’s state of alarm and lockdown until at least April 11.
In France, where the first doctor died of coronavirus in Compiègne, the total number of cases rose to 16,018 with 674 deaths, including 112 on Sunday alone. Health Minister Olivier Véran also said he believed the true number of cases in France is 30,000 to 90,000. However, he brazenly ignored calls from health professionals to carry out mass testing to identify and isolate all the sick before they can spread the disease to others. Instead, Véran said France would increase testing “once confinement orders are lifted,” that is, at some point in the indefinite future.
In Germany, officials are reportedly considering a nationwide lockdown as the number of sick rose 2,488 on Sunday to 24,852. Amid growing fears of coronavirus infections in rest homes, nine elderly residents of a home have died and thirty people have been infected, including some of the rest home’s staff, in the town of Würzburg, where 166 people have already fallen ill. Among those now self-isolating, moreover, is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who reportedly came into contact with a doctor who later tested positive for the virus.
In Britain, 48 people died and 665 fell ill on Sunday, bringing the total to 281 deaths and 5,683 cases—including the first teenager to die of coronavirus in Britain, aged 18.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson came under growing criticism for his refusal to act against the pandemic. After his scientific advisor Patrick Vallance said it was “not desirable” to prevent Britons from contracting the disease—claiming this would prevent them from becoming immune—Johnson was forced to deny a Sunday Times report that his far-right adviser Dominic Cummings had argued to “let old people die.”
The pandemic is rapidly bringing to the fore deep class divisions internationally. The financial aristocracy is determined to let the disease run its course, so long as they are able to emerge richer than ever before. While the European Central Bank has printed €750 billion since the pandemic began to bail out stock markets and the super-rich, and national states are offering hundreds of billions of euros in financial guarantees for the corporations, businesses across Europe demand workers stay on the job to keep making profits for them.
Anger is mounting among health workers and industrial workers, however, at the ruling elite’s irresponsible attitude to this deadly pandemic. Amazon has stopped shipping non-essential products in Italy, after strikes last week and threats of strike action by Amazon workers in France.
After a wave of wildcat strikes in Italy forced Conte to adopt the initial confinement order, health professionals are bitterly criticizing decades-long EU austerity policies that have slashed health budgets and devastated hospitals .
In Spain, a hospital supply purchaser spoke to El Espanol to criticize Sanchez’s Spanish Socialist Party-Podemos government’s failure to order face masks and emergency respirators. “He did not buy them on time, it is a scandal,” he said. “In the meantime they were debating about local elections in the Basque Country and Galicia or asking whether the Montero law on sexual freedom was creating conflict in the ruling coalition. What stupidities, with coronavirus looming over it all! What a waste of time!”
In France, a group of 600 doctors has sued Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and former Health Minister Agnès Buzyn before the Republic’s Court of Justice (CJR) over their handling of the pandemic. They are accusing Philippe and Buzyn of having “voluntarily abstained from taking or launching measures” against “a danger for the security of persons.” After Buzyn admitted she had warned Philippe of the danger of a pandemic since January, the group is demanding a criminal investigation of Philippe and the seizure of his computers.
Amid growing class conflict, as workers clash with the state and the banks to try to secure social resources to fight the pandemic, the ruling elite—assisted by the union bureaucracy and its pseudo-left political allies—is moving to suppress opposition. Obsessed with giving handouts to the banks and the super-rich, it is preparing attacks on wages and basic social and democratic rights and accelerating moves towards authoritarian forms of rule.
As Portugal’s social-democratic government voted a state of emergency on March 18, suspending the constitutional right to strike for the first time since the fall of the fascist Salazar dictatorship in 1974, Spain deployed the army at home to enforce the state of alarm. In France, the government adopted a bill for a new state of emergency during the coronavirus crisis that allows businesses to slash a week of vacation and eliminate restrictions on the length of the workweek—even after the coronavirus crisis is over. These measures emerged from talks between business and the unions.
In Germany on Friday, the IG Metall union used the coronavirus crisis as a pretext to abandon talks with employers and accept contracts with no wage increases—claiming this was necessary to protect business activity. Left Party official Dietmar Bartsch hailed Merkel’s policies, tweeting, “The Left party fraction will support all measures that demand solidarity to avoid damage to the nation, people and the economy.”
