Australia: Bipartisan push to wind down COVID-19 contact tracing

Margaret Rees

A concerted bipartisan effort is underway in Australia to condition public opinion to accept the demise of an important weapon in science’s anti-pandemic arsenal—an effective Test, Trace, Isolate and Quarantine (TTIQ) system.

Australia’s political establishment is making clear that the population will have to accept mass COVID-19 infection and death, with some medical authorities being used to justify the wholesale removal of restrictions to prevent the deadly virus spreading. The target for the ruling elite is not the coronavirus but contact tracing itself.

Pedestrians walk away from the central business district in Melbourne, Australia, Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. (AP Photo/Asanka Brendon Ratnayake)

The Labor government of Daniel Andrews in Victoria and the right-wing Coalition government led by newly-installed Dominic Perrottet in New South Wales (NSW)—the country’s most populous states—are now waging a joint assault on proven measures to identify and trace the spread of the virus.

Both governments are responding to the demands of major corporations, particularly the airlines and giant retail supermarket chains, which have insisted that their staff be exempt from isolating after their workplace has been visited by anyone infected with COVID-19.

Coles, the country’s second largest supermarket chain, has demanded the redefinition of a “close contact” and of a “Tier 1” site in order to change the current TTIQ measures.

Up to now workers at Tier 1 sites, where the risk of contracting the virus was high, were required to self-isolate for 14 days. Since mid-July, when Delta outbreaks began in Victoria, about 30,000 Coles workers have had to isolate. At the end of last month, Woolworths, Australia’s largest supermarket retailer, had 1,000 staff isolating in Victoria.

These giant retailers want the Victorian government to align its TTIQ system with measures recently enacted in NSW. In that state Woolworths demanded, and received, NSW Health approval for the redefinition of a close contact.

Previously anyone who had spent more than a minute within 1.5 metres of an infected person, even if both were wearing masks, was defined as a close contact. In NSW a close contact is now defined as a person within 1.5 metres of an infected person for more than five minutes while either was wearing their mask improperly.

One Woolworths worker explained to the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) that he was ordered to isolate by NSW Health for 14 days as a close contact of an infected co-worker, only to be phoned and texted after four days and told to return to work.

In the stampede to dispense with restrictions, Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton announced on October 4 that the state’s listing and reporting of Tier 2 sites, many of them supermarkets, would be progressively scaled back. “We have to focus our efforts on where we get most bang for our buck,” he declared, adding that it was no longer “an effective use of energy” to capture all Tier-2 sites.

The process now underway in Victoria was initiated by the NSW government which scrapped the reporting of close contact sites and then ended daily health press conferences. Currently only transmission sites outside Sydney, the state capital, and its most populous city, are reported in any detail on the NSW Health site.

Victoria’s contact tracing system had been plagued from the outset of the pandemic with inadequate resources. Justifying the roll-back of its efforts, Sutton claimed that so-called mystery cases, unlinked to any known outbreak, were just a feature of “widespread community transmission. It is just a phenomenon that happens when you have got thousands of cases per day.”

The virtual scrapping of the TTIQ system is not confined to retail but is also being implemented in state schools which the Victorian government has begun to reopen despite opposition from educators, parents and students. Already, within a week of Year 12 students returning to in-person classes, infections have skyrocketed and schools closed.

Sutton’s perspective is that this will deepen. “We certainly won’t have the entire school quarantining for a full 14-day period” after infections are detected, he said.

Every arm of the corporate press, including the state-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has been engaged in a non-stop propaganda campaign to promote the lie that the pandemic is over.

As part of this barrage, “7.30,” ABC-TV’s flagship current affairs show, recently broadcast a program entitled “Close Contact,” subtitled, “How contact tracing could work in the months ahead as vaccine targets are met.”

The program approvingly referred to the situation in England. It noted that when it opened up in July, the country had so many COVID-19 infections that the UK Track and Trace system that alerts one’s smartphone with a ping was so frequent that it became known as a “pingdemic.” The ping alerted the phone’s owner that they had been into contact with a positive COVID-19 person and imposed 10-day self-isolation orders.

Rather than enact measures to stop the spread of the virus, the British government changed its advice so that fully vaccinated people were told to get tested, but not to isolate at all.

This is being replicated in Australia. The “7.30” program quoted Deakin University epidemiologist Professor Catherine Bennett, who said: “We don’t need to put everyone in isolation, but identify the key individuals who are most at risk.”

In NSW, Customer Service Minister Victor Dominello, responsible for the state’s check-in application as part of contact tracing, declared: “I think the QR codes should be retired once we get to the 90 percent mark, subject to Health advice, because this goes to trust.”

Similarly, the Guardian interviewed Professor Jodie McVernon of the Doherty Institute, which provided the modelling for the Morrison government’s “roadmap” out of the pandemic. McVernon is currently working with governments to gradually de-escalate the public health responses to the pandemic, with the “necessary transition” from a pandemic to the virus “becoming endemic” in the community.

Despite the experiences of Israel, the UK and US, where high vaccination levels have not prevented mass outbreaks, McVernon justified the abandonment of all public health measures by the failure of the inadequate ones which led to the current outbreaks.

She said: “We’ve adapted and adapted and adapted and adapted—when you think about testing, tracking, isolating and quarantining, the idea that somebody who walked past you in a supermarket when you were there for half an hour would ever be called a contact—that was never in our minds.”

She asserted: “As we continue to adapt, we now have a vaccine in play that is actually lowering risks.”

Predicting future mass undetected infections, she continued: “But as we move into this new era, we will have a higher tolerance for saying, ‘OK, if we don’t test every single person who went to the supermarket, we might miss one, but if there are lots of infections in the community, that has a very different risk consequence.’”

The imperatives of the financial and corporate elite, such as the giant supermarket chains, are to be translated into the destruction of even the limited track and trace systems that have been put in place. With the opening up of the economy that they stridently demand and that the corporate media parrots faithfully, the COVID-19 pandemic will have unlimited sway, and infections and deaths will escalate accordingly.

Humanitarian disaster in Yemen as fighting for Marib intensifies

Jean Shaoul

Yemen is facing the world’s worst food crisis. This is the direct result of the criminal Saudi-led military coalition’s efforts to restore by force the discredited government of Riyadh’s proxy, President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Backed by US and British imperialism, the six-year war fought by air, land and sea, has wrecked the country’s economy.

