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FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: IS SOMERVILLE READY FOR A SOCIALIST TAKEOVER? A group of Democratic socialists is betting that the Somerville City Council is ready for a socialist takeover this fall.

The Boston chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America is rolling out a slate of endorsements today, first reported in Playbook, for city council races in Somerville and Boston. If all of the endorsed candidates win, Somerville would have perhaps the only majority-socialist city council in the country.

The group is endorsing Somerville City Councilor JT Scott, along with new candidates Tessa Bridge, Willie Burnley, Jr., Charlotte Kelly, Becca Miller and Eve Seitchik. (WickedLocal has a rundown of all candidates running in Somerville so far). And in Boston, endorsed candidates are Kendra Hicks and Joel Richards.

"Our goal is to take over Somerville and to start implementing a Green New Deal for Somerville, free transit, defunding the police, creating affordable housing, bringing back rent control," said Seth Gordon, spokesperson for the Boston DSA. "But we also want the Somerville election to be a lesson to those who don't pay attention to constituents."

The endorsements are a signal that the Boston Democratic Socialists of America is flexing some new political power, and eyeing a move toward the mainstream. The group has more than 3,000 members, hundreds of whom live in Somerville, and plans to make phone calls, knock on doors and donate to endorsed candidates. And in Boston, organizers are well aware that landing a socialist or two on the council in a major U.S. city could have a ripple effect.

"We are not afraid of the socialist label. We're not running away from it. Our candidates certainly aren't," Gordon said. "We hope that this also just sends a message that we are a real political force to be reckoned with."

The rise of Democratic socialism is easy to spot on the national stage. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez come to mind. And socialists are getting elected in other cities. Chicago has six socialists on its 50-member council. Seattle has one.

In Massachusetts, the political left has seen some recent setbacks. Progressive Democratic challengers came up short in state legislative primary races last fall. In Winthrop and Revere, an anti-abortion Democrat who supported Donald Trump in 2016 won a special House primary just a few weeks ago. And the DSA endorsed the Democratic socialist running to fill former Rep. Joe Kennedy IIIs seat last year, though the endorsement was called off after allegations of staff mistreatment surfaced. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, a self-proclaimed Obama-Baker voter won the seat.

But if any citys going to elect a socialist city council, it would probably be Somerville. Voters there gave President Joe Biden his second-largest margin against former President Donald Trump in November of any Massachusetts city. And Somerville just sent a Democratic socialist to the State House last fall first-term Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven.

Have a tip, story, suggestion, birthday, anniversary, new job, or any other nugget for the Playbook? Get in touch: [emailprotected]

TODAY Boston Acting Mayor Kim Janey joins the Transit is Essential Coalition for a press conference. Sen. Ed Markey holds a virtual press conference for the Transform, Heal, and Renew by Investing in a Vibrant Economy (THRIVE) Agenda," visits a vaccine site in Brockton with Mayor Bob Sullivan and tours the Shawmut Corporation facility in West Bridgewater with Rep. Stephen Lynch. Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins is a guest on WBUR.

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Massachusetts reports 1,817 new COVID cases, 29 more deaths Sunday; active case total rises again, by Benjamin Kail, MassLive.com: Massachusetts public health officials reported 1,817 new cases of COVID-19 and 29 more deaths on Sunday. There are 30,772 active coronavirus cases, as of Sunday, another figure thats increased slightly over the last few days, according to the state Department of Public Health. For several days last week, the number of active cases was around 25,000. On Saturday, the state reported 29,806 active cases.

Statehouse remains closed as Mass. reopens, by Christian M. Wade, The Salem News: City and town halls, schools and businesses are reopening as public health metrics improve, but the halls of state government remain shuttered. The Massachusetts Statehouse, shut down a year ago to prevent spread of the coronavirus, remains closed to the public with no plans to reopen anytime soon.

What You Need To Know About The New Mass. Climate Law, by Miriam Wasser, WBUR: Gov. Charlie Baker signed a sweeping climate bill into law on Friday, signaling a new era in Massachusetts plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions, build a greener economy and prioritize equity and environmental justice.

Massachusetts is spending $130 million to identify people exposed to COVID-19, but some question if money is well spent, by Kay Lazar, Boston Globe: Few states invested more effort tracking down people who may have been exposed to COVID-19 than Massachusetts. More than 4,500 workers have been hired to do the labor-intensive job, costing the state $130.4 million by the end of this June."

Parents rally outside State House to denounce lack of input in school reopening plan, by Caroline Enos and Nick Stoico, Boston Globe: About 30 educators, union representatives, and families from communities of color rallied outside the State House on Saturday to protest the states full return to in-person learning at many schools this spring a decision they say was made without their input.

Film tax credit backers say they have the votes, by Bruce Mohl, CommonWealth Magazine: Supporters of the states film tax credit, which came under fire this week from a commission examining Massachusetts tax breaks, say they have the votes to pass legislation that would make the tax credit permanent."