The defense of workers’ health, livelihoods and democratic rights after years of EU austerity and police-state repression demands a social revolution and a break with this rotten establishment. The struggle to stem the pandemic, obtain decent wages during lock-downs, and obtain free and decent medical coverage for all is an international political struggle. This requires the organization of the working class across Europe and internationally in rank-and-file committees of action, independent of the unions, and a struggle to transfer political power to the working class.
Originally published by WSWS.org
Coronavirus pandemic: 37 million U.S. jobs could be lost but gun sales spur
by Countercurrents Collective
U.S. Private Sector Job Quality Index estimates that some 37 million domestic jobs are vulnerable to layoffs. Hardest hit would be limited- and full-service restaurants, with some 9 million jobs at risk of layoffs in the near term. Fields such as education have some 3.2 million jobs at risk, while general stores have 2.8 million, according to the report.
Prime Minister’s initiative on Corona- Political parties & Corporates too have to act fast
by E A S Sarma
The Central and the State governments cannot afford to lose even a day in the campaign to contain the spread of the virus, in ramping up the medical infrastructure, in equipping the medical/ para-medical staff to insulate themselves from getting infected, in protecting the lakhs of the sanitation workers who are equally, if not more, exposed to the contagion and in providing livelihood relief to millions of low-income families who have lost their livelihoods as a result of the lock down imposed across the country.
Business as Usual: Coronavirus, Iran and US Sanctions
by Dr Binoy Kampmark
Never discount the importance of venality in international relations. While pandemics should provide the glue for a unified front in response – we keep being told of fighting this
horrendous “invisible enemy” – it’s business as usual in other respects. The United States, with a disparate, confused medical system that risks being overwhelmed, remains committed against that other country floundering in efforts to combat COVID-19: Iran. Instead of binding the nations, the virus, as with everything else, has served as a political obstacle.
Never discount the importance of venality in international relations. While pandemics should provide the glue for a unified front in response – we keep being told of fighting this horrendous “invisible enemy” – it’s business as usual in other respects. The United States, with a disparate, confused medical system that risks being overwhelmed, remains committed against that other country floundering in efforts to combat COVID-19: Iran. Instead of binding the nations, the virus, as with everything else, has served as a political obstacle.
This has led to a few glaring oddities. The first lies on the policy approach to US-led sanctions, which continues with usual viciousness. Last week, the US State Department added nine new entities and three individuals to the sanctions list against Iran. According to the press statement, “The actions of these individuals and entities provide revenue to the regime that it may use to fund terror and other destabilizing activities, such as the recent rocket attacks on Iraqi and Coalition forces located at Camp Taji in Iraq.” The aim here was to “deprive the regime of critical income from its petrochemical industry and further Iran’s economic and diplomatic isolation.”
The Trump administration has insisted on pursuing the Iranian bogeyman with an enthusiasm verging on mania. Its attempts to scuttle Tehran’s 2015 nuclear agreement with six world powers has, to a certain extent, been successful. This has merely added gusto to Tehran’s defiance. The US has also sought to impress the Iranian armed forces that their influence in the Middle East remains on notice: the killing of Major General Qassem Soleimani of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Coprs was sharp, bloody and bankrupt in terms of strategy.
The coronavirus outbreak may well be seen as offering other opportunities to bring Iran to its knees. The desiccated tacticians are out with their spread sheets and tables wondering what will be most effective approach. The sanctions, as they tend to, have targeted the vulnerable, though never touch the well-heeled. The health system has suffered; shortages in equipment and medicines are savagely biting. A team of researchers at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran have concluded, using simulations, that 3.5 million deaths might eventuate in Iran if the crisis persists at its current momentum till May. A truly horrendous toll that, should it eventuate, would not necessarily give Washington what it wants: submission and regime change.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has insisted on conditions to any state wishing to offer humanitarian assistance to Iran. The “release of all dual and foreign nationals” is a primary condition. A cumbersome, red-tape Swiss channel has also been established to facilitate trade with Iran, but US oversight makes the option ungainly.
Amidst the tangle have come small offers of assistance from Washington; first the brutal slap, then the promise of miniscule relief. Scepticism was forthcoming. What was the Great Satan playing at? “Several times Americans have offered to help us to fight the pandemic,” assessed a sceptical Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a televised address over the weekend. “That is strange because you face shortages in America.”
