How the world ran out of semiconductors

Hamza Mudassir

While it is easy to blame the COVID-19 pandemic for this situation, the truth is that the global semiconductor supply chain had this coming for some time. As much as 70% of the world’s semiconductors are manufactured by just two companies, Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) and Samsung.

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There’s a global shortage in semiconductors, and it’s becoming increasingly serious. The US is currently reviewing its supply of the technology, following a landmark executive order from President Joe Biden.

The president also pledged US$37 billion (£26 billion) to cover the short-term costs of rebuilding and securing America’s supply of semiconductors, which are a fundamental part of microchips and thus integral to everything from computers to smartphones to renewable energy and military hardware.

The automotive sector has been worst affected by the drought, in an era where microchips now form the backbone of most cars. Ford is predicting a 20% slump in production and Tesla shut down its model 3 assembly line for two weeks. In the UK, Honda was forced to temporarily shut its plant as well.

Even highly experienced tech companies such as Nvidia and Microsoft are struggling to provide a steady stock of graphics cards and Xboxes respectively. It appears that no company, big or small, tech or non-tech, is safe from the wide-ranging impact of the great semiconductor famine of 2021.

The concentration problem

While it is easy to blame the COVID-19 pandemic for this situation, the truth is that the global semiconductor supply chain had this coming for some time. As much as 70% of the world’s semiconductors are manufactured by just two companies, Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) and Samsung.

The entry barriers into semiconductor manufacturing are astronomically high. There’s a steep learning curve required to set up a semiconductor foundry, entailing an upfront investment of US$10-$12 billion and then at least three years to become production-ready.

Even then, there are no guarantees that a new foundry’s chip yields will match those of the incumbents. Chips rapidly become obsolete and price pressures are a major problem in the tech sector, so there are lots of risks to profitability.

Due to such harsh economics, it has only made sense for a handful of large players to invest in manufacturing capabilities and then spread those costs and risks across hundreds of thousands of customers. Global tech has historically been very happy to hand the manufacturing reins to TSMC and Samsung. And in turn, this has created the supply-chain equivalent of a house of cards.

High demand

The pandemic has driven unexpectedly high demand for home electronics such as laptops and gaming consoles, as many people started working from home and seeking more sources of indoor entertainment.

Automotive companies had been expecting lower demand, given that car sales tend to move lower in an economic downturn. This, however, proved to be an erroneous assumption, as new car sales started bouncing back quickly by the tail end of 2020. Automotive companies tried to re-book previously cancelled semiconductor orders only to discover that home electronics manufacturers had taken their place.

At the same time, President Trump’s trade war with China led to new rules that made it harder for Chinese companies to source semiconductors from TSMC and Samsung. With China’s own semiconductor technology inferior to the industry leaders, Chinese tech behemoths like Huawei stockpiled semiconductor chips in advance of the new restrictions in 2020, soaking up any spare capacity with large orders.

But the straw that finally broke the proverbial camel’s back was the sharp rise in bitcoin prices in early 2021. This increased the demand for the graphics processing units that are traditionally used in mining the digital currency, exacerbating the semiconductor supply issues further.

All of this has been enough to cause TSMC and Samsung to run out of capacity and significantly increase lead times to fulfil orders, leading to the drought we see today.

Who loses

The share prices of TSMC and Samsung have risen by 190% and 61% respectively in the past 12 months thanks to the supply shortfall. Despite President Biden’s best efforts, the situation is unlikely to improve in the next three years because of all the barriers to entry in this sector.

Prices of consumer electronics have shot up, thanks to scalpers who routinely buy graphics cards and consoles at recommended retail prices and sell them for higher prices on sites like eBay.

It is only a matter of time before tech manufacturers and retailers decide to increase prices to match the high demand and low supply of the components. Expect to see releases of more expensive variants of existing electronic products hitting the market soon.

Just like in an actual famine, the end consumers of these goods are going to be significantly worse off, with little or no respite coming their way.

Serious Questions Being Raised About Extent of Corporate Control All Over World

Bharat Dogra

At a time when increasing questions about corporatization trends are being raised in India, it is useful to know that the extent of corporate control over farming and farmers ( small and medium farmers, family farms) is being increasingly questioned almost all over the world, including the USA. A widely discussed account is that of Bedabrat  Pain , an ex-NASA scientist who recently travelled the US countryside widely with three colleagues to understand the reality of corporate control and the resulting problems of small farmers and family farms. The quotes here are from his report titled ‘How Big Ag Ate Up America’s Small farms’.

This report says “Nearly all the farmers we talked to held the Reagan-era ‘opening up’ of agriculture and the rise of ‘Big Ag’ –gigantic agro-business that now dominate American farming –responsible for their plight…Shorn of government support a quarter million small farmers closed , over a million generational farmers were displaced, and deserted towns began dotting the rural landscape. What  happened to the land? Unsurprisingly Big Ag gobbled it up as landless farmers started toiling under onerous contract farming terms. Giant corporations used financial clout to control the market, depress farm-gate prices, buy infrastructure for a song, and raise costs to a point where small farms became unsustainable.”

This account would no doubt shock many people who have generally  a  benevolent and picturesque view of US farming. But at the same time let us also remember that the US is not at all alone in experiencing a large-scale displacement and closing down of small farms. The figure mentioned for a smaller neighboring country Mexico is  that nearly a million farmers were displaced in the aftermath of the introduction of trade treaty called NAFTA which brought cheap subsidized imports from the USA against which Mexican farmers could not compete.

Or take the example of India where comparison of  2001 and 2011 census data reveals a reduction of 8.6 million farmers and even a bigger rise in the number of rural landless households. So while we are shocked at what happened in USA let us look at our own plight as well.

In the account on USA changes it is said that most farmers believe that harmful impacts related more to legal changes made in Reagan years. This again bears comparison with the debate taking place now in India regarding the impact of three new farm laws against which farmers’ movement, supported by several others, has been protesting.

However other studies relating to US agriculture and the adversities of small farmers point to several much longer-term trends as well. What happens is that when there is a lot of opposition to some very adverse recent changes like laws, the longer term problems tend to be forgotten or neglected in relation to this. This is what is reflected in the above account on the USA which traces problems entirely to Reagan-era changes while the corporatization trends of earlier years too were problematic. Again there is similarity with the situation in India, where the intense debate just now on the three farm laws has led to the neglect of several disturbing trends from much earlier times.

