Australian government declares it “illegal” for citizens to return from India

Oscar Grenfell

The Liberal-National Coalition government announced on Friday that Australian citizens stranded in India, where the coronavirus pandemic has spiraled out of control, would commit a criminal offence if they attempted to return home, punishable by massive fines and imprisonment.

Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison in Sydney, Australia, Tuesday, April 27, 2021. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

The edict is a blatant attack on democratic rights and condemns thousands to possible infection and even death. It has highlighted the absence of constitutional protections for key civil liberties, as well as the callous and nationalist response of the Australian ruling elite, and the major imperialist powers, to the humanitarian disaster unfolding in India and other impoverished countries that have become epicentres of the global pandemic.

The ban, which will remain in place until May 15 and could be extended further, is based on provisions in the Biosecurity Act. It grants the federal health minister draconian powers in the event of a health crisis. Penalties for defying the orders of the minister range from fines of up to $66,000 to five years’ imprisonment.

The blockade takes to a new level the criminal indifference of the government, along with the Labor Party opposition, to the plight of tens of thousands of Australian citizens and residents who have been stranded abroad during the pandemic.

There are currently some 34,000 Australians overseas who have registered that they wish to return. The government has consistently refused to organise adequate charter flights for their repatriation and provided only pittances in financial aid. It has maintained stringent caps on the number of international flights permitted to arrive in the country each week, as a result of the failure of the state and federal authorities to develop an effective quarantine program.

A number of those trapped abroad have been reduced to pauperism, while the majority have been compelled to try to book exorbitantly-priced flights from private airlines, which are often subject to repeated cancellations. In some countries, one-way international flights to Australia have cost as much as $35,000.

While the arrival caps have effectively blocked thousands from being repatriated, Friday’s decision was the first time that the government has instituted a blanket ban on citizens returning from a foreign country. According to some legal experts, the blockade may be the first such measure by any government against its citizens since the pandemic began.

Much of the commentary on the ban has focused on its blatantly discriminatory character and its clear racist undertones. No such blockade was instituted on returnees from Britain or the United States, even when the per capita infection rates there were higher than the current rate in India.

The ban on citizens returning from India, however, is an attack on citizenship rights as a whole and establishes a precedent that could be applied to Australians trapped in any other country.

The potentially tragic consequences of the ban are demonstrated by the situation in India. The country is recording nearly 400,000 COVID-19 infections per day, while the daily death toll is approaching 4,000. But these official figures are a gross understatement. Real daily infections are likely in the millions. Journalists and rights organisations have documented thousands of fatalities that have not been included in the official toll.

The country’s health care system has collapsed, with many severely-ill patients unable to receive a hospital bed and a major shortage of oxygen supplies required to keep those stricken by the disease alive.

The eight to ten thousand Australian citizens who will not be able to return face the real risk of contracting a potentially-deadly illness, which they may not be treated for.

Those affected included the very young and the elderly, who are at a particular risk. Drisya Dilin, an Australian hospital administrator, has told the media that she dropped her daughter off in India, with the child’s grandparents, before the pandemic began. The ban means there is no immediate prospect of securing the five-year-old girl’s return.

Other Australians have spoken to the media about fears for their elderly parents, who are also trapped. Australia has a large Indian community, accounting around 2.6 percent of the population, or well over half a million people, many of whom are affected by the tragedy unfolding on the subcontinent.

The government is well aware of the possible consequences of the ban. This morning it was reported that Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly warned Prime Minister Scott Morrison and other senior ministers that the blockade could result in citizens falling ill without the prospect of treatment, as well as a “worst case scenario,” i.e., their death. Kelly, however, indicated his support for the ban, because of Australia’s “limited” quarantine facilities.

It is an indictment of the federal and state governments that well over a year into the pandemic they have not instituted any effective quarantine program. The vast majority of international arrivals are still being sent to private hotels, where they are compelled to isolate for a fortnight at their own expense.

All governments have rejected calls from health experts, beginning early last year, for the construction of purpose-built quarantines. Time and again, epidemiologists have warned that hotels are inadequate because their airflow systems are often not capable of preventing the transmission of airborne viruses and they were not constructed to serve as medical facilities.

The hotel quarantines, moreover, have been staffed by low-paid and often casual workers, some of whom must work at multiple facilities to make ends meet. In many cases, they have not been provided with adequate personal protective equipment.

Every significant COVID-19 outbreak in Australia over the past six months or more has been linked to a “leak” from a hotel quarantine. This included the worst phase of the pandemic to date, when a mass outbreak in the state of Victoria last July-August resulted in 750 deaths and some 20,000 infections. This year, clusters have emerged in almost all the capital cities following quarantine failures. The total number of such “leaks” over the past half year is 16.

The ban was imposed as the number of positive cases in quarantine grew rapidly. At the Howard Springs facility in the Northern Territory, there were 53 positive cases a week ago, a figure now down to 41. The proportion of those infected at the site was at one stage over 15 percent, compared with the 2 percent deemed a safe positivity rate by health authorities. As many as 70 percent of returnees from India at Howard Springs had tested positive.

Howard Springs is the only quarantine centre that is not based in a private hotel. It has a capacity of just 900 returnees at any given time. The government ban is a tacit admission that the hotel quarantines are not safe, and only function if none, or hardly any, of those quarantining are COVID positive.

