The $24 an Hour Minimum Wage

Dean Baker

The push for a $15 an hour minimum wage has developed considerable political momentum over the last decade. It is a very real possibility that we will see legislation imposing a national minimum wage of $15 an hour by 2024 if Joe Biden wins the election this fall.

That would be a great thing, it would mean a large increase in pay for tens of millions of workers, but it is still very modest compared to what the minimum wage would be if it had kept pace with productivity growth. As is often mentioned, the purchasing power of the minimum wage hit its peak in 1968, at roughly $12 an hour in today’s dollars. However, productivity (output per hour work) has more than doubled over the last 52 years.

This means that if the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity growth it would be over $24 an hour today. Furthermore, if we go out four years to 2024, and we see normal inflation and productivity growth, a productivity adjusted minimum wage in that year would be almost $27 an hour, nearly twice the $15 an hour target.

The idea that the minimum wage would keep pace with productivity should not seem far-fetched. It actually did follow productivity growth fairly closely in the first three decades in which we had a national minimum wage, from 1938 to 1968. This did not lead to soaring unemployment. In 1968 the unemployment rate averaged 3.5 percent. So, the idea that the minimum wage track productivity growth should not be far-fetched.

Nonetheless, I would not advocate a $27 an hour minimum wage for 2024 or even phased in over a longer period of time. The reason is that we have restructured the economy in ways that it likely could not support a $24 an hour minimum wage in 2020. Raising the minimum wage to this level would almost certainly result in spiraling inflation.

We would then have to take steps to counter this inflation, such as interest rate hikes by the Fed or tax increases by the federal government. The result would be higher unemployment, and quite possibly a situation that left workers in the middle and bottom worse off than if we left the minimum wage at its current level. The key to allowing workers at the middle and bottom to get their fair share of the economic pay is to reverse the policies that redistributed so much income upward.

Reversing Upward Redistribution

I realize I must sound like a broken record on this stuff to regular readers, but the point is important. If workers at the middle and bottom are going to have more, people at the top have to get less. This is straightforward. If we could tell a story whereby the high pay for those at the top leads to more rapid economic growth so that their higher pay in effect paid for itself, then cutting pay for those at the top would not be freeing up resources for the middle and bottom. But this is not the case. By every measure, productivity growth has been slower in the period of inequality (from 1979 onward) then it was in the period of equally distributed growth, from 1947 to 1973. While it may not be the case that growing inequality is the reason for slower growth, it takes quite an imagination to claim that it led to faster growth.

It is also worth remembering that the gains were at the top end of the wage distribution, not corporate profits. The before-tax profit share of net income was 23.4 percent in 1968. In 2018 (the last year for which full data are available) it was 24.7 percent. With the data to date showing a drop in the capital share of roughly 0.7 percentage points from 2018 to 2019, the final figure on profit share for 2019 is likely to be a little different from the figure for 1968. This means that the redistribution from workers at the middle and bottom did not go to any significant extent to corporate profits.

The big winners were instead high-end wage earners, people like CEOs and other top-level corporate executives, hedge fund managers and other Wall Street types, higher-paid tech workers, and highly paid professionals, like doctors and dentists. If we want to make it possible for the minimum wage to rise back to its productivity-adjusted 1968 level, then we have to take back the big pay going to those at the top.

I know I harp endlessly on this issue, but reversing the big paychecks for those at the top (this is the whole point of Rigged [it’s free]) is essential for improving living standards for those at the middle and the bottom. We can envision various ways to make the economy more productive, and some may actually work, but as a practical matter, if we want to see large gains in living standards for those at the middle and bottom, it will have to come at the expense of those at the top.

There are many on the left who would agree with this view, but then say that they would just tax away the high and very incomes earned at the top. That is an alternative route, but I would argue there are both serious political and practical obstacles to reducing high-end consumption through this channel.

On the political side, in addition to facing the full-fledged opposition of the rich, efforts at highly progressive taxation often also face opposition by many people who would not be affected by high top-end rates. Part of this is just confusion — almost no one understand the concept of a marginal tax, which is why many middle-income families are terrified their estate may fall one dollar over the taxation cutoff – but part of it stems from concepts of fairness. Some people consider it unfair to tax someone’s income at 80 or 90 percent, even if they do understand that this only applies to income over some high threshold.

But even if we overcome the political obstacles, there are still practical obstacles. Rich people will not sit there and politely hand over whatever amount we tax them under the law. They will use every tool at their disposal, both legal and often illegal, to avoid paying the legislated tax rate. Remember, if we have a 90 percent marginal tax rate, we are effectively paying rich people 90 cents to hide a dollar of income, or to be closer to the mark, we are paying them 9 million dollars to hide 10 million dollars of income.

I know every progressive committed to high marginal tax rates is convinced that under a progressive regime we will have super-sleuth tax auditors at the I.R.S. who will crack down on avoidance/evasion schemes, but we have never seen the required levels of diligence here or anywhere else. My expectation is that if we have very high levels of progressive taxation is that we won’t see the money, but we will see an explosive growth of the tax shelter industry, another major source of inequality. (Hiding rich people’s money pays very well.)

This is why I want to change rules of corporate governance so CEOs cannot rip off the companies for which they work. (Their $20 million paychecks are not explained by returns to shareholders, which have been historically low for the last two decades.) If CEOs got $2-$3 million, and we saw corresponding pay cuts for others at the top of the pecking order, there would be much more money for everyone else.

In the same vein, the government can make patent and copyright monopolies shorter and weaker, and in some cases, like prescription drugs and medical equipment, not rely on them at all for financing research and development. This would reduce the money going to the top by several hundred billion dollars annually (2-4 percent of GDP).

We should also crackdown on the massive waste, and associated high salaries, in the financial sector. The place to start here is a financial transactions tax and cracking down on the abuses by private equity companies and hedge funds. And, we should subject our most highly paid professionals, in particular doctors and dentists, to the same sort of international competition that autoworkers and textile workers now face.

