Revelation of US government conspiracy on COVID-19 exposes EU herd immunity policy

Alex Lantier

Revelations that Trump and other top US officials lied publicly about the danger posed by COVID-19 exposes the politically-criminal policy of the European Union (EU). While they had access to official briefings like those available to their US counterparts, they reproduced the same litany of lies and expressing the same flagrant contempt for their citizens’ lives, advocating a policy of “herd immunity,” that is, of controlled spread of the virus in the population.

This is a warning about European Union (EU) officials who are now demanding that workers and children return to work and to school despite an accelerating spread of the virus. Their statements on COVID-19 are worthless. Like Trump, they have a record making false public statements trivializing the pandemic, in flagrant contradiction with medical information they were receiving in private, to boost the stock markets and the wealth of the super-rich at the expense of workers’ lives.

These revelations about Donald Trump, published by the well-known US journalist Bob Woodward, center on the American president’s private knowledge of COVID-19, provided by intelligence briefings and discussions with Chinese officials. It is simply not credible to assert that EU officials did not have access to the same type of information as Trump.

On January 28, intelligence officials told Trump the pandemic would be “the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency.” Then on February 7, Trump told Woodward that Chinese President Xi Jinping had warned him about the disease: “This is deadly stuff. It’s also more deadly than… even your strenuous flus… this is five percent [case fatality rate] versus one percent and less than one percent.” He added, “It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch.”

For months afterwards, however, Trump and other US officials publicly mouthed a pack of lies, also told by EU officials—comparing COVID-19 to the flu, insisting that fear of the virus is worse than the virus, and so on. Speaking of the virus, Trump told Woodward that he “always wanted to play it down” in order to avoid “panic,” that is, a collapse of the financial markets.

The initial response of major European papers to revelations of this conspiracy at the summit of the American state has been as extraordinary as the report itself. Virtually all published superficial articles focused almost exclusively on the question of whether the report would harm Trump and benefit the Democratic Party in the November 2020 US presidential elections.

Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung titled its article “Woodward’s book on Trump is a gift for Biden.” It wrote, “Trump has lied to the American people. At least that is how Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden sees it.” After discussing Woodward’s report, the SZ contradicted its own headline, concluding it was unclear whether it would benefit Biden: “What Woodward’s revelations mean for Trump’s re-election, we will find that out first in November.”

France’s Le Monde claimed that the world is “by now familiar” with the phenomenon of Trump struggling with embarrassing revelations. It concluded: “These extracts show that the president lied to his fellow citizens about the seriousness of the threat, and he is already frequently accused of having delayed taking measures he knew would strongly impact the economy.”

None of these articles posed the obvious question: if these reports expose Trump as a liar, what does this say about EU officials who knew the same things and made similar statements as Trump?

Firstly, EU states were doubtless well aware of the tone of the intelligence briefings Trump received on COVID-19. Indeed, as EU states have pledged in recent years to spend hundreds of billions of euros on strengthening the NATO military alliance, they were intensifying the already close coordination of their intelligence agencies’ reporting of common threats facing NATO.

Two months before the outbreak of COVID-19 last December, the NATO alliance published an article on its web site, titled “A new era for NATO intelligence.” It announced a “broad series of reforms to improve the quality and utility of intelligence provided to NATO’s most senior political and military leaders.” It reported that the allied NATO powers “agreed that a common approach would improve intelligence sharing, coordinate production, enhance indications and warning, and improve management and governance.”

As for Chinese officials, they were in close discussion with the EU on the pandemic. On February 13, almost a week after Trump told Woodward about discussing COVID-19 with Xi, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi traveled to Berlin to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss the virus. According to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Merkel “highly commended China's decisive and forceful response and tremendous efforts” and pledged to “support, help and work with China” on COVID-19.

It is not credible under these conditions to claim that top EU officials were unaware that US intelligence saw the pandemic as the major world threat in January and that Chinese officials had explained that COVID-19 was a deadly threat.

Yet not only did EU officials abstain from unmasking Trump’s conspiracy, of which they were well aware, but they themselves repeatedly downplayed the virus. Like Trump, they sought to avoid taking measures that would affect the flow of profits to the banks and the financial aristocracy.

They constantly equated COVID-19 with milder illnesses that are not fatal for healthy adults or children. On January 23, German Health Minister Jens Spahn infamously compared COVID-19 to the flu: “That is also a risk we have every day.” On February 24, eleven days after Merkel met Wang, Spahn again argued against establishing social distancing, this time comparing COVID-19 to the measles. Tagesschau cited him as saying: “Measles are clearly more contagious than COVID-19, but cities are not blockaded because of measles outbreaks.”

On March 5, French government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye declared, “We must remember that 80 percent of those infected [with COVID-19] only get a big cold, or at worst a big flu. … We are not going to stop the country.”

That same day, as his government advocated a herd immunity strategy, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Britain could “take it on the chin, take it all in one go and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population, without taking as many draconian measures.”

Though EU governments apart from Britain and Sweden did not admit it so openly, the entire EU sought to implement the herd immunity policy. On March 11, Merkel called a press conference and baldly asserted: “A high percentage of the population, experts say 60 to 70 percent, will be infected.” Given the EU’s population of over 510 million, this meant accepting well over 300 million cases of COVID-19 in Europe.

The exposure of Trump’s lies about COVID-19 shows that these EU officials were also misleading the public, while accepting in private a level of infections that would lead to millions of deaths.

They vindicate the warnings and the political work of the ICFI. Already, on February 28, the ICFI had issued a statement calling for “a globally coordinated emergency response to the coronavirus pandemic.” It warned of the pandemic’s vast potential scope and called for the allocation of hundreds of billions of dollars to fight the pandemic and help workers, immigrants and other people protect themselves from the virus.