The blockade has provoked widespread opposition from Indian community groups, medical associations, public figures and ordinary people. Amnesty International and civil liberties organisations have condemned the ban as a breach of fundamental human rights. Morrison and his ministers have blithely dismissed the criticism.

Some lawyers and legal firms have foreshadowed a potential challenge through the courts. But Australia’s anti-democratic 1901 Constitution contains no bill of rights, or any explicit recognition of fundamental civil rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and those associated with citizenship, such as the right to return.

This means that a legal case would likely need to assert that the ban does not conform with the Biosecurity Act’s requirement that directives from the health minister be “appropriate and adapted.” The deliberately vague wording of the legislation could render such a case difficult to establish.

The Labor Party opposition has cynically criticised the ban and demanded to know why the federal government has not established purpose-built quarantine facilities. Federally, however, Labor has functioned as a “constructive” opposition throughout the pandemic, largely marching in lockstep with the government. This included support for most of last October’s federal budget measures, which included massive tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, but not enough health funding for the creation of such quarantines.

The majority of the state and territory administrations, moreover, are led by Labor. They have participated alongside the federal government in an extra-constitutional national cabinet that has frequently ruled by decree throughout the pandemic. State governments, including those led by Labor, have presided over the hotel quarantines. The scheme has provided a bonanza for the major hotel corporations, which otherwise would be impacted by the decline in international travel, and kept government spending as low as possible.

On the international front, Labor has supported Australia’s increasingly prominent role in the US-led confrontation with China, as well as the pitiful levels of aid that it has provided to impoverished countries in the Indo-Pacific region as they have been hit by the pandemic. Since the surge began in India, Australia has announced only that it will send 500 ventilators to the country of 1.3 billion people, along with half a million masks, and even fewer face shields and gloves.

Rape and Ethnic Cleansing in Tigray

John Clamp

Victims have told investigators that when Ethiopian federal regular soldiers and militia inflict infertility on Tigrayan women with burning metal rods, after gang-raping them, they tell the women that this is to stop them having ‘Woyene’ children (the Amharans’ derogatory term for ‘Tigrayans’).

Unleashing this kind of sentiment is a dangerous tactic in a country as ethnically diverse and restive as Ethiopia. The several hundred reported rapes must be an underestimate, though by how much is impossible to tell: many parts of Tigray are even now still impossible to access.

Abiy Ahmed’s government is overseeing ethnic cleansing, which partly explains the prevalence of rape allegations in the western part of Tigray. A chunk of the region was granted to the Tigrayans by the then Tigrayan-dominated government, which instituted a more decentralized ethno-federalism through its 1995 constitution. The new federal regions, which have the right to secede, were granted revenue-raising powers. This Tigrayan insurance against future federal domination also helped the coalition government they led until 2018 divide and rule Ethiopia according to ethnic groupings, a strategy which may now be unravelling spectacularly in a country where inter-ethnic violence is always looking for a walk-on part.

Ahmed, an ethnic Oroman, was seen as a new broom in a country where Amharans and Tigrayans had for decades gripped the levers of power, yet his national unity rhetoric failed to draw in the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, which refused to join his Prosperity Party coalition.

Ethiopia is a concoction of around 80 ethnic groupings. The Oroma account for a third, the Amhara 27 per cent, and the Tigrayans just six per cent of the population. For more than two decades after the ousting of former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) led the coalition Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and maintained the Marxist-Leninist tradition for grand-sounding monikers. Yet the TPLF’s dominance was also assured through state brutality and dividing and ruling the other ethnic populations. When Abiy Ahmed became prime minister, releasing many of the thousands of political prisoners was an easy win-win decision to make, and he was ready to end the state of war with Eritrea which had continued for years. Yet now the political capital he acquired in his first two years in power has evaporated, and even his fellow Oromans are questioning Ahmed’s motivations, concerned that his message of national unity may be doublespeak for the precise opposite.

The Nobel Committee has form when it comes to naïve and premature enthusiasms. Awarding Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed its peace prize in 2019 now looks slightly ill-advised, adding substance to criticism of the Committee for rewarding aspirations rather than concrete achievements. Their citation said: ‘As Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed has sought to promote reconciliation, solidarity and social justice.’

The TPLF have fled to the mountains. They have tens of thousands of well-trained fighters at their disposal, and the criminal brutality of the federal intervention has ensured they won’t be short of future volunteers.

America Hacks Itself

John Feffer

America has a serious infrastructure problem.

Maybe when I say that what comes to mind are all the potholes on your street. Or the dismal state of public transportation in your city. Or crumbling bridges all over the country. But that’s so twentieth century of you.

America’s most urgent infrastructure vulnerability is largely invisible and unlikely to be fixed by the Biden administration’s $2 trillion American Jobs Plan.

I’m thinking about vulnerabilities that lurk in your garage (your car), your house (your computer), and even your pocket (your phone). Like those devices of yours, all connected to the Internet and so hackable, American businesses, hospitals, and public utilities can also be hijacked from a distance thanks to the software that helps run their systems. And don’t think that the U.S. military and even cybersecurity agencies and firms aren’t seriously at risk, too.