If we made these sorts of changes, we could realistically talk about a $24 an hour minimum wage in 2020. With an economy that was not structured so as to redistribute so much income upward, there is no reason that the minimum wage could not track economy-wide productivity.

And think of what a difference it would make if the lowest-paid worker, say a custodian or dishwasher in a restaurant earned $24 an hour, or $48,000 a year for a full-time full-year job. That comes to $96,000 a year for a two-earner couple.

If this is the floor, presumably someone working for 15 to 20 years can expect to earn at least 15 to 20 percent more, which would be putting them over $55,000 a year for a full-time job. In this world, we could really imagine that everyone had a comfortable and secure standard of living, especially if we had national health insurance (which would likely mean higher taxes on our low-wage earners) and free or low-cost child care.

The idea of a $24 an hour minimum wage is also worth thinking about in the context of racial inequality, where we have disproportionately relegated Blacks to the lowest paying jobs. It is not acceptable that Blacks are so much more likely than whites to work as custodians or housekeepers, and so much less likely to work as doctors or lawyers, but that is the reality we have today.

While still far from fair, the situation would be quite different if custodians and housekeepers earned $24 an hour, and doctors and lawyers earned on average something close to half of their current pay. And in that situation, the children of custodians and housekeepers would likely have much better prospects of becoming doctors and lawyers than is the case today.

But to allow for more pay at the bottom, we have to do something about pay at the top. And that means changing the way we structure the market. And, if we aren’t paying attention to restructuring the market, we aren’t serious about addressing inequality, including racial inequality.

COVID-19 and Bioweapons Research

Seiji Yamada

The anthrax attacks of 2001 were carried out via mail. Anthrax was sent via the US Postal Service to members of Congress and media executives together with notes reading “Death to America,” and “Allah is great.” Five died. In the weeks following the September 11 attacks, the intent of the perpetrators was to make it appear that the anthrax was being sent by Islamic militants.

The anthrax itself was weaponized. Natural anthrax is found in the soil and rarely causes human disease. The weaponized anthrax spores were designed to easily float in the air and thereby more easily infect its victims. The weaponized anthrax was identified as originating in the U.S. government laboratories. Genetic analysis identified it to be from the Ames strain, isolated from a cow in Texas in 1981, and studied at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID), Fort Detrick, Maryland. A U.S. government scientist was identified as a suspect, but he committed suicide before being taken into custody. For an analysis of how the anthrax attacks followed the playbook of the June 2001 “Dark Winter” preparedness exercise, see Whitney Webb and Raul Diego’s “All Roads Lead To Dark Winter.”

The so-called biodefense complex is inherently dangerous. While the stated intent of biodefense research is to develop the means of countering attacks – in order to do so, scientists often create virulent pathogens in order to determine the means of responding to them. The process by which microorganisms are artificially made more virulent is called “gain-in-function” research.

An example is how the H5N1 strain of influenza was manipulated in order to make it more easily transmissible among humans. One technique is to infect ferrets with successive generations of a virus. Because the ferret respiratory system has similarities to the human respiratory system at the molecular level, such a technique produces viruses that can more easily infect humans. For obvious reasons, the publication of such research was opposed by many in the scientific community.

Wuhan, the original epicenter of the current COVID-19 pandemic, has two microbiology laboratories equipped to handle pathogenic microorganisms. Such labs are designated by their biosafety levels, with BSL-4 being the highest. The Wuhan Centers for Disease Control is a BSL-2 laboratory located within 100s of meters from the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, where cases of COVID-19 were initially found. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is the only declared BSL-4 laboratory in China.

The WIV is responsible for much of the coronavirus research in China. Early on in the epidemic, we learned that the virus responsible for COVID-19 is similar to the coronavirus responsible for the 2002-2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV): therefore its scientific name, SARS-CoV-2 or SARS coronavirus 2. Moreover, we learned that researchers from the WIV had collected a coronavirus from bats in Yunnan Province with 96% homology to (sharing 96% of its genes with) SARS-CoV-2. Dr. Zhengli-Li Shi, as the head of this research group, takes her place as the last author on the article.

Look at a map of China. Wuhan’s central location is what makes it a transportation hub. Yunnan province, to the Southeast, borders Laos and Myanmar. There are a thousand kilometers between Wuhan and the bat caves in Yunnan. The prevailing theory of the origins of the virus is that it made its way into humans through the exotic animal food trade. The encroachment of industrial agriculture into what is left of the wilderness created the conditions for the cross-species jump. It would have a bat virus in Yunnan somehow making the species jump into humans, possibly through an intermediary species, somewhere between Yunnan Province and a city (Wuhan) a thousand miles away.

Isn’t it a more plausible scenario that the SARS-CoV-2 was collected in the Yunnan bat caves by researchers from the WIV, brought by them to Wuhan, and somehow leaked from the laboratory? There are a lot of BSL-4 laboratories in the U.S. Leaks happen at these labs.

Note that I am not suggesting that the SARS-CoV-2 was genomically bioengineered, nor that it was created to be a bioweapon. Obviously, the SARS-CoV-2 genome is under close scientific scrutiny, and we assume that molecular biologists would be able to detect such manipulation. However, it is possible to manipulate a viral genome without a recourse to gene-splicing techniques, such as the passing multiple generations through laboratory animals, as noted above with ferrets.

The researchers at the WIV have collaborated with American researchers, however, conducted gain-of-function experiments utilizing gene-splicing techniques. See, for example, a 2015 paper published in Nature, “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence” authored by researchers mostly from the University of North Carolina (UNC), but also by collaborators from Harvard, Switzerland, and Wuhan. Dr. Zhengli-Li Shi is the second-to-last author.

Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone.

