Facebook platforms shut down by worldwide outage

Kevin Reed

The entire network of services and apps owned by Facebook was shut down for hours worldwide on Monday beginning at approximately 11:40 a.m. Eastern time.

Users reported that the company’s platforms Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus initially displayed error messages and then became inoperable. In the case of Facebook, which has nearly 3 billion monthly active users internationally, the platform was reported to have “disappeared from the internet.”

The Facebook logo is displayed on an iPad (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

The impact of the shutdown was felt around the world where, in some countries like Myanmar and India, Facebook is synonymous with the internet. Some of the apps, such as WhatsApp and Messenger, are the primary means through which billions of people communicate with family and friends each day. Some businesses that rely upon Facebook for marketing and sales promotion were unable to operate.

Meanwhile, due to its dominance in the social media marketplace, Facebook is used by people to sign into other apps and services and manage their accounts, such as shopping websites, business software, news sites, smart TVs and other internet-of-things connected home appliances and electronic devices.

The shutdown also paralyzed nearly all of Facebook’s internal business and employee communications systems and left the staff in the position of having to use text messaging and other alternatives in order to work on a solution to the problem.

New York Times tech reporter Sheera Frenkel tweeted that a Facebook staff person told her over the phone that employees were “unable to enter buildings this morning to begin to evaluate extent of outage because their badges weren’t working to access doors.”

Associated Press (AP) reporter Phillip Crowther tweeted, “Source at Facebook: ‘it’s mayhem over here, all internal systems are down too.’ Tells me employees are communicating amongst each other by text and by Outlook email.”

At 12:22 p.m., Facebook tweeted a message that downplayed the extent of the outage: “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

At 6:33 p.m., the company followed up with another tweet: “To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we’re sorry. We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us.”

As of this writing, all of the primary apps—Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger—were back online. While Facebook has yet to report the cause of the outage, no evidence has been presented indicating that the failure was the product of malicious activity.

The AP reported that Facebook’s outgoing chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, tweeted “sincere apologies” to everyone impacted by the outage and placed the blame on “networking issues.”

The news agency also interviewed Doug Madory, director of internet analysis for Kentik Inc, a network monitoring and intelligence company, who said the cause of the outage appears to be related to the deletion of basic data “that tells the rest of the internet how to communicate with its properties. Such data is part of the internet’s Domain Name System, a central component that directs its traffic. Without Facebook broadcasting its location on the public internet, apps and web addresses simple could not locate it.”

The Verge reported that “Cloudflare senior vice president Dane Knecht notes that Facebook’s border gateway protocol routes— BGP helps networks pick the best path to deliver internet traffic—were suddenly ‘withdrawn from the internet.’”

J. Eckert, VP of Ecosystem at blockchain platform Chia, tweeted, “This Facebook outage is a WAY bigger issue than I think some realize, or they are willing to admit. Their entire DNS record has been wiped from the internet across all root servers. Either the most sophisticated & coordinated hack of all time, OR the biggest human error ever.”

Forbes reported late Monday afternoon that the Facebook outage played a role in the decline in the value of company shares of 4.8 percent or a wipeout of approximately $117 billion. The decline also translates into a drop in the personal fortune of founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg of $5.9 billion.

A lost day for Facebook also means a loss of $330 million in its marketing services revenue.

There was also pressure building against the value of Facebook stock from a whistleblower leak of internal company information and criticism by former employee Frances Haugen who said during a “60 Minutes” interview broadcast Sunday that there is a corporate culture of putting “profits over people.”

The whistleblower story, called “The Facebook Files,” was broken by the Wall Street Journal—a publication that has devoted all 132 years of its existence to putting “profits over people”—and exposed that company executives were focused on growth at the expense of the public good. Haugen provided internal Facebook documents including ones that show the company’s own research demonstrated the platform magnified hate and misinformation and was harmful to mental health.

The shutdown of Facebook and all of its associated platforms on Monday has revealed the dependence of billions of people on the stability of online social networks for critical daily tasks of a personal, social and professional character.

Protests expand in Polish health care system

Martin Nowak & Clara Weiss

Protests in the Polish health care system have entered their fourth week. On September 11, at the initial demonstration, 40,000 workers from all sectors of the health care system took to the streets in Warsaw alone. This was triggered by the government’s announcement to postpone the increase in the health care budget and not to increase spending to 7 percent of GDP until 2027. On September 17, the corresponding law was passed in the Sejm (parliament). According to this, the budget is to increase by only 85 billion złoty (around 19 billion euros) over a period of six years—an almost insulting sum in view of the catastrophic conditions in the health care system and the pandemic.

Protesting nurses in Poland

Poland’s health care system is notorious for its low wages, acute staff shortages and miserable working conditions. For example, nurses earn an average of 3,000 złoty net per month, or about 659 euros. Many employees, and especially doctors, depend on having several jobs, both to make ends meet but also to maintain basic services in many regions.

Paramedics, in particular, who have been calling in sick en masse for months, are at the centre of the protests. Last Friday, for example, half of all ambulances in Gdansk were not in service due to the lack of personnel. In parallel, the university hospital in Zielona Góra stopped emergency room operations for several hours due to lack of staff. In Poznań, 65 percent; in Włocławek, 70 percent; and in Płock, 80 percent of the staff were absent, according spokespersons for the protests, and they are expected to continue until October 10.

The local government then tried to use paramedics from the fire department and the army as strike breakers. However, they refused to sign the prepared contracts.

