European panel concludes AstraZeneca vaccine is linked to blood clots in rare cases

Benjamin Mateus

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) advisory panel concluded on Wednesday that there is a link between AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine and a rare blood clotting disorder—cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), blood clots that occur in veins that drain blood from the brain, and splanchnic vein thrombosis (SVT), blood clots that develop in the veins of the liver, spleen, or intestines—that is accompanied with declines in platelet counts. Platelets are an essential blood component whose function is to react to blood vessel injury and bleeding by initiating a blood clot formation.

In their analysis, they reviewed 62 cases of CVST and 24 cases of SVT, of which 18 resulted in death. The statistics were obtained from the European Union drug safety database. These cases occurred among 25 million people who had received the AstraZeneca vaccine. Most occurred in women within two weeks of receiving their first injection. According to the website Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, published by the University of Minnesota, the European Union surveillance had received 169 reports of CVST and 53 reports of SVT among 34 million vaccinated individuals.

A vial of AstraZeneca vaccine is pictured in a pharmacy in Boulogne Billancourt, outside Paris, Monday, March 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

At the same time as EMA’s press conference on AstraZeneca’s vaccine was under way, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the UK’s medicine regulator, announced that their review from last week had found 79 cases of severe blood-clotting complications out of 20 million doses of vaccines that had been administered. Regulators said that 19 patients had died days after having been inoculated. Much work remains to be done to determine the exact etiology of this adverse event, but they hypothesized it is most likely related to the immune system’s reaction.

Dr. Jonathan Van-Tam, UK deputy chief medical officer, noted that the propensity for the complication was higher in younger people who have a lower risk of death with COVID-19 than older people. Based on a risk-benefit analysis of young people developing severe COVID-19 versus the small risk of blood clots from the vaccine, the UK health regulators have changed their recommendations that people under 30 should receive alternative vaccines, such as Pfizer or Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines. However, many EU nations such as Germany, France, Italy, Australia and Canada are placing higher age restrictions on the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Emer Cooke, executive director at the EMA, told reporters, “Our review has found that the AstraZeneca vaccine is not associated with an increased risk of overall thromboembolic events or blood clots, but there have been a small number of very rare but very serious clotting disorders which triggered a more focused review.” She went on to add, “After a very in-depth review of reported cases of these unusual blood clots, the agency has decided that these should be listed as possible side-effects of the vaccine.” The EMA, however, stopped short of recommending placing any limitations on the vaccine for a particular population by their age or gender. As Cooke explained, their review didn’t indicate there was “any causal link between the different gender or age groups.”

In this regard, Cooke went on to state, “It is very important to highlight when a country makes a decision about vaccination, they do that with the full knowledge of that particular population, of what is available and what the particular risk factors of that population are. The EMA’s job is to look at the vaccine and to see whether it is safe and effective and if the benefit outweighs risk.”

The chair of the EMA’s Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC), Dr. Sabine Straus, supplemented Cooke’s remarks by adding, “We have been working around the clock on this review. Our conclusion is that benefit of the AstraZeneca vaccine is far greater than the risks. There is also no evidence of a quality issue with a particular batch of vaccine.”

After explaining that the number of overall blood-clotting events after vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine is lower than would be expected in the population, she added, “As the vaccine is effective in reducing COVID-19, which itself causes an increased risk of blood clots, it is likely that vaccination will result in an overall reduction of blood clots.” She estimated that the overall frequency for the condition is approximately one in 100,000.

They did advise that anyone who has recently received a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine and develops shortness of breath, chest pains, leg swelling, persistent abdominal pain, severe headaches or blurred vision, or tiny blood spots under the skin at the injection site, occurring from four to 20 days following vaccination, should seek medical attention immediately to determine if such a rare complication is developing. Though there have been fatalities associated with these rare blood clot events, the reaction is treatable. Mild and local side effects within two or three days from vaccination are expected and common.

Following suit, the COVID-19 subcommittee of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS) published their statement based on a review of the investigations conducted by the EMA and MHRA. They wrote, “Based on current information, a causal relationship between the vaccine and the occurrence of blood clots with low platelets is considered plausible but is not confirmed. Specialized studies are needed to understand the potential between vaccination and possible risk factors fully.”

The WHO said that 200 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine had been given so far out of a total of 710 million COVID-19 vaccine doses worldwide. They also pointed to the grim statistics noting that almost 2.9 million people had succumbed to COVID-19 in the 16 months since the first death from the infection was reported.

Dr. Andreas Greinacher from the University of Greifswald’s Institute for Immunology and Transfusion Medicine named the rare disorder as vaccine-induced prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia (low platelet count).

The dominant theory about this rare blood-clotting event is that it resembles a condition known as heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) but caused by an immune reaction elicited by the vaccine. Heparin is a medication used to prevent or treat blood clots. In rare instances, the drug can cause the immune system to form antibodies against it when bound to a protein called platelet factor 4 (PF4). These antibodies bind to platelets, activating them, which initiates the formation of aberrant blood clots. At the same time, platelet numbers drop, causing thrombocytopenia.

Heparin was first discovered more than 100 years ago. Clinical trials only commenced in the mid-1930s and the drug has been a critical component of the medical armamentarium since. On June 1, 1957, Dr. Roger Weismann and Dr. Richard Tobin presented a report on ten patients at their scientific meeting of the International Society of Angiology in New York. These patients had developed unusual arterial blood clots after having been on heparin therapy. Finally, after platelet measurement counts became routinely performed by the 1970s, the condition’s pathogenesis began to be understood.

In a preprint report first posted on March 29, 2021, Greinacher et al. published their investigation of nine cases of rare blood clots from Germany and Austria after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine. Eight of the patients were female, with a median age of 36, ranging from 22 to 49. Seven patients had CVST, one had a pulmonary embolism, and one had SVT. Four of those who died had also tested strongly for the HIT antibodies leading to their conclusions. What precisely is triggering the formation of this immune-mediated pathway remains to be determined.