Such vulnerabilities stem from bugs in the programs — and sometimes even the hardware — that run our increasingly wired society. Beware “zero-day” exploits — so named because you have zero days to fix them once they’re discovered — that can attract top-dollar investments from corporations, governments, and even black-market operators. Zero days allow backdoor access to iPhones, personal email programs, corporate personnel files, even the computers that run dams, voting systems, and nuclear power plants.

It’s as if all of America were now protected by nothing but a few old padlocks, the keys to which have been made available to anyone with enough money to buy them (or enough ingenuity to make a set for themselves). And as if that weren’t bad enough, it was America that inadvertently made these keys available to allies, adversaries, and potential blackmailers alike.

The recent SolarWinds hack of federal agencies, as well as companies like Microsoft, for which the Biden administration recently sanctioned Russia and expelled several of its embassy staff, is only the latest example of how other countries have been able to hack basic U.S. infrastructure. Such intrusions, which actually date back to the early 2000s, are often still little more than tests, ways of getting a sense of how easy it might be to break into that infrastructure in more serious ways later. Occasionally, however, the intruders do damage by vacuuming up data or wiping out systems, especially if the targets fail to pay cyber-ransoms. More insidiously, hackers can also plant “timebombs” capable of going off at some future moment.

Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran have all hacked into this country’s infrastructure to steal corporate secrets, pilfer personal information, embarrass federal agencies, make money, or influence elections. For its part, the American government is anything but an innocent victim of such acts.  In fact, it was an early pioneer in the field and continues to lead the way in cyberoperations overseas.

This country has a long history of making weapons that have later been used against it. When allies suddenly turn into adversaries like the Iranian government after the Shah was ousted in the 1979 revolution or the mujahideen in Afghanistan after their war against the Red Army ended in 1989, the weapons switch sides, too. In other cases, like the atomic bomb or unmanned aerial vehicles, the know-how behind the latest technological advances inevitably leaks out, triggering an arms race.

In all these years, however, none of those weapons has been used with such devastating effect against the U.S. homeland as the technology of cyberwarfare.

The Worm That Turned

In 2009, the centrifuges capable of refining Iranian uranium to weapons-grade level began to malfunction. At first, the engineers there didn’t pay much attention to the problem. Notoriously finicky, such high-speed centrifuges were subject to frequent breakdowns. The Iranians regularly had to replace as many as one of every 10 of them. This time, however, the number of malfunctions began to multiply and then multiply again, while the computers that controlled the centrifuges started to behave strangely, too.

It was deep into 2010, however, before computer security specialists from Belarus examined the Iranian computers and discovered the explanation for all the malfunctioning. The culprit responsible was a virus, a worm that had managed to burrow deep into the innards of those computers through an astonishing series of zero-day exploits.

That worm, nicknamed Stuxnet, was the first of its kind. Admittedly, computer viruses had been creating havoc almost since the dawn of the information age, but this was something different. Stuxnet could damage not only computers but the machines that they controlled, in this case destroying about 1,000 centrifuges. Developed by U.S. intelligence agencies in cooperation with their Israeli counterparts, Stuxnet would prove to be but the first salvo in a cyberwar that continues to this day.

It didn’t take long before other countries developed their own versions of Stuxnet to exploit the same kind of zero-day vulnerabilities. In her book This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends, New York Times reporter Nicole Perlroth describes in horrifying detail how the new cyber arms race has escalated. It took Iran only three years to retaliate for Stuxnet by introducing malware into Aramco, the Saudi oil company, destroying 30,000 of its computers. In 2014, North Korea executed a similar attack against Sony Pictures in response to a film that imagined the assassination of that country’s leader, Kim Jong-un. Meanwhile, Pelroth reports, Chinese hackers have targeted U.S. firms to harvest intellectual property, ranging from laser technology and high-efficiency gas turbines to the plans for “the next F-35 fighter” and “the formulas for Coca-Cola and Benjamin Moore paint.”

Over the years, Russia has become especially adept at the new technology. Kremlin-directed hackers interfered in Ukraine’s presidential election in 2014 in an effort to advance a far-right fringe candidate. The next year, they shut down Ukraine’s power grid for six hours. In the freezing cold of December 2016, they turned off the heat and power in Kyiv, that country’s capital. And it wasn’t just Ukraine either. Russian hackers paralyzed Estonia, interfered in England’s Brexit referendum, and nearly shut down the safety controls of a Saudi oil company.

Then Russia started to apply everything it learned from these efforts to the task of penetrating U.S. networks. In the lead-up to the 2016 elections, Russian hackers weaponized information stolen from Democratic Party operative John Podesta and wormed their way into state-level electoral systems. Later, they launched ransomware attacks against U.S. towns and cities, hacked into American hospitals, and even got inside the Wolf Creek nuclear power plant in Kansas. “The Russians,” Pelroth writes, “were mapping out the plant’s networks for a future attack.”

The United States did not sit idly by watching such incursions. The National Security Agency (NSA) broke into Chinese companies like Huawei, as well as their customers in countries like Cuba and Syria. With a plan nicknamed Nitro Zeus, the U.S. was prepared to take down key elements of Iran’s infrastructure if the negotiations around a nuclear deal failed. In response to the Sony hack, Washington orchestrated a 10-hour Internet outage in North Korea.