Responding to the advocacy of herd immunity strategies by Johnson, Merkel, and others, the WSWS wrote: “What such statements reveal is not incompetence, but political criminality. Seventy-five years after the downfall of the Nazi Third Reich, a fascistic attitude towards the working class prevails in the financial aristocracy, mirroring that of Ancient Rome to its galley slaves: work until you die.” In its reply to Merkel, it called for massive public spending, quarantines and the independent organization of the working class in workplaces in order to fight the virus.

Only the independent intervention of the working class, in a wave of spontaneous strikes centered in Italy that spread across Europe in March, compelled EU governments to adopt lockdowns. The EU relentlessly pressed for a return to work, however, voting trillions of euros in EU and European Central Bank bailouts to the banks and major corporations, which were explicitly approved by the major German and French trade unions. At the same time, they denied small businesses and workers appropriate funding to weather the economic impact of the lockdowns.

Studies by Imperial College London published in Nature have estimated that the lockdowns saved around 3 million lives in Europe. The fact that several million lives are at risk is underscored by a 17-page internal memo prepared on March 18 by the German Interior Ministry and later published on its web site. Titled “How we get COVID-19 under control,” it asserts: “Most virologists, epidemiologists, doctors and political scientists, when asked what would happen if nothing is done, reply with a worst case scenario in which over 1 million die in 2020, in Germany alone.”

As EU officials now force children back to school and their parents back to work, the European ruling class is again conspiring against the population. Governments across the EU have declared that there will be no more lockdowns, and Spanish officials have already blurted out that their back-to-school policy leads to “practically all children” being infected.

That is to say that, behind the backs of the people, the EU is conspiring to place the lives of millions at risk in order to fund bailouts and enrich the financial aristocracy. Workers across Europe must be warned: the ruling class and its political establishment is again preparing a massive social crime. It can only be fought on the basis of the independent, international mobilization of the working class, based on a revolutionary and socialist perspective.

Wildfires turn US West Coast into an apocalyptic hellhole

Linda Rios

The massive wildfires ravaging the West Coast of the United States continue to burn unabated. More than 100 active fires are raging across the region, including the largest fires in state history for Washington and California, with the fire season is set to last until at least October or November. The state governments of California, Oregon, and Washington have all declared a state of emergency.

On Thursday night, authorities announced seven new deaths attributable to the North Complex fire in Butte County, bringing the total death toll in the state to 19. At least 25 people have now died in the fires across the West Coast, with dozens of missing people across the region and hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes.

As with the criminal mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the mass devastation wrought by the wildfires exposes the complete inability of capitalism to address any social problem. While labeled a “natural disaster,” the unprecedented destruction is in fact a product of the subordination of all aspects of society to the profit interests of the financial oligarchy.

The ruling class has done nothing to address climate change, which in recent decades has created ever deeper droughts and wildfire seasons. They have cut state budgets to the bone, leaving fire departments drastically under-staffed and ill-prepared to handle such massive fires. So far this year, wildfires across California, Oregon and Washington have burned more than 3 million acres of forestry and decimated small, mountain communities.

The fires have filled the air with ash and smoke, compromising air quality and covering the densely populated metropolitan regions of Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities in an apocalyptic orange haze akin to images of Mars. Portland, Seattle and San Francisco now have the worst air quality in the world, while Los Angeles ranks seventh-worst.

Fine particulate matter released by the fires will cause permanent lung damage to millions of residents and threaten the lives of tens of thousands of people with respiratory conditions. Those with heart, lung, or vascular diseases are now at higher risk for stroke and heart attack. The poor air quality weakens the immune systems of even healthy people, placing the region’s population of roughly 50 million people at greater risk of contracting COVID-19, while those that do contract the virus will suffer exacerbated symptoms.

According to official counts, which are generally considered significant underestimates, roughly 186,000 homeless people live in California, Oregon and Washington, many of whom completely lack access to indoor shelter and are now forced to endure unbearable breathing conditions on the streets. The limited supply of hotel vouchers provided by the Democrat-led state governments have quickly dried up, forcing thousands more people to live in their cars.

The majority of the fires began as the result of dry lightning strikes, triggered by record-breaking, triple-digit heat waves. The extreme heat, combined with very low to no humidity, and the drying out of thousands of acres of forestry, have created “tinderbox” conditions. These arid conditions also encourage the infestation of certain types of beetles, which weaken and kill trees, which in turn feed the wildfires.

The speed at which the fires have spread has also broken records, with the Bear Creek fire in California tore through roughly 230,000 acres in approximately 24 hours. Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at University of California, Los Angeles, told the New York Times, “It’s really shocking to see the number of fast-moving, extremely large and destructive fires simultaneously burning. I’ve spoken to maybe two dozen fire and climate experts over the last 48 hours and pretty much everyone is at a loss of words. There’s certainly been nothing in living memory on this scale.”

California

Across the state, at least 20 fatalities have been reported, over 3.1 million acres burned, and over 6,000 structures have been destroyed. To date, there have been 7,700 wildfire “incidents” so far this year.

On Thursday, the August Complex Fire, located 150 miles north of San Francisco, became the largest fire in the state’s history at 746,755 acres, far surpassing the Mendocino Fire of 2018, which burned 459,123 acres. The fire complex, only 24 percent contained, is the result of the merger of multiple fires and is now larger than the state of Rhode Island.

Several other major fires continue to burn in Northern California, including the North Complex fire in the foothills to the Sierra mountains, northwest of Sacramento, and the Creek Fire, north east of Fresno, both of which have led to the evacuation of thousands of people.