Mass. residents work around the clock to score vaccination slots for people theyve never met, by Beth Teitell, Boston Globe: The states vaccine rollout has been so frustrating that it infamously left people trying to book appointments in tears, dented Governor Charlie Bakers popularity, and birthed an army of vaccine angels people so upset by what they are witnessing that they are working around the clock to score slots for people theyve never met.

56,228 people received COVID vaccines at Fenway Park; video celebrates last person vaccinated at home of Boston Red Sox, by Scott J. Croteau, MassLive.com: As Fenway Parks role as a Massachusetts COVID vaccination site came to a close, the vendor running the location posted a video celebrating the last person to receive a shot at the Boston stadium.

'199 years is long enough': Kim Janey becomes Boston's first Black and first female mayor, by Sarah Betancourt, The Guardian: Earlier this week, Kim Janey, the first woman and Black person to lead the city of Boston, became acting mayor. She was sworn in by the first Black woman to lead Massachusetts highest court, Kimberly Budd, and the first Black Massachusetts congresswoman, Ayanna Pressley.

What number Boston mayor is Kim Janey, actually? by Sean Philip Cotter, Boston Herald: Which number mayor is she, anyway? Newly minted acting Mayor Kim Janeys administration blasted out multiple emails this week celebrating her ascension to becoming Bostons 55th mayor. Press releases celebrating her ceremonial swearing-in did as much, along with a Dear Boston letter the mayors office shot out via email.

After-school programs suffer school reopening whiplash, by Stephanie Ebbert, Boston Globe: Six months after scrambling to rent gyms and church basements to care for children whose schools didnt open, community groups are again dashing to accommodate the whiplash changes to school schedules as districts shift back to in-person learning.

At Mass General Brigham, a sweeping effort to unify hospitals and shed old rivalries, by Priyanka Dayal McCluskey and Larry Edelman, Boston Globe: They promised to become partners but never truly did. Now, more than 25 years after Massachusetts General and Brigham and Womens hospitals joined forces to boost their clout with penny-pinching HMOs, trustees and executives are making their most sweeping attempt yet to set aside old rivalries and work as a unified health care system.

Boston coronavirus cases rising among people under 30, Kim Janey says, by Sean Philip Cotter, Boston Herald: The coronavirus is again spreading rapidly among young people, acting Mayor Kim Janey said as the city prepares a campaign aimed at cutting transmission rates among the youths.

Boston hotels, among hardest hit in the country, could take years to recover, by Katie Johnston, Boston Globe: Normally at this time of year at the Omni Parker House, anticipation is in the air. Wedding banquets are being planned, graduation dinners are being booked, and tourists are snapping up rooms at the elegant property, a fixture in downtown Boston since 1855. This year, however, is anything but normal.

New chairman of Mass. Competitive Partnership aims to use its power to reshape local economy, by Jon Chesto, Boston Globe: Jeff Leiden knows this state still has a long way to go to recapture the jobs that have been lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the new chairman of the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, Leiden is in an unusual position to help restore the local economy to glory.

State officials are investigating senator, wife for potential campaign finance violations, by Matt Stout, Boston Globe: A politically powerful Massachusetts couple is asking a judge to temporarily stop the states top campaign finance regulator from referring an investigation into them to state prosecutors, marking an extraordinary turn in what had been a private state probe.

DA Ryan Asks State's Highest Court To Review Cases Tied To Hinton Drug Lab, by Deborah Becker, WBUR: Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan filed a petition with the state's Supreme Judicial Court on Friday asking it to review all criminal drug convictions based on evidence tested at the now-closed Hinton Drug Laboratory during the years in which two disgraced state chemists worked there.

After several state cases were dropped against 2020 Black Lives Matters protesters in Worcester, the one man federally charged intends to plead guilty, records show, by Scott J. Croteau, MassLive.com: While the state charges against several people arrested in the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in Worcester were dropped, it appears the one person charged in federal court plans to plead guilty, records show.

Not Prosecuting Low Level Crimes Leads To Less Crime In Suffolk County, Research Finds, by Ally Jarmanning, WBUR: New research looking at Suffolk County criminal cases finds that declining to prosecute some low-level offenses can actually lead to less crime.

Amazon started a Twitter war because Jeff Bezos was pissed, by Jason Del Rey, Vox: Amazon has long been at odds with Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren over their criticisms of the companys labor and business practices. But the discord reached a new height last week when Amazon aggressively went after both on Twitter in an unusual attack for a large corporation.

Sens. Ed Markey, Elizabeth Warren join push for permanent $3,000-plus Child Tax Credit as White House preps massive infrastructure, recovery plans, by Benjamin Kail, MassLive.com: The temporary $3,000-plus Child Tax Credit approved in President Joe Bidens $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill should remain permanent, Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren and more than three dozen Democratic senators recently argued.