That is to say, these scientists bioengineered a chimera, a Frankenvirus, from the old 2002-2003 SARS virus but with spikes from a different bat coronavirus. The Frankenvirus seems to be a pretty tough customer:

Additionally, in vivo experiments demonstrate replication of the chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable pathogenesis. Evaluation of available SARS-based immune-therapeutic and prophylactic modalities revealed poor efficacy; both monoclonal antibody and vaccine approaches failed to neutralize and protect from infection with CoVs using the novel spike protein. On the basis of these findings, we synthetically re-derived an infectious full-length SHC014 recombinant virus and demonstrate robust viral replication both in vitro and in vivo. Our work suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations.

That is, it’s hard to kill, it’s hard to immunize against, and it reproduces like gangbusters – meaning that if it got loose, it might cause a . . . wait for it . . . a pandemic.

Wait, doctors, didn’t you take the money because you said you were going to come up with a biodefense? Again, I am not suggesting that the SARS-CoV-2 was genomically bioengineered – but these scientists are actively creating highly pathogenic organisms, then reporting their work in the scientific literature. Sounds like a Pandora’s box to me.

Of note, this article was published during the period (2014-2017) while the National Institutes of Health was not funding gain-of-function research – though exceptions were made for certain institutions (such as UNC, Harvard, and the WIV). As reported by Sam Husseini, this study also received funding from the US Agency for International Development and the EcoHealth Alliance.

Weapons systems, such as nuclear weapons, missiles, or drones, are developed with the intent of gaining a military advantage over one’s enemies. Inevitably, though, enemies catch up – and the end result is proliferation. As with other weapons, the downsides, the risks, and the costs of bioweapons research are becoming more obvious. Also obvious is that we must put a stop to it.

The New Cold War Heats Up

Brian Cloughley

At this time of all times, when the world is staggering from the shattering effects of the Coronavirus pandemic, it would be sensible for nations to pull together in order to devise policies and practicalities to counter and defeat the devastation that is taking place and seems likely to increase.  Now is the time for cooperation, compromise and mutual assistance in all spheres of medical research and in devising protective measures which can be emplaced and enforced with the minimum of dislocation.  Internationalism should be the norm, and the best brains in the world should be in harness, from Beijing to Boston and beyond.

But they’re not, because there are some countries that are resolutely resisting cooperation in the fight against world disaster and choosing to focus on confrontation. And, naturally, they are the ones that are suffering most. As of July 23, the highest numbers of deaths in the Americas were the United States with 146,200 and Brazil scoring 82,890, while in Europe the United Kingdom had a depressing 45,501. These are the countries whose “leaders” (for want of a better word to describe erratic bunglers at the head of government) have failed utterly to cope with the national aspects of the pandemic crisis.

Not only this, but concurrent with their exhibitions of domestic ineptitude, Presidents Trump and Bolsonaro and Prime Minister Johnson have ignored or even insulted and aggressively confronted nations with whom they should be most energetically working to help their own citizens return to leading normal lives.

There are two main countries with which the US, Brazil and Britain should be energetically cooperating in the campaign to alleviate and eventually overcome the virus :  China and Russia.  But forget it, because, for example, one of America’s main priorities, as reported by Stars and Stripes, is the rebuilding and extension of the Campia Turzii air base in Romania for use by US strike aircraft.  This is to cost 130 million dollars for “the biggest overseas military construction project under the Pentagon’s European Deterrence Initiative, which was initiated in June 2014.”  The build up of US-Nato forces continues unabated around the Black Sea and along the length of Russia’s borders.

Admiral James Foggo, recently departed head of U.S. Naval Forces Europe, declared that the U.S. “bottom line” is “mutual interest” with Ukraine, which is “why we regularly operate in the Black Sea. Both U.S. and NATO forces routinely operate there to send a message that we will uphold international law and norms. Our collective efforts will lead to a better and safer Ukraine, which means a better and safer Black Sea for all of us.”  In the Pentagon’s playbook, US security is enhanced when it threatens other countries by indulging in massive military build-ups and confrontational military maneuvers round their borders.  Foggo’s replacement, Admiral Robert Burke, assumed command of Naval Forces Europe and NATO’s Joint Forces Command on July 17 and promptly declared that China and Russia pose “overt challenges to the free and open international order.”

The Coronavirus campaign takes a back seat, where US power-projection is concerned. The Pentagon has over 50,000 troops stationed in Japan, of whom half are in bases on the island of Okinawa which, as CBS News noted on July 16, “sits closer to Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, than it does to Tokyo. It’s a pivotal foothold for Washington, both to protect Asian allies including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, and to project U.S. power and be able to react to increasingly aggressive military moves by China in the region, and the ever-present threat from North Korea.”  But this pivotal foothold for US power projection is experiencing “the biggest coronavirus outbreak within the U.S. military anywhere in the world . . . [on July 16] U.S. Forces Japan confirmed another 36 infections among troops on Okinawa, bringing the total to at least 136 since the U.S. military reported its first cases there last week.”  The people of Okinawa are understandably extremely worried about the threat from the virus brought to their home by US military personnel — but the Pentagon and the Washington establishment are prioritizing their activities in the region by indulging in confrontational antics in the South China Sea, where they have been carrying out massive military maneuvers involving two aircraft carrier strike groups and nuclear bombers in order to continue threatening China.  (On July 17 a further two B-1 nuclear bombers were deployed to the U.S. colony of Guam in the western Pacific to carry out “strategic deterrence missions to reinforce the rules-based international order in the region.”)

In the eyes of the Trump Administration, confrontation with China is preferable to cooperation in trying to combat the pandemic,  and this was made abundantly clear during a bizarre Trump tirade in the Rose Garden on July 14 when he announced that “We hold China fully responsible for concealing the virus and unleashing it upon the world.  They could’ve stopped it.  They should’ve stopped it.  It would’ve been very easy to do at the source when it happened.”  This palpable nonsense is U.S. official policy, and a most troubling indicator of belligerence.

Britain’s Boris Johnson once described himself as a ‘Sinophile’ but has joined with Trump in trying to confront China over Hong Kong and obeyed his orders to ban the Chinese firm Huawei from business in the UK. Further, he is enthusiastically embracing the current propaganda campaign against Russia.  Instead of cooperating with Beijing and Moscow in trying to develop a counter-virus vaccine, London joined Washington in proclaiming, in spite of there being no evidence whatever, the bogus allegation that Russia was paying the Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.  While this nonsense was being refuted, there came yet another accusation from London which at first seemed extremely serious.