According to Newsweek Polska, Polish paramedics, most of whom have to endure 24-hour shifts, work an average of 300 hours of overtime a year. The gross hourly wage of a paramedic in Warsaw is just 24 zloty (5.25 euros).

Meanwhile, protests are spreading to other areas. For example, medical students and health care trainees have announced protests in several cities on October 9 under the slogan “Młodzi z Medykami” (Youth with Doctors). In many cases, doctors are also quitting their second or third jobs in order to reduce their exorbitant working hours. This has led to the closure of wards in many places, including the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology in Warsaw.

About 60 percent of all Polish physicians work in more than one institution and that on a full-time basis. The sad record holder is said to be a doctor from Łódź who worked 620 hours a month. Exhaustion and lack of concentration due to chronic fatigue pose an enormous danger not only to patients. For example, a 39-year-old anaesthesiologist from Wałbrzyc who, according to colleagues, had worked 96 hours a week due to a lack of staff, died at the end of August.

In the meantime, employees of the judicial system, who had also already demonstrated in September against their low wages and high workload, have also set up a “red city” next to the previous “white city” of medical professionals.

The disastrous conditions in the Polish health care system are a direct result of the restoration of capitalism by the leaders of Solidarity and the former Stalinist regime. The deregulation and privatization that followed were further exacerbated when Poland joined the EU in 2004. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, life expectancy differed by about 10 years between Western and Eastern Europe.

In addition to poverty wages, the health care system is plagued by an acute shortage of personnel. For example, according to the Supreme Medical Association, more than 10,000 physicians left the country between 2004-17 alone. One in four working surgeons is actually already retired. Due to declining birth rates, migration and the closure of medical schools and universities, the number of medical students alone shrank from 6,310 in 1987 to 2,070 in 2000. By 2020, the number had risen to over 5,000 for the first time. The Ministry of Health stated that tens of thousands more doctors would be needed than are being trained to compensate for age-related shortages in the coming years.

The situation is equally dramatic for the approximately 225,000 Polish nurses. With an average age of 53, a massive shortage of personnel means it is already almost impossible to provide secure nursing care, and here, too, tens of thousands of new recruits would be needed every year.

The pandemic has exacerbated all these problems, which have been worsening for decades. Up to now, over 75,000 have died of COVID-19 in Poland, including 500 health care workers. Yet the wave of the Delta variant is only beginning to arrive in the country. The Ministry of Health is now regularly reporting more than 1,000 new infections a day after the infection rate dropped to single digits in the summer.

So far, only about 20 million Poles are fully vaccinated, about 51 percent of the population, while one in four has no vaccine protection at all. Professor Andrzej Pławski of the Polish Academy of Sciences therefore warns of another 40,000 deaths by the end of the year from COVID-19. Although Health Minister Adam Niedzielski expects 5,000 new infections daily as early as the end of October, he categorically rejected new nationwide restrictions and lockdown measures.

The health care protests are developing within the context of a highly explosive class struggle in Poland and internationally. Major strikes by workers in the auto industry, health care and railroads have also occurred in the US and Germany in recent weeks. In Poland, in addition millions of public sector workers, including teachers and judiciary employees, are demanding a 12.5 percent wage increase.

Also, in view of the decision to phase out coal, struggles by around 100,000 coal miners are imminent. Energy prices in particular have been rising rapidly for months, while the inflation rate stands at 4 percent. As social discontent grows, the journal Polityka recently warned of a “hot autumn” and mass strikes and protests in numerous industries.

The ultra-right government of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) has adopted a provocative and uncompromising attitude toward workers.

To this day, it refuses even to send Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki to the negotiating table, as demanded by the protesters in Warsaw, and has refused to make even the smallest concessions in negotiations with the unions, openly resorting to delaying tactics to wear down the workers. The PiS has also taken a tough stance in talks with public sector unions.

The PiS government is hated by large sections of the population and has been in deep crisis, especially since the mass protests against the new abortion law. In opinion polls, the PiS electoral alliance, which won an absolute majority by advocating populist measures in both 2015 and 2019, currently has only 35 percent support. Recently, massive conflicts in the coalition have arisen over disputes with the EU, and there are growing rumours of preparations for a “plexit,” or Polish exit from the EU.

Under these conditions of growing class conflict and enormous political instability, the trade unions are the mainstay of the Polish bourgeoisie and are desperately trying to prevent the development of a broad working-class strike movement. Despite the openly provocative attitude of the government, the National Strike and Protest Committee, composed of various trade unions and professional associations in the health care sector, continues to hold inconclusive negotiations with the government and intends to continue them at least until October 7.

In doing so, the only practical action organised by the committee is the “Białe miasteczko 2.0” protest camp in Warsaw (White City 2.0); most of the other actions by doctors and paramedics to expand the protests seem to have developed independently of the unions.

There is no doubt that a sellout is being prepared behind closed doors. Some unions have even begun it. On September 21, for example, the government signed an agreement with the union for paramedics (OZZRM) and the respective employers’ association (SP ZOZ). The core of the agreement is a 30 percent travel allowance on top of wages and a minimum wage of 40 złoty (about 8.74 euros), for some of the paramedics. There were angry comments both among those at the protest camp and on OZZRM’s Facebook page. For example, Piotr, a paramedic from Szczecin wrote, “their agreement is worthless” and “the community was sold out.” The supreme chamber of pharmacists has also already concluded a separate agreement and likewise left the protest alliance.