In Southern California, the SQF Lightning Complex has burned 35,674 acres and remains wholly uncontained despite burning for nearly a month. The Apple Fire, which began on July 31 and is 95 percent contained, has been one of the longest burning fires. The Dolan fire has burned 73,089 acres and is 40 percent contained. The Lake Fire is 90 percent contained and burned 12 structures. The Valley Fire, east of San Diego, has burned nearly 18,000 acres and is only 39 percent contained.

Oregon

With 39 fires burning through the state, over 500,000 residents have been evacuated from their homes throughout parts of Oregon, representing over 10 percent of the state’s population. At least 14 people have been killed, almost 1 million acres have been burned, and hundreds of homes and commercial buildings have been destroyed.

Portland mayor Ted Wheeler issued an Emergency Order on Thursday as “extreme wildfire conditions threatening lives and property” grew closer to the metropolitan area of 2.4 million people. Saturated with smoke from the 39 fires raging across Oregon, according to the Office of Emergency Management, the cities air quality index registered at 379 on Friday, a level that can be described as “hazardous” to human health. The air quality is currently considered the worst of all major cities in the world.

The city order closes parks, directs homeless people to "relocate as quickly as possible to safer areas," and activates evacuation sites for fire victims. The order did not provide any resources or safe evacuation areas for the city's homeless.

The Beachie Creek and Riverside fires, close to the town of Estacada—24 miles outside of Portland—were threatening to merge on Friday, as they are separated by only one mile. A merger of the wildfires would increase the intensity due to “plume dominated” fire behavior. The towns of Estacada and nearby Molalla have been evacuated.

With nearly 3,000 firefighters deployed against fires tearing through rural areas, several towns in the western part of the state have been completely decimated. The chief of the Oregon Department of Forestry estimates that another 3,000 firefighters are needed, highlighting the urgent need for more firefighters and resources to combat the fires. “This could be the greatest loss of human lives and property due to wildfire in our state’s history,” Oregon Governor Kate Brown warned at a recent press conference. “We have never seen this amount of uncontained fire across our state.”

Washington

There are approximately 15 active fires in Washington state, with over 500,000 acres having been burned in the span of just a few days. The Pearl Hill and the Cold Springs Canyon fires are threatening to merge together. A 1-year-old boy was tragically killed in the Cold Springs Fire, and both of his parents are still in critical condition with severe burns. The fire is only 25 percent contained at present, while the Pearl Hill fire is 50 percent contained. In total, over 200 homes and structures have been lost with close to 800 more being threatened.

The Olympic Peninsula has been especially affected by poor air quality, as a dense and massive plume of smoke has moved north from the Oregon fires. Cooler winds are expected soon, which will bring more smoke particles from the southwest.

California, Oregon and Washington are all dominated by the Democratic Party, which has overseen decades of unending budget cuts. These cuts have deepened as a result of the economic fallout wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, which will further undermine the already insufficient funding for much needed resources to combat the growing number of fires.

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom supported the cutting of $681 million from this year’s state budget for environmental protection. Oregon lawmakers recently proposed $400 million in budget cuts, as a budget writing subcommittee “kicked off” their July meeting by proposing the delay of much-needed wildfire equipment purchases.

Scientists have been warning for decades that climate change will produce catastrophic consequences for the world’s population. The devastating wildfires gripping the West Coast mark a qualitative deepening of a years-long process of worsening wildfire seasons and follow similar record-setting wildfires across Australia last year. The underlying cause of these immense crises is the capitalist system, in which all of society’s resources are controlled by a tiny layer of parasitic oligarchs.

The massive social dislocation caused by the wildfires, like the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, are a testament to the inability of capitalism to serve the interests of the majority of the population. Only through the socialist transformation of society will the working class be able to stop the devastating wildfires, halt and reverse climate change, put an end to the pandemic and ensure that the social needs of the working class take precedence over private profit.

As pandemic death toll approaches 200,000, American oligarchs celebrate their wealth

Niles Niemuth

The United States is passing through a historic social, economic and political crisis. The death toll from the coronavirus pandemic is nearing 200,000 and could double by the end of the year. Democratic forms of rule are breaking down, with the Trump administration intensifying its open incitement of fascistic violence. Tens of millions are unemployed and face impoverishment and homelessness. Wildfires are burning out of control on the US West Coast.

It is impossible to understand any of these processes outside of the massive levels of social inequality. The United States is an oligarchy, with a concentration of wealth that is historically unprecedented.

The release of the Forbes 400 billionaire report gives a sense of this reality. The richest 400 individuals (0.00012 percent of the population) now possess more than $3 trillion.

The report declares: “Pandemic be damned: America’s 400 richest are worth a record $3.2 trillion, up $240 billion from a year ago, aided by a stock market that has defied the virus.” The surge in the stock market, underwritten by the multi-trillion-dollar CARES Act passed in March, has filled the already overflowing coffers of the super-rich, who now hold claim to the equivalent of 15 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Even the numbers provided by Forbes, based on figures from July 24, are a major underestimation of the current reality. Since that time, the wealth of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person, has shot up to more than $200 billion, while the wealth of Tesla CEO Elon Musk has grown to over $100 billion. Bezos’s holdings are three million times greater than the annual income of the typical American household.

The staggering level of inequality reflected in the Forbes list is the central feature of American society, which is defined by the transfer of obscene and ever larger amounts of wealth from the working class into the hands of a tiny financial oligarchy through tax cuts, bailouts, the slashing of wages and the clawing back of pensions and other benefits won by workers in the struggles of the 20th century.