It was claimed by the usual anonymous sources that, as reported by Reuters, “Britain, Canada and the United States said . . . that hackers backed by the Russian state were trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine and treatment research from academic and pharmaceutical institutions.” Britain’s foreign minister promptly declared that “Russian intelligence services are targeting those working to combat the coronavirus pandemic,” but when this was realized to be an absurd claim, even the New York Times had to state on July 17 that “Russian drugmaker R-Pharm has signed a deal with AstraZeneca for it to manufacture a COVID-19 vaccine being developed by the British pharmaceuticals giant and Oxford University.”  AstraZeneca’s international headquarters in in Cambridge, England, and it has research laboratories in the U.S. State of Maryland and in Sweden.

This was a pretty amateur propaganda operation, but in spite of the fact that the allegations were demonstrably ridiculous there is no doubt the story had the intended outcome and that the anti-Russia fire was stoked effectively.  The rift between the West and Russia and China is being deliberately widened, and a New Cold War is breaking out, with the U.S. and Britain playing down their domestic calamities and choosing international confrontation in preference to cooperation.

Trump and Johnson are not serving the best interests of their own citizens and are harming the entire world by their belligerent posture.  There are rocks ahead.  Maybe nuclear ones.

Racism in Chile

Andre Vltchek

Recently, when a retired Chilean U.N. employee tried to enter ECLAC (United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, based in Santiago de Chile) to claim her pension in a bank inside the compound, her car was stopped by a U.N. security officer. She was asked to complete formalities. To her taste, the process was taking too much time, and she began honking. The head of security approached her, trying to explain the procedure, which had recently toughened up, due to the outbreak of COVID-19. The security head happened to be an African-Brazilian.

She clearly did not like this fact, and she exploded:

“That spicy nigger (‘el negro picante’) is the security head? I’m going to send him to the United States so that they could kill him there! I’m going to write to ‘El Mercurio’ newspaper! Who would think that this nigger could be a boss?”

Her horrid outburst was reported, and it quickly reached the ECLAC head who happens to be a progressive Mexican scientist – Alicia Bárcena – who is a vocal admirer of AMLO, Hugo Chávez, Correa, and Lula. Indignant, she took immediate action, barring the former employee’s entry to the compound and reporting the incident to the U.N. headquarters in New York.

This story could be dismissed as an ugly anecdote, as something sick and unusual. Except, it is not unusual at all. Chile is a dreadfully racist place, although, as many countries where racism thrives, it does not openly admit that it is.

Gone are the internationalist ideals of Allende’s era, gone is solidarity with other Latin American nations. It appears that only the Chilean Communist Party has at least some sympathy with the plight of Venezuelan people. And no one here is demanding the return of the access to the sea to Bolivia: access which was literally stolen during the shameful “War of the Pacific,” during which Chile disgracefully joined forces with Great Britain against Bolivia and Peru.

*

“We are English of Latin America.” This is how Chileans like to view themselves.

And they openly despise those who are not as white as they are: Peruvians, Bolivians, Haitians.

Throughout the 20th Century, Chilean immigration policy was based on a determined effort to attract the whitest of whites, from Germans to Czechs, Croats, Swiss. Even the Italians were not good enough for them. A new wave of European migrants was mainly settling in the south, pushing indigenous, native Mapuche people to the margins, and into misery.

Chilean Left has very little to do with the indigenous struggle. It is a Western-style left, much closer to defunct “anarcho-syndicalism” in the United States, then to Cuban, Venezuelan, or Bolivian pan-Latin American struggle. The majority of Chilean ‘revolutionaries’ feel much more at home in Miami, Paris, or Rome than with their own oppressed people in such places as Puerto Saavedra or Temuco.

In Chile, race plays an extremely important role. It opens and closes doors. It determines who gets what jobs, and who ends up living in inescapable misery.

*

Under the cover of “fight against COVID-19”, Chilean extreme right-wing government of Sebastian Piñera unleashed a new stage of the war against Mapuche people, a war that even some foreign mass media outlets could not ignore, anymore.

According to Thomas Reuters Foundation News report from 17 June 2020:

“The Mapuche, which means “Earth People” in the Mapudungun tongue, make up about 10% of Chile’s population of 19 million and mainly work as subsistence farmers in the Araucania region – one the poorest areas of the country.

Mapuche activists have gone on hunger strike, occupied and burned forestry and farming lands, and cut off highways to demand territories they say were stolen from them.

Mapuche leaders say that, like black Americans, they have lost a disproportionate number of their own young men to police violence.

One such case was Camilo Catrillanca, who was shot dead in 2018 during a police operation that sparked widespread fury among Chileans.

The 24-year-old became a symbol of police brutality, and his death triggered the resignation of the country’s police chief.”

However, while there is now even the “Papuan Lives Matter” movement, in far-away Indonesia, until this very moment, there is nothing resembling like “Mapuche Lives Matter” movement in Chile.

The Reuters report continues:

“Still, the struggles of indigenous people remain unknown to many, according to Karina Riquelme, a Chilean lawyer.

“Every day they (the Mapuche) live in fear that one of their members could end up dead,” said Riquelme, who works with indigenous groups.

“I don’t think people can imagine, but there are tanks, helicopters, and police installations in their communities.”

Holding those responsible to account and getting justice is rare, said opposition lawmaker Emilia Nuyado, Chile’s first Mapuche congresswoman elected in 2018.”

*

The plight of non-white migrants in Chile is horrific, particularly of those with non-white skin.

Haitians are taking the worst part.

Even Venezuelans, those who were leaving their country mainly because of the economic difficulties which have risen due to illegal U.S. sanctions against their country, have to face discrimination and often even open hostility.