Above all, the unions are systematically trying to prevent the workers’ struggle from expanding either within the health care sector or beyond. The OPZZ union confederation has so far remained entirely silent, although most teachers are organized within it. In 2019, the unions, working closely with the liberal opposition PO (Civic Platform) party, sold out a nationwide teachers strike, thus saving the PiS government from its fiercest threat yet from the working class.

The unions and associations organized in the National Strike and Protest Committee also have a long history of selling out struggles. For example, the nurses and midwives union OZZPiP, like the entire FZZ union federation, has close ties to both government and opposition parties. Leading trade unionists, such as Lucyna Dargiewicz or Dorota Gardias, ran for office on lists of the PiS or the ex-Stalinist Social Democratic Party of Poland (SDPL).

The doctors union, PR OZZL, for example, ended its protest, accompanied by hunger strikes, in 2018 for measly concessions that included limiting an increase in health care spending to 6 percent of GDP by 2024. For the protesting doctors association “Porozumienie Zielonogórskie,” Marek Twardowski, a representative, even joined Donald Tusk’s PO government in 2007.

The COVID pandemic and the supply chain crisis

Nick Beams

One of the characteristics of a ruling class that has completely exhausted any progressive, historical role it might once have had, is its inability to deal with major problems in society, because of its insistence that nothing can be done that would impinge on its wealth.

A worker checks a fuel tanker at Buncefield Oil Depot near Hemel Hempstead, England, Monday, Oct. 4, 2021. Britain is facing fuel shortages due to a lack of HGV drivers able to deliver fuel to petrol stations. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

This phenomenon, clearly visible on the eve of the French revolution of 1789 and the Russian revolution of 1917, is again on display, with even greater force, in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The eruption of this deadly virus almost two years ago required a globally coordinated response, mobilising the resources of society to eradicate it. It has been estimated by epidemiologists that had such measures been adopted, COVID-19 could have been eliminated within a matter of weeks.

However, the focus of governments was not on science and the measures it called for. It was directed to the stock market—the money-making machine that has lifted the wealth of the financial and corporate elites to stratospheric heights at the expense of the needs of society, ranging from the provision of social services, such as health care and education, to basic infrastructure such as roads, ports and a transportation system capable of sustaining and developing a globally integrated economy.

From March 2020, the policy of the ruling classes has been guided by the dictum, “The cure cannot be worse than the disease.” That is, nothing can be done that will in any way impinge on the rise of the markets. Trillions of dollars were supplied by the US Fed and other central banks to ensure this.

But there was an inherent contradiction in this policy. The more the demand for opening the economy was pursued, the more the virus was able to spread and develop even more infectious variants, such as Delta, which would never have emerged had a policy of eradication been undertaken at the outset.

The Fed was able to print money to boost the stock market and increase the mountain of fictitious capital, but none of that cash went towards developing the underlying real economy, nor could it.

Now that contradiction has led to the eruption of a crisis, in the form of a protracted and worsening disruption of global supply chains, the vast and complex system of production and transport that is at the base of the global economy.

It began with the supply of computer chips, necessary for auto production and other industries, but has now extended across the board. This crisis is most apparent in the US economy—the world’s largest—particularly in the port of Los Angeles, but is manifest around the world.

As an article published over the weekend in the Washington Post put it: “The commercial pipeline that each year brings $1 trillion worth of toys, clothing, electronics and furniture from Asia to the United States is clogged and no one knows how to unclog it.”

Severe weaknesses in the transport system have been revealed, including shortfalls in investment at key ports, cuts in the rail system and the chronic failure of key participants in the system to collaborate. The Post cites one person who has advised government agencies as saying: “It’s like an orchestra with lots of first violins and no conductor… No one’s really in charge.”

The myopia of the ruling classes was highlighted by a recent article in the Guardian on the supply chain crisis.

“It was all going so well,” the article began. “Successful vaccinations were driving the post-pandemic recovery of the global economy, stock markets were back at record highs, and prices were rising just enough to make deflation fears a thing of the past.”

Now the supply chain crunch, which started with computer chips, is “morphing into a full-blown crisis featuring a shortage of energy, labour and transport, from Liverpool to Los Angeles, and from Qingdao to Queensland.”

Los Angeles, the entry point for more than a third of all imports to the US, is at the centre of the crisis. At the beginning of September, according to the Post, there were 40 container ships waiting for a berth. Less than three weeks later the number had risen to 73.

But as with the situation in hospitals around the world, impacted by decades of cuts, the crisis was foretold. In 2015, regulators warned: “Congestion at ports and other points in the nation’s intermodal system have become a serious risk factor to the relatively robust growth of the American economy, and to its competitive position.”

The problems are not confined to the ports, but extend to the rail system. The workforce at Union Pacific, now at 31,000, is one-third smaller than it was in 2015, representative of cuts that have taken place across the US rail system. And the problems in rail impact on truck transportation, with drivers having to wait for hours in their rigs to pick up containers to which they have been assigned.

Costs are rising rapidly. As the Post article reported, the median cost of shipping a container from China to the US West Coast hit $20,586 last month, almost double the level in July, which, in turn, was twice the cost in January.

But wherever there is a problem, there is a profit to be made. The seven largest ocean carriers have reported $23 billion in profits for the first half of this year, compared with $1 billion for the same period last year.