Iran’s supreme leader had an explanation. Using the conspiratorial language that President Donald Trump has made ritualistic and famous, he claimed, that the virus was “specifically built for Iran using the genetic data of Iranians which they have obtained through different means.” He also retorted with the Chinese thesis on the subject. “Also, you are accused of creating this virus.” To accept medicines from the US might assist in spreading “the virus or cause it to remain permanently.”
The continued sanctions regime despite the crippling effect of COVID-19 has prompted calls for an easing, if not lifting altogether. China has taken the lead on the issue, and the international relations cognoscenti sense a pronounced step in the virus propaganda war. Its Foreign Ministry has urged the US to, in the words of spokesman Geng Shuang, “immediately lift unilateral sanctions on Iran. Continued sanctions are against humanitarianism and hamper Iran’s epidemic response and delivery of humanitarian aid.”
Russia has also added its voice of support, with its Foreign Ministry arguing that, “Illegal unilateral US sanctions, imposed since May 2018 as part of the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign, are a powerful obstacle to the effective fight against the infection.”
One firm US ally might also be softening its stance. The case of the Iranian-British dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has seen prospects for an easing of pressure. Her release from Iranian captivity, a period lasting five years, was a topic of discussion between UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and his counterpart Javad Zarif last week. Options pertaining to practical help for Iran were also discussed.
Even within US political circles, the Trump administration’s insistence on politicising aid is proving worrying. “We should never be conditioning humanitarian aid,” opined Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to the National Interest. “We need to be engaged in the world, providing the leadership, and solving the pandemic, and giving help to countries that need it.” The good member of Congress might also consider that leadership also entails sorting out the domestic front before sending in the cavalry of rescue. A country short of respirators, masks and beds would be a poor contender for that role.
Azadeh Moaveni of the International Crisis Group, and human rights advocate Sussan Tahmasebi, founder of Femena, argue that suspending the sanctions regime during the course of the COVID-19 outbreak “should not be seen as a troubling or even monumental thing to do.” To control the virus should not be deemed a favour to the Iranian regime but more for Iranians “and indeed, to the rest of the world.” That would entail, almost impossibly, abandoning the temptations of Realpolitik and the urgings of insensible patriotism.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Clapping Against Coronavirus
by K P Sasi
If you are clapping for the selfless work of the health workers, the minimum effort that should be done is to find out what their requirements are and what limitations they have to deal with this problem. Not clapping for heaven’s sake.
Leaders Inspire Through Their Actions
by Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Why is this country and its leadership not serious about the issue confronting. Why you want to convert everything into an event and
spectacle. Definitely, the PM was sounding worried as he saw the situation in the west is turning nightmarish but unlike the Western leaders who showed great sense of urgency to protect their nation and their economy, we did find nothing
Primavera Redefined – (Or life post-corona virus?)
by Mitali Chakravarty
Man and Woman, Race and Ritual
united by their battle to live,
survive with love and forgive.
There is a winter before every spring.
What Americans Don’t Know About Military Families
by Andrea Mazzarino
As each of my husband’s Navy submarine deployments came to an end, local spouses would e-mail me about the ship’s uncertain date of return. They were attempting to sell tickets to a raffle in which the winner would be the first to kiss her returning sailor. When the time came, journalists would
hover to capture the image as hundreds of families, many with young children like mine, waited for hours at an empty lot on base, sometimes exposed to rain, wind, or sun reflecting off the pavement.
As each of my husband’s Navy submarine deployments came to an end, local spouses would e-mail me about the ship’s uncertain date of return. They were attempting to sell tickets to a raffle in which the winner would be the first to kiss her returning sailor. When the time came, journalists would hover to capture the image as hundreds of families, many with young children like mine, waited for hours at an empty lot on base, sometimes exposed to rain, wind, or sun reflecting off the pavement.
As the crew disembarked, kids tried to catch sight of parents they hadn’t seen or spoken to for months, calling out to them from behind barbed wire fences. Amid the hubbub, a singular couple — curiously, almost always a young, white, attractive heterosexual pair — would enjoy the carefully manufactured privilege of having that first kiss.