The latest rise in the billionaire’s wealth is not based on any exertion of labor but on the inflation of the stock market, with trillions of dollars in debt from the Federal Reserve and Congress which will be paid off the backs of the working class. Everything has been subordinated to ensuring that the Dow Jones and S&P 500 rise to new heights.

It would take the median American, who earns $33,000 per year, 97 million years to earn as much as is controlled by the wealthiest Americans. Consider what $3.2 trillion could pay for in a year:

• In the 2016-17 school year, $739 billion was spent on public elementary and secondary schools, providing education for 50.8 million students and employing 3.2 million teachers and another 3.2 million school employees.

• The Congressional Budget Office projects that the federal government will spend $1.3 trillion on health care programs this year.

• Diabetes cost the US economy $327 billion in 2017, with insulin accounting for $40 billion of this total. The average cost of insulin, critical for the survival of diabetes patients, is up to $6,000 per year and continues to rise.

• According to the US Department of Agriculture, $800 billion was spent by Americans on food and beverages for consumption at home in 2019. The federal government provided $60 billion of this in food stamps for the poorest and most vulnerable to gain access to essential nutrition.

• The 2018 fire season cost $24 billion, driven by record devastation including the destruction of the city of Paradise, California. All told, extreme weather and climate disasters that year cost $91 billion.

Added up, the wealth of just 400 people could pay for an entire year of public education, health care, nutrition and disaster relief for millions of Americans. The UN recently reported that 132 million more people will go hungry worldwide this year due to the pandemic, driving the number of undernourished close to 1 billion.

Despite the burning need to save millions from malnourishment and starvation, the World Food Program faces a shortage $5 billion in its effort to deliver food to those in need. The wealth of the 400 richest people in the US is more than 600 times this amount.

Every element of politics is subordinated to the interests of this social layer. It is for this reason that the danger of the pandemic was initially covered up, the bailout of Wall Street was organized and the back-to-work and back-to-school campaigns were implemented.

The systematic looting of society left the country vulnerable to such an outbreak. The subordination of health care to the predatory interests of for-profit health care companies and insurance giants turned nursing homes for the elderly into death chambers and left nurses and doctors without the necessary personal protective equipment and other medical equipment—such as ventilators—needed to treat patients.

The drive of the Trump administration to fascism and the cultivation of extreme right cannot be understood except in relation to the class interests of the oligarchy, representing that faction of the ruling class which seeks to smash outright any sign of opposition from the working class. On the other side of the coin, the Democrats represent that faction that has sought to use the politics of race and identity to smother the class struggle while fighting for access to positions and greater wealth.

As only the latest example, the racially fixated New York Times published its “Faces of Power” list this week, noting that too many people in “influential positions” are white. What difference would it make if everyone one of them was black, Hispanic, Asian or Native American? In fact, the report found that a majority of police chiefs in the largest cities are black or Hispanic. Cold comfort for the young black men who are disproportionately killed by police.

The obsession by upper-middle class academics and journalists on race and gender is a distraction from the grotesque levels of wealth that define social relations in American society. This form of politics has nothing to do with the interests of the working class. Instead, it seeks to harness anger over racism and social inequality to advance the interests of a small layer of minorities in the next 9 percent who want a larger piece of the pie hoarded by the top 1 percent.

At every point, science, reason and human solidarity collide with the economic interests of the current rulers of society—the oligarchs, the parasitic masters of finance capital. It is impossible to defend democratic rights or save lives without confronting this issue.

Mass problems such as the COVID-19 pandemic, increasingly deadly fires fueled by climate change, and global hunger require mass solutions. The problems of mankind cannot be resolved without breaking the stranglehold of the capitalist oligarchy in every country. The wealthy must be expropriated and directed toward meeting social needs. The large corporations and banks transformed by the working class into democratically controlled institutions oriented to meeting human need and not private profit.

The social inequality that characterizes capitalist society—and all the policies that flow from it—is fueling an immense growth of social anger and working class struggle. These struggles must be organized and united on the basis of a conscious, revolutionary and socialist program.

What Motivated Chinese Military Drills Near the Taiwan Strait?

Jack Kai Yui Wong

President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan continues to reject Beijing’s sovereignty claims as well as the offer of “one country, two systems.” In response, Chinese President Xi Jinping has called the possibility of Taiwanese independence a "dead-end."

Verbal hostility from Beijing towards Taiwan is not unusual. However, in July and August this year, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched various military drills, a lot of which took place near the Taiwan Strait. The PLA drills occurred between mid-July and mid-August near the Taiwan Strait. It included live-fire maritime target attack drills, a beach assault in Hainan Province, and coordinated command and sea-crossing assault drills off Fujian Province. This commentary evaluates the possible intentions behind those provocations.

Diplomatic Outreach

Two broad motivations can be discerned. First, China wants to deter Taiwan from formally establishing more diplomatic relationships as well as strengthening its combat readiness. Second, China hopes to deter the US from conducting any freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) near the Chinese coast.

Taiwan has achieved some diplomatic breakthroughs in the past two months. On 1 July, it established a formal diplomatic relationship with the self-claimed East African state, Somaliland. Somaliland has hitherto lacked any international recognition, while Taiwan only has official diplomatic relations with 15 countries. This unconventional bonding met with firm opposition from China.

Taiwan has also announced the reopening of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Guam in the hope of increasing economic and cultural exchanges with the Western Pacific region. Guam, a US territory, hosts the Anderson Air Force Base, which is the backbone of the US military forward presence in the Indo-Pacific region. Both these diplomatic engagements reveal Taiwan’s determination to explore all opportunities to advance its formal, global recognition. This undoubtedly touches a nerve with Beijing.