Fighting has intensified, with 47 identifiable front lines. The war has caused at least 120,000 deaths, including tens of thousands of civilians, as well as a further 131,000 from indirect causes such as lack of food, health services and infrastructure. An outbreak of cholera, an easily treated disease, has led to more than 2.5 million cases and at least 4,000 deaths.

Human rights organisations have accused the Saudi-led coalition of bombing schools, hospitals and other civilian targets. Earlier this month, the United Nations Human Rights Council succumbed to pressure from Saudi Arabia and its extensive lobbying campaign and voted against extending its investigation into possible war crimes in Yemen committed by the Saudi-led coalition. It marked the first time in the council's 15-year history that a resolution was defeated.

In this Sunday, June 14, 2020 photo, seven-month-old Issa Ibrahim Nasser is brought to a clinic in Deir Al-Hassi, At seven months old, Issa weighs only three kilos. Like him, hundreds of children suffer from acute severe malnutrition because of poverty and grinding conflict. Yemen. (AP Photo/Issa Al-Rajhi)

Last week, the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs’s (OCHA) Assistant Secretary-General Ramesh Rajasingham warned that five million people are one step away from famine and more than 20 million Yemenis, two thirds of Yemen’s 30 million population, need humanitarian assistance. But, he said, the aid agencies “are, once again, starting to run out of money,” having received $2.1 billion, just over half of its $3.85 billion requirement. Without further funding to “keep famine at bay,” he added, “in the coming weeks and months, up to four million people could see their food aid reduced,” and the number rising to five million by the end of the year.

Yemen’s population is young and the situation facing children is heartbreaking. Henrietta Fore, Executive Director of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), said, “Being a child in Yemen is the stuff of nightmares.” Having experienced or witnessed horrific scenes of violence or watched their parents fight off starvation, they will carry the physical and emotional scars for their entire lives. In 2021, 1.6 million children were internally displaced due to violence, while essential health, sanitation and education services are “incredibly fragile” and “on the brink of total collapse.”

Of the 20 million Yemenis in need of humanitarian assistance to survive, 11.3 million are children. Of these children, around 2.3 million are acutely malnourished and 400,000 under five suffer from severe acute malnutrition. Fore stressed, “In Yemen, one child dies every 10 minutes from preventable causes, including malnutrition and vaccine-preventable diseases.”

Yemen’s economy has suffered one blow after another thanks to the blockade of its ports and the closure of its international airport in Sana’a. Its currency has sunk to one sixth of its pre-war value against the dollar in Aden, making imports unaffordable. According to OCHA, commercial food imports to the key ports of Hodeida and Saleef were down eight percent compared to this time last year, while “fuel imports were an alarming 64 percent lower.”

Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world even before the war, has seen its GDP crash by 40 percent since 2015, leading to doctors, teachers and sanitation workers being paid late if at all over the last four years. Two million children are not in school and one in six schools are unusable. A further four million children are at risk of dropping out as unpaid teachers leave to find paid work.

Unemployment is running at more than 50 percent. The war has disrupted agriculture, manufacturing and the extraction of oil and natural gas, the country’s key exports. Inflation last year was more than 26 percent, with situation in relation to food, far worse. Between February 2016 and October 2020, wheat flour rose 133 percent, vegetable oil 96 percent and rice 164 percent, making it impossible for most Yemenis to put food on the table. Most now survive only because of international aid.

The Saudi-led military campaign was launched in 2015, with the US and UK providing weaponry, surveillance, intelligence, training and other backup support, to restore the Hadi government. It is part of the House of Saud’s efforts to maintain the rule of the Gulf petro-monarchs and their allies across the peninsular amid seething social tensions that came to a head in the Arab Spring of 2011. Mass protests in Bahrain, major demonstrations and unrest in Kuwait and Oman, and smaller protests in Saudi Arabia were brutally suppressed.

In Yemen, protests broke out against the 32-year-long dictatorial rule of US and Saudi-backed president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who unleashed the military. Following forced Saleh’s forced resignation, Hadi, his vice-president, took over in 2012. Two years later, protests again erupted over his failure to resolve any of the social problems, leading to Hadi’s ouster and the seizure of power by the Houthis, a Shia tribe from the north of the country, in alliance with some of Saleh’s supporters in January 2015. Hadi fled to Riyadh.

The Saudis, fielding a military coalition with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other Arab countries, invaded their southern neighbour in 2015, denouncing the Houthi rebels as Iran’s proxies, in a bid to reimpose Hadi and prevent a similar uprising at home. The oil-rich Eastern Province that is home to Saudi Arabia’s Shi’a population who have faced decades of economic neglect is a social powder keg. But the coalition disintegrated as the war proved more difficult and costly than expected, with local or tribal militias operating in unstable and fluid alliances—some backed by Riyadh and some by Abu Dhabi, which has since withdrawn its support for the war.

The country has splintered with the Houthis controlling the northern part of the country, including the capital Sana’a and the majority of the country’s population. The south and the west, including the port city of Aden, is controlled by the UAE-backed secessionist Southern Transitional Council (STC) in the south and the Republican Guards on the western coast, led by former president Saleh’s nephew. The eastern provinces that are home to the country’s energy resources, pipelines and Indian Ocean ports, is controlled by Hadi’s dwindling forces and supporters linked to Islamists and al-Qaeda. All the major ports and cities in the south and west have seen protests in the last months denouncing the government’s failure to pay wages, ensure reliable electricity and fuel supplies and end inflation.

The Houthis are now fighting to gain control of Marib, which along with Shebwa is the site of Yemen’s oil and gas reserves. In recent weeks, they have taken control of the central province of al-Bayda, the southern approach to Marib and its oil reserves, and made gains in Shebwa and Abyan provinces, cutting off Saudi supply lines in readiness for a final push on Marib city.

The Saudis have pushed back against the Houthis, with ground forces killing at least 165 Houthi fighters and air strikes killing another 1,000 in the last week and displacing nearly 10,000 people. The city is already home to hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people. The loss of Marib would mean the near certain collapse of the mission to reimpose the Hadi government and likely see the Houthis push south to confront the secessionists in the south and west of the country, potentially causing the UAE to return to Yemen to support its clients.