The eruption of a supply chain crisis, however, is not going to bring about a course correction to deal with its underlying cause—the COVID-19 pandemic—through a program of global eradication.

Rather, the blame is being placed on the limited, but totally ineffective, measures that have to date been carried out. Worldwide, the demands are growing from corporate and financial circles that even limited mitigation measures be scrapped.

This global push was highlighted at the end of last month, when the International Chamber of Shipping joined with other transport employer groups, and the International Transport Workers Federation, an association of trade unions headed by the national secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia, Paddy Crumlin, to issue an open letter calling for an end to all COVID-imposed transport restrictions.

The open letter called on governments and UN agencies to ensure the free movement of transport workers, and “end travel bans and restrictions that have had an enormously detrimental impact on their wellbeing and safety.”

The letter cited the “crumbling global supply chain” and called for “meaningful and swift action to resolve this crisis now.” But the health with which this unholy alliance is concerned is not that of the workers, but of the corporations. The policy on the pandemic is to let it rip.

As is always the case with half-baked, would-be reformist measures, the inevitable failure of the so-called mitigation policy has opened the way for the right-wing agenda.

IATSE movie and television workers vote overwhelmingly to strike

Hong Jian

Around 60,000 production workers in the movie and television industry voted to authorize strike action, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) announced on Tuesday. Over 90 percent of the membership turned out to vote, with 98.6 percent voting in favor of a strike.

IATSE workers picket (IATSE Local 700 Organizing Department)

As if on cue, within hours of the announcement of the results of the strike vote, both IATSE and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) announced they would be resuming negotiations on Tuesday, October 4, after a two-month hiatus brought on by the renegotiation of the COVID-19 protocols just as the Delta variant was surging across California and the country as a whole.

Those loosened protocols, which were set to expire on September 30, were further extended until the end of October, according to management, though the union leadership stated that there was merely a “tacit agreement” to extend them.

When the studios wanted to make it easier to carry out production work by loosening the restrictions in place to keep workers safe during a global pandemic, IATSE not only agreed, but they put the contract negotiations on hold to do so, and gave the AMPTP a two-month extension. During that time, IATSE claims that AMPTP refused their last offer and refused to come back to the table, yet they waited.

IATSE President Matthew Loeb and the rest of the leadership waited to hold a strike authorization vote until over two weeks after the extension of the original contract expired. This delay took place even after the AMPTP said that they wanted to more than double the number of hours required yearly before IATSE members can qualify for the pension.

After the announcement of the results of the strike vote, the AMPTP said that it “remains committed to reaching an agreement that will keep the industry working. We deeply value our IATSE crew members and are committed to working with them to avoid shutting down the industry at such a pivotal time, particularly since the industry is still recovering from the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. A deal can be made at the bargaining table, but it will require both parties working together in good faith with a willingness to compromise and to explore new solutions to resolve the open issues.”

In response to this statement, one worker had this to say: “‘We deeply value our IATSE crew members’—just not enough to guarantee a humane lunch hour. Or humane working hours. Or to admit that streaming services aren’t ‘new media’ and haven’t been for a really long time. But yeah, we deeply value you all! But pity the poor Hollywood producers. It’s been a rough year for them with covid. They’re only pulling in billions of dollars of profit. How dare IATSE ask for humane conditions! Now’s not the right time. Next time. Next time. Next time. Say it with us now, ‘Next time.’ Pity these poor Hollywood producers, most of whom identify as liberals. Who ‘like’ posts on Facebook from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Who virtue signal with a retweeted AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] story. Pity them for they know in their hearts of hearts that they’re corporate shills, doing the bidding of their overlords to drain the life out of the middle and working classes.”

Immediately after the vote, Loeb stated: “The ball is in their court. If they want to avoid a strike, they will return to the bargaining table and make us a reasonable offer.” Asking for a reasonable offer from the AMPTP is an open signal that the IATSE leadership is more than willing sacrifice workers’ demands, which include an end to excessively unsafe and harmful working hours, a livable wage for the lowest paid workers, reasonable rest during meal breaks, between workdays and on weekends, and equitable pay and conditions for those working on “new media” or streaming projects.

IATSE workers voted to strike for the first time in its 128-year history because the conditions to which they are subjected are untenable, including constant 12-16 hour days, no rest, no sleep and poverty wages.

One worker, commenting on a statement from someone in management, replied: “I’m sure that 2nd (walking) meal of cold pizza that you approved from your tower office sounds delicious. It’s not. Neither is the cereal I’m going to have for dinner when I get home from my 17 hour day. Cereal because I only have an 8 hour turn around and I don’t have to time to cook. Also because I haven’t had time to shop for groceries since it’s my 4th 17 hour day in a row.”

After the resumption of negotiations was announced, Loeb said: “The members have spoken loud and clear. This vote is about the quality of life as well as the health and safety of those who work in the film and television industry. Our people have basic human needs like time for meal breaks, adequate sleep, and a weekend. For those at the bottom of the pay scale, they deserve nothing less than a living wage.”

If Loeb and the rest of the IATSE leadership were truly interested or if they truly cared about the health and safety of their membership, they would not have agreed to a loosening of the COVID-19 protocols as the Delta variant was surging, nor would they “tacitly” agree to extend those loosened protocols while they were attempting to negotiate a new contract. Nor would they have recommended the membership to vote yes on the previous contract, or the one before, the conditions under which the leadership now admits are intolerable. Loeb, who takes home a yearly compensation package of more than $500,000, has been sitting atop the union and every negotiation since 2008.