Military Preparedness

Meanwhile, within combat readiness, the Taiwanese Ministry of National Defence frequently organises comprehensive training exercises to sharpen war-fighting and situational awareness abilities against possible Chinese aggression. On 2 July, Taiwan’s military completed a large-scale anti-landing drill in Taichung City. Two weeks later, it conducted the 36th edition of the annual “Han Kuang" live-fire exercise with more than 8,000 personnel from all service branches. Taipei had also reached a deal with the Pentagon on the sale of 444 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missile systems to reinforce the country’s air defence capability.

Taiwan’s interest in consolidating its combat and defence power is not acceptable to Beijing, which explains the rationale behind the PLA drills.

US-led Naval Exercises

The drills also serve as Beijing’s response to recent US-led naval exercises. In a span of three weeks, two aircraft carriers carried out a FONOP in the South China Sea (SCS). The USS Nimitz carrier strike group conducted a passing exercise with three Indian warships in the Indian Ocean, and the navies of the US, Japan, and Australia completed joint training in the Philippine Sea.

These FONOPs not only undermine Beijing’s claim to most of the SCS but also imply that the US Navy is capable of reaching all ports. In response, the PLA demonstrated their anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) ability by launching a DF-26 anti-ship ballistic missile in a cross-regional confrontational exercise, and staging an air defence firing exercise in China’s Guangdong Province. These drills demonstrate Beijing’s willingness to fortify China’s ‘near-seas’, and were intended as warnings to the US Navy for leading joint exercises with China's neighbours.

Looking Ahead

Tsai’s administration has recently proposed a 10.2 per cent increase in defence spending for the next fiscal year. Besides, Taiwan works closely with the US to upgrade its air force. The Taiwanese defence company, Aerial Space Industrial Corp, has opened a maintenance centre for F-16 fighter jets, based on an agreement signed with the US defence conglomerate, Lockheed Martin. Additionally, an indigenous submarine project to bolster the navy’s capability against Chinese surface vessels has also been launched.

The PLA’s rapid modernisation, displayed for example in the new Type 075 amphibious assault ship sea trials, has motivated the Tsai administration to make efforts at augmenting its own capabilities. Nevertheless, Taiwan can resist potential Chinese aggression only to a certain extent. Indeed, the US has to provide more military support to ensure Taiwan prevails if the PLA strikes.

However, the primary element in keeping Taiwan safe is Taiwanese unity. In the past, senior Taiwanese military and intelligence officers ended up in prison for selling classified information to China. Beijing’s “united front” work has then achieved significant results. If the Taiwanese cannot unite themselves to counter Chinese pressure and infiltration, no shots will need to be fired.

Fourteen Martyrs in the Struggle Against Racist Terror and Trumpism-Fascism

Paul Street

The wannabe fascist dictator Donald Trump, his personal attorney general William Barr, and the rest of the broader right-wing United States political and propaganda machine absurdly portray the remarkable anti-racist and anti-police violence protest wave that arose across the nation after the lynching of George Floyd as “radical Left terrorism.”

A federal whistleblower has just reported that the Trump administration ordered the Department of Homeland Security this summer to suppress reports of right-wing terrorism and play up supposed case cases of left-wing terrorism.

So, let’s be clear about who the real terrorists have been and who has been harmed by political terrorism this summer. The main perpetrators by far and away have been white gendarmes and vigilantes, some clearly motivated by the hateful and paranoid rhetoric of the nation’s virulently racist president and his white nationalist cohorts. The primary victims have been civil rights and social justice protesters.

Fourteen of these victims have so far paid the ultimate price, dying in the line of anti-racist and anti-fascist citizenship duty.

Let us pay homage to these martyrs in the struggle social justice, racial equality, and human rights. We must honor their sacrifice and show that they did not die in vain by fighting to stop Donald Trump and his backers and collaborators from consolidating neofascist, white-supremacist rule in the world’s most powerful (and dangerous) nation.

Calvin Horton: “Two Types of Justice in America”

Calvin Horton, a 43-year old Black man and the father of seven children, was killed by a white pawnshop owner who blasted his shotgun into a protest crowd in Minneapolis on the evening of May 27th, 2020. Horton died from wounds to the chest and upper extremities during unrest that broke out after the horrifying video of George Floyd’s May 25th murder by the white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin went viral online. Calvin was shot in the back.

“We’re absolutely heartbroken,” Horton’s daughter, Cadaezhah Horton, 20, said. “And we’re left to feel as if we’re the ones in prison.”

“The only thing I want is justice,” said Horton’s mother, Mae Roberts. “Nothing is being done for my son.”

Horton’s killer was not charged with murder.

“We seem to be reminded over and over again that there are two types of justice in America, one for black America and one for white America,” said Horton family attorney Ben Crump.

James Scurlock: “All Because He Decided to Protest Against Racism”

James Scurlock, a 22-year-old Black man, was shot to death by a white bar owner during anti-racist protests in Omaha, Nebraska on the evening of May 30, 2020. Scurlock died while trying to restrain the bar owner, who had pulled a gun and fired in response to the presence of crowds outside his establishment. Authorities refused to charge the bar owner for murder.

“Last night I lost a son, my wife lost a son, my kids lost a brother,” Scurlock’s father told reporters. “His daughter lost a father. All because he decided to protest against racism. “

Dorian Murrel: “His Child Will Never Meet Him”

Dorian Murrel, an 18-year-old Black man, was shot to death by a white man (Tyler Newby) in Indianapolis during a George Floyd protest in the early morning of June 1st. “He was an awesome young man,” Murrel’s mother told reporters last August. “He was into sports, he was happy, he had a beautiful smile, and he knew how to make everybody in the room laugh. He has a child on the way. His child will never meet him.”