As the leaks from whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed in 2013, the NSA had set up full-spectrum surveillance through various communications networks, even hacking into the private phones of leaders around the world like Germany’s Angela Merkel. By 2019, having boosted its annual budget to nearly $10 billion and created 133 Cyber Mission teams with a staff of 6,000, the Pentagon’s Cyber Command was planting malware in Russia’s energy grid and plotting other mischief.

Unbeknownst to Snowden or anyone else at the time, the NSA was also stockpiling a treasure trove of zero-day exploits for potential use against a range of targets. At first glance, this might seem like the cyber-equivalent of setting up a network of silos filled with ICBMs to maintain a rough system of deterrence. The best defense, according to the hawk’s catechism, is always an arsenal of offensive weapons.

But then the NSA got hacked.

In 2017, an outfit called the Shadow Brokers leaked 20 of the agency’s most powerful zero-day exploits. That May, WannaCry ransomware attacks suddenly began to strike targets as varied as British hospitals, Indian airlines, Chinese gas stations, and electrical utilities around the United States. The perpetrators were likely North Korean, but the code, as it happened, originated with the NSA, and the bill for the damages came to $4 billion.

Not to be outdone, Russian hackers turned two of the NSA zero-day exploits into a virus called NotPetya, which caused even more damage. Initially intended to devastate Ukraine, that malware spread quickly around the world, causing at least $10 billion in damages by briefly shutting down companies like Merck, Maersk, FedEx, and in an example of second-order blowback, the Russian oil giant Rosneft as well.

Sadly enough, in 2021, as Kim Zetter has written in Countdown to Zero Day, “[C]yberweapons can be easily obtained on underground markets or, depending on the complexity of the system being targeted, custom-built from scratch by a skilled teenage coder.” Such weapons then ricochet around the world before, more often than not, they return to sender.

Sooner or later, cyber-chickens always come home to roost.

Trump Makes Things Worse

Donald Trump notoriously dismissed Russian interference in the 2016 elections. His aides didn’t even bother bringing up additional examples of Russian cyber-meddling because the president just wasn’t interested. In 2018, he even eliminated the position of national cybersecurity coordinator, which helped National Security Advisor John Bolton consolidate his own power within the administration. Later, Trump would fire Christopher Krebs, who was in charge of protecting elections from cyberattacks, for validating the integrity of the 2020 presidential elections.

The SolarWinds attack at the end of last year highlighted the continued weakness of this country’s cybersecurity policy and Trump’s own denialism. Confronted with evidence from his intelligence agencies of Russian involvement, the president continued to insist that the perpetrators were Chinese.

The far right, for partisan reasons, abetted his denialism. Strangely enough, commentators on the left similarly attempted to debunk the idea that Russians were involved in the Podesta hack, 2016 election interference, and other intrusions, despite overwhelming evidence presented in the Mueller report, the Senate Intelligence Committee findings, and even from Russian sources.

But this denialism of the right and the left obscures a more important Trump administration failure. It made no attempt to work with Russia and China to orchestrate a truce in escalating global cyber-tensions.

Chastened by the original Stuxnet attack on Iran, the Putin government had actually proposed on several occasions that the international community should draw up a treaty to ban computer warfare and that Moscow and Washington should also sort out something similar bilaterally. The Obama administration ignored such overtures, not wanting to constrain the national security state’s ability to launch offensive cyber-operations, which the Pentagon euphemistically likes to label a “defend forward” strategy.

In the Trump years, even as he was pulling the U.S. out of one arms control deal after another with the Russians, The Donald was emphasizing his superb rapport with Putin. Instead of repeatedly covering for the Russian president — whatever his mix of personal, financial, and political reasons for doing so — Trump could have deployed his over-hyped art-of-the-deal skills to revive Putin’s own proposals for a cyber-truce.

With China, the Trump administration committed a more serious error.

Stung by a series of Chinese cyber-thefts, not just of intellectual property but of millions of the security-clearance files of federal employees, the Obama administration reached an agreement with Beijing in 2015 to stop mutual espionage in cyberspace. “We have agreed that neither the U.S. [n]or the Chinese government will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information for commercial advantage,” Obama said then. “We’ll work together and with other nations to promote other rules of the road.”

In the wake of that agreement, Chinese intrusions in U.S. infrastructure dropped by an astonishing 90%. Then Trump took office and began to impose tariffs on Chinese goods. That trade war with Beijing would devastate American farmers and manufacturers, while padding the bills of American consumers, even as the president made it ever more difficult for Chinese firms to buy American products and technology. Not surprisingly, China once again turned to its hackers to acquire the know-how it could no longer get legitimately. In 2017, those hackers also siphoned off the personal information of nearly half of all Americans through a breach in the Equifax credit reporting agency.

As part of his determination to destroy everything that Obama achieved, of course, Trump completely ignored that administration’s 2015 agreement with Beijing.

Head for the Bunkers?

Larry Hall once worked for the Defense Department. Now, he’s selling luxury apartments in a former nuclear missile silo in the middle of Kansas. It burrows 15 stories into the ground and he calls it Survival Condo. The smallest units go for $1.5 million and the complex features a gym, swimming pool, and shooting range in its deep underground communal space.

When asked why he’d built Survival Condo, Hall replied, “You don’t want to know.”