Medications have been an essential adjunct in modern medicine to improve people’s lives from infections, high blood pressure, blood clots and diabetes, to name just a few. Vaccines have been critical in response to potential pandemic pathogens and community scourges like tuberculosis, typhus, cholera and dysentery. Life expectancy has doubled over the past 200 years, having reached close to 80 in the US. The most significant gains occurred between 1880 and 1920, as implementation of public health measures helped improve control of infectious disease, particularly provisions for more abundant and safer food and water.

Yet, the very same medications that have provided these social gains have been known to cause harm and be fatal to a small subset of people. Severe allergic reactions to antibiotics that may lead to a respiratory arrest are one typical example of this. No one, however, questions the benefits antibiotics have had for society. With regard to the COVID-19 vaccines, the clinical phase three trials found no such safety concerns. It required a vigilant pharmaceutical monitoring program to capture these rare events in the population where millions were being inoculated.

But it is precisely in this context that society’s benefits have to be balanced with risks to a tiny minority of people. As the Guardian recently noted, “We pay disproportionate attention to rare events precisely because they are exceptional. Politics often exploit that cognitive weakness. Emotion and drama crowd out reflection and reason. That has been the hazard throughout the pandemic.”

It becomes imperative that vaccines are not politicized nor commoditized, and communities remain in constant engagement with their health systems to learn more about the nature of these decisions made by their regulatory agencies. However, with the nature of the herd immunity policy and amidst the utter disregard exhibited by governmental and public health officials for the lives of the population, the working class is pitted in an adversarial position with the infrastructure that claims to have its best interest.

Asia emerges as a new epicenter of the global COVID-19 pandemic

Alex Lantier

As humanity faces a new upsurge of the pandemic driven by more contagious coronavirus variants, Asia is emerging as the world’s worst-hit region. Forty percent of the world’s over half-million reported daily cases of COVID-19 are now in Asia, where vaccination has barely begun. Moreover, nearly 90 percent of these cases are in a swathe of countries in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific where, virtually from one week to the next, infections are exploding, shattering previous records.

However calls for medically-guided lockdowns and social support for those unable to work to halt this new, even deadlier upsurge of the virus invariably run into implacable opposition from governments across Asia.

People queue up for COVID-19 vaccine in Mumbai, India, Thursday, April 8, 2021. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

In India, daily infections have doubled since late March to over 120,000, the highest in the world, and nearly half of Asia’s 260,000 cases. Yet Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is adamantly opposed to calls for a nationwide lockdown, or even the closing of non-essential businesses in the worst affected states. Instead, Modi and his Hindu supremacist BJP boast of mounting “the world’s largest vaccination drive.” To date, India has administered the world’s third highest number of vaccine shots. But fewer than 6 percent of Indians have received a single dose of a vaccine, and just 0.8 percent are fully vaccinated.

As India crosses the threshold of 13 million cases and 167,000 deaths, its underfunded health system is on the brink of collapse. A double variant, which combines mutations akin to the South African and US West Coast variants, is spreading, along with the B.1.1.7, or UK, variant. In Mumbai, India’s financial capital, Dr. Lancelot Pinto told the BBC that every few minutes he must refuse calls from desperate families seeking an emergency care bed for their loved ones: “We are already overrun. All COVID-19 beds in my hospital are full.”

A hysterical campaign is underway among India’s ruling elite to oppose even partial local lockdowns. The Times of India denounced them as “a cure truly worse than the disease,” in an editorial Tuesday. Meanwhile Jai Ambani—the son of a billionaire and the nephew of Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, with a fortune of $83.1 billion—tweeted that lockdowns “destroy the very backbone of our society and economy” and are a “totalitarian” attempt to “control every aspect of your life.” This confirms the British Medical Journal’s characterization of the US, UK and Indian ruling elites’ pandemic policy as “social murder.”

Turkey saw a record 54,740 cases of COVID-19 and 276 deaths from the disease on Wednesday, with the number of active cases quadrupling to 406,004 since March. Child intensive care cases are rising rapidly, with an estimated 75 percent of new cases caused by the B.1.1.7 variant. Turkish Intensive Care Society chair Professor İsmail Cinel has warned that Turkey’s intensive care units will be full within 10 days. Only 8.7 percent of Turkey’s population and 10 percent of educators are fully vaccinated.

Nonetheless, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has kept tens of millions of workers on the job in non-essential industries while lifting social distancing measures—ending weekend curfews, and reopening schools and cafés. The Istanbul Medical Chamber branded this policy as a “fiasco,” and the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) tweeted: “There is no rational, scientifically-based struggle against the pandemic. … Insisting on wrong health policies is social murder.”

Iran saw a record 20,954 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday and 193 deaths—a figure that has doubled in one week, as the UK variant spreads. With a record 4,200 intensive care beds occupied in Tehran, one doctor told Le Monde: “Public hospitals are full, urgent care wards have no more space. Patients are treated lying on the ground or wait days for a bed.”

Facing devastating US economic sanctions, Iran—a country of 83 million—has received only a few hundred thousand doses each of Chinese, Russian and South Korean vaccines. Citing the impact of US sanctions and war threats, President Hassan Rouhani refused to order a lockdown, stating that its economic impact could trigger mass protests of workers: “The easiest would be to stop everything. But after that, the people, facing hunger, poverty and unemployment, would go into the streets.”

Iraq—whose health infrastructure has been shattered by decades of US-led wars, bombings, and sanctions since the 1991 Gulf War—saw a record 8,331 new cases Wednesday. As infections near 1 million, with only 119,000 vaccine doses administered in a country of 39 million people, Save the Children is warning that hospitals could soon be flooded: “There are worrying signs that COVID-19 is taking a heavy toll in Iraq. … We are worried that the new variant will start spreading undetected among children. It could be a matter of time before Iraq’s healthcare system is overwhelmed.”