When the Chilean neoliberal economy began collapsing as a result of the 2019 popular uprising, as well as mismanaged COVID-19 crisis, most of the Venezuelan migrants lost their jobs. They ended up literally on the street, facing insults, ridicule, even attacks. Hundreds gathered in front of their Embassy in Santiago, hoping to return home, but there were no flights. The temperature was dropping as winter had arrived. The Chilean state did nothing to help. In the end, it was the Communist mayor of Recoletta, who took decisive action and housed all Venezuelan people in need in his neighborhood.

The Chilean government began preparing what is termed as ‘voluntary repatriation’ of both Haitian and Venezuelan citizens, demanding that they sign an affidavit with a clause that they cannot re-enter the country for at least nine years. Thoroughly unlawful and unconstitutional move, but here nobody cares.

*

In Chile, racism has many diverse forms, and some of them are truly monstrous.

Right after the Pinochet dictatorship officially ended, I went to Chile, to write about, and to expose “Colonia Dignidad,” an evil German enclave, run by extreme right-wing (some of them Nazis) child molesters (listen to my interview here). This huge compound, in remote Maule Region, spreading towards the Andes and the border with Argentina, was, particularly during the dictatorship, notorious for torturing, raping, and disappearing people. Its name was changed in 1991 to Villa Baviera, but even after that, for years it continued to function as a state inside the state, equipped with barbed wire at its perimeter, as well as searchlights, German shepherds, two airstrips, power plant, and the arsenal of weapons stored in the underground tunnels.

After returning to Chile, several months ago, I discovered that all major Chilean supermarket chains are stuffed with the Villa Baviera products, from German bread to sausages of all kinds.

This pinnacle of racism, bigotry, sexual abuse (mainly pedophilia), and torture, the colony is now operating as some sort of “tourist resort.” This is clearly a spit in the face to its countless victims, many of them kidnapped and ‘adopted’ Mapuche children, and to the Chilean democracy, which was broken to shards on 11 September 1973, during the fascist, US-backed military coup. Democracy, which was never restored, until this very moment.

*

Even in the United States, one statue after another is getting desecrated, painted with graffiti, or simply destroyed. Crimes against humanity are being exposed. With each of the statues, respect to US racist past has been vanishing.

In Chile, racist, white pro-imperialist figures have always been admired and revered. During the last year’s uprising, however, several monuments were attacked, including those to the conqueror Pedro de Valdivia, in the cities of Concepcion, Valdivia, and Temuco.

History of the country has been closely tied to various brutal conquerors, butchers of the native population, and to the collaborators with the European and lately North American interests: Pedro de Valdivia, General Baquedano, and others.

In Santiago de Chile, a huge statue of General Baquedano was painted over with graffiti. It served as a gathering place for the anti-government demonstrations at the end of 2019.

However, under cover of the four months long COVID-19 lockdown, the government of Sebastian Piñera managed to stop most of the protests, and consequently repaint the Baquedano’s statue. At one point, the president himself stopped his motorcade and took his own selfie in front of the monument to the butcher of Bolivia and Peru.

*

In Chile, there is no love for the Chinese or other Asians. The country fell under the total influence of the U.S./European political and cultural propaganda.

I knew several Asian women who used to face intimidation and harassment in Santiago.

Here, to be white, to be of European stock, is worn like a coat of honor. The highest honor.

Twenty years ago, when I lived here for over two years, Chileans were obsessed with different cultures. People appeared to be thirsty for everything coming from Asia or the Middle East. Now, it is back to the mainstream Western offerings: from U.S. pop music to Hollywood junk. The number of art cinemas shrank dramatically. Santiago reduced itself to a provincial, culturally dull capital. Unless one is interested in the second-rate Western offering, there is very little of interest here, now.

Little wonder. Under the neo-liberal model, Chile’s upper and upper-middle classes adopted the Western/white complex of superiority fully.

Obviously, individuals who spit at black people will not be seeking African art.

In a report published by Palabra Publica, some facts and analyses appear to be shocking:

The report ‘Manifestations of Racial Discrimination in Chile: A Study of Perception’s, published by the National Institute for Human rights (NIHR) in February of this year, indicates that 68.2% of surveyed individuals declare that they agree with measures to limit the entrance of migrants into Chile. In turn, a third of them consider themselves “whiter than other people from Latin American countries” and almost 25% in the Metropolitan Region see immigrants as “dirtier” than Chileans. Additionally, the National Institute for Human rights indicates in their report that “the fact that skin color and indigenous features are indicated as reasons for rejection denotes their use as indicators of social exclusion and, therefore, as an implicit expression of racism (…) the indicators of the responses show that over 30% of the participants do not clearly reject the idea of stigmatizing them”.

Black lives do matter, increasingly, even among the many progressive groups of people in the United States. But not in Chile. Despite gross discrimination, assaults and even killing of the people with a different color of skin, (one of the most ‘famous’ cases was that of a 27-year-old Haitian immigrant, Joanne Florvil, who got, in 2017, arbitrarily detained, denied an interpreter and killed), there seems to be no organized, powerful movement in Chile, which would stand determinately against racism and continuous theft of what is left of the Mapuche lands, or for the return of access to the sea to Bolivia.

Now, during the draconical COVID-19 lockdown (Chilean neoliberal government absolutely failed in its ‘battle’ with the novel coronavirus – Chile presently having the highest number of infections in Latin America, per 1 million people), Haitian immigrants are abused more and more, openly and brutally. Bizarrely, many Chileans believe that Haitians are ‘dirty’ and that they are responsible for spreading the virus. Horrid conditions in which they have to live, as well as abuses they have to face, were recently depicted even by Al-Jazeera and otherwise staunch neo-liberal reporter Lucia Newman.

*

In a way, Chilean racism and racial divisions are an extreme version of what is happening in several countries of South America. Here, the European descendants became what is called ‘elites.’ They control political, cultural, and economic life, and they control land, despising other ethnic groups.