Jorge Gomez: “Tell Your Son’s Story”

Jorge Gomez, 25, was shot dead by four police officers during a George Floyd protest in Las Vegas, Nevada on June 1st. Police claimed that Gomez raised a gun at them. Gomez was killed while running and had previously been knocked to the ground with impact munitions. Shortly before his murder, Gomez went up to hug a protester who told the story of how her son had been killed by police four years earlier. “I’m sorry about your loss,” Gomez said. “Tell your son’s story.”

David McAtee: A “Beloved” Restaurant Owner Defending His Business and Family

David McAtee, owned and operated YaYa’s BBQ Shack, a popular barbeque restaurant in Louisville’s predominantly Black West End. A “beloved fixture” in his community, he “had a reputation for generosity, including serving food at no cost in his restaurant to police officers and members of his community who were struggling financially. Having de-escalated potentially violent situations on multiple occasions, he was also known as a calming presence in his neighborhood.”

McAtee was fatally shot in the chest by a Kentucky National Guard soldier on the evening of June 1. The National Guard was deployed alongside Louisville police to impose a 9 p.m. curfew in response to protests sparked by the police killings of Floyd and Louisville’s Breonna Taylor.

McAtee was killed because he resorted to armed self-defense after police shot into his restaurant, nearly hitting his young niece in the head. McAtee was murdered by the state for resisting an unwarranted military assault on his property and family.

No charges have been filed against his killer or the officers who attacked his restaurant and its patrons.

Italia Marie Kelly: “She Was Trying to Protest Peacefully”

Italia Marie Kelly, a 21-year old Black woman, was gunned down by a young white man (Parker Merlin-Belz) after attending a protest at a Wal-Mart parking lot in Davenport, Iowa on June 1st. “She was trying to protest peacefully,” her mother said, adding the Kelly “died of the kind of senseless violence she protested…We need to stop the racism in the city…That’s why she was here, trying to get the message across and it ended her life.”

Sean Monterossa: “Shot Down in Cold Blood”

Sean Monterrosa, a 22-year old man of Argentinian ancestry, was shot in the back of his head by the white police officer Jarret Ton in the early morning of June 2 in Vallejo, California. Monterrosa, who was kneeling at the time he was shot, was carrying a tool that Tonn “mistook for a gun.”

Tonn has a long record of excessive force, as does his department. “Over the last decade,” Wikipedia reports, “Vallejo police have shot 32 people, 18 of whom were killed, in which time no officer has been fired for their role in a shooting. As of May 2019, the department had the highest per capita rate of police shootings in Northern California. Vallejo police killed people at a per capita rate over four times as high as neighboring city with a similar population and high violent crime rate.”

Less than an hour before Monterrosa was murdered by Vajello detective Jarret Tonn, he texted his sister a petition demanding justice for George Floyd.

Monterrosa’s family has filed suit. “Here,” the family’s attorney said, “is a 22-year-old kid who is now dead who appeared to be surrendering and he is shot down in cold blood.”

Robert Forbes: Killed on His Knees

On June 3, Robert Forbes, a 55-year-old Black man and protester was hit by a car driven by a middle-aged white man in Bakersfield, California. Forbes died three days later.

“When we got to Oak and California Streets, everybody was marching,” an eyewitness reported. Forbes “went to the sidewalk and got on his knees. Next thing you know, a car with its lights off hit him.”

Witnesses reported that the car sped up as it approached Forbes. Some of the driver’s tattoos are associated with white supremacist groups.

No charges were filed against the driver. The Bakersfield police contest protesters’ eyewitness accounts of how Forbes died.

Tyler Gerth: “A Vocal Supporter of the Black Lives Matter Movement”

In late June 27-year old Tyler Gerth was shot to death while documenting a Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Louisville. Gerth was a passionate white ally of the anti-racist struggle. The killer shot into a large crowd, injuring another protester. The Louisville Courier Journal reported that “Gerth had become a vocal supporter of the ongoing protests against racism and police brutality and a strong supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement.”

“In everything Tyler did to fight for the outcast, for those at the margins of society, those facing injustice and inequality,” the minister who presided over his July 3rd funeral said, “he did it not for himself, but for others.”

“It was this sense of justice,” Gerth’s family said in a statement, “that drove Tyler to be part of the peaceful demonstrations advocating for the destruction of the systemic racism within our society.”

Summer Taylor: ‘Standing Up for Anyone Who Needed to be Stood Up For”

Summer Taylor, 24, was killed by a speeding car on a protest-closed section of U.S Interstate Highway I-5 on July 4^th. Taylor was a strong white ally of the Black Lives movement. Taylor and another victim of the automobile assault, Diaz Love, were described at a July 7th vigil as “drawn to the protests because they believed that Black lives matter and that it was important to do everything in their power to support Black lives and fight for them.”

“They were always the first ones to call people out for being sexist, racist — standing up for queer and trans people, basically anyone who needed to be stood up for, they were the ones there that were so vocal,” a friend told the New York Times.

Writing from her hospital bed, Diaz Love reported days after her assault that “my Facebook is filled with death threats.” (Facebook is rife with fascists.)

Garret Foster: “He Fought Against Injustice”

Garret Foster, 28, was shot to death at a Black Lives Matter protest in Austin, Texas on the evening of Saturday, July 25^th. His killer was active U.S. Army Sergeant Daniel Perry.

Foster was legally carrying an assault weapon, an expression of his determination to provide armed defense for anti-racist protesters who faced regular death-threats from white-supremacists in and around Austin.

Sgt. Perry claims he came across the protest by accident while working as a ride share driver, and that he only opened fire in “self-defense” after Foster allegedly pointed an AK-47 at him. There are reasons to doubt his defense. In June, when Trump tweeted that “protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes” protesting in Oklahoma would face “a much different scene” than protesters in New York or Minneapolis, Perry responded as follows: “Send them to Texas and we will show them why we say don’t mess with Texas.”