Can landlords really ban marijuana edibles? Usually not, but that hasnt stopped them from trying, by Dan Adams, Boston Globe: Five years after Massachusetts voters legalized marijuana, the states apartment renters are increasingly being pressured to give up their ability to use or even possess the drug in their own homes. A Globe sampling of leases from around the state found that a growing number of landlords are revising the annual contracts to replace generic anti-drug provisions with new restrictions on cannabis and not just on smoking it.

Herald: CLIMBING CONCERN," "DESPERATE DEMS, Globe: Building a bridge toward a Green New Deal," "COVID cases tick back up across US.

Gov. Charlie Baker on potentially facing a Republican primary if he seeks a third term, on WBZ's "Keller @ Large," which aired Sunday: "I'm not really spending a lot of time thinking about this stuff. Once the lieutenant governor and I get around to figuring out exactly what we want to do, we'll plan accordingly. But I've been incredibly blessed to have this chance to serve, and the people in Massachusetts have been overwhelmingly kind and gracious to both me and the lieutenant governor over the past five years. These are extraordinary times and they create tremendous opportunity, along with tremendous challenges. I think anybody who is interested in serving in public life needs to recognize and understand that the challenges that we face are significant, but the challenges that our citizens face, our residents face, go way beyond the challenges that we face. And, you know, again, bringing a little bit of that humility to these roles, I think, would make everybody a lot better off." Link.

State Rep. Tram Nguyen on the rise in anti-Asian violence, and hate crime legislation, on WCVB's "On the Record," which aired Sunday: "The goal of this, the hate crime bill, is to make sure that it serves its intended purpose of holding perpetrators accountable, especially those who target people based on a protected class. Right now, Massachusetts has one of the weakest laws because our laws, we have two statutes, are vague and partially overlapping. What this bill seeks to do is to combine these two statutes into one, and to further clarify that certain behaviors, such as violent, threatening, destructive behavior, is not protected under the First Amendment." Link

Springfield officials ask Massachusetts State Police to add patrols to help quell violence that has left 2 dead, 6 injured, by Jeanette DeForge, Springfield Republican: City officials are asking the Massachusetts State Police to help turn up the heat after an uptick in gun violence has left two dead in less than two weeks and six others wounded over six days. Mayor Domenic J. Sarno and Police Commissioner Cheryl Clapprood have asked Maj. Michael Habel, commander of Troop B located in Western Massachusetts, to provide extra patrols in areas determined to be hot spots.

What if you called 911 and someone other than the police showed up? Northampton explores creating new unarmed response department, by Jackson Cote, MassLive.com: The Northampton Policing Review Commission released its final report this week, a 58-page document with the potential to change the face of emergency responders in the Pioneer Valley city.

Finegold speaks with Duxbury High football players about Jewish faith after anti-Semitic incident, by Abigail Feldman, Boston Globe: State Senator Barry Finegold spoke about the Jewish faith with members of the Duxbury High School football team Saturday, nearly a week after school officials fired the teams longtime head coach during an investigation into the teams use of anti-Semitic language during games.

Duxbury controversy shines light on South Shore's history with anti-Semitism, lack of education, by Wheeler Cowperthwaite, The Patriot Ledger: The use of anti-Semitic terms by Duxbury's high school football team is reverberating nationally, but local Jewish leaders and civil rights advocates are quick to point out that, on the South Shore, anti-Semitism is not a new problem.

State data shows vaccine rate disparities, by Madeline Hughes, Eagle Tribune: While about 30% of people in Essex County have had their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, according to state data, in Lawrence only 18% of residents have had their first jab. The city is lagging in vaccination rates, and this week's state numbers show only a 2.5% increase over the past week, while the rest of the county has seen about a 5% increase.

Worcester dealing with bus driver shortage day before start of hybrid learning, by Scott O'Connell, Telegram & Gazette: Ahead of the return of thousands of students to schools, the administration said Friday there is a shortage of bus drivers at the districts transportation provider. According to a memo sent by Superintendent Maureen Binienda, a combination of vacancies, medical leaves and other absences has left only 58 drivers at Durham School Services available to bus kids when hybrid in-person learning starts Monday.

Could a ship get stuck sideways in the Cape Cod Canal? It's unlikely, but yes. by Jeannette Hinkle, Cape Cod Times: The Ever Given, one of the worlds largest cargo vessels at roughly 1,300-feet long and 200-feet wide, has been blocking the Suez since Tuesday, delaying global shipping. Egyptian officials said Friday the massive boat could be dislodged within the next few days, but others involved in the operation estimate the effort could take weeks. Could a ship passing through the Cape Cod Canal ever find itself in the same predicament, bow on one bank, stern on the other?

TRANSITIONS FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: Alex Gray, an at-large candidate for Boston City Council, hired Francy Wade as communications director, Sam Miller as campaign manager, Dakota Fenn as deputy campaign manager and Annie Schreiber as finance director.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Data Protocol CEO Peter Cherukuri, Harvard Kennedy Schools David King, Ned Gandevani, Sanjay Misra, and Richard Lewontin.