Following one six-month deployment, I remember being told about the chatter aboard the sub when, through its periscope as the ship approached base, the long “ears” of the male partner of a male submariner were spotted. Being part of a community of “furries,” he was dressed in a giant rabbit costume. Other spouses and sailors wondered what it would have been like if that couple had gotten the coveted raffle ticket.
What message would the American public then get about military families? Would they even be allowed to appear? “It’d actually be kind of perfect,” a friend of mine and military spouse (about to enter a graduate program and live separately from her Navy husband for years) told me, wryly.
We agreed that such a moment would have offered a needed balance to the Stepford-wife-style images of military families to which Americans have grown accustomed.
Beyond the Cameras
I’m a Navy spouse. My husband has served two tours on a nuclear submarine and spent two shore duties at the Pentagon while we’ve been together. We’ve moved three times with our young children and that’s a modest number compared to so many hundreds of other military families I’ve met in our community and through my work as a therapist-in-training.
While I haven’t experienced the life-and-death costs of war like the families of so many U.S. troops who have served in this country’s twenty-first-century war zones, I’ve co-edited a book, War and Health: The Medical Consequences of the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which documents the health costs of our endless post-9/11 conflicts. In 2011, I also co-founded Brown University’s Costs of War Project, which continues to document the human and financial tolls caused by those wars.
So I’m no stranger to the experience of war in its grim diversity. Which is why I cringed when, during President Trump’s recent State of the Union Address, he used a family reunion — an Army sergeant first class brought back from seven months in Afghanistan, his fourth tour of duty in America’s forever wars — to show his empathy for the strains such conflicts place on the U.S. military. In the process, he claimed a rare moment of bipartisan accord. An attractive young husband and wife embraced in the gallery of the House of Representatives while their two well-behaved children beamed. Everyone, Republicans and Democrats, clapped, and close-ups of figures like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence displayed solemn faces, respectful of this intimately staged public moment.
Stress Fractures
As I watched that scene, I wondered: What about the family members of the other 1.4 million active-duty service members today? What are they experiencing as they catch this scene and think about their families? What have their reunions felt like?
The family is probably the most significant form of support that American troops have today, so it’s obviously convenient to believe that such families are capable, stable, and instagrammable. Their capacity to withstand the repeated long deployments of the post-9/11 years, whether in war zones or not, says a great deal about this country, its unity, and its security.
I have some experience with this. I’ve spoken with hundreds of military families over the past nine years of my own marriage. The vast majority of them do not look like, act like, or fulfill the fantasies engendered by that couple Trump highlighted in his State of the Union moment; nor, in fact, do they resemble those who regularly seem to win that chance to reunite first with their loved ones during the end-of-deployment ceremonies I’ve witnessed.
Military families and marriages are anything but perfect or stereotypical. For starters, a surprising number of military couples are openly gay. Some are also headed by women — and their partners are often much less able or willing than the wives of male troops to follow their spouses from post to post.
Many military families I’ve met have at least one member with developmental or physical disabilities or a chronic mental illness like bipolar disorder or severe depression. And the vast majority of couples I’ve run into have significant marital conflicts related to repeated deployments in this country’s war zones and other parts of the world. In the military universe I live in, for instance, no one bats an eye when an officer appears alone at his farewell party at the end of a tour of duty without the spouse who originally accompanied him to that post. In my experience, this is the rule, not the exception for such events.
Even in the best of circumstances, when families stay intact, spouses often engage in risky practices like heavy drinking, drug use, spending way beyond their means, or gambling, among other self-destructive activities. Add in stressors like caring for heartsick, mentally ill, or disabled children alone, or being bullied by commanding officers or the spouses of commanders who pressure spouses to work at volunteer events to prove their love for family members overseas.
Remember as well that, during deployments, spouses can’t communicate honestly with each other, given censorship by military commanders who scan communications for “sensitive” information that might distress those meant to fight — like news that a family member is ill.
As anthropologists Jean Scandlyn and Sarah Hautzinger point out, the more months soldiers are deployed, the higher the risk of divorce, with 97% of such divorces taking place soon after a deployment ends. A recent National Institutes of Health study suggests that children of deployed parents display more aggressive behavior and greater symptoms of depression and anxiety than do civilian children (though the difference is modest).