In the Philippines, new daily cases surged from 2,065 on March 2 to 15,280 on April 2. The number of active cases, now at around 160,000, is more than double the earlier peak of 79,800 last August. Manila and its surrounding provinces have 70 percent of Filipino cases, and intensive care beds are already 79 percent occupied in the National Capital Region, 26 of whose 150 hospitals are fully occupied. However, President Rodrigo Duterte has decided to channel US$19 billion of desperately-needed public funds into paying off state debts to major investors.

In Bangladesh, a global textile center where garment workers earn only a few dollars per day, daily infections have surged from 606 to 6,854 in a month. The state has declared a lockdown, but only for a week. Meanwhile, it is forcing workers to stay on the job to satisfy fashion conglomerates based in the imperialist countries, who dominate Bangladesh’s economy. Only 5.5 million vaccine doses have been administered in this country of 163 million, which has seen 666,132 cases of COVID-19.

Significantly, Asia also provides examples showing that a scientific social distancing policy can halt the virus while mass vaccination prepares its eradication. China, the initial epicenter of the pandemic, has reported 3,270 COVID-19 cases and two deaths in all of 2021, mainly as a result of travelers bringing the virus back into the country. Similarly, Taiwan has reported 246 cases including 3 deaths this year, and Vietnam reported 1,174 cases, but no deaths.

The successes of the few countries that have halted the virus expose the bankruptcy and criminality of the “herd immunity” policies pursued not only in the rest of Asia, but in the imperialist centers of North America and Europe. Their governments have systematically prioritized profit over human lives, insisting on opening businesses and schools as the pandemic runs rampant. While China’s 1.4 billion people have suffered less than 5,000 COVID-19 deaths, the NATO countries’ 941 million have suffered over 1.4 million deaths.

The re-importing of the coronavirus into countries where it is under control underscores an essential political point. The fight against this constantly-mutating virus, which ignores borders and needs no passports, is international. It cannot be stopped in one country, or even on one continent, but only across the world. Stopping it requires, however, an international struggle against capitalism.

Claims that there is not enough money to end “herd immunity” policies, fund social distancing, rapidly make vaccines, and halt the pandemic are lies. This last year, the world’s billionaires added $5.1 trillion in wealth to the $8 trillion they already owned, as central banks in the imperialist centers pumped trillions of dollars, euros, pounds and yen in public funds into the financial markets. India’s three richest billionaires added US$100 billion to their wealth last year, while Turkey’s 26 billionaires increased their collective wealth to $53.2 billion.

At the same time, countries across Asia and the world are plunging trillions of dollars into preparing for war. NATO countries are to spend over $1 trillion on their militaries this year. India, which budgeted just US $8.4 billion for health care last year, spent $66 billion on its military in 2020, while integrating itself ever more fully into Washington’s military-strategic offensive against China, including through the US-led Quad strategic partnership with Australia and Japan. Turkey spent $19 billion on its military, including on the continuing NATO war in Syria.

Were these sums to be expropriated, they, together with the even larger fortunes held by the financial aristocracy in the imperialist centers, could provide humanity with the resources needed to halt the pandemic and avert tens of millions of unnecessary deaths.

But this requires the mobilization of the working class in revolutionary struggle against imperialism, the reactionary capitalist governments across Asia, great-power conflict and war, and for socialism.

The globalization of production, over several decades, has brought over a billion peasants to cities across Asia, producing a vast and powerful working class. The last year has seen hundreds of millions participate in protest strikes or industrial action in India, wildcat strikes against “herd immunity” policies at major industrial plants in Turkey and Bangladesh, and mass social protests in Iran.

Halting the pandemic requires unifying this mighty force in struggle across its many regional, ethnic and sectarian divides, and welding it together with its class brothers and sisters in the imperialist powers and beyond, based on an international socialist program to reorganize economic life based not on private profit, but social need.

Semiconductor shortage continues to roil global auto industry, fueling geopolitical tensions

Steve Filips

An ongoing shortage of semiconductor chips is continuing to reverberate throughout the global economy, particularly impacting the auto industry and disrupting production at virtually every major automaker in recent months.

General Motors and Ford Motor Company both announced new temporary plant shutdowns on Thursday. GM is halting production at six of its North American factories, including the Spring Hill Assembly plant in Tennessee, the Lansing Delta Township and Lansing Grand River plants in Michigan, and the Ramos Arizpe Assembly plant in Mexico. In addition, previously announced shutdowns at the Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas and the CAMI Ingersoll plant in Ontario, Canada, will both be extended until at least May 10.

An etched silicon wafer used to produce processors (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Production will resume next week at GM’s Wentzville Assembly plant near St. Louis, Missouri, after being idled since March 29. The plant has roughly 3,500 workers, who build the profitable Canyon and Colorado mid-size pickup trucks.

Ford said Thursday that it would be idling production at three plants next week—Chicago Assembly, Flat Rock Assembly in Michigan, and the Transit van side of its Kansas City Assembly complex—and that Ohio Assembly would run on a reduced basis. Previously, the company had announced that its Dearborn Truck plant in Michigan, the Louisville Assembly plant in Kentucky, and the Oakville Assembly complex in Canada would be down for parts of April.

The automakers have sought to shift scarce chip supplies to their more profitable pickup and SUV segments, and when those run short, they plan to go as far as producing them without certain electronic modules.

Ford has said it will build the F-150 truck, the linchpin to its profits, without some electronic components and will store them until there is an adequate supply of semiconductors. The F-150 is built by 4,400 workers at the Michigan Dearborn Truck plant, and the nearly 10,000 hourly employees at the Kansas City Assembly plant in Missouri. The F-150 has been the best-selling vehicle in the US for the past 40 years.