Politically, they are controlling not only the right-wing, but also in some cases (like Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay), a substantial part of the Left. Here, much of the Left now has nothing to do with the Latin American Left, which is governing in countries like Cuba and Venezuela. As described above, in Chile, it is a defunct pseudo-left similar to the Western anarcho-syndicalism, which is alien to the mentality of the native, non-Western cultures. It is all about ‘rights’ and individualism, and very little or none, about internationalism. In Chile, during the big uprising which took place at the end of 2019 – an uprising which I photographed, filmed and covered – there were almost no voices supporting Venezuela or denouncing US-backed coup in Bolivia. However, there were many demands for free abortion.

*

Chilean racism is deadly. Here, European migrants ruined great native cultures, both in the south and north. Alliance of Chile and the U.K. robbed Bolivia of its access to the sea and damaged Peru. Chile spied on Argentina, on behalf of the U.K., during the War of Malvinas. The country was the essential participant in Operation Condor, with Colonia Dignidad being one of the main torture centers on the continent. Until now, Santiago plays a crucial role in isolating and intimidating Venezuela and other left-wing countries in Latin America.

All this, because of desperate desire to be accepted, to be part of the Western club of predominately white nations.

“The English of Latin America,” Chile does not want to be a victim. It prefers to be a victimizer. And in many ways, it is. Domestically and internationally.

But the word is quickly changing, and Chile may find itself on the very wrong side of history. The Western regime, the Western empire, is rapidly collapsing. And the white color could and should, very soon, become just that and nothing more – a color.

While the great original cultures of Latin America will, no doubt, return to both prominence and former glory.

Online Education: A Student’s Perspective

Maliha Iqbal

I have been attending online classes for three months but the experience continues to be the same – surreal and absurd. In these times, when the world is going through a crisis of great magnitude and death could be right there knocking on the door, what most school students do or rather, what they have to do is to open their devices and drably study somnolent subjects.

In physical school, we had two math periods on Wednesdays. I grew to hate Wednesdays but it all became quite bearable when I thought of the games period afterwards. Here, during online classes, in the midst of a pandemic that has wreaked havoc in the world, I have nothing to look forward to during the online classes. Not even my friends are present there.

When young minds need consoling and psychological strength to come through this crisis, all they are taught is the sum of all angles in a triangle. People might say that at least it keeps them occupied, gives them something to do but is that all it’s about? Somehow keep your children busy, finish the syllabus and burden them with homework. The true meaning of education is lost here. Whatever happened to ‘learning with creativity and fun’? Education is the enlightenment of the soul, it is supposed to be something that helps the child to overcome their fears.

Not surprisingly, more than half of school students don’t attend online classes. There are mainly two reasons for this. Firstly, most children don’t have access to proper devices for online classes. Imagine a child with only one smart phone in his family. How is he supposed to borrow it for the entire day when there are other everyday necessities such as calling and communication?

Majority of the schools had been unprepared for online classes. Although there were some schools who were starting to include latest technology for studies, these numbered very few. Most of the schools thought that they had a few more years before they actually had to think about using latest technology or moving on to online platforms. But now, the virus has accelerated or rather, “super-accelerated” this gradual process and here we are, having online classes with so many problems. There are many teachers and students alike who don’t know how to go about it and who are not acquainted with the operational niceties of computers. This is a direct corollary of a hurried and unorganized digital educational programme which wants to instantaneously improve online education in a largely de-digitized environment.

Then there are those students who are there in the class although they are actually not there. Many of my friends proudly say to me “Really? You even attend the classes? I just log in to the meeting and then play PUBG.”  Although the teachers do try their best to mark only those students present who are actually there in class but as a student, I have seen many instances when children get attendance even though they are not present. In a class with 50 students and just one teacher, there’s always room for inefficiency. It’s only natural.

Spending long hours on screen due to social media and addiction to online gaming had already made parents worried. Most children were not allowed to be seen in the vicinity of a smart phone but now the screen is the new normal. This leads to parents monitoring their children’s usage of the internet. “What if my child is not doing classes?” “What can he/she be doing?” Excessive monitoring can lead to resentment among some children. By monitoring their usage of internet, you are showing that you mistrust them. You force them into lying to you because you are showing that you will punish them if they use the internet for what you think is wrong.

Often these online classes tend to make me more stressed than I would have been otherwise. If my microphone is not working or if I am unable to log in to a meeting then I would probably be marked absent. One full day’s attendance gone. I feel so frustrated when I keep trying to answer and my teacher somehow doesn’t hear my voice. He would probably think that I am not in class. I snap at my parents to do something about the connectivity despite the fact that we have three different internet connections at home and three devices. Despite all this, I face problems. I blame my parents but what can they do when the network connection is so bad? And it’s not that I live in a village either. What must other children who are not as blessed as me go through?

There is no definitive for attending online classes at present. One can face all kinds of problems- audio, video and whatnot. Some schools have classes on Zoom, some on Microsoft Teams while others even have them on WhatsApp.

Nobody was prepared for this so we should not expect miracles. The question should not be about finishing the syllabus or doing your homework or teachers making PPTs and uploading them. It should be about how to improve this online education. How to make students think positively and how to dispel their fears at these times of crises.  We should first perfect our first move rather than thinking about the next.

The nationalist hijacking of the race for a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus

Benjamin Mateus

With the pandemic continuing to spiral out of control, and as the race for the vaccine heats up, various US institutions and political entities are jockeying to control who will be first in developing a viable vaccine against the coronavirus and how that vaccine would be distributed among the population. This raises serious concerns about the motives behind these developments which are anything but ingenuous.

There are presently 24 candidate vaccines in clinical evaluation, otherwise known as human trials. More than 140 are in preclinical evaluations across several nations throughout the globe. Of those in clinical trials, only four have reached phase three clinical trials: AstraZeneca (UK-based), Moderna (US-based), and two from China being produced by Sinovac and Sinopharm. Pfizer (US-based) has announced it would start phase 2B and phase 3 trials at the end of July.

Stephen Hoge, president of Moderna speaking at House and Commerce Committee July 21.