As it happens, we know remarkably little about health indicators among military spouses. A recent review of health surveys from 2010 and 2012, however, suggests that one in five spouses of active-duty Army members were then overweight, a third were obese, and about 8% reported themselves as heavy drinkers. Many in this last group claimed to be stressed out by information (or the lack of it) regarding spousal deployments or other aspects of their spouses’ jobs.
In short, despite the image of that couple the president highlighted in that State of the Union moment, all evidence indicates that military service tends to erode the fabric of family life and that, in reality, the state of America’s most fundamental union is anything but strong.
Joining Forces
And yet, who do we military families have to rely on but one another, however imperfect we may be?
When the toddler of a spouse in my husband’s command was gravely ill, we other spouses helped her locate a civilian doctor agreeable to treating the child at a reduced cost outside the military hospital where doctors chalked up the toddler’s dwindling weight to poor parenting. When, during a different deployment, a partner grew depressed, another spouse gave her mental health counseling free of charge every day.
Other spouses and I have shared countless opportunities to workshop our resumes, introduce one another to prospective employers, share information about reliable childcare, or look after one another’s children when someone grew ill and we were far from family members who could help. In 2016, after a difficult move, I compiled some of our concerns into a letter to Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, founders of Joining Forces, documenting the lack of access to healthcare and childcare for military spouses, as well as the military bureaucracy’s grotesque lack of accountability for such things. With another spouse, I requested a meeting, but never received a response.
In recent years, however clumsily, the government has come to recognize how crucial loved ones are to caring for veterans, if not the troops themselves. In her essay “Afterwar Work for Life” in War and Health, anthropologist Zoe Wool describes the Veterans Affairs caregiver program that provides wives and other immediate family members of war-injured veterans with salary replacement, specialized training, and mental health services, among other kinds of support.
Strikingly, however, only about a third of the people actually taking care of post-9/11 veterans — with or without government support — are spouses. About 25% are parents and 23% are friends and neighbors. Yet the government will fund and assist only people who are either related to veterans or live with them and will support only one caregiver at a time per veteran, an immense burden for a single person.
What Happens When the Soldiers From the Afghan War Finally Come Home?
The Trump administration is now preparing for an (already somewhat shaky) pull out of American troops from Afghanistan by 2021. Meanwhile, those of us in military communities are looking for reassurance that some of the 600,000 uniformed troops who have survived the longest war — and the war with the largest number of troops serving multiple combat tours of duty — in American history have lives to return to. About a million service members from those post-9/11 wars have some kind of officially recognized disability. Many more live with unrecognized injuries, often invisible and related to mental illnesses such as depression and PTSD, chronic pain, or traumatic brain injuries.
Raising American consciousness about the aftermath of this war is going to be tough, though. Fewer veterans have fought in Afghanistan than in any other recent American war and it’s been the veterans of foreign wars who have kept alive the issue of the health problems such military families face. It’s veterans who often help returning troops register for disability status, counsel them on how to navigate the court system, drive them to their medical appointments, and serve as peer health advocates and counselors.
All this leaves me wondering what will happen to Afghan veterans who endured longer and more frequent deployments than their counterparts from the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the first Gulf War. With the end of our draft system in 1973, it’s become so much easier to convince the public that military families are okay. According to a 2011 Pew Research Center Survey, more than three-quarters of adults aged 50 and older reported that they had an immediate family member who had served in the military. Only a third of adults ages 18 to 29 could say the same.
In short, most Americans no longer have first-hand or even second-hand knowledge of what it’s like to serve in the military during such wars. Bases, even in this country, are enclosed and heavily guarded. (They weren’t always this way.) And the unpaid volunteer work military spouses are expected to perform does not help them interact with civilian families.
In other words, Americans know remarkably little about the lives of the uniformed troops who fight wars in their names and largely live separated from them on islands in this country.
One alternative might be for every American to begin bearing witness to the disastrous forever wars of this century, to those Americans still fighting them, and to the many hundreds of thousands of people, including civilians in the war zones, whose lives have been uprooted and damaged by them or who have lost their lives in them.
Believe me, the beautiful family at Trump’s State of the Union address represents next to nothing when it comes to actual life in the military in 2020. Nor do I. Nor does the gay couple I mentioned at one of my husband’s submarine homecomings.
In fact, there is no category that can simply be labeled “military family.” There are only shared experiences among people who often disperse as quickly as each tour of duty ends, as each war fades from public consciousness.