Returning to the USA account quoted above it is useful to see what it says about the extent to which corporate control has proceeded. To quote, “ A handful of meat processing companies now own the livestock , while poultry , beef and pig farmers are more or less serfs—raising the animals for them under contract . They have no bargaining power because these food giants are the only players left in town. Nearly 75% of all US poultry farmers today live below the poverty line while Big Ag control everything from “ farm to fork” and from seeds to grocery stores. Four large firms control at least two-thirds of the seed market , 80% of chemical fertilizers , grain trading , dairy production , meat supply ad almost 100% of farm machinery. Meanwhile , government money flows to the corporations in the form of  write-offs, market facilitations and crop insurance subsidies. Over 70% of the $50 billion in US government subsidies goes to the top 20% of farms. John E. Ikerd, retired professor emeritus at University of Missouri, says this couldn’t have happened without political patronage.”

This is a very disturbing picture which shows that domination of a few big corporations is accompanied by increasing marginalization and disempowerment of farmers till they are reduced to serf-like position in contract farming or under somewhat  similar legal arrangements. This entire disturbing and harmful trend is manipulated in such a way that the big business interests continue to get the most financial benefits from government spending on agriculture.

This complaint has been increasingly heard in many countries that a very large share of what gets spent in the name of agriculture actually goes to big agro-business and not to the small and medium farmers who most need this help and support.

The wider reality is that with all these injustices of the USA or western countries there are likely to be social security arrangements that will protect the most marginalized sections from the worst impacts of poverty , but such protection is likely to be denied  to the marginalized and disempowered or even displaced sections in poorer or less prosperous countries including India.

Hence it is clear that one of the most urgent but neglected issues is not just increasing agricultural production but increasing it on sustainable and protected farms of small and medium farmers so that the base of agriculture all over the world is that of small and medium farmers. This is an important justice issue, but in addition it should be highlighted that small and medium farmers alone are able to provide the care of soil and land  and animals and water sources which is so essential for sustainability and which cannot be provided by the big business farming with all its heavy machines and truckloads of agro-chemicals.

Harry and Meghan fire their latest broadside against the House of Windsor

Chris Marsden

Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness ends with its protagonist, Kurtz, declaring, “The horror! The horror!”, as his verdict on all that he has done and seen, and on the general devastation wrought by imperialism on the African continent.

One wonders what enduring phrase Conrad would have employed to summarise the terrible suffering inflicted upon Meghan Markle by Britain’s Royal Family? Possibly, “The banality! The self-pity!”

Markle and her husband, Harry, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, spoke to Oprah Winfrey, net worth $2.7 billion. She began by asking what their $14.5 million home near Santa Barbara, California means to them as part of their new life after withdrawing from Royal duties.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II is joined by Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, and at rear, from left, Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince William, Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex during a reception at Buckingham Palace, London to mark the 50th anniversary of the investiture of the Prince of Wales. March 5, 2019 file photo (Dominic Lipinski/Pool via AP, File)

“Peace,” Markle replied. One might add that it is just one of the benefits of having an awful lot of money.

The interview cum promotional video, which has already earned over $9 million for Winfrey’s production company from CBS and £1 million from ITV, was a much-anticipated takedown of “The Firm”, a suitably disparaging term for the House of Windsor, and the latest stage in a bitter factional conflict rocking the Royal Family to its foundations.

Harry and Meghan’s catalogue of complaints was thin gruel. Meghan said that she had been driven to the point that she “didn’t want to be alive anymore” but cited only one example of ostensibly genuine racism by a member of the Royal Family, an allegedly racist motive regarding bestowing the title of prince on her son, and the cold indifference to her suffering at the hands of the venal British media.

Harry played on comparisons between the mistreatment of his wife and the tragic fate of his mother, Princess Diana, made a swipe at his father, Prince Charles, for abandoning him, and at the royals for closing the purse strings after the couple made clear they wanted out.

Markle portrayed herself as a naïf, who believed her marriage to Harry would be the stuff of a Disney movie, only to discover the racism in the British media and a belief in the royal household that she and Harry were upstaging the heir to the throne, Prince William, and his wife Kate.

Of the accusations made, the supposedly most explosive were “several conversations” about how “dark” Meghan's baby’s “skin might be when he was born”—relayed to Meghan by Harry. “At the time it was awkward, I was a bit shocked,” he explained. Really? Someone who grew up with Prince Philip as his grandfather, and whose idea of fun as a young man was to dress up as a Nazi? Both refused to say which royal said it, but they asked Winfrey to stress that it was neither the queen nor Philip—which eliminates at least one notorious racist.

The account was meant to reinforce Markle’s assertion of a racist motive for not making her son Archie a prince, “which would be different from protocol, and that he wasn't going to receive security”. Citing royal protocol was not a suitable explanation, she insisted. It was particularly concerning that “the first member of colour in this family isn't being titled in the same way as other grandchildren would be.”

This is nonsense, as royal protocol does specify that Archie would not get a title at birth as he is only the son of the second son of Charles, the Prince of Wales. Had Meghan been minded to hang around for more than two years, Archie would have been made a prince once Charles ascended to the throne.

The only other accounts of royal skulduggery and abuse related to Winfrey were that a row over her flower girl wedding dresses was reported as having reduced Kate to tears, when in fact it was Meghan who ended up crying; Prince Charles not taking Harry’s calls after he stepped down; and the two being cut off financially in the first quarter of 2020. Had he not had the money left him by his mother, the revenues from his father’s estate, and the ability to rely on American billionaire media mogul Tyler Perry, they would have been in a truly dreadful situation.

Whatever event or combination of events convinced the Sussexes that they no longer wanted to play their part in the front ranks of the monarchy, the most important deciding factor was that they could make far more money once they were free operators. Both wanted Harry to retain the title His Royal Highness (HRH) while being freed from mundane royal duties.