The Biden administration in the United States has begun to pressure Riyadh to put an end to a war that is draining the resources of one of its key regional allies. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan recently visited Riyadh, calling for an end to its blockade on Hodeida port and negotiations with the Houthis to enable the reopening of Sanaa International Airport. He warned Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that Congressional legislation could limit US military cooperation with Saudi Arabia.

Stellantis slashes 1,800 auto jobs at Windsor Assembly in Canada

Carl Bronski

Stellantis, the global auto giant and parent company of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Canada, announced Friday evening that it will indefinitely lay off 1,800 workers at the company’s Windsor Assembly Plant in Windsor, Ontario, just across the international border from Detroit, Michigan. The layoffs will be accompanied by the elimination of the plant’s second shift effective April 17, 2022.

Shift change at the FCA Windsor plant, March 2020. [WSWS Media]

“The global automotive industry continues to face significant headwinds such as the persisting semiconductor shortage and the extended effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the company stated in justifying the jobs massacre. “In response to these factors, Stellantis will adjust production operations at its Windsor Assembly Plant.”

The statement went on to declare that the company’s promised $1.3 billion to $1.5 billion investment to move production to electric vehicle models in Windsor by 2024 was unaffected by their layoff announcement.

Certainly, the global shortage of semiconductors has temporarily affected auto production. In Canada, volumes have dropped by almost 7 percent over the past year. Many of the remaining assembly plants in the country have produced only sporadically since last February. Windsor Assembly, for instance, has operated for only 3 months in 2021. Stellantis’ Brampton Assembly Plant has seen significant downtime as well. Ford, General Motors, Toyota and Honda operations have been similarly impacted. GM’s CAMI assembly plant near London, Ontario—one of the hardest hit—has only operated for three weeks in the past 9 months.

That being said, Stellantis’ attempt to sell the layoffs in Windsor as a mere response to unexpected supplier issues is a cynical fraud. The reality is that well before last January’s merger of FCA with the PSA group, which includes Peugeot, Opel, and Vauxhall, that formed Stellantis, corporate management were plotting a massive onslaught on workers’ jobs and conditions around the world.

Noting that Stellantis employed some 410,000 workers on almost every continent when it was formed, the World Socialist Web Site explained, “The merger of FCA and PSA has been driven by the ferocious struggle among the auto giants to dominate both new technologies, including electric and autonomous vehicles, and markets. The tie-up will itself push other companies to seek out further consolidation and cost savings. The major banks and investors have exerted relentless pressure on automakers in recent years to accelerate cuts and restructuring plans, with the aim of squeezing out every drop of profits possible from the working class.”

Carlos Tavares, who heads the Stellantis group, is notorious as a cost-cutting restructurer. He is responsible for the destruction of thousands of auto jobs across PSA’s European operations in France, Germany, and Britain, and he is now imposing similar attacks globally to ensure Stellantis can make bumper shareholder payouts and outcompete its rivals in the rapidly expanding EV market.

The job cuts at the Windsor plant, which builds the Chrysler Pacifica minivan, Pacifica Hybrid, Grand Caravan, and Chrysler Voyager, will reduce the workforce to around 2,200 this coming spring. The plant has for years been the largest employer in Windsor, which has been devastated by a steady reduction of auto production in the city, once called the automotive capital of Canada. As late as 2020, the plant employed almost 6,000 autoworkers over three shifts. About 1,500 workers were then axed with the elimination of the third shift.

At that time, officials from Unifor, the union which represents workers at the plant, refused to mobilize autoworkers to oppose the layoffs. Talking like a corporate executive, Unifor Local 444 President Dave Cassidy said the destruction of the third shift was “strictly a business decision based on the Pacifica.”

On Friday, Unifor National President Jerry Dias justified the layoffs in much the same way Stellantis did. “The computer chip fiasco has caused all kinds of turmoil,” he said. “It leaves all of the companies evaluating their priorities. The unfortunate reality is that pickup trucks, SUVS are where they’re hanging their hat. And it’s a disaster for us because we bargained something much different (minivans). But you can’t control where the market is at as the result of the computer chips. It’s a mess. I’m frankly so disappointed.”

This is nothing but a pathetic apologia for Unifor’s central role in blocking any opposition by autoworkers in Canada to the global restructuring plans of the major automakers. During last year’s round of collective bargaining with the Detroit Three, Dias and his teams of negotiators facilitated the massive onslaught on jobs and working conditions by campaigning for the provincial and federal governments to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to FCA, Ford, and GM to ensure Canada’s “competitiveness” as a destination for new investments. They combined this with a doubling down on their promotion of rotten Canadian nationalism, telling autoworkers in Windsor, Oakville, and Brampton that their jobs could only be secured by competing in a race to the bottom with their class brothers and sisters in the United States, Mexico, and internationally.

When bargaining concluded last fall, Dias postured as the savior of the Canadian auto industry, claiming that the Detroit Three’s commitment of around $5 billion in future investments to manufacture electric vehicles in Ontario guaranteed secure, decent-paying jobs for autoworkers. The elimination of the second shift at Windsor, coming little more than a year after the third shift was axed, puts paid to such bluster. Insofar as the auto industry in Canada is being “saved” it is at the expense of auto workers and the communities in which they work and live. The only ones to profit from this are the automakers and their super-rich shareholders along with their advisers and co-managers in the Unifor bureaucracy.

Last year’s collective agreement between FCA and Unifor, which Dias’ described as the “best deal in 25 years,” sought to fool the membership into accepting sweeping retrenchment with headline promises of large investments. Management’s promise to invest up to $1.5 billion to re-tool Windsor Assembly for electric car production projected about 2,000 jobs slowly coming back on stream over several years.

But as the WSWS warned workers, “FCA’s letter of intent to Unifor sums up the uncertainty that remains over the automaker’s plans. FCA asserted that any investments would be predicated on ‘competitive operational practices’ and ‘appropriate government financial support to build a strong viable business case for future investments.’ The letter then continued by stating that all investments ‘are subject to the two key conditions in the preceding paragraph and, as always, to market demand, consumer preferences, company business plan requirements, group executive committee approval and economic conditions.’”