The pandemic and the associated slowing down of production that it entailed left IATSE workers with more bargaining power than ever. However, each day that production is allowed to continue squanders this opportunity weakens the effects of any future strike activity by giving the producers breathing space to wait out any possible strike.

BJP provocation against Indian farmer protest leaves nine dead

Kranti Kumara

Four protesting farmers and a local journalist were killed Sunday in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh after a convoy of SUVs—including one owned by Ajay Kumar Mishra Teni, the minister of state for Home Affairs in Narendra Modi’s far-right BJP government—deliberately ploughed into them.

Toyota workers and Karnataka farmers stage joint procession in Bengaluru (Credit: WSWS)

The driver of one of the SUVs and three BJP workers were killed when farmers outraged by the wanton attack set upon them and beat them to death. Two SUVs were also set alight.

The deadly altercation occurred near Lakhimpur Kheri on the Tikonia-Banbirpur road about 130 kilometres from the state capital Lucknow.

According to farmers who witnessed the attack, one of the four farmers was shot dead by BJP Minister Ajay Mishra’s son, Ashish Mishra. The latter, however, claims he was not part of the convoy.

The dead farmers—Gurwinder Singh, 19; Lovepreet Singh, 20; Daljeet Singh, 35; and Nachattar Singh, 60—were among a crowd that had gathered to protest the BJP’s pro-agribusiness farm laws. Ajay Mishra, the local MP, was a particular target of the protest because he had recently made threatening statements against the now nearly year-long agitation against the BJP’s farm “reform” laws.

The speeding SUVs also injured 12 farmers, and a further 50 sustained injuries, some serious, when the Uttar Pradesh police intervened with their customary savagery.

Sunday’s murderous attack on the farmers has prompted an outcry across India and fury in the Lakhimpur Kheri district. The Uttar Pradesh (UP) government, which is led by close Modi ally Yogi Adityanath, has placed the district under the draconian Section 144 of the Indian Criminal Code, outlawing all gatherings of more than four people. It has also deployed paramilitaries, and, without any public announcement, suspended Lakhimpur Kheri’s internet and cellphone service. Opposition leaders who have attempted to visit the area to speak with the farmers, including the Congress Party’s Priyanka Gandhi, have been barred from doing so and detained.

Such tactics—which have long been employed by Indian governments, whether led by the Congress or BJP, in Indian-held Kashmir—are increasingly being used to suppress social opposition across India.

The Lucknow Journalists’ Association has sent a letter to the UP government demanding a judicial inquiry into the death of local television journalist Raman Kashyap and the laying of murder charges against those responsible. It is also seeking financial compensation for his family. There are conflicting reports as to how Kashyap died. According to some accounts, he was beaten to death by BJP goons for having filmed the SUVs deliberately mowing protesters down.

Media reports say the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh has announced a 4.5 million rupee (about $61,000) compensation package for the families of the dead farmers.

The exact details of the attack are unclear, but there is no question it arises out of the increasingly violent atmosphere being whipped up against the protesting farmers by the BJP government at the centre and in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. Chief Minister Adityanath is a virulent Hindu supremacist who routinely runs roughshod over basic democratic rights and unleashes state violence to terrorize government opponents, Muslims and other minorities. He has denounced the farmers’ protests—an agitation that has galvanized farmers especially in the north Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Punjab and won the sympathy of working people across India—as “a conspiracy to destabilize the country.”

In a tweet, the UP chief minister vowed Sunday’s events will be “thoroughly investigated and the involvement of antisocial elements … brought to light.” “Antisocial elements” is a phrase Adityanath and other BJP leaders often use to smear those opposing their pro-big business and Hindu supremacist agenda.

Relatives of the deceased farmers and their supporters remained at the site of Sunday’s murderous attack, with their battered corpses on display, for much of Monday. While the UP government mobilized state security forces, it ultimately relied on the leaders of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU—Indian Peasants Union) to help defuse the situation. They urged farmers to “maintain the peace” and not descend on Lakhimpur Kheri. After meeting with top UP officials, BKU spokesperson Rakesh Tikait convinced those at the attack site to disperse. He told them they had won a major “victory” as murder charges have been laid against Ashish Mishra, and the state government has agreed to appoint a retired state judge to investigate Sunday’s events.

Criminal charges have also been laid against Minister of State Ajay Kumar Mishra. Neither Modi nor Home Minister Amit Shah have made any comment on the affair, let alone asked Mishra to resign while he is under criminal investigation.

In September, Mishra threatened local farmers when they displayed black flags during a previous appearance in his home constituency. “Fix yourselves or face me,” declared Mishra. “I will fix you in a matter of minutes.” Boasting about his thuggish past,” he continued. “I am not just a minister or an MLA (state assemblyman) or an MP. Those who know me from before I became a legislator would also know I never retreat from challenges.”

Since late November, tens of thousands of farmers have camped out on the outskirts of India’s capital Delhi to press their demand for the repeal of the three pro-corporate farm laws the BJP rushed through parliament in September 2020. India’s agriculture sector has been in crisis for the past two decades or more with wide swaths of the rural masses, both small farmers and agricultural labours, living in grinding poverty. Although about half of the country’s 1.39 million people billion depend on agriculture for their livelihood, it produces just 15 percent of the country’s $2.9 trillion dollar GDP.