There have been previous shutdowns at Ford’s Louisville Assembly Plant (LAP) with 4,000 workers this year and last. Last month it was announced that the company’s other plant in Louisville, Kentucky Truck Plant (KTP), with nearly 9,000 workers who produce the Super Duty pickup trucks, Lincoln Navigators and Expeditions, will remain open for the time being, but has dropped one production shift.

Ford also announced that it was planning to cancel its annual summer shutdowns at a number of plants, which is a time when many autoworkers plan family vacations.

For its part, Stellantis (formed from the merger of Fiat Chrysler and France’s PSA Group earlier this year) stated in late March that it would be idling five North American plants, including Warren Truck in Michigan, Belvidere Assembly in Illinois, Windsor and Brampton Assembly in Canada and Toluca Assembly in Mexico. The company’s new Mack Avenue plant is also running on short shifts, and the shutdown at Warren Truck has recently been extended to six weeks, according to unconfirmed reports from workers.

Autoworkers on temporary layoff at the Detroit Three will only receive roughly 75 percent of their pay through unemployment aid and supplementary benefits, known as sub pay. Temporary workers—a category vastly expanded through the sellout contracts negotiated by the UAW in 2019—will receive no supplementary benefits and will be forced to rely solely on miserly state unemployment aid.

The chip shortage threatens to significantly undermine the temporary recovery in auto sales which began in the latter half of 2020. The global auto industry could see a $61 billion drop in revenue in 2021, according to industry analysts AlixPartners. Ford is expecting that the impact of the shutdowns would cut profits by $1 billion from $2.5 billion expected in the first half of the year, while GM has said its pre-tax profits could be hit by as much as $2 billion.

Nearly every major global automaker has announced temporary shutdowns or slowed production in recent months, including Volkswagen, Toyota, Nissan, Honda and Volvo. Honda and Nissan are facing plant shutdowns in the US both due to port congestion and the microchip shortage. US electric vehicle maker Tesla and China’s Nio have both also been impacted.

Automotive industry analyst IHS Markit has stated that there would be 700,000 fewer vehicles produced in the first quarter of the year as a result of the chip shortage, while other trade groups expect a shortfall of 1.28 million vehicles produced in the US in 2021. The timeline for a “return to normal” continues to be pushed back, with analysts reporting that shortages may not be resolved until the third quarter.

Tom Caulfield, the CEO of the world’s third largest chip foundry, GlobalFoundries near Albany in Malta, New York, commented to CNBC that the semiconductor shortage could last into 2022. “Right now all our fabs are not only more than 100 percent utilized, we are adding capacity as fast as we can.” Caulfield continued, “The semi industry going into COVID was projecting a five percent annual growth rate for five years. We’re projecting that to almost double now.”

Behind the chip shortage

There are a number of factors that are exacerbating the shortfall in semiconductors, which is straining not only the global automotive supply chain but also other high industrial sectors. The auto industry accounts for only 10 percent of the annual production of microchips, although this share has been growing in recent years as touchscreens and other advanced electronic systems are adopted in new models.

The immediate cause of the shortage is the disequilibrium in supply chains and economic activity triggered by the pandemic. In March 2020, as the threat posed by COVID-19 first became clear, workers forced auto plants to shut down through a wave of wildcat strikes in Europe and North America, in an effort to protect themselves and their families from infection. As limited shutdowns of daily activity followed and demand for vehicles plummeted, orders for microchips by automakers slowed precipitously.

However, a relative uptick in demand arose for chips used in consumer electronic goods, such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones, as many schools quickly transitioned to remote learning and some workplaces to remote operations.

The auto industry began to reopen in May—prematurely and before it was safe—and demand for vehicles began to rebound, with many of those buying cars seeking to avoid exposure to the virus on public transportation systems. But automakers found themselves suddenly flatfooted, now competing for semiconductor supplies with transnational electronics giants.

Additionally, small quantities of chips to none had been stockpiled by many auto companies or their Tier 1 suppliers, who have increasingly adopted just-in-time supply chain models in order to reduce warehousing and other costs.

In mid-March, the Renesas Electronics Naka semiconductor factory fire in northeast Japan worsened the shortage. Renesas has warned that it could take up to a month to restart production at the plant. Sixty-six percent of its production is for the automotive industry, and it has a 30 percent share of the automotive microcontroller units (MCU) produced worldwide.

Smartphones and other electronics manufacturers are experiencing their own difficulties. Samsung, both one of the world’s largest smartphone producers and a semiconductor maker, encountered a significant setback with the February 16 shutdown of its Austin, Texas, chip plant caused by the deadly winter storm that knocked out power across the state. Samsung is projecting a mid-April restart for the factory. The company is considering Austin as a site for a new $17 billion chip manufacturing plant.

The impact on the auto industry has not been uniform. Toyota announced the semiconductor shortage was not having as adverse an impact as on other companies due to measures to secure its supply chain after disruptions caused by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. But there is also a plastics shortfall that is causing delays in production at their plants in the US and Mexico, and a chief cause of the problem was the winter freeze in Texas this February.

Semiconductors, globalization and geopolitical tensions

The truly global nature of production and the need for systematic, scientific planning of international economic activity are exemplified in the intensifying global supply chain squeeze. Again and again, the working class and humanity’s productive forces are running up against the limits imposed by capitalism, namely, the nation-state system and private ownership of the means of production.

Both the blocking of the Suez Canal and the semiconductor shortage have underscored in the recent period the reality of the world economy and its globally integrated character. The production of microchips and the vehicles and electronic devices which rely on them are the result of an international division of labor, with workers on several continents designing the devices, extracting the raw materials for them, building the machines to manufacture them, and shipping them around the world for assembly into their final products.