In January last year the couple declared on their website, sussexroyal.com, their intention to “carve out a progressive new role within this [Royal] institution,” including becoming “financially independent.” This meant not making claims on the Sovereign Grant provided by the state to the top royals, which they complained only covered “five percent of costs for The Duke and Duchess” anyway. They would, however, still claim £5 million from Charles’s Duchy of Cornwall, which represented the remaining 95 percent of their income, Frogmore Cottage in Windsor as a UK base, and wanted British taxpayers to pick up their security and travel tab at a cost of over £1 million per year.

Alas this was not to be, as the monarchy instructed the pair to stop using HRH and get on with their money-grubbing without invoking the royal title. This was not much of a hit for the pair to suffer. The money has rolled in as they both knew it would, including a deal with the streaming service Netflix worth £100 million and a podcast deal with Spotify worth around £30 million. More money will flow their way after Sunday’s interview painting Meghan as a martyr.

It is hard not to experience a twinge of feeling for the queen, faced with such self-serving nonsense that risks undermining the institution she has spent decades buttressing. But we must resist. This is a fight between two factions for which there can be no sympathy, other than to acknowledge that their deeply flawed personalities are the product of an institution and a social milieu that does great damage to all involved.

The British press was largely sympathetic to Elizabeth and hostile towards the Sussexes, though the Guardian was firmly in the Meghan camp. Leading up to the interview, the Times ran allegations citing “Royal aides” that Markle was abusive and bullying towards palace staff, leading to resignations, while the Sun cited “insiders” calling Harry “the hostage” to a fiancé and wife “always looking for drama”. “There is an active role that the firm is playing in perpetuating falsehoods about us,” Markle told Winfrey.

Yesterday, the Telegraph’s Anna Pasternack compared Harry and Meghan unfavourably to the fascist sympathisers Edward VIII and “another American divorcee [who] captured the heart of a British prince”, Wallis Simpson, who both “despite being banished, were dutiful and patriotic to the end.”

There were no editorials, however, likely due to widespread concern that further mudslinging risks permanent damage to the monarchy, at a time when Prince Andrew stands accused of sex with underage prostitutes paid for by the deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Philip is at death’s door after heart surgery.

Once again, tensions and crisis risk tearing apart the Royal Family. This cannot be explained at the level of personal motives, even though these stretch as far back as the 1980s, above all to Princess Diana’s death in 1997. They are rooted in a general crisis of every major institution of the British state, provoked by the impact of globalisation.

The marriage of Charles and Diana ended in divorce rather than resigned unhappiness because she was adopted as a cause célèbre by the newly dominant super-rich layers of the financial oligarchy who supported her challenge to a monarchy embodying the hereditary privilege of layers they viewed as has-beens and virtual paupers. Every effort to resuscitate the monarchy’s public standing has involved taking a distance from the celebrity and open displays of wealth and excess associated with Diana, while appropriating her pose as a “people’s princess” supposedly in tune with “ordinary” working people. William married the “commoner” Kate Middleton in 2011. Harry went one better in 2017 by marrying a black actress, combining glamour with a progressive anti-racism and modernising message.

But nothing has worked in the long-term. On the day of the Winfrey interview, the queen gave a Commonwealth Day speech praising “selfless dedication to duty” and the importance of “friendship and unity”, speaking alongside Charles, his second wife Camilla and William and Kate. Unfortunately for her, the lure of wealth has again determined events—with Meghan winning Harry to a life of global celebrity over the spirit of duty in the interests of British imperialism that she demanded of him.

The gap between the fabulously wealthy elite and the broad mass of the population grows more acute by the day. Ultimately, the undermining of the monarchy, the prime symbol of national unity in the UK, is the harbinger of social conflicts far more fundamental than the spats within the ruling elite exercising the world’s media while millions face desperate hardship and threats to their health and lives during the pandemic.

UK: NHS protest organiser fined £10,000 under pandemic legislation

Thomas Scripps

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) broke up a small protest by National Health Service (NHS) workers and their supporters in St Peter’s Square, Manchester on Sunday, citing draconian COVID-19 legislation.

The organiser, Karen Reissmann, a mental health worker and a member of the Unison trade union’s National Executive Committee, was fined £10,000. Another woman, a 65-year-old NHS worker, was briefly arrested for “failing to provide details having refused the opportunity to leave when asked,” before being released and fined £200.

The protest was called after news broke last week that the Conservative government would be offering over 1 million NHS workers a paltry 1 percent pay rise for 2021-22—an effective cut after inflation. Around 20 people attended the Manchester protest, all wearing masks and observing social distancing. Reissmann, a member of the Socialist Workers Party, had announced the event as a “socially distanced and fully risk assessed protest”.

Karen Reissmann speaking at the nurses protest in St Peter's Square (credit: Lamin Touray/GoFundMe)

Within a few minutes of her beginning to speak to the protestors, large numbers of police arrived, outnumbering the protesters and causing by far the main threat to social distancing on the day.

The Manchester Evening News (MEN) reported that, after speaking with the senior police officer, Reissmann told protesters, “Unfortunately, the police have now told us we can't proceed with this, despite what's going on in the health service, the impact on people, morale, the hurt, the distress and the traumatisation that we feel we can't go ahead and give this message.”

She said they were threatened with the “full force of the law” if they did not comply.

At this point, the police began moving people out of the square, which has been a gathering place for demonstrations for decades going back to the 1819 Peterloo Massacre. Several protesters spoke briefly with the MEN as they left, describing the feeling among NHS workers. One explained, “As well being exhausted, everyone is very angry”. Another told the newspaper, “I work in mental health and it's upsetting to see colleagues who've now got symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from working on COVID wards.”

In a further attack on democratic rights, police then told MEN reporters to leave the area.

Reissmann was served her £10,000 fine for organising the protest and showing, so the police claim, “a degree of non-compliance”. The huge fine was the same level of punishment as that handed out to the organiser of an anti-lockdown rally in the nearby Piccadilly Gardens in the city last November, attended by roughly 600 people making a point of not wearing masks or social distancing.

The clampdown on the Manchester protest had immediate ramifications, with another protest against the NHS pay rise scheduled for yesterday afternoon in Sheffield called off by organisers under threat of the same penalty. Organiser Joan Pons Laplana told the Sheffield Star, “In view of yesterday’s police action in Manchester, we have decided to cancel today’s protest as we can’t afford a £10,000 fine.”