Want to make an impact? POLITICO Massachusetts has a variety of solutions available for partners looking to reach and activate the most influential people in the Bay State. Have a petition you want signed? A cause youre promoting? Seeking to increase brand awareness among this key audience? Share your message with our influential readers to foster engagement and drive action. Contact Jesse Shapiro to find out how: [emailprotected].

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SOCIALISTS plan SOMERVILLE TAKEOVER Inside AMAZON'S TWITTER WAR against ELIZABETH WARREN Could a SHIP get STUCK in the CAPE COD CANAL? - Politico

The World Socialist Web Site is publishing today in Chinese 800,000 COVID-19 deaths in Europe: capitalism, social murder and the case for socialism.

Written by Alex Lantier and originally published on February 25 in English, the article reviews how the political representatives of the financial elite have condemned hundreds of thousands to death from COVID-19. Lantier powerfully explains why the fight against the pandemic requires the political mobilization of the working class against capitalism, based on a socialist and international program.

One year of the COVID-19 pandemic: A disaster caused by capitalism

The COVID-19 pandemic is a turning point in world history, an event comparable in scale and impact to the Great Depression and the two world wars.

read more

We invite feedback from Chinese readers.

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WSWS publishes Chinese translation of 800000 COVID-19 deaths in Europe: capitalism, social murder and the case for socialism - WSWS

With Hitler defeated and Western values and institutions seemingly secure, it wasnt long before, left-wing intellectuals in search of big structural change began attacking them. They exploited the hedonism of the swinging Sixties to push a big government, equal outcomes, ideology.

Socialists infiltrated campuses and workplaces pushing their anti-capitalist critiques. Throughout the Vietnam War they ramped up their offensive, preaching that capitalism and injustice were synonymous. They heralded the Soviet Union as the future until it wasnt. Without liberalisation the moribund federation broke apart. Even a desperate coup attempt by hardliners couldnt save it. On Christmas Day 1991, the Soviet flag flew over the Kremlin for the last time.

And so the Peoples Republic of China became the undisputed global power base for Marxist ideology. Unlike the erstwhile Soviet Union, China was enjoying a sudden great leap forward thanks to the reforms of Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping who incorporated capitalism into central planning. However, with the PRCs 70th anniversary in sight, Communist party leaders worried that Dengs liberating reforms were exposing the party to an existential threat. Restoring absolute control became the first priority.

So, in 2012, a princeling, Xi Jinping, was elected president. Xi had never accepted Dengs liberalisations were behind Chinas economic prosperity. To him, empowerment of individuals was a bourgeoise fallacy and free speech, equality under the law and other human rights, had to be controlled or delayed.

Once in office, Xis grip on power tightened. He took control of the party, the government, the military and the armed police. Citing Mao Zedong, he ordered the systematic dismantling of law and order institutions and ended civil service independence. As Core Leader, he secured an unlimited presidential term and had his thoughts incorporated into the preamble of Chinas constitution. Xi conducted a vast and ruthless anti-corruption drive in which more than a million officials were dealt with, some brutally. He also introduced a social credit system where a persons general behaviour determines their eligibility for everyday amenities.

Come July, the Chinese Communist Party will celebrate its centenary. It will coincide with the 14th Five-Year Plan which will be strongly nationalistic and feature the CCP and Xi Jinping, front and centre. Ideals of liberalisation will be officially cancelled so that President Xi can boast he eradicated absolute poverty four months ahead of schedule. Xi will also take credit for another great miracle namely the control of Covid-19. Beijing has only reported 4,636 deaths, ranking China, with a population of 1.4 billion, between tiny Serbia and Ireland.

Notwithstanding these triumphs, Xi warns, The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is at a critical stage. He knows China is no longer the low-cost manufacturing hub it was and that there is dissatisfaction with low pay, underpayment of social security insurance and abusive management. He also knows that plant closures have left growing numbers of jobless workers unhappy and unpaid.

This is the legacy of decades of profligacy and corruption. Previously concealed bad debts now threaten the viability of financial institutions. Some 70,000 heavily subsidised zombie companies sap productivity. Unsurprisingly, Chinas stock market has plunged. Most worrying for Xi is the decline in the birth rate when life expectancy is increasing. It will mean fewer workers supporting a rapidly ageing population. With total debt to GDP at 340 per cent and falling productivity and weak profitability, Chinas options are limited and its future is not what it tells the world.

Politically, attempts to make the bureaucracy more responsive and efficient, are failing. Officials remain steeped in a risk-averse, tick-a-box, please Beijing culture. With a wealth gap wider than Americas and with personally intrusive initiatives like the empty plates food-wastage campaign, its no wonder the 2020 World Happiness Report ranks China 94th in the world. America is 18th.

In this centenary year, President Xi is understandably projecting China as a united, financially strong, militarily powerful and morally superior nation. His mission is to restore China to its rightful place in the world thereby vindicating Chairman Maos adage that The weeds of socialism are better than the crops of capitalism.