These international connections in the productive process are a potential reservoir of colossal strength for the international working class, holding the possibility for it to exert its power worldwide. Thus, they are simultaneously viewed by the ruling classes with growing fear and as a threat to their national interests.

The Biden administration is expected to meet with chip manufacturers next week to discuss “what might be done” to alleviate the shortages facing the auto industry. The White House also announced at the end of March a proposed $50 billion subsidy for the domestic semiconductor industry in an attempt to “onshore” production, as part of the administration’s infrastructure spending bill. While the funding, even if approved, would come too late to have any impact on the current shortages, it is aimed at securing the US supply chain at the expense of China.

Biden’s Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo bluntly told CNBC, “This is about out-competing China. If we act now, we will compete with China.”

For its part, China also views its semiconductor supply chains as vulnerable, and recently announced that it would enact tax breaks for its domestic industry, allowing them to import machinery and raw materials tax-free until 2030.

Taiwan has emerged as a chief flashpoint in the US war drive against China, with relentless propaganda pumped out day after day by the US media and government over the country. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), with a dominant 54 percent market share, and United Microelectronics, also in Taiwan, are not the least factors in this campaign.

Throughout the shutdowns caused by the microchip shortage, the UAW bureaucracy, which has integrated itself ever more deeply into corporate management over the last 40 years, has stated that it would take measures to lessen the hit to the auto manufacturers’ profits, while ratcheting up its promotion of poisonous nationalist sentiment.

In January, UAW spokesman Brian Rothenberg told the Detroit News, “This is an issue that demonstrates the need not to offshore American jobs and to bring back production of semiconductors and other auto supply parts to U.S. workers where as a nation we have more ability to respond to these demand issues.”

The UAW’s call to bring back semiconductor production has absolutely nothing to do with protecting the interests of its members, which the bribed and corrupt union bureaucracy has repeatedly demonstrated it has nothing but contempt for. Rather, it is aimed at handcuffing workers to the national interests of their exploiters, the capitalist ruling class and its political representatives in both the Democratic and Republican parties.

The relentless promotion of nationalism, anti-Asian and anti-Chinese sentiment by the trade unions, the corporate media and the Democrats and Republicans has the dual objective of dividing workers in the US from their class brothers and sisters in other countries, and lining American workers up behind the war drive of US imperialism against its rivals.

Control of semiconductor production, particularly the most cutting-edge technologies used in missile guidance and detection systems and artificial intelligence, are critical to US military dominance. Thus, the American ruling class, with the loyal support of the union apparatus, is dead set on preventing China, whom it views as its chief economic competitor, from gaining any technological advantage, and is willing to risk provoking a war with unfathomably catastrophic nuclear implications, sooner rather than later.

Crisis after crisis is laying bare the fundamental contradictions of capitalism threatening humanity: on the one hand, between globalized production and the nation-state system, and on the other, between social production by the working class and the private ownership of the means of production by the capitalists. The nationalist policies pursued by the ruling class have led to a situation where human lives and mankind’s resources are being criminally squandered.

The alternative is an international movement of the working class, consciously setting as its political aim the overturn of the outmoded capitalist profit system and its replacement with socialism, a democratically controlled, scientifically guided, globally coordinated system to meet human needs.

With COVID Cases Soaring in France, Macron can No Longer be in Denial

Philippe Marlière

France is in a “race against time” against Covid-19, Emmanuel Macron declared in a television broadcast this week. In an attempt to curb France’s soaring Covid case numbers, Macron has imposed a national lockdown, extending to the entire country measures that were already in place in 19 départements. Although Macron insisted that France had not lost control, he admitted that “we cannot be in denial either”.

The president may no longer be in denial, but the situation in some parts of France appears to be very much out of control. Daily Covid cases have reached 59,000 compared with the UK’s 4,000, and hospitals are straining under the pressure; some doctors worry that they may soon need to start prioritising those who will have the greatest chance of successful treatment.

The issue of intensive care bed capacity has been a thorn in Macron’s side for the past year. In March 2020, the health minister promised to increase the number of beds to 14,000. One year later, doctors and nurses are accusing the government of having largely broken its pledge. Most of these beds never materialised, and France’s hospitals appear unable to cope with the challenges of the pandemic.

Macron’s admission of the scale and severity of France’s Covid crisis signals a remarkable change of attitude. When he was interviewed in Greece on 24 March, he acknowledged that Europe had “lacked ambition” in its vaccination programme but reiterated that he saw no reason to commit France to a new national lockdown. Many have criticised Macron’s opaque decision-making over Covid-19, contrasting his “Jupiter” leadership style with Angela Merkel’s approach, a chancellor who has admitted her political errors and consulted with regional leaders.

Macron has decided against a full lockdown, instead opting for “softer” measures that are expected to remain in force for at least four weeks, including a ban on travel between regions and the closure of nonessential businesses. The country’s 7pm to 6am curfew remains in place. People are still permitted to go out shopping or to exercise, so long as they remain within a 10km perimeter of their homes. They no longer have to download an exceptional travel certificate, previously the bureaucratic way of monitoring the whereabouts of the population, after critics argued this self-certified system conferred arbitrary powers on the police.

As the country’s public health situation deteriorates, some of Macron’s stubborn pronouncements are coming back to haunt him. Last month the president said a new lockdown wasn’t suited to France’s situation and ignored scientists and doctors who had warned that tighter measures would be needed to prevent a “third wave”. Epidemiologists now think Covid cases in France have been increasing exponentially for at least a month.

The depiction of Macron as an indefatigable leader who has availed himself of the science on Covid-19 and become something of an expert on the subject – hasn’t helped. His education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, said that Macron had “acquired real expertise” in epidemiology, while Richard Ferrand, the speaker of the national assembly, declared that he “could easily write a PhD dissertation on Covid-19”.