The key clause to draw attention to here, as the WSWS did at the time, is the need for “group executive committee approval” for any job guarantees. Under conditions where the Stellantis group was emerging, it proves that Unifor knowingly reached an agreement that created the perfect conditions for the auto giant to launch its long-planned onslaught on jobs and conditions, all the while lulling its members to sleep with bogus propaganda about how their future employment was secure.

To oppose this corporate-union conspiracy and defend their jobs, autoworkers at the Windsor plant and across Canada must take matters into their own hands. They need to establish rank-and-file committees to oppose Unifor’s nationalist, pro-corporate agenda, and unify their struggle for decent-paying, secure jobs with their international colleagues at auto plants across the United States, Mexico, Europe, and elsewhere.

Autoworkers in Canada can draw on the powerful example set by tens of thousands of workers in the United States who are in open revolt against the corporations and the bosses’ junior partners in the unions. The brutal working conditions and rotten contract offers that are policed by the UAW and USW have been rejected in recent months by workers at Volvo Trucks, Dana auto parts, and John Deere. The rebellion by over 10,000 workers at Deere has led to the first strike at the agricultural equipment manufacturer in 35 years. It is the largest of a series of job actions by workers across the country that is developing into the biggest strike wave of the American working class in decades.

Coronavirus continues to surge in Northwestern US

Shelby Michaels

Coronavirus cases remain high across the United States, including more than 78,000 new cases a day and close to 1,300 daily deaths. Cases have, in particular, been surging in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon and Washington since August, with a corresponding rise in hospitalizations and deaths.

In this Aug. 31, 2021 photo medical professionals pronate a 39 year old unvaccinated COVID-19 patient in the Medical Intensive care unit (MICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho. (AP Photo/Kyle Green, File)

Similar to the growth in cases nationally, Northwest US has been hit by a combination of the emergence of the Delta variant of the coronavirus and the reckless policies of school and workplace reopenings by the Biden administration. There were less than 750 new cases per day in the region as a whole at the beginning of July, and now the five states collectively report more than 5,600 new cases a day, a more than seven-fold increase.

There have been more than 1,000 new cases each day reported in Idaho since September 12, a sharp rise which follows a nadir at the beginning of July when cases dropped below 70 a day. Daily deaths also stand at about 20 a day, a record exceeding the daily death tolls suffered last winter.

The state also continues to set record-high hospitalizations, with a daily average of 661 on October 14 and a peak starting in September that reached 761 the first week of October. The New York Times has reported that Idaho officials have activated “crisis standards of care,” allowing packed facilities to ration treatment. “We are being absolutely crushed by COVID,” Chris Roth, the president and chief executive of St. Luke’s Health System, a network of hospitals across Idaho. Sandee Gehrke, the chief operating officer for St. Luke’s Health System, reports, “We are out of actual hospital beds.”

With a vaccination rate of just 42 percent across the state, some of Idaho’s coronavirus vaccines are expiring because they have sat unused for so long. Idaho’s Republican Governor Brad Little has refused to set mask mandates in the state since the start of the pandemic. In addition, amidst the current crisis, Lt. Governor Janice McGeachin tried to ban local mask mandates the first week of October.

Montana has seen higher seven-day averages this month than in January of 2021. The week of October 11 had the highest number of cases reported in a single day, 2,200. Hospitals in Montana reached a new high of 510 patients with COVID-19, four more than the previous high in November 2020. Hospitals in Bozeman and Helena reached capacity multiple times over the past month.

Blaine County in Montana, with a population of just 23,000, saw a 464 percent increase of daily cases this week from the average two weeks ago, the highest since the start of the pandemic. Since the pandemic’s beginning, 1 in 6 residents have been infected in Blaine County. Located in Park County, the Livingston Public Schools board voted to hold middle and high school classes virtually starting this coming Wednesday due to a spike in cases at the schools.

Wyoming saw a similar rise, with new cases peaking at an average of more than 500 a day in September and which has dropped to just over 400 now. The surge has also claimed more than 300 lives in the state since the beginning of July. Similar to Idaho and Montana, hospitalizations have risen since September. The most recent 14-day average was at 228, the highest since winter 2020, when the 14-day average was at nearly identical rates. Despite such high rates of infections, Republican Governor Mark Gordon has also refused even basic public health measures such as mandate masks.

Oregon currently suffers more than 1,000 new cases each day, and last week saw a record 188 deaths in the state. There are also a record 72,000 active cases throughout the state, more than at any time previously in the pandemic. The sharp rise in cases has taxed the state’s health care system to its limits. As of Friday, only 8 percent of intensive care unit beds and 7 percent of non-ICU beds were available.

In Washington, where the first case of COVID-19 was detected in the US, there has also been a sharp rise in cases since the summer. After falling to less than 350 daily cases, the number of new infections rose to 3,500 in early September and has since dipped to 2,500 now. The daily death toll similar climbed, peaking at an average of 42 lost lives per day and now still at 32, still higher than last winter’s surge.

Meanwhile President Biden openly acknowledges that his administration’s plans to combat COVID-19, first and foremost, are meant to protect the economy. Referencing the “six-pronged program” Biden promises to “use every available tool to combat COVID-19 and save even “more” lives in the months ahead, while also “keeping schools open and safe, and protecting our economy from lockdowns and damage.” At the current rate of death, with an average of 1,200 people dying each day, more than 200,000 people will die in the next six months, bringing the official US death toll to about one million.

The current conditions in the US Northwest, along with other states that continue to face high numbers of cases, make it clear that the only viable method for ending the pandemic is eradication. While vaccination is an effective tool, it is not enough to end the spread of the virus. Vaccination is most effective when combined with aggressive public health measures, including the shutdown of nonessential production and schools, along with mass testing, contact tracing and isolation of infected individuals.

In order to fight for eradication, an intervention by the working class to force a change in policy is essential. The working class must be aided with science and understand the strategy for eradication. The WSWS is holding an online webinar on October 24, that will present to a global audience the scientific case for eradication. We call on all of our readers to register for the webinar today, speak to your co-workers about it, and promote the event as widely as possible on social media.