According to STAT News, the National Academy of Medicine, tasked by top US health officials, has named a panel to establish a framework for the initial distribution of the vaccine. However, this infringes on the role of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its advisory panel, which makes recommendations on vaccination policy. This is further complicated by the administration’s Operation Warp Speed, which has used federal funds to enrich private biotech and pharmaceutical companies.

Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy, said, “Between ACIP [Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices], and this new committee, the group working within Operation Warp Speed and just in terms of input from the general community, it’s not clear to me who will make the final decision and how the process will unfold.”

Every US-based COVID-19 vaccine in phase three uses a two-dose regimen separated by 28 days. This adds to the problem that supplies will be quite limited at the start, posing the critical question of what criteria will be used to identify those that should first access this potentially life-saving cure. (The two-dose regimen provides a boost to the immune system that a single dose does not offer.)

During the hearing on “Pathway to a Vaccine” at the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on July 21, with prominent pharma executives present as witnesses, the issue of the dosing and distribution was raised early in the course of the discussion. Republican Congressman Greg Walden of Oregon said, “That’s really helpful for us and the public to understand [about two-dose regimens]. When we talk about having 300 million doses or 30 million doses, we probably should cut that in half in terms of the number of people that are actually going to be able to get vaccinated in a worst-case scenario.”

The witnesses at the hearing included Dr. Mene Pangalos, executive vice president at AstraZeneca; Dr. Macaya Douoguih, head of clinical development and medical affairs at Johnson & Johnson; Dr. Julie Gerberding, executive vice president and chief patient officer at Merck; Dr. Stephen Hoge, president of Moderna; and Mr. John Young, chief business officer of Pfizer. The title of doctor among these personalities has assumed a figurative sense to provide a modicum of altruism when, in fact, their allegiance is strictly to their shareholders.

Other important issues were raised by the panel including the concern over the rapid pace at which vaccines are being developed that could lead to bypassing the necessary assessment of the efficacy of vaccines in the general population as well as concerns that even severe rare side effects in small cohorts of subjects in phase two and three trials may be compounded by the massive distribution of the vaccine among billions.

The chairman of the Committee, Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone of New Jersey, added, “We all want a COVID-19 vaccine to be developed as soon as possible, but before a vaccine is distributed, public health experts must ensure that it is safe, effective, and available to all who need it. My fear is that the FDA will be forced by the Trump administration to approve a vaccine that lacks effectiveness.”

Moderna’s Hoge assured the panel, “We do believe it’s going to be possible in a safe way to bring forth an effective vaccine in 12 to 18 months. We’ve been working around the clock to make sure we’re doing this in an incredibly responsible way all the way through.” Moderna received $483 million in funding through the Department of Health and Human Services in April. Since that partnership was announced, Moderna’s stock price has climbed from under $40 per share to over $80, doubling its value. Moderna is moving to start phase three clinical trials this week.

Dr. Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chairman and CEO, said, “We’ve been committed to making the impossible possible by working tirelessly to develop and produce in record time a safe and effective vaccine to help bring an end to this global health crisis.”

Pfizer, which is in collaboration with a small German biotechnology company, BioNTech, was awarded a $2 billion contract for up to 600 million doses of their mRNA coronavirus vaccine. According to the agreement, pending the outcome of clinical trials, the US government placed an initial order for 100 million doses with the option of acquiring an additional 500 million doses. Pfizer and BioNTech are moving to start phase 2b and 3 clinical trials at the end of this month and will seek regulatory review as early as October 2020.

Novavax, another US-based biotechnology and vaccine development company, backed by Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, announced earlier in July that it was partnering with the federal government to expedite the development of their vaccine.

The contract will provide the Maryland-based company $1.6 billion. The company has also awarded its executives stock options worth tens of millions even if their efforts to produce a viable vaccine fail. In its 33-year history, the company has never delivered a vaccine to market, though its market value has climbed from $250 million to $8 billion during the pandemic.

The executives, speaking before the panel, assured lawmakers that their products would be ready by the end of the year. However, in the bluntest terms, Hoge of Moderna, said, “We will not sell it at cost.” Objections and concerns raised by House members are simply formalities. As is evidenced by the hearings on Remdesivir, there is no real mechanism to inhibit the government for pricing for profit. In fact, the government has been at the forefront of providing the funds for access to these therapeutics. “We’ll price our potential vaccine consistent with the urgent global health emergency that we’re facing,” said Young, Pfizer’s chief business officer.

Complicating Novavax’s relationship with the US government, however, the company has already received grants worth $388 million from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) that stipulated CEPI would have the right of first refusal to ensure delivery of the vaccine to emerging nations. It remains to be determined how binding these agreements will be.

The World Health Organization is in partnership with CEPI and Gavi, the vaccine alliance, to purchase 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines for high-risk populations of the world. The cost of such a massive effort is projected at $18.1 billion, with $11.3 billion needed to be raised by year’s end. Additionally, the initiative requires commitments from developed nations to purchase close to a billion doses of a viable vaccine. For their commitments, these countries would be offered shares of nine candidate vaccines that are being supported by CEPI. These arrangements assure governments access to a viable vaccine if others prove ineffective in clinical trials.

These efforts belie the sinister and avarice-ridden decisions being made on the production and distribution of vaccines. Klus Stohr, a German virologist who played a key role in identifying the coronavirus as the cause of SARS, in an interview with Bloomberg, warned that 90 percent of the population remains susceptible to the virus. As with other respiratory pathogens, he added, the winter season will produce another wave, much more severe than the present instance.

He said, “Countries like Germany may have a significant amount of vaccine by the beginning of next year and a rollout that may take four, five, six months for the elderly. The strategy may be different for a country like Brazil, Argentina, or Chile, which may never get a single dose of a vaccine and still has to cope … it’s not the vaccine that’s going to end the pandemic. The virus will end this pandemic by burning every piece of dry wood it will find. The fire will not go out before the last susceptible person has been affected.”