This level of sycophancy has in fact made people less likely to trust in Macron’s strategy, and he has been ridiculed on Twitter as a would-be superman: an omniscient and almighty statesman who works wonders. As France’s mounting Covid cases show, this image could not be further from reality.

Even when acknowledging the rapid rise in Covid cases in his televised announcement on Wednesday, Macron made no Merkel-style apologies. He said the decision to delay a new lockdown meant French people had “gained precious weeks of liberty, weeks of learning for their children”, and had allowed “hundreds of thousand of workers to keep their head above water, without losing control of the epidemic”.

It was a bizarre and contentious point to make, and seemed to imply that the government’s priority was not to protect public health, but to reopen the economy – come what may. Surprisingly, the government has not insisted on people working from home wherever possible. An estimated 36% of employees who could work from home continue to travel to unsafe workplaces. Meanwhile, as schools across France closed in droves after large numbers of teachers and pupils contracted the virus, Blanquer, the education minister, provoked the anger of teachers when he declared the virus hardly circulates at all in classrooms.

Instead of fighting the virus, the French president has so far given the impression that it is better to coexist peacefully with it. He appears to believe that his words, reassurances, and apparent mastery of the science, should be sufficient to tame public opinion. This may prove a grave miscalculation.

One year before the next presidential election, Macron is concerned about the volatility of French public opinion. He is afraid that voters might turn to Marine Le Pen and the far right in great numbers. Yet his mismanagement of the pandemic, and misplaced ego, may be playing into Le Pen’s hands.

Stop Using Our Tax Dollars for Human Rights Abuses: Pass the Philippines Human Right Act

Seiji Yamada, Arcelita Imasa & Mary Ochs

While the deadline for filing Federal income taxes has been postponed to May 17, the traditional deadline (April 15) is an appropriate time for U.S. taxpayers to reflect on what our tax dollars fund. A significant portion of our taxes funds human rights abuses in the Philippines. Since 2016, the year when Rodrigo Duterte was elected president, the U.S. has sent $550 million dollars in military aid to the Philippines.

Under Duterte, over 30,000 Filipinos have been killed by their government. The killings began as a so-called “War on Drugs,” targeting poor drug users and drug dealers. Under the nebulous provisions of the Anti-Terror Law, the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippines National Police are now targeting social activists, accusing (red-tagging) them of being Communists and terrorists. Indigenous people, human rights workers, peasant and labor organizers, environmental activists, journalists, health workers, local elected officials, and clergy have been red-tagged, imprisoned, and extrajudicially killed.

The Duterte government has used COVID-19 lockdown measures to further militarize the country and repress labor and people’s organizations. His police and military have arrested individuals delivering relief and food to those in need, further increasing the number of political prisoners in the country. This militarist approach has worsened the Philippine public health situation while miserably failing to provide a comprehensive health response and adequate economic support to the suffering people amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

We call upon the U.S. Congress to introduce and pass the Philippines Human Rights Act (PHRA). The PHRA would cut off U.S. government funding and assistance (including weapons sales and donations of armaments) to the Philippine military and police. U.S. representatives to multilateral agencies would veto loans and funding. The U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. State Department would be required to submit a report to the Congressional Appropriations Committee regarding such funding and any misappropriation of any other funding to the Philippine military and police.

In order for the PHRA funding restrictions to be lifted, the government of the Philippines would have to guarantee the human rights of its citizens, establish a judicial system to prosecute members of its military and police responsible for human rights violations, and comply with audits and investigations to ensure that U.S. aid is not used for human rights violations.

Such restrictions are not unprecedented. In 2007, then-Senator Barbara Boxer held a hearing on the human rights abuses of the Philippine military, leading to a suspension of military funding the following year. A decrease in human rights abuses followed.

Let us keep in mind that our tax dollars are funding these extra-judicial killings. As U.S. taxpayers – this makes us, to a degree, culpable for these human rights abuses. There are many better uses for our tax dollars.

On this traditional Tax Day, we urge our Congressional representatives to support the PHRA. While in the present moment we are all focused on Myanmar, the U.S. has little leverage over the Myanmar military, while the U.S. has tremendous leverage over the Philippine military. We call for an end to this morally untenable situation.

French Senate amends anti-separatism law to ban hijab for youth under 18

Samuel Tissot

Last week, on the first day of reading of President Macron’s “anti-separatism” law, the French Senate voted to approve an amendment banning Muslim women under the age of 18 from wearing hijabs anywhere in public. A second amendment banned Muslim mothers who are veiled from participating in school trips and activities with their children if they are dressed in religious clothing.

Both amendments still need to pass through the National Assembly before coming into law. They were tabled by a group of senators from the conservative Republican Party (LR) and European Democratic and Social Rally group.

A police officer watches a woman, Monday, Oct. 5, 2020 in Paris. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

The amendment targeting under-18-year-olds passed by a margin of 177 to 141, with senators from the Socialist Party, Communist Party and a majority of Macron’s Republic On the Move party voting against it. It would prevent non-adults from wearing “signs or clothing” in public spaces that “ostensibly manifest a religious affiliation” or “that would signify the inferiority of women to men.”

While the authors were conscious to avoid mentioning the hijab by name, the primary target of the amendment are France’s 5.4 million Muslims. Police would effectively be given the right to harass and arrest Muslim youth, and virtually anyone wearing clothing that they deemed inappropriate under the sweeping language of the bill. It is to be enforced through a further build-up of the police in impoverished and minority areas, and invasive measures against Muslims.

A 2019 survey found that around 20 percent of women from a Muslim background regularly wear the hijab or another veil; another 20 percent wear it in some contexts. Most Muslim women who do wear a veil or headscarf start at the age of puberty, in their early teenage years. The legislation would outlaw this practice. Muslim girls and young women would be forced to dress in accordance with the dictates of the state if they wish to participate in public life.