Perhaps he was worried about a future nuclear exchange, another even more devastating pandemic, or the steady ratcheting up of the climate crisis. Those, however, are well-known doomsday scenarios and he was evidently alluding to a threat to which most Americans remain oblivious. What the Survival Condo website emphasizes is living through five years “completely off-grid,” suggesting a fear that the whole U.S. infrastructure could be taken down via a massive hack.

And it’s true that modern life as most of us know it has become increasingly tied up with the so-called Internet of Things, or IoT. By 2023, it’s estimated that every person on Earth will have, on average, 3.6 networked devices. Short of moving to a big hole in the ground in Kansas and living completely off the grid, it will be difficult indeed to extricate yourself from the consequences of a truly coordinated attack on such an IoT.

A mixture of short-sighted government action — as well as inaction — and a laissez-faire approach to markets have led to the present impasse. The U.S. government has refused to put anything but the most minimal controls on the development of spyware, has done little to engage the rest of the world in regulating hostile activities in cyberspace, and continues to believe that its “defend forward” strategy will be capable of protecting U.S. assets. (Dream on, national security state!)

Plugging the holes in the IoT dike is guaranteed to be an inadequate solution. Building a better dike might be a marginally better approach, but a truly more sensible option would be to address the underlying problem of the surging threat. Like the current efforts to control the spread of nuclear material, a non-proliferation approach to cyberweapons requires international cooperation across ideological lines.

It’s not too late. But to prevent a rush to the bunkers will take a concerted effort by the major players — the United States, Russia, and China — to recognize that cyberwar would, at best, produce the most pyrrhic of victories. If they don’t work together to protect the cyber-commons, the digital highway will, at the very least, continue to be plagued by potholes, broken guardrails, and improvised explosive devices whose detonations threaten to disrupt all our lives.

Housing and the Rising GDP

Dean Baker

The economy grew at a 6.4 percent annual rate in the first quarter driven by double-digit growth in consumption in both residential and nonresidential investment. The quarter’s growth left GDP just 0.9 percent below the pre-pandemic level reported for the fourth quarter of 2019.

Productivity Growth Looks Strong

The strong growth in the quarter also implies that the pick-up in productivity growth seen in 2020 is continuing. After growing at just a 1.0 percent annual rate for the prior decade, productivity increased by 2.5 percent from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the fourth quarter of 2020.

With hours having risen at roughly a 2.5 percent annual rate in the first quarter, today’s GDP figure implies productivity growth of close to 4.0 percent. Productivity data are notoriously erratic, and surely even more so than usual given the shutdowns and reopenings associated with the pandemic, but these data are encouraging. If productivity can remain on a faster growth path, then there will be far less basis for any concerns with inflation.

Durable Goods Consumption Continues to Soar in First Quarter

Consumption of durable goods rose at a 41.4 percent annual rate in the quarter and now stands 21.7 percent above its pre-pandemic level. This jump accounted for 2.95 percentage points of the growth in the quarter. Sales of cars and trucks rose at a 51.5 percent annual rate and are now 25.2 percent above the pre-pandemic level.

Sales of household furniture also rose sharply, reflecting the surge in home buying. Sales are now 19.6 percent above the pre-pandemic level. Purchases of recreational goods and vehicles also rose sharply and stands 29.4 percent above its pre-pandemic level. This category includes both entertainment items, such as televisions, as well as goods that would be purchased for home offices, such as computers and printers.

Nonresidential Investment Continues to Rise Rapidly

Investment in equipment and intellectual products rose at a 16.7 percent and 10.1 percent annual rate in the first quarter, respectively. Investment in equipment is now 7.5 percent above its pre-pandemic level, while investment in intellectual products is 4.6 percent higher. This is encouraging, since high levels of investment can sustain stronger productivity growth.

Investment in nonresident structures continues to lag; it declined at a 4.8 percent annual rate and is now 17.1 percent below its pre-pandemic level. This reflects the declining need for office space, as well as traditional retail space.

Housing Continues to Soar

Residential construction increased at a 10.8 percent annual rate. It is now 17.3 percent above its pre-pandemic level, pushing the housing share of GDP to 4.7 percent, its highest level since the bubble.

There is still little basis for a concern that a collapse in house prices will again crash the economy. The first quarter construction levels are still a full 2.0 percentage points below the peaks hit in the bubble. Also, there is good evidence that this surge is being driven by the fundamentals of the market as people are shifting their consumption to spend more on housing. The savings rate has been hitting record highs through the pandemic, as opposed to the record lows seen in the housing bubble years.

State and Local Government Spending and Services Continue to be Drags on the Economy

State and local government spending rose at a 1.7 percent annual rate, leaving it 1.9 percent below the pre-pandemic level. This reflects the need to make cutbacks due to revenue shortfalls, as well as the fact that many schools were closed to in-class instruction in the quarter. With the recovery act spending coming through at the end of the quarter, and most students now back in class, we will likely see strong growth in the second quarter.

Consumption of services rose at a 4.6 percent annual rate in the quarter but still stands 5.7 percent below the pre-pandemic level. This reflects the high levels of infection at the start of the quarter that prevented people from going to restaurants or seeing their doctor for nonessential care. With the progress in controlling the pandemic, we are certain to see a big jump in the current quarter.

Trade Deficit Rises Sharply in Quarter

The nominal trade deficit rose by more than 5.0 percent in the quarter to $847 billion, as imports rose 5.7 percent, while exports edged down 1.1 percent. In other times we may view a rising deficit as a drag on growth. In this recovery the trade deficit will be a major release valve for any inflationary pressures the economy develops over the course of the next couple of years.