Perry has faced no charges for acting lethally on his anti-protester sentiments.

Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum: A Presidentially Triggered Teen Fascist’s Double Murder

Joseph (“JoJo”) Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, were murdered by the white teen fascist Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin in the early morning of Tuesday, August 25^th. A big Trump and police fan, Rittenhouse answered the call of a local fascist militia, the “Kenosha Guard,” in response to protests and riots sparked by white Kenosha policeman Rusten Shesky’s savage attempted murder of the young Black man Jacob Blake.

With the chilling approval and support of militarized Kenosha County police, Rittenhouse patrolled Kenosha’s riot zone with a military assault weapon that he was too young to legally own. Rittenhouse shot his first victim, Rosenbaum, five times.

As one friend wrote, Rosenbaum “gave his life to further equality & justice. He didn’t deserve to be slaughtered by the ignorance & hate this incompetent president foments. I’m saddened & sickened by what this country has become.”

When protesters tried to disarm the active shooter, knocking him to the ground, the teen fascist turned and murdered Huber, a skateboarder, in an assault widely viewed on cell phone video. The next day hie girlfriend Hannah Gittings fought through tears to tell protesters that “Anthony Huber was an amazing person” who “hand nothing but love for this city. That’s we were out here last night. And he took down an armed gunman with nothing but a skateboard.”

After committing his second homicide of the night, Rittenhouse walked freely past Kenosha County military police with his arms in the air while protesters futilely told the gendarmes that the fascist adolescent had just shot two people.

The police who let Rittenhouse go unmolested and leave town are commanded by David Beth, a vicious, moronic, and white racist-fascist county sheriff who said the following in response to the arrest of Black shoplifting suspects in 2018:

“I’m to the point where I think society has to come to a threshold where there are some people that aren’t worth saving. We need to build warehouses to put these people into it and lock them away for the rest of their lives…. Let’s put them in jail. Let’s stop them from, truly, at least some of these males, going out and getting 10 other women pregnant and having small children. Let’s put them away. At some point, we have to stop being politically correct… These people have to be warehoused, no recreational time in jails. We put them away for the rest of their lives so the rest of us can be better.”

After he was belatedly apprehended and charged with murder, the young terrorist has been defended by no less of a fascist than his very own beloved U.S. president, Donald “White Power” Trump. Rittenhouse has been proclaimed a hero by the nation’s alt-right and much of its mainstream (Republican) right-wing, including Fatherland News anchor and future white nationalist presidential candidate Tucker Carlson. Nazi cultist Anne Coulter tweeted that she wants Rittenhouse as her next president. Amerikaner Trumpenvolk are streaming contributions to the white-nationalist teenybopper’s legal fascist defense fund.

Trump and his fascism-mainstreaming Republican allies bear no small responsibility for Rittenhouse’s crimes Damaged white men and boys like Rittenhouse, Rusten Shesky, Derek Chauvin, Jarret Tonn, Daniel Perry, Aaron Danielson (see below),James Fields (below), Jeremy Joseph Christian (below, Patrick Crusius (below), and Robert Bowers (below) have been egged into violent racist-fascist frenzies by the hateful rhetoric of the president, the now Trumpified/white-nationalist Republican Party (which featured a wealthy white couple who criminally menaced Black Lives Matter protesters in St. Louis at its 2020 national convention) , and neofascist Big Brothers and Big Sisters like Carlson and Coulter. These malevolent terrorists tell armed Trumpenvolk that the Great White Fatherland is under existential assault from Communist “terroists” masquerading as civil and human rights while under the control of evil “outside forces” linked to the supposedly “radical Left” (actually centrist corporate) Democrats.

On his path to infamy, Rittenhouse became a MAGA-boy who travelled from northeastern Illinois to Des Moines, Iowa to hear his Dear Leader speak last January. A CSPAN photo shows Rittenhouse standing in the Trump rally’s front row. The future murderer, set to be tried as an adult, gazed in rapt adoration at the indecent beast who tells police to “take the gloves off” when dealing with Black criminals, who fantasizes about attacking immigrants and protesters with “vicious dogs,” and who is clearly counting on those he calls “my Second Amendment people” to intimidate protesters and keep him in office if voters and (and supposedly “Marxist” [LOL] Democrats) try to “steal” the White House from the Chosen One this year.

Michael Forest Reinoehl: A State-Sanctioned Fascist Execution

Eight days ago, a Federal Fugitive Task Force murdered Michael Forest Reinoehl, suspected of killing a Patriot Prayer-affiliated white-supremacist in Portland, Oregon. The flat-out police- state execution of Reinoehl was meant to send a message: defending Black lives and fighting back against fascist thugs is punishable by death, ordered from the highest level.

Reinoehl was marked for assassination because he used legally protected armed force to prevent the far-right terrorist Arron “Jay” Danielson from murdering one of Reinhoehl’s Black comrades. Danielson was a longtime fascist streetfighter who spent much of his last day violently attacking anti-racist social justice protesters. He was armed with a can of bear mace, a retractable metal baton, and a handgun. His confrontation with Reinoehl occurred as pro-Trump militia members drove (to Trump’s applause) pickup trucks through downtown Portland, shooting paintballs and pepper spray and engaging in fistfights with civil rights and anti-police violence protesters.

The assassination of Reinoehl was rapidly applauded by the white nationalist Attorney General Barr, who absurdly said that the killing of an “admitted Antifa member” was “a significant accomplishment in the ongoing effort to restore law and order.” (There is no membership organization called “Antifa.”).