GMP’s actions have nothing to do with protecting people from the threat of COVID-19. Speaking after the event, police superintendent Caroline Hemingway said, “With the positive step of schools reopening tomorrow, it is vital that people continue to follow Government legislation on social distancing and avoid gathering illegally in large numbers.

“Regardless of one's sympathies for a protest's cause, we would ask the public to maintain social distancing and follow legislation to prevent a rise in infections and provide the best possible chance of a further easing of restrictions in the weeks to come.”

Hemingway was referring to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government opening schools to more than 10 million pupils, students and school and college workers with practically no safety measures in place, but a masked, socially distanced protest of 40 people is a risk too far.

From a public health standpoint, this is obviously absurd. But from the standpoint of the government’s class war herd immunity policy, the abandonment of the lockdown and all public health measures to contain the pandemic and using the virus as a pretext to attack democratic rights, go hand-in-hand.

The Socialist Equality Party warned in a March 3 statement, The end of the UK lockdown and the way forward for the working class, that in ending the UK’s “last lockdown”, Johnson was declaring “political war on the working class” and that “the sacrifice of workers’ lives to the pandemic takes place under conditions of a ruthless effort to claw back from the working class the billions handed to the corporations.”

This was confirmed by the effective pay-cut planned for NHS workers, revealed just days before the reopening of schools. The government know that their planned assaults on the lives and livelihoods of the working class will provoke mass opposition and are preparing the mechanisms for its suppression.

Last summer was marked by international protests against the police killing of George Floyd, police brutality and racism, which mobilised tens of thousands of people in cities across the UK. In response, leading police officials used the pandemic, and a fascist provocation encouraged by the government, to call for a ban on demonstrations. This became law in November, with Home Secretary Priti Patel removing an exemption for socially distanced protests included in previous pandemic restrictions on large gatherings.

The ban has already been used to intimidate striking workers. In November, strikers at the Optare bus factory in North Yorkshire were dispersed from a picket line by police. The case was due to be brought for judicial review but at the last moment the government conceded that the right to picket should be upheld.

A month later, however, police were repeatedly called against strikers at a DHL warehouse in Liverpool, in a blatant act of intimidation organised by the company.

In the ongoing indefinite strike at the Go North West bus company in Manchester, management have installed 80 new CCTV cameras enabling them to spy on pickets. No doubt any fleeting breach of social distancing will be used to justify a police crackdown.

The Labour Party fully support this agenda. A spokesperson for the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham backed police in Sunday’s events, “The protest today was rightly a matter for the police to deal with and is not something in which the Mayor has any role.

“However, under current legislation protests and demonstrations are not permitted, whether we agree with the protest or not, and it is the responsibility of the police to uphold the law.”

The government is preparing to extend its anti-democratic legislation. Last month, the Observer reported that Patel is looking at how to maintain the restrictions on protests implemented as part of the lockdown in the post-COVID environment.

She wrote to HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services in September asking “what steps the government could take to ensure the police have the right powers and capabilities to respond to protests” so that those protests do not impact “the rights of others to go about their daily business”.

The Inspectorate is now conducting a review which, the Observer reported, “will help Patel prepare a new law to curb protests that it is understood will target those that block parliament or affect judicial hearings, among other criteria.”

The specific reference to “judicial hearings” is significant. The most-protested hearing in recent years is that of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who the British state is seeking to extradite to the United States to face a life sentence for exposing war crimes, torture and imperialist conspiracies.

A pro-Assange protest outside Westminster Magistrates Court was broken up by police in January. Several pro-Assange protestors were arrested outside the courthouse on COVID-19 charges, including a 92-year-old man. The police came mob-handed with roughly 50 officers and police vans, in what was clearly an attempt to intimidate future demonstrations of support.

Workers’ opposition to the assault on basic democratic rights and their support for nurses fighting for a living wage is indicated by the fact that a GoFundMe page to pay Reissmann’s £10,000 fine exceeded £15,000 in donations as of Monday evening.

A political response is required to defeat these assaults on the freedom of assembly and protest. Workers must take up this fight based on socialist political perspective for ending the pandemic—using whatever lockdowns, public health and workplace safety measures are necessary—while guaranteeing jobs and wages and the stability of small businesses.

Opposition grows in Chile to school reopenings amid COVID-19 surge

Mauricio Saavedra

Four days after face-to-face education was resumed in Chile, 30 schools were temporarily closed due to the detection of coronavirus infections of children and staff. Another 21 schools quarantined the infected but kept the facilities open. Nonetheless, the ultra-right Chilean government of President Sebastian Piñera is proceeding with a reckless policy of progressively opening all public and subsidized private schools in the country.

The 2021 academic year started on March 1 with mixed modes of teaching and amid opposition from the wider community. Demonstrations rocked the capital at the beginning and the end of this week as high school students and youth were confronted by a massive deployment of Carabineros Special Forces with the now standard operating procedure of brutal repression and arrests. Only a fraction of the primary and secondary public school population attended in-person classes.

Overwhelming pressure is being exerted on teachers in the face of a surge in COVID-19 cases. Education Minister Raúl Figueroa reiterated the supposedly voluntary nature of returning to on-site learning. Teachers and education employees, however, were directed to be present at schools just in case students turned up, making a mockery of the claim.

Union and government roundtable discussions February 18 (Credit: mineduc.cl)

“I want to be very clear that it is the parents who must make the determination of whether or not their children go or not at this time to face-to-face activities,” Figueroa threatened, adding that “for a long time now countries in the Northern Hemisphere have also been doing it.”

South American governments are using the authority of UNICEF to force schools open in a bid to implement criminal herd immunity policies.

The regional director of the organization claimed that “children in Latin America and the Caribbean have been out of the classroom longer than any other children in the world.” In line with this, BBC interviewed UNICEF emergency education specialist, Ruth Custode, who claimed “that the opening process cannot be postponed any longer, even if it is gradual.” Custode continued, “Governments must think about the risks of opening schools versus the risks of not opening them. By far, not opening them will be more detrimental to the region.”