The government’s greatest fear is that the farmers’ agitation will intersect with growing popular anger over the Indian ruling elite’s criminal mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and a wave of worker struggles against the BJP government’s pro-investor policies—austerity, privatization, the gutting of environmental and labour standards and the promotion of precarious contract labour employment.

Sunday’s murderous attack is indicative of a Modi government and BJP that are increasingly angered and frightened by the mounting popular opposition. To their dismay, they have failed in their attempts to wear down the farmers or to engineer a significant split in their ranks through offers of token amendments to the three farm bills.

Increasingly, Modi and his BJP are seeking a way out through violence. In the state of Haryana, one of the hotbeds of the farmer agitation, the BJP state government under the leadership of Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar ordered police to violently attack a farmers’ protest in late August. A 55-year-old farmer named Sushil Kaja died after being savagely beaten by the police and scores of other farmers were injured.

In a recent video-speech to BJP members, Khattar urged them to form goon squads armed with lathis (wooden truncheons) to go around the state to beat up protesting farmers. He was quoted as saying: “In every district, particularly the northern and northwestern districts, we will have to raise groups of 500-700 kisan (farmer) volunteers and then [mount] Sathe Shathyam Samacharet (tit-for-tat).” In the video the audience of BJP members are heard laughing at this open call for violence.

From the get-go, the BJP central, UP and Haryana state governments sought to repress the farmers’ agitation. They succeeded in preventing the farmers from entering Delhi at the start of their agitation last November, but they could not prevent hundreds of thousands from making it to the city’s outskirts. And as the protest stretched into weeks and became a rallying point for broader popular opposition, the BJP government was visibly thrown into crisis. True to their authoritarian instincts, Modi and Home Minister Shah laid the groundwork for violently dispersing the protesting farmers, mobilizing tens of thousands of security forces and mounting a propaganda campaign to smear them as “anti-national.”

The Supreme Court has sanctioned one anti-democratic and communalist action of the BJP government after another. However, due to fears among broad sections of the ruling class that a violent crackdown could backfire and serve to galvanize the working class to intervene in the mounting political crisis, the court balked at greenlighting the BJP’s plans to suppress the farmers’ protests by declaring them “illegal.” Later, it sought to provide the government with a mechanism to defuse the situation, by ruling that application of the three farm laws should be suspended while the farmers and government negotiated.

However, like the BJP and clearly reflecting mounting pressure from big business for speedier implementation of its pro-investor policies, the Supreme Court’s attitude towards the farmers is hardening. When farm protest leaders recently approached the court for permission to enter the capital to stage a rally, a panel of Supreme Court justices denounced the farmers’ agitation. “You have strangulated Delhi,” the court declared, “by holding sit-in protests on highways ... even blocked movement of armed forces and jeered them. Now you want to come inside the city and create chaos?”

On Monday, just hours after the BJP’s violent provocation against the Lakhimpur Kheri farrners, another Supreme Court bench openly questioned the legitimacy of the farmers’ agitation. It chastised the farmers for mounting protests when the farm laws are stayed and for protesting, while challenging the laws’ constitutionality in the courts. “When farmers are in court challenging the laws, why protest in the street?” asked the judges. Ominously, India’s highest court announced that on October 20 it will rule on whether there is an “absolute” right to protest—all but announcing that it intends to provide the government with a legal fig leaf for employing state violence to end the farmers’ agitation.

‘Pandora Papers’ points to major tax evasion by global financial oligarchy

Jacob Crosse

On October 3, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in coordination with 600 journalists from 117 countries, began publishing the “Pandora Papers” a series of articles based off of 11.9 million leaked financial services files—totaling nearly three terabytes of data—from 14 companies that provide tax evasion and money laundering services to the financial oligarchy.

A view of the entrance of the Chateau Bigaud, in Mougins, southern France, Monday, Oct. 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

The ICIJ claims to have “uncovered financial secrets of 35 current and former world leaders, more than 330 politicians and public officials in 91 countries and territories, and a global lineup of fugitives, con artists and murderers.” Included in this list are 130 Forbes billionaires, as well as celebrities, athletes and royalty. Just 100 of the billionaires identified in the Pandora Papers had a combined fortune of more than $600 billion in 2021.

Some 150 news outlets participated in the investigation, including the Washington Post, the BBC, the Guardian, Radio France Morocco’s Le Desk and Ecuador’s Diario El Universo.

The ICIJ analysis identified 956 companies specializing in offshore tax havens with ties to 336 “high-level politicians and public officials, including country leaders, cabinet ministers, ambassadors and others.” The ICIJ found that “more than two-thirds” of the companies identified were “set up in the British Virgin Islands.”

This is the third major exposé on the dealings of the international bourgeoisie published by the ICIJ. In 2016 the ICIJ published the Panama Papers and in 2017 the Paradise Papers. The latter actually contained more files, 13.4 million compared to 11.9 million, however the amount of data contained in the Pandora Papers is more than the Panama or Paradise leaks.

Whereas the Panama Papers dealt primarily with with Panamanian corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, the Pandora Papers encompass records from 14 financial-services companies operating throughout the world, including in Switzerland, Belize and the United Kingdom. The leak also demonstrates the key role US states such as South Dakota, Florida, Nevada and Delaware have assumed in the global tax avoidance scheme.