Certainly, if you want to get a different impression of America’s wars and life in the military, you could sign up for the Costs of War Project’s mailing list or that of UCLA’s Palm Center, whose courageous research and advocacy for marginalized members of the military, including transgender and female service members, provides a much-needed countercurrent to clichéd images of husbands and wives embracing.
Afterword, Afterwar
Recently, my husband made the difficult decision to leave the submarine service so that our family might have a chance of spending our lives (or at least the next few years) in the same place together, whatever his service might be. He had grown tired of returning from trips to find that our children no longer really recognized him; nor, sometimes, he them. He used to blush and look at the ground when extended family and acquaintances commended him for the sacrifices he was making in serving our country.
After he announced that he would never again serve on a submarine, I noticed him using the word “sacrifice” for the first time; he would, the implication was, make the sacrifice of leaving that service. This felt odd to me. After all, he would spend the next several years working eight-hour days instead of 16- to 18-hour ones. He would be relatively immune from hazing by commanders with unrestrained bad tempers and untreated combat trauma. And of course, we would be together.
I soon learned that what he felt he was sacrificing was a sense of meaning and of belonging to something larger than himself.
At the same time, what we both knew but never stated outright to one another was that, had he continued on those submarines much longer, our family, even if together in name and law, would no longer have understood one another.
In the meantime, maybe it’s a moment for Americans not in the armed forces to stop thinking it’s enough to thank anyone in uniform for his or her service or place those yellow-ribbon bumper stickers on their cars — and to focus instead on almost 19 years of disastrous and destructive American wars abroad and what they’ve done to those very troops and their families. If more people studied up on the lives of military personnel and their families, they might write and lobby members of Congress strongly advocating support for them and for stressed out military children and their parents who are forced to leave their friends, doctors, and relatives behind every few years. Because make no mistake: even if (and that’s a big “if”) the longest of wars is slowly ending and our troops are actually pulling out of Afghanistan, as the agreement with the Taliban claims, the struggle to support the staggering numbers of service members and their families wounded (in the broadest sense imaginable) by that war, no less our other still-unending conflicts across the Greater Middle East and Africa, has yet to come close to peaking. It won’t do so until those veterans (and their families) age perhaps another 30 years.
As a country, the real future war for us may be keeping their struggles alive in our consciousness so that more than just their aging spouses, wounded in their own ways, remain on deck to care for them.
Andrea Mazzarino, a TomDispatch regular, co-founded Brown University’s Costs of War Project. She is an activist and social worker interested in the health impacts of war. She has held various clinical, research, and advocacy positions, including at a Veterans Affairs PTSD Outpatient Clinic, with Human Rights Watch, and at a community mental health agency. She is the co-editor of the new book War and Health: The Medical Consequences of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
Originally published by TomDispatch.com
Copyright 2020 Andrea Mazzarino
In Defence of Harsh Mander
by Press Release
Around 100 retired civil servants make an appeal in favour of Harsh Mander who is accused of seditious speech
Arundhati Roy And Other Prominent Writers And Activists Express Solidarity With Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha
by Press Release
In August 2018, the Pune Police implicated Prof. Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha with other human right activists and lawyers in the now-infamous fabricated Elgar Parishad case. The police presented concocted theories since day one and these theories have not an iota of truth in
them.
The Impending Arrest of Prof. Anand Teltumbde Is Undemocratic
Press Release
AIFRTE Statement on Supreme Court’s rejection of anticipatory bail to Prof. Anand Teltumbde
Uttar Pradesh leads nationally in Dalit oppression
by SR Darapuri
The crime report released by the National Crime Bureau (NCRB) last year” Crime in India – 2018” has been released with a delay of about one year in which crime and atrocity figures against Scheduled Castes have been released along with other crimes. With these figures, on the one hand, the rate of crime / oppression against these sections in Uttar Pradesh is seen to increase continuously like before (10,426 in 2016, 11,444 in 2017 and 11,924 in 2018) while on the other hand the rate of crime against Dalits ( Crime per one lac population) is much
higher than the national rate.28.8% which is higher than the national rate of 21.3%. Crime against Dalits in Uttar Pradesh in 2018 is 27.9 percent of the total crime in the country. This rate is more than 21.1% of the Dalits in the national population.