In the past two weeks minister after minister has joined the drive to browbeat teachers into submission. Economy Minister Lucas Palacios slandered educators as lazy. In his interview with T13 Radio, Palacios said that “in the case of teachers, it is striking that they seek by all means not to work, it is a unique case in the world, and I would say that it is worth studying.”

To suit the government’s agenda, Health Minister Enrique Paris that “children transmit the coronavirus very little.” Education Minster Raúl Figueroa, who opposed the school closures throughout last year, falsely argued that “schools are safe spaces when they comply with the required sanitary measures and protocols.”

Various scientific studies have conclusively demonstrated that school closures are associated with a significant decline in both incidence of COVID-19 and mortality. What is more, the experiences in the United States and Europe attest to the false and misleading character of the government’s arguments. Lockdowns and school closures are today more necessary than ever.

Last Friday, the country recorded 5,325 COVID-19 cases in 24 hours, the highest figure in eight months. Schools were closed last March, when the virus had just made its appearance, and education went online due to widespread public concern.

Today, with the number of suspected cases and deaths reaching over 950,000 and 27,000 respectively, the right-wing government is forcing teachers into the classrooms as it pushes a “back to normal” paradigm. This “new normal” is all the more criminal given that in Chile the 24- to 69-year-old working age group constitutes 73 percent of cases and one-third of deaths. Moreover, the more infectious and lethal British and Brazilian strains have been detected since February and have now made their way throughout the country.

The spurious grounds for reopening schools—that the government is concerned for the well-being of children and youth—is belied by reality. Twelve months of the pandemic have exposed the utter disdain the political establishment has for the poor and working class families.

Undoubtedly, children have suffered from the consequences of social isolation, and intra-family tensions reached new heights last year, due to forced confinement. The primary contributor to this tragic situation has been insecurity arising from mass unemployment, hunger, the threat of evictions and homelessness, all which rose sharply in a country suffering from multidimensional social inequality.

But neither the executive nor the legislature provided any meaningful assistance to deal with these deep social disparities with millions living in the overcrowded working class communities of Santiago or in the countless shantytown campamentos throughout Chile, lacking potable water and a regular supply of electricity and gas, let alone access to the internet.

The teachers union bears direct responsibility for the dire conditions facing education staff. Despite immense support within the working class and among youth for teachers, the unions have refused to mobilize their membership out of fear that it would unleash a tidal wave of social opposition.

Nor are the unions opposed to on-site instruction. What they want is to be invited to the negotiating table. Two weeks prior to the schools reopening a government-union roundtable was arranged which put forward a nine-point plan. This consisted of delaying on-site learning until the entire education population was vaccinated with both doses and dynamic quarantining reaching Phase 4.

“We believe that there is no possibility of returning in March, mainly because of the pandemic situation and because beyond the vaccine, which is an important element, we will not have the two doses by March 1. There has been a lot of improvisation in this respect, and we are not all going to arrive inoculated on that date,” union President Carlos Diaz said coming out of the meeting. (By March 1 half the 513,000-strong workforce was vaccinated, with the remainder receiving the first dose by March 5, and 3.9 million have been vaccinated with a single dose.)

When the government rode roughshod over the union’s demands, Diaz offered only an accusatory finger but proposed nothing to protect its membership. “In case of any contagion, any death, the responsibility will be on the Ministry of Education and the government of Sebastián Piñera.”

With 51 schools affected by coronavirus cases as of Friday, March 5, Díaz made a perfunctory call “to the Government of Sebastián Piñera, to the Ministry of Education, because given the conditions that we have today, it is not possible to continue with these on-site classes.”

Díaz, a member of the Humanist Party, is aligned with the pseudo-left front Frente Amplio that holds seats in the legislature and together with the Communist Party controls the trade union apparatus. These two multiparty organizations have been instrumental in allowing the deeply hated Piñera to remain in power for the last two years. Through verbal opposition to the ultra-right government, they posture as “lefts,” while thwarting every initiative to save the lives, jobs and conditions of the working class.

The unions long ago ceased to be national reformist organizations. During the military dictatorship, they were transformed into corporatized instruments to increase productivity and police wage cuts and job destruction in the drive to make the economy internationally competitive. This process is no more exposed than in the privatization reforms of education that were consolidated under civilian rule.

The corporatist agenda has only accelerated during the pandemic as trade union federations drove miners and other “export-oriented” sectors back to work. They helped impose wage cuts, supported the furloughing of hundreds of thousands of workers in private industry for the employers’ benefit and refused to call any industrial action against poverty, hunger, insecurity and evictions impacting the working class.

This bitter experience with the unions is not unique to Chile but universal. Teachers internationally have come into direct conflict with their union leaderships, who are also negotiating the reopening of schools to meet the requirements of the financial and corporate elites.

In recent months, planned action by Chicago teachers was betrayed by the Chicago Teachers Union, paving the way for a reopening of schools across the US. A mass strike of teachers in São Paulo, Brazil has been sabotaged by the APEOESP union, and wildcat French teacher strikes have been strangled by the unions.

From these common experiences, workers in Chile must draw definite conclusions. They must break with the Stalinist PCCh, the pseudo-left Frente Amplio, the establishment left and the union apparatus and create new organs of political power that are comprised of and controlled by the rank and file.

Amazon reports record profits in last quarter of 2020

Ray Coleman & Tom Carter

According to Amazon’s latest financial disclosures, the giant international conglomerate recorded unprecedented profits and revenue in the last three months of 2020, as the pandemic sent its sales soaring, and the company continued expanding its operations around the globe.

In these disclosures, made available last month, Amazon reported a fourth-quarter profit of $7.2 billion, more than double what was expected by analysts. This raised its 2020 full-year profits to $21.3 billion, the highest level in company history. This compared to $17.4 billion in 2019 and $13.2 billion in 2018.

For hundreds of millions of people, the coronavirus pandemic has been an extreme hardship and an economic disaster, punctuated by funerals of loved ones and other tragedies. But for the corporate-financial oligarchy in control of giant corporations like Amazon, it has been a cash bonanza like nothing they have ever seen before.