The Future Looks Bright

The overall picture in this report is overwhelmingly positive. The growth in the quarter was strong, as expected. The sectors where recovery has been trailing, consumption of service and state and local government spending, seem likely to boom in the current quarter, pushing the economy well above its pre-pandemic level.

Furthermore, the continuation of strong productivity growth in the quarter seems likely to alleviate any inflationary pressures. Also, the trade deficit is expanding along with the economy, indicating that imports are acting as a relief valve.

Our Humanity; Our Identity

Chandra  Muzaffar

Identity politics has been on the ascendancy in many parts of the world in the last few decades. Its relationship to ethnicity, culture and religion is what concerns us at this point. To understand this relationship one has to consider the context. We should also try to explain the impact of identity politics upon religion itself.

The United States of America is that one country where identity politics has become more prominent in recent times. Significant elements within the majority community feel that their power has been eroded not only by the alleged assertiveness of the African-American minority (Barack Obama was president of the USA for 8 years from 2008 to 2016) but also by    the growing educational and economic clout of the Asian-American communities. Besides, there is the increasing presence of the Hispanic minority and its demographic implications for the country as a whole. Fear of these changes has been exaggerated and distorted to mobilise White supremacist sentiment.

A parallel development of sorts has been occurring in parts of Europe. Segments of the White majority have become antagonistic towards minorities many of whom profess Islam. Cultural differences aside, the flow of migrants from West Asia and parts of the African continent— a huge chuck struggling to survive — has intensified resentment and anger on the part of the majority. If anything, heightened unemployment in some of the host societies has exacerbated the situation. The newly arrived migrant often becomes the target of racist attacks.

Outside Europe and the US, there is another state, psychologically part of the West, where the racist temperature has also risen significantly. This is Israel where identity politics has become a major force marked by anti- Arab and anti-Muslim sentiments among the Jewish population. Needless to say these sentiments are antithetical to Jewish philosophy itself.

Within Israel’s neighbourhood, the emergence of a state committed to Islam as ideology has reinforced identity politics. There are of course other states in the region which also define themselves in terms of religion. When a state projects a religious identity, its internal dichotomies and divisions are often concealed and camouflaged, giving the erroneous impression that a harmonious whole prevails.

As the state’s religious identity becomes more and more decisive, inter-religious ties and even intra-religious relationships are transformed in accordance with the dominant religious complexion of the day. Indeed, even the nation’s history and its evolution is re-interpreted to reflect the narrative set by the national elite. This is happening in a South Asian state today where ancient rites and rituals are revived in order to articulate an explicit religious identity which  undermines the rich diversity and cosmopolitan character of its past and present.

Revivalisms of this sort are often linked to the pursuit and perpetuation of power. We are now witnessing how facets of religion are being exploited to serve the narrow interests of a military-cum –political elite in a certain Southeast Asian state. It has resulted in a situation in which the universal message of peace and compassion at the core of the religion’s teachings has been perverted to legitimise an elite’s obsession with power and wealth.

It is obvious that a variety of factors are responsible for the articulation of identity politics through religion and ethnicity. Politics, power, elite interests and changing economic circumstances, sometimes combine with re-interpretations of religious texts to endow identity politics with a dynamism of its own. As we have hinted, identity politics is seldom the essence of faith. It is not at the crux and core of the philosophy of any religion.

To appreciate this, one has to look at what the illustrious prophets and sages taught at the outset of their mission. The long line of Hebrew prophets was concerned about justice. The Hindu sages focused upon righteous conduct. The Buddha’s primary goal was to restore compassion in the conduct of human affairs. For Jesus Christ love was his central purpose. The quintessence of the Quranic message is justice and compassion embodied in the Oneness of God ( Tauhid) which is the foundation of the unity of creation and the solidarity of the human family.

Within such a vision, there is no room for sectarianism, for a ‘us versus them’ dichotomy. Identity politics thrives upon such divisions. When common values are emphasised, when shared principles are highlighted, it is our common humanity that shines forth.

For that to happen, a radical psychological shift will have to occur in the way in which we understand and practise faith. It is the deed we perform rather than the word we profess that will define who we are and what we are. It is what we do that will signal our humanity. And our humanity will define our identity —- our true, real identity.

Forgetting Citizenship: Australia Suspends Flights from India

Binoy Kampmark

As India is being devastated by COVID-19 cases that have now passed a daily rate of 400,000, affluent and callous Australia has taken the decision to suspend all flights coming into the country till mid-month.  The decision was reached by the Morrison government with the blessing of the State Premiers and the Labor opposition.

Not happy with banning flights from India, the Morrison government promises to be savage in punishing returnees who find ways to circumvent the ban (for instance, by travelling via a third country).  Citizens who breach the travel ban can face up to five years’ imprisonment and fines up to AU$66,000.  “We have taken drastic action to keep Australians safe,” explained the Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.  The situation in India was “serious”; the decision had only been reached after considering the medical advice.

According to a statement from Health Minister Greg Hunt, it was “critical the integrity of the Australian public health and quarantine systems is protected and the number of COVID-19 cases in quarantine is reduced to a manageable level.”