As schools across the country reopen for in-person learning, COVID-19 cases remain high. In the Pacific Northwest (PNW), Idaho, Montana and Wyoming have seen continued rising rates of cases and hospitalizations since August. Regional data is consistent with the rise in cases nationally. Although both Democratic and Republican politicians promised that vaccinations would end the pandemic, most states are seeing case rates as high as the winter months of 2021.

Germany: Right-wing extremism in North Rhine-Westphalia police force

Elisabeth Zimmermann

There have now been 53 confirmed cases of right-wing extremist activities in the police force of North Rhine-Westphalian, Germany’s most populous state. This was announced by the state interior ministry in Düsseldorf following enquiries by Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa).

Riot police in action (Image: Montecruz Foto/CC BY-SA 2.0)

A year ago, far-right chat groups and images found on the cell phones of police officers in Mülheim an der Ruhr/Essen had shocked the public.

In one video, which was then sent to colleagues, a police officer lays out the bullets of his service weapon into a swastika. Another shared snapshots via WhatsApp of Christmas decorations with SS runes and the inscription “Sieg Heil.” One patrol officer stood with his legs wide apart on the roofs of two service vehicles and gave the Hitler salute. Another video shows the same policeman and others singing the forbidden first verse of the Deutschlandlied during a trip in their police vehicle.

In the following months, the scandal about right-wing extremist police chat groups increasingly grew. For example, the forbidden Horst Wessel Lied, the battle song of Hitler’s SA and the later party anthem of the NSDAP (Nazi party), was found on seized data storage devices.

During the investigations, more and more suspicious cases were added. In early November 2020, 147 police officers and four employees of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (as the secret service is called) in North Rhine-Westphalia were under investigation. By the end of September this year, the number of suspicious cases reported had risen to 275.

Evaluation of extensive data seized during the search of the suspects revealed the most vile criminal images and films. On September 18, 2020, the World Socialist Web Site commented on this, saying, their content is “inadequately described as agitating against refugees, fascist filth, and the trivialisation of the Nazis.”

Images included refugees screaming in a gas chamber and a man on a bicycle pointing a gun at a black youth trying to escape from him.

Since then, the North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) state government, a coalition led by failed Christian Democratic Union (CDU) chancellor candidate Armin Laschet along with the Free Democratic Party (FDP), has sought to downplay the extent of the far-right networks. When asked by dpa, the state Interior Ministry, led by Herbert Reul (CDU), responded with the following assessment: “Suspicion of right-wing extremism had been confirmed in 53 of the investigated cases, which had already been conclusively investigated and punished. Suspicions had not been confirmed in 84 cases. These cases have also been conclusively investigated. In 138 cases, the investigation was still ongoing.”

The consequences for the police officers concerned are negligible. Six police trainees have been dismissed. Two dismissals and three warnings were issued in the course of labour law proceedings.

The decisions also show that the cases of right-wing extremism among police officers and in the state apparatus that have been discovered and potentially breach criminal law are being systematically downplayed and covered up. The police officers concerned generally got off scot-free under the criminal law because the judiciary classified the WhatsApp chats as “private communications.” Relevant criminal offences, such as the dissemination of illegal symbols (e.g., the swastika), thus did not apply, the dpa reports.

Last year, a female police officer from Mülheim/Essen had successfully sued against her suspension. In her case, the court had concluded that the Hitler video on her cell phone was a “parody.”

The cases of right-wing extremism that have come to light among the police in NRW, the extent of which is now being concealed, are just the tip of the iceberg. The same is true of many similar cases in Hesse, Berlin and other German states.

If particularly blatant cases come to light, there are brief hypocritical expressions of indignation on the part of the state. Then they are played down as individual cases and to get over them as quickly as possible. Nevertheless, new cases continue to come to light.

For example, almost at the same time that the results of the investigation into the right-wing extremist chat groups were announced by the NRW police, there was a raid in Aldenhoven, in the district of Düren. A huge cache of weapons, including firearms, explosives, hand grenades and mines, was discovered at the home of a 32-year-old man, who is said to be a senior officer and explosives expert in the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces).

The man had originally only been investigated for violating the Foreign Trade and Payments Act because he had shipped a package containing silencers. Now, the charge of violating the War Weapons Control Act has been added and he has been remanded in custody. So far, nothing is known about his political motivation. Since unknown chemicals were also discovered in the house, experts from the Federal Office for Radiation Protection were called in to assess the situation. Some of the explosives found were detonated on site.

At the beginning of October, it became known that right-wing extremist incidents were also said to have occurred in the Bundeswehr’s elite “Guard of the Federal Republic.” This battalion stands guard during state visits, among other things. At the centre, is a grouping within the 2nd Company that calls itself the “Wolf Pack.” It involves right-wing extremist incidents, repulsive initiation rituals, sexualized violence and assault.

Even before this, one soldier’s contact with the fascistic Identitarian movement had attracted attention. Also, a soldier in the battalion is said to have had himself photographed in the uniform of Hitler’s Wehrmacht (army). Both had been banned from performing their duties.

Before a more detailed investigation could even take place, federal Defence Commissioner Eva Högl (Social Democratic Party, SPD) said after a visit to the guard battalion that she had “a good impression” of the investigation. “So far, there is no confirmation of an entrenched far-right group within the Guard Battalion.”

This month, Mediendienst Integration published research on the topic of “right-wing extremists within the security agencies,” which showed that the number of investigations into suspected right-wing extremist cases inside the security agencies has increased sharply in recent years.

For example, since the beginning of 2017, there have been 319 investigations into suspected right-wing extremism in the authorities at state level (police, state criminal investigation offices, secret service). At the federal level (including the Federal Police, Federal Criminal Police Office, BKA and Customs), there were 58 cases of suspicion, and 1,064 at the Military Counter-intelligence Service (MAD). Investigations by MAD were mainly related to the Bundeswehr, where the number of suspected right-wing extremist cases increased by a third between 2018 and 2019.

The report by Mediendienst Integration cites numerous racist and right-wing extremist incidents in the security agencies between 2017 and October 2021. Again and again, it involves right-wing extremist chat groups in the police. Apart from the cases in NRW, similar groups came to light in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Hesse and Berlin and almost all other federal states. Racist incidents are also mentioned again and again.