Having reclaimed Hong Kong, Xi is pressing territorial claims over more than 80 per cent of the South China Sea. Of these, Taiwan reunification is a strategic priority, especially given the worlds dependence on Taiwanese semiconductors. Chinas military buildup across the Strait may signal intent. With a deteriorating economic and social outlook at home and the risk of Donald Trump or a similar nationalistically inclined president in 2024, an early military strike on Taiwan could boost Xis standing at home and enhance Chinas superpower credentials abroad. With the 20th National Party Congress in 2022 in mind, it has appeal.

President Xi will be encouraged in this by President Joe Bidens meek response to Chinas genocide of its Uyghur Muslim minority. Biden dispassionately observes that Culturally, there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow. Perhaps a Taiwan invasion will be seen as a cultural norm?

Xi must also derive confidence from the fifth columnists active inside Hollywood, the mainstream media, Big Tech, government agencies and even the Wests military. These activists are weakening his enemy from within. Indeed, Beijing exploited their woke-washing at the recent Alaska summit. Demonstrating breathtaking chutzpah, laced with contempt, the Chinese delegates lectured America on its many deep seated problems on human rights, pointing to Black Lives Matter.

Whatever Chinas medium-term prospects, Xi Jinping is no fool. As he smugly watches vacuous, Western leaders tearing themselves apart in a puerile, divisive competition for wokeness, he purposefully feeds the socialist weeds rapidly strangling freedoms Western crops. Xi knows well that by the time enough people realise how lethal they are, it will be too late to get rid of them. Xis dream of China as the worlds dominant power can then be realised.

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Woke culture thrives among the weeds of socialism - The Spectator Australia

On this day, 5 March, in 2013, a great revolutionary finally succumbed to cancer and passed away. He was only 58 years old. The socialist world will forever be grateful to the people, government and doctors of Cuba who did all they could to try and defeat the cancer and other opportunistic respiratory infections which finally killed this great revolutionary. Today, we are assembled on this platform to celebrate the life and times of this great socialist revolutionary.

Commandant Raphael Hugo Chvez Frias was born on 28 July 1954 and died on 5 March 2013. Comrade Hugo Chvez was president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, apart from a very short time in April 2002.

Today we will look to five areas of Comrade Chvezs life that demonstrate that he was a true visionary leader of the working class.

Chvez knew that his primary theatre of revolutionary struggles was, of course, Venezuela, but, he was alert always to the fact that Venezuela alone in Latin America and the world could not succeed to establish a sustainable socialist project if the rest of Latin America and the whole world remained chained to capitalism.

Comrade Chvezs internationalism made him instrumental in the setting up of the Union of South American Nations, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, the Bank of the South and, of course, the regional television network TeleSUR.

It is not true that Chvez did this great international work because he was using oil to achieve narrow Venezuelan interests. Chvez was always aware that the United States imperialist interests and stranglehold on Latin America could not be defeated in one country alone, no matter how revolutionary its people and leaders of such a country could be.

For example, Chvez was well aware how the US economic blockade on Cuba was in fact economic genocide performed on Cuba by the US government and its capitalists. He knew Venezuela would suffer the same fate.

After the collapse of the Union of the Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union in 1991, a fundamental lesson no socialist or communist could ignore was the historic fact that to defeat capitalism, the working class and all oppressed peoples of the world needed to be organised in a world revolutionary movement to overthrow the world capitalist system. No single country on its own could achieve and sustain socialism, let alone advance to communism.

The reason is very simple: capitalism is a world system; to defeat it, it must be fought at a world level. While revolutions against capitalism must and can start in one country, the working class and all oppressed and dominated peoples of the world must also rise up everywhere and fight to destroy the world capitalist system.

Chvez understood this international character of the struggle for socialism very well, and so he moved swiftly to unite the desperate peoples of Latin America, so that together they could defend themselves against the rapacious imperialism of the United States in the region.

This is one powerful lesson we must learn and celebrate about Commandant Hugo Chvez: our struggles for emancipation, while being fought at a local and national level, are bound to fail if we at the same time do not forge a global movement against the world capitalist system!

Even without achieving socialism, it is possible to fight mass poverty, unemployment, extreme inequalities and the indignities these capitalist evils cause millions of human beings to suffer on Earth. We cannot completely win these fights under capitalism, but we can reduce the levels of suffering.

Chvez demonstrated in practice that there is no excuse for allowing the wealth of any country to benefit a tiny minority and their imperialist backers. He embarked upon an ambitious nationalisation project, crucially of the Venezuelan oil resources.

People love ideas, stories, poetry reading and writing books. But people dont eat ideas. They eat food, need houses to live in, must have clothes to wear, their children must go to schools well fed, and everyone needs water and good health. Chvez understood that with or without socialism, the majority of the Venezuelans who are the working class and indigenous people needed these basic things of life.

Chvez did not wait until Venezuela achieved socialism to redistribute wealth. He went ahead and did it inside the Venezuelan capitalist system.