The files were analyzed for nearly two years, and include private emails, secret contracts, bank statements, passports and confidential spreadsheets exposing the intricate money laundering schemes employed by princes, kings, prime ministers, presidents the world over employ in order to protect their ill-gotten wealth and pass it on to their heirs. Among the tools examined by the ICIJ were the use of trusts by the bourgeoisie to ensure that their property remains in their family, tax free, for generations.

However, like the previous exposures by the ICIJ, there is a startling gap between the financial details revealed concerning those who are official enemies of US imperialism, compared to Americans. Of the 336 politicians identified in the leaks, none are from the United States, while 19 Russian politicians and 38 Ukrainian politicians were identified. The lack of US politicians named is even more noticeable considering the ICIJ found over $1 billion held in US-based trusts, integral tools for tax avoidance and money laundering.

The ICIJ worked with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) in producing the report. According to ICIJ, more than “75 journalists” from OCCRP’s network helped comb through the data. The OCCRP is supported by grants from the United States Agency for International Development, the US State Department, Google Ideas as well as George Soros’s Open Society Foundations.

In a comment from Russia’s RT, Kit Klarenberg asked, “Could the CIA be behind the leak of the Pandora Papers, given their curious lack of focus on US nationals?” Likewise, the editor of the Chinese-based Global Times, Hu Zijin, suggested that US and Western “intelligence agencies” were involved in the leaks, writing on Twitter that “They are creating new tools for their political intervention in developing counties.”

Seemingly backing Zijin’s perspective, in a statement on Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki reiterated President Joe Biden’s commitment to “fighting corruption as a core national security interest.”

Psaki also reiterated Biden’s pledge to “work with partners and allies to address issues such as the abuse of shell companies and money laundering…” Coming from the former senator from Delaware, one of the most corporate friendly and opaque states in the nation when it comes to shielding financial records of the wealthy as it provides every loophole and benefit to credit card companies while eliminating bankruptcy protections for credit card and student loan defaulters, this statement is more than just a little hypocritical.

While the ICIJ failed to find any “corrupt” politicians in the US, it did uncover large numbers of trusts established within the US that have been used by the bourgeoisie to shield their assets from tax liabilities. In South Dakota, where Republicans have controlled the state government since the 1970s, trust companies have been allowed to flourish, allowing the financial oligarchy to stash almost $360 billion in assets through secretive trusts.

Amid ever-widening levels of inequality and more open forms of financial parasitism, the use of trusts, popular in the Middle Ages for English aristocrats, has skyrocketed in recent years, especially in the United States, where several states have passed laws eliminating rules against perpetuities, allowing for the creation of “dynasty trusts.” Of the trusts identified in the papers, South Dakota had the most, with 81, followed by Florida, 37, Delaware 35, Texas, 24 and Nevada, 14.

Politicians named so far in the investigation include:

• King Abdullah II, 59, has ruled Jordan since 1999 and is a close ally of the US. The papers reveal that Abdullah II owned “36 front companies in Panama and the British Virgin Islands.” These companies were used to disguise the purchase of “at least 14 luxury homes in the United Kingdom in the U.S.” These holdings included the hidden purchase of a $33.5 million mansion in Malibu, California in 2014, along with properties in London and Washington D.C., totaling more than $106 million from 2003 to 2017.
• Nirupama Rajapaksa was a former member of parliament and deputy minister of water supply and drainage from 2010 to 2015. She is the cousin of current Sri Lankan president, Gotabaya Rajapakse. Nirupama, along with her husband Thirukumar Nadesan, controls a shell company that was used to buy luxury apartments in London and Sydney, while another company, Pacific Commodities, was used to transfer 31 paintings and other art pieces to the Geneva Freeport, a warehouse complex in Geneva Switzerland where the bourgeoisie stores their assets to avoid taxes. According to the specialist art journal Connaissances des Arts, in 2013 the Geneva Freeport held around 1.2 million artworks.
• Tony Blair, former UK Prime Minister from 1997 through 2007. Blair, along with his wife Cherie, registered a UK company named Harcourt Ventures Ltd. to buy a British Virgin Islands entity named Romanstone International Ltd., which owned a building in London valued at $8.8 million. The Romanstone property was a subsidiary of a real estate firm owned by the family of Zayed bin Rashid al-Zayani, Bahrain’s industry and tourism minister. By simply purchasing the company that owns the property, the Blairs were not obligated to pay property taxes, saving them more than $400,000 according to the Guardian.

MTN Global Graduate Programme 2022

Application Deadline: 30th October 2021

To be Taken at (Country): African countries listed below

About the Award: MTN’s Global Graduate Development Programme seeks to source, develop, and accelerate top graduates from across MTN’s footprint in Africa and the Middle East. The programme offers a privileged experience that fast-tracks talented individuals into critical roles at MTN. The MTN Graduate Development Programme combines both formal development in partnership with Duke Corporate Education and the MTN Academy, as well as on-the-job development through full employment and placement into a strategically aligned role.

The formal component includes modules at MTN’s 3 regional learning centres, located in Southern, Northern and Western Africa.

Type: Job

Eligibility: You should be

• An African in the following countries
• 27 years

You must have completed or be studying towards a qualification with the following:

• minimum 65%
• bachelors degree
• 14 disciplines

You must have experience with the following

• Digital Marketing
• Commerce
• Economics
• Marketing
• Business Administration

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:

• Financial rewards for performance
• Global induction
• Free or subsidised mobile phone
• Medical Aid
• Laptop/tablet
• Staff discounts
• Career development resources
• Pension scheme
• Subsidised canteen services
• Flexible working hours

Duration of Award: Fulltime.