In this Thursday April 16, 2020 file photo, The Amazon logo is seen in Douai, northern France. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler, File)

Amazon posted $125.6 billion in fourth-quarter revenue, up 44 percent from the same quarter the previous year. While Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing arm, accounted for 63 percent of 2020 profits, Amazon’s retail operations made up the vast majority of its sales, which totaled $386 billion last year.

This is the same company that viciously canceled its measly $2 per hour coronavirus hazard pay for workers at the end of May of last year. The huge profits now revealed to have been raked in by the company vindicate the sentiments of workers at the time, including one worker who told the World Socialist Web Site, “They can more than afford to let us keep it permanently.”

Indeed, to put Amazon’s profits in perspective, dividing the $21.3 billion in full-year earnings from 2020 by the global workforce comes out to over $16,000 per worker. In other words, the company could have written a check for $16,000 last year to each and every one of its 1.3 million Amazon employees worldwide—and still would have had money to spare.

This money reflects the real value of the labor of “essential workers” at Amazon, who risk their lives to provide critical services during the pandemic, ensuring the delivery of goods as workers and families quarantine themselves to try to limit the spread of the deadly virus. This money was extracted from workers through capitalist relations of production and has accumulated in the bank accounts of the oligarchs and Wall Street funds that own and control the conglomerate.

Notwithstanding the mounting and explosive anger among its giant workforce, the company continues to enjoy an extraordinarily high market capitalization, with stock prices currently at $2,951.95. While this number has dipped somewhat since last month, it still gives the international conglomerate a total market capitalization of around $1.5 trillion. The rise in share prices last year added $70 billion to the private fortunes of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, already one of the richest people on the planet.

Amazon’s profits soared into the stratosphere in the midst of a pandemic that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the US, accompanied by mass unemployment and general economic devastation. Its profits piled up as demands from Amazon workers intensified for safer working conditions, sane work speeds, livable wages and prompt information on coronavirus infections in their workplaces.

Like the murderous policy of a “safe reopening” of schools, Amazon covered up its refusal to slow or stop operations behind minimal and cosmetic safety procedures, such as requiring workers to wear masks. The company also refused to promptly disclose information indicating how many workers have become infected, in an effort to lull workers into a false sense of security.

By last October, the company revealed that, by its internal count, there had been 19,816 presumed or confirmed COVID infections among its frontline workers at warehouses and Whole Foods locations in the US alone.

Given the poor record of testing and tracing within the US since the start of the pandemic, with some public health experts estimating that the true level of community spread to be as much as 10 times the number of confirmed cases, the number of infections at Amazon warehouses given by the company is no doubt substantially lower than reality.

Amazon’s workers largely remained at their stations throughout the pandemic, being subjected to frantic speedups to meet the demand for home delivery of internet purchases. In conversations with WSWS reporters, Amazon workers reported that social distancing measures are arbitrarily and inconsistently enforced, when they are enforced at all, due to the nature of warehouse work.

This exploitation has led to repeated tragedies. On March 1, 48-year-old Paul Vilscek jumped to his death at the LAS7 fulfillment center in Las Vegas while his co-workers watched in horror. On January 8, 38-year-old Poushawn Brown died suddenly of unexplained causes after working as a coronavirus tester at the DDC3 warehouse in Springfield, Virginia.

Awash in cash, Amazon is now expanding its operations in other areas of the economy. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Monday, the cargo airline Air Transport Services Group reported that Amazon had purchased a minority stake in the company. Amazon already owns a minority stake in the only other major cargo airline used by Amazon, Atlas Air, and is developing its own air service called Amazon Air.

The conglomerate has extended its reach into consumer products, streaming video and music, prescriptions and telehealth, books and e-books, smart devices and voice assistants, cloud computing services, groceries and other logistics operations, among others. In the last two years, it has increasingly invested in its own delivery operations by aggressively expanding its network of fulfillment and sorting centers, delivery stations and other facilities.

Amazon’s sprawling influence also extends to robotics, electric vehicle companies such as Rivian, autonomous vehicle startups like Aurora Partners and delivery robots called Amazon Scout that are being tested in Southern California and could be rolled out elsewhere in the near future. Amazon Kuiper is creating a satellite network capable of delivering high-speed internet.

Additionally, it serves as the e-commerce platform for over 2.5 million third-party vendors selling millions of items. With so many interests across crucial sectors of the economy, Amazon has faced growing criticism over its monopolistic behaviors. But politicians in North America, Europe and India, while occasionally offering various denunciations of the company, have not taken any significant actions to counter Amazon’s meteoric growth or its exploitative practices.

Amazon warehouses have been found to have twice the rate of serious injuries per 100 employees compared to the industry average. A major factor in these injuries is management’s fanatical insistence on speed, with workers in some cases expected to perform a task every six to nine seconds. Like the number of officially reported cases of the coronavirus, the tally of reported injuries is surely an undercount.

Earlier this year, Amazon agreed to pay a $61.7 million settlement to the Federal Trade Commission over claims it withheld tips from its Flex delivery drivers, who are categorized as independent contractors and deliver for Prime Now and Amazon Fresh. Starting in 2016, the company had been taking its drivers’ tips to pay a portion of their delivery rates, and only halted this practice after becoming aware that the FTC was investigating the matter.

In light of Amazon’s giant revenues and expanding operations, the settlement is such an insignificant sum that it will not leave so much as a dent in the company’s annual profits or future plans.

Germany’s reopening plan opens floodgates for resurgence of pandemic

Gregor Link

After nine hours of wrangling behind closed doors, Germany’s federal and state governments reached a deal late last Wednesday evening aimed at systematically dismantling the remaining COVID-19 restrictions, despite a rise in infection rates and the pandemic continuing to rage across Europe. The plan worked out by the chancellor and minister presidents opens the floodgates for yet another round of catastrophic mass deaths.

Already in the weeks prior to the meeting, repeated outbreaks of more-infectious coronavirus variants occurred across Germany due to the continued operation of workplaces and the reopening of schools and childcare facilities. The terms of the deal finalised last week allow states and municipalities to eliminate lockdown restrictions on retail, recreational activities, and restaurants.