As the World Socialist Wes Site (WSWS) observes, Barr offered a standard and longstanding fascist police state rationalization for the hit-job:

“…Barr justified Reinoehl’s extrajudicial killing by declaring that he had ‘attempted to escape arrest and produced a firearm.’ This is a well-known formulation that has often been used to justify police assassinations…Such claims have been used to whitewash the killing of political opponents, including the FBI’s efforts to destroy the left-wing Black Panther Party in the 1960s and 1970s…Historian Edward B. Westermann notes that under Germany’s Nazi regime as well as the preceding Weimar Republic, the phrase ‘shot while trying to escape’ was frequently used ‘to describe the killing of the regime’s putative political and racial enemies…’ He explains that ‘in many cases, the phrase normalized the act of murder by providing a veneer of procedural legality that served as both a euphemism and a justification for murder.’”

The WSWS elaborates, framing Reinhold’s execution in the streets as part of a broader fascist evolution in the Trump administration’s conduct:

“The murder of Reinoehl occurred the same week that Jeremy Logan, co-chair of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, was kidnapped and placed in an unmarked van, then detained for more than a day by federal agents….The methods used by the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile—snatch squads, disappearances and extrajudicial murders of political opponents—are appearing in the United States…Reinoehl’s death was a state-sanctioned killing, carried out with the support of the Justice Department and the White House. Just minutes before Reinoehl’s death was announced, President Donald Trump tweeted a demand that the police take action to apprehend Danielson’s killer. ‘Do your job and do it fast. Everybody knows who this thug is,’ Trump declared.”

The Real Terrorists

This fascist crime-boss president, who (as we have just learned) admits that he collaborated with the demented Republican journalist Bob Woodward to deliberately downplay the threat posed by COVID-19 last April, has been smearing peaceful civil rights protesters as Marxist and anarchist “terrorists” who want to “destroy America” and turn the nation into a “socialist Hell.” This is not just fascist dog-whistling. It is a call for far-right bloodshed, something to take very seriously as we head into a certain-to-be contested election that Trump recklessly and absurdly says he “can lose only if it is rigged” – an open incitement to civil war if and when the Electoral College doesn’t go his way. Talk about terrorism!

The real American terrorists are located in the nation’s ever more explicitly fascist right-wing, from the Proud Boys Patriot Prayer, and the Kenosha Guard et al. up through local police, national guard units, FOX News, much of the Republican Party, some sections of the U.S. military, and the president himself. The death count resulting from the racially disparate pandemic that the that genocidal racist Trump has deliberately lied about and fanned from coast to coast will soon pass 200,000. A half million or more Americans, disproportionately poor and non-white will have perished by Inauguration Day (January 20, 2020) next year.

An untold number of Americans have been murdered by Trump-inspired racists and fascists since the neoliberal Weimar Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (super-wealthy champions of the Inauthentic Opposition and Fake Resistance) ushered the Orange Malignance into the White House in 2016-17. These earlier victims include two men (Ricky John Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche) killed by a white-supremacist (Jeremy Joseph Christian) for defending two Muslim teenage girls from white-supremacist abuse in Portland, Oregon in May of 2017; Heather Heyer, the young white anti-racist murdered by the white supremacist James Fields. in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017; the twenty-two people killed by the white racist-nativist Patrick Crusius in El Paso, Texas on August 3, 2019; and the eleven people slaughtered by the white racist-nativist shooter Robert Bowers in a Pittsburgh synagogue of October 2018.

“Less Lethal” Police State Fascism

Many more have been injured and maimed by the white-Amerikaner police-state this summer. As special USA Today report issued nearly one month after the Floyd murder told a disturbing story three weeks into the George Floyd uprising:

‘In a joint investigation into law enforcement actions at protests across the country after George Floyd’s death in police custody, Kaiser Health News and USA TODAY found that some officers appear to have violated their department’s own rules when they fired “less lethal” projectiles at protesters who were for the most part peacefully assembled.

At least 60 protesters sustained serious head injuries, including a broken jaw, traumatic brain injuries and blindness, based on news reports, interviews with victims and witnesses and a list compiled by Scott Reynhout, a Los Angeles researcher.

Photos and videos posted on social media show protesters with large bruises or deep gashes on the throat, hands, arms, legs, chest, rib cage and stomach, all caused by what law enforcement calls “kinetic impact projectiles” and bystanders call “rubber bullets.”

At least 20 people have suffered severe eye injuries, including seven people who lost an eye, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology.  Photographer Linda Tirado, 37, lost an eye after being hit by a foam projectile in Minneapolis. Brandon Saenz, 26, lost an eye and several teeth after being hit with a “sponge round” in Dallas. Leslie Furcron, 59, was placed in a medically induced coma after she was shot between the eyes with a “bean bag” round in La Mesa, California.

Twenty-seven-year-old Derrick Sanderlin helped defuse a confrontation at a protest in San Jose, California, on May 29. While he was trying to protect a young woman from police, he was hit with a projectile that ruptured a testicle and his doctor said may leave him infertile.

With terms like “foam,” “sponge” and “bean bag,” the projectiles may sound harmless. They’re not.’

Last July11th, one of Trump’s own federal paramilitaries in Portland, Oregon nearly killed a young protester (Donavan La Bella) holding his arms above his head with a “crowd control munition.” The savage shooting fractured the protester’s’ skull and required him to undergo facial reconstruction surgery.

Nine days later, federal agents in the same city shot Lewis and Clark College’s History Department chair Maureen Healy in the head with an “impact munition.” Ms. Healy, 52, was attending a peaceful Black Lives Matter rally. She is an expert on the rise of fascism in 20th Century and Eastern Europe.