In the shortest time, destitution, illiteracy, hunger, homelessness, access to clinics and hospitals were improved, and he improved the quality of lives for millions of Venezuelans such that even the UN could not pretend not to see that Venezuela was changing for the better.

To struggle every day to improve the quality of life of the working and impoverished masses is the revolutionary responsibility of every socialist activist whatever the ideological and political system of the country in which we live. The masses in fact may only listen to us, and fight with us for socialism because they will know by our example while in a capitalist system what good things we can achieve together with them, when we defeat capitalism and create socialism.

Chvez taught us to dedicate our lives fighting even for the smallest victories for the working masses and the impoverished inside capitalism, without losing sight of our goal for a socialist society through the socialist revolution.

On radio, television and Twitter, Chvez was not afraid to directly speak with and to the people of his country. He was not happy and comfortable to hide behind official press statements and one-way, Address to the Nation or Letter from the President, hide-and-seek tactics.

To learn what was happening in his country, he did not just depend on his intelligence, security and military establishment: he had direct personal conversations with his people.

He enjoyed listening, learning and directly talking with the masses through the mass media means of communication and rallies. This way, he knew exactly what the burning questions of the day among all the classes of the people in his country were.

This is why his election victories saw him successively increase his votes for most of the time he stood as president of Venezuela the masses knew him, and he knew them very well. In fact, this is what annoyed the US and the world capitalist system: here was a socialist and he was winning elections!

To counter the capitalist lies about Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution, Chvez instigated the birth of several newspapers and powerful TV, TeleSUR, a regional Latin American television broadcaster. Without a dedicated revolutionary media and press, it is almost impossible to win the battle for the hearts and minds of the working and impoverished masses capitalism will always reach them first!

Hugo Chvez was a career soldier who, in fact, became a revolutionary while serving in the Venezuelan army and believe it or not hunting down Marxist guerrillas opposed to the government he was serving!

He read everything he could lay his hands on, on the history of Latin America and its revolutionary traditions and the world communist movement including, but not limited to, Simn Bolvar, Simn Rodrguez, Ezequiel Zamora, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, Vladimir Lenin, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and many others.

This rich literature and knowledge armed him with both revolutionary and theoretical strategic tools to navigate the complex political and economic world system in which Venezuela was immersed.

Ultimately he worked hard to unite the disparate Left parties and movements in Venezuela into what later became the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, in short PSUV. This is the party in power in Venezuela today.

Without this self-education and preparation and how Chvez used this to build the PSUV, it is possible that by now the US with its crippling sanctions and sponsorship of sabotage and insurrection would have completely destroyed the revolution in Venezuela.

Without revolutionary theory, it is impossible to have a revolutionary movement. Chvez understood this, and he armed the working class, through his daily contact and mass media, with a thorough knowledge of the capitalist class system in Venezuela and US imperialism and its intentions in Venezuela.

Chvez combined revolutionary theory with revolutionary practice and fought and lived for the success of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.

We must learn the obvious fact that without the weapon of revolutionary knowledge, it is impossible to wage a successful revolution. Our first duty, therefore, is to learn, to educate ourselves, through both theory and concrete participation in the daily struggles of the working masses and the impoverished.

Today, we have many socialists in our trade unions and social movements who preach their Marxism at work and in workshops but are patriarchal savages in their homes. We have so-called socialists who steal money from their organisations to enrich themselves. Laziness, hatred of hard work, fear of suffering and hardships these are the most important characteristics of so-called socialists of today. Love of comfort, luxury, a good time, idleness: this is the quality of revolutionary life many so-called socialist revolutionaries live or aspire to live today.

We have socialists who, with just a little money, all the socialism evaporates from their heads and they start singing from the capitalist bible. We have so-called socialists who hate working-class democracy and worker control. We have so-called socialists who are such hopeless cowards they hate any talk of the idea of the dictatorship of the working class as the most complete and thorough democracy. We have so-called socialists who think that capitalism can be destroyed through elections!

Chvez was the opposite of this. He was a fearless, principled, consistent and courageous revolutionary. He was prepared at all times to lay down his life for the struggle for a full life for the working class, the indigenous people and all the people of Venezuela, and therefore, for the working class of the world. He was never afraid to pick up arms against the capitalist system. He was not a thief. He was always ready to make the highest sacrifice, including sacrificing his own life.

He understood that to defeat the ruling class he had to set up working-class and popular-power structures among and for the masses. Through a referendum, he had the old Constitution amended to allow for the birth of the Constituent Assembly, which became the centre of power. Together with a loyal army, it is this assembly today that holds Venezuela together. Chvez was a democrat.

The Venezuelan revolution cannot be defended just via conference and congress resolutions of solidarity. We need to fight capitalism directly in our countries this is the best way to increase the world socialist forces against capitalism.

This is a lightly edited speech delivered by Andrew Chirwa on 5 March 2021.

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Hugo Chvez united the workers of the world - newframe.com

The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates used the terms endemic and epidemic to distinguish between diseases that were always present in a population and diseases that only occurred during certain parts of a year or at yearly or even greater intervals.