Over the coming four weeks, retail outlets, museums, zoos, and outdoor sports facilities will be opened first with restrictions, followed two weeks later by outdoor restaurants, theatres, cinemas, and gyms. Two weeks later, “recreational outdoor events” and “contact sport” will be permitted, allowing the areas “events, travel, and hotels” to be discussed at the next meeting of the minister presidents on March 22.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) together with Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) and Berlin Mayor Michael Müller (SPD) at the press conference after the Corona summit on March 3 (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, Pool)

The agreement explicitly states that the reopening of clothing shops, cosmetic stores, gyms and beer gardens will be allowed up to an incidence of 100 infections per 100,000 inhabitants per week—i.e., under conditions of hundreds if not thousands of deaths per day. The paper states that there is a “chance to make possible additional openings in combination with a significant expansion of tests and a test programme linked to a better traceability of contacts…even with higher seven-day incidences of over 50 per 100,000 inhabitants.”

Only if the incidence rises above 100 “for three days in a row” will a so-called “emergency brake” take effect. But this only means a return to the restrictions that applied prior to last week’s decision, which have already proven to be inadequate to prevent the spread of the B117 and B135 variants.

The immunologist Michael Meyer-Hermann told the Tagesschau on Wednesday that a precondition for a “sensible opening strategy” was that “contact clusters can really be fully and comprehensively traced.” Currently, we are far from that goal, he added. Meyer-Hermann is a co-author of a “no COVID” strategy paper, whose signatories have warned of hundreds of thousands of deaths if wide-ranging reopenings are implemented in Germany.

The government knows full well that the decisions it took will lead in a few weeks to a new wave of infections and thousands of deaths. The Social Democrat parliamentary deputy Karl Lauterbach, who welcomed the reopening of businesses, bluntly declared on Twitter, “By early April at the latest, the incidence will be above 100.” When the incidence rose above 100 in Germany for the first time between November and January, roughly 1,000 people were dying every day.

But the loss of human lives barely plays any role in the inhumane calculations of the government heads. Instead, bitter conflicts between the political representatives of the financial aristocracy are raging over how the policies of mass infections, social spending cuts, and the boosting of corporate profits can be carried out in the face of an increasingly shocked and combat-ready working class.

The financial daily Handelsblatt reported sharp verbal disagreements between Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Bavaria’s Minister President Markus Söder (Christian Social Union, CSU) over the question of whether “crisis funding” for businesses should be financed by the federal government or the states. Economy Minister Peter Altmeier (CDU) ultimately expressed his satisfaction at the “good result” of the meeting and remarked happily, “Many of the demands from the standpoint of business are being responsibly implemented.”

The profit-making machine is to be set into motion by what the agreement described as a “four-pronged strategy of vaccines, tests, contact tracing, and openings.” To this end, they intend to double the “actual number of vaccines administered per week” and “further develop the involvement of GPs.” The deal also referred to making available “very large quantities of rapid tests and self-administered tests.”

In reality, the widespread availability of rapid testing and self-tests, which the government is citing to justify its reopening agenda, is expected only in early April. Together with a shortage of test kits, infrastructure and test plans are also lacking. Chancellor Angela Merkel stated early last week at a meeting of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group that we will “certainly need the month of March to establish a comprehensive test strategy.”

The private purchasing of self-test kits, which are much less reliable compared to PCR and blood tests, will pose low-income workers in particular with a major financial burden. The discount supermarket Aldi told public broadcaster ARD that a pack of self-tests would be sold for €25. Health Minister Spahn has refused to comment on whether the federal government will cover the cost of the tests.

The Cologne-based pharmacist Thomas Preis, chair of the North Rhine Pharmacists Association, told WDR that he expects tests to cost €10 each. Manager-Magazin, which wrote last week of “great business with coronavirus self tests,” carried the headline, “Pharma and biotech firms from around the world can’t wait to join in the mega business opportunity.”

Germany’s vaccine campaign, which according to Merkel is the “second pillar” of the reopening plan, is caught up in a maelstrom of capitalist greed and geopolitical calculations, with the result that 10 weeks after the official launch of the vaccine drive, only 10 percent of those aged over 70 have been immunised.

As the agreement text acknowledged, “The rapid increase of the virus variants as a share of total infections in Germany is causing the number of new infections to start increasing once again.” The experience of other countries shows how dangerous the various COVID-19 variants are.

The policy of death is endorsed by all of the major parties. Thuringia’s minister president, Bodo Ramelow of the Left Party, who has consistently rejected regional lockdown measures and praised Sweden’s so-called herd immunity policy, told the media last Wednesday evening, “I am happy that we are no longer chained to the number 35.” This was a reference to the politicians’ abandonment of a previously agreed-upon rule that no openings would be undertaken unless the seven-day incidence dropped below 35 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Earlier, Ramelow praised the “helpful army” for the best peace-time mission ever.” Referring to the total number of those infected and those who have received the vaccine, Ramelow added that “brave steps” are needed “to make possible the immunisation of the population.” This means “accepting the use of the word herd immunity.”

Greek state charges pregnant refugee on Lesbos who attempted suicide with arson

Katerina Selin

The hellish situation in the Kara Tepe refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos is increasingly driving refugee children and adults to commit suicide. Three weeks ago, the attempted suicide of a heavily pregnant woman from Afghanistan evoked shock and horror across the globe.

On February 21, a Sunday, the 26-year-old refugee brought her three small children to safety and then set herself on fire in her tent. The fire was extinguished in time by other camp residents and the pregnant woman was saved. She was taken to hospital in the island’s capital Mytilini with severe burn injuries to her hands, feet and head.

Her tragic act of desperation is a damning indictment of the Greek government led by the right-wing ND (Nea Dimokratia) and the European Union (EU), which together bear responsibility for the death of hundreds of thousands of refugees. But instead of this gang of criminals, it is the victim who is now in the dock facing punishment.

Refugees between their tents after a rain storm at Kara Tepe camp on 14 October 2020 (AP Photo/Panagiotis Balaskas)

The exhausted and desperate woman, who is eight months pregnant, was interrogated by the Greek judiciary while still in her hospital bed. She faces charges for alleged arson and destruction of public property.

Teresa Volakaki, one of her two lawyers, described the authorities’ brutal treatment of her client to the Guardian: “Although she was in a lot of pain from her burns and found it difficult to speak, the testimony in Mytilene lasted for around two and a half hours.”