The crime report released by the National Crime Bureau (NCRB) last year” Crime in India – 2018” has been released with a delay of about one year in which crime and atrocity figures against Scheduled Castes have been released along with other crimes. With these figures, on the one hand, the rate of crime / oppression against these sections in Uttar Pradesh is seen to increase continuously like before (10,426 in 2016, 11,444 in 2017 and 11,924 in 2018) while on the other hand the rate of crime against Dalits ( Crime per one lac population) is much higher than the national rate. This is 28.8% which is higher than the national rate of 21.3%. Crime against Dalits in Uttar Pradesh in 2018 is 27.9 percent of the total crime in the country. This rate is more than 21.1% of the Dalits in the national population. On the contrary, the Yogi government claims to reduce crime in the state while the rate of crime against Dalits seems to be defying it.
The above situation becomes clearer from the following crime-wise crime against Dalits in the year 2018: –
- Crime including SC / ST Act IPC – Uttar Pradesh has this rate at 22.6 whereas the national rate is only 19.0. Crime in Uttar Pradesh is 9434, 23.5% of the crime at the national level 40077, which is much higher than the national rate.
- Murder – The crime rate of Uttar Pradesh is 0.6 while the national crime rate is 0.4. Out of 821 cases at the national level, 239 occurred in Uttar Pradesh alone, which is 29.11% of the crime committed at the national level. This is a worrying situation.
- Grievous Hurt – Crime rate of Uttar Pradesh is 0.7 as compared to the national rate of 0.6. The crime committed in Uttar Pradesh 285 is 22.05 percent of the 1283 crime at the national level, which is a matter of concern.
- Outrage Modesty of Dalit women– The national rate of this crime is 0.5 whereas for Uttar Pradesh it is 1.3 which is very high. Uttar Pradesh crime at 557 is 59% of the nationwide crime 944 which shows how vulnerable Dalit women are in Uttar Pradesh.
- Assault on Dalit women and girls with intent to outrage her modesty – Uttar Pradesh has this rate at 1.7 while the national rate is 1.5. The crime committed in Uttar Pradesh is 711 which is 22.69% of the 3133 crimes at national level, which is a symbol of insecurity of Dalit women.
- Assault on Adult Dalit women with the intent to outrage her modesty – Crime rate of Uttar Pradesh is 1.6 while at the national level it is 1.4. In contrast to the 2759 total crimes at the national level, Uttar Pradesh alone has 643 cases, which is 23.30% of it. This figure also shows the insecurity of Dalit women in Uttar Pradesh.
- Kidnapping and Abduction of Dalit Women – Uttar Pradesh has this rate at 1.3 while the national rate is only 0.5. It is noteworthy that out of a total of 944 such crimes at the national level, 557 cases occurred in Uttar Pradesh alone which is 59% of the total crime at national level. It shows how insecure are Dalit women in Uttar Pradesh.
- Abduction of Dalit women – The crime rate for Uttar Pradesh is 0.4 while the national rate is only 0.1. In Uttar Pradesh, the number of crimes is 158, which is 52.14% of 303 crimes at national level. It is again a matter of grave concern.
- Kidnapping and Abduction of Dalit women with intent to murder – Out of total 13 crimes committed at the national level under this title, 12 occurred in Uttar Pradesh alone, which is 92.30% of crime at national level. It is really very lamentable.
- Kidnapping and Abduction of Dalit women to compel her for marriage – Uttar Pradesh has this rate at 0.9 while the national rate is only 0.2. It is noteworthy that out of total 494 crimes at the national level, 381 crimes occurred in Uttar Pradesh alone, which shows how vulnerable Dalit women are in Uttar Pradesh.
- Rape of adult Dalit women – Uttar Pradesh has this rate at 1.1 while the national rate is 1.0. The 438 crimes committed in Uttar Pradesh are 21% of the total crimes 2086 committed at the national level. By the way, the crime of rape has also increased against women of general castes in Uttar Pradesh.
- Attempt to Rape – Under this title, 48 out of 132 crimes committed in the entire country occurred only in Uttar Pradesh, which is 36% of the total crime. It is also a symbol of insecurity of Dalit women.