In epidemiological terms, endemic means the constant presence and prevalence of a disease within a population in a certain geographic area. It refers to a state when a disease reaches a level that most of the population has developed immunity. They can develop secondary infections though these are often mild. Children usually become the primary cases because they are nave (not previously exposed) to the virus.

Certain influenzas and viruses that cause the common cold are thought to be endemic. Some endemic viruses have been eradicated by vaccines and public health measures. Two historical examples are smallpox and rinderpest.

However, the recent use of the term endemicity by the ruling class and bourgeois scientists has little to do with its epidemiological understanding and everything to do with a fatalistic response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In much the same way that repeated lockdowns and reopenings have inured some people to accept the permanence of the virus, the talk of the virus becoming endemic is employed against any further mitigation efforts which impinge on profit accumulation.

Regardless of such defeatist conceptions, the pandemic remains in its early and acute phase, with significant potential to infect a vast portion of the globes population that has not yet been exposed to the coronavirus. A cohesive international strategy employing the public health tools that are within our grasp could bring the contagion under control before it becomes endemic, at the cost of millions of lives.

These nihilistic conceptions being promoted by the bourgeois press and some scientists to justify dispensing with all mitigation efforts and allowing the pandemic free rein are dangerous to the working class. They would use the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines to anaesthetize the public against the impending catastrophe, although this is only possible in a handful of wealthy countries where vaccine supplies are ample.

At the World Health Organizations March 22 COVID-19 press briefing, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned, The inequitable distribution of vaccines is not just a moral outrage, its also economically and epidemiologically self-defeating. Some countries are racing to vaccinate their entire populations while other countries have nothing. This may buy short-term security, but it is a false sense of security.

Executive Director of WHOs Health Emergencies Programme Dr. Mike Ryan reaffirmed the director-generals warnings, stating, The formula for this may be boring, it may not be attractive; there are no silver bullets, but we have got to get back to strong, comprehensive, strategic approaches to the control of COVID that include vaccination as one of those strategies. Im afraid were all trying to grasp at straws. Were trying to find the golden solutions and we just get enough vaccine, and we push enough vaccine into people and thats going to take care of it. Im sorry: its not! There arent enough vaccines in the world, and theyre distributed terribly iniquitously. In fact, we have missed a huge opportunity to bring vaccines on board as a comprehensive measure. Its not being implemented in a systematic way. Its a failed opportunity and, as the D-G says, is not only a catastrophic moral failure, but its an epidemiologic failure and its a failure in public health practice.

The lack of any significant measures to eradicate the virus, combined with the economic devastation for much of the working class, encourages a pessimistic outlook to which even principled scientists are not immune. As the virus ravages the world population, with its seven-day infection rates increasing by 400 percent from February 28 through March 5, the ruling class utilizes the fatigue felt by the population through repeated shutdowns and reopenings to establish a rationale for living with the virus. This has been willful.

Still, the response of some cities and nations in the course of the pandemic has proven that the SARS-CoV-2 can be eradicated. When the contagion first struck Italy in February of 2020, causing a massive health care crisis and inundating their health systems, the town of Vo, a commune in the Province of Padua in the Italian Veneto region, an hour west of Venice, was placed in a strict 14-day lockdown, with all 3,270 people being tested for the virus multiple times. Positive cases were quarantined and treated. In a matter of a few weeks the virus was eradicated from the town.

Testing, contact tracing and quarantiningprecisely the methods used in Vowere employed in all nations that have managed to rein in the virus. As of March 22, 2021, Taiwan, a country of 24 million people, has had 1,006 reported infections and 10 deaths. In Singapore, home to five million people, new cases have remained in the single or low double digits since October 2020.

The science of public health and the tools for eradicating the virus have always been available, but the decision to allow the virus to spread unchecked with nothing more than vaccines made available to a tiny percentage of the developed world is part of a conscious decision which, without the revolutionary intervention by the international working class, can lead to the virus becoming endemic.

However, this is not merely rhetorical. There is a sea of death between the two terms, eradication and endemicity. Reaching endemicity means that the majority of the worlds population will contract the virus, which at its present lethality means tens of millions more lives lost. The arithmetic is inexorable: If billions contract COVID-19, with a death rate approximating two percent, then 20 million people will die for every billion people infected.

This does not even begin to take into consideration the numerous and more deadly variants. The present horrors in Brazil are demonstrating that prior infections with previous strains of SARS-COV-2 do not necessarily protect the population from the new and more virulent variants.

The drive to label the pandemic as inevitable has been a bipartisan effort. The media is flooded with articles to misguide readers that public health and science itself are helpless to prevent the disease. A few examples include a February 17 piece in USA Today, which utilized model data from Emory University and Penn State University scientists to suggest that if the novel coronavirus continues to circulate in the general population and most people are exposed to it from childhood, it could be added to the list of common colds.

The researchers who completed the Emory/Penn State study lament: One year after its emergence, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has become so widespread that there is little hope of elimination.