“It was clear she was stressed and having difficulty remembering but the prosecutor took a very strict line and ruled she will now face criminal charges, trial and not be able to travel abroad.”

With her attempted suicide, the young woman was reacting to the inhuman conditions and sense of hopelessness which prevail in the Kara Tepe tent camp, where she had been staying for 14 months with her husband and three small children. The camp is located on a former military site directly by the sea. Thousands of refugees were forced to move there last autumn when their previous slum camp in Moria went up in flames.

Prior to her suicide attempt, her family had finally been recognised to be in need of protection and was due to be flown to Germany with other refugees. The woman then learnt she would be denied departure due to her impending birth.

“When she was told she could not travel, her grief and disappointment was so great she attempted suicide,” declared Nikos Triantafyllos, an investigating magistrate who conducted the initial interviews. The prospect of a family move to Germany was her “only ray of hope,” she told investigators. She had hoped to leave before giving birth. The unhygienic conditions in the camp were unbearable for pregnant women and young mothers, and she preferred to die rather than bring another child into the camp, she told prosecutors, according to Der Spiegel.

She had first looked for a rope or other ways of committing suicide, but then in her distress decided to set herself on fire. All the family’s belongings went up in flames. The fire did not spread to other tents, however, and no one else was harmed or endangered. The young mother, who has since been released from hospital, remains in a poor mental state, her lawyers stress. They are calling for her acquittal, and a lifting of all restrictive conditions so she can leave for Germany with her family.

This latest suicide attempt is particularly shocking but comes as no surprise. For months, doctors, psychologists and aid organisations have been warning of the dramatic increase in depression, suicidal thoughts and other health consequences resulting from the traumatic and miserable conditions in Kara Tepe.

Around 7,000 refugees—mainly families—live among rubbish and mud. For the last few weeks, they have been struggling against freezing cold, rain, storms and even snow, without sufficient electricity and heating. Most recently, soil samples have shown that the former military training area has elevated levels of lead. The aid organisation Human Rights Watch has warned of the danger of lead poisoning, especially for the around 2,500 children who play outside daily on the bare ground and in the mud, and are exposed to the pollutants. The Greek government, however, has dismissed all of these accusations.

The child psychologist Katrin Glatz-Brubakk, who works for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Lesbos, spoke in an interview with the German paper Neues Deutschland one week ago about the psychological suffering in the camp: “Nightmares, difficulty concentrating, extremely low frustration tolerance, aggressiveness and panic attacks. Some children withdraw almost completely from the world. They no longer play, some have hardly spoken a word for eight months. Others are so apathetic that they no longer eat and need to be fed. They are so listless they don’t even go to the toilet themselves.”

On Lesbos alone, MSF treated 50 children and young people with suicidal thoughts or attempts at suicide last year. The youngest among them was an eight-year-old girl who tried to hang herself, Glatz-Brubakk said. “This year we have already treated three children after suicide attempts. Among them is a 13-year-old boy from Afghanistan who has made a number of suicide attempts. He has swallowed pills, he has run into the sea to drown himself, has tried to jump in front of a moving car and has cut himself with broken glass and razor blades.”

The people in the camp are worse off now than they were in Moria, she says. “They are demoralised. Meanwhile many are giving up hope that life will ever get better. Many have run out of any reserves. They are just breaking down.”

Glatz-Brubakk quite rightly blames EU policies for the refugees’ plight: “The conditions in the camp are not the result of a natural disaster. For over five years, I and many others have been repeatedly drawing attention to this disgraceful situation, for which Europe bears responsibility. Political decision-makers then promise us that things will get better—but the opposite is the case! It is not only the camp residents who are disappointed and angry. I am too. Europe is watching these people slowly perish.”

Disease and deadly dangers are also part of everyday life in other refugee shelters. A week ago, a fire broke out in the refugee shelter of Thiva, northwest of Athens, and a seven-year-old boy died. He was living in a container with his family from Iran. According to witnesses, it took the fire brigade over an hour to get to the site, where they were met by angry refugees.

Meanwhile, the Greek government, in close cooperation with the EU, is preparing the construction of a new refugee detention centre on Lesbos, which will replace all the previous camps on the island and is located next to a rubbish dump in the Vastria region. Migration Minister Notis Mitarakis said in a letter to the mayor of Mytilini 10 days ago that the “Closed Controlled Island Facility” (KEDN) would open no later than November. It is to be equipped with “NATO-type double military fences” and “advanced security systems” and will include a so-called “pre-departure detention centre” where offenders, refugees with deportation notices and new arrivals will be held for the first few days.

Thousands of refugees who have been granted asylum in Greece are now at risk of homelessness as temporary shelters close. The EU-funded “Filoxenia” programme had provided accommodation in hotels and limited assistance for refugees but is now being shut down. Many have already been evicted, among them families and children.

At the same time, illegal deportations continue to take place on the Mediterranean Sea. In the so-called “pushbacks,” refugees are forced to leave Greece for Turkey. The Norwegian non-governmental organisation Aegean Boat Report regularly informs about such pushbacks. According to its latest weekly report, 11 boats with 453 people were stopped or pushed back between February 22 and 28.

Aegean Boat Report describes an incident on February 17, when 13 refugees, including five children, arrived by boat on the coast of Lesbos in the evening. Following advice from the aid organisation, they went to the Megala Therma refugee camp to seek shelter during the cold night. Upon arrival, they received warm blankets from the other residents, but were then taken away by police under the pretext they were to be tested for COVID-19. Instead, the officers took them to a white container, where other men in unmarked uniforms and carrying batons loaded them into vans and drove them to a port. At the port they forced the refugees onto a boat, took them out to sea for about half an hour and abandoned them on a life raft, without life jackets. The panicked refugees were finally rescued by the Turkish coast guard.

Numerous accounts from research and aid organisations make clear that the EU border protection agency Frontex is both directly and indirectly involved in “pushbacks.” Along with the regime of concentration camps and prisons where refugees vegetate and commit suicide, the illegal deportations at Europe’s borders are part of the systematic criminal policy of the EU directed against millions of people forced to flee after their home countries have been bombed, destroyed and plundered.