The decision fails to carry any weight.  It did not take long for more alert medical practitioners to wonder why the approach to India was being so selectively severe.  Health commentator and GP Vyom Sharma thought the decision “incredibly disproportionate to the threat that it posed”.  Sharma is certainly correct on this score in terms of international law, which requires the least restrictive or least intrusive way of protecting citizens.

Then there was the issue about the previous policies Canberra had adopted to countries suffering from galloping COVID-19 figures.  A baffled Sharma wondered, “Why is it that India has copped this ban and no people who have come from America?” Former race discrimination commissioner Tim Soutphommasane seconds the suspicions.  “We didn’t see differential treatment being extended to countries such as the United States, the UK, and any other European country even though the rates of infection were very high and the danger of its arrivals from those countries was very high.”

The Australian Human Rights Commission has also asked the federal government to justify its actions. “The government must show that these measures are not discriminatory and the only suitable way of dealing with the threat to public health.”

In the face of such behaviour, aggrieved citizens are left with few legal measures.  Australia, among liberal democratic states, is idiosyncratic in refusing to adopt a charter of rights. Down Under, parliamentarians are supposedly wise and keen to uphold human rights till they think otherwise.  (Human rights, the argument goes, would become the fodder of lawyers and judges, interfering with the absolute will of Parliament and the electors.)  The Australian Constitution is hopelessly silent on the issue of citizenship.  Left at the mercy of legislative regulation, Parliament and the executive can be disdainful towards their citizens without consequences.

One avenue remains the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Committee.  On April 15, the UNHRC ruled on the case of two petitioners of FreeAndOpenAustralia.org (formerly StrandedAussies.org) that the Morrison government had to “facilitate and ensure their prompt return to Australia.”

Represented by the notable sage of international law Geoffrey Robertson QC, the petitioners argued that Australia was in breach of Articles 12(4) and 2(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.  The first article provides that no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country; the second provides for “effective” remedies to be granted to those whose rights and freedoms have breached under the ICCPR.  The petitioners also freely admitted that they had no issue with quarantining for 14 days on returning to Australia.

In the words of Free and Open Australia spokesperson Deb Tellis, the Commonwealth should “use its power to expand quarantine facilities, and end travel caps that are being dictated by the states.  There are thousands of our fellow citizens suffering loss of their relatives and loss of their jobs.”

The government has preferred a meaner, penny pinching approach in coping with quarantine, reducing flights when needed rather than expanding facilities to accommodate a greater number of infected arrivals.  The hotel quarantine system continues to receive effusive praise from the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison as being 99.99 percent effective.  But it is impossible for him, and his ministers, to conceal the fact that they do not trust, and are unwilling, to use other facilities and expand existing ones.

Since last November, there have been 16 COVID-19 leaks across the cities of Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth from quarantine hotels.  At this writing, another quarantine leak is being reported in Western Australia, involving the now customarily infected hotel security guard and the inevitable seepage into the community.  The problem of airborne transmission continues to plague, as does the uneven provision of Personal Protective Equipment.  No national standard of quarantine has been formulated through the country, with each state adopting its own approach.  Audits of the ventilation systems in many such hotels remain sketchy.

Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan, who recently imposed a lockdown of the Perth and Peel areas and may well do the same thing over the next few days, suggested that the Commonwealth be generous with some of its facilities.  Why not use the RAAF Curtin Air Base, or the immigration detention centres of Yongah Hill and Christmas Island?  “It’s kind of staring us in the face and there are things that could assist, it’s just that the Commonwealth doesn’t want to do it.”

The evidence so far is that facilities such as Howard Springs in the Northern Territory tend to work.  It features single-storey cabins, segregated air conditioning systems, outdoor veranda space and, in the vicinity, a fully functioning hospital.  No leaks have been recorded.  And location is everything: distant from densely populated areas.  This government, however, is miserly on the issue of quarantine, an obligation it has transferred without constitutional justification to State premiers who fear both the virus and its electoral consequences.

Germany’s official COVID-19 contagion policy puts hundreds of thousands of students and educators at risk

Tamino Dreisam & Joshua Seubert

The amendment to Germany’s Infection Protection Act, passed last week, reinforces the government’s reckless contagion policy in schools and threatens the health of thousands of students and educators.

New COVID-19 infections in Germany have averaged around 20,000 per day in recent weeks. That is more than three times the total at the peak of the first lockdown. According to the latest report by the renowned Robert Koch Institute (RKI), coronavirus infection figures have increased among younger people, largely due to the opening up of schools.

The RKI assesses the threat to the health of the population as very high. Particularly threatening are the increasing mass outbreaks in day-care centres, schools and workplaces. This is especially dangerous against the background of the rapid spread of British, South African and Brazilian variants, which are more contagious and frequently lead to severe health consequences, including among younger people.

Pupils crowd into a school centre in Dortmund-Hacheney

Since autumn, 335 cases of pupils, 129 of teachers and 182 of other educators are reported to have been hospitalised because of COVID-19. Three teachers and six education care staff have died from the disease. The number of unreported cases is much higher, with information only available for those officially registered as infected.

As the World Socialist Web Site has already reported, the government’s coronavirus “emergency brake” is utterly ineffective. It stipulates that nationwide in-person classes will continue as long as the seven-day incidence figure for infections does not exceed 165.