Links between police officers and the Reichsbürger (groups that reject the legitimacy of the post-war German state), Q-Anon types, the Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) and other right-wing extremist and fascist parties, right-wing extremist and right-wing terrorist networks in the Bundeswehr, connections to the neo-fascist Nordkreuz group as well as to the “Hannibal Network” and the “Uniter” association of ex-military and police are cited. Some of these groups are preparing for a so-called “Day X,” maintain “enemy lists” and have organized stocks of body bags for their political opponents.

Mediendienst Integration writes, “one reads little in the official situation reports about some networks reported in media.”

The compilation of known right-wing extremist and right-wing terrorist incidents related to the security agencies alone shows that these are not isolated cases. The right-wing extremist groups within the NRW police are part of a far-right extremist network that extends across all the security agencies and is promoted and covered up by the intelligence services.

These right-wing extremist structures are being used to prepare the state to suppress the growing resistance of the working class against mass layoffs, social cuts, herd immunity policies and militarism.

NATO Secretary Stoltenberg calls for stepped-up targeting of China

Alex Lantier

Speaking yesterday to the Financial Times of London, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg demanded that the military alliance intensify its threats against China. His remarks highlighted both the extremely aggressive policy pursued by the NATO alliance and explosive divisions emerging among the NATO imperialist powers.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg addresses the Annual Session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly at a hotel in Lisbon, Monday, Oct. 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

Stoltenberg spoke as tensions mount between Washington and the European Union (EU), especially France, after the sudden signing of the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) alliance against China. The alliance, which Washington negotiated for months without notifying the EU powers, led Australia to repudiate a €56 billion submarine contract with France. Paris briefly withdrew its ambassador to the United States in protest, and top French officials, echoed by several EU foreign ministers, criticized AUKUS.

Stoltenberg was returning from a meeting with Biden in Washington, where he also spoke at Georgetown University, provocatively demanding that NATO “step up and do more” to allow countries on Russia’s borders to join the NATO alliance. His Financial Times interview was a barely disguised message from the White House calling for the EU powers to fall in line with the mounting US war drive targeting China.

NATO, Stoltenberg insisted, should target not only Russia but China as well. He criticized “this whole idea of in a way distinguishing so much between China, Russia, either Asia-Pacific or Europe,” adding, “it’s one big security environment, and we have to address it all together. … It’s about strengthening our alliance to face any potential threat.”

He denounced China, claiming it was a major security threat in Europe. “China is coming closer to us, for instance, in Africa. We see them in the Arctic. We see them in cyber space. We see China investing heavily in critical infrastructure in our countries. Of course, the fact that they have more and more longer-range weapons that can reach all NATO allied countries. … They are building many, many silos for long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles.”

He announced that at next year’s NATO summit in Madrid, NATO would directly target China and discuss China potentially overtaking the United States as the world’s largest economy. “I expect that when we meet in Madrid the rise of China, the impact of China and the shifting the balance of power has on NATO will be thoroughly addressed in the new strategic concept, among other topics. China is not mentioned in one single word in NATO’s current strategic concept,” he complained.

Turning to the EU, Stoltenberg insisted that as they spend billions more on their armed forces, EU powers should avoid any competition with NATO. “NATO and the EU are working together, and we should not create any kind of contradiction,” he said.

Asked about plans for an independent EU army championed by Berlin and Paris since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, Stoltenberg described them as potential threats to NATO security: “There are different interpretations of what [a European army] means. … If this means more European soldiers, battleships, drones, fighter jets, then it’s something we strongly welcome and urge. If it means new structures competing for the same capabilities, then it will undermine our security. But I have been assured that is not the plan. So, we don’t need new structures.”

He also dismissed concerns in Paris over AUKUS. “I understand that France is disappointed. … But at the same time, this is an agreement which is not directed against Europe or NATO.”

Stoltenberg’s brief for military confrontation with China is a pack of lies and cynical evasions. First, the threat of war, including nuclear war, comes above all from NATO, not China or Russia. Since the Soviet bureaucracy dissolved the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO has constantly expanded its reach, waging bloody wars in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and beyond that cost millions of lives and left these countries shattered. NATO deploys troops on Russia’s and China’s borders—in the Baltics, Ukraine and Afghanistan—not the other way around.

China’s vast growth over this period, based on providing cheap labor to transnational corporations from imperialist countries, exposes by contrast the stagnation and corruption of imperialism. This has emerged in a devastating fashion by the COVID-19 pandemic. NATO powers reacted with bank bailouts of trillions of dollars to the super-rich but called for “living with the virus,” leading to mass infections and nearly 2 million deaths from COVID-19. China, which sought to eliminate the COVID-19 virus, suffered far less economic dislocation and kept deaths below 5,000.

Workers must be warned: NATO’s warmongering threatens not only to trigger conflict with Russia and China, which are nuclear-armed powers, but conflicts between America and the European powers that twice in the 20th century erupted into world war. Indeed, Stoltenberg’s warnings to the EU are simply more polite versions of US threats against the EU over its military plans. In 2019, US officials sent a letter denouncing an EU army as a “dramatic step back” for NATO, threatening the EU with trade war tariffs if it did not abandon the project.

While Washington threatens China most aggressively, workers cannot support any of the rival imperialist factions in NATO. All these powers pursue their own profit and strategic interests via the same methods: war abroad and police-state rule at home to impose the policy of “living with the virus” and intensified exploitation of the working class. This emerges very clearly in remarks of European foreign policy strategists.

Before Stoltenberg spoke to the Financial Times, Thierry de Montbrial, the head of the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI) think-tank, spoke to French financial daily Les Echos on US-EU tensions over China. Montbrial said, “US foreign policy has entered a new phase at least since Obama, for objective reasons: they need to ‘pivot’ to Asia. Those who believed Joe Biden’s election would bring back the good old days were wrong. The White House is now a bit more polite, but just as brutal.”

He said this created a lasting divergence of interests between America and Europe. “We have no reason to leave the Atlantic alliance, but we have no interest in seeing it transformed into an anti-Chinese alliance. … French or European interests are far from identical with American interests,” he said, adding, “On China, it’s the same old story. The Germans have commercial interests there and do everything to protect them, like in Russia. No European country wants to be forced into a brutal confrontation with China. The issue is: How to deal with US pressure?”