It is in this context that the recent unsubstantiated accusations by the US against Russia and China is part and parcel of the geopolitical struggle to “secure supplies for a scientific breakthrough that could confer enormous economic and political power,” according to the Wall Street Journal. The recent indictment brought against Chinese citizens for attempting to steal vaccine data stems not from evidence of a crime but to ensure the United States can position itself strategically to be the first to patent a vaccine for the coronavirus. However, such brinksmanship may provide sufficient critical mass for regional aggressions to blossom.

The sudden consternation raised by the mouthpieces of the financial oligarchs such as the New York Times and Washington Post regarding the attempted theft of intellectual property at this precise moment should be measured against the advances made by Chinese pharmaceuticals in the vaccine race. Sinopharm, using an inactivated virus vaccine, has launched a phase three trial in the United Arab Emirates and is well under way in recruiting thousands of trial subjects, while another Chinese company, Sinovac Biotech, commenced phase three trials in Brazil earlier in the month.

Even the UK is facing an assault on its advanced position in vaccine development through the financial markets. AstraZeneca, in collaboration with the University of Oxford, is currently conducting phase three trials in Brazil and South Africa. However, shares slid seven percent earlier this week despite positive results in their phase one trial that demonstrated both high neutralizing antibody levels and T-cell responses, although the responses may not have been as robust as other vaccines. The pharmaceutical giant announced last month that it is committed to manufacturing two billion doses by the end of the year.

South Asian floods kill hundreds and displace millions

Arun Kumar

Floods and landslides triggered by heavy monsoonal rains since June have killed over 700 people across South Asia, including in Nepal, Bangladesh and India. With many people still missing and downpours continuing, the death toll is expected to further increase. Around 10 million people have already been displaced.

In India, more than 6.8 million people have been hit by severe flooding, mainly in the northern states of Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya. In Assam, the most heavily affected state, 87 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced according to the latest figures , with Goalpara, Barpeta and Morigaon the worst hit districts.

In Bangladesh, more than 2.8 million people have been impacted, including over one million who remain isolated and surrounded by flood waters, according to the country’s disaster management and relief agency.

On Monday, Bangladesh’s director-general of health services said 79 people have been killed in “flood-related problems” and more than 4,500 were infected with various waterborne diseases in 18 flood-hit districts.

The Kathmandu Post reported this week that the death toll in Nepal had risen to 114. More than one million people had been displaced and several districts cut off after floods washed away bridges and landslides blocked highways. On Monday, the flooded Bagmati River, which passes through the Kathmandu Valley, inundated residential districts.

Experts cited by the newspaper said the severity of recent flood disasters was caused by “haphazard urbanisation and reckless land use.” The political responsibility for this lies with the decision of successive national and local Nepalese governments.

The monsoonal flooding comes as Indian and Bangladeshi residents were attempting to recover from Cyclone Amphan, which hit the region in May, destroying or damaging 260,000 houses, along with basic infrastructure and crops. At least 91 people were killed in India and Bangladesh in that cyclone.

The latest disaster coincides with the ravaging of South Asia by COVID-19. Yesterday, Indian health authorities reported 1.24 million infections and 29,861 deaths, while in Bangladesh the figures climbed to over 216,000 infections and 2,801 fatalities. Nepal recorded more than 18,241 cases and 43 deaths.

A report this week by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies correctly noted that the destruction of homes, small businesses, farmlands and crops in recent weeks will push millions more people into poverty. The callous government responses parallel the official indifference to those infected with COVID-19.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week spoke about the flood situation with Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and reportedly expressed his “solidarity” with the people. Modi is shedding meaningless crocodile tears for public consumption, as with his response to every disaster.

According to the Assam-based pratidintime.com website, the state has not received any assistance from the Indian government’s National Disaster Response Fund since 2014, despite having suffered substantial human and material losses in floods that year and every year since.

In a video conference on Tuesday, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheik Hasina claimed her ministers and officials had made arrangements to alleviate the hardships of all those affected by the floods. This is empty posturing, with no concrete details, and will doubtless do little to assist the hundreds of thousands struggling to avoid starvation.

The Daily Star reported on Wednesday that in Kurigram district more than 300,000 people had been displaced by floods and were facing severe hardship without drinking water, food and shelter. Flood survivor, Saleha Begum, 48, told the Star that residents “have been living a subhuman life for the past eight days.” and that “no one came forward to help.”

Flood devastation and the associated deaths, destruction and poverty are an annual occurrence in South Asia. According to a recent UN report, at least 600 people were killed and more than 25 million were impacted by monsoonal flooding in Bangladesh, India, Myanmar and Nepal last year. And in 2017, over 1,000 people died in floods across the region.

Researchers have also warned that within a few decades, Bangladesh, with a population of over 160 million people, could lose more than 10 percent of its land to rising sea-levels caused by global warming. This would result in the displacement of as many as 18 million people.

In May last year, the South China Morning Post warned: “Rising temperatures have caused Himalayan glaciers to melt, increasing the risk of floods and landslides during monsoon season. Long-term, permanent disappearance of the glaciers could affect the flow of major Asian rivers, including the Yangtze, the Mekong and the Brahmaputra.”

Six rivers—the Indus, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutluj and Beas—flow from India into Pakistan. Three of these pass through Jammu and Kashmir. Meanwhile, water from the Indus is shared by India and Pakistan. The Ganges is shared by India and Bangladesh, former East Pakistan. The largest of these rivers, the Brahmaputra, originates from Chinese-controlled Tibet and flows through India and Bangladesh.

The arbitrary, undemocratic and reactionary character of the 1947 communal partition imposed in South Asia by British imperialism and the regional capitalist elites prevents the development of a coordinated strategy to overcome these disasters. The capitalist class and its political servants are incapable of developing a progressive, internationally-coordinated solution to natural disasters and associated social, economic and health crises facing working people in this vast area.

The only force able to create the conditions for this to occur is the working class, united and mobilised behind a revolutionary socialist perspective to put an end to capitalism and establish a Union of Socialist Republics of South Asia.