The amendment underscores the reactionary and far-right character of the Macron government’s “anti-separatism” law. Among other measures, it establishes a “Charter of principles” that Muslim associations are legally obliged to sign, pledging their allegiance to the state, and grants the state vast powers over religious and other associations. Political discussion inside mosques is banned, and statements denouncing the French state as racist are declared to be defamatory.

As with the entire law, the latest amendment turns the principle of “secularism” on its head. The democratic principle of the separation of church and state aims to prevent the intervention of the state into the private lives of citizens. The Macron government and the extreme right are using references to “secularism” to justify state infringements on the democratic rights of the Muslim population.

The votes against the amendment by a majority of government senators—as well as representatives of the Socialist Party, Unsubmissive France and the Communist Party—are hypocritical and cynical in the extreme.

A major concern motivating them is that the amendment expresses even more openly the blatantly discriminatory character of the “anti-separatism” law, and threatens to provoke an eruption of opposition in the working class and youth against it.

Secondly, there is a concern that the amendment itself may be unconstitutional. This was stated by Darmanin in explaining his reasons for opposing the amendment. Along these lines, Communist Party Senator Mari-Noëlle Lienemann explained her vote against the amendment by stating that she wanted to “find legislation that outlaws the veil for minors,” but that “we cannot make a mistake in choosing which method to use” to achieve it. “If the measure is rejected [as unconstitutional], that would have an impact contrary to our intentions,” she said.

The amendment is also the extension of restrictions on wearing Islamic clothing that have been passed with the support of the entire political establishment over decades. In 2004, the Socialist Party voted to support the ban on students wearing religious clothing in schools. In 2010, the Sarkozy government used anti-terrorism measures as a justification for banning the niqab and all other clothes that cover the face in public.

Unsubmissive France and the Communist Party deputies have either voted for or abstained on more than 40 percent of the articles on the “anti-separatism” law in the National Assembly.

Darmanin’s absurd claim that he is concerned the amendment would undermine “religious plurality” in France fools no one. Darmanin is known to have supported the royalist and far-right Action française. Last October, he declared he was shocked at the sight of halal and kosher foods in supermarkets, and said such separated food aisles were the first step toward “communalism.”

In a debate with Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally in February, he attacked Le Pen from the right as being “soft,” and for failing to vote for some of the government’s anti-terrorism laws.

Last November, dozens of mosques, as well as BarakaCity, the largest Muslim charity in France, were investigated and closed by the government on the claims that they were suspected of “separatist” sympathies. Many of those targeted and arrested were critics of French imperialist wars and interventions in the Sahel, Middle East, and North Africa.

Justifying this policy, Darmanin stated last December that “up until now, the government has been interested in radicalization and terrorism,” but would now also target those “who create the intellectual and cultural space to secede and impose their values.”

The fascistic nature of the government’s campaign is made clear by a series of tweets from the Inter-ministerial Committee for the Prevention of Delinquency and Radicalization on March 29.

One tweet claimed: “The term ‘#islamophobia’ has been imposed by Islamists with the aim of prohibiting any form of criticism of radical Islam.” The term was used “to justify the massacre of the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo,” a reference to the 2015 terrorist attack on the magazine. While it insisted that “[Muslims] must be able to live their faith and worship freely,” it ominously added, “in accordance with the laws and values of the Republic.”

In these statements, the French state is propagating far-right conspiracy theories, claiming that anti-Muslim discrimination is a myth conjured up by unspecified pro-Islamist groups to justify terrorism and communalism. Under Macron, fascistic attitudes and policies have been adopted wholesale by large portions of the French state.

Right-wing campaigns against the veil have also not been limited to France in recent months. In February 2020 the Coalition Avenir Québec introduced a “secularism” bill which sought to ban hijabs in schools. Last month, Switzerland outlawed face coverings, including the niqab and burka in public.

Like its international counterparts, the Macron government is desperate to contain rising social outrage following the mass amount of death and economic devastation that has resulted from the ruling class’ murderous mismanagement of the pandemic. This had led to the rapid construction of a police state apparatus as well as measures to facilitate the repression of all opposition to the dictates of French imperialism. While the current measures are primarily aimed toward Muslim minorities, they are part of preparations for a much wider assault on the fundamental democratic rights of the working class in France and across Europe.

Boris Johnson lifts UK COVID-19 restrictions, as scientists warn of “surge of infections and death”

Laura Tiernan

On Easter Monday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson delivered an address from Downing Street’s new £2.6 million media briefing room, announcing “step two” of his government’s drive to remove all public health measures to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

With worldwide infections and deaths from COVID-19 rising at their fastest rate since the start of the pandemic, Johnson announced, “From Monday 12th April, we will move to Step Two of our roadmap—reopening shops, gyms, zoos, holiday campsites, personal care services like hairdressers and, of course, beer gardens and outdoor hospitality of all kinds.

“And on Monday the 12th I will be going to the pub myself—and cautiously but irreversibly raising a pint of beer to my lips.”

Johnson’s speech epitomised the nationalist idiocy of the British ruling class and its criminal indifference to suffering and death on a mass scale. Faced with a global death toll of 2.75 million people—including one million in Europe, 150,000 of those in Britain—Johnson described his government’s removal of health restrictions as a “roadmap to freedom”, noting in passing, “We still don’t know how strong the vaccine shield will be when cases begin to rise, as I’m afraid that they will.”

As he has done twice in the past with deadly effect, Johnson used the sharp decline in UK infections, hospitalisations and deaths brought about by lockdown to argue for the lifting of all restrictions. But even as he delivered his speech, data from Public Health England showed the rate of COVID-19 cases increasing across many of England’s poorest northern cities and regions. Yesterday’s Independent described “fears the areas could become ‘epicentres’ for new surges or variants of the virus… The worst affected areas are Rotherham, with a rate of 170 Covid infections [per 100,000 people], followed by Barnsley, Doncaster, North Lincolnshire, Wakefield, Bradford and Hull.”