On February 16, Nature printed a survey it conducted, where 89 percent of scientists polled expressed their concerns that COVID-19 is likely to be endemic in pockets of the global population. Disregarding the persistent efforts of Dr. Michael Osterholm to inform the Biden administration on a correct policy to eradicate COVID-19, the magazine highlighted one of Osterholms quotes: Eradicating this virus right now from the world is a lot like trying to plan the construction of a stepping-stone pathway to the Moon. Its unrealistic.

It should be of no surprise to anyone that a significant section of scientists has become resigned to accepting COVID-19 as an ineradicable disease. It points to nothing more than their disillusion with the inaction of world governments, as schools and businesses throughout the world have essentially opened their doors.

Fundamentally, it expresses the inevitability of the virus reaching a state of endemicity under capitalism and rules out the possibility of a working class movement and socialist revolution that could halt the virus in a matter of weeks with coordinated global action, as part of a larger struggle in the fight for socialism, where the lives and interests of the working masses around the globe are prioritized.

One year of the COVID-19 pandemic: A disaster caused by capitalism

The COVID-19 pandemic is a turning point in world history, an event comparable in scale and impact to the Great Depression and the two world wars.

What is invariably left out of these press releases is the criminal policy of the ruling class across the globe, that has ignored the warnings of epidemiologists and scientists as it interfered with their priority for profit accumulation.

With remarkable foresight, in late spring of last year, as countries were prematurely reopening commerce, Dr. Mike Ryan lambasted the world governments for lifting restrictions under conditions of persistent and rampant transmission of the virus, without systems in place to even detect it, let alone trace and quarantine the infected, warning this would produce a vicious cycle of public health disaster followed by economic disaster followed by public health disaster.

There is, however, a growing chorus of scientists who are putting forward a call to eradicate the coronavirus. The Zero COVID policy, first articulated by Independent SAGE, a group that rivals the British governments official Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE), argues for the proven public health measures that can halt the spread of COVID-19. They call for lockdowns, with compensation for those economically affected, improved testing and contact tracing, and argue that the pandemic can be suppressed with public health measures.

A leading advocate is Dr. Deepti Gurdasani, an epidemiologist who is a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. She has spoken out scathingly on the UK plans to come out of lockdown so quickly. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, after implementing the strictest lockdown measures on January 4 to stem the disastrous tide of infections and deaths during the winter surge, was in no time demanding again for school reopenings by early March. Dr. Gurdasani called it a shockingly negligent strategy and very clearly a policy of tolerable deaths, while speaking to Channel 5 News on February 22.

Gurdasani cited predictions forecasted by the Imperial College that even under the best conditions of three to four million doses of the vaccine rolled out a week, opening schools on March 4 would increase the Effective Reproduction Rate (Rt) to above 1, resulting in 30,000 to 60,000 more deaths. She warned of the dangers of the virus mutating to threaten vaccine effectiveness, under a high rate of transmission, as has already happened with the South African variant.

Aoife McLysaght, of the Molecular Evolution Lab in Dublin, Ireland, spoke on a pinned Tweet, of the need to fight for Zero COVID, which would allow us to go about our lives in a normal way. Commenting on the danger of relying solely on vaccines as new variants emerge, McLysaght warned of a whole new pandemic arriving at our shores.

The science put forward is an indictment of world governments inaction, including the Johnson administration in Britain, which allowed the unchecked spread of the emergence in southeast England of a more virulent form of the virus, lineage B.1.1.7 which spreads 30-80 percent faster than the wild strain. In Brazil, the policies of the fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro have allowed the dominance of the P.1 strain of the coronavirus, which is up to 2.5 times more transmissible and has a potential to reinfect up to 63 percent. The health care systems in Brazil are buckling under the gravity of so much severe disease and death. Already, spillovers into neighboring countries like Peru, Chile and Uruguay are causing new surges in these regions.

While the growing group of principled scientists who call for the Zero COVID strategy have laid out the salient policies and make a case for mitigation efforts, what is lacking entirely is a socialist perspective. Fundamentally, Zero COVID accepts the current mode of production. It argues for a more humane capitalism, for improved public health measures under the current framework of a system which itself has produced the pandemic. The profit motive has reigned supreme and the indifference to human lives is the logical outcome of a class policy in the interests of the worlds elite. The Zero COVID policy is correct on a scientific basis but lacks a political strategy to achieve these necessary aims. Inevitably, these scientists have become auxiliary consultants to capitalist agencies.

The only social force that is capable of preventing SARS-CoV-2 from becoming endemic is the international working class, which must organize itself and build its leadership in order to carry out a fight for socialism and against the homicidal policies carried out by the ruling elites around the globe. Armed with a socialist perspective and program, the global working class can not only eradicate SARS-CoV-2 but many more viruses and horrors which have been allowed by the ruling class to persistfrom measles to hepatitis, to hunger and homelessness.

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The antiscientific campaign to promote living with the virus - WSWS