He also dismissed comparisons between the Soviet military presence in Europe after World War II and a “new cold war” supposedly emerging between China and NATO. “The issues posed by China today are very different. Where is the Chinese threat in Europe today? Europeans have interests to defend. We must first identify them correctly. But we do not need a military alliance for that.”

What Montbrial proposes is not peace, however, but only the pursuit of rival imperialist interests. He demanded “economic reforms,” such as French President Emmanuel Macron’s cuts to pensions and unemployment insurance, to free up more money for the military. As France wages war in Mali with EU assistance and keeps troops across francophone Africa and the Baltic republics, Montbrial insisted, “[o]ur neighborhood to the south and east should be our main focus.”

Polish Constitutional Court ruling deepens EU crisis

Martin Nowak & Clara Weiss

On October 7, the Polish Constitutional Court ruled that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has no right to make decisions about the Polish judiciary, effectively asserting Polish national law precedence over European law.

Demonstration for the European Union in Warsaw

The ruling, which was handed down by a vote of 10 to 2, has further exacerbated the political crisis in the European Union and also within Poland. Many observers interpret the ruling, which came at the request of the right-wing nationalist PiS [Law and Justice Party] government, as a step toward “Polexit,” even though the government itself denies seeking Poland’s exit from the EU. Since the ruling, there have been calls for the EU to cut its extensive subsidies to Poland.

The specific issue in the court case was whether provisions of the EU treaties that give the EU Commission a say in questions concerning the rule of law are compatible with the Polish constitution.

The EU has long criticized the PiS for systematically subordinating the Polish judiciary, and, in particular, the Constitutional Court, to its political interests, and for undermining the principle of the separation of powers since coming to power in 2015. The Constitutional Court is now almost completely dominated by PiS. Presiding Judge Julia Przyłębska is considered to be PiS-affiliated and a close confidant of PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński.

On March 2 of this year, the ECJ concluded that the PiS government’s controversial judicial reform could partially violate EU law. It found that EU law overrides individual provisions in national law and national constitutional law, and that it could therefore force Poland to repeal parts of the controversial judicial reform.

The PiS government objected to this. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki personally appealed to the Polish Constitutional Court to review the ECJ’s decision. The court has now ruled in his favour and openly questioned the authority of the ECJ.

Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro celebrated the ruling in blatantly nationalistic terms. He said it was a “very important decision” in a situation where Brussels and Berlin were “treating Poland like a quasi-colony.”

The Polish opposition, led by the liberal Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska, PO), which backs greater cooperation between Warsaw and the EU, and Berlin in particular, organized protests Sunday against the Constitutional Court’s ruling. Donald Tusk, the PO’s main leader, served five years as president of the European Council until 2019 and acquired a reputation for being close to German Chancellor Angela Merkel politically.

Tens of thousands took part in protests in the capital, Warsaw, according to media reports. Protests also took place in other cities. However, the overall number of participants fell well short of the mass protests against the abortion law last year.

The demonstrations were mainly supported by the middle-class layers that benefit economically from Poland’s EU integration and make up the PO’s social base. Former Solidarność leader Lech Wałęsa, who played a central role in the reintroduction of capitalism to Poland, supported the protests.

The Financial Times, the mouthpiece of British and European finance capital, was particularly strident in its opposition to the court decision. The newspaper called the ruling “a greater challenge to EU unity than Brexit.” It was “a direct attack on the EU’s legal order, the cement that holds the EU together,” the newspaper wrote. It went on to say it was “regrettable” that the EU had no mechanism to “exclude” members like Poland. The only way to respond, therefore, was to massively cut EU funds to Poland.

As the largest net recipient, Poland receives about 12 billion euros a year from the EU budget. The EU Commission is currently examining whether Poland’s 36 billion euros from the EU’s Coronavirus reconstruction fund can be cut. So far, it has been withholding these funds. Former Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski has publicly threatened that Poland would cancel an equally large portion of its EU contributions if this were to happen.

EU Commission President and former German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said she was “deeply concerned” by the Polish Constitutional Court’s ruling. “EU law takes precedence over national law, including constitutional provisions,” she declared. “We will use all the powers we have under the treaties to ensure this.”

Nevertheless, many media outlets and members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have criticized von der Leyen, who was elected Commission president thanks to the votes of Poland and Hungary, saying she remains largely passive. Some MEPs have even launched a failure to act case against the Commission to force faster action against Poland.

The conflict between the EU and Poland must be understood against the backdrop of the deep crisis of European capitalism, growing tensions with the United States and preparations for war against Russia and China.

Berlin has so far kept a relatively low profile not only because the PiS supported von der Leyen’s election, but also because German companies are among the main beneficiaries of massive EU subsidies to Poland. According to a report in business weekly WirtschaftsWoche, more and more German companies are closing their sites in Germany and relocating production to Poland, where they benefit both from EU subsidies and the extremely low wages of well-trained Polish workers.

Among the 5,800 companies with subsidiaries in Poland are Lufthansa and Siemens. Economic ties between Poland and Germany have been growing steadily for years. Germany is by far the most important export and import trading partner for Poland, accounting for around 28 percent in each direction. Since 1990, German capital has invested around 40 billion euros in the neighbouring country.

The chairman of the Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations, Oliver Hermes, has warned against restricting EU payments to Poland or even Hungary. He wrote that “Delays in the allocation of EU funds also affect German companies in Poland and Hungary, because EU co-financed investments have been a key growth driver since 2004.”

Poland is also of crucial geopolitical importance. It plays a key role in the expansion of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), as all direct land links to the three Baltic EU states, Ukraine and Russia run through Poland.

The Polish government, which emerged from the restoration of capitalism, plays a key role in NATO’s war preparations against Russia. Most recently it has been at the centre of NATO manoeuvrers such as “Defender-Europe 20.”

Since 1989, the Polish bourgeoisie has been oriented primarily toward a military alliance with the United States. In contrast to the previous PO administration, the PiS government has refrained from closer military cooperation with Germany. Instead, it is seeking to build an alliance of Eastern European states along the lines of the “Intermarium,” directed against both Russia and Germany.

Under Donald Trump, Washington openly supported this policy. The Biden administration’s growing focus on war preparations against China and its efforts to somewhat dampen the conflict with Russia, at least temporarily, may now undermine Warsaw’s adoption of this orientation.