- Riots against Dalits – For Uttar Pradesh this rate is 1.2 while the national rate is only 0.7. In Uttar Pradesh, 509 which is 32% of the total crimes of 1569 at the national level,. This is also a sign of insecurity of Dalits.
- Criminal Intimidation of Dalits – Uttar Pradesh has this rate at 2.5 whereas the national rate is only 1.6. It is worth considering that out of 3223 total crimes committed at the national level, there were 1037 crimes in Uttar Pradesh alone which is 32% of the total crime. It symbolizes the unsafe condition of Dalits in U.P.
- Other IPC Crimes – The rate of Oher IPC crimes against Dalits in Uttar Pradesh is 9.6 whereas at the national level this rate is only 5.3. It is noteworthy that out of 10,835 total crimes at the national level, 3986 crimes occurred in Uttar Pradesh alone which is 37% of the total crime. It is also a symbol of the pathetic condition of Dalits in Uttar Pradesh.
- Crimes under SC / ST Prevention of Atrocities Act – In Uttar Pradesh the rate of these crimes is 5.7 whereas at the national level this rate is only 2.1. It is lamentable that out of 4322 total crimes at the national level, 2399 crimes occurred in Uttar Pradesh alone which is 56% of the total crime i.e. more than half of the total crime in the country.
- Intentionally insult or Intimidation with Intent to Insult – In Uttar Pradesh, the rate is 2.8 while at the national level the rate is only 1.1. It is noteworthy that 1184 crimes which occurred in U.P. are 51.68% of total crimes 2291 at national level. It is a matter of grave concern.
- Other Offences- The crime rate for U.P. is 2.9 as compared with 0.9 at the national level. It is painful to note that out of a total crime of 1880 at national level 1189 crimes were committed in U.P. alone which forms 63.24% of national crime. It speaks very loudly about the pitiable condition of Dalits in U.P.
- Total of SC / ST Act Crime with or without IPC – In Uttar Pradesh the rate of crime under this title is 28.3 whereas at the national level rate is only 21.1. The crimes11833 in Uttar Pradesh are 27% of 44399 crimes at the national level. It is clear from this that the rate of crime of Atrocities is very high in Uttar Pradesh.
- Court conviction rate in crimes against Dalits – In the year 2018, the rate of conviction in the crime against Dalits in Uttar Pradesh was 55%, which is higher than other states but still much lower. In this way, 45% of Crimes against Dalits in Uttar Pradesh end in acquittal which is a matter of grave concern.
It is clear from the above discussion that rate of crimes against Dalits in Uttar Pradesh in the year 2018, such as murder, atrocities, Grievous Hurt, riots etc. was much higher than the rate of crimes at national level. Crimes against Dalit women such as outrage of modesty, kidnapping for murder, rape and abduction are much more than crimes at the national level. It shows how vulnerable are Dalit women in U.P. under BJP rule. In Uttar Pradesh, the rate of conviction in courts in crimes against Dalits is also very low. Therefore, it is clear that the Yogi government’s claim to reduce crime in Uttar Pradesh is hollow especially in the context of Dalits and Dalits / Dalit women are not safe at all.
In fact, ever since the Yogi government was formed in Uttar Pradesh, the morale of criminals and feudal forces has gone up tremendously due to protection from the government. In this government, people like those who killed the police inspector and accused of rape like Chinmayanand are welcomed on release from jail. The arrest of the murderer BJP MLA takes place only after heavy public pressure. Daylight robbery takes place in the capital city of Lucknow. Overall, the government’s fear seems to be over. Nowhere does the rule of law prevail. The government itself has waged a war against ordinary citizens.
One of the reasons for increasing atrocities on Dalits is that Mayawati, who claims to be the leader of Dalits, is silent on the attacks of this government, not only because of fear of the CBI and because of her corrupt politics, but she has also prohibited her workers from holding demonstrations or agitating, as has been revealed during the incident of killing of 10 Tribals by feudal lords in Sonbhadra last year. For this reason, for the life, honour and security of common citizens including Dalits, we have launched a “Save Democracy Campaign” so that every attack by the feudal forces under this government and its protection can be countered and a safe Uttar Pradesh is built. In the present circumstances, Babasaheb’s slogan “Educate, Agitate and organize” becomes even more relevant.
SR Darapuri, I.P.S. (Retd) and President, Save Democracy Campaign
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