How to Apply: Click your country’s link below:

• MTN Global Graduate Programme 2021 – Zambia
• MTN Global Graduate Programme 2021 – eSwatini
• MTN Global Graduate Programme 2021 – RSA
• MTN Global Graduate Programme 2021 – Nigeria
• MTN Global Graduate Programme 2021 – Rwanda

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Equal Opportunity Employment Commission sues Ford for pregnancy discrimination

Jessica Goldstein

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is suing Detroit-based automaker Ford Motor Company for pregnancy discrimination, stemming from its alleged refusal to hire a woman after she disclosed that she was pregnant, according to a press release on the EEOC’s website. The lawsuit was filed in the District Court of the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division on Monday.

“This alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which makes it unlawful to discriminate against applicants or employees because of their sex, including pregnancy,” the EEOC press release said.

According to the lawsuit, Edwina Smith was qualified to work at the Ford Chicago Stamping Plant in Chicago Heights, Illinois and was given a conditional offer of hire by Ford in June 2019 “subject to passing a physical, drug test and background check.” A Ford physician administered a pre-employment physical in August 2019, during which she disclosed that she was pregnant, and the physician still cleared her for hire. Ford never scheduled her for her first day of work in spite of its own physician’s approval, the lawsuit alleges.

Smith pursued Ford for weeks to get answers to when she could begin working at the stamping plant, according to the lawsuit, but was continually given the run-around until October when the company answered that Ford was no longer hiring. The lawsuit also alleges that other workers were hired and sent for orientation during the same time period, demonstrating that Smith was discriminated against based on her disclosure of pregnancy.

The press release does not name the parties involved with Ford with whom she was in contact, but it is clear that neither the company nor the United Auto Workers union (UAW), which supposedly represents workers at the plant, did anything to ensure that she was given an equal opportunity for employment.

If the allegations of the lawsuit are proven, it will show that Ford is in violation of the 1978 US Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which forbids discrimination based on pregnancy for any aspect of an individual’s employment, including hiring, pay, termination, job assignments and benefits.

The US has also signed, but never ratified, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1980. The Convention was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979 and prohibits dismissal on the grounds of maternity or pregnancy and ensures the right to maternity leave or comparable social benefits.

This is not the first sexual harassment lawsuit brought against Ford by workers. In 1997, 14 women who worked at Ford in the US filed a class action lawsuit against the company for sexual harassment. In November 2014, more than 30 workers, all who were women, filed another class action lawsuit against Ford, alleging routine sexual and racial harassment on the job by both management and United Auto Workers union officials at the Ford Chicago Assembly and Stamping plants. The allegations in the 2014 suit ranged from suggestive comments and unwanted touching to attempted rape.

In both aforementioned lawsuits, the EEOC has played a particular role in making sure that Ford did not face serious repercussions. The EEOC created a “Conciliation Agreement” with Ford in response to the 1997 lawsuit, which required “workplace monitoring” for three years. The essentially toothless agreement did nothing to stop the rampant abuse against workers at Ford plants across the US, as workers soon found out in the years that followed.

In 2017, Ford settled harassment claims brought by workers with the EEOC for $10.1 million, a drop in the bucket compared to its annual profits. Ford tried to cite the EEOC case settlement in an attempt to brush off the 2014 lawsuit, which was separate from the 2017 EEOC case. Keith Hunt, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the 2014 lawsuit, referred to the EEOC settlement as an attempt by Ford to “circumvent the class-action process.”

Workers of all genders and races face harassment by company managers and union officials alike, according to workers at the Ford Chicago Assembly plant who spoke to the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter about the 2014 allegations.

“It’s more than sexual, because there’s a lot of men here that have been harassed. Their jobs have been manipulated, their overtime has been manipulated and threats made against them,” one worker recounted in 2015.

The worker continued, “They’re manipulating people, period. If they can’t get what they want from you, they totally manipulate you. If it’s sex they want, and you’re not giving it, they’re going to manipulate your job. You’re not going to get any overtime, you’re going to get the hard job.”

The conditions that workers are faced with today are similar to, and in some ways are worse, than those that autoworkers in the 1930s faced. Before rank-and-file workers carried out the historic sit-down strikes in Flint, Michigan, which led to the formation of the United Auto Workers, the exploitation of women workers by management ran rampant. In one department of an AC Spark Plug plant, all of the women workers had to go to the hospital to be treated for a sexually transmitted disease that was traced to one foreman. Men who worked at these plants suffered as well, and were threatened with their jobs if they tried to individually stand up for the women that managers exploited.

Workers at both Ford Chicago Stamping and Ford Chicago Assembly plants have spoken to the WSWS about the ways that management and the union foster a hostile working environment to maintain control over the workers and suppress any organized opposition by the workers against the sweatshop conditions in the factories. Workers are routinely written up and threatened with their jobs for minor attendance infractions, given little to no protection from safety hazards (including the spread of the deadly COVID-19 infection) and targeted for retaliation when they speak out against their conditions.

What the lawsuit shows is not just the abuses of management, but that they are allowed to run rampant by the UAW. The UAW has completely turned its back on its history as a workers’ organization built to protect workers from exploitation at the hands of management. It now either ignores harassment that goes on before its very eyes, or directly engages in it along with management, and the two are nearly indistinguishable from one another in their treatment of workers.