At the same time, there are discussions in Germany about whether the “Intermarium” strategy could be used in its own interests. A strategy paper by the pro-government Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Science and Politics Foundation) argued that Berlin should “pursue a policy of interested and benevolent involvement” despite Polish resistance to admitting Germany in order to “position itself in the region as a geo-economic actor alongside the United States as well as China and Russia.”

The conflicts within the Polish bourgeoisie, the dispute between the EU and Poland, and the growing threat of war are ultimately the result of the intensification of international conflicts and class tensions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

As in other Eastern European countries, the pandemic has claimed a particularly large number of lives in Poland, mainly as a result of the disastrous consequences of capitalist restoration 30 years ago, and it has exacerbated the political crisis of the PiS government, which is now rejected by more than two-thirds of the population. With its aggressive nationalist course, the PiS is trying, not least, to distract attention from the growing protests and strikes at home.

Deadly fire in Taiwan leaves nearly 50 people dead

Ben McGrath

A fire broke out in a working-class apartment building in the southern Taiwan port city of Kaohsiung early Thursday morning, killing at least 46 people and leaving another 41 injured. The exact cause of the fire, which resulted in the second-highest death toll of any building fire in Taiwanese history, is still under investigation, but the disaster highlights the difficult and dangerous conditions faced by workers and the poor in Taiwan.

A charred building sits empty after a major fire in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, Friday, Oct. 15, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Huizhong Wu]

The 13-storey dilapidated building was a 40-year-old mixed-use building, common throughout Asia. Once a department store, the converted structure known as the Cheng Chung Cheng building contained 120 units and was home to many of the poorest in the city, including disabled and elderly residents. The building, located in the city’s Yancheng district, had been partly abandoned.

Witnesses reported hearing an explosion, with people in the building screaming ‘fire’ around 3 a.m. on Thursday. The fire was not put out until about 7 a.m. Many of those who died on the upper floors were killed by smoke inhalation. Three people who died were from the Chinese mainland.

Local residents described the structure as a “ghost building,” according to the New York Times. Abandoned sections were used by gangs, reportedly engaging in criminal activity, while stairwells and hallways were piled high with garbage and had exposed wiring.

One survivor, 58-year-old Huang Chin-chih, who was not home at the time of the fire, told the media: “I was afraid of this ghost building, but I had no choice but to live here. I’m just feeling lucky I was not there that night.” Huang paid a third of her monthly salary, approximately $US100, for a one-room apartment in the building.

The fire reportedly started on the first floor. At present, a resident and his girlfriend are under investigation and were questioned by prosecutors on Friday. The couple had supposedly fought the previous day. No details have been announced, but authorities are suggesting that arson could be a cause of the deadly blaze. Kaohsiung police chief Huang Ming-chao said burned incense was discovered where the fire supposedly began, though it is unclear how this might have contributed to the disaster.

What is known, however, is the building did not meet fire safety standards. The bottom six floors had originally been used for commercial purposes, but had become derelict. These floors were filled with flammable materials that greatly exacerbated the intensity of the flames, according to Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chi-mai. Kaohsiung fire chief Lee Ching-hsiu also reported that the construction materials were not up to fire safety standards and contributed to the spread of the blaze.

Taiwan’s United Daily News reported that fire extinguishers were installed only last month, but there were just three per floor, as the residents could not afford to pay for more. This highlights the subordination of public safety to profit. The basic right to protection from disasters like fire is made available only to those who can afford it.

Mayor Chen offered crocodile tears at a news conference. “For the families and Yancheng, I feel incomparable pain and I blame myself deeply,” he stated. “Here I want to express my deepest sorrow to all the wounded and those who died, as well as their families and all the residents.”

Politicians from both the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), including President Tsai Ing-wen and the opposition Kuomintang, offered similar empty words. However, nothing will change after the deadly blaze.

“The problem is not just the fire, but the many structural issues that lie behind the fire,” Chen Liang-Chun, an adjunct professor of urban planning at National Taiwan University, told the New York Times. “In Taiwan, it is always like this. Natural hazards happen all the time, but man-made factors are what turn those hazards into disasters.”

In fact, on Friday, Kaohsiung officials already reported that there were at least 34 “high risk” older buildings in the city, indicating that the problem is widespread. Undoubtedly, there are many more similar buildings throughout the island that also pose significant safety risks. City officials said they would investigate these buildings for fire code violations.

None of this means any real changes will be coming for those living in the most vulnerable conditions. City officials claimed that they had investigated the Cheng Chung Cheng building four times since 2019, though no major steps to improve safety were taken.

“This building was a tumor of Kaohsiung,” said Hong Xian-kai, who ran an antique shop on the destroyed building’s ground floor, near where the fire reportedly started. “No one managed it, and no one cared about it.”

Regardless of how the fire began, the living conditions the residents faced were created by capitalism, which is defended by both the local and central governments. The couple allegedly involved, or anyone else who can be used as a scapegoat, will be demonized in the press in order to divert attention from the social conditions and avoid making any changes that would undercut the drive for profits.

Many workers and poor are unable to find or afford safe places to live as housing prices rapidly grow. A poll conducted at the end of September by the minor opposition New Power Party (NPP) found that 82.6 percent of people believed housing prices were unreasonably high. The NPP postures as a non-aligned “third” party in Taiwan, but is in fact a supporter of the ruling DPP.

While housing in Kaohsiung remains difficult for workers to find, the city is welcoming the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, with open arms. TSMC is expected to expand into Kaohsiung, setting up new plants beginning in 2023. The resulting speculation has further driven up housing prices in the area.

As has happened globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a sharp rise of social inequality in Taiwan, even according to recent official data released by the island’s Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS).

In 2020, income inequality on the island was the highest in eight years, with the top 20 percent of households earning 6.13 times the bottom 20 percent, according to the DGBAS. The agency said disadvantaged employees had been hit harder by the economic fallout from the pandemic, with many of them asked to take unpaid leave, for example.

Accessing safe and affordable housing is a growing problem not only in Taiwan, but in many cities throughout China, including in Hong Kong. While governments and politicians seek to drive wedges between workers in Taiwan and the mainland, and whip up animosities to justify war plans, the working class faces similar conditions throughout the region and the world.