Scientists have been saying for months that this level is much too high. When German schools were due to reopen after summer holidays last year, the RKI recommended schools adopt reduced alternate teaching rotas based on an incidence of 35 and to revert to online, distance teaching when the incidence reached 50.

The fact that the value of 165 is purely arbitrary and has no scientific basis can be seen from the fact that only 170 districts closed schools despite high infection levels after the “emergency brake” was applied much too late. In addition, according to the RKI, incidence levels among 5- to 14-year-olds, i.e., the group that goes to school, is significantly higher than among the rest of the population. For this younger age group, the incidence is above 165 in 277 regions and between 100 and 165 in 93 regions.

In the state of Saxony, where schools remained open before the emergency brake came into effect, irrespective of infection levels, the incidence rate among 15- to 19-year-olds was 367 last week. The highest level was in the Zwickau district with 579. In the city of Chemnitz, the incidence among 10- to 14-year-olds reached a record level of almost 700.

Final year classes, special schools and emergency care for children that far exceeds what is absolutely necessary are exempt from closure in all federal states, even after the emergency brake came into force. Many federal states have in addition decided on their own exceptions to the nationally agreed measures.

In the states of Bavaria, Lower Saxony, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, grade 4 and final grade students remain in alternating classes, regardless of the incidence rate. In Bavaria, Lower Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania schools had previously been closed at an incidence of 100, which means the emergency brake has no effect and amounts to an easing of the lockdown in these states.

In the state of Hesse, grades 1 to 6 returned to alternate teaching last Monday, with grade 7 due to return on May 6.

Schleswig-Holstein, which currently still has the most schools closed and the lowest incidence of all the federal states at 75, plans to bring all grades back into alternate teaching on May 3.

Baden-Württemberg, which introduced alternate teaching for all grades at the end of the Easter break, is currently recording the biggest increase in new infections, an increase of 14 percent last week alone. The state government had already set an incidence limit of 165 before the emergency brake was introduced, but according to the Education Ministry this was only “to give schools a better chance to plan for a further opening up.” This opening up has already begun, with physical education classes for grades 11 and 12 once again being held in person.

In Brandenburg, grades 1 to 6 will remain in alternating classes until May 3, even if the incidence rate of 165 is exceeded. From May 3, grade 9 and final students are also due to return to in-person teaching.

The most relaxations in pandemic regulations have been made in the state of Thuringia, which is governed by a so-called red-red-green coalition (Social Democratic Party, Left Party and the Greens). The state currently has the highest incidence rate in Germany. Although only five out of 23 districts in the state are below an incidence of 165, all 10th-12th graders will continue in person learning.

With incidence rates far above 165 prevailing in some districts, Berlin continues to keep schools open for grades 6, 9 and 10 as well as for final grade students.

Already at the beginning of the second wave of infections, school openings were justified on the basis of lies and deceptions, combining the deliberate withholding of studies demonstrating the true rate of infections in schools and the promotion of unscientific studies depicting the absence of outbreaks in what were deserted institutions.

Once again, this policy is being promoted with criminal energy. Already in March, SWR media reported that the district of Calw was deliberately removing “traceable” mass outbreaks from its incidence statistics to lower the level and make the case for opening up.

In addition, delays in reporting new infections leads to a temporary lowering of incidence rates, which in turn means that regulations linked to the incidence rate are delayed or do not come into force at all. Scientists such as the epidemiologist Dr. Ralph Brinks are already warning of an undermining of incidence values.

The extent to which incidence values are manipulated became apparent immediately after the emergency brake was passed. In Berlin, according to Die Welt, on day two of the new rules, seven out of twelve districts no longer reported any new cases and another district reported virtually none. The district of Lippe, which reported an incidence of 200 just a few days before, suddenly reported an incidence of 162 when the new guideline came into force.

In the last few days and weeks, similar reports have accumulated in the regional press. In the district of Sächsische Schweiz, the official incidence number dropped from 230 to 164.9. Saarbrücken even reported an identical incidence of 164.9 three days in a row. In the district of Kleve, the reported incidence rate dropped from 164 to 158 and in Mönchengladbach from 154 to 114.

As a consequence, there is growing anger among students, teachers and workers. Elke, a teacher from Lower Saxony, told the WSWS about the situation in schools: “We are all unhappy, we are not allowed to strike and live in fear when we are in school.”

Before the Easter break, with infection figures climbing rapidly, schools were opened up again, with all grades attending alternating classes in the last week before the holidays. Elke reported: “I have a total of about 250 pupils I teach, and I participate in almost every year group. So, everything gets mixed up for me, and sooner or later I’m exposed to contagion from almost every class in the school.”

The policy of compulsory testing in schools is also no real safeguard, as Elke says: “This is the next disaster! We are not vaccinated and are supposed to do tests with pupils without a mask. This policy led to protests in Lower Saxony’s schools after it started a few weeks ago. I don’t think much of this testing either, it is much too unreliable. At most it can be a secondary safeguard if you are vaccinated.”

In this respect no support can be expected from the main political parties or the trade unions: “We teachers are all afraid of contagion and feel abandoned by the politicians, especially by our top boss, Education Minister Grant Hendrik Tonne. The fact that we were exposed to a danger to our lives was of no interest to anyone, not even the GEW (teachers trade union) Lower Saxony issued any statement.”