Christina Pagel, from University College London, told the Independent: “We are seeing the same things we saw last year and in the autumn, none of the fundamentals have changed. These areas will be left behind, that is the risk of the course we are on.”

None of this will deter the government from its course of ending “the final lockdown”. A “roadmap update” published by the Cabinet Office on Monday outlined plans to lift restrictions further, based on the introduction of “Covid status certification” (described elsewhere as Covid passports) to facilitate non-essential travel and “help towards the return of crowds to mass events and closed settings, from football matches to theatre performances, and the reopening of nightclubs.”

The population is to be used as human guinea pigs, with a series of mass events overseen by the government’s Events Research Programme from April 15: “The programme will be run across a range of venue and activity types, including the World Snooker Championship at the Crucible in Sheffield and the Circus nightclub in Liverpool, with the aim of admitting a crowd of up to 20,000 to Wembley for the FA Cup final on 15 May.”

A Social Distancing Review is in place “exploring whether existing rules, designed to limit virus transmission, could be relaxed in different settings”—i.e., slashing the 1+ metre rule.

Step three of the government’s four-step plan is due on May 17, with the reopening of indoor venues including pubs and restaurants, hotels, cinemas, museums, play centres and group exercise classes, and with indoor sports venues able to admit up to 1,000 spectators. By June 21, the government plans to have “unlocked” completely, lifting all controls on public gatherings, indoors and out.

Johnson, the serial liar, told Monday’s press briefing, “We see nothing in the present data that makes us think that we will have to deviate from that roadmap.”

Flanked by Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer for England, and Sir Patrick Vallance, Chief Scientific Adviser, Johnson concealed findings by the government’s own Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) that a surge of deaths was “highly likely” following the lifting of restrictions in steps three and four of the government’s roadmap.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty at the Covid-19 press conference on Easter Monday 05/04/2021 (Picture by Pippa Fowles / No 10 Downing Street-FlickR)

On March 31, SAGE’s Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M-O) reported to the government, “It is highly likely that there will be a further resurgence in hospitalisations and deaths after the later steps of the roadmap.”

The report—based on modelling provided by the University of Warwick, Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine—warns a surge of infections is likely in summer and autumn, and that “scenarios with little transmission reduction after step four, or with pessimistic but plausible vaccine efficacy assumptions, can result in resurgences in hospitalisations of a similar scale to January 2021.”

Britain’s vaccine rollout has been seized on by the Tory government to push through an end to the lockdown, but SP-M-O’s report contradicts these efforts. Modelling by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine suggests the AstraZeneca vaccine might cut the risk of infection nationally by just 31 percent, concluding, “Step four may lead to a larger surge of cases and deaths comparable to that seen during the first wave.” A similarly “pessimistic model” by Imperial College London, suggests that hospital admissions could peak at levels seen earlier this year, based on an assumption that vaccinations halve the risk of infection.

Of the 31.5 million people who have received their first dose of a vaccine, only 5.4 million have received both jabs. SAGE is already warning of a slow-down in vaccine take-up, forecasting a drop to 2.7 million jabs per week until July, with insufficient vaccine available for first doses. “As the dates of second doses for the over-50-year-olds are now largely fixed, this slower scenario has the effect of reducing the proportion of under-50-year-olds who are protected at the time of steps 3 and 4.”

At Monday’s press conference, Whitty alluded to the situation in Chile, where a speedy vaccine rollout has failed to halt spiraling infections, “We want to do things in a steady way because the assumption that just because you vaccinate lots of people, then the problem goes away, I think Chile is quite a good corrective to that.” Twenty percent of Chile’s population has been fully vaccinated, the second highest in the world after Israel, but infections are surging once more, with 5,827 new cases reported yesterday taking Chile’s death toll to 23,677.

Capitalism has created a humanitarian disaster for the working class across the planet. The ruling class policy of “herd immunity”, allowing the virus to spread unchecked, has given rise to new and potentially vaccine-resistant Covid mutations. The UK B117 variant, which is 60 percent more transmissible, is present in 125 countries, including India, where it reportedly accounts for the majority of new infections. India’s National Centre for Disease Control has announced a new variant—a “double mutant”—identified in Maharashtra, Delhi and Punjab, that may inhibit the effects of current vaccines, while simultaneously increasing the virus’s ability to infect its host.

With hospitals across Europe, the Americas and much of Asia buckling beneath the weight of the most serious pandemic in more than a century, Johnson told the media he remains “hopeful” that international travel can “get going” from the earliest possible restart date of May 17.

On display at Monday’s press conference was not simply the criminality of the Tory government, but of the entire capitalist order. Johnson’s Orwellian pronouncements about an “irreversible roadmap to freedom” have been endorsed by every section of the media and political establishment. Whether Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, the Scottish National Party or the Trades Union Congress, all agree that public health measures must be ended, and the economy reopened, to protect the profits of the corporations, banks and super-rich.

Starmer’s sole criticism of the government has been to align himself with around 70 Tory rebels to reject vaccine passports as “un-British” and a threat to civil liberties. There is a cynical and diversionary character to such posturing. As Director of Public Prosecutions, Starmer played a key role in the state persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and as Labour leader he has backed the most far-reaching assault in decades on the right to protest and assembly, including the government’s repressive Covid regulations.

Starmer, along with members of Labour’s Socialist Campaign Group, including Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott, condemn Covid passports as a form of identity card. But they are silent on the reason they are being proposed—to justify the ending of lockdown and the herding of workers and youth into unsafe workplaces, schools, pubs, clubs, gyms and sporting venues that threatens the lives